Reconstruction of the mage class

Our attitude towards playing Scape has always been open-minded. Once you make one custom or one change to the rules an avalanche can follow- in our case we have collected ideas from all sorts of games and combined them with Scape.

It doesn’t always work. We’ve had so many ideas and play so much that our Scape playing can be dissected into historical periods.

First there was the early years, when the kids were small and we played a version of the basic game. We got into the game when it was beginning to become hard to find. This was our hunter gatherer period I guess. We were looking for boosters and gathering what we could.

Then came the period of isolation, when we had moved away from the game rules and we were experimenting with new ideas and manipulating them to see how they affected game play. Our Early Reconstruction Period.

In the golden age we began to produce everything in great quantities. Ideas, mechanics, special powers, customs. There was such a great flowering of ideas – it was almost a challenge to think of new things and figure out how they could work. It was the age of catapults, cannon, ballistae, ships, gyrocopters, horses, elephants, powers of invisibility, mages and magic systems. The Valkyrie generals’ factions split into more than thirty factions, each with their own systems and mythos. We began to play massive games that took months and kept track of them on peg boards, playing out individual battles, working on strategies to cut supply lines, feinting, counter attacking, dreaming of still greater things. Did I mention the Titans?

But like every golden age eventually it descended into chaos. Stats grew higher in an escalation of powers. Older units became unusable. Whole drawers were abandoned. Figures with unreasonable powers were no longer taken. I particularly remember a bull made of metal and ice who could breath out an ice bridge eight hexes long, freezing everyone in its path- and then he could slide on it.

I suppose what followed should have been a dark age, after the fall of greatness. We sat around and talked- we missed the old days, we missed having fun heroes, we wanted our game back. So we started from scratch. Redesigned everything, starting with the pointing system. Created categories so that figures were forced to balance their powers. It was a long haul but we are playing like crazy again, the system and games are good. The reformation. The age of Reason.

It was a great loss, in my opinion, when our mage class was forgotten.. We don’t always play with sorcerers, but they’re great fun when we do. So we were very happy to reinvent mages and spell books to fit into our revised Scape system.

We have chosen to try and make everyone balanced. No figures that are luck dependant- they suck when there’s no luck and they’re no fun super powers when they’re lucky. So the mages would have to be sturdy with a high chance of succeeding.

We returned to our charges based system. A mage would have a normal ranged attack with six range, all paid for by their normal price. Then charges, at 5 points each could be purchased and used to power special attacks- really spells from the spell book. Simple spells were one charge, spells with more attack or ones that affected multiple figures or hexes were more expensive. A mage needed 7+ to cast successfully. More proficient mages only needed 5+.

We playtested, tinkering with the spells. A spell called gust which could blow multiple figures a few hexes seemed useless sometimes but overpowered on cliffs and near lava. The buffing spells seemed the strongest- magic that increased attack or defence for multiple figures for one turn.

The most common magic would be spell book based, but different factions have different systems. The Rawrens, big wolf like creatures- have magic powered by blood (wounds).

We had never been that happy with the Scape elves. You need a pack of them to stick together, and while that may be a realistic portrayal of that cowardly race it didn’t play that well in our game. So we evened them out and made them dependable- even though they are elves.

It may sound like a huge undertaking but it is a labour of love. It is still our favourite game and we play four to five times a week. For a while we were playing a lot of other games too, but lately, perhaps because of school and other time commitments, its mostly our version of Scape. It’s magical stuff.