Spellbound & Mythic - Starfall Empire



Right from the get go, this feels like a Spellbound entry. When coupled with Mythic's aesthetics, it truly paints a picture of a vintage Spellbound techtree, which, of course, went along with the Blue theme. Again, classic Spellbound.



The Starfall Empire is a techtree that draws heavy inspiration from the Protoss playstyle of Starcraft 2 specifically, in that it borrows from the concepts of warping units in as well as the way the Colossus attacks. It even uses a shielding system, which I am pleased to see does not use the Mana Shield ability as I have seen many predecessors that have attempted something like this do before, but in fact implements it entirely passively. Perhaps more obscurely, I feel a bit of a Magic: The Gathering - Battlegrounds vibe with the way the more mystical variant of Giant Turtles are used both as Food Production, and as a potential form of defense. Other aspects feel reminiscent of the Blue's aesthetic in Battlegrounds, and perhaps some inspiration was drawn from the title, presenting an overall pretty aesthetic.



The playstyle of the techtree is unique to the ingame factions in that rather than leveling up your Town Hall to tech up, you simply build the next structure, somewhat similar to how the Zerg play where the base structure produces all the units, while the unit structures provide the upgrades and unlock the next tier of units. This provides a much cheaper, and much faster way to tech up, as you can skip the expense and time investment of going to tier two or three, and jump straight into unlocking the units, all while expanding your Evokation field and the rate in which you collect the charges that allow you to produce your units.



This does, unfortunately, provide a very fast means of going straight into the third tier, allowing you to fast track your way right into Channellers. This is actually optimal, as I was able to defeat an Insane AI with absolute ease using these. It also makes for easy creeping when you are able to use flying Colossi before the first Night Time even hits. Their primary weakness is that they can't attack air units, but that tends to not be much of an issue as you upgrade the Channelers to do additional damage against buildings and destroy waves of Food Production structures while picking apart entire armies.



Unfortunately, none of your structures actually qualify as a Town Hall, either, making Town Portal ineffective for this faction. The potential oversight of Tavern Heroes, however, was well taken care of as they require the appropriate Tiered facilities - something that can be overlooked, and I am very glad to see it wasn't.



The towers available to the faction are additionally interesting, as they are geared more towards levitation and can be picked up by the Giant Turtles, which are colloquially referred to as Stormbinders. Upon moving near them, the Tower can be picked up by the Turtles, turning them into Stormbearers. Pretty cool stuff. This gives them a Tempest ability which produces a debug message, and after a while begins Thunderclapping the ground with bolts of lightning.



But in most likelyhood you probably won't use too much of those, or any of the other units, as Channelers are the way to go. Unless you come up against some fast Gargoyles or Hippogryphs, you're likely to be fine, and if anything does cause them damage it goes straight to their mana instead, which regenerates rather nicely. In some cases it does seem like the mana shielding could be easily exploitable by units like the Spellbreaker, or a Demon Hunter with his Mana Burn, but none of that really matters if you don't have a base.



Some other things I noticed was that the Backpack upgrade seems strangely more expensive, suspiciously sporting the same icon and cost as the Thaumapagy upgrade found in the Aether Vault. Additionally, the Aether Vault requires only the Mystic Loom, allowing you to skip tier 1 units altogether, and realistically, this seems to be the best course of action. While the tier 1 units are by no means bad, they're no Channelers.



A part of me can't help but wonder what the philosophy behind the entry is, either. While they feel similar to the Magic: The Gathering - Battlegrounds Blue faction stylistically in addition to Magic Protoss, I do wonder what the philosophy behind the faction is, as well as how that would translate into their playstyle.



Overall, this techtree lives and breathes everything that is Spellbound, and the artistic style is classic Mythic, which appears to be a very fitting union. There are definite faults with this, possibly due to time constraints and being overly ambitious in some areas, but with the minimum requirements met it seems suitably established. Perhaps we will see an updated version over the horizon?

