SPELLSTONES
The Mother of Card Battler Gets a Fresh Coat of Paint
FREE DOWNLOAD BELOW!
FREE DOWNLOAD BELOW!
Before Magic: the Gathering, there was Cuttle! Dating back to at least the 1970s, the game of Cuttle is credited as the earliest known example of card-battling mechanics in a game. Played with just a standard deck of playing cards, the rules and gameplay are pretty straightforward, yet there’s quite a few comparisons to be made to modern TCGs.
When I was introduced to Cuttle in 2023, my first reaction was that much of the text that was in the rules really needed to be printed on the cards themselves. As I set out to tackle this, I found myself assembling print files and thinking “what if we put some art on these cards?”
This was right around the time that Adobe had released their Firefly image gen AI model, and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to put it to the test. Soon I had a fully-illustrated fantasy-themed deck of cards on my hands. After a few gameplay tweaks to match the theme and freshen things up a bit, Spellstones was born!
A quick note on the use of AI for game art, because I know this is a hot topic right now. If you’ve seen me talk about this on stream, you’ll already know where my stance is on this, so I’ll keep it concise here. As an artist myself, I understand the value of real art created by real humans, and will always prefer it over AI. My reasoning in using it for this project was that it’s not something I intend to sell, and that there’s no “job” that an artist would be missing out on. With the limited time and resources I was able to invest in this, I think AI made a lot of sense for illustrating how theme and design can modernize even a game as old as Cuttle.
On that note, it’s worth pointing out that, yes, Cuttle is quite old. Even with the efforts I made to modernize Spellstones, the gameplay still feels distinctly old-school. There’s a lot of “take-that” mechanics at play, and some games can be decided before one player even has a chance to respond to their opponent’s strategy. There’s some charm and nostalgia to this of course, and even some lessons to be learned about how games have evolved over the years, but it’s something you should be prepared for going into your first games.
So, if you’re ready to give it Spellstones a try for yourself, click the button below to download the full PDF package! It’s only six pages of cards and a sheet of rules, making it an easily-accomplished afternoon print-and-play project. I included a separate card backs file for you overachievers out there, but I’d rather just sleeve the cards than mess with that myself. Be sure to let me know what you think, either by reaching out through the Connect page or catching me during one of my livestreams. Happy gaming!