Essentia (2010)

Far away, in a land called Essentia, two Orders of spell casters have fought for the territory’s possession through the years. Sworn enemies, the Wizards of Dawn and the Sorcerers of Twilight strive for their opponents’ end in every battle. But the number of magicians is small and their life is priceless, so they do not fight on their own but by means of golems under their command.

These battles are carried out on a strange zone where a special magic named essence provides the golems with new powers. That place, called The Changing Land, consists of several different terrains: plains, plateaus, rocks, forests and mountains. There also exist other weird zones, such as springs and circles of essence. Every magic terrain gives a certain magic power to whom tread on it so that it allows them to move or attack in different ways.

Today, one more struggle is about to begin. A skilled wizard of Dawn and a clever sorcerer of Twilight are the chosen ones to handle the golems to solve the battle.

The game includes:

- Organic cotton case (Format 1).
- A4 flexible pad board.
- 28 printed and laser-cut tiles.
- 16 dark onyx laser-cut acrylic golems.
- 16 translucent white laser-cut acrylic golems.
- Rulesheet.

Essentia was initially conceived by Fernando as an interesting Chess variant called "Multidrez", where your pieces changed their movement rules depending on the squares they occupied.

Néstor wanted something more, and asked Fernando to re-implement it by adding the "golem struggle theme" and changing a few things. Fernando provided a magic background and an original story for the game and suggested some ideas such as certain movements of the pieces, the size of the board or the tile distribution, which Néstor considered, adjusted and eventually accepted. Both worked for 5 months to turn it into "Essentia", the ultimate battle between the wizards of Dawn and the sorcerers of Twilight.

Once the design was finished, nestorgames hired artist Chechu Nieto, who illustrated the board and the tiles.