Last week we saw the first four of the last eight second summoners for Summoner Wars. Those were my “bottom picks” for who is and isn’t the best. I ran some clarifications on how I do my ranking but one thing I didn’t mention is that I also focus on general utility. I show preferential treatment to decks that are capable of facing off against multiple different opponents in Summoner Wars than those that are tooled to deal with specific match-ups or playstyles. So, while I ranked Natazga of the Swamp Orcs rather poorly, I think her cards can be really good against certain foes. For one, she can do well against her Swamp Orc brethren. Her units are obviously unimpeded by the walls of her foes and her Swamp Archers will be fantastic at sniping Mugglug’s Hunters or getting hits on Glurblub that likes to use his as blockers. All her units hit hard enough to tear down any walls that crop up from her opponents and she can halt Mugglug’s growth if she gets some early Erosions on his starting walls. Finally, her Fury of the Fen can shuffle around her own walls to corner off Mugglug’s growth if he does manage to grow beyond his confines.

So it isn’t like she’s complete rubbish. Likewise, I’d expect Brath to do better against opponents that want to play slow and defensive. And Farrah certainly fares a lot easier against factions she already has faction symbols of in her deck.

But the thing about the tip top tier decks is that they have very few tough opponents. Their gameplan is either powerful enough to dictate the pace of the game or they possess enough tools that they can adjust their strategy on the fly. And I think these last four really cover both of those options.

4. Get out of my head, Charles. (Benders – Shiva)

These middling decks I’m the least certain about. I like a lot of what Shiva is doing but she has one glaring weakness that holds her back and that I find a bit troubling. Not because it isn’t insurmountable but that it seems so uncharacteristic of her faction that I have to question how it came to be. Generally, factions are designed around certain core concepts. The Cave Goblins, for example, are cheap expendable units that basically rush zerg-like towards their enemies and try to win through sheer numbers and audacity. A four magic common with a high health pool would seem very out of character for the faction.

Likewise, you’ll notice that the Mountain Vargath are pretty hurting for ranged units. Same for the Filth.

Thus, I was a little taken aback by the sheer proliferation of melee units in Shiva’s deck. Tacullu had all ranged and laid claim to the “fragile but strong” archer archetype. Sure, parasites are a thing but not one anyone really paid much attention to. A few melee units I could live with as I can imagine continuing to make only ranged units would get difficult after awhile. But for the majority to be shirking the design space of the original seems a little… odd.

Plus it makes Shiva worse. Had she one or two more really strong ranged units, I’d feel far more comfortable ranking her higher.

For, you see, Shiva has a really strong ability. She can forgo her own Movement Phase to move her opponent’s units around instead. It’s only one space each but the board’s small enough that even one space can ruin your opponent’s formation. You can pull weaker units out of cover. You can expose enemy summoners to your attacks. You can separate units boosted by each other’s abilities, be it Moyra’s Defenders or Brath’s Gem Golems. And, of course, you can draw them to your side of the board where you can slaughter them amongst your own forces all within the safety and comfort of your walls.

Unless, of course, your units are tripping over themselves because they are all close range. I definitely think Shiva’s potential will raise when she puts several of the powerful ranged units in the Bender’s arsenal into her deck. Deceivers, Geopaths and Controllers all benefit from Shiva’s Influence. And Shiva’s units themselves are all quite powerful in their own right. Puppets are a magic cheaper than their statistics. Their negative for this discount is offset by Shiva’s strength but even if you don’t Influence that turn, Puppets can take an attack to move adjacent to a nearby friendly Bender. They can cover for Shiva if she moves in to leverage her powerful 3 ranged attack. Shiva can command them with an event and even the Puppetmaster can move them around into position. Shiva does seem locked into including the unit because of all the support she has for them so it’s fortunate that the unit has a fair bit of flexibility and use. They cover the weakness of the parasite by sporting both more health and attack so summoning them doesn’t feel much like a waste.

We also have the Siren that has one of the best abilities revealed. It’s like a mini Influence that targets only one Common or Champion near the Siren but it doesn’t require the expenditure of a movement or attack action. We saw Brath’s champions eat attacks to pull of their abilities but the Siren can just sit on the field and do nothing but lure victims towards (or away) from her. And with two attack, she also makes for a strong and cheap offensive option.

Unfortunately, with both her two main commons being melee, Shiva falls into the same problem as Tacullu. She wants to play on her side of the board but doesn’t include anything natively in her deck to encourage opponents to come at her. This can be addressed through deck building whether through Endrich’s Geopaths or Owl Gryphon but it’s troubling to see a defensive deck created without some lure to avoid stalemates. Maybe the designers thought she would be more aggressive but that seems unlikely. I can only think that Influence was meant to force opponents into Shiva’s defensive position though I imagine it’ll work only to encourage her opponent’s to hunker down on their side of the board and not summon things. Even worse, Shifters encourage your opponent to not play commons as you can simply steal them with the Shifter then Wither it to get some of your magic back. It’s a neat idea to adapt Tacullu’s mind control element and is very similar to a faction I had designed.

Shiva breaks the Bender mould even further by providing some decent champions to the faction as well. I’m not convinced of Lem’s power as it feels too inconsistent and chance based for my tastes. But both Puppetmaster and Haku are fantastic units. Haku in particular deals with champions pretty well or any unit with a low number of attacks (hi Bladed Mutant).

Finally, I should mention that Hinder is a great event for stalling a game which adds more credence to the idea that Shiva is expected to play passive and boring. Sadly, without any late game advantage, I don’t see Shiva doing well against the stronger defensive factions. Even other stalling decks like Brath can probably do some damage to Shiva as she needs to twiddle her thumbs and hope for her opponent to be drawn close enough into her trap. Which is unfortunate because even just one ranged common unit could provide her with the pressure Shiva needed to move forward and force the fight to her. Which is a pity that she has such a glaring flaw since her deck looks incredibly fun otherwise. This is why I’m uncertain about Shiva’s placing. I could see her performing worse than both Farrah and Brath though I think the general strength of her individual cards keep her from being the absolute bottom of the releases.

3. Moo, I say. (Mountain Vargath – Malenatar)

If first Summoner Wars summoners were deemed strong and had weaker second summoners, then it stands to reason that the inverse would be true. At the very least, Malenatar makes a compelling argument.

Like Shiva, however, there’s a peculiar design decision that has left me scratching my head. Granted, at first I was skeptical of Malenatar’s direction. His revealed ability required discarding cards from hand to fuel it. We’ve seen this before in the Mountain Vanguard Korbolden and I ranted about it to no end. So here we see the ability crop up again and I was readying my pitchforks. I have gently tucked them away because it seems my prior complaints were heard. While personally I thought that units with costed abilities should receive a built in discount, Plaid Hat did the opposite approach and provided renewable resources to keep paying for the ability. We saw Little Meda get her Amoeba last week. Malenatar has Battlefield Procurement. So at least these summoners aren’t starting from a weaker position than their non-costed companions.

Renewable economy, Malenatar’s got it.

The part that confuses me, however, was the lack of a discarding mechanic amongst Malenatar’s commons. Considering that Malenatar has more than Battlefield Procurement to help refund these costs, it seemed strange to devote so much of his event suite to discounting these abilities when they’re only on three units. And for Ossa in particular, her discard mechanic is really unnecessary for her power.

Personally, I would have liked to see the Commander need a discard in order to trigger her ability. Then she wouldn’t need to be so expensive. We’ve already seen two factions get a melee unit that has two attack and two health for one magic. Malenatar instead gets one at three. Oh well, she does not so Malenatar has some events that he can always build for magic. It also makes these commons more exportable to Sunderved who is more than happy to have a unit that will allow him to attack with powered up Cherubim more than once per turn. And, of course, it improves Malenatar’s damage output by squeezing in additional attacks.

Multiple attacks – Malenatar’s got it.

But while we’re on strange design decisions, the Aspirant also breaks the Vargath design space by providing a low health unit to their pool. I do like the two attack with one health for one magic option but, once again, it just seems strange for it to show up in a faction that doesn’t really support that kind of design. I get that Malenatar lacks the attack boosting power of Sunderved and having a higher attack option was necessary to bump him up into these higher predictions. Probably the best thing about Aspirants is that they provide a turn by turn use for Battlefield Procurement. Malenatar can move the Aspirant with his Strategic Positioning, allowing the Aspirant to move another nearby unit one space. Then the Aspirant can take a normal move and move the other unit or a different one an additional space. It’s a quick way to get four movement a turn – a necessity for any faction that wants to play aggressively. Also, that Malenatar can move up to five units (why do you have five units out?!) is also pretty crazy for making a strong rush down deck when you consider that any freshly summoned unit can move at least four spaces on the turn they appear. This also helps his all melee common troupe get in position to pull off their attacks.

Mobility – Malenatar’s got it.

And, of course, there’s the guard which is a fantastic unit that is pretty close to one I designed for a custom faction so I’m obligated to love it. I’m a little saddened its ability wasn’t called Light Cover so it could benefit from the Crusader’s Shining Aura but that would have been a bit too cheeky.

Additional heath – Malenatar’s got it.

Probably the biggest change Malenatar brings to the table over Sunderved is an event suite that actually benefits from containing Superior Planning. Sunderved’s events were pretty mediocre but Unify on its own gives Malenatar something to dig from his discard repeatedly. It may even be worth pulling from the Draw Pile if a good opening presents itself. Malenatar also brings some good champions to make-up for the rather disappointing options traditionally offered the Vargath. Varden offers the rare ranged attack and gives you something to play with Superior Execution. As mentioned, Ossa is fantastic and can single handedly halt a Cave Goblin rush.  Kadros is… an option if you make it to late game and have lots of magic lying around.

Powerful champions – Malenatar’s got it.

There’s really nothing more to say about Malenatar. He’s got a deck full of good units with good events. He has good attack and maneuvering making him an excellent aggressive summoner. When all your stuff is good, it’s hard to not expect a deck to do well. Basically, Malenatar addresses all my criticisms for prior aggressive summoners and why their strategy fundamentally underperformed compared to others.

Victory – Malenatar’s got it.

2. Follow the leader. (Sand Goblins – Scraven)

Malenatar provides his troops some really great movement options but Scraven takes it to a whole new level. He can grant three units free movement at the start of every turn. Even better, he automatically pulls them back as blockers at the end of the turn. It’s a mixture of Maldaria’s Save the Queen and Jexik’s Brilliant Strategist – both of which are excellent abilities in their own right. I can, however, see Scraven being hard to pick up and play if you’re not familiar with your enemy’s options. There are some units that would make you really need to change your strategy, like the Jungle Elves Archer which can shoot through Scraven’s loyal protectors to wound him directly.

But Scraven has a few of his own tricks up his sleeves. First, he’s packing a couple of Event Abilities which opens Marek’s cards up to some interesting deck building options. And some of those abilities are really wonderful. Strong Wind is perhaps the stand out, giving a unit a sort of “taunt” movement that lets you pluck enemy commons from their defenses while working your own troops into the midst of combat. Flingers also see past blockers and walls alike to throw their dice around. Once again, we’re seeing the refinement of aggressive deck design here. And Scraven really focuses on the common play, with Cyrus, Hunters and Scraven himself benefiting in multiple ways by flooding the field with goblins.

And speaking of Cyrus, it wouldn’t be a Sand Goblin deck without some truly stand out champions. I love scaling attack power. Hester is one of my favourite champions and can consistently get up to six dice on attack. I’ve had games where he’s throwing twelve on the attack. Cyrus… isn’t going to be getting that high but he can certainly build up to a respectable attack power in a hurry. And having extra bodies on the field doesn’t hurt Scraven who is happy to get more units to use with his Esteemed Leader. And even if it’s just Hunters you’re throwing down, at least they’ll be getting stronger whilst bolstering Cyrus strength. Cyrus even comes with the Sand Goblin discount to boot even though his ability isn’t really a negative and definitely not to the same level as Kreep or Biter.

Then there’s Dinky. Here’s a champion that the opponent always has to keep in mind and that absolutely punishes champion play. Even better, you have control over Dinky’s weakness and can decide to hold off summoning him until the battlefied has cleared a little. He may seem like he’s anti-synergistic with Scraven’s common deluge but more likely he’s the answer to when your little guys inevitably die. And he’s probably the best late game champion in Summoner Wars, not to mention a fantastic wall breaker. And there really isn’t any other champion that can rival him. Little Meda better watch out because Dinky is just going to squish Nanny if he ever gets a swing on them. He’s such a large threat that likely your opponent is going to be required to spam commons in anticipation of the oaf arriving. Which works just fine for Scraven who has such cheap and strong commons that he’s apt to win the exchange.

Finally, there’s the Wraith. I don’t think you can make any comment on Scraven without talking about this guy. He’s like a super Shaman. He’s only harmed on die results of 6 though he vanishes after he makes his attack. But that’s a ranged two attack that is incredibly hard to prevent. Better yet, he’s immune to abilities that directly apply damage, absolutely ruin units with Precise and doesn’t care about events that destroy other lesser units. All of that for one magic. And that’s magic that’s never going to your opponent. He doesn’t combo with Esteemed Leader’s return ability, so there’s that to keep in mind. And he can be destroyed with enough dice thrown his way but the more attacks he eats, that’s less attacks coming at the rest of your forces. And if the enemy doesn’t attack him, well that’s fantastic too because you want him to disappear from your attack.

All of that said, I’m not sold on Hunters or the Sand Drake. Their combination seems a bit too “best case scenario”. Sand Drake itself is rather expensive, cutting into your common economy and really needs to get some units sieging with it to be scary. But it has such a slow ramp up of damage that I feel like it’ll die before it’s truly a threat. And the staggered summoning platform element is a touch too slow for my tastes as it allows the enemy to respond. As for Hunters, their strength is in their zero cost but if you have more than one they immediately lose that strength. And improving health is the weakest statistic to improve in the game. Their one attack is underwhelming as well. That said, you can set up a good Barrage turn with them and in this regard they are a “fixed” Scavenger.

Overall, it’s a powerful package and apt to really ruin players that aren’t used to opponents rushing their face from the first turn. Suddenly, the Summoner Wars battlefield got a whole lot more crowded.

1. Watch you don’t cut yourself on all this edginess. (Shadow Elves – Saturos)

And then there was Saturos.

Scraven and Malenatar might be fantastic examples of aggressive design but Saturos embodies it. This deck is filled to the brim with murder. Too bad it’s also covered in Lycra and teenage angst.

Saturos himself, however, is terrifying. He’s slightly weaker than Selundar but packs more of a punch at range. Better yet, his Blood Summon is like a beefy Glurblub Vinemancer Sow. Instead of punting two health vine walls across the board, however, Saturos is kicking enraged Blood Drakes. Any enemy unit he slays on his opponent’s side is a free summon for him. That’s a crazy amount of tempo swing. It grants you a magic for the kill, denies the board position that unit was in, gives you up to a two magic discount on a unit, gives you the board control and potentially places a unit in position to chain attacks on cowering summoners. Saturos even dodges the Burning Skeleton issue as his Blood Drakes can shift a space when they appear. And if you don’t happen to have the sanguine drakelings in hand, Vindicators are quite happy to take their place as two ranged attacks is also hard to avoid.

And holy smokes, Shadow Warriors are bloody fantastic. They’re Swordsmen replacements or, better yet, supplements. Honestly, I think they’re better than the much lauded Selundar Swordsman as Blood Step can give you far greater range once you take control of the middle board with Saturos. To clarify, they can blood step to a wounded unit before taking their regular movement so when you get some champions in play with a few scratches, the Shadow Warriors can leap immediately to the fray from them as though they had been woven from Melundak’s shadows. And you can do it with all three of these guys too.

Beside, look at that attack spread – 3 attack with a blood summoned Blood Drake, 2 attack with stationary ranged Vindicators and 2 attack off those hopping Shadow Warriors. Saturos comes swinging out of the gate hard and none of this is taking into account his events. Relentless Assault is insane, granting a free full movement to all your units. Sure it wounds Saturos in the process but this can be advantageous if you’ve been doing a good job of keeping him safe as it now makes him a jump off point for Shadow Warriors. Greater Blood Summon is plain nuts allowing you to not only Blood Summon off any unit that manages to destroy an enemy common but also to trigger on your side of the board if you manage to get overrun. Note, this occurs whenever a unit destroys an enemy – it doesn’t specify an attack. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? If you’re thinking Satara then good, because she is love and live the dream of bouncing three units in for free before your attack phase.

But what about that defender’s advantage that I’m always talking about? How does Saturos deal with that problem? We saw Scraven pulling his troops out to prevent them from falling into the enemy’s better positioning. And Malenatar can simply reinforce his frontlines like it’s nobodies business assuming his guarded units are even falling to the counter attack in the first place. Aren’t the Shadow Elves suppose to be brittle? Those Shadow Warriors still only have one health, after all. And it’s not like Plaid Hat is going to reprint Shadows.

Well, they didn’t. Instead, Saturos has Revenge. It’s like Shadows if you cared about clearing the board of enemies. Two free wounds is great against units especially tough ones like, say, Baldur who is otherwise going to be unphased by the large attack pools of the Shadow Elves. But wait, the biggest issue with Sunderved was that he had to put himself in danger in order for his aggressive force to benefit from his ability. Glurblub at least had Spore Carriers to take over the duty of growing his swamp after the first couple of turns and he had to pull back. Well, have no fear aggressive Saturos for Vanquish is here to help you. When a common strikes Saturos you can simply knock that unit back to your opponent’s hand while ignoring whatever damage he’d have done. Mugglug may have thought he had a clever flank with a Savager. Now he realizes that he’s gained nothing and is out 3 magic for his trouble. Should he try it again? What if Saturos has his second Vanquish waiting for that exact scenario?

It’s a hilarious way to both protect your summoner while also doing significant damage to the opponent’s position and economy. If Saturos is already wounded and it was a blocker that took the strike, that could mean the enemy is now exposed to your Shadow Warriors.

And all of this without considering Saturos’ champions. Zhant gets you some extra movement and attack though his range is pretty small so he’ll be tough to position properly. Uriel is there if you’ve completely overwhelmed your opponent and he’s fled to a back corner and walled himself in. Congratulations, you’ve just played yourself as Uriel can sit on the opposite side of the opponent’s battlefield and simply choke him out of the game. Finally, there’s Shiiq who brings a lovely 4 attack while also giving you some tricky swapping options at the end of the enemy’s turn. This means any common carelessly left alive can become this frightful woman or, if she’s on the enemy’s side, it can give Uriel an immediate attack on the summoner the first turn he’s summoned.

Yeah, you can basically pluck a card at random from Saturos’ deck and realize how great it is. He’s the definitive example of just making everything great to be effective. It’s telling for a Summoner Wars deck when I think Zhant and Uriel are the least impressive elements when they’d be considered highlights in others.

This doesn’t mean that Saturos is invincible, mind you. He seems oppressive from his preview but even the match-up between him and Scraven would be interesting. While Saturos can Blood Summon Scraven’s loyal guardians, Scraven has Wraiths and Dinky to deal with the fact that commons are going to be vanishing faster than cupcakes at a six-year-old’s birthday.

What I’m most happy to see, however, is that Plaid Hat finally took off the kiddie gloves when it came to designing aggressive factions. I’ve always felt they’ve been holding back either through concern that a too strong aggressive deck would utterly dominate Summoner Wars or that most people didn’t really play defensively to see just how much it hurt their prior offensive decks. Well, our complaints have not fallen on deaf ears and it seems that we have some really great standout decks for all three archetypes of the game.

So while Summoner Wars may be coming to a close, the battles have only just begun.

Well this sort of crept up out of nowhere.

So I’ve rambled quite a lot about Summoner Wars on this blog. Mostly because it’s an easy thing to ramble about on a day when I don’t know what else to write. So when I’m neck deep in work I can riddle off several paragraphs about this fun little board game and not have to worry too much that I’m making a lot of sense. Well, these simple, lazy days will soon be coming to a close. Plaid Hat Games have revealed the last of their second summoners for the game. This rounds out the product (to my knowledge) and caps off the game with its myriad of rules and characters. Most of these last summoners are the second options for the Master Set – the natural jump off point for new players – so it’s good that they’re finally releasing additional deck building options for the armies that most players are going to own.

There’s also eight of these little guys and gals coming out which, conveniently, happens to be the exact same amount that was in the large Alliances box that came out last year. So, you know what that means. Baseless speculation ahead! And just like Alliances, I thought I’d give my initial impressions based off the previews Plaid Hat put up and try and rank them in order from best to worst.

A few keynotes should be stated, however. Firstly, I am judging these decks solely on their base components. Much like Alliances, these second summoners have definitely been designed with deck building in mind. Farrah in particular stands out as a remarkable example of a deck created around the entire game’s release line. However, it has been and continues to be my opinion that base decks should stand on their own partly because it feels a little disingenuous to tell new players that a deck is good only for them to go out and purchase it and realize they need supplementary purchases to get it to work. Also, the way the game is designed with its very restricted deck building rules makes it feel more natural to judge decks by their initial release. A good third of the deck is unchanging and the parts that can change are pretty narrow.

This isn’t to say I won’t make mention of deck building but that my ultimate opinion is derived from what you get out of the box.

Secondly, these decks are being judged amongst themselves. As an overall observation, they are much better designed than earlier releases. Nothing appears to be as poor as Vlox, for example. Or Melundak for that matter. So even the worst ranked deck does hold some potential, just not nearly as much as its brothers and sisters.

Finally, I haven’t actually had any chance to sit down and try these decks so I don’t know how they actually play. I may overestimate how bad certain negatives are and not give enough credence to the positives. See my early speculation on Endrich in the Alliances for that. While my early assessments of his drawbacks were dead on, it turns out that the things that were good in his deck were really, really good that they made up for his short comings. Consequently, I undervalued the weaknesses of Hogar and conservatively ranked him higher based on my uncertainty.

That is to mostly say I’m not a soothsayer and it’s mostly fun to see how my early impressions line up with some experience. And we are, after all, here for some fun, right?

So as an overview, here are the last eight Summoner Wars decks being released:

• Shadow Elves – Saturos: Selundar has been a rather inconsistent and underestimated deck in our experience. Focusing on quick engagements and striking with lots of weak but strong units, Selundar shows a flawed approach to assassination and being aggressive. Saturos takes this design of aggression and ramps it up to eleven while drawing heavily on Melundak’s Shadow Weave ability and the Shadow Elf Hunter design.
• Swamp Orcs – Natazga: The often horribly named Swamp Orcs are a rather disheartening faction to face. Their vine walls slowly dominate the battlefield, choking out avenues and options from their enemy before they can overwhelm them from the safety of their swamp. Mugglug has proven quite effective in his games with his high attack Hunters and Savagers being able to appear right on his enemy’s doorstep. We’ve seen just about every manner of vine wall generation from killing units beside walls to killing enemy units with Glurblub and now Natazga gets them for attacking enemy walls themselves.
• Mountain Vargath – Malenatar: The goats have had an unfortunate run in Summoner Wars. Sunderved was meant to be the counterpoint to the Cave Goblins: a rush down aggressive common focus deck that had more survivable units at a higher cost than the swarming goblins but hit like no other. Sadly, it has been a struggle for Sunderved to cinch victories combating the natural defensive advantage of enemy walls, though Moyra did offer him a number of tools to overcome his weaknesses. Malenatar returns with strong, aggressive units but brings with him something the Vargath desperately needed: good champions.
• Sand Goblins – Scraven: Krusk had some of the best commons in the game with some of the cheapest champions. He’s a pretty solid deck whose biggest weakness has been a mediocre to poor event suite and a really horrible common with few options to replace it. The Alliance deck had very little for the original Sand Goblin faction with Marek introducing a new type of event and having most her forces based around them that made exporting into Krusk’s formations pointless. Scraven builds upon some of the ideas that Marek introduced while also bringing to the table an ability that outshines Krusk’s situational Sandstorm.
• The Filth – Little Meda: The Filth are a fun but weird faction that rely on a special type of common known as mutations. The Demagogue has been a consistently strong opponent with a weakness to early game rushing but an absolutely dominating late game with his not quite champions but far stronger than commons deck composition. Prior second summoners for very strong performing decks have always seemed to err on the side of caution towards making their original release even stronger. Does Little Meda simply make Demagogue impossible to handle? The Warden skirted that issue by utilizing a Prison mechanic but Little Meda is pure filth chicanery.
• The Benders – Shiva: Like the Filth, Tacullu has also been a rather dominant force on the Summoner Wars board. He even benefited strongly from Endrich’s Alliance, giving the passive Bender summoner some defensive pressure to force his enemies to his side of the board – exactly where he wants them. Are the Benders simply destined to win the wars or does Shiva take the faction in a different direction that is both effective and fair?
• Deep Dwarves – Brath: And the last of the big summoners, Tundle of the Deep Dwarves has done very well for himself with a strong common unit, a powerful ability, great events and some of the best champions in the game. All his units require additional magic to use but Tundle can generate magic like no other – assuming he gets enough space to create this advantage. Magic generation seems a core concept of the Deep Dwarves but a powerful one too. Brath certainly tries to take it in a different direction but will it be as good?
• The Mercenaries – Farrah Oathbreaker: You don’t see much talk about the Mercenaries. I absolutely love Rallul but he is a peculiar nut. He’s sort of passive, sort of aggressive with an equally strong economic game and strong units to support his style. I think his strong ability and events were overshadowed by the fact that everyone could poach his very good, if oddly internally incoherent collection of commons. So, in a sense, Rallul was the quintessential mercenary in that his forces quickly abandoned him for higher bidders. Farrah turns this on its head and instead restricts her commons from other summoners but gets to take whatever she wants from her enemies’ ranks. The possibilities are truly endless with the Oathbreaker.

After showing our highly trained team of analyst monkeys and promising them an endless supply of bananas, we at somewherepostculture.com have determined the “Very Most Reliable Ranking of Last Second Summoners.” It’s taken us months, mostly as we figure out to chain monkeys to desks, to produce this ranking. Our data is both mountainous and incomprehensible so I’ll spare you most of the details. I have sifted through their mad ramblings to produce a short blurb on why they are where they are and what to possibly expect when these decks hit the commercial shelves. So here we go!

8. Get off my lawn! (Swamp Orcs – Natazga)

Yeah, we’re doing it in reverse order this time.

I feel that Natazga suffers from a rather disjointed direction. Her ability is the least reliable of the three vine wall conjurers. She needs to score at least two wounds against a Wall without destroying it to make a vine wall. This, inherently, is a less efficient manner of generating a swamp. Both Mugglug and Glurblub can kill enemy units and earn magic on top of getting their wall out. They gain far more board presence through creating their wall while also (potentially) eliminating an enemy unit. Glurblub can be stifled slightly by the opponent not playing any commons for him to kill – though the opponent will invariably have targets at the start of the game for him to murder. Mugglug can always resort to killing his own units.

Natazga, however, needs to ignore the enemy’s forces to get her walls out. Granted, she gets advantageous walls immediately – they’re both on the enemy’s side and cutting off a summoning point – but she misses out on that magic and board positioning. It also reduces the number of attacks she can use against her opponent’s units. Consequently, misses  seem like they’re even worse for her than normal especially since it’s unlikely you could position multiple attackers on walls and not put your own forces at a monumental risk. To compensate, Natazga been given a number of units that can produce vine walls on their own but at a cost. Skrub poops vine walls intead of attacking. Zur Lak bleeds vine walls while he’s dying. Zealot’s both eat an attack and die to make their wall. That’s three different units devoted to something that Natazga’s brothers did on their own. Her events for producing vine walls – Erosion and Quagmire – are likewise less efficient than Mugglug and Glurblub’s events. Quagmire requires you to pay two magic to produce one vine wall and only if you’ve already got one that’s about to be destroyed. Erosion only works against generic walls and gets better the more you devout your units to attacking the walls and nothing else. So both Erosion and Natazga’s Overgrowth have anti-synergy with Skrub and Zealots.

Sklursh and Zur Lak returned to Swamp Orc champion form of being incredibly expensive. The Skull Taker/Battle Champion combo to get them out “cheaper” isn’t actually any cheaper. It produces the champion at cost assuming you have all the pieces of the combo and your Skull Taker survives a round of being worth extra magic when killed. And while the Skull Taker is nice for being a strong, deadly unit that’s cheap his drawback of preventing you from generating magic off his kills is a rather significant drawback.

All that said, Fury of the Fen is an amazing event if you manage to get your vine walls to the board. Unfortunately, Natazga is a common focused deck so the Fury is most efficient when you have no other units on the board. Otherwise, you’re angling it for a surprise two or so attack on an entrenched opponent.

And while Swamp Archers are the unit that Mugglug has always wanted, I have to wonder how effective they will be in Natazga’s more sparse swamp.

There just seems to be a lot of anti-synergy amongst Natazga’s cards and a deck that is more focused on trying to shore up her lackluster Overgrowth that it stagnated her potential overall.

7. Children are disease factories. (The Filth – Little Meda)

Here’s a controversial opinion, I think Little Meda is nicht zehr gut. I do think there’s a lot of interesting design going on with her. I simply feel the execution results in something a little too chancy and inconsistent. Specifically, I recognize the problem of designing a second summoner that doesn’t simply make Demagogue a demigod. Demagogue can use Mutagist to recycle mutations endlessly, creating an infinite economy so long as he possesses things to spend his money on. It’s a late game engine where he can put out mutant after mutant until he overruns his enemy with super commons. But it comes with a negative and that’s the Demagogue’s weakness to early game pressure while he tries to get his little money printing machine working.

Little Meda appears to twist this Filth tempo on its head. With three ranged attack and a champion on the board at the start, she (probably) has the strongest first turn setup in the game. My guess is that Little Meda is a powerhouse in the early to middle game with painful events (3 wounds from Daddy Doesn’t Like You!) and a large health pool to soak the initial retaliation the opponent can cobble together. Her ability drains her economy, however, but lets you react to an opponent’s counter play immediately instead of requiring the prediction from the Demagogue. Her magic generation options are, however, limited. She has a single “magic drain” and a mutation that feeds her ability and early game pressure.

Unfortunately for Little Meda, her commons are worse than the Demagogue’s. This isn’t usually an issue since Filth commons exist solely as mutation platforms but with Little Meda’s focus on that early game, having 0 cost units that could support her aggression would have been wonderful. The Herald is way less consistent than the Zealot though if you’re lucky he is better. But good luck getting doubles. Deathseeker is poor since she’s ranged but her ability is meant to be used for blocking. Even worse, she only stops movement so she can’t even block a ranged unit from getting into position. Then she dies without even eating an opponent’s attack.

Then there are the mutations. Nearly half of them are… well… not that great. Gas-Filled Mutant is cute but a worse Barbed Mutant and really expensive for a girl that doesn’t have the spare money that her kin possess. Leech Mutant is a high priority target with little health and a melee attack which makes him easy to hunt down. Blade Mutant is a more niche Claw Mutant. Drool Mutant is niche and expensive with an ability essentially under the opponent’s control. It at least has four attack.

That leaves Springy, Tusk, Amoeba and Bloodspray Mutant. Little Meda has poor options for tutoring these cards from her deck, however, and is reliant on the luck of her draw. As her opponent, I’d see any moment she plays Daddy Loves Me for card draw as an opportunity to try and murder Nanny since Little Meda is going to be hesitant about putting those wounds on herself. It also means that when these guys go down, Little Meda has few options left to close out a game. Though Amoeba does give her some magic generation like the Demagogue, I see this more as a way to off-set the cost of her Gifts from Daddy ability than a true economic engine. It is great that he can keep coming back to the table again and again (assuming you have Deathseekers and Heralds to mutate) so long as your opponent spends their magic.

I feel like Little Meda is under her own pressure to close out a game within five turns or so. After that, her effectiveness looks like it drops off rapidly as she accumulates wounds on Nanny and your enemy can pull out answers that can deal with her mutants. But it does look like she can make those first five turns pretty terrifying.

6. They dug too deep! (Deep Dwarves – Brath)

Yeah, there’s a trend appearing. The second summoners to strong first summoners look like they’re less powerful. Brath, like Little Meda, has an ability that is much weaker than her colleague’s. Deep Magic pulls a card from your Draw or Hand at any point in your turn, turning it into magic now instead at the end of that turn or the next. To me, this suggests that Brath is – once again – a deck that wants to leverage her immediate advantage before she burns out by the end game. Unlike Little Meda, however, I don’t feel like her early game is all that great.

But let’s rewind a little and talk about Tundle. The Deep Dwarves are known for two things: being defensive like hell and crazy combo turns. With units that all require magic to activate, Tundle needs to build up a bank of money to summon his units and pay for their abilities or drop a Wake the Father Gem. He then wins with powered Gem Mages striking at targets beside Scholars while Kynder and Lun wreck havoc on the opponent’s formations. Tundle’s biggest fear is getting overrun before he has all his units on the board and in position but he can rely on Magic Stasis, Summoning Surge and Illusionary Warrior to alleviate some of that pressure.

Brath is similar in that she has some crazy combination potential. Her ability to survive until those perfect moments, however, look like they’re less powerful. Her pieces revolve around Gem Golems and Gem Archers. Both of these are pretty uninspired units on their own. The archer is a basic one attack with one health. The golem has no attack unless Brath risks burning an important card from the top of her deck to empower them. Consequently, Brath’s power is the opposite of Tundle’s. Tundle wants to meditate as much as possible until he’s under pressure and has to perform. Brath doesn’t want to touch Deep Magic until she has her important cards on the field and in her hand. So it isn’t even an early game power but one that’s mostly for improving her golems.

That said, if you manage to pull off Brath’s combination, it is far scarier than Tundle’s. Gem Archers in position and strengthened through Call of the Mother Gem are hitting for two ranged attack and allowing the Gem Golems to shift one space and make a free 2 melee attack. With just two archers and a golem in a good position, you can get 8 dice with two attacks. With three gem archers, that can turn into 12. With a single Gem Mage, that can be 12. If you somehow work a Scholar in there somewhere, you can roll 17 dice! Throw in a Magic Strike to place wounds on anything within two spaces of your golems to soften them first. If you have a Will of the Mother Gem you can have your golems attacking diagonally too! Use Back to the Deep to recycle those Call of the Mother Gems to repeat the process multiple times. You can blow up walls, vapourize champions and blast summoners hiding in positions they originally thought unassailable.

Sadly, without the preparation, Brath is a lot less threatening. Gem Golems are rather pricey for their base statistics and until you have your pieces, you’re risking a lot to get them to attack with a pathetic one attack. Drek can stall but he isn’t hitting hard either. Aurora can substitute for a Call of the Mother Gem but she’s rather an expensive back up compared to an event plus eats into your attacks. Noa’s there to try and fix the Gem Golem cost. Finally, Geomancers are a poor man’s Gem Mage since they’re trading the potential for a third attack in order to assure a second wound on their target. Good against Baldur though.

And the more you have to use your units prior to getting your combo, the more you risk burning yourself out with that complete lack of economy engine. If the stars align, Brath looks frightening. But consistent pressure should see her draw reliant strategy fold more often than not. Perhaps the best she wants to see is a passive summoner that’ll dither and let her build up to her crazy potential.

5. United we stand. Divided we fall. (Mercenaries – Farah Oathbreaker)

I… don’t know what to think about the Oathbreaker. Mostly because she’s so weird. So, she’s built all around the whole faction symbol that’s been on cards but has done nothing for years other than be pretty.

So, let’s get it out of the way. I think Farah has some severe weaknesses in her design. I think she also has some insane overpowered elements in there as well. She’s a combination of extremes. First, let’s talk about the good because everyone likes good.

Undercover Agent. Wowzers. That’s an event. Assuming you can meet its requirements, Farah gets an invulnerable unit that reveals her opponents hands. First, the revealing is pretty minor. It may seem strong and powerful and whatnot. People will talk about the advantages of a whiffed Mimic giving you insight into your opponent’s hand. However, unless you’re Rallul, hands change pretty quickly in Summoner Wars. Deck knowledge is better than hand knowledge as most opponents will burn through their hands the turn they draw them. Barring combo decks (like Brath) or insistent champion play, the reveal isn’t likely to spoil too much that you wouldn’t know. It’s good – I’m not saying otherwise – but it’s hardly a gamer changer.

But that invulnerable unit? Phew. That’s a blocker your opponent can’t remove. That’s a summoning spot you can just stuff for as long as you want. That’s an assassin that the enemy summoner can’t escape! Slap this on a three attack unit and just stalk Elien all around his house scaring the living daylights out of him. There is literally nothing that the enemy can do about this. That’s a game changer.

Now, unless you’re one of the original six factions, getting that Undercover Agent is going to require some work. You either need Mingle or Disguise which means that Farrah is a bit of a combo deck herself. No accelerated draw, however, so you’re going to have to dig for those events.

And now we get to the massive negative of Farrah: 3 commons. That’s huge. One of the largest problems with Selundar is that he only has 3 swordsmen in his deck. I make mention about consistency and draw luck and Farrah is at its mercy. You don’t put six of a common into your deck because you plan on summoning all of them. You put in six so you can build most when they wouldn’t be helpful and summon the ones when they will be. Farrah…. can’t. Not really. Every unit she builds as magic is decreasing her chances of getting use of that unit. On top of that, she starts with a whole mitt full on the board which means she only has 2 of those commons in her deck. Really need that Heavy Knight now? Too bad you built one and lost the first one. The final is probably the last card in your draw. Good luck!

One way Farrah combats this problem is by having a whole whack of commons worth summoning. So you may only have 3 Rune Smiths but at least the Heavy Knights aren’t that bad of a draw. Farrah’s commons are pretty great across the board. The only one that seems lacklustre for Farrah is the Augur who would mostly serve as an Undercover Agent against the Fallen Kingdom for her than using its ability. One magic to save one wound is meh for having to keep him beside Farrah. Otherwise, Heavy Knights, Rune Smiths and Invaders provide a decent stock of attack in the deck. Changelings are perhaps the best 0-cost common in the entire game though for Farrah the cost of transforming them is a bit of a hit. Lurkers are meh but at least they’re free. And the more junk Farrah throws to the ground, the more her Unity improves her attack value. And Rune Smiths can make a really awkward economy engine between returning disguises and recovering undercover agents but it’s not really great.

Sadly, there’s not a lot of attack in Farrah’s base deck. Fortunately, her champions are relatively cheap. I didn’t expect to see another Khan and his ability can be nice given Farrah’s numerous 0 cost troops. Lukestor provides a bit of ranged fire power too and Soar is a decent survival ability. Pity you have to pay extra for it. So while I think invulnerable units are likely to be really good, the generic attack spread of Farrah’s deck means she’s reliant on that trick in order to get her victory. Getting your agent looks like it’ll be a bit of gamble, however, especially against the Alliance or Master Set factions. And Inside Information can be pretty crazy if you’re lucky and snatch a strong event or champion from your enemy’s deck.

There’s a lot of cutesy tricks Farrah knows. But like Vlox, I don’t know how often those tricks will lead you to success.

Here we are at the end. Our king of the Master Set round of Summoners is none other than the green menace himself, Mugglug. Oddly enough, Muggles hasn’t actually won a single tournament. But he’s come close each time and that top four finishing is consistent enough for him to come out on top after weighting results.

And if there is one way to describe the Swamp Orcs is that they are consistent. They’re a good faction and I’ve seen numerous players able to pick them up and do well with them. They’re not crazy but they are fairly intuitive. And their base mechanic – getting walls on the enemy’s board – is strong. Mugglug in particular is the defensive approach to spreading the swamp through the poorly named vine walls. But that isn’t to say that he doesn’t have any teeth to his side while he’s poking around his garden.

For one, Mugglug has always been a common focused deck even back when the game revolved quite strongly around champions. This mostly grows from the issue that the Swamp Orcs have, for the longest time, really bad champions. Their reliance on their commons was bred more through necessity but it helped that they had really good commons.

And there really isn’t anyway to discuss the Swamp Orcs without talking about Vine Walls. Walls are really important in Summoner Wars as they give you unprecedented board control. The high life value of walls is key to keeping defensive summoners alive and thwarting early attacks with kill lanes and creating pockets of inaccessible territory to hide your precious summoner. Then, of course, is the need to have walls on the board in order to summon your forces. Staggering walls is an important tactic to leave as many summoning spots open as possible to prevent the disruption of timely wall crowding. And anyone that has lost their starting wall and had the misfortune of their deck placing the last two on the bottom know just how important preserving summoning spots are.

So, being able to spam walls is an incredibly powerful ability and no other faction really does it quite like the Swamp Orcs. Of course, their walls are a meagre two health compared to the nine of a standard wall. This would be a weakness – and is in a select number of matchups – but isn’t quite the problem you would normally expect. Due to the restriction on the number of attacks a faction can perform a turn, a round where your enemy is attacking your wall is a round they have less attacks to throw at your forces. A lot of the game, it’s simply ineffectual to deal with the spreading swamp and the opponent is simply left being overrun. Only in the late game, when the threat of summons are reduced due to diminishing magic piles or empty draw piles, can an enemy really handle these little thorns in their side.

As such, it’s quite common for Mugglug to slowly plod through his deck, not building or playing more than he needs to keep the swamp spreading and the harassment on his enemy flying. The enemy has to respond since Vine Walls are just as effective as units as choking summon points – more effective really since they give the Swamp Orcs new avenues to summon and attack. Oh, and they block line of sight and potentially wound and stop enemy units that try to crawl over them.

Unfortunately, the major stumbling block for Mugglug is that there are simply a handful of decks that really make his match-up very difficult. The Guild Dwarves are masters as wrecking walls and destroying the hard earned swamp with one or two event cards. Rallul, the other master of wall destruction, can rip down vines while fuelling his draw power or churning out even greater economic advantages. And without vines, the rest of the Swamp Orc forces are simply not the terrors to handle as they normally are.

Mugglug (3M-7W-Rampant Growth)

Mugglug sports the standard orc high health and attack value. You’d think from his statistics he’d be a good bruiser summoner but he actually sees very little combat. His high attack value is simply good for crushing little attempts to assassinate him and not much else. The extra health means that there’s still a bit of bite if you manage to grind the Swamp Orcs to the late game as he fulfils the champion slot of his forces once there’s no threat of an instantaneous counter assault. When it comes down to summoner versus summoner, that extra little durability will give him the push through a ranged summoner’s first salvo to get up and crush his face.

Granted, that’s never the real end goal and Mugglug’s route to victory is pretty clear. Rampant Growth necessitates that his swamps are constantly fertilized and you will be providing them plenty of blood to really hydrate that soil. He is capable of sprouting roots from any body – whether it be friend or foe. During the early game, it’s going to be mostly your own forces giving their life to grow forward. While the classic example is a full regiment of imported Apprentice Mages so Mugglug can develop his economy while sowing his weeds, Shamans work well in a pinch from the base deck. The goal isn’t to make all your units grass seed. You’re just getting close enough that your opponent will have to respond to your actions and once they start stepping beside your vines, you’ve got the growth you need.

As such, Mugglug has three Vine Growth to give a free wall to push forward. Vine Guard and Ambush both grant an ability from one of your commons to the rest of your forces and are really great for it. Ambush is the least useful of the pair since you can’t stack the abilities on your Hunters and they form the backbone of your army. However, it’s fantastic for giving your Savager a surprise boost and – more importantly – the ability to extract himself from the swamp should he get overwhelmed himself.

Finally, there’s Ensnare. It’s a bit of a non-combo since it places enemies on your walls which means they can’t get you more vines but it does rip blockers away from your opponent’s summoner as well as put vulnerable archers right in the middle of your swamp where they will be surrounded and eliminated.

It might not be the sexiest collection of events but they’re all pretty solid. And, for the most part, if you aren’t playing them when you draw them they’re not so vital that pitching them immediately for magic is an issue.

Hunter (1R-2W-2M-Vinemancer Ambush)

These guys are good. For Mugglug, they’re essentially a 2 range, 2 health unit for 2 magic since you’ll almost never attack with them without dancing on or off a vine wall. For those stats, they’re pretty economic. That they’re ranged as well is just icing on the cake. The best part is, since they need to be on your swamp to get their ability, they’re really hard to surround. A lot of the time, they’ll only have one unit to return fire and that two life can get them to last an extra round or two. It’ll allow most of your exchanges to be in your favour and if you’re winning exchanges, then you’re winning the economy game.

Savager (3M-3W-4M-Fear)

The Savager is a rather fearsome unit, coming in with stats that are comparable to cheap champions. Three attack is a pretty big threat for champions and summoners alike and their Fear ability makes it a tricky proposition for melee units to retaliate. Fear is more likely than not to fail, so if you’re facing these brutal shock troopers, it’s often in your best interest to go for the attack anyway. Especially if the alternative is letting the Savager rampage through your forces. Course, ranged units are able to attack without the worry of running away in fear but Savagers also eat ranged units if they managed to catch up to them.

A point of interest is that the Savager doesn’t natively have any way to traverse the vine walls so is at mercy of getting stuck in them and picked off by ranged units as the enemy is. Course, you can rescue them with Ambush or, typically, just summon them on the edge of the swamp and run these guys into your enemy’s ranks. Savagers definitely make up for the lack of champion play on the Swamp Orc side so their prohibitive cost isn’t nearly as problematic in other decks that want to play their champions.

Shaman (1R-1W-1M-Vinemancer Guard)

I feel like Shamans are a little underrated. Partly because they’re competing with Hunters and Savagers for your precious magic and, in comparison, the greater damage output from the other two are hard to pass up. Shamans mostly live to die and grow your swamp further, however they’re a pretty resilient unit in their own right. Requiring a 5 or 6 to hit is no insignificant amount and these guys can hold a flank like no other common. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of situations where you need to stuff a flank especially since you’ve got Vine Walls to accomplish the same and Vine Walls don’t give magic when they’re destroyed.

As a third common, they’re not the worst and you can get the odd one to hold up a champion longer than he’s worth. Mostly, though, these guys will be going to your magic pile for fuel or summoned for a vine wall instead. Ultimately, that 1 attack just holds them back too much like most single attack range units.

Blerg (2M-6W-7M-Adaptive)

And here we have a prime example of why you don’t play Swamp Orc champions. Blerg is overpriced for his stats, offering you the same threat as a Hunter but at melee and for more than three times the cost. Adaptive is certainly not worth the extra two magic that Blerg is priced beyond expectation, especially since it takes additional magic to use. If you’re looking at giving him 3 attack, you’ve now sunk 8 magic into the guy – and made him more valuable to kill to boot.

That said, his heal does trigger without spending the magic but at two attack, you’re likely looking to have other units set up the kill or he’s killing commons. Issue is, the Swamp Orc commons are already good at killing commons.

Blerg is nearly the cost of two Savagers and chances are those two Savagers would probably get you further than this Swamp Orc that trips over vines.

Glarg (2M-6W-5M-Vinemancer Reach)

Glarg is the exception to the rule. He is fantastic. For one more magic you can have twice the health of a Savager. He’s a super hunter and you should play him as such. Glarg is certainly the champion I try to get out every game and is the other reason that Mugglug at 5 magic is so scary. At a moment’s notice, a Glarg or Savager could emerge from those vine walls and start wreaking havoc.

Glarg is less exciting without Vine Wall support, however. He certainly isn’t as good in the Swamp Orc bad match-ups or reaching around walls you haven’t fully enveloped. He is the first in a line of Swamp Orc champions that work really well in the vines and so long as you’ve grown a good swamp, he’ll help you secure a victory. Also, he does stack with Ambush for scary 4 range attack turns assuming you’re standing on a Vine Wall.

Splub (3M-6W-7M-Vinemancer Sow)

Splub is, yet again, a little too expensive for what he does. Seven magic is a large investment and all Splub brings to the table is more Vine Walls. Mugglug, however, isn’t really in need of help in that department. His events and ability give Vine Walls readily enough and having an ability strictly for growing the swamp means that in champion versus champion engagements, Splub will likely lose out to those that are geared more towards the killing.

He does have three attack, however, which is a good base. And if you were ever in a situation where you need to generate Vine Walls, Splub is definitely adept at it. He just fills a niche that Mugglug doesn’t need to fill. I’m not even certain I’d deck build him because it seems more cost effective to work around the Swamp Orc summoners’ abilities for generating walls than spending lots of magic on it.

For the most part, the Swamp Orcs are pretty straightforward. I think this really lends to their popularity and their success. There aren’t unintuitive tricks you need to master with this deck. You aren’t handicapping yourself by focusing on commons and cheap champions while throwing out your events and marching your forces towards your enemy. That you get such strong units for your magic makes each summon a threat as well.

Mugglug is simply a good, well-rounded summoner. His weak base champions are easily ignored. The only blemish are those handful of decks that just ruin his swamps with hardly any effort. But if he isn’t facing his arch nemeses then chances are he’ll be playing with defenders advantage even if he’s halfway across the board.

And it’s really easy for enemies to get bogged down and drown in Mugglug’s murky waters.

The Shadow Elves are a bit of an enigma. They consistently do well in tournaments, grabbing a double fourth place finish in both. Outside of tournaments, they consistently lose matches. It’s like lady luck has a soft spot for the albinos and keeps providing them the benefit of her touch whenever the matches count. They’re a faction which we constantly underrate and under appreciate. And they’re the type of faction that can capitalize on an opponent’s lapsed judgement.

Of all the Master Set releases, the Shadow Elves are the only real faction that encapsulates the assassination style of play. They have, in general, high attack but low staying power. However, they have several tricks and movement options up their sleeves that can worm their units past defences to strike unprepared summoners. An enemy can’t really know where or how the Shadows Elves will strike next and it’s easy to forget just how far their reach can extend.

Unfortunately, they’re not the most adept as assassins. Along with playing aggressively, the assassination style has always been the hardest to perform. On one hand, it’s the most effective way to win the game. Wherein playing defensive you’re trying to create an economic advantage to turn into battlefield superiority and playing aggressive involves applying more pressure than an opponent can withstand, assassination goes right for the jugular.

Granted, because “assassinating” is kind of an easy concept to understand, your typical player is wary of leaving their summoner in easy reach. For most factions, a player is going to skulk their summoner on their back and furthest row from their enemy. That means an assassination ploy is going to involve getting a unit across the board in order to be in position. Walls and defenders will litter the way so you’ll need better movement to get around them. But unless your opponent is susceptible to assassination, like having a low starting health, then the match-up can be very difficult. You’ll have to work multiple units onto the summoner, or somehow get them to stick for a few turns. As such, it’s easy for a failed assassination plan to hand your opponent the match if you’ve got too weak an economy to defend against the inevitable counter attack.

So why would you want to play this dicey style? Well, outside of making a match very tense, the threat of assassination never really disappears. Depending on how the opponent can deliver their damage, defending against several attempts can lull your enemy into a false sense of security. If their army moves forward to crush you, your opponent may find himself quickly missing the defenders he had before to protect himself. And, since assassins generally use high attack values, their summoned defenders are still a threat to those would be avengers.

More likely, however, a player will switch styles throughout a match. You may be playing defensive, building up a decent economic pool while looking for an opening to strike your opponent. When that happens, you might throw a few assassins out before committing to a full aggressive push. Being flexible and keeping your opponent guessing is the best way to keep the threat of assassination open.

So what does this mean for the Shadow Elves? Well, they have to be adaptive in order to address their opponent’s style. If your enemy is going defensive, you can try to move a few key units forward to pull out extra defenders. If they keep hiding, you can probably pick of stragglers or draw forward walls until you get a good opening or they turn to an aggressive counter. Then you can pull back, lure them into your territory and slaughter their units. It’s much like a fencing match, with all the strikes and ripostes. A few hits on their summoner should dissuade a complete commitment to passive play and frustrate their plans.

This also means that my sister can be effective with the Shadow Elves since rushing your enemy, while not as strong as with an aggressive faction, can still have some teeth to it. I’m still not convinced that the Shadow Elves base deck is as strong as it appears – their only large victory of note in the Big Tournament was against the Swamp Orcs – but hey, if you can’t be skilled, you might as well be lucky.

Selundar (2R-7W-Out of Shadows)

Selundar is interesting in that he has a bit more health than normal for a ranged summoner. This is partly because if you’re going to get use from out of shadows you’ll probably be in place to be counter attacked. But a 2 range that can shift to a 4 melee is impressive for a summoner. He has some real potential to turn eager champions into mince meat should they blindly come after him. He’s a very dangerous assistant to your assaults. But he’s also more apt to play in the mid board position, looking for moments when he can use that four dice in effective but safe manners.

Learning when to advance and when to retreat is important for Selundar because the last thing you want is to be surrounded and “assassinated” yourself. Keeping tabs on the enemy’s magic pool is vital in order to predict what they’ll summon. If you get some units deep into enemy territory, they will naturally draw your opponent’s attention. But it won’t last long. All the Shadow Elf commons are pretty brittle so they won’t stand up to any abuse.

Selundar does have some tools to help him, however. His event Shadows is so representative of his style that it spawned an entire unit in the Alliances box. The event lets you claim a loss of one of your troops as magic for yourself. Get these early and a quick rush on your opponent can really leave their economy crippled as the money from your deaths are denied. If they had to summon a defender themself, this could leave your enemy with an additional turn or two without magic (outside of what he builds). It even lets you refund the cost of your own troops, to an extent.

And if your enemy gets emboldened by your early loses, you have Into Darkness to punish a fool hardy counter assault if they drop a hasty common retaliation. Unfortunately, Into Darkness discards the units instead of giving you the magic but if your two targets are both 2 magic, then you’ve done a significant tempo hit. Yeah, it’s a catch up event but I find it’s too situational to try and set up the conditions for it yourself. Its requirements are more apt to appear through natural gameplay and, given that the ability is almost half as effective as the other big catch up events, it isn’t as problematic for the game in general.

Stalking Advance is the Shadow Elf aggression event. It gives you as many single space moves as you have units on the board so it also doubles as a surprise event to extend the reach of your assassins. It’s a very good if incredibly unexciting event. I can understand why a new player may not be blown away by it on first blush. But after repeated games, Stalking Advance is certainly the event that can ruin your opponent.

Finally, there’s Summon the Night. Between this and stalking advance, you can create a very terrifying turn for your opponent. This event can really cinch a match. If you manage to have a strong board position and throw this out, it’s possible to get essentially “an extra turn” as your opponent stumbles in the one space restriction unable to strike anything. And it neuters ranged factions, forcing them to stumble into melee range where they are more vulnerable. This can really extend the life on your champions in particular as they and Selundar are the most susceptible to a fresh trio of summoned defenders surrounding and overwhelming them. That’s near impossible in the night. It’s also great on the defence, letting you quickly retreat Selundar from assassins or a strong attacking force while out-manoeuvring them with your defenders. It’s an all around fantastic event.

It’s a good but tricky suite and takes some practice to use well and to defend against.

Ranger (1R-1W-1M-Shadow Arrows)

Eh, rangers. I’m pretty unimpressed with them. They’re your only ranged common but they’re not particularly grand. One ranged attack is as disappointing as you get since they aren’t much of a threat against their similarly priced melee units which generally come with two health.

As such, they’re more effective when you’re on defence. Especially since Selundar’s board set up is so awkward. I mostly build them for magic more than anything else but something has to fill that role. As for their shadow arrows, they rarely ever work. First, they have to get a kill which is a tall task for one attack. They also have to be killing something that is within three clear spaces of another juicy target. And it eats up the magic that you get for the kill. Unless I can score a cheap shot on the enemy summoner or take out a more expensive archer of theirs, I usually ignore it. It is your “extra attack” for an aggressive faction however.

Scout (1M-1W-0M-Scout)

Scout’s scout scouts scouts. I can see some of the flavouring took a real long time.

I like the scouts if only because they’re free bodies. They provide the Shadow Elves a chance to always have just one more unit despite the state of their magic pile. Their ability is really good but don’t expect it to ever really trigger. The problem with it is it’s attached to a single health unit and that scout is going to chew up one of your movements in order to crawl onto your opponent’s board. Your opponent will likely then move a lone defender to go and claim the weak girl as magic.

I mean, you could protect it with a hardier target but that would mean you’re protecting a 0 magic unit with a champion or your summoner. And those are things you don’t want to be attacked either.

They’re basically a second magic fodder though it doesn’t hurt to keep a few back to assist with protecting Selundar or to attack anything that comes near your walls. With any luck they can kill things that cost more than them and you can just shoot the girls in the back with a ranger or two to deny their magic.

Swordsman (2M-1W-1M-Swiftness)

Swordsmen are hands down the best common in the Shadow Elves. I’d argue they’re one of the best commons in the game. At least they were before Alliances came out and significantly enlarged the common pool with much better units. I, personally, prefer 2 attack instead of 2 health on my melee commons if only because two health doesn’t provide that much more in terms of survivability in a game with plenty of two and three attack options in most factions. And 2 attack is twice as threatening to champions and summoners. Three of these guys springing from your walls and surrounding a newly minted champion can really ruin your enemy’s day.

But that brings them to their largest weakness. You only have three of them in your deck.

For some inexplicable reason, the Shadow Elves start with half their best units on the board. Not only does this effectively force Selundar to roll for first turn but it also means that the Shadow Elf player can’t get much use out of them. Likely, you’ll be attacking at least one because there is little chance all three of them will survive a turn and so, one turn into the game and already your best forces have been reduced significantly.

It’s one thing I haven’t mentioned but another large problem with some of the earlier summoners is that their starting line-ups really cut them off at the knees. Selundar is perhaps the worst offender of the bunch. You need to have these units in your deck so you have the chance to draw them throughout the game to gain the advantage and surprise of being summoned from your walls. Unfortunately, this is denied to the Shadow Elves unless they purchase a second box and deck build in extra swordsmen. I would have really preferred if only two or (preferably) one started on the field and there were seven or even eight of these guys in the deck. The Shadow Elves can stand to lose extra rangers and scouts.

Having so many fragile units on the board at the beginning really kills the Shadow Elves ability to field an efficient common focused force. And going first with so many melee units also hurts because you are reduced to only moving two. It’s so unnecessary to make the Shadow Elves first turn so difficult. They must stumble before through those first few rounds before they can gain the proper momentum and board state to run the clean and surgical strikes they want.

Hydrake (3M-8W-8M-Assault)

Granted, the poor setup of their commons just pushes the Shadow Elves towards a champion focused game. And they have some pretty decent champions.

Hydrake is the most terrifying on appearance. This fearsome lizard single handedly won the match-up against the swamp orcs. Three melee is good. Able to strike everything around it really discourages the natural tendency for opponents to crowd a champion when it comes stomping into their home. And since high strength range units are rare, this typically translates into an extra round or two of the Hydrake running around than any other champion.

Sometimes, the strongest defence is a ridiculous offence.

That said, eight magic is a tall order to achieve and if you draw him early he’s probably not worth holding onto since you’ve got all your events that you’re trying to time properly. There is a certain satisfaction when the enemy takes casualty after casualty until they finally bring the dreaded Hydrake down and as they reach to claim their prize you drop a Shadows to the board.

Delicious.

Malidala (2R-3W-5M-Shadow Dancer)

Malidala is just plain bad. Just like the Sand Goblin scavenger, she’s a card that is rendered useless because of the grievous absence of a necessary “may.” Maybe if she had the elusive 3 range stat I could recommend her. However, she just isn’t worth the investment when you can get the Hydrake for three more magic. Three wounds is absolutely pitiful but that her ability is so easy to negate is hilarious.

All the opponent has to do is attack Malidala with a one attack common and shadow dance is completely voided. Sure, it forces an additional attack on her but if she’s in a fisticuffs with another champion she’s just going to outright lose. You can squeeze a bit more usefulness with summon the night to save her skin and this isn’t bad if you have other units benefit from the reduced attack range. Course, in that situation, any ranged champion would have been good too. I’d take just about any other option over the weird double skirted cheerleader. But I don’t have anything so straight to the magic pile for you, girl (unless you happen to be my last champion in the deck)!

Xaserbane (3M-4W-4M-Sneak)

Xaserbane, however, is the real deal. When you’re first learning to play as and against the Shadow Elves, this guy is going to get so many good stabs. With stalking advance, he’s a total of five movement. Off a forward wall, you’ve got a good chance of striking the enemy summoner and forcing her to deal with bob cut albino. But he’s the definition of an assassin, easily folding in one round. But he’s cheap as dirt so it’s not too great a loss.

As always, summon the night can extend his life expectancy but even then, chances are you’ll only get one more turn since he’ll be receiving a minimum of two dice attacks. But the threat of Xaserbane can really affect your opponent’s behaviour. Expect your opponent to keep hawkish attention on your magic pool to know when she is or isn’t safe of a sudden stalking advance from this guy. And if he manages to get on an opponent and she fails to kill him on her turn, you’re practically golden for the rest of the match.

On the other hand, there’s nothing more disheartening than getting the perfect sneak with this guy and watching all three dice come up as misses.

So, yeah, I’m still surprised by the Shadow Elves performance. Even after doing an long write-up I still can’t really see how great they are. They have a few tricks that are decent, a few cards that are decent but nothing that is outright scary. And perhaps it is this acknowledgement that they aren’t some sort of “over powered” or “broken” faction that makes us far more exacting in how we play them. Knowing that we have to squeeze every last ounce of strength we can from each card perhaps makes our strategy all the better than when my sister or I have a faction we feel will win without a challenge.

Like I said, it’s almost this idea that the Shadow Elves unimpressive deck lulls you into carelessness. All you have to really do is kill their swordsmen and keep an eye out for that sneaking Xaserbane and you’ll be fine, right? And then, you remember summon the night only as the Hydrake is chowing down on the opponent and Selundar is sliding forward with a stalking advance and striking out of the shadows in a desperate play that pulls you into the grave.