Elric: Battle at the End of Time (1982) was a reprint of the 1977 Elric (which would be reprinted again, as Elric, by Avalon Hill in 1984). This edition, like Dragon Pass was a pretty big step up in production values from the original edition, which was issued in a Ziplock bag. It is, of course, too much game for me at the moment, but I think it is at home on the hypothetical shelf between Dragon Pass and Divine Right.

Unlike those games, I feel like Elric is more consciously a kind of playground for fans of Moorcock’s novels. There are modes of play that seems to aim to emulate the stories, but there are others that are very much in the fuck around and find out school of play. I, for one, would very much like to see Pan Tang versus the rest of the world play out! Because of this sense of anything-goes, I think the game probably plays a bit faster and easier than its cousins.

There’s not much bother paid to balance. Rather, each culture on the board and their heroes are designed to reflect the fiction, which makes things seem rather unpredictable. Truly, imagine trying to map the mercurial Elric to the constraints of a typical wargame, he’d be unrecognizable. The ever-shifting balance between Law and Chaos exacerbates things (every time someone dies at the hands of the runeblades, Chaos moves a step toward dominance!). 

And damned if it isn’t gorgeous. That map. I am such a sucker for a brightly colored hex map. It’s the same basic map by William Church that is in the RPG box set, which I already liked, but the color really increases the appeal. There is something about the way the ink saturates the paper, and the texture of the paper, that makes it warm and inviting. Same with the counters. They have little silhouettes like every other wargame (though they are bigger chits) but the color combos and the textures are really appealing in a tactile way. A nice comic book-ish cover by Steves Leialoha and Oliff rounds it all out.