The more I read about this game, the more intrigued I become. Today, I’d like keep my focus on Eldfall Chronicles series, and specifically take a deep dive about the magic in the Eldfall Chronicle setting.
I prefer fantasy over the SciFi setting. One of the reason is I like Magics. From adventure board gamer’s perspective, the amount of detail Eldfall Chronicles have put in to the Magic system may be unlike anything else you’ve seen before, and perhaps one we’ve dreamed of. The detail here is compatible to well built crafted tabletop RPG, fantasy story, or perhaps anime.
The purpose of this article is not talk about specific game rule for spell casting. The purpose is to assess how much of the depth Eldfall decided to commit in designing magic system.
Let’s take a look.
Elements of Magic
In Eldfall Chronicles, magic is called arcana. There is a very detailed world setting about this that you can and should read on the official website, which I will put links below. Let’s take a 10,000 feet overview.
4 principal elements
In a fantasy based adventure board game, it is not uncommon to see you have a magic and spell casters. However, it is most likely for the purpose of keeping the rule simple, many games do not distinguish elements or types of magics.
On the contrary, if you read fantasy novel, watch anime, or play RPG video games, it is one of the core element of the world building to have different types of magic.
In Eldfall, there are four principle elements, fire, wind, water and earth. In the game, we are supposed to refer them as pyro, aero, hydro and geo. If you are feeling a hype already, then keep watching. It’s just get better.
Light, dark and ancient magic!
Beyond the four nature bases elemental types of magic, the game has 3 more elements. Two are called divine and profane. Yes! These two covers the classic light and dark opposing magic types.
Then, the last one the call elder. This is the element often referred to as the “lost magic”, “ancient magic” category in other well crafted fantasy settings.
Game Play
What’s impressive here is that Eldfall Chronicles often have actual game play implementation of the detailed lores.
The spells in this game indeed have elemental types. Currently the game has unequal number of representation from each element, but each element has at least one representation.
The elemental classification system is thematic with each element designed to have own flavor.
For example, fire spells are primarily focusing on damage with burn traits, which causes additional wounds from a given attack. Water spells can attempt to control the field to your advantage such as by slowing enemy’s movement.
Affinity
In Eldfall, there are affinity to the elements. So most spell casters, called arcanist in this game, can only cast particular element of spells that they have the affinity to.
This part of lore serves a great reinforcement so each elements of arcana will retain their own flavor as individual characters most likely be able to cast a spell from the very specific type of element, which in turn makes characters feel unique in their play style.
Furthermore, such setting and restriction allows to create the exciting character or moment when there is a character who can cast spells from multiple different elements. We’ve all seen and know how cinematic this can be from our favorite book, anime or RPG.
Just to illustrate another layer of depth the background story has, elves-equivalent in Eldfall are called Rin. Most Rin are born with affinity to a single element while human do not have affinity to any arcana element when they were born. However, human can learn new affinities through rigorous practice, while learning new affinities for Rins is nearly impossible. I appreciate such a detail building of the world.
Elemental Relationships
Another example of the detailed world building is relationships amongst elements rather than just simple 7 independent classification system.
Fire is fierce and swift.
Air is swift and adaptable.
Water is adaptable and resolute.
Earth is resolute and fierce.
For example, adjacent principle element arcana is easier for one to learn than the others.
Game Play
Affinity is fully represented in the game as the core rule. In fact, most models looked to have just one and some having two.
I also appreciate the game has added another layer in spell classification, which is serving as subcategorization.
While affinity defines fundamental type of spell that the model have potential access to, there is a concept of “spell craft”, which defines a set of spells that the character have access to.
This subclassifications creates thematic sense of applied, derived or specialized type of magics where perhaps nobody else have access to. As an example, while Anari has dual affinity to opposing principal element water and fire, she use “cryomancy” or “ice” magic.
This added layer of spell classification system allows creation of intentional design space for spell pool isolation. This is identical to what some of TCG does when the game was built from ground up with planned new expansion several times a year without plan for any set rotation. These games are considered more serious organized play in mind as there are often involvement of large cash prize pool involved.
Spell Types
In Eldfall, it’s not just elements that are used to classify the spells. There are spell types.
The game defines 5 types of spells based on their application.
- Sorcery
- Healing
- Enchantment
- Transmutation
- Conjuration
In brief, sorcery are instant, short lasting spell. In game play perspective, they last until the duration of the activation sequence, which mean essential just one movement/action set of the given model.
Healing spells are self explanatory. One thing to note here is they are not just healing HP.
Enchantment is also relatively self explanatory. This type of spells have lasting effects beyond single activation sequence. The default duration here is until the caster’s next Strategic phase, which means a whole round including remaining allies activations, and subsequent all opponent’s characters activations.
The forth type is transmutation. This type of spell has permanent effect until it is specifically removed or destroyed. There is no actual spell under this specific type.
The last type is conjuration. This is a summon spell. Yes. We can summon in this game, and they have their miniature representations.
Perhaps most thematic spell type I see is conjuration. As I exactly imagine, summoning a creature require concentrated spell casting. This is represented by “ritual” action, which means the caster must forfeit movement during the activation sequence.
The summoned creature is treated as its own model including own model profile.
The summoner needs to pay mana upkeep cost at every active turn of its own. The cost of mana upkeep is defined by tier of the creature, and the limit is defined by the summoner’s stamina stat. I see this as a very thematic mechanics.
Each spell types have their unique, thematic rule. For example, healing, enchantment, and conjuration types cannot be casted as reaction. Transmutation spell may have an armor value, which allow it to become target of attack.
Mana
Some spells require the model to pay mana cost. This is not the same as mana upkeep.
In fact the game actually have mana represented as mana counter token.
Currently, the way to generate mana is to be a mage class and use its class ability, which allows conversion of any number of its activation points into corresponding amount of Mana Counters when in the active role.
Then, the mana counter can be carried over to subsequent turns.
Basically, this is a form of resource management. This part of game mechanics shows a potential of trading card game’s fundamental design, the mana resource management.
Currently, there is summoner class ability that allows sharing of mana pool with other summoner class members in the party. This is illustrates the scene of multiple summoners working together to summon a legendary creature.
Others
There are many other details about magic in Eldfall.
From the lore side, I thought the soulrot concept is pretty cool. Soulrot is essentially a condition where the model used too much mana beyond one is capable of. In video game, it’s the condition where you run out of magic point.
This phenomenon has a very cinematic description in Eldfall Chronicles lore.
When the individual’s threshold is reached, the unexpelled mana starts to pool inside of the body, materializing and crystalizing within. The veins become overflown with a tar-like substance (the crystalized mana), black and congealed.
It spreads throughout the affected’s body, leading to paralysis. In severe cases, soulrot punctures the skin and leaves the victim perforated with profane protrusions that seem like blackened glass or broken shards.
https://eldfall-chronicles.com/introduction-to-arcana2/
Also, in concordance with majority belief, spell casters are usually glass canon. This is true in Eldfall with spells generally tend to deal more damage than physical weapons, but the casters are more fragile. Also, developer notes spells usually have a shorter range than physical ranged weapons.
Future/Wishlist
Although everything sounds great and I am hyped, I am greedy.
There are couple future wishlist from me.
First, I would like to see each spells represented in a card with a high quality art.
Being able to present a card on the battlefield when casting a spell gives me the physical feedback and improves game immersion.
Second, there is currently only a single type of mana counter to represent mana accumulation. The lore and developer confirmed that there are 7 types of mana in the world of Eldfall Chronicles.
So as the game continues to expand, I hope to see individual mana types actually represented of its own as different types of tokens, dice, cards or perhaps a combination of. It will certainly improve immersion to the game, but also I am hoping such implementation is a confirmation and necessity for the game stepping up to the next level of spell casting. At that time, I am looking for replication perhaps evolution of trading card game’s resource management system.
Doesn’t it sound exciting to have a spell that requires 2 fire and 2 water mana? How is one going to pull that? May be two summoners with each having different affinity can share their mana together.
What if a combat is taking a place in the field where a specific mana element is scarce and only so much can be stored in mana pool at once between players?
The third, which I am more confident is that game most likely have alternative way of generating mana in the future such as by means of magical weapon or item.
Conclusion
While Eldfall Chronicles isn’t just an adventure board game, with the Northern Wind I think its fair to view this as a fully fledged adventure board gamer in addition to war/skirmish game.
So from the adventure board gamer’s perspective, this game has unbelievable amount of lore and world building. The amount of detail here is something I’ve only seen in board game representation of the already existing blockbuster game, movie, fantasy book or anime.
Here, Eldfall Chronicles is original IP and despite dungeon crawler system is being released after the original, war game version, I think two are completely cross compatible and continue to see future expansions together. So it’s just impressive.
Today, I’ve just done a quick research about their magic system implantation, but it was truly a joy to read the lores, setting and then most importantly seeing those are directly represented in the actual game play mechanics. This is just a one piece and one example of the game’s depth.
Obviously you wouldn’t need to know all lores to play the game, but if you are after cinematic game play, Eldfall may be able to immerse into the game fairly deeply.