Games with Brad: Arcane Dual

White Dwarf issue 524 came with the rules and everything needed to play the mini-game Arcane Duel (you need to provide the wizards and some dice).

We recently started this recurring column to talk about monthly gaming sessions with our friend Brad. During our most recent session we played the mini-game Arcane Dual!

Arcane Duel is played on a small cardstock board that is separated into different zones that have varying effects on the wizards if occupied. These effects range from positive to negative. Instead of using wizards, we decided to use psykers from our Vastarian setting.

Each wizard starts with a dice pool of 16 dice (Power Dice). These dice are the lifeblood of the wizard. They are used for casting and dispelling spells and keeping track of the wizard’s health. When used to cast spells, the dice are depleted from your pool. Once you run out of dice your wizard is defeated. Some spells and areas on the battlefield can replenish or deplete dice, however you can never go above 16 Power Dice. 

On each of your turns you can choose to move your wizard to a new location or cast a spell. When casting a spell, you choose from one of three of your spells to cast. Each spell has a difficulty rating printed on it that needs to be met or exceeded by rolling D6s from your dice pool. Before attempting to cast the spell you decide how many dice from your pool you want to use to cast the spell. After successfully casting a spell, your opponent has the opportunity to try dispelling it with dice from their own dice pool. At the end of your turn, you are forced to relinquish one of your spells, which will then be available for your opponent to cast after a turn cycle.

Saint Clement, head of the Synod of Reclamation, mentally prepares for a Wizard Fight!

Ligeia Orr, Prophet of the Crimson Veil, readies her mind to unleash a psychic onslaught.

Ligeia Orr meets Saint Clement of Ravachol at the Arcane Nexus, the center of the psychic maelstrom. Here casters gain additional destructive and rejuvenative capabilities.

The game came down to the wire with Ligeia Orr casting Unleash Power to drain the last remaining Power Dice from Saint Clement. Ligeia was left with one Power Dice remaining.

Overall, Arcane Dual was a fun and straightforward game. The Power Dice mechanic was fun and easy to keep track of and the spell economy was interesting and added more strategy. All of the different spell cards in the game are double sided, so there is a large variety of different and interesting combinations, adding to the replayability. The game could be an interesting system to adapt to our Vastarian setting to represent psychic warfare. Maybe in the future we will use the game to further the Vastarian narrative focusing on some of the Saints swallowed up in the warp!

-Adam Wier