Spellbinder (board game)

Spellbinder is a 2–4 player game in which each player controls a wizard. Yamantsar, the chief wizard of central Yof-Pintre castle, has departed to go conquering, and the four remaining wizards, who occupy lesser castles in corners of the board, each decide to take over Yof-Piintre.^[1]

Each turn, the first player is chosen at random. The sequence of play is:

• Movement
• Magical combat: Each wizard chooses a spell secretly, and the two spells are revealed simultaneously. Spells can cause damage to the enemy army, but can also backfire, causing damage to the owning player's army.
• Regular combat^[2]

The game comes with three scenarios:^[2]

1. Everyone vies for control of Yof-Pintre.
2. One player starts in control of Yof-Pintre and must defend it.
3. Yamantsar, the chief wizard, returns to fight the lesser wizards.

There is also a campaign game, which is to play all of the scenarios in order.^[2]

Points are awarded for destruction of enemies, with the highest number of points awarded for controlling Yof-Pintre. The player with the most points is the winner.^[2]

In 1977, Metagaming Concepts published Ogre and pioneered the microgame, a small and easy-to-learn wargame, often with a fantasy or science fiction theme, packaged in a ziplock bag or thin plastic case. Several game companies responded with their own lines of microgrames, chief among them the "Fantasy Capsule" and "Space Capsule" microgames of Simulations Publications Inc. and the "Pocket Games" of Task Force Games. One of the Pocket Games line was Spellbinder, a microgame designed by R. Vance Buck, with interior art by Buck and Bob Bingham, and cover art by Alvin Bellflower. It was published by Task Force Games in 1980.