Reception
Scott Haring reviewed Spellfire for Pyramid #9, published in October 1994. Haring felt that the game was going to be "just the first of what is sure to be a long line of games trying to take advantage of the market that Magic opened", but found that he was "pleasantly surprised by Spellfire". He called the game "quite good", and liked how the game was simple to play with very few exceptions to the rules, and "a lot of subtlety to the design, and there are many opportunities to find strange new combinations of cards that affect the game in strange new ways". Haring felt that the lack of original art was tempered by TSR's twenty years of art archives. He felt that the art was "very good" despite not having the same sort of "edge" found on most of the original art on Magic cards. He was least impressed by the art on the Realms cards, the most common type of card in the game, as the cards are illustrated with excerpts from maps.
Chris Baylis reviewed the fourth edition of Spellfire for Arcane magazine, rating it a 6 out of 10 overall. He found the pack "striking", considering the fourth edition to have "the instant eye appeal that none of its predecessors could muster. With this latest set, I would say that it's almost dead to rights. I say 'almost' because TSR has unfortunately wasted a good opportunity to lose the poor and cutaway artwork on some of the earlier cards." He felt that the revitalized cards that were missed from the changes in third edition help to "ensure that this becomes the best way yet to start playing Spellfire". He found the twin-deck pack "a little misleading" because it did not contain two 55-card decks, but he did consider the selection of cards to be "fairly well conceived - it includes many of the powerful and imaginative cards along with the usual basics". He felt that some of the rules were changed because they didn't work or were too complicated, but that others were changed just for the sake of it or to force players into using cards they wouldn't otherwise touch. Baylis concluded by saying: Spellfire will never seriously rival Magic, but it does provide light, sometimes intense entertainment at a reasonable price, and when you come down to it, that is surely the essence of games playing."
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