So it has been a few days or so since my last posting. 2020 has turned out to be quite busy, both worldwide and in my own little microcosm. I’m hard at work finishing up the second Red Sabre novel: Cinderborn. This has been a very arduous journey and I feel like I’m nowhere near finishing it yet. Though no one comes here to read my work woes.

I’ve also had a lot of personal changes going on in my life. I’m trying to get things finished for a large move to another country that has eaten up more of my attention and time. It feels like I’m starting a new chapter of my life: filled as it is with the typical apprehension and anxiety that such changes bear with them. So this blog post is hardly a sign that I’ll be getting back to my old posting habits. Mostly, it’s a brief oasis in a turbulent sea of uncertainty.

But, more than anything, I have returned with the news that Plaid Hat Games has turned independent again. There is word that Summoner Wars 2.0 is in the works which got me pretty excited! There’s been no details – naturally – of what that will entail. Will it be a reboot? Will it be compatible with the old decks? Will it be so overhauled as to be entirely unrecognizable?

Who knows? But that doesn’t mean we can’t speculate about it!

In honour of this announcement, I wanted to make a list of things that I would like to see changed or returned whenever this game comes to the market (assuming, of course, it does). These are presented in no real order as this post is entirely my first impressions and enthusiasm for one of my classic games getting a very unexpected breath of fresh air!

So let’s begin on my Things I want to see in a Summoner Wars sequel!

1. Better Theme

We’ll begin with the easiest. I wrote at length how bland and generic I found the original Summoner Wars. It’s artistic design was… well… functional at best. If you want to see why I found the Jungle Elves and Swamp Orcs so creatively distracting, you can search through my archives. But it wasn’t just bland flavouring. I also spoke to a great degree how the drab art detracted from the game as well. The original Mountain Vargath look rather indistinguishable which can lead to moments in a game where units blend undesirably together.

However, I also feel like this wish is almost all but guaranteed. I doubt anyone is particularly wedded to the old designs because they were so basic so changes are doubtful to cause outcry. Furthermore, Crystal Clans and Ashes demonstrated Plaid Hats’ evolution in far more distinct art direction. Regardless of whether you like the art in either of those, it at least stands out and I think it pretty much all but guarantees that this is a field in which Plaid Hat will have a one hundred percent improvement. And I hope they push more into their weirder design ideas while keeping a wide pool of wacky factions. Despite having bland names, the clans of Crystal Clans had some nice fantastical variety.

2. Keep the Dice

Here might be my most controversial request. I would really like to see the attack dice return! I know this is often the most maligned aspect of Summoner Wars but hear me out.

I think the dice in Summoner Wars is rather integral to its game. I’ve read numerous articles and design documents from developers explaining how randomness improves complexity and strategy rather than diminishes it. Which runs counter typically to how players and fans respond. But the one thing that randomness does is create dynamism. Summoner Wars is a rather simple game by design and I think its simplicity is an important part to making it popular (it’s certainly useful in teaching it to new players). Removing the dice shifts it to a far more predictable game that both reduces the excitement of turn by turn decisions (since attack actions would be assured) but also decreases design space. We’d lose abilities like Precision, Toughness or even interesting ones like Infernal Preaching (ignore the higher result of your attack rolls). The final second summoners managed to find plenty of additional interesting design space in a system that doesn’t have a whole lot in the first place.

So I’d like to see the dice remain but I would prefer if the system was expanded to give it more support. Having played a bunch of Arkham Horror LCG, I wouldn’t mind something like its “card commitment” system or another one analogous to it added to Summoner Wars.

Finally, Crystal Clans departed from the dice while still adding some element of uncertainty with its hidden card play. And while it was cute, I found it mostly highlighted that I preferred dice. Crystal Clans combat was basically a straightforward game of addition and the hidden card mechanic made it impossible to really play the game by yourself.

And I must shamefully admit that I’ve played a bunch of Summoner Wars on my own. Particularly when I was designing my custom content. I found this unworkable with Crystal Clans even though my games against people hardly took into account what card they played in their defence. It was all but impossible to not consider that information on your own.

3. New Economy

For me, this is the portion of the game which I would really like Plaid Hat to consider and experiment. The issues with Summoner Wars mechanics has been debated simply to death. Everyone has their own answer for what went wrong. For me, the problem lays here. It was clever to have your events and units also double up as your economy. But in the end, I feel that it was also the greatest handicap to the game’s desired flow.

Particularly, killing your own units controversially awarded you with magic. I’ve heard a number of people comment on how unintuitive this is. Furthermore, it led to a particularly bleak period of the game’s lifecycle wherein the most popular mode of playing was to kill all your commons for magic, build all your drawn commons for magic, then hide behind your walls hoping your opponent would come to you so that your saved champions could wallop them and secure you a victory. I’ve been rather critical of the argument that this style of playing was the “best” and that its proliferation was more due to the delicacy Plaid Hat applied to aggressive faction and unit design.

But this system also pushed the game into a rather tight design corner that made certain units and mechanics far less desirable than they should have been. For example, single attack cards were almost all but useless. Two attack was far more guaranteed to wound your opponent with a decent chance to give two wounds. This made 2 attack 1 health units far and above more valuable than 1 attack 2 health units. Failing to secure a kill had a compounding problem. First, you didn’t get the expected magic from the death of your enemy. Second, it gave your opponent a good chance to claim your unit for theirs. A unit for unit trade at least is an equal exchange. But summoning a unit only to have it fail to generate magic and then die the next turn was far too punishing, especially if your opponent killed it with the unit you failed to eliminate! It set you back the resources on your failed summon, gave them the resource of your failed summon and (in all likelihood) resulted in them claiming their own unit as a small refund! It also made it so 1 attack 1 health units were essentially non-existent outside of very niche decks as they accomplished nothing and gave too much resources to your opponent.

What could they do differently? I’m not certain because changing the nature of the game’s economy will have a massive fundamental change on all aspects of the game. Crystal Clans had an interesting push and pull economy with the crystal tracker. I’m not certain it was successful. Partly because I didn’t play enough to really understand the game. Partly because I think it led to a different issue of evaluating better exchanges and value.

Had I a good suggestion for this, though, I wouldn’t be sharing it here. I would be designing my own game. So I wish the best of luck to Plaid Hat on this front.

4. Maintain the Board Size

So, I know I’m referencing Crystal Clans a lot but that’s partly because of my disappointment with it being a spiritual Summoner Wars 2.0. It is largely its own beast and the similarities between the two are more superficial than they are worth highlighting. However, the nice thing about Crystal Clans being so different is it allowed me to hone in on what I really liked about Summoner Wars.

There’s a really fascinating spatial puzzle aspect to Summoner Wars. You have to manoeuvre your units around your opponent’s forces and open up corridors of attack. Or you have to funnel an invader into death alleys while protecting your wounded leader from surprise flanking measures. Crystal Clans lacked all this because its board was so small. You had no sense of actually outmanoeuvring your opponent. But that’s what the difference of 48 squares to 9 squares will bring. I want to have to plan crazy sprints of swift units around enemy bodyguards or using guile to shift units to open valuable columns to rush my assassins through. I don’t know if I would want to see the board shrunk, I’d be happy to see it grow but at the very least it should remain substantial.

5. Balance Defence and Offence

Summoner Wars matches can really grind to a halt, especially against some of the earliest designed decks. There are two reasons for this: the board is large enough that you can put your opponent’s summoner on the retreat (this is good). The other problem was that invading your opponent’s board was far too difficult because of the power of summoning walls. Walls were too strong to reliably address in a timely manner if your opponent’s summoner slipped behind them. And assaulting the walls or trying to work around them left you far too vulnerable to your opponent summoning off those walls and stealing momentum and advantage.

Yes, the summoning wall mechanic was the other great contributor to the stagnant turtle strategy. But I don’t want it abolished. I want a nice balance between defensive strategies and offensive strategies. Playing defensive shouldn’t be an inherent advantage (due to the awkward economy of the cards combined with the positional advantage of defending walls). Instead, it should be strong for factions designed around them. The Deep Dwarves losing offensive value to gain an economic edge is a great design. It puts pressure on the attacker to come and get their opponent otherwise they’ll sit and meditate their way to victory. But it also means that, to truly capitalize on the meditating advantage, the Deep Dwarf player has fewer units to defend herself from an assault.

On the flip side, you had Tacullu who was only strong on defence but did not apply any pressure for doing so. His abilities triggered if the enemy was on his side of the battlefield but there wasn’t anything to encourage the enemy to come to him. So it was often advantageous for his opponent to sit across from him, passing and twiddling their thumbs since Tacullu’s defensive style applied no pressure – it merely punished his opponent if they tried to play the game.

I think Plaid Hat was slowly arriving at a good balance near the life cycle of Summoner Wars between offence and defence. But more than that, I want there to be some mechanic to encourage offensive play. Crystal Clans had its crystals which armies fought over. I think Summoner Wars 2.0 would benefit from some manner of map objectives that allowed an aggressive player to seize momentum or an advantage by claiming territory on the board. I think this could open up greater design space too but having defensive factions built around the idea of reinforcing a space on the battlefield instead of just taking advantage of inherent defensive perks. A theoretical faction could then be geared towards claiming a map objective and sitting on it, making it very difficult to reclaim by their opponent instead of being designed around hiding in a corner behind unbreakable walls.

6. Take Time to Future Proof

I will always sing the praises of the final releases for Summoner Wars. Alliances and the last second summoners were, overall, really interesting from a complexity and creativity standpoint. It really stretched the game’s system and made for some really fantastic abilities.

But goodness was Farrah and her deck a novel. Moyra had her own collection of awkward wording and overall the writing on the cards got smaller and smaller as more text was squeezed into unchanging boxes. A large part of this was trying to come up with ways to write really narrow gameplay fixes to prior cards or strange interactions. I think the game would benefit from having a more fleshed out toolbox. Having things like keywords, generic abilities and unit traits can hopefully avoid needing to remember who has the word Light in their ability name and whether Flight counts for that trigger.

I’m hopeful that this is almost a guarantee as well. Crystal Clans and Ashes had these necessary core elements. Crystal Clans hardly tapped into its trait system as it died on the vine a little early. But I’d rather the system in place than the questionable grammar we got from Summoner Wars.

Also, consistent wording and formatting on cards would be a lovely little bonus cherry.

7. The Filth

I want to see the Filth return. That’s it. I just liked the weird demon cult and how their basic unit was body horror’d into all those delightfully weird mutations. But please leave the pink demon clutches in the past, if you would be so kind.

Well, it’s been a little quiet from me, but I have finalised my draft for the reading beta. If you are interested in helping me out with my next release, code name Cinderborn, please sign up for the beta reading list and get an early draft of the novel. Only you can prevent forest fires!

So, I thought I would write about something that I haven’t discussed on this blog in a long time. You see, I recently was graciously given access to the final second summoners for Summoner Wars! Yes, it’s been over a year but, you see, the cards have been out of print and I never got my grubby hands on most of them. So it was a pleasure to finally give these elusive decks a try.

Now, I would normally like to write an indepth review of the decks. Partly because it would give me far more content to post on the blog but largely because I enjoyed analysing the product. Alas, my time with these releases was too short to get a really good understanding of them. But I was able to get a general impression.

And I have to say, it’s a real shame that Summoner Wars ended. Though it was just several brief games, I found these last six decks to be an absolute blast to play and I think they are some of the best design Plaid Hat Games put out for this system. Now, I say last six decks because I do own two of the final summoners: Farrah Oathbreaker and Saturos. So those I have played on my own time. But the remaining ones (Brath, Scraven, Little Meda, Shiva, Natazga and Melanatar) were all fantastic.

Granted, these are hardly the simplest decks released. But though they can kind of get wordy, I am not certain I found them any more complex than the Alliance decks. I also had the misfortune of playing against Oldin as well, and the stark contrast not just in design but in balance was remarkable. Summoner Wars is a weird little game, and I don’t want to slag its early design too much, but given all its mechanical quirks it is so great to see that it ended on such a high note. Even if some of the later releases pale in performance to the first decks, they are all pretty balanced and – more importantly – enormously fun (barring Hogar)!

I am humbled how you can take a fairly simple system and continually add greater strategical complexity. For example, Shiva gives a player the chance to forego an entire turn phase in order to have unprecedented control of the battlefield. Lessons were certainly learned and, had the game been predominately the releases from the Master Set and on, I think it would have been in a fantastic state. It would possibly be even more loved than it was. These last releases actually renewed my interest and love for the game, which is remarkable because I think after two years of following its product line, I got a bit disillusioned with its glaring flaws.

I won’t rehash its issues here, but seeing Oldin in play and the dreaded “defensive playstyle” I can see where the product line got a bad reputation. And what’s fascinating is the interplay between these final summoners and those early releases. You see, Oldin’s gameplan is to play about eight of its thirty-three card deck. Everything else goes to the magic pile. Playing Oldin looks to be a real drag. Most turns seem to be “draw five cards, kill your starting units, build your five cards for magic, pass.” Repeat until you get a hand of champions and Heroic Feats, throw out Magic Drains to nettle your opponent then summon a beefy champion and kill your enemy with all the extra attack dice your Heroic Feats grant.

But despite how drab that plan is, there was still excitement in the matches against these new summoners who almost all are designed to fight Oldin with this game plan. In fact, some of the summoners just outright destroy Oldin if he does this, forcing the Oldin player to actually play the game the way it was intended. And it was glorious.

Granted, the best games I played were ones between two of these final summoners. All of them have a brawling, fast and active play style and those games were really interesting and engaging.

I’ll give my impressions of the decks. Though, as I said, it have too little experience to really get a grip on their strengths, I’ll roughly organise them by my initial sense of their power from weakest to strongest.

Shiva – Benders

I think my favourite thing about Shiva is how she really captured the Bender feeling without anywhere near the aggravation of playing against Tacullu. Shiva can skip her movement phase to move three of her enemies one space each. This sounds like an awful trade, except Shiva’s deck revolves around Puppets – units that can’t move during her movement phase in the first place. Between them and Sirens (who can move a unit one space as well), you really get a strong sense of controlling the battlefield.

Unfortunately, because of her immobility, Shiva doesn’t make for a really strong attacking deck. And the one thing I noted about most of these last summoners is that they are very strong on the attack. Her events are far less impactful and I found that she got overwhelmed rather quickly when she tried to apply pressure that she sort of fizzled out. She’s probably the deck I played the least, however. I only got one of her champions on the board (Puppetmaster both games but he does seem really good) and I never had an opportunity to play with the Shifter at all which allows you to steal your enemy’s units! So I certainly missed out on some of her shenanigans and power.

Scraven – Sand Goblins

I really like Scraven. However, his base commons leave something to be desired. However, his ability to give three commons a free move at the start of his turn plus guaranteed blockers at the end is so great. I certainly found myself constantly thinking about distances and angles. And it is really hard to get your opponent in a tough position with your army ping-ponging back and forth during your turn. You feel crafty but it is difficult to wield. I’d like to try him some more so I could wrap my head around his battle flow, especially after being told that Wraiths make for fantastic vanguards. I personally had trouble getting him to do anything and he folded pretty fast beneath the other summoners’ pressure. I wanted to get Dinky to the board but was always dead before I got a chance to throw nine dice!

Natazga – Swamp Orcs

Wow, Natazga is crazy. I don’t remember how I ranked her when she was previewed but I know I had a lukewarm impression. I know I thought that she would struggle since she was throwing her attention at walls instead of the enemy’s units. However, most people like to play passive, so there isn’t a big downside to that. Plus, her Skulltakers don’t generate magic on kills so are better for hitting walls. And with Erosion, those walls go fast. My favourite game was between her and Brath, where Brath lost her starting wall and her other two were in the last four cards of her deck! Needless to say, Natazga won though it was a nailbiter game despite this huge advantage!

Generating vine walls immediately at the most valuable locations is a very strong ability. And all of her units hit really hard. It feels like a fast tide of green flowing over your opponents side. Is it fun? You bet. Powerful? Perhaps not. I think she may be the weakest of the swamp orc summoners due to her low vine wall generation (you really take notice of all the unit wall generating powers). On the flip side, she did beat Oldin despite the threat of Besiege the Walls due to the heavy wall pressure she applies plus the small wall generation by her units discouraging the event play to set her back. Also, she totally got lucky on a Gror whiff but that’s neither here nor there.

I like playing her, though, even if she isn’t the most effective. I think she does well against the opponents which are strong against Mugglugg but she certainly struggles with everyone else. Though there’s lots of fun tactical considerations in those struggles. And who knew using Erosion on your own walls would be a good idea!

Brath – Deep Dwarves

Here’s where we get to the meat of the releases. I think Brath, Little Meda and Malenatar are very competitive out of the box and can only get better with deck building if that is your kind of thing. Brath in particular is rather interesting because she sports the lowest average attack value in likely the entire game! Her deck is built around the zero attack Gem Golems, continuing a recurrent theme that most of the second summers kind of minimize their deck building potential by making them reliant on certain commons for their abilities. This concept isn’t new but the integration of these units feels better designed and more cohesive.

Brath, for example, gets around her low attack options by having several ways to make the Gem Golems better. First, she can take a card off the top of her deck to give them an additional die. Second, whenever her Gem Archers attack near a golem, the archers give the golem a free attack. Third, Brath has two events that increase the golem’s attack and she has two more events that allow her to recycle any card she has (and I generally chose those attack increasing ones).

Now, my feelings towards Brath are a little limited as she’s the second deck I played the least. She stomped Oldin, however, even if she lost to Natazga. I found her very fun and very aggressive as she throws her strong golems and supporting army at the walls of her foes. Even trying to wall yourself in doesn’t help as those tricky golems can even attack diagonally! I love them.

Little Meda – Filth

If I was hard on Natazga, I know I was lacklustre towards Little Meda. I really wish I bought her now that I got to give her deck a go. I don’t know how, but the second Filth summoner I think is better than the first. And that’s saying something since I think the Demagogue was one of the best. Now, I’m feeling he’s the worst of his faction!

That said, Demagogue is easier to play and far more defensive so there is a certain amount of play style preference at work. I thought Little Meda would be unwieldy because she needs to keep to her Nanny’s side if she wants to survive. But, in the end, I feel that she’s almost more survivable than the Warden! And she hits three times as hard too!

Granted, she has a bit of a learning curve. She has some magic economy but it is reliant on her Amoeba mutant. Though she has two events to pull it out, my first game with Meda I failed to get the Amoeba until the last couple of turns of the game and by then it was too late for it to have any impact. In later games, it kept getting Magic Drained so mileage on that will vary. Her mutations are a mixed bag too. I think her best ones are worse than Demagogue’s best but her worst aren’t as bad as Demagogue’s worst. She’s more levelled the usefulness distribution. Her events are, much like her forebearer, where she shines.

Probably her best event is her most innocuous. Daddy I’m Scared allows her to move at the end of an opponent’s movement or attack phase, either setting her up in a good position for an attack next turn or (more often) getting her our of harm’s way. I dodged a Heroic Feat bomb doing just that and if you snatch Oldin’s Heroic Feat threat, you nearly defang him. Ironically enough, I find that you are spending more time trying to protect Nanny than you are Meda. Also, their immunity to events and abilities is straight up aces.

That said, she does struggle on a traditional offensive front. Since she’s largely the source of consistent damage and you spend so much time manoeuvring her and her nanny, you can’t rush down your opponent like the other decks. In that sense, she’s more of a traditional deck though she has some measure of applying defensive pressure to force a confrontation even if that pressure is somewhat easily countered.

Very fun though and I feel less complex than the Demagogue because she’s not nearly as reliant on her mutations. The ones she uses are generally ones that you have already drawn so you don’t need to memorize your deck either.

Malenatar – Mountain Vargath

Malenatar has the distinction of having the most hilariously one-sided fight against Oldin. And that’s considering that Brath chased him into a corner and punched him between walls.

Malenatar is a juggernaut. He comes so fast out of the gate and he just does not let up the pressure. He could crowd the walls of all his opponents in the games I played by round two which gives little time for an effective defence. And he hits so hard that the wall is unlikely to stand for very long. Assuming you want to go for that wall. Generally the summoner is waiting just behind it and given a turn, Malenatar has a decent chance to just end the game against a number of summoners.

Funnily enough, his commander common is fantastic yet I find I never used more than the starting one. The guard can keep it alive for so long, is cheaper and also can protect aspirants who were pitching most of my dice.

Malenatar did make clear that the biggest thing holding aggressive decks back was the restriction on moving units. When pushing across the board, you have to choose whether to keep up your attack or replenish your line. But if you weren’t going to commit to the attack, why did you go into it in the first place? So aggressive pushes traditionally were more like assassination attempts. You throw a lot of resources on a single attack and hope it gets you the game.

But Malenatar alone can move five other cards when he moves! Will he? Of course not! But you will likely be moving an additional one for free (with Battle Procurement) and that alone helps maintain a continuous assault. Aspirants, of course, help things shimmy along.

Guards, of course, help things keep going since (with some Unity), they can help protect Malenatar from being in poor positions when the enemy walls start to come down. And talk to a Moyra player about how big keep a well placed unit around for an extra turn or two can be.

I have to say, I was really impressed with Summoner Wars last hurrah. It was such a good note to end on and refreshing to see such variability in design. My favourite games were the ones between these last summoners. They were fast, frenetic affairs that felt like they could go either way. That the game was balanced on the edge of a die roll. And now I’m sad to know that these great decks are out of print and impossible to find.

But at least I got two of them before they went.