Blastflare

This game is © 2025 David Hammerle. All Rights Reserved. You are granted permission to download and play for non-commercial, personal use only. No redistribution or commercial exploitation is permitted. For any other use, please contact davehammerlecoder@gmail.com.

Blastflare is a tactical board game where players battle using characters with spells and special abilities. The game focuses on positioning, resource management, and strategic card play. Players collect crystals around the board to fuel their special abilities while trying to eliminate the opposing team. Each character has unique cards that give them different tactical options. This game works best with teams of players, typically in a 2v2 format, and combines elements of resource management with tactical combat.

This was a simplification of my previous game, "Militious Treasure Hunt". It removes the character ability development (leveling up) aspect of that game and adds cards, which determine characters' abilities. It still had one of the major flaws of "Militious Treasure Hunt", which was that it was free-for-all, rather than team based. This meant that whichever characters attacked other characters, or were attacked, were at a disadvantage, and the character(s) other than them would win. For this reason, I would recommend playing the game using teams, even though I only ever played it free-for-all.

Another flaw with this game is that towards the end of the game, all players' cards will have been revealed, meaning that there is little or no unknown factors to keep the game interesting. Often at this point, players can figure out definitively what will happen given any action they might take. This at least makes the game less interesting towards the end, but also can cause a stalemate, because no player wants to attack, because generally whichever character attacks loses. Also, the cards were not particularly well-balanced. Regardless, I thought the game was kind of fun.

Blastflare Rules and Card List.txt (contains the info below)

Board Setup

• The board should be a square (or rectangle close to a square) grid approximately 10-20 squares times the number of players.
• At the start of each game, the board should be haphazardly scattered with approximately 1/5 the total board size barriers (which have 1 health each) and 1/5 the board size walls.
• No space(s) should be completely separated from the rest of the board by walls.
• Then approximately 3-10 Crystals (pennies) per player should be placed about the board haphazardly in approximately 8-20 stacks.
• Then starting places for characters should be chosen randomly, re-rolling collisions with other characters, walls, barriers, or Crystals (you can't start on Crystals) in any order.
• Every time a character moves onto a stack of Crystals, it may pick them up (during its turn but not using its turn).
• Live characters, barriers, and walls may not occupy the same spaces.

Cards

• Deal the cards out to the players, divided evenly amongst them with extras shown and removed from the game.

Health and Mana

• Each player starts with 4 health and 4 max health and 0 Crystals (there is no max on Crystals).
• Health and Crystals may not go below 0.

Starting Player

• Select a starting player at random.

The current player may take any one action each turn.

Actions

1. Move 1 space.
2. Deal 1 damage at 1 range.
3. Use 1 non-passive non-interrupt card (passives and interrupts may be played without using an action).
4. Sacrifice 1 health to give a voluntary dead character 1 health, who is then alive, but skips its next turn.
5. Pass the player's turn without doing anything.

Teams and Winning

• This game is played by two teams against each other, each with the same number of players on it.
• Two on two would probably work well.
• As soon as all characters on one team are dead at the same time, the opposing team wins.
• Optionally, it may be decided that players are not permitted to communicate with the other members of their team.

Character Death

• Each time a character reaches 0 health, the character dies and loses 1 max health, remaining at the same board location.
• If the character has Crystals, they are dropped on the character's space on the board and can be picked up by other characters.
• Dead characters may occupy the same space as other characters.

Range

• If an ability says it deals damage at a range, it may reduce the health of a target player or barrier within that range (orthogonally) by the number of damage.
• All ranges are measured delta X + delta Y and LOS means that the range is blocked by walls, barriers, and other characters (but not by corners of the aforementioned unless both diagonals of the corner are occupied by walls and/or barriers).

Push Back

• If the ability says push back, the target is moved back 1 space for each push back in the closest of the four directions to the direction of the attack or diagonally if the attack is exactly on diagonal.
• Characters and barriers may be pushed back, but not walls.
• If a barrier or character is pushed back into a wall or another character or barrier, both take damage equal to the amount of remaining push back instead of moving.

Explosions

• If the ability says damage and/or push back at a number, the ability deals that amount of damage at everywhere up to that distance away (orthogonally) from the target (except the target) directed away from the target (it’s an explosion). Explosions only require LOS if the ability says 'LOS' after the radius.

Friendly Fire

• There is friendly fire, so attacks may damage the character's self and also friendly characters.

• Until used for the first time, each card in a player's hand remains hidden from other players.
• The first time each card is used, it is revealed but its Crystal cost need not be paid.
• After the first time, its Crystal cost must be paid in Crystals by the character using the card.
• Cards that say 'no action required' don't require an action, but still must be played during the player's turn.
• Passives and interrupts may be played any time and do not require a turn.
• Passives are resolved before interrupts and both are resolved last in first out.
• If an interrupt invalidates the way a previously-played card should have worked, it is un-played and the player that played it can take it back (incl. costs paid) and do something else instead.
• Passives may not be used more than the initial time they are played in a game.

Attack Cards

• Flare - Costs 1 Crystal; deal 2 damage at 5 range LOS, fire.
• Fireball - Costs 2 Crystals; deal 2 damage 1 push back at 5 range LOS and 2 damage at 1 radius LOS, fire.
• Shock - Costs 1 Crystal; deal 1 damage at 3 range LOS, target character loses its next turn.
• Psychic Pulse - Costs 1 Crystal; deal 1 damage at infinity range LOS, target character loses 1 Crystal.
• Cold Blast - Costs 1 Crystal; deal 1 damage 1 push back at 4 range LOS, target character may not move on its next turn.
• Force Hit - Costs 1 Crystal; deal 2 damage 1 push back at 1 range.
• Spike - passive, you may spend your turn to deal 2 damage at 1 range.
• Drain - Costs 1 Crystal; deal 1 damage at 2 range LOS, target character loses 1 Crystal, if target character loses an Health and/or a Crystal from this attack, you gain 1 of it.
• Touch of Death - Costs 1 Crystal; discard another card to kill a character at 1 range.

Area Effect Cards

• Meteor - Costs 1 Crystal; no action required, choose a space at random to deal 4 damage and 3 damage 1 push back at 1 radius LOS and 2 damage at 2 radius LOS to, fire.
• Lightning Bolt - Costs 1 Crystal; deal 1 damage at any space.
• Blizzard - Costs 1 Crystal; choose a space at 5 range LOS, all characters and barriers within 2 range no LOS including up to 2 diagonals of that space are moved 1 space in a random direction with push.
• Flame Wave - Costs 3 Crystals; deal 2 damage to all spaces between or in 2 (of 8) directions which are 90 degrees apart within LOS, fire.
• Inferno - Costs 1 Crystal; all spaces within 4 range LOS of you take 1 damage, fire.

Movement Cards

• Riptide - Costs 1 Crystal; move all characters 1 space with push in the same random direction.
• Teleport - Costs 1 Crystal; interrupt, teleport to a random location, if land on a barrier or wall destroy it, if land on a character choose a new random location.
• Rush - passive, each turn for the rest of the game you may spend your turn to move to a space adjacent to a target character within 5 range LOS on your side of it and deal 1 damage to it or 2 damage if you have spike.
• Wall Phase - Costs 1 Crystal; move up to 2 spaces, may pass through walls or barriers but may not end the turn on them.
• Speed - Costs 1 Crystal; move up to 3 spaces.
• Barrier - Costs 1 Crystal; place a barrier on any space adjacent to you.

Defensive Cards

• Regeneration - passive, you regain 1 Health at the beginning of each of your turns unless you were damaged since your last turn, you lose 1 max Health.
• Burrow - Costs 1 Crystal; you may not take damage or be attacked or take your turns until you choose to unburrow directly before one of your next 10 turns (which you may and must).
• Trollish - passive, halve your max. Health, you may only be damaged by fire attacks.
• Toughness - passive, you gain 2 extra Health and max Health.
• Shield - Costs 1 Crystal; interrupt, cancel the effects of any attack to you or a character within infinity range LOS.
• Heal - Costs 1 Crystal; regain 1 Health or give a voluntary character within infinity range LOS 2 Health (not above max.).
• Deflect - Costs 2 Crystals; interrupt, all effects from one attack dealt to you are instead done to the attacker.
• Pheonix - passive, use this card and discard another card when you die to be teleported back into the game with full Health and deal 2 fire damage to your killer.
• Fire Immunity - passive, you are not affected by fire attacks, may not be used with Trollish

Utility Cards

• Mind Meld - Costs 3 Crystals; choose a player and half the cards in your hand (round down) and switch those with the same number of random cards from that player's hand.
• Go Fish - Costs 3 Crystals; secretly tell any player a card name, if that player has that card they must give it to you without saying what it is to anyone else.
• Interrupt - Costs 1 Crystal; interrupt, take a turn now and then return to the normal turn cycle (from the interrupted turn).
• Scan - Costs 2 Crystals; interrupt, look at any one player's hand, you may force them to show you those specific cards again any time for the rest of the game.
• Counterspell - interrupt, discard this card to cancel another card for the rest of the game as its effect is being used.
• Duplication - play this card as the duplicate of any one of the last cards revealed/played by each player including paying its normal cost.

The Cards

• You could use an application like Nandeck or CardMaker to create a PDF file with all the cards and then chop them up and sleeve them, as described under 'How to Make the Cards' on this website.
• Or you could use index cards and just write the names of the cards on them. Players would then need to refer back to the card list to see what each card does.
• Or you could use index cards and write the full definition of each card on it, but that would be more time-consuming.

The Board

• Finding a good board to use for this game can be difficult.
• The board just needs to be a square grid of spaces, but it needs to be big enough.
• A chess/checkers board would work except that 8x8 probably isn't big enough.
• I made a board for myself in shop class in high school for this purpose.
• If you have the board from the old game "Hero Quest", that would probably work, but you'll probably have to use a square portion of it because the entire board would be too big.

Barriers and Walls

• For the barriers and walls, I tended to use 2 different types of counters (little lumps of plastic), which can probably be acquired most easily at an art supply store.

Health and Crystals

• Pennies could be used to represent Crystals, both on the board and when held by each character.
• Dimes could be used to track health remaining.
• Quarters could be used to track reductions in max health from dying.

Characters

• You'll need something unique to represent each character.
• I usually use figurines from other board games.
• Each player will need to remember which figurine is his/hers.