The mana available differs from place to place and from time to time. In the game this is represented by the Mana Deck; this deck contains land cards. Magic users can draw from this deck to get mana for their spells. The GM decides on what sort of magic is available in the environment and thus decides what cards are available in the Mana Deck in every place. Mana can wax and wane; this is represented by the GM each round adding cards to the deck or taking cards away.
Players who want their character to use magic must make a second deck for their character. This deck is the character’s spell book; it contains the spells that the character knows. Starting characters can have a spell book with a total mana requirement equal to their skill in magic. For this purpose, an ‘X’ in the casting cost counts as zero. Mages can only casts spells that are in their spell books.
Players with mage characters will want to get two advanced skills in particular for their characters. The first one is Magic Sense. This is a blue skill which gives the wielder an idea of the magic in the area. It gives a general idea about the mana content (the number of mana cards in the mana deck) and how it is divided over the different colours. If an area contains little mana it might point to magic being used there recently. If much black mana flows around in an area where you would not expect this, it may point to necromantic magic being used.
The skill can also be used to detect whether an object, person or area is enchanted and the nature of this enchantment.
The second skill is Cast Spells. This skill lets a mage cast spells. It is the only skill for which a player doesn’t draw from the Character Deck; instead she draws as many cards as her level in this skill from the Mana Deck.
After the cards are drawn, the player assesses which cards she can use. She can do three things with the mana:
- Put the cards that she doesn’t need back into the deck.
- If she doesn’t have enough mana in her draw to cast the spells she wants to cast, she can keep some of the mana. She puts these cards face up in front of her. At the end of each round the character gets one mana burn (loses one life point) for each mana point kept. The kept cards don’t hinder the mana draw in the next round; the player can then draw again as many cards as her skill in ‘Cast Spells’, and then see if the mana from that hand plus the one from the kept cards is enough to fuel the desired spells.
- Cast one or more spells. If the mana in the draw plus the kept cards is enough to pay the casting cost, the spell goes off. The mana is then burnt and doesn’t go back into the mana deck right away. Discard those cards - slowly they’ll get back into the mana for the area, but for the moment that mana is lost.
A character cannot hold mana cards anymore after a round in which she has cast a spell. All the cards burning mana in front of her are discarded, whether they’re used in the spells or not.
A handful of zombies shamble toward Jarrold (who has a Cast Spells skill of 4). He has only two turns before they reach him. Jarrold feels the mana and tries to find the right magic (Jarrold’s player draws four cards from the mana deck and gets BRWW. She keeps one black mana, putting it in front of her and putting the other cards back into the deck). End of turn - Jarrold gets one mana burn because of his holding the black mana. Next turn Jarrold continues his search for the right mana - this time he gets RGU. His mana pool now consists of BRGU. He casts a quick ‘Shock’, sacrificing the red mana to kill one of the zombies. The blue mana gets back into the mana deck, while Jarrold sacrifices the green mana to raise a Tinder Wall between him and his attackers. The black mana that was kept is sacrificed to cast a Glyph of Doom on the wall, just before two zombies crash into the wall. They die instantaneously as the glyph shines with a terrible black light, then disappears. As the two remaining zombies try to circumvent the wall to reach Jarrold, he sets the wall aflame, using its energy (RR) to shock those zombies out of action.
If a character casts one or more permanent spells (enchantments, summoned creatures), he can put them in front of him to indicate that they are in play. The character’s Magic skill drops by the number of permanents under his control.