Spellfire was a collectible card game based on
Dungeons & Dragons published by TSR from 1994 to 1997, only eight months after
Magic: The Gathering was published. TSR had hoped to recapture the gaming market that Wizards of the Coast took from them, but the short development time for the game (developers said they basically made it over a weekend), as well as egregious reuse of artwork from previous
Dungeons & Dragons products, made for an Original Sin that eventually doomed the product to failure.
Tropes
- All There in the Manual: The cards don't tell you how to play the game; one must have the manual to know what one is supposed to do. That said, the game assumed that players could figure some things out on their own, something Magic never did.
- Art Shift: The art came from TSR products that were made in a range of 20 years. The different styles clashed horribly together.
- Artifact of Death: One artifact card, The Heartwood Spear, specifically specializes in outright killing dragons and monsters.
- Attack! Attack! Attack!: Players are encouraged to keep attacking, as otherwise once someone gets six domains they win.
- Collectible Card Game: One of the first to be published after Magic took off. It lasted longer than most other similar games that were released in 1994.
- Combat by Champion: A player sends out one of his championsnote which included Hero, Wizard, Clerics, and Monsters to raze an enemy's realm, and the opponent trys to stop it by sending one of his champions to block him.
- Crapsack World: The Dark Sun and Ravenloft setting cards are two different types of this kind of world, and the artwork reflects this.
- Creator Cameo: If a card did not use old art, it likely used a photo of one of the creators in fantasy costume instead.
- Do Well, But Not Perfect: The game is easily expandable for multiplayer. An advisable strategy in free-for-all multiplayer formats would be to remember this trope; since you have multiple opponents to worry about, appearing to be the strongest player is a good way to get them to gang up on you.
- Equippable Ally: Ally cards could be placed on one's champion during combat, and are discarded after combat whether of not the champion won or lost.
- Expansion Pack: One gained additional game cards thru booster packs or starter decks.
- Expansion Pack World: The first edition had three D&D settings featured. The future expansions added more possible settings to the game.
- Fanservice: Early D&D products were not afraid to feature scantily clad females in chainmail or leather bikinis, and the artwork from them were used for cards in the game.
- Flight: Flyer cards could attack any realm that didn't specifically bar flyers from attacking it, as opposed to the first unrazed realm of the defending player.
- Guide Dang It!: Some of the cards from the 1st Edition were changed in later printing, but you'd have no way of knowing unless you had those updated cards in your possession, or had reference material for it.
- Place of Power: Realms and Domains each represented a geographic location, and each had its own particular advantage in playing it in particular. They usually represented places of note in the D&D setting they originated from.
- Psychic Powers: The Powers expansion added Psionicists and Psionic Power cards to the game, which represented mental power as opposed to magical power.
- Reused Character Design / Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: The image of Red Sonja from the adventure module Red Sonja Unconquered was transposed and then used for the card Dori the Barbarian.
- Revenue-Enhancing Devices: Players had to buy additional cards thru boosters and starter packs to have more powerful decks, aiding the cash flow to TSR...or at least, that was the hope.
- Ring of Power: Some of the Magical Items in the game were Rings, usually ones available already in the D&D game but now in card form.
- Super Swimming Skills: A Swimmer could attack any realm the opponent had as long as it featured a coast, indicating the champion could swim from anywhere at any distance to attack said realm.
- Überwald: Anything from the Ravenloft setting will have this aesthetic.
- Uniqueness Rule: The game had Rule Cards that added a rule to the game, but only one could be in play at a time.
- Useless Item: The earliest releases had a plethora of Ally cards that offered pathetically small combat bonuses and had no special abilities whatsoever. Since all Ally cards in Spellfire have the same cost and Allies were at the time the weakest card type in the game, there was never any reason anyone would ever put one in a deck. The reprints gave these cards special abilities.
- Vanilla Unit: In early sets, some Champions and Allies had no additional abilities; when they were reprinted they were given abilities just so they would not be relatively useless.
