Benedict was chatting something about the village being peaceful or the weather or something similar but Cadmus wasn’t listening.
He had seen a quick flash of movement and that flash was bright blue and he was now alert and watching, the village was almost empty and unusually quiet for this time of day.
“we are not alone Benedict, we have company” Cadmus said quietly as he turned and watched the buildings around him.
Benedict stopped talking instantly taking a defensive stance and held the pendant hanging around his neck, Cadmus had noticed before how Benedict had fiddled with that pendant when he was nervous and he definitely looked nervous now.
Then they came, two blue wizards a man and a woman and they were already casting spells…
Cadmus thought to himself where had they come from, how had they entered the village without raising the alarm, would he survive this encounter with only Benedict by his side, all this he thought in the second or two it took him to move towards the statue in the village centre, Benedict was a good friend but he wasn’t the strongest wizard and in combat he had sometimes been a little lacking when needed.
A mass of sharp brambles hurtled past his head so close he was caught by a couple of the sharp thorns, it smashed against Benedict and cried out in pain.
Cadmus calmed himself he would get through this hopefully with Benedict, with practiced ease he cast Iron Skin on himself and readied a fireball, if those wizards wanted to kill him, they would have to work for it.
He moved then out from behind the statue and hit the closest of the blue wizards, the female, as they ran into the street, he saw with pleasure that she reeled with pain from the effect of the spell.
Yep, he thought they would have to work for it…
I had a spare hour today and thought that I would have a quick game of Crystalline Wars: Arcane Battlegrounds.
For this battle I would just have two wizards a side and set the encounter within a small village, and the wizards will just be four I pointed up a while back.
For the red wizards we have Cadmus Hawthorne and Benedict Coleridge and for the blue side we have Serena Whitlock and Edmond Kingsley, all are very basic wizards with a simple spread of attack, support and defence spells.
The cards I used were from an old set I did and I noticed while playing that there were a couple of tiny mistakes, but nothing that would affect the game.
So on with the game, I set up a small village with some buildings set around a village statue, no real cover so this could be really quick and painful.
The first turn the wizards got a good selection of elements for their spells, Cadmus probably got the best draw of the all the wizards for the first turn.
Serena moved forward and casts tempest gust at Benedict and smashes him back against the building behind him as he staggers to his feet she hits him with a water missile.
Cadmus casts a fireball at Serena and is not happy when he sees Edmond cast mist shield on Serena to reduce the damage caused by the fireball.
Benedict pulls himself together and moves forward to join the fight with Serena and casts two water missiles hitting her twice and then casts tempest gust and returns the favour and slams her into a building behind her, he was pleased to see that she looked in a bad way as she got back to her feet.
Edmond shadow stepped close to Serena to try and give her some support and cast two metal missiles at Benedict.
Turn two and Cadmus cast shadow step and moved away from Benedict to try and reduce the chance of area spells hitting both of them, he then cast iron skin on himself.
Serena moved in closer to Benedict and hits him with golems punch hitting him full in the chest, luckily he had cast thicket ward to reduce some of the damage effect.
But Serena wasn’t finished yet, she cast bramble shot and Benedict staggered under the onslaught, and again she continued the attack and hit him with a couple painful water missiles.
Benedict was barely standing now and was clearly in a bad way.
Edmond saw his opportunity and moved towards Benedict and cast metallic surge and pieces of sharp metal flew into Benedict ending his fight.
So now Cadmus was alone and facing two powerful wizards, what could he hope to do.
Turn three and the elements were not kind to Cadmus, he only managed to get enough elements for defensive spells, he didn’t get anything to allow him to cast attacking spells… this wasn’t good.
Serena seeing that Cadmus was in trouble moved in to attack and casts a water missile which removed the iron skin on Cadmus and then she hits him with a golems punch, but Cadmus casts stone bulwark and reduced the amount of damage he takes.
Edmond again moves alongside Serena and joins in the attack hoping to finish this quickly, he cast bramble shot and Cadmus reels from the pain.
Turn four and Cadmus was much luckier this turn with the elements, maybe he will be able to get some revenge for Benedict.
Edmond cast metallic surge at Cadmus who can do nothing except grit his teeth against the pain, Edmond then fires off a metal missile, Cadmus is still standing… but only just.
Cadmus targets Serena with a fireball and two water missiles and is pleased to see her fall to the ground.
Turn five and Cadmus casts fireball at Edmond, but Edmond casts mist shield and stops some of the damage, Cadmus then casts a water missile, all Edmond can do this turn in reply is fire a metal missile back at Cadmus.
Turn six and both wizards drew on their elemental powers and Cadmus was extremely lucky, Edmond could sense this and decided that it would be best if he left the village as soon as he could… he cast shadow step twice and was gone.
Well that was fun, and very close, Cadmus was down to his last point of life, it really could have gone really bad for him if the elements hadn’t been kind to him.
The draws from the bag were fairly average for most of the game until that last couple of turns where Cadmus was exceptionally lucky, put that with the fact that Edmonds draws were really bad and well Edmond did the right thing, he would live to fight another day.
In this game a wizard can go from full health to dead in a very very short time, just like poor old Benedict.
I guess if I had kept the two red wizards together then maybe Benedict could have survived for an extra turn or maybe two, but I don’t think it would have made a huge difference to the outcome.
Also fighting in a completely open space wasn’t good for either side, it is always better to hide behind a wall or fence, it gives the wizards more chance to survive.
Next time I might point up two more powerful wizards and put them against several weaker ones and see how they do.
If you want to play the game yourself you can download it free from Wargames Vault – https://www.wargamevault.com/product/467337/Crystalline-Wars–Arcane-Battlegrounds?src=FyndoriaGamesSite
Or from itchi.oi – https://fyndoriagames.itch.io/crystalline-wars-arcane-battlegrounds
Crystalline Wars: Arcane Battleground is a free print and play wizard skirmish game, the game has simple game mechanics and best of all no need for dice!!!
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Hi Mac,
That looked fun to play, and Cadmus was definitely lucky!
Im most of the systems I play a Mage duel tends to get nasty really quickly – the first one to fluff a roll invariably ends up toast …
Is there a rule for interventions during an opposing wizards turn? I ask because one of the games I play where wizards can duel another has a rule where as one wizard is spell casting the other can interfere in the ritual to try and spoil the spells effects … or even cause the other wizard a magic failure & backlash! In this way two wizards can largely counter each other – in the larger story of a battle the two wizards lock minds & struggle for dominance whilst the knuckle daggers conk each other over their heads with refined stones …
In one (funny) game I played one wizard try to summon a demon to do his dirty work, the opposing wizard interfered in the spell ritual and FOOP! one very annoyed demon appeared, grabbed the summoner and departed back to wherever demons come from (Luton, I’ve heard it said … maybe Basingstoke … ), taking the summoner with it …
Better than the GURPS magic system … cast spell (round 1), enlarge the spell (round 2), enlarge the spell again (round 3), enlarge the spell yet again (round 4 … now its maximum size, so … ) throw spell at target! Missed … drat! start again … better still, pull a refined rock implement out from under your wizards robe & go conk the target over the head with it – it’ll be quicker that way … saw that done when I DM’d GURPS over 30 years ago. Still laugh about it now – Gary was fed up with trying to use magic to zap the Orcs …
I have way too many systems I never seem to play enough, but I might yet get this for a try – diceless systems are very intriguing!
Hi Vic,
Cadmus was really lucky!! He drew enough of the right elements to really give Edmond a very bad day, so Edmond very sensibly realised he had to be somewhere else 🙂
The wizards can’t interrupt spell casting they can only reduce the effect of the spell… this is only a “lite” version so that may be something for the full version when I get around do writing it.
As I say they can affect the damage done by casting a shield or something similar, but they still need to have the elements to cast it.
All the spells have point values so you can point up your wizards to do certain things, like healing or protection or just basic support (movement spells etc.)
And add a couple of damage dealers and you have a fun, tactical game, with no dice!
The game can handle up to six wizards each side, you would need to add more elements to the bag to use more wizards, although with more than twelve wizards it would possibly not be a skirmish game.
It is like all of my rule sets “simple” and the no dice makes it perfect for me as I hate rolling dice, the system works around drawing element tokens from a bag and allotting them to your wizards, if the wizard has the right elements, then they can cast their spells when they are activated (or defence spells when needed) so no need to roll dice!
It is simple, and it works really well, even though this is a lite version.
Further down the line I will start to put together a full version with lots more spells and items and probably summoning as well, so you could have necromancers summoning the dead to fight or druids summoning animals to fight etc. etc. lots of options.
If you do get a chance to look at the rules or even play them let me know what you think.
Mac