Last but certainly not least, our Summoner Wars 2.0 relaunch concludes with my estimated strongest faction from the box. It’s a classic tale of good versus evil here, with dusting off the old and making them shiny and new. Last time, we saw Sera Eldwyn return better than ever. Her time in the spotlight, however, is short lived. 

Because most improved has got to go to old Ret-Talus. 

Old Ret-Talus was a snotty little punk with far more bark than bite. As ruler of the undead, Ret-Talus liked to play in his graveyard. Naturally, as everything ends in the grave, to compensate for this strong ability, the old Fallen Kingdom units were very expensive for what they did. The design was meant to be the other side of the same coin with Sera: attrition based faction designed to wear down your opponent. But whereas Sera healed her units and kept them in fighting form, Ret just pulled his back again and again.

Well, Sera does that now. So thematically and mechanically, the pair are tied even closer together. While Sera’s new Summoner Wars simply requires her to attack an enemy unit, Ret-Talus has been learning from his old pupil Mad Sirian. It’s Ret’s life that’s on the line now. Which is great, since giving life to power feeds into his “sacrifice” element. 

However, Ret’s dead raising has received a facelift. He can now raise during the summoning phase, which lets his fresh monsters their own turn to move. This will make positioning easier. Furthermore, Ret doesn’t have a small health pool like his old incarnation. Though his stats are painfully mediocre so don’t expect much on that front. Two strength range is weak so it’s a good thing that late game you’ll be relying on your dead than yourself to finish out the game. 

Of course, the old caveat (and the same as Sera’s) still applies here. Ret needs things in his discard in order to bring them back. Granted, with the new graveyard rules, you’re assured anything that’s destroy will be available so your opponent can’t lock important units in their magic piles. That’s a lovely quality of life improvement.

Granted, his ability is restricted to undead units, so there’s currently a hard limit on who benefits from his ability and no doubt this limitation will be utilized to keep Ret-Talus in check as much as possible for future releases. Much like with Sera, I don’t see a lot of Citadel or Undead being printed though, of the two, I expect to see more undead. 

Now, while I think Ret-Talus’ summoner ability is one of the strongest, it really only shines because of his epic event. 

Sacrificial power is a faction defining card and you will definitely be playing his matchups with this in mind. As Ret’s opponent, you need to be cognizant of his sacrificial potential. As Ret himself, the availability of the pyre will dictate the pace of your plays. 

But it’s certainly worth it. I mentioned before that Ice Repair was the strongest healing event in the game. Well… I lied. Sacrificial Pyre takes the smoke. An active event which accrues boosts for doing the thing needed to win the game: destroying units. Barring exceptional circumstances, this will generate 4-6 healing in one play as you should reasonably expect each player to destroy 2-3 cards on their turns. At least, that’s what they’ll be trying to do. Being able to dump that much healing right on Ret-Talus (which can then be turned around and recycled into more undead units) is simply fantastic. This healing can also be used to save a champion in a pinch – making a hard hitting lynchpin unit even that more difficult to remove from the battlefield. 

Furthermore, there’s not a whole lot of counterplay open to your opponent when the pyre gets lit.

Sure, they could just refrain from killing things. But if I had the option of taking an event that said “your units can’t be destroyed for one turn” that would probably get heads to turn. It’s ultimately hard to justify keeping dangerous units on the board and simply not conceding the healing to Ret.

However, Ret isn’t even at the mercy of his opponent’s whims. If he really wants to be accruing tokens for the pyre, he can drop a handy Purge. And if Sacrificial Pyre is good, Purge is phenomenal. 

On first blush, destroying a unit for 2 assured wounds may not seem great. But it’s the fact that Ret-Talus really combos off destruction that makes purge all the better. Triggering in the move phase means that you can hobble your wounded units into advantageous positions before making them pop. And the damage from purge will most definitely leave what remains softened up for the attack phase. Pairing purge and pyre, you can probably reliably generate 4 boost tokens on your own turn between blowing up your own units and killing theirs.

But purge is great because it doesn’t need to combo either for it to be value. Purging is like the old Summoner Wars old magic denial trick. Your sacrificed units give no magic to your enemy. Anything they leave behind turns into lost cash and can tip the economic balance in your favour. And it’s free to boot!

While these two events represent Ret-Talus’ best, his other two are no slouches either. 

Hellforged Blade is like a less reliable purge with a chance to give you continual value. I mean, it likely won’t. Either it’ll blow up its user (denying that unit’s magic in the process) or leave your enchanted common weakened to be killed by your opponent on their turn. As such, it’s less valuable but giving any melee unit an additional 2 more strength (which is essentially them dealing 2 more wounds) isn’t the worst play. If the unit somehow survives and you get another round to attack with it, then you’re just laughing. 

Oh, and it can also combo with pyre – either through ensuring your unit kills what it’s attacking or it blows itself up. Or even both at the same time!

Last, but certainly not least, is Blood Summons. This lets Ret-Talus keep up the pressure against his opponent. He’s an even more conservative summoner than Sera, preferring to keep well away from any attempted harm while he saps his own strength while waiting for the high of a strong pyre. 

Blood summon lets him turn any of his units into temporary gates. Even better, you get to summon for free! Well… sort of. The unit needs to give up two health. Which can destroy itself. Which can in turn give pyre an additional boost! Or you could blood summon off a bunch of units, move them forward then purge them for huge gain!

So, while on its own, blood summon may have marginal effect, it easily pairs well with the best of Ret-Talus’ events. 

And that’s what makes his suite so strong. Each event improves its others. And with so many triggers occurring on unit destruction, you can create a lovely cascade of power effects. His turns can get quite complicated, yet it’s a very good kind of complication. Comboing all these triggers makes them stronger, so learning the best order to blow up your units is both a fun process of discovery while also being very potent in advancing the game in your favour. 

However, to really shine a light on how good all these self-blowy-uppy powers are, we’ll have to take a look next week at Ret-Talus’ units.

Last time, we saw how Sera Eldwyn of the new Vanguards in Summoner Wars relaunch had a slick coat of sparkling paint. With some very nice looking events and an ability that lets her command additional troops from her mighty Citadel, she’s become quite a terrific battlefield commander. 

But returning lost Citadel units is only useful if those units themselves are good, right?

Well, why don’t we take a gander at them.

First up is the Citadel Knight. This guy has one of the greatest transformations in the jump from old to new Summoner Wars. I’m sure most people don’t even remember the old Guardian Knight. And I wouldn’t blame them. Here he’s a hefty 5 health and two strength. I mentioned before with Svara how this is a pretty threatening unit in its own right. Better yet, Sera’s knights have the engage ability which appears fairly common now on units meant to hold the front of a battleline. One damage for moving past the knight isn’t terrible if you need to wiggle through but it does nettle. Furthermore, their protect ability means that simple worming around isn’t good enough to strike Sera behind as they must be the target of any adjacent attack. 

Thus, these knights end up being supplementary health pools for Sera thereby trivializing the danger of her being at the forefront of the battle so long as she has access to her bodyguards. And since she can pull them from the graveyard anytime they’re sent packing dirt, you can pretty effectively make a rather large roadblock to trying an assassination attempt against Sera. And they’re absolute walls to break too, so it’s no easy feat to simply remove the knight and attack with ranged units.

But though he sports great defence, if you’re wanting to lay on some hurt, you’ll turn to the Citadel Paladin. This guys… is mostly bought for his stats. He comes with a little less health for that seemingly coveted 3 strength attack. Drawing cards on a special results is nice and all, made more reliable with his high strength but it doesn’t really do much if you draw through your deck. He’s largely a beat stick and you’ll pull him back to simply apply the beating. Everything else is a cute bonus.

Rounding out the last of Sera’s Citadel options is the humble archer. The best part of this guy is his large health pool equaling that of the knight. Unfortunately, that’s about it. His attack is too weak to effectively trade and using arrows of light to compensate can get pretty expensive. He’s more of an emergency play than anything else. This is a unit that can only work in new Summoner Wars, however, since you do get the magic for the archer’s discards and you can then use Sera’s Citadel Might to pull back a card to play later (or build for an additional magic).

As I mentioned before, Sera’s ability only triggers if there is a Citadel unit on the board. And all three of these units are pretty healthy, making it a difficult feat to negate her power through common slaughter. As such, it’s always handy to keep at least one Citadel in hand to summon on your next turn should the tides turn unexpectedly against you. 

But to help keep these soldiers going is the humble Priest. I mentioned before that Sera has a healing option and these ladies are far better than the Mass Heal event. First, they’re a body so can, in a pinch, be two strength attack or a body to block. Their healing requires you to discard a card, which is a little worse than using a magic (ignoring that Sera recycles cards endlessly) and uses up an attack. However, you have the potential to heal upwards of 4 health in one swing if you get specials on both those rolls. Plus, Holy Judgement makes this heal even more. Not to mention you can be healing units away from Sera.

Healing is fairly niche in the first place so I’d rather have a flexible card that can attack and block as well. The Priest is the only common that’s costless too which is appreciated compared to all those two cost Citadel units.

Sera’s champions, much like Abua’s, do end up leaving something to be desired. They’re not bad, per se, it’s just that they don’t compare to the commons anywhere near as well. With priest support, you can get some more mileage out of them rather than Abua’s, mind you. 

The worst, personally, has to be Coleen. Her greatest use is her attack but at three times the cost of a paladin, it’s hard to justify her use. I’ve notoriously bad luck and the few times I play her I can’t ever seem to get her to trigger her shield. She’s also a support champion who you really want on the field with a bunch of other Citadel commons to get the benefit from her. I just think it’s too much hoping for the stars to align. Late game, if I’m sitting on a pile of magic, I may consider it but generally I just pitch her for ease and convenience.

Brother Jacob Eldwyn at least brings something unique to the Vanguard roster. His two strength ranged attack can give you that desperately missing long range power. Even better, his strength grows with every two magic you accumulate in your pool. The obvious synergy is with the archers but then you’d need to play the archers. I find just timing him to attack third during your turn is generally enough to get a bonus strength or two. Six health on a champion isn’t a whole lot, mind you, so don’t expect him to make a huge impact. But he’s more affordable than your other options.

Last is Valna who slots in perfectly with Sera’s gameplan. Her nine health is good for leading a charge. That she gets stronger the more knights, paladins and archers are supporting her places your opponent in a tight bind. They can try to winnow your forces to reduce her attack, though you can always summon more and that leaves her on the field longer. Focussing her, however, and her large health pool lets your paladins and knights run free. She offers no good options. And, if you happen to get her early, the additional two card draw is nice to get more options and keep Citadel commons in your hand. If I had a choice between the three champions, I’d choose Valna each time. In fact, if I could, I’d just choose three Valna’s. 

As you can see, Sera sports a pretty strong collection of common units and events that synergize well with an incredibly powerful ability. It’s really no wonder that she’s so powerful. Your general game plan will be to bring the aggressive fast and hard. You’ll be burning through your deck, getting those delicious Citadel units into your discard to recycle them with Citadel’s Might. And the more pressure you apply to your opponent, the more resources they need to burn to deal with you. Sera’s end goal is to reach the late game where her endless magic generation and card recycling gives her a clear advantage.

However, you don’t need to recklessly use Citadel’s Might either. Even two or three uses can give you the edge needed to claim victory. And you benefit from a methodical approach. Much like Abua Shi, Sera’s life points are a resource too. You can afford to take quite a few hits to win the economy war. The plan is to end with neither you nor your opponent with any draw pile and for you to outnumber your enemy’s forces decisively. The more your opponent summons units to take stray shots at you, only to die to your force’s retaliation, the sooner you reach those overwhelming numbers.

That you’ve got units and events to make the exchanges even less efficient for your enemy between blocking and healing damage is merely a handful of additional nails in their coffin. 

Certainly, the Citadel’s strength knows no bounds.

Only two more factions to go before we have covered the entirety of the Summoner Wars relaunch! And these next two factions are quite the dozies! 

First up, and by my estimation the second most powerful summoner, is Sera Eldwyn. She’s returned with her feisty Vanguard but this time she’s got a lot more heft in her hammers. This isn’t your old peace loving girl. This one is prepared to punch in your face. 

The concept behind the Vanguard faction is simple enough: win through attrition. In Summoner Wars 1.0 this meant you had high (relative) health units, low attack and a boatload of healing capabilities. The Vanguard were meant to really drag their opponents into the mud, slowly whittling down their health and resolve while keeping the fighting spirit in tip-top shape.

In practice, this manifested as the Vanguards hitting like wet noodles, being completely run over by the rampant high attack factions and champions and overspending on mediocre healing effects and units that could hardly defend themselves. 

Sera was bad. And Sera was sad.

However, it seems that in the intervening years she’s really been hitting the gym. She threw aside her triage skills, instead learning that people really only respect one thing: power. And boy howdy, is Sera’s new ability power. Now, whenever she shoots feebly at one of her enemy’s units (alright, maybe she wasn’t hitting the gym that hard), she is able to pull a Citadel unit from her discard into her hand. 

If anyone recalls The Demagogue from Summoner Wars’ old Filth faction, they’ll understand how strong this ability is. It allows, in theory, an infinite amount of economy with the only limit being how many things Sera can shoot and what you have in your graveyard. There’s also small print on her ability – she needs to have a Citadel unit on the field. So keep in mind there’s (a little) counterplay to this. 

But there’s additional perks in being able to draw from your discard: you can be assured having a common you need on the next turn, you can build the card you’d play for magic prior to give yourself a discount on its summoning and you need to worry about stuffing your hand with important units. You can also endlessly recycle your best common. Imagine if Abua Shi could have infinite border archers. Crazy bolts!

There’s a caveat here, outside of just killing all of Sera’s Citadel commons. She needs to be flicking pebbles at something to do this, so she does need to position herself a little aggressively to get this benefit. It certainly reduces the amount of economy she’ll generate compared to old Demagogue but with greater health pools in the new Summoner wars, this is less a concern than you may think. 

As for Sera’s events, let’s start by looking at her worst.

I mentioned how Svara’s Ice Repair was fantastic and frustrating. Well, Sera’s unit version, Mass Heal, is… something I almost never play. First, it costs a magic. And when we see Sera’s roster, we’ll understand there’s not a lot of magic to go around. 

Because her stuff’s expensive.

Second, she can only heal units within two spaces of her. And yes, the Vanguard play tight but even so this is a bit too tight to get a whole lot of benefit from. If you’re really pressed about healing in this game, Sera has a much better option for one magic and we’ll be discussing that later. Basically, you want to get at least two units with this to be effective. But, honestly, letting Sera’s units die is actually beneficial if it opens up firing lanes for her to drag them back from the discard. 

Thankfully, the rest of her options are much better.

Guarding Spirits is wonderful. Kait might not be sold on them but I think this is a fantastic common event that I’d probably throw into as many decks as I can. All units within 3 spaces of your summoner suffer only 1 damage from the first attack against them? Yes please. Sure, striking that unit with a weak attacker first eats this protection. But then that means the enemy a) needs to have weak attackers out and b) needs to position at least two attacks on their target thereby assuring that none of your other units will die in their remaining attack phase. 

Unless you’re the Cave Goblins, I suppose. Rejoice, Cave Goblins, you’re good in one specific instance!

Sera’s epic event is suitably impressive. Holy Judgement gives all your common units, regardless of position, an increase of 1 strength. In theory, she can have this event last for three turns which is a potential for 9 damage from one event! Granted, you’re unlikely to have this event last that long. Your enemy would be focussed on killing our units regardless of it ending your event sooner or not. But getting even 3 bonus damage from one event without paying a dime is wonderful. You’re laughing if you can get it to last two rounds. 

Last, certainly not least, and arguably her best event, is Renewed Hope. This event has so many benefits for Sera. First, you can summon multiple units from the same spot which has marginal usefulness. More importantly, is being able to use Sera as a mobile gate for a turn, allowing summoning from her during the movement phase, attack phase and even the draw phase! This allows Sera to immediately capitalize on, say, magic from killing units, clearing blockers, fresh defenders drawn after she triggers Citadel’s Might or even anything tantalizing that she gets in her new draw. And these units are guaranteed to come down defending Sera?!

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

I will note here, however, one hesitation I have for Sera. With so many of her abilities triggering off the Citadel keyword, it means she has a very limited potential for deck building. Unless we get word of deck building, I’m not certain there’s going to be a lot of decks that carry such a faction specific keyword. Whereas say, Sneeks, is merely limited by summoning cost and so is more likely to see a wider variety of options as the game goes on.

On the one hand, this means that the balance on Sera can be controlled a lot easier. Any future release that will synergize with her will be done very deliberately. No needing to worry about crippling a hypothetical Alliance box set with weak decks to keep her in line. Ultimately, however, it probably means that she’ll really only have what we see to play with. So either her decks are all going to be the same or she’s going to have to lean into some other synergies and combos that reduce the power of her Citadel’s Might ability.

The good news is her events are faction agnostic so it might not be that dire in the end.

Alright, are you ready for another full day of me gushing over how great the Polar Dwarves are?

I know I am. 

I do like how Summoner Wars reboot has made common units an integral part of faction identity and tactics. Commons are a far better unit to focus your deck around, largely because there’s far more of them in your deck. This gives you better consistency in your draw, which is an aspect of Summoner Wars that doesn’t get enough attention. It is a card game, after all is said and done, and no matter the dice results or your clever maneuvering, you can still be undone by a lousy new hand of cards.

The original Tundra Guild tried to manipulate your deck and draw for advantages. It failed. Thankfully, Svara ejects this principle. 

Instead, let’s talk more about structures with her standout common: the Ice Golem. 

Can you believe that Summoner Wars 1.0 analogue of the Ice Golem was 1 attack and 3 health for the same cost? Crazy eh? To make matters worse, you needed one of five other cards in Hogar’s old deck to turn it into a moving summoning post. Which only did so after the summoning phase so your opponent had a very good chance of just blowing your ice golem off the board before you could even use it as such.

But not Svara’s golems. These brutes swing for a respectable 2 strength. It’s not incredible but it’s enough to demand attention from your opponent. That five health pool is hard to chip down with the added bonus of failing to finish them off leaves them open for a lovely repairing on Svara’s turn. 

Moving only one tile a turn is not to be dismissed, however. You’ll be using a lot of Svara wiggles to get them into position. But these guys are really good at holding their position once you get them there. However, those first few rounds are brutal while you try to get them setup.

And that’s what I like about Svara. She really takes advantage of the board in this boardgame. Your golems are less mindless chaff pitched mercilessly against your opponent’s defences. They’re pillars supporting your massive battleline. And Frost Mages are the unsung heroes of your battles. Don’t let their meagre strength stat fool you, the real steal here is their 4 health for 1 magic. They’ll almost never be attacking at 1 strength with your plethora of structural support to boost their strength. And against most ranged options, they’ll be winning their exchanges. 

Only Abua’s Border Archers really offer a one turn threat to your mages and they’ll need to roll above odds to win. Plus, border archers are twice the price so even if it takes two mages to kill one, you do economically come out equal. And much like Abua, golems and mages are rather your main battleline. 

However, Svara’s other options are interesting in their own right. 

Bear Cavalry are, thematically, awesome. I’m less sold on them as a unit in general. They’re a specialist, needed for very specific moments but otherwise best sent off to the magic pile. Svara has no economic strength so a 3 magic unit is a tough sell. Their trample and 3 melee strength provide some reasonable damage against commons, however. But they’re no more durable than your golems – less so if you take repairing into account.

But the one niche where the cavalry shine is in conjunction with Ice Smiths. These little guys are mercifully free. They’re pretty flexible too. Two melee strength is pretty handy to have on call at any mana level especially since they can usually reach whatever target you need once your gate and golem line is established. Their special ability is interesting if a little slow to roll out. You basically have to decide upon summoning whether you want to sacrifice them to improve your golems and bears or if you’re going to attack with them since no enemy will let them live a full turn. Their ability – making any special symbol count as two wounds, is very nice. Obviously they’re best on the bears who have a higher attack. In the worst case, they will make sure all your attacks hit. But they can also make golems and bears effective champion slayers with a potential 6 or 9 wounds on a best roll!

It’s a pretty decent collection of units, after all is said and done.

Svara’s champions are no slouches either. 

Nadiana is the expected “a common but better” unit. She eases off the pressure for exacting structure placement with counting two spaces for her strength bonus. Her 7 health is on the low end but never forget that she’s even more effective behind a parapet than Svara is. 

Jarmund is a far more reasonable 5 magic. He really neuters melee focused decks, applying auto wounds to any enemies that end up adjacent to your walls. Like everything else with the Polar Dwarves, he needs a turn to start building his boost charges and wrecking havoc so your opponent can respond. Which is nice but ultimately doesn’t help them all that much. 

Last, and certainly least, is hands down the worst champion in the game. 

I’m glad Svara at least delivered something for me to hate. I cannot tell you how bad Ollag is. 

But I will certainly try.

Ollag has an incredibly awful ability. Sure, having no range limit on his health boost to all your structures is nice. And it’s probably the only thing I can compliment him on. Unfortunately, a boost of one health is pretty minor when all your structures already have such large pools to start. He’s also timing dependent – you get no benefit from this ability if you don’t have structures on the board that your opponent is going to attack. Which is to say, you need a bunch of golems out. 

And a minor ability would be fine if it came on someone who compensated with good stats. Yet, Ollag’s 5 magic, while low for a champion, is still too high for the magic pressed Polar Dwarves. Even worse, he has only 7 health so he’s not going to survive very long out in the wild (unless you hide him but then why did you waste 5 magic on a guy squatting in a corner when you could be killing with golems and bears?). Even worse, he doesn’t even have a good strength like Miti Kyru. And your smiths are unable to improve this at all so he’s left standing out there with subpar health, sub par strength providing very little durability to your forces who, albeit, lean heavily on their durability to win the game. 

There’s simply no good moment where you would want to summon Ollag.

But thankfully, he’s pretty much the only blemish on an otherwise well designed faction. I like that the Polar Dwarves are focused on being a mid game powerhouse, creating a formidable line of structures that are hard for your opponent to move around and surrounding them in crushing ice. It’s a defensive style that works aggressively while Svara slowly chokes all options out from her opponent until claiming victory over their suffocated corpse.

I really like this ice.