While I may be a huge fan of long, ponderous, board games that take an entire afternoon for my buddies and I to crawl through. Sometimes you need to shake things up a bit, sometimes you need a fast and loose style of game. I introduce to you, Spellslingers!
Vincent Baker, of Vindicated Entertainment, has brought us a game that feels reminiscent of a game of Uno played backwards. Rather than trying to rid yourself of cards you covet them, all while using them to attempt to rid your fellow players of their own hands. The base game is quick and chaotic, you can play with 2-10 players after all. Each card in your hand has an effect and upon playing it you are typically targeting another player forcing them to react with their own cards or even discard them to avoid an even more devastating effect.
The base deck of cards, as you can see each card has a value and a description of what the card does.
Basic Spellslingers is a quick game to play with friends but within the package you receive there are already new variants of the game available.
Signature Spells: Vastly more powerful. Suggested play styles include adding them to the regular deck to be drawn randomly to your foe’s despair or, even better, as a separate deck to be gained upon defeating a fellow player. I even had an idea to grant a draw from the deck for the remaining players who didn’t defeat an opponent to add an element of “they are getting desperate” to the game.
Spellslinger Characters: To give the game a more thematic flair characters have been added that are chosen either purposefully or at random in the beginning of the game. They add special effects to what you as a player can do.
Other variants of note include an Epic Enemy that you can play against if you’ve got some solo time to kill, ways to play against the deck with fellow players, and even a variant where you can all team up on one stronger player.
Spellslingers is a fast paced game that’s easy to learn. I love the touch that the game includes numerous variants on how to play so you can pinpoint your own favorite style of play. It really is pretty versatile for a quick and easy card game. If it has any faults I’d say the chance someone gets teamed up on can be fairly high, but considering how quick one game is over and a new one begun that’s not going to hold it back too much.
If you are interested in buying this game, which comes in at a price of $14.99, you can simply follow this link to the Vindicated Entertainment store. While you’re there check out some of the other games offered. Hope you enjoy!
Want to see the game in action?
-Melvs
