Games for Gamers Who Like Games Like Magic, Part 2!

Yeah I'm back, what?

So it's been a while. My bad. Things got a bit crazy between work and holidays and such, but here I am talking to you about Spectromancer. Spectromancer is both a card game and not a card game, just as it is a tabletop game without really being a tabletop game. Meaningless drivel, you say? You'd be right. But I stand by that drivel.

Spectromancer


Spectromancer is based on the computer game Astral Tournament by Alexey Stankevich, and he developed this game along with Richard Garfield and Skaff Elias, two names which should be familiar to longtime Magic players. The crux of the game is this: A player has 5 decks, one for each Elemental Magic (Fire, Water, Air, and Earth) and one for the player's Specialty. For example, an Insanimancer's specialty is Chaos Magic, where each spell has a randomized effect, or a Cleric's specialty is Holy Magic, which is mainly defensive - gaining life, healing creatures, oh, and it's got Wrath of God.

 At the beginning of each game, each player gets 4 semirandom cards from each deck: one cheap card, one medium cost card, one high cost card, and one random card. Those are your cards for the whole game. Oh, and there's no deckbuilding either.

Wait! No deckbuilding!? Shocked? Well, don't be. Whereas a game like Magic is a lot about the metagame, Spectromancer was designed to be lighter fare. It's actually pretty standard for a Richard Garfield design - Garfield is a big fan of randomization in games and this one has a good amount of that. The semi-random deal you get at the beginning of a game servers pretty well to balance things and the various options are all pretty balanced. Plus, after a bit of play you can see that deckbuilding isn't really necessary. While there are some cute interactions to be had, part of the fun is trying to figure out how to play a particular arrangement. Deckbuilding would just smooth out the gameplay into a big indistinguishable mass, and indistinguishable masses aren't known for good gameplay. Just ask a game of Puerto Rico! (*zing*)

Gameplay

Each player has mana pools for each of their 5 decks. Each turn, you can cast one spell by spending mana of that type. Then each turn, you gain a mana of that type, though there are cards that can increase the rate at which you gain mana.

Creatures go onto the field in one of 6 slots. They have a Power and a Life total, and each turn, each of your creatures attacks the opposite slot. If there's a creature there, it loses life equal to the attackers power, otherwise your opponent loses that life. And it's that simple. All you have to do now is beat your opponent to death! Good times.

Strategy in Spectromancer is interesting. Over the course of a game, you learn what spells the opponent has and can learn to play around them. But the biggest thing is planning out and managing the growth of your mana pools. Being able to efficiently use your mana is key. Spectromancer is about planning your turns in advance, knowing what creatures are best to play in what slots against your opponent's creature.

It's not really especially analogous to Magic gameplaywise, but there are certainly ways to play Aggro, Combo, Ramp, and Control just the same. (There's even a Control school of Magic used by Dominators.) Playing Aggro, you can play a bunch of cheap, powerful creatures, but what you're sacrificing is the creatures' Life, which means they die faster, allowing your opponent to overwhelm you with stronger creatures while you struggle to keep replacing your cheap ones. However, as a early strategy it's not bad - if you stick to one cheap creature in a single school of Magic, it makes it easy to transition into powerful spells in your other four schools once you've let them build up by focusing on one school.

Then Control is more about playing defense, finding ways to gain mana advantages over your opponent, either with efficient removal spells or by actively going after their mana pools, eventually overwhelming them with superior spells.

And Ramp is all about using creatures that increase your own growth, usually culminating in one of the four Elementals, big creatures that become more powerful the more mana of their type you have.

All in all, it's actually a very compelling game with nuanced strategy. I urge you to go and buy it on Steam or from the official site.

For extra fun, check out Richard's notes and a podcast on Spectromancer (technically the expansion, League of Heroes) with Richard and Skaff at their site, Three Donkeys.

And if you do get the game, drop me a line either here or on my Twitter or in some other creative way!

See ya next time! (Which will hopefully be sooner rather than later.)