Ye Olde Inn

What is the best name for spell cards?
I noticed in the Game System they used Earth Spell, Fire Spell, Water Spell, Air Spell, Chaos Spell, but in Wizards of Morcars they used the plural, High Mage Spells, Necromancer Spells...
In the Elf Quest Pack they used singular again (Elf Spell) but in the new version they went back to plural once more for Bard Spells, Druid Spells and Warlock Spells while all the others remain singular (Dread Spell).
Is there a logic behind this?

I understand the card back text as the type of card you are taking. Artifacts cards back says "Artifact", Treasures cards back says "Treasure", and so on... I would write it in singular since each card refers to only one spell, not to a group of them. That's the way I translated them here I had the same doubt at that time)

I believe the inconsistency is a typo that the editors never caught. I would go for the singular version.

lestodante wrote:What is the best name for spell cards?
I noticed in the Game System they used Earth Spell, Fire Spell, Water Spell, Air Spell, Chaos Spell, but in Wizards of Morcars they used the plural, High Mage Spells, Necromancer Spells...
In the Elf Quest Pack they used singular again (Elf Spell) but in the new version they went back to plural once more for Bard Spells, Druid Spells and Warlock Spells while all the others remain singular (Dread Spell).
Is there a logic behind this?

I agree with the others that singular works best as a default for spell types as set forth by the Game System. But then the designers of WoM introduced two plural variations: Spells of _______ and _______ Spells. I can't explain why in the world they chose to introduce this complication other than they liked the sound of it, or they were just negligent in the editing process.

It appears that the NA designers of the EQP judged the exta WoM spell-naming convention as needless and chose to return to the default of the singular case. Were any of the WoM spells shipped as whole spell groups into the unreleased WQP, they should have reverted to the singular-case naming convention, as well (Necromancer Spell, Darkness Spell.)

Naturally, the Avalon Hill design team chose to ignore the established singular-case NA naming convention and instead went with the plural naming-case from WoM. Like the WoM design team, they probably thought it sounded better, but at this point it's almost more consistent to switch again!

Should AH release the EQP again, I'd expect they'd rename the Elf Spell cards in the plural case to Elf Spells. This would follow the naming convention for spells dedicated to a single player (like Druid Spells.) Then again, as a larger group to be chosen from (like Chaos Spell), they might consider Elf Spell worthy as a type of magic all its own.

Is there a logic behind all this? If there is, it is at best convoluted and always open to revision.

I see the inconsistency, and it gives me comfort when I make my own customs and they aren't always consistent. So if I write out a number vs. typing it or capitalize something vs. lower case or put it in plural vs. singular, or use the British spelling vs. American... I just don't worry about it too much. Reprinting hundreds of cards to fix it, just isn't worth it to me anymore, but to someone just starting out, I can see the desire to pick a standard and stick to it.