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What Spell Cards are and how they actually work is not known at this time, but they appear to play an important role in casting powerful character-specific magic. During a Spell Card trance, the user's offensive and defensive capabilities appear to increase greatly. In some cases, the user becomes completely invincible for the duration of the trance. However, the user may only cast the spell that was specified by the Spell Card until the trance ends, limiting its overall usefulness.

In the Touhou shooting games, Spell Cards are used as life-saving "bombs" by playable characters, and as a source of danmaku bullet patterns by enemy characters. In Immaterial and Missing Power, Spell Cards attacks are the equivalent of "supers" in 2D fighting games (special condition, high damage, very-high priority attacks).

Spell Cards were probably the first known instance of a shooting game's bullet patterns being given official, personalized names. Many danmaku-fans appreciated this extra touch, as it clearly showed that the developers of the Touhou series cared about the patterns as much as the fans did.

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