Alright, there’s no way I can make a play on the Benders’ name without it coming across as slightly sexual. Let’s all just be mature adults and politely ignore the humorous oversight of Plaid Hat Game’s naming for this faction.

Snicker.

Ah, the Benders. Is there a faction more hated than this? Oh, and what a coincidence that most of the people in it are women too, huh. I’m not saying that if you hate the Benders you’re a misogynist. I’m just heavily implying it. Do you hate women? No? Then clearly, you don’t hate the Benders.

I for one love our new female overlords. Who are led by a male. Because of course we can’t have a dominant female faction without a man in the primary role. They are also the masters of mind games. This is just the way things have to be in order to appeal to our target demographic. Which, we’ve already established, aren’t misogynists.

Social justice! Down with men! Let’s burn some bras!

Alright, so who are the Benders (heh). Well, for one, they’re the champions of the Master Tournament. So they’re not someone that you can take lightly. On the other hand, they only got thirteenth in the Everyone Party Tournament, taking a low place alongside the Demagogue. So the Benders aren’t invincible either.

They are a passive faction, however, so my sister is not doing well with them. Prior I mentioned in the Deep Dwarves write-up that a passive opponent could really make the game long and tedious. Say hello to that passive opponent. The Benders are perhaps what everyone thinks when they imagine the defensive factions of Summoner Wars. I, generally speaking, consider a faction defensive if they gain some advantage by keeping to their side of the board and not rushing their opponent. There are a number of factions that occupy a rather weird position where they don’t have a good aggressive strategy, a feasible assassination strategy or an effective defensive strategy. We call those factions the Cloaks and they’re losers.

Alright, maybe not quite, but the factions with a sort of aimless design do have a tendency to default to a defensive play. But that’s not the same as being a defensive faction. The Benders are strongly encouraged to hunker down behind their walls and wait for their enemy to come at them. Unlike the Filth and the Deep Dwarves, however, they don’t have a lot of pressure that forces their opponent to rush headlong over the middle line. They have no economy game outside what the core mechanics provide. And, quite frankly, the opponent is heavily discouraged from playing ball.

This is what leads to the Benders low popularity polling. And, honestly, it’s a fault of the design. Basically, a match against the Benders is going to involve the Bender player sitting at the table, pulling everything to the back of his board and shouting, “Come at me, bro!” If the enemy complies, he’s a happy toad on a log. If, however, his enemy pulls his units to the back of the board and returns with a, “No! You come at ME, bro!” then we have a problem. The game can turn quickly into a staring match which each player waiting for the other to blink first.

For many match-ups, this isn’t an issue. Aggressive factions will take the bait and rush forward because that’s what they do. Better defensive factions will hold back and apply that passive pressure, forcing the Benders to react. But for those factions that fall in the middle? Well, the game grinds to a boring halt.

I know the designers wanted to make a faction that would cause friends to hate each other but not like this Plaid Hat. Not like this.

I think they realized their mistake. That’s why the Deep Benders have the Owl Gryphon. It’s not actually a champion for Endrich. Endrich has an economy engine (as awkward as it is) that can apply pressure on its own. He also has an aggressive game if he wishes to attack from a different angle. But Tacullu doesn’t. If Tacullu isn’t playing defensive, he really doesn’t have any (clear) route to victory. So he’s meant to take the Owl Gryphon and be the Deep Dwarves 2.0 because the designers couldn’t think of any better passive pressure to solve the issue.

Long story short, if you own both the Master Set and Alliances, take the Owl Gryphon out and shove it in with Tacullu. Give the alopecian man anything in return. He’ll just build it for magic anyway. This will make your games much better. Tacullu has a Hero is Born anyway.

But, since we don’t review based on deck building, keep in mind that the criticisms against the Benders are valid. Whatever their design, it’s fundamentally flawed to stall games in a non-insignificant number of match-ups. And asking one player to sacrifice their own best interest (whether that be the Benders going against their defensive direction or the opponent to willingly attack a faction at their strongest) to fix a design issue is not a proper workaround.

Tacullu (2R-5W-Counter Summon)

Personally, I think Tacullu has 1 health too many. And no, I’m not saying this because I just want to see the Benders lose. I think the 4 health line for summoners is interesting. It makes the player be overly protective of their summoner. This fits in with a defensive faction. It also makes them more vulnerable to assassination tactics since those factions excel at getting only one high strength strike through. I like the generic rock-paper-scissors power dynamic of defensive beats aggressive, aggressive beats assassination and assassination beats defensive. As a general design paradigm, I think that’s a pretty easy and intuitive set-up.

Oh well, Tacullu has five health and we’ll just have to deal with it. Much like a lot of the Benders other design.

With a low attack, he won’t be pulled out to do much of anything in a fight. Don’t neglect Counter Summon, however. This would, in theory, be the fear that a Bender player building up a larger economy pile would put into their opponent. Its restrictions are nice in that it could open the Bender player up to an assassination counter play. And it’s strong enough to really take the wind out of an aggressive focused force’s sails when their impervious champion or common is whisked away without having to chew through defences or health pools.

Unfortunately, this isn’t how Counter Summon ends up playing. It basically turns the stalling game into an exercise in frustration as the enemy builds for a large champion to charge at Tacullu and the Bender player builds a large pool to kick it to the curb, leaving both players back at square one.

It’s still a strong ability if only because it turns one of the best advantages of cheap champions back on themselves. In that way, it’s kind of a cool piece of design.

But let’s take a look at those events.

First, Magic Drain. We all know the deal here. But that the Benders, who are already playing really passive and far back on their field have it means that the opponent is likely to self kill their units to try and keep on par or lower than the Benders to prevent the drain. It just encourages more cold war stare-offs.

A Hero is Born is here for reasons I cannot fathom. This card is pretty bad because there aren’t many “need to have” champions in the game that would require a tutor for them over just building five magic and drawing five cards a turn can’t find. With the Owl Gryphon it could actually see some play, perhaps, but for the most part it’s a bad event.

Mimic is both an incredibly frustrating event for your opponent and not a very good one for you. I kind of like it and with a tweaked Bender deck design, I think it would make a strong addition. It essentially punishes event combo decks. Either a player has to play their events as they draw them or build them for magic otherwise the Benders will claim them. This is doubly important for events that don’t discriminate against factions when firing like Reinforcements. However, it can lead to some interesting plays against combo factions if they’re able to fake out a few mimic plays since Tacullu does have a limited number. And while missing an event sucks with mimic, there is still some value in knowing what the opponent has in their grubby hands.

Except, in summoner wars, most cards are just magic fodder so it’s not as good as other games.

At last, we have Mind Control. This is the card that makes the Benders really want to play defensively. Well, this and they’re all low health and ranged so they naturally utilize the defender’s advantage better than others. But mind control just frustrates aggressive assaults as it not only swings the tempo in Tacullu’s favour but it can leave vulnerable enemy units suddenly exposed to an attack they wouldn’t have received otherwise. However, it’s trigger of your board means that Tacullu almost never wants to go aggressive. He’ll live and die on his side hoping for those mind controls.

Oh, and yes it only targets commons but if you think that means you just need to build champions to take on Tacullu, scroll up and re-familiarize yourself with that section I just wrote on counter summon. They’re a particularly nasty combination.

Breaker (1R-1W-2M-Memory Break)

Breakers have the auspicious title of being the first common in a deck that doesn’t start in their summoner’s opening set-up. That makes them the best bum card because you can completely deck build them out without having that awkward one or two required for the first turn of the game!

Unfortunately, breakers are the worst common in the Bender deck and, consequently, are the ones you’ll never see. It’s unfortunate because I kind of like their design. However, they’re grossly overshadowed by the controllers. So while these gals are meant to offer a rare damaging paradigm – directly attacking the opponent’s deck and, indirectly, their economy – we don’t really get to see how effective this design is. But they have the potential to create interesting situations. Say a breaker reveals a key champion like Kynder from the Deep Dwarves deck. Surely you’d pay one magic to keep the champion around. But would you pay two magic from two breaker attacks? What about three?

And to add insult to injury, the card gets buried at the bottom of the deck meaning you have to dig to get it back. And if you’re not dealing with those breakers, they could just lose it or have to pay even more when it comes up again.

Sadly, you’re just not going to spend two magic for one attack to cause this issue. That the breaker has to hit a unit and not a wall further reduces their usefulness given that your opponent likely isn’t throwing a lot of commons at Tacullu thanks to his mind controlling.

Personally, what I would have liked to see with them is their cost reduced to one magic. Maybe tweak them so they only hit on a 4+ to compensate because I do think the ability is really good. But I feel breakers should have been the cheap option in the Bender deck because their effect is so subtle and pretty chance based. I mean, if you hit one of your enemy’s bum commons, they’ll just pitch it and likely kill your breaker in the next turn for the magic that card could have provided. At two magic, this simply isn’t a worthy exchange for the Benders in a large number of cases.  At one… who knows? Maybe?

Controller (2R-1W-2M-Telekinetic Blast)

These are the all-stars of the Bender army. Two range is pretty strong though 2 magic is the general cost for things as soft as these ladies. The blast has great utility as Kynder demonstrates and they don’t spend a magic to do it. They don’t even need to hit anything so you can attack your own walls with controllers if you just want to push someone around. And I often do this to Tacullu to get him flopping away from angry players running across the board to smack him in his annoying non-face.

Unfortunately, they’re so good that they kind of overshadow the other Bender commons. Personally, I think I’d drop their attack down to 1. I’d still leave their cost at 2 magic because defensive factions should have more expensive units and I do think blasting things is worth the extra magic. But don’t think this is a nerf because I would move that 2 attack stat line to…

Deceivers (1R-1W-1M-Stun)

These girls. These girls right here. I’d make them the 2 attack at 2 magic option. Why? Because it makes them a bit of a nombo (non-combination) with stun. It makes them a little more awkward which is fine because a lot of the time you’re spending that two magic for the attack and don’t really care about the ability. Though they would make wonderful little common haters as they can stun a unit then blow their faces off with that extra attack.

As is now, they’re generally blockers. How? They simply sit beside an enemy’s attacking unit and sing kumbaya until the enemy manages to dislodge them. At one magic, they’re dead easy to summon and pitch mindlessly at your enemy while you skulk behind your walls being a little taunting brat that refuses to put your money where your mouth is. They can slowly roll their die and whittle away their stunned partner’s health but be careful that they aren’t immediately murdered the moment that stunned enemy is dead.

I like deceivers and feel they’re a little under appreciated. Not that I can blame people, controllers are really good.

Gulldune (2R-4W-5M-Mind Capture)

So Gulldune isn’t particularly good. Granted, most the Bender champions aren’t particularly good. But Gulldune takes the cake for probably being the most not particularly good of the bunch. He’s a little pricey for 4 health and 2 range attack. What really kills him, however, is that his ability is pretty rubbish.

You have to kill the unit in order to capture them. At 2 attack, that means whatever you capture can only have a maximum of 2 health left (more likely they’ll only have one). Alright, so you’re not mind controlling any healthy units. You’re still stealing them and permanently, right?

Though if you can kill the unit in one attack, chances are the enemy can as well. And since you’re stealing them in the middle of your attack phase, you can’t move them out of harms way. You can’t move them anywhere, really.

So you now have a low health unit in the middle of the enemy’s ranks who, likely, you won’t be able to attack with him since he can’t move when you take control. What’s the first thing that’s going to happen when the opponent takes their turn? They’re going to kill that shiny unit you just stole.

And take the magic.

So you’re losing out on the magic that you’d get from the kill and are giving it to the opponent. The only way this would be advantageous to you is if you get a good attack with the unit you steal since it’s not going to live very long. Really, the only way this will happen is if your opponent doesn’t see Gulldune coming but once he hits the table, the enemy will be more careful about where potential mind capture victims may be.

Also, he’s four health so he won’t last long. Especially if he fails to kill his target and they run up to him and punch him in his face.

Ultimately, you’re better off just murdering the target and claiming the money than trying to work around this cumbersome ability.

Kalal (3R-5W-7M-Glimpse the Future)

Kalal is your tank in the Benders. She has 5 health. One thing I haven’t touched on is the fragility of the Benders. They’re paper tigers that don’t stand up to repeated punishment. Which is good because they’re all ranged and kind of annoying.

Kalal is nice since she has 3 attack at range. Unfortunately, five health doesn’t make her quite a bruiser. You can use deceivers and controllers to limit the amount of hate that will come her way. And glimpsing the future is a rather interesting ability. You can control, to a degree, your enemy’s draw. Have them pull their bum commons while stuffing their combo events and champions at the bottom of their deck. Or, you can ensure your good cards come up while throwing your bum ones for later.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s worth the extra magic that Kalal costs. I get that it’s suppose to combo with the breakers but the breakers themselves aren’t really enticing on their own. And 7 magic is quite an investment for something that’s only ok. Kalal doesn’t really push you towards a direct path for victory. You’re not really going to pitch 7 magic and how many breakers to pursue this circuitous route of burning the enemy’s deck to win.

You’re just going to mind control, kill and unsummon what they bring out.

And if you only want Kalal to kill, wouldn’t you just take a champion with 3 attack that was cheaper?

Sorgwen (3R-3W-5M-Telepathic Command)

Speak of the devil.

Sorgwen is basically the go to champion for the Benders. She has that three ranged attack that is the draw for Kalal. She has a fairly low cost of 5 magic so she won’t break the bank and leave lots of magic for counter summoning. She has telepathic command that gives you an extra attack in the turn as if the Benders were an aggressive faction. I’m guessing that’s because the Benders are suppose to be “a little of everything.”

She’s really hard to compete against and nothing has. Her ability is so good that when they put it on a summoner, they had to give it a cost. In fact, the only difference between her and Endrich is that he has one more health and you don’t lose the game if Sorgwen falls. She makes your controllers all the better. And just think what her and breakers would be like if you actually played them!

Just make sure she’s well protected through controller blasts and deceiver stuns. She’ll probably still be assassinated but, hey, that’s three damage that wasn’t done to Tacullu.

Many words have been said about the Benders and how to “balance” them. I don’t think people really mean that they’re unbalanced but just that they’re not fun. I would like to have seen them provide a reason for the enemy to have to engage them. They have decent weaknesses as is. And with better developed assassination factions, they’ll continue to drop games.

It’s just a shame that some of their more interesting ideas were abandoned amongst the torrent of bad publicity. There was an interesting design space to explore here that was just dropped in the later releases. We’ll have to see if the second summoner picks up this idea of attacking the opponent’s draw pile and economy. I feel like there’s still many interesting interactions left to explore in the system. My hope is that Plaid Hat will realize them.

ermergerd erts der derp dervs. der derp dervs der mer ferverer. ey ruv der derp dervs. derp. dervs.

I don’t know why but this is how I imagine all underground fantasy races sound. Perhaps its because Dungeons and Dragons had the svirfneblin as one of their token deep cavern races. And choosing one of the most unpronounceable Nordic mythological races as your direction just leads to stupid moments at the gaming table.

Though, I guess the D&D dwarves are called duergar. That doesn’t make it better.

We’ve arrived at the top four for the Master Set Showdown, however. The Deep Dwarves just missed the top cut, edged out by the Benders by one game. They managed a poor fifth position in this tournament but really turned things around in the Free for All with claiming a very respectable fifth place again. Just a quick reminder that the second tournament had three times the contenders and not only that but the Deep Dwarves crawled their way up through that bloody gauntlet of a loser’s bracket. Their victims were the Demagogue, the Swarmp Orcs and the Mercenaries respectably.

In fact, I can’t help but feel that the Deep Dwarves were often the loser’s army. How the second tournament worked was the winner of a round had their choice of faction in the next round (which were determined by weighted seeding). Generally speaking, the winner grabbed for their favourite faction of the pair. And Kait hates the Deep Dwarves with a passion. Invariably, this meant that I was playing them.

Part of the reason for the Deep Dwarves mediocre performance is that they do not mesh with Kait’s playstyle at all. Going over my records and I don’t see a single victory for the faction attributed to Kait’s play. This is understandable. They simply cannot smash their opponent’s face. They’re a slow, deliberate, defensive faction that relies on building up a powerful economic advantage through their inherent economy engine to cinch the game in the final moments through powerful combo pieces and a superior magic pool.

Kind of like the Filth from last week, actually.

Unlike the Filth, however, they don’t have the flexibility that mutagist provided the Demagogue. They are pretty reliant on chance draws – perhaps more so than the average summoner because of how combo focused their events are. As such, the Deep Dwarves are most vulnerable during the early and mid game as they try to establish their strong position. But they lack the cheap defenders that the Demagogue has in his 0 cost fanatics. Those first few early turns can really dictate the pace of a Deep Dwarves game.

So you’re looking at trying to capitalize on that inherent defender’s advantage as much as possible. Since Kait is really terrible at that, I have a pretty easy time destroying her in those moments – barring the magical double wall draw opening hand. Overcoming the defender’s advantage is far more difficult so her losing to the Deep Dwarves in the early tournament is understandable as she hadn’t developed the effective tactics for destroying them.

As for the games in the Grand Tournament, all three of them were very close affairs that hinged on key dice rolls and little else. The Demagogue, Rallul and Mugglug are all defensive champions in their own right and any of them could have taken the fight.

But let’s just say the battles against Krusk and Abua Shi were not.

Tundle (2R-6W-Meditate)

I’m tired of commenting on the 2 range, 6 wound spread so I’m not going to this time. Instead, let’s discuss that meditate. This ability likely won’t trigger that often in a fight. The reason for that is, if the enemy hasn’t started coming at you from the start then a turn or two of you generating “free magic” is going to prompt them across the board. And that’s what you want.

As Tundle, you don’t want to have to assault the opponent and you don’t have to either. You can recall how the Filth’s mutagist offered them a way to recur magic but needed a few turns to setup properly? Well, Tundle doesn’t have those issues. He has no free units in his deck so if you need to get magic into your discard you can summon just about anything that you draw. Not only that, but all his units let you spend magic to do things which can get you spending that money like an obedient little capitalist consumer.

What’s the hitch? You can only attack with one unit. What does this mean? You’re trash on the defensive. This is why meditate doesn’t trigger often. If the opponent has three (or more, heaven forbid you’re facing a good aggressive faction) units charging down the derpy dwarves position, you’re going to need your attacks to save your bacon. If you draw your walls and can funnel the enemy down murder lanes that only need a single entrenched gem mage to do the killing, then you’re laughing. If not, you’ll probably need Tundle and some illusions to hold back the tide while you build up that font of power to eradicate your opponent in one grand, laser fuelled turn.

Wait, lasers?

Yes, lasers.

Magic Torrent is an event that lets you deal one one wound to each enemy (barring summoners and conjurations) within 4 spaces of Tundle. It costs you one magic to do so, however. Granted, there’s no laser in the name but that’s how I imagine it’s done. I mean, these are the guys that are obsessed with gems and crystals. You know, for focusing light. Work with me.

It’s a good event that I rarely have the magic to pull of because my sister is smashing my face. But being able to clear blockers for your artillery and draw even on the cost is good. However, there are other things that invariably stuff my hand that I usually pitch this event away.

Alright, so if I’m not playing magic torrent, what am I doing with my time?

Playing every other event.

First up is Illusionary Warrior. This little baby let’s put put to the table for free any single common in your magic pile. This includes enemy commons if you happen to snag a timely savager or other expensive and scary unit. Mostly, this is looking to get a discount on gem mages but even that is good. The downside? It’s picky. You can only use this event if you have a living gem mage or a champion. Why not Tundle? Don’t know. I’m assuming he’s too busy nap-meditating to bother with light shows and magic tricks.

Second is Magic Stasis because you know what’s good? Preventing your opponent from reinforcing his attacking army. It’s especially great when your enemy drops a whole hand of four or five cards. The obvious champion build play is wonderful to delay by slapping this card on the board and giving your enemy your best shit-eating grin. Double style points if you have your second magic stasis to throw the turn after for maximum trolling. Will this win games? No. But you’re a late game powerhouse and looking for every trick you can find to slow the pace of the match and let you get there. Magic stasis is one of the best cards for accomplishing that.

Summoning Surge is your “making up for lost meditates” card. Since your opponent should be forcing you to attack with more than one unit a turn, they’re probably killing your guys to meet that pressure. If you’re losing guys then you’re meeting the requirements for the surge. It also lets you grab a good chunk of your discard pile to reclaim a juicy common to press gang as an illusionary warrior. Oh, and you can summon during this phase as well if you need just one more magic to pull out a champion that you didn’t have at the start.

Last but not least is Wake the Father Gem. This turns on your explosive turns. You know how I earlier mentioned that Deep Dwarves are looking to setup that game winning combo? This is it. If you have two or three gem mages on the board and in position, this lets you fire nine dice at range on units that can then hop back into cover for free. It lets you move units back and forth with your champions to open up firing lanes for said gem mages. And if you also have a scholar beside the target then you can simply laugh maniacally.

Realistically, however, you’ll be using it earlier while you’re trying to grow your magic pile or when you simply don’t have any magic to use abilities at all. The dream is to blow up the earth but the reality is that this lets you squeeze just a bit more from your early units before they invariably push up daisies in the bloody defence.

So, yeah. You can say Tundle has a powerful event suite.

Gem Mage (2R-1W-2M-Gem Magic)

Which is good because Tundle’s commons are rather… lacklustre.

I know this will probably get some flack under the gem mage description but it is what it is. Honestly, if it weren’t for Tundle’s ability and powerful events, gem mages probably wouldn’t be that amazing. They are because Tundle can afford them but I have to question whether anyone else could. Also, gem mages look really good when compared to the competition.

But let’s look at them. Two range attack is strong. One health is brittle. Two magic is expensive. Gem magic is costly and makes gem mages actually more expensive than they appear. Truth be told, you won’t hard pay for gem magic that often. Sure, when you really need to kill that wounded champion or managed to get a clear shot on a summoner you’ll pitch the magic to increase their attack to 3. Hopping them back behind cover for another magic is entirely dependent on how many mages you have left in your deck, how well you’ve been developing your magic economy and how safe the board really is.

Often, this means you aren’t jumping the mage. Granted, you can meditate and attack with a gem mage in a turn and use either the increase attack or jump ability and break even for magic. This is typical if you manage to draw your walls early and can limit the avenues the opponent has to get to you. But barring murder lanes, you’re probably better saving the magic unless the situation is really dire.

Miner (1M-2W-1M-Tunnel)

And then there were the bums.

Miners are your auto build card. You don’t ever want to place these guys on the board. They’re bad and there’s no way around it. Their stats are standard for a 1 magic melee unit. But tunnel is just plain awful. Note that your whole movement is spent placing the miner adjacent to another miner. Thus, for the ability to be useful, you have to be investing in miners on the board in the first place. Second, you need your first miner in a location where you’d want more miners. Third, this location has to be exactly one space away from whatever you want to target.

Basically, you literally need an enemy summoner one space away from your miner for tunnel to be useful. But an enemy summoner will never be in this location. If they’re attacking a miner it’s either in melee (so a tunnel will just have your buddies holding hands but the original miner is the only one in range) or they’re attacking three squares away so a tunnel will just leave your miner one space out of reach.

Granted, you could then tunnel another miner in front of him. But you know how else you could cover two spaces from that original miner? That’s right, by just moving him forward. Don’t forget that tunnel costs 1 magic too.

So, this is basically a naked 1 melee with two health. Maybe he could be a cheap blocker? Oh wait, no, scholars are a thing.

Really, tunnel needs to let a tunnelling miner to still move two spaces after joining their friend. Otherwise, the fact that it uses up a movement just absolutely kills this unit. For that reason you won’t even use them during a father gem awakening since you have other Deep Dwarves to putter about. You know, the ones that can hit for more than one die. More specifically, the ones that you can increase to three dice for free.

But thanks miner for giving them the energy to do their job!

Scholar (0M-3W-1M-Insight)

Scholars are… not great. You’ll mostly need them if you need those cheap blockers that miners could have potentially been. Three wounds is better on a blocker and their lack of attack isn’t really a negative in a faction that’s happy to only attack once a turn anyway. And they can increase the attack of any units shooting at whatever they’re standing at? That’s pretty great too, right? It should really stick it to champions.

And, yeah, it does. But you’ll mostly be building these guys for magic because you both need a large magic stack and you want to be drawing lots of cards. Draw them early and you’re still (hopefully) being a nuisance with your starting scholar and miners. Draw them late and chances are you’ve got better units to be using your movement and attacks on.

I suppose I should point out that you don’t spend 1 magic for each of these guys but 1 magic for all of them. Same with the miners for all that’s worth.

I just find I never pull these guys out. Their need is very niche. But they’re still ok for those rare times that come up. They’re just not great.

Kynder (2M-6W-5M-Mage Push)

Well, if I’m saving all this magic, how am I going to us it? Surely I don’t need that much magic for my gem mages.

No, you need it for your champions. Because your champions rock. Remember the Sand Goblins and how they had incredibly cheap champions that came with negatives. Well, surprise! Deep Dwarves have cheap champions that come with crazy positives!

That said, you’re paying through the nose with them. The whole Deep Dwarf shtick is that everything costs money. That’s why you’re building your bad and mediocre (and often your good gem mages too) commons for money. You need your champions and you need their abilities.

Kynder is your heartiest with 6 health for 5 magic. Two attack is ok but he really shines with his mage push. Remember how Silts was super good because he had that rare “at any time” trigger for his ability. Well, grin like a devil because Kynder has it too. Yours costs magic, however, but you’re getting essentially two free uses with your starting cost discount. Plus, you can meditate. Oh, and I guess the father gem can help as well.

But basically this is Silts’ cunning only at two range. Is it better? Eh… hm, there’s lots of factors to take into account before I’d claim that. I will say it’s just as good and, much like cunning, is game winning but at a price point for more digestible.

Lun (3M-4W-4M-Gem of Calling)

Ok, Kynder is good but where’s the real powerhouse of the faction? Where’s the Biter?

Oh, here he is. Wait, he only has 4 wounds? But you complain how 6 wounds is so fragile! How can this mewling, bald Deep Dwarf be so good?

Well, that’s because Lun can pinch your opponent’s units from the wrong side of a wall and deposit him right in the middle of a clan of angry Deep Dwarves. Do dwarves congregate in clans? Or are they more gaggles?

Either way, for a single magic investment, you’re whittling your enemy slowly down. Probably in a position where they can’t retaliate. And remember all those issues with attacking and how getting around walls is difficult and reinforcing takes time and all that jazz? Yeah, Lun makes it all apparent. You have to kill this jerk but he’s hidden in the back row behind as much obstruction he can plucking hapless victims from 4 spaces away to deposit them at a murder feast and your opponent is on the menu.

Both Lun and Kynder are actually priced at expectation but I consider both under costed simply because their abilities are that good. Yes, even with them costing a magic to use each time. You use these guys basically to isolate the weakest portions of the enemy’s forces and destroy them. Then, as your opponent’s assault is crumbling, you line up your gem mage artillery, drop down an awoken father gem and leave a pretty little crater where your enemy once stood.

Sprong (2R-6W-6M-Restructure)

Oh. I’d forgotten about Sprong. He’s pretty bad. You’ll be building him for magic almost every time.

What’s wrong with him? His numbers look fine, right? I mean, he’s priced how we’d expect him just like the other two. Well, put simply, his ability is way too niche to really ever need Sprong. He doesn’t help you on the big play turns. He doesn’t help you build to your big play turns (since his cost cuts into the magic you’re building). He simply doesn’t fit the style and game plan. Draw him early and you don’t want to waste all your magic on a guy that provides so very little to a defence. Draw him late and you’re looking for three dice gem mages or your pushy other champions.

Toss him. You won’t miss him at all. He works better as laser fuel.

I like the Deep Dwarves if only because my sister hates them. They’re certainly not a favourite of mine, however. But the interplay you get in the first couple of turns with them against your opponent are some of the tensest you’ll find in Summoner Wars. There’s this race against the clock on either side. You’re trying to stall it while your opponent is trying to break it. And struggling through the hectic rushes that come your way make your victories all the sweeter.

That said, they can really grind a game if an opponent isn’t going to co-operate. If your enemy decides to hang back they you’re going to be in for a tedious game. It may not be longer but it will certainly be less interesting. And you’ll probably win it too, assuming you don’t offend the dice gods. But the Deep Dwarves dynamism requires that an enemy is going to play ball. If you happen to match up against an aggressive summoner then it’s all good. But if you’re against a defensive one then it can really sap the enjoyment of the game.

Thankfully, my sister plays everything aggressive whether it should be or not.

So, we need to talk. This is a conversation that’s been long overdue. Please, you might want to sit for this.

You see, Summoner Wars, we need to discuss you. Who are you? What are you going for here? I’m not even certain I know you anymore. You’ve got this whole double persona going on. During the day, you’re a friendly, casual board game that’s great for pulling out during a party. You’re simple, straight forward and fun to engage. You bring a smile to player’s faces as they tensely roll for the long shot play.

And then at night you’re a completely different person. You’re this competitive and no nonsense person where everything has to be exacting. Decks must be optimized to a razor edge and you dictate your games must be played beneath the tyranny of managing every last loose scrap of magic. You’re self killing and mean, focusing on denying your opponents instead of engaging them to squeeze every advantage – real or imaginary – as you possibly can.

You’re a bit scattered, Summoner Wars, and I simply don’t know how to deal with you.

Well, actually, that’s a lie. I do know how to deal with you and have been doing so this whole time. But I haven’t actually told you why I’ve been doing this. You’ll notice, when I review you, I take a pretty strict approach. I almost solely only discuss what you offer out of the box. I may make the off handed comment here and there about deck building but, really, you need to stand on your own merits, Summoner Wars.

I like that you blend elements from traditional board gaming and collectible card games. But you’re not Magic: the Gathering or Netrunner. You’re far more board than paper. I think it’s pretty apparent when you look at your very rules. Building a deck is far more involved in an actual collectible or living card game. There’s greater mechanics and far more interactions between the cards. I mean, you can literally throw every single card you own into a deck for Magic (assuming you keep to their four copy rule). Only restrictions you have is that you must have at least sixty cards and you need to follow whatever legacy or card restriction rules your group or tournament holds. That’s it.

Netrunner’s pickier in that you have to follow influence options but, once again, you’re not restricted by a maximum card total but a minimum. You can pull your icebreakers from any faction. Or your economy. Or your hardware. You simply can’t go over the influence limit of your identity. Other than that, you have the entire pool of your identity’s factions cards to pull from including numerous icebreakers, economy and hardware.

Then we have Summoner Wars. What are the deck building options? You can’t have a deck greater than 34 cards. Period. You must have 18 commons and no more than 10 of a single common. You must have 3 champions. And you must have your summoner and the nine events unique to him. Oh, and your walls. You can only tweak your commons and champions and only amongst a very limited number.

I mean, it’s nice that there’s a deck building element but it’s pretty bare bones. Because, ultimately, it’s not an important part of the game. It’s an option, like playing with four players. The game’s design is far closer to that of a board game where you pull out the board and players pick their assigned pieces.

Just to be clear, this isn’t to say one type of game is better than the other. You can have very competitive board games and card games as well as really fun and casual ones as well.

So, while I appreciate the option to further tweak and customize your favourite faction, I only really care about what comes in a deck’s core. I’ve played Summoner Wars in many different settings and, really, whenever it occurs out it’s always someone grabbing the box and us digging in and pulling out some armies to fight. You don’t expect someone to show up with their constructed deck like you would if you were getting together for Magic or Netrunner. And the interest for sorting through each faction’s different options is rarely present when the board is unfolded.

Furthermore, none of my friends have a complete collection which also reduces the prevalence of deck building. While having played everything that’s been released, I myself only own about half the product. Long story short, base decks are the primary method of play and, I feel, it’s the standard the vast majority of players will interact with the game. So while you may pick up the expansions for your favourite faction, you’re not likely to have all the cards that are available.

This is why in my discussion of decks I don’t mention any sort of solutions that a faction may have in their supplementary releases. I don’t think prospective players should have to inform their buying purchases with additional materials. The product should stand on its own. Thus, it doesn’t matter to me how super broken Hogar is if you purchase every single Guild Dwarf and Tundra Orc product and shove their best champions and commons from each into him. He’ll still be treated by the merits of what he came with.

Also, these reviews are long enough without having to take into consideration of every possible permutation of a faction and their opponents. Basically, it should go without saying, that if you replace every bum card in a base deck with a better card in an expansion than the faction will be better.

I bring up this point now because we’re going to talk about a faction that was, essentially, designed to be deck built. Alas, I didn’t purchase their reinforcement deck and when I finally got the Alliances box, they had to face their alliance deck in the tournament so couldn’t deck build.

I am, of course, going to talk about The Filth.

The Demagogue (2R-6W-Mutagist)

Good old Demi managed third in our Master Set Tournament. He then took a shocking thirteenth place in our All In Brawl. Kait and I have always considered the Filth really strong so for them to be eliminated so early was quite the blow. But despite their power, there’s some very specific flaws in the Filth base deck that can be exploited.

To understand these flaws we must first look at the Demagogue’s mutagist ability and what the faction is all about. Mutagist is one of the strongest summoner abilities in the game. It’s a built in card tutor that lets the Demagogue search either his deck or his discard for a mutation and put it in his hand. It does cost an attack so not only does this mean that the Filth player will only have two attacks that turn but you can’t use that mutation that turn. But this doesn’t prevent the Filth from building that mutation for magic. And if you just pulled it from your discard than that’s creating a point of magic that didn’t exist in the game!

I’ve mentioned before how tight economy is in Summoner Wars. Since your cards act as both army and economy and your deck is constrained by an exact number of cards, it means there’s only so much magic to go around. Being able to break that limit is power. As such, most summoners that can squeeze extra magic from the game must do so with a cost. The Demagogue’s is less strict than the other summoner in this tournament who can do this but the Demagogue’s is trickier to use. To generate magic, he must have mutations in his discard. To get them there, they have to be spent from his magic pile. The Filth have to spend money to get money in this game as there is no other way for him to get his mutations into the discard from hand.

Wait… what are mutations?

Mutations are the Filth. They’re the core of the deck serving as magic (mentioned above) and army. See, they’re a common that follows their own rules. First, you can’t summon them directly to the field. They must grow from a target, bursting forth from their hapless victim in as gruesome a manner as possible. This doesn’t remove the poor soul, however, who must remain tortured and broken beneath the mutation. In game terms, this means that every mutation on the field rewards two magic when its dies. But to compensate for its downside and requirement, the mutations are stronger than typical commons. They’re more like mini-champions. Which reflects their nature in deck building.

See, I was getting around to that.

Mutations can occupy either a common or champion slot in your deck. For the Demagogue, this means he only has one champion in his entire deck. Personally, I’d rather there weren’t any. But there’s certainly a lot of variation available to the Demagogue should he ever want to tweak his deck.

Alright, so he has a good ability that makes magic. Oh, and it also gives him flexibility in that he can pull out whatever mutation he needs in his next turn. Sure, this makes him pretty reactionary but being able to get the cards you need is always a strong power. But how do his events look?

Well, they look pretty damn good.

One other downside with mutations is that they cost a decent chunk of magic. Sure, they’re cheaper for their stats and abilities than if any other faction had them but they still average about three magic. Don’t worry, you have Channel Corruption to make up for that. There’s not much to say about this event because it’s good and obviously so. I mean, I guess it’s a combo card which is a bit problematic but since you can use mutagist to pull the mutation you want so long as it’s not locked in your magic pile it’s not much of an issue.

Then there’s Heretic’s Rebuke. Which is also fantastic. Granted, it’s not saving you money but it does something even better: it kills an enemy common and gives you a mutation target. This is pretty big since the Demagogue is weakest at the start. Invariably, when the enemy comes knocking, Heretic’s Rebuke will be turning their dangerous units into your little monsters. It can also be used to peel defenders and get your mutations in forward positions if you have the upper hand. And you can use it to eliminate costly commons like savagers for nothing. Yeah, it’s good.

Possessed Wall is the Filth’s worst event but it’s sort of like a less interesting magic drain. It’s really draw dependent, needing you to pick them up before your opponent can get his walls out to ignore it. Even if you do block his wall, however, it’s not difficult to remove it. It can be discarded at any time and the opponent will be drawing before they want to summon. It’s a speed bump and a minor one but it costs you a card and little effort.

Shield of the Hopeful is incredibly important and, appropriately, you have three of them. Your mutations mean nothing if you don’t have anything to mutate and while you’re building your economy you’ll be relying on your non-mutation commons to protect the Demagogue in the early stages. Shield of the Hopeful will see your little cthulu cultists stick around for their otherworldly blessings. It’s also helpful to keep a target breathing when you mutagist a needed mutation and have to wait your turn to play it. Requiring your opponent to spend more attacks killing your cultists can throw a real wrench in their plans. And if your opponent is trying to play around Shield, doubling up their attacks on pathetic cultists then they’re using their units inefficiently and, well, that’s a victory too.

Cultist (1R-1W-0M-Hex Thrower)

One of the two Filth commons, the cultist is your range devotee to the cause. Since your mutations are all good, your commons are bad. Or, at least, they’re suppose to be. In any other faction you’d likely be unimpressed (though a 0 cost ranged unit is actually pretty good in-of-itself). But the idea isn’t that you’re keeping your cultists around for long. As a unit to thwart and annoy your enemy, they’re good.

As they’re ranged they’re a little harder for the enemy to eliminate. They’re a thing. Oh, I should mention they can’t attack things beside them because that’s bad.

Zealot (1M-1W-0M-Bloodlust)

So this is your melee version of your cultist. It can’t attack walls. So don’t expect to be able to apply a lot of pressure with him.

Like I said, these guys are basically here to slow the enemy down and give you something to mutate. So let me talk about an issue with the deck. There’s just way too many of these guys. It’s a funny thing that the Demagogue has a decently strong economy engine but all his little weenie units cost nothing. As I mentioned earlier, you need to spend money (mutations) with the Filth in order to make money (pull those mutations from the discard). Your cultists don’t help with this. So you want to use your first few mutations as magic fuel in your recurring engine but in order to get that engine going you need to spend it on mutations.

What the Demagogue wants is a common he can spend money on. But without further purchases, you’re going to hope that you get a few mutations in your early draws and hope you don’t draw too many cultists that you might have to throw out for magic just so you can draw more cards on your next turn.

Long story short, you can get very screwed by your draws in the first couple of turns. And if the opponent is rushing into your face you kind of need to throw your cultists to the field to protect yourself. But if you end up throwing too many cultists in an early defence, you could run out of targets to mutate once you’ve established a large economic advantage to afford an army of gibbering mutants.

And the great unspeakable ones forbid that you don’t manage to draw any walls to defend yourself in that early rush.

Bestial Mutant (2M-3W-2M-Greater Swiftness)

So, to summarize the mutations really quickly, they’re all good. Some let you be an aggressive bruiser. Some can easily let you go for an assassination. Some let you just smash face real good.

What I want to talk about instead is the weaknesses of mutations. And yes, they have them. Mainly, you only have eight of them. And if these things end up in your opponent’s discard pile, you’re stuffed. Losing mutations, especially key ones, can be crippling to the Filth game. It’s why even the mewling Cloaks can be a threat if they’re floating an Assassinate event to murder your horror mutant. And if you’re trying to use them for your economy, you’re kind of cutting into how many you can be throwing to the field.

So there’s this weird game of who gets the last whack on your mutant moles. While most factions will often try and kamikaze their high attack value injured units to maximize damage, the Filth kind of rush to get the last kill so they can grab that mutation from their discard again. And if you go in for assassination attempts and lose the mutation, it is a rather troubling loss. That said, you can swap mutations during your summoning phase, so rescuing an important mutation is easy if it survives the enemy’s turn. And if you use a lower health mutation you can even get the magic for the death when the wounds transfer.

So you need to kind of baby these little guys. Not too much, though, because they are monsters. But don’t get lulled into a false sense of invulnerability if you manage to get four or so of these guys on the board at once.

Anyway, the bestial mutant is good for rushing into an enemy’s face but isn’t so valuable that you’re sad to lose him.

Claw Mutant (1M-4W-4M-Crushing Grip)

This guy is your answer to champions. Because, you know, you’re not really running them yourself. And he’ll straight up murder them. He can be used for money if your opponent is only going commons on you. If they decide to switch gears later, just yank him from the discard and you’re good to go.

Corpulent Mutant (1M-4W-4M-Ignore Pain)

I use this guy to get my economy going. He’s decent as a roadblock early on not a terrible loss if he goes into the enemy’s magic pile. I never get ignore pain to do anything for me but my sister manages to eat tons of wounds with him.

Edible Mutant (1M-6W-3M-Feed the Brethren)

Another excellent engine starter. I get that he’s meant to assist your mutant assault by taking wounds off your guys but I find that it’s rare to have him around by then. He’s good at blocking lanes and delaying the game with that six health for three magic. I mostly use him for magic, though.

Horror Mutant (3M-3W-3M-Demonic Visage)

Horror mutant is a terror (har har) for melee factions and a very strong attacker. Three attack at 3 magic is a good price point and her wonderful face will limit the number of people that can beat her up. If you do have an edible mutant out, you want him on her coat tails to keep the horror mutant going as long as possible. Take note that she scares everyone including summoners which can be legitimately terrifying for your enemy. Try not to lose her even though the enemy will be putting everything into killing her.

Spew Mutant (2R-3W-3M-Acidic Vomit)

Spewie is pretty good, especially if you need a strong defender. Her stomach acid works on walls too if you really want to try and bust them. There’s not a long of range option in the mutation pile which makes her stand out.

Tentacle Mutant (2M-2W-1M-Insidious Reach)

I actually really love the tentacle. It can reach anywhere and gets into the most difficult spots. And he’s just the right fit too.

I find that’s he’s one of the best early defensive options. You can plop the tentacle behind the wall and keep attackers from hurting your summoning point. He’s a threat behind shielded cultists and zealots. And he costs next to nothing so you can afford him nearly from the get go. Honestly, if I don’t draw him in my opening hand (or if I’m going first because the enemy is a jerk), I’ll usually mutagist him out. He doesn’t have a lot of use late game either, so losing him isn’t terrible.

Winged Mutant (3M-3W-3M-Greater Flight)

This is probably my favourite mutation. Wingie wins games. She’s hard to hide from and she hits like a twenty pound gorilla truck. This is the mutation you want to save as much as possible. Though, it’ll be hard because she’s apt to fly over several walls and be on her own.

So, yeah. As you can see, the Filth are really strong. They’re also really fun. Both of us love playing the demon cult even if they have such a profound effect on the game. They do kind of force your opponent into being aggressive, allowing you to leverage that sweet, sweet defender advantage. But when you get a bestial, winged and horror mutant bearing down on their screaming, trembling, and pant-wetting summoner, it’s hard to not have a crazed grin on your face.

Also, can I just take a moment to say how much I love the art? I normally do nothing but rag on it but whoever directed this faction was really, really good. Using the cultist and zealot as bases for the mutation and also keeping their designs distinct and interesting was just brilliant. And some of those mutations are quite horrifying, lending a very strong visual representation for that delightfully wicked theme.

Oh, am I forgetting something? Do we really have to talk about it?

Fine!

The Abomination (0M-7W-8M-Writhing Spawn)

He truly is an abomination. Play this guy only if you really want to throw your game.

Here’s a stroll down memory lane. I’m out of town, visiting a friend and house sitting when my buddy turns to me and asks, “Would you like to play a game?”

From the next room comes the massive box and I’m left wondering what I agreed to as a great board and numerous chits are scattered before me. There’s the frantic scratches of some forgotten general faded beneath the columns of spacious squares. He hands me a deck of cards.

“This is called Summoner Wars.”

I was playing the Sand Goblins, though that didn’t mean anything to me at the time. I can’t remember who he played. I want to say it was the Benders. All I know is that he taught me the game wrong, something I only learned later that night when I went online to check what other factions were in this strange but wonderful game.

I’m pretty sure I lost, by the way.

And I’ve been keeping that tradition strong ever since.

The losing with the Sand Goblins, not the obsessive online researching. Though, hm, maybe I’ve kept up with both.

Anyway, I’ve always liked the little Sand Goblins. This was before I learned they were suppose to be really good. Bolstered by the fact that providence had delivered me a great faction, I pulled them out against hapless victim after victim.

And I got trounced each time.

I don’t know why, but I simply can’t get these critters to do anything. They’re good. I can see that. I look at them and recognize that they’re good. But they just don’t work for me no matter what strategy I try.

My sister was the same way. In our first tournament, the Sand Goblins were second last, just beating the Cloaks but failing to edge out the Mountain Vargath. Our games outside our little tournaments continued this trend. The Sand Goblins just weren’t clicking for whatever reason. Chalk it up to personality differences or something.

Then the Big Ticket Tournament happened. Everything we thought we knew turned out to be wrong. The little goblins that could rose right up to third place, displacing some personal favourites from the tournament. Tacullu and Tundle were just several victims of these desert raiders. Even more shocking was that they rode this wave solely on my sister’s back. I didn’t get a single win with them and kept choosing their opponent expecting their “lucky streak” to break.

Even more baffling is that this faction isn’t well geared for the headlong rushing that my sister adores. I can’t explain it. I wish I could. I can’t tell if this is evidence of my sister’s good fortune or my bad luck. I’m certainly not going to attribute it to Kait’s strategic skill, that’s for sure!

Krusk (2R-6W-Sandstorm)

Krusk is, I dare say, pretty average. Baseline statistics, average ability, ranged attack. It’s all nothing extraordinary. His ability is a decent 3 spaces and his events are global, so Krusk is going to skulk his back line just like any other typical summoner. He’s kind of forgettable back there and I certainly have a tendency to neglect his ability during a match.

But let’s talk about sandstorm.

At 2 magic, it’s not the cheapest thing on the block. I complained about Endrich’s geopathic command for costing 1 magic. This is twice as expensive. It’s limited by the same range though Krusk has a bit more health so him being in risk of receiving a hit or two isn’t going to end your game. You can target both enemies and allies, however, and it’s a bit of utility in that it can both move and damage targets. Granted, if you’re using it on your own units, you won’t be too happy about that self-harming bit.

It can get a unit into position or even finish off a trooper to deny your opponent the magic. Best case scenario is shifting an enemy into a firing lane and getting a hit on them but at 2 magic, you’re really not going to use this ability unless it’s going to have a major game effecting play.

Personally, I’m not a huge fan but I can recognize its niche use. It’s fine in the sense that a summoner and his deck don’t rely upon their ability. Endrich proved that.

Krusk’s events are a bit of a mixed bag as well. I resent Shiny. I’ve tried to get some use from it but not only is it hard to set-up but your opponent has full control over whether it can trigger at all or not. But we’ll get into how truly bad Shiny is when we discovered the much maligned scavenger. Suffice to say, it’s a bum event and basically just two magic in the deck.

Duck and Cover is interesting only because it’s so situational. It’s a powerful ability, granting conceal to all your Sand Goblins. However, it means absolutely nothing if you’re not facing an enemy that relies heavily on ranged units. It also does nothing if you’ve mostly got a bunch of javelineers on the field – a rather common occurrence if you’re facing an enemy that relies heavily on ranged units. I can’t recall a single use of it that has ever truly impacted a game. I can’t even recall it every being used to be honest. It’s seemingly a good card that’s kind of bad.

The one of is Mirage and this can be quite a powerful card. Not only does this rescue your summoning points if the game has gone completely sideways but it can also convert an early fortification into an aggressive forward barrier. It’s almost always better later than earlier, however, but we’ve had some game changing mirage plays. It’s also an event that your opponent is apt to forget since moving walls aren’t really a consideration in most match ups.

Finally, there is Taunt. I suspect this is the key to Kait’s success. I could never really get a good taunt off. Mostly because whenever I’m playing the goblins, all Kait’s commons are already adjacent to my units. Shuffling them around never seems like a necessary action. However, Kait always seems to taunt my boosted geopaths or controllers into the midst of her ranks to murder them wholesale.

The ability to move enemies and move them quite a distance is really strong and is hands down Krusk’s best event. You’ll likely be playing both of these even as the rest of your events go to the garbage. They alone are the reason I won’t say his suite is bad even if the others don’t pull their weight.

Javelineer (1R-2W-1M-Camouflage)

So, this is a common.

What’s there to say about Javelineers? I suppose we can start off with how 1 range attack is pretty poor. I mean, that’s the same damage as a Gunner. And those girls are awful. Oh, but the Javelineer is 2 health so they would win an exchange with a gunner. Oh, and the gunner can’t attack them in the first place without giving up their ranged attack because of camouflage.

Oh. These guys are actually pretty awesome.

They basically shut out all ranged commons single handedly. And they’re cheap, cheap, cheap. Two health on a range unit is rare and you won’t be finding it on a 1 magic unit anywhere else. The idea is that ranged units are more fragile since they get to make the first attack against their opponent. Granted, these guys do nothing against melee units but their high health can make exchanges possible against your cheap attackers. Do keep in mind that a 1 magic melee unit is likely to have the same stats.

Only downside is that one attack is abysmal against melee champions that’ll just eat these guys for breakfast. But, I mean, they’re a freaking 1 magic common!

Scavenger (1M-2W-1M-Scavenge)

Ugh, scavengers.

These are the guys that made me originally comment on Plaid Hat creating all their decks with an unplayable unit who exists solely for magic fuel. I mean, I can see what they’re going for but the little jerks certainly do not do what they’re suppose to do.

So, see, it’s clear that scavengers were meant to be the core unit of a Sand Goblin army. The idea would be that they’d run around “scavenging” (please, Plaid Hat, hire a creative designer) and build up a bunch of shields to make them tanky. Then, Krusk would play Shiny and now you’ve got a bunch of 3 attack units that can’t be hurt smashing in your face.

But what do scavengers actually do?

Well, first, you aren’t going to be getting an army of them because they stifle your economy. You aren’t just killing enemy units to clear them off the board, you’re killing them because they give you a magic to use for summoning. Ever piece of “whatever” a scavenger scavenges is a point of magic that you can’t use to summon more scavengers, javelineers or shamans.

Second, these guys are natively one attack. So unless they’re facing the Cloaks, chances are they’re going to need other units to soften their target up for them to try and get their kill. They’re certainly not going to be eliminating the enemy’s forces without the use of shiny but they need to kill things in order for shiny to work. So you need the magic they’re denying in order to play the units that will let them kill the units that let them shiny and kill the enemy’s units.

Third, you get no benefit from shiny until after an enemy’s turn has passed. Unfortunately, there is no “may” in the scavenge ability. Whenever the enemy would place one or more wounds on your scavenger you must discard his scavenged shield. So this ability isn’t even making the guys particularly durable since the enemy can first attack with a low attack unit to peel off the shiny then attack with the high attack unit to kill the scavenger. Or, you know, he can just hit the scavenger once and remove the scavenged shield thus making your shiny in hand completely useless.

It’s incredibly easy to tell when Krusk is attempting to set up a shiny turn and trivially easily to stop it. Either Krusk can stuff his hand with the shiny hoping to pull it off eventually or give up on the attempt that’s already burning him potential magic with the kills he’s been setting up with the scavengers. Oh, and scavengers don’t even get a choice of whether they scavenge or not so whenever you play them to the field you’re running the risk of losing that kill’s magic.

Build them for magic and complain to Plaid Hat about how bad they are. Even a simple “may” in their ability would do wonders for them though I don’t even know I’d still play them in that circumstance (wherever they place that may in the ability).

Shaman (2R-1W-1M-Escape)

Shamans rock. There’s not much else to say.

Alright, I’ll say a little more. But it should be evident to anyone that’s read a prior review. Though, really, at this point it should be evident even if you’ve only read this review. Two range attack for one magic is very, very good. And the shaman isn’t even burdened with a negative ability to get this very, very good stat line. Granted, if you start using escape then you’re not really getting that cost discount but you aren’t forced to use it and it can be helpful to block or clear lanes. Remember, the Cloaks are spending an extra magic to get this ability on one of their champions.

Granted, buying cost effective stats isn’t particularly sexy so I can understand why no one would be getting excited over them. But wowie, are these guys silly good.

Biter (3M-6W-4M-Crazed)

Every now and then I’ll mention a deck’s theme. Often this was an overarching design philosophy that shaped the design of the cards. It’s a central idea which each individual piece taps into in some way. The Mountain Vargath were herbivorous bruisers – hard hitting, aggressive bullies who herded together to make themselves stronger. Deep Benders were a fusion of Deep Dwarf economic efficiency with the Bender’s trick of mimicry.

So what’s the Sand Goblins shtick? Well, I think they were meant to follow some sort of racial profile. The Cave Goblins are all about a tide of cheap bodies that rush their opponent. The Sand Goblins seem to forego the rushing element and decide to supplement their strategy with toughness but they seem to still tap into that goblin characteristic of being priced well below their peers.

So… yeah. Look at Biter. He is a whole 2 magic cheaper than you’d expect a champion with 3 melee and 6 health. He’s actually the same price as the Swamp Orc savager and Jungle Elf jungle guard who have 3 melee/3 health and 1 range/4 health respectively. That’s bananas.

To offset this discount, Biter does come with a negative ability. Crazed means that every enemy unit has a free engaged ability. It’s going to be hard wiggling this bloodthirsty goblin onto the enemy summoner as he stops to stab everything that he passes on the way. A wily summoner can keep him at bay, chipping through that health pool to bring him down. A wily Krusk has to play around his disadvantage to wield this powerhouse to his advantage. This is where that sandstorm comes in. You can clear the way for Biter with that two magic discount and get him after the enemy summoner. Even if he ends up dying on an opponent’s champion, chances are you’ll be able to take out his opponent as well and its likely that you got the better deal in that economic exchange.

Yeah, Biter is great. It’s hard to not make a deck without him. A common with a literal stat line of a champion is well worth the negative he comes with. Biter is awesome.

Kreep (3M-6W-4M-Cowardly)

The Sand Goblins have two Biters in their deck?! How is that fair?

It’s not. This is why the Sand Goblins are pretty good. Their commons are cheap and powerful, allowing you to apply pressure with marginal tax on your economy. Then, when you draw your champions, you can throw them to the field to wreck faces. It’s a wonder that I don’t ever win with them.

I mean, four magic for a champion means that you can have the magic to play him in your first draw even as you pick him up!

That said, Kreep isn’t as good as Biter. Whereas Biter’s negative is he gets stuck with any old unit the enemy throws beside him, Kreep gets skittish if he’s left staring in an enemy’s eyes. Sure, it’s only a 1 in 3 chance that he’ll run off but there’s no worse feeling than rolling a pair of misses on a two health common then rolling a 2 on Kreep’s morale check and watching your fresh 4/6 champion scamper off to your discard pile.

Kreep is also significantly worse against champions than Biter. Those beefy targets can trigger morale checks multiple times. It’s also much harder to protect Kreep since your options to pull him away from opponents after his attacks are extremely limited. You really need to count on Kreep not missing whenever he steps up to the plate.

He’s ok and as a duo with Biter he’s fantastic. But he’s the kind of champion that you often want to ensure that he has backup. It’s a fantastic marriage of mechanics and theme, I’ll give them that.

Silts (2M-6W-7M-Cunning)

Last but not least is Silts. Silts almost makes up for the discount on Kreep and Biter. Almost. His stats are actually less than you’d expect for a 6 magic champion and he costs one more. That said, his ability is definitely worth 2 magic.

Cunning has a rare trigger, letting you exchange places with a target whenever you want during your turn. And this is literally at any time. You can move one space, exchange and keep moving. You can attack with a shaman, exchange places between Silts and the enemy and let even more of your ranged army hit the poor victim.

Hell, you can make an exchange before you draw cards if you so desired, you maverick you.

And Silts can move any unit. Conjurations, summoners, champions, commons: it doesn’t matter, Silts will move with them all. This can pull Biter from some blocking weenies. This can yank Kreep away from a terrifying cowardice check. Silts can open lanes, block lanes, expose flanks and generally sow confusion and discord wherever he goes.

That said, 7 magic is a steep cost and 6 health doesn’t hold up well. Cunning protects him from reprisal with clever swaps, though, so if you’re clever you can get a lot of mileage out of this little goblin. But expect a lot of hate to come his way. He’s a more situational summon and though his ability is fantastic, it is hardly necessary. You can build him out for other options and not feel like you’re cutting off your arm in the process.

So, yeah. Here we are with the third worst of the Master Set group and the deck isn’t really that bad at all. There’s a lot of powerful cards in here, a fact my sister proved when she took the Sand Goblins to third place in the major showdown. They’ve got some tricks to them and some strong answers to things that are thrown their way.

That said, their path to victory isn’t assured and it feels like you have to play this weird back and forth game with the Sand Goblins. You’re looking to coerce the opponent into having to spend their magic inefficiently, using double or more their resources to take out your more cost effective options. They don’t have a lot of answers if someone puts them on the defensive, however. Nor are they particularly great at rushing an enemy so if the opponent has a better late game, it’s going to be tricky breaking those defences.

And though they rarely seem to co-operate with me, I still look on them fondly as the plucky little desert weirdos that got me into this strange game.

Sometimes we like things that we shouldn’t. Children can’t get enough of ice cream. Americans can’t get enough Adam Sandler. My sister can’t play enough Mountain Vargath.

Continuing my review of some older Summoner Wars decks, I come to an important transition point. Last week, I covered the abysmally performing Cloaks and their feeble line of champions and commons. This week I’ll be looking at the mountain goats. Both of these factions are notable for two reasons. One, they have a consistent low performance across tournaments. Second, they’re both near and dear to our hearts.

The Mountain Vargath had an equally poor showing as the Cloaks. They claimed two victories in our Master Set tournament. They claimed nothing in the Kitchen Sink Combat. The only reason they edge out the Cloaks is because one of their two victories was against the hapless rebels. And… well… someone had to be on the bottom and frankly the Cloaks have an overall worse deck than the Vargath.

But after these two we actually start entering murky waters. The nice thing about the goats and rebels is that they are clearly, distinctly terrible. When calculating a rough ranking for these factions to decide how I’d post them, most of the factions were fairly close. But the Cloaks and Mountain Vargath were half the ranking of their peers. No matter who played them or how we approached the decks, these two factions kept falling on their faces. For the Cloaks, we could see that pretty much every option they had to field for battle was both brittle and underwhelming.

But the Mountain Vargath are oddly the opposite. There’s not a single 1 health unit in their ranks. They actually have access to two attack commons fairly effortlessly. And their champions aren’t quite as terrible as the Cloaks.

So what went wrong?

I’ve discussed before the difficulties of aggression in Summoner Wars. There’s inherent design that makes charging across the battlefield to combat your opponent a noticeably weaker strategy than sitting back and waiting for the enemy to come to you. Most of the factions that are effective at aggression have some advantage to match the ability to instantaneously reinforce and surround an attacking force.

I believe the Mountain Vargath were the first faction to try and address this. Looking at their numbers, they’re kind of insane. Unfortunately, in order to leverage their advantage, the Mountain Vargath kind of reveal new issues that being aggressive hadn’t revealed before. I think, in their attempt to fix one problem, the designers stumbled into other ones.

Sunderved (3M-7W-Command)

Alright, I tried to ignore it but I can’t. I have to say it. I hate the Mountain Vargath art. It’s not just because of their dopey faces. I hate that they are just bland, brown smudges. From their commons to their summoners and across their champions, they’re all just brown, boring blobs. There’s no interest. There’s no inspiration. Even the colour palette is chosen to just get lost in the greater whole. And the poses are pretty lacklustre. The only way I can tell a champion from a summoner is to read the name.

Anyway, let’s put the bad art aside.

Sunderved is the standard for aggressive summoners. He’s melee so to cash in on his shorter range he gets an additional health and an additional attack. It’s a pretty good bruising stat line. Of course, if you’ve read my Alliance review, you know that it’s a bit misleading. You don’t lead the charge with these summoners. You still lose the game if they go down and while seven health is hearty, it isn’t insurmountable.

Course, this is where Sunderved’s ability comes in. And what an ability it is. Every Mountain Vargath common within 2 spaces of their commander gets an additional attack.

Let me repeat that. Every common in two spaces of Sunderved gets an additional dice in their attack.

Moyra only gives one common one additional dice. You can get a bonus three with this goat. Course, the catch is you have to use commons. And, unfortunately, Sunderved lives and breathes in the time of catch-up events and common hate. We just saw a summoner who had two powerful events that only trigger on having less commons than his opponent. And Assassinate only goes after commons. And Vlox isn’t even the meanest to commons. And his opponents are mostly going champions.

But that’s not to take away from the fact that Sunderved gives his a nice boost. And the boost is good against anything be it walls, conjurations, summoners or champions. He makes his commons quite the threat on his cheap little kids.

So, yeah. It’s good.

Unfortunately, not everything is as rosy. Sunderved’s events don’t measure quite as well as his ability. Let’s start with the lowest hanging fruit.

Torodin’s Advance is awful. It’s your one off event and isn’t even impressive for something you have to dig through over thirty cards to find. And it’s a combo card requiring you to have the matching champion Torodin on the field to have any effect. So surely it must do something spectacular right?

Wrong. You can move him two additional spaces.

Like, this is the definition of a bum card. It’s awkward to pull out. It’s not something you want to stuff your hand to play. It doesn’t even do anything good when you actually play it.

Sadly, things don’t improve much from here. Next up is Superior Planning which is an event tutor. Yet, you have two of these and the aforementioned Advance makes it so one third of your events to search for don’t do anything. They can pull from the discard, though, so they aren’t the worst tutors. And if you draw them before your other events you can at least thin your deck.

Next we have Muster which lets you pull two commons to your summoner. It should be good but it ends up not being that useful despite Sunderved wanting units around him. Partly because, once again, it’s a combo card. You either need commons really out of position or have them in your hand to summon when you get the card. Or you’re trucking it around and stuffing your hand slowing down your draw and magic generation.

Greater Command is probably the best and all it does is extend Sunderved’s command range to four spaces. Not bad but not something to call home about either.

Then you have Fall Back. It’s necessary to allow Sunderved to retreat from a failed advance. Unfortunately, retreating from your opponent ends up weakening your chances of victory.

You see, nothing adds to the survivability of Sunderved’s forces while he’s charging headlong at his enemy’s face. So while he’s trucking across the battlefield, his opponent is raising walls and surrounding his army. Two health, while better than one, is still quite easy to take down in a single turn as players are apt to prioritize their own cards with two or greater attack. And once those wounds start landing, Sunderved can do nothing about them.

In fact, the fastest way to stop Sunderved is to get four wounds on him. Not a herculean task especially since you’ll have two or more turns while the goat tries to angle a good position on your summoner to accomplish this. With only three health left, the goat has to bleat and retreat and once he’s cowering on his own side of the battlefield, he’s significantly less of a threat.

And that’s been the story of Sunderved in nearly all battles. Rush forward with glory and fame filling your eyes, get man handled for a turn or two and run crying back home. Sunderved is a bully in the classic sense of the word. He’s all bluster and pose without anything to back up his big words.

Brute (1M-2W-2M-Knock Around)

My sister hates the brutes. I think they’re decent. You probably won’t pay for a lot of them, however, because that 2 magic could easily be 2 more warriors. However, they do give Sunderved a little bit of trickery. Opponents can sometimes forget that you can knock around your own units and you can fastball special Sunderved into the enemy’s face. Preferably with a Fall Back primed since for the manoeuvre to work you need to put 1-2 wounds on your summoner (a rare situation where the lack of a “may” in a seemingly positive ability turns out to be a negative). The 1 attack at 3 health isn’t a particularly popular statistical spread mostly because of how poor 1 attack is. However, keep them close to Sunderved and that’s easily a 2 attack at 3 health for 2 magic.

Unfortunately, their ability isn’t all that impactful. Positioning your brute to propel enemies in useful directions is far more clumsy than you’d imagine. They’re really good at punching enemies away but getting them to throw a helpless victim into the middle of your herd is far less likely. And if you’re just trying to keep an enemy away, the opponent can simply walk it back to place next turn especially since you have no other movement options to cover lanes.

They make good bodyguards for Sunderved. Alas, they are hard to get into position. This underscores the biggest issue facing a Sunderved assault. Moving all your pieces ends up being incredibly cumbersome and slow. You want to keep units around Sunderved to reduce the number of attacks that are directed his way. However, you also need to advance Sunderved to keep his warriors and rushers gaining his command boost. With only three movements per turn, you can’t move Sunderved and cover all his flanks. This is one of those primary issues facing aggressive factions that the Mountain Vargath revealed. It’s not just health that’s needed to keep a forward force to apply pressure against an enemy but mobility as well to get that force across the middle line.

And you aren’t going to use Brutes to overcome that issue. Their requirement to wound a unit to knock it around removes the natural health advantage of the Mountain Vargath commons. If they aren’t within range of Sunderved, their attack also has a non-insignificant 33% failure rate. And if you were relying on that knocked unit to cover Sunderved’s side then you’re in a massive heap of trouble.

So we’re looking at a rather unappealing stat line on an active ability that’s only relevant when the attack lands and doesn’t do a whole lot when it occurs in the first place. And it has limited utility outside of smacking enemies.

I don’t fault my sister for not being a fan.

Rusher (1M-2W-1M-Rush)

The rusher is as uninspiring as his name. He is, unfortunately, the only mobility option available to the Mountain Vargath. So, unless you’re relying on finding those Musters, these are the guys that can easily reinforce an active assault from your walls. Sadly, after their first turn, their ability essentially turns off. Kait loves nothing more than pitching these people across the field to perform hapless single dice attacks against her enemy. They’re great for being a diversion in that regard but unless she’s fighting one of the more fragile summoners like Endrich then these guys are rarely threatening.

They do benefit the most from Greater Command, however. That four space reach means that their constant forward charges can still pick up Sunderved’s bonus dice. However, their usefulness dramatically falls off as the enemy gets their walls raised and lanes blocked. Their mobility isn’t too difficult to work around and since you have such a limited window they never present an assassination threat.

They’re cheap, however, and can easily keep within Sunderved’s sphere of influence so maintaining them as 2 melee 2 health isn’t that rare.  They won’t be winning awards but they aren’t Vlox’s scrappers either.

Warrior (1M-2W-1M-Battle Frenzy)

Warriors are the most over powered common that no one talks about.

It’s funny. The Mountain Vargath warrior, on paper, is a beast. One magic for a unit that can, pretty easily, be a 2 melee or 3 if near Sunderved. With 2 health. By the numbers, this card should be absolutely broken. And yet, somehow, they seem unable to pull Sunderved from the bottom tier.

So what went so wrong?

For one, their bonus die is reserved for commons only. Yeah, champions are all the rage, but surely these guys can apply pressure before champions start dominating the field. Except, that bonus die isn’t applied to the enemy summoner either. So you need Sunderved right behind them if you want that scary 2 melee for 1 magic baseline. But if Sunderved is behind them then either he’s exposed or you’re already late into the game that champions are appearing. And late drawn warriors have a lengthy march to catch up to their fearless leader where they can be peppered by slings and arrows before they ever get to a face to smash.

Furthermore, these guys are pretty helpless against walls. Two attack isn’t fantastic against the nine health obstructions which your opponent is immediately going to crawl behind when they see the goats take the field. Your opponent knows that these guys are basically blank when on their own side and, because they are such a good unit if aggressive, your hand is basically forced by their presence. Woe to the Mountain Vargath that has to struggle through any early wall cards their enemy might throw down.

It’s almost a catch-22. Warriors are great so you want to use them and shape your strategy around maximizing their effectiveness. But because they are so good your opponent is going to avoid them and prioritize them. Unfortunately, there’s nothing to alleviate that pressure and Sunderved, as mentioned, has no preservation skills. They don’t have any tricks to get out a burst of crippling damage and they don’t have any sustain to survive a war of attrition. Worse still, they aren’t great on defence. You’re better off with rushers as at least they maintain their mobility.

I feel it’s necessary to point out they aren’t ranged here.

It was definitely a balancing decision to keep the Mountain Vargath from having really any range option. Sadly, they weren’t compensated with anything to make up this short coming. I think the designers erroneously felt that the extra bit of health would let them weather the first volley that a range attack grants. However, defensive archery units are quite capable at limiting retaliation angles so the lack of mobility hinders the Mountain Vargath yet again. They really needed more durability to survive the enemy’s defensive fire. While the designers gave them quite an astonishing amount of attack dice, they ended up being far too frail to leverage those attacks.

Growden (3M-6W-6M-Sunder Hammer)

Growden is the champion that you don’t want to play but you’re likely to keep in your hand just in case you need him. Nothing brings an assault to a screeching halt that one or two wall cards hedging a timid summoner in. Those nine health speed bumps are more then enough to stall a game for a proper defence to be summoned and for Sunderved to be surrounded. And it’s trivially easy to attack the Mountain Vargath if they attempt to siege a walled position given their lack of ranged pressure.

Growden can break that line. Two auto wounds is a sufficient barrage to rip down a wall in about three turns. His base three attack is also threatening enough that once those pesky walls are down he’s still a problem. He can even keep breaking down those obstructions while murdering the defenders. So why not summon him all the time?

Well, as mentioned, Sunderved is a common focused leader. He gains little to nothing from Sunderved and you want to be using his hefty six cost to play more rushers and warriors. He’s also not the best against other champions. The best of the elites have powerful abilities that make them even more threatening in a fight. Growden’s hammer won’t ever give him the edge in a head-to-head conflict with another champion especially if they can be reinforced through a summoner’s abilities or events.

He does address a problematic tactic, so in that case he’s useful. It just always hurts whenever I have to put him on the table.

Quen (2R-4W-5M-Chain Lightning)

Phew, Quen. You are the sole ranged option available in Sunderved’s base deck. And, consequently, you’re far more costly than other equivalent ranged champions in other decks. But since you’ve got a monopoly on bows, you’re begrudgingly worth the price.

It further hurts that the old girl demands more magic for her ability. But then she does have 4 dice at range which is enough to be a sizeable killing threat if she can have a safe corridor to advance on the enemy summoner. But that four health. Phew. So much for the goats being hardy. She needs almost as much protection as Sunderved.

But she can be quite the surprise if the enemy forgets that the goats can sling shots. She’s the champion I try to field the most and it is often to your benefit to chain lightning against two different targets if you can clear the board of the threats. Otherwise, she’s your best answer to other champions so you want to hold on to her until the first of the enemy’s chosen falls so you can retaliate with her electricity.

Unfortunately, your hand can get pretty clogged if you’re waiting with Growden, Quen and some events in your hand.

Torodin (2M-7W-6M-Trample)

You’d think that, given he’s the only champion with his own event, that Torodin would be some kind of monster. And yet, he’s easily the worst champion in Sunderved’s arsenal. He has the lowest attack of the group (if you take in the fact Quen can pay to double hers). Two attack on a champion is grossly lacklustre when you remember that the mighty warrior can have 2-3 depending on circumstances. To make up for it, Torodin has the mighty trample ability. He can pass through common units to inflict an automatic wound against them. Sadly, he has no improved movement capabilities so we’re looking at a single auto wound. On a common. You know, those units that your warriors are trained to murder wholesale.

And since he can’t trample champions, he’s straight up inferior to most in a head-to-head fight. He’s designed to combat the thing that the rest of Sunderved’s deck is design to combat but yet he ends up being worse at it. Use his 6 magic to get six warriors. They are better in nearly every way.

Build him and his awful event for magic.

I can’t help but find the Mountain Vargath interesting. Though their design ended up missing the mark, I feel they were on the right track. There’s a number of good ideas for making a hyper aggressive faction here. But to understand the difficulties facing aggression requires an intimate understanding of Summoner Wars more wonky attributes.

We all know the adage, “A good defence is a strong offence.” Sadly, this isn’t true (yet) in Summoner Wars. The nature of the game’s mechanics put a significant benefit on being defensive. It’s a combination of summoning off walls helps defenders more than attackers and the limitation of 3 moves and attacks a turn put a greater benefit to ranged units than melee. Wall summoning ensures that defenders can get their melee units into range on the turn they summon them – an advantage attackers sorely lack. Having to fight around their walls typically lets the defender determine attack avenues and limit options for their stronger units to get surrounded. And stopping to attack walls means that defenders get first strike when they summon defends to protect them.

And when assaulting units fall, it’s really hard to reinforce them. Unlike defenders, who can spawn infinitely from their walls (which can appear instantaneously away from crowding forces), attackers must march their units after their forward advance, often giving a free turn or two to finish off the first wave of weaken and destroy the reinforcements. This is even more dangerous for Sunderved who needs to be amongst his units to boost them to effective levels. Whenever a common falls, it opens up Sunderved’s flanks.

So what are hallmarks of a successful attacking force?

The nice thing about Alliances is that it’s a refinement of prior ideas and attempts. Moyra is essentially Sunderved 2.0. While Moyra’s presence only boosts one common, it also gives them a bit more movement to catch up with the rest of the force. She also has cherubim as her primary attacker, a unit with swiftness and slipperiness so that the little angels can catch up easily or wiggle through defenders to get into good positions. They’re ranged, so without Moyra’s influence, they have a threat zone of six spaces. That’s one more than the rusher and doesn’t put the cherubim out of position as it does the melee Mountain Vargath.

But having a stronger core unit isn’t the only advantage Moyra offers. Her defenders and blinding light toughens up the entire force, increasing survivability of the primary force and increasing the odds they can survive the inevitable counter attack. Moyra also intervenes on key units, taking the hits for them. She also has Father Benjamin to ease the pressure of the inevitable wounds that come her way to keep her presence on the front lines.

The other methods for more successful assaults are to overwhelm defenders with bonus movement and attacks like the Cave Goblins or to get forward summoning points that matches the defender’s wall advantage. Rallul can summon off his stone golems. Swamp Orcs are built entirely around overwhelming the enemy with vine walls to block summoning points and give them forward spawns.

So the Mountain Vargath serve an important point in design history for demonstrating that the bar for assaulting needs to be just a little higher. They were a valiant attempt, however. I can respect the design philosophy even if it came up short. I have more forgiveness for these earlier summoners as they tread new waters. It remains to be seen if their second summoners address these issues, however.

Well April is nearly upon us which means I’m going to be neck deep in work and wholly disinterested in emerging to post to this illustrious site. So, I have two options. Either I follow my co-contributors and politely ignore the Internet’s existence for four weeks or I prepare some entries ahead of time. Course, I normally don’t know what I’m going to write until the day that it’s due so I need some topic I can cover for four weeks that can be of some interest to someone out there.

As it so happens, Plaid Hat Games has started to preview eight new summoners for their card meets board game Summoner Wars. Hey, I remember doing this last year so let’s try this again!

We’re going to do something slightly different this time. Or, really, it’s something familiar. I’m going to be reviewing stuff that came out aeons ago and everyone has seen, experienced and forgotten. But I’m incessantly behind, like a cultural anthropologist dusting off ancient relics from a forgotten dig site. As I have mentioned, whenever I get some new Summoner Wars goodies, my sister and I immediately sit down for a tournament to gauge its usefulness. Well, this series is going to take a peek at some of the results of these tournaments.

Much like my review of the Alliances set, I’m going to be looking at eight factions and how they stacked against each other over two tournaments. First was the Master Set Throw-down wherein the six factions from the first big box of Summoner Wars battled against each other and two independent summoners for top billing. As with the Alliance Tournament, my sister and I rotated playing each faction against the other until a winner emerged.

Supplementing this result is the Mucho Grando Tournament where we had everything and the kitchen sink thrown into brackets to compete. Unlike the other tournaments, factions were seeded into rankings and a regular competitive format was followed, obeying double elimination rules. This tournament is notable in that factions didn’t fight everyone. Decks that hard counter others had the potential to entirely miss their strongest match-ups and created a very fortune driven competition.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that some factions did wildly different across the two matches. However, I’m glad to start off my review with one that was not. This faction was inspiringly consistent: they always came last.

Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you to the worst faction (across these two tournaments) in Summoner Wars: the Cloaks!

Having won a total of two matches across both tournaments, this placement is free of any controversy. The Cloaks have earned their dead last spot and participation award through blood, sweat and many, many tears.

But who are these noble losers? Why do they struggle so much? What is up with their summoner’s gagging collar? Let us dive into these pressing questions and get to the root of what makes a summoner bad in the unending war for Itharia.

The Cloaks come from the old guard – that first wave of releases which everyone likes to criticise. They have the hallmarks of the first forays into the game’s design. Is there catch-up events that trigger when you have fewer units that your opponent? You betcha. Is there built in common hate cards? Why, of course. Are there cards which no sane person would ever play and exist solely to be tossed into the magic pile? Well, the Pope poops in the woods, does he not.

I think the Cloaks were an attempt at a combo faction that was meant to rely on esoteric set-ups and trickery to snatch victory. In fact, they were probably meant to encapsulate the “assassination” style of play – wherein the opponent uses superior movement and abilities in order to isolate and deal a game winning number of wounds to his enemy before she is able to utilize a more traditional and board domineering strategy to regain control and strangle out a win. I mean, with events called Assassinate, Cloak of Shadows, Raid and Spy, how is the faction not suppose to represent this underhanded and roguish style? And is there truly any style more frightening than the omnipresent threat of losing the game from a single turn chicanery?

Well, yes. Turtling is more frightful and more successful. Assassination focused decks encourage turtling and generally lack any means to defeat it. A defensive player can generally keep themselves locked away behind impenetrable corridors stuffed with tough defenders or unshakeable walls. Perhaps more egregious, so worried were the designers of the effectiveness of assassination (since, you know, victory is actually only determined by the summoner’s death and no other metric) that Plaid Hat took every opportunity to make the Cloak’s natural playstyle as much an uphill battle as possible. And if there’s one problem that persists across the faction is a surprising dearth of high attack options in a faction that’s meant to strike hard, fast and fleeting.

And for the Cloaks, there isn’t any other avenue left to them. If they can’t get a shocking win in a one turn pile-up on the enemy’s summoner then they’re not ever going to win. Their results demonstrate this problem. They only ever managed a single win in either tournament, the sort of results you’d expect through sheer dice hate alone. The path to victory for the erstwhile rebels is mostly through devote prayer to a higher power and hoping your enemy is cursed with many 1s while you get nothing but 6s.

Vlox (2R-6W-Master of the Art)

Vlox is remarkable in almost how unremarkable he is. He sports the generic six health and two attack at range of the summoner line-up. Oddly enough, however, he’s rather expected to shoulder a lot of the assault despite lacking the additional health or attack that aggressive summoners generally sport. His strength lies directly in his ability. Master of the Art allows him to copy the ability of any Cloak unit on the board. This can create really strong combos. It can also mean that some turns he may be stuck with a Greater Sneak or Raid that can’t trigger because you were just curb stomped by a more effective opponent. At the very least, you choose during the event phase so you can summon whatever ability you want so long as you’re holding it in your hand or manage a lucky draw. It’s the sort of ability that has infinite scaling and is only limited by the releases Vlox can access.

It’s a good and necessary ability that would have been faction defining if it were in a deck that was more effective. Unfortunately, because there are so few decent tactics for the Cloaks, it makes their strategy a bit one note. Your enemy knows that you’re going to try and abuse the potential for Master of the Art and will do what they can to limit the effectiveness of Vlox while pinning him in and trying to force subpar mimicry. They don’t have all the information, however, so you can still pull some surprises against even the most attentive opponent. But the more wise your enemy is to your ways, the harder it gets to slip a scrapper by unnoticed.

His events aren’t awful, however. Though anyone sporting Magic Drain can hardly be considered to have terrible events. Yes, even in the Cloaks, Magic Drain is silly. There’s a bit of anti-synergy with the Cloaks as Vlox would like to have more units on the board in order to leave him as many options for Master of the Arts as possible but he also needs to have the threat of a double Magic Drain ruining an enemy’s planned counter attack. That said, Assassinate is great for taking out hardy commons – the biggest weakness that Vlox can face as he has little response for those. Assassinate is fantastic against the Filth since it not only eliminates a dangerous mutation but refunds the cost as well.

Just to give a comparison for Assassinate, however. Plaid Hat have just revealed a 2 magic cost event in the new Shadow Elf summoner repertoire. Not only does the Shadow Elf get to draw two cards when they play their paid for Event but they are also able to give every one of their units the ability to summon – for free – a unit from your hand if they manage to kill something that turn. Vlox, in comparison, can remove a single common. To make it even worthwhile, you’ll want to target a 2 magic or more card. Otherwise, you’re paying through the nose in order to open a firing lane.

Cloak of Shadows also costs 2 magic (essentially because why are you wasting this event on a common). It’s good since it means you can only be hit by dice rolls of 6 for a whole turn. And you’ll need to save it almost universally for Vlox after he’s managed to sneak his way into trouble.

Spy is fantastic if inconsistent. Being able to mess with the opponent’s draw is something we haven’t really seen at all in Summoner Wars which is unfortunate since it’s a powerful and interesting mechanic. But if you can’t get a pivotal champion in those five cards to pitch immediately into the discard, then there’s not a lot of advantage to be gained. Most events either have multiples in a deck or aren’t super important if one is discarded. Throwing walls to the bottom of the enemy’s draw is great but throwing garbage commons is rather disheartening.

Raid is fine and only held back by the criminally low number of thieves in Vlox’s deck. It can be used as a Greater Sneak substitute to get Vlox on a summoner or to get him to the back line in order to teleport out of the enemy’s territory if you’ve overextended, however.

Gunner (1R-1W-1M-Greater Sneak)

Gunners are pretty lame, I won’t lie. Rarely do you want to spend what precious magic you have on them. One attack is lackluster. One attack on a one health is pitiful. Greater Sneak can be great for assassinating but you’re not assassinating anything with a single dice. You’re pinging and praying. I generally try and keep one of my starting alive to give Vlox the option of a solo three extra spaces move. These gals just fold under pressure, however. And, sadly, there’s not a whole lot of anything in the deck to alleviate pressure on them. They’re your go to magic fodder.

Scrapper (1M-2W-1M-Blindside)

Scrappers are your surprise factor. They can help teleport a Cloak of Shadows Vlox right on to the enemy if you’re able to get one to the enemy’s back row. That is, of course, assuming you hit. With only one die (yet again), you have only a 66% chance of getting that wound that will let Vlox jump. If you whiff, then you have a weak, low health twit standing in the middle of enemy forces looking stupid. Sadly, this is your only option for a survivable Cloak common without dipping into second summoners and that extra health is sometimes worth praying on to get a little more utility in a second round. They aren’t particularly threatening, however. And don’t think that having other scrappers capitalize on Blindside is a threat. Three gentle one dice love slaps isn’t going to give anyone nightmares. Course, this threat would also require each successive scrapper to hit too. So, yet again, slap those hands together in prayer and hope you got a good 6 streak in you.

Thief (1M-1W-0M-Steal)

Thieves are probably the best common in Vlox’s deck. That’s kind of worrying when a zero coster is your only hope. Unfortunately, the base deck doesn’t have lots of thieves. Their lack of a cost is great for taking off pressure on your economy game. And if you’re able to get them to the back of the opponent’s board, they can do some damage to your opponent’s plans. Seriously, though, the Cloak player should choose what’s stolen at random instead of giving the opponent the option to just toss whatever useless common they have in their hand. At least then you could pray to pluck a key champion your enemy is saving for. Unfortunately, don’t expect to get many steals off. One health is easy to pick off and you don’t have much of anything to distract from raid runs. Your best bet is to summon off a forward wall, Raid down an empty corridor and then destroy your thief for a 2 magic swing.

It won’t win you a game, like ever, but you’ll feel better about yourself. That’s really the best victory you can hope for. These small victories. You are playing the Cloaks, after all. Oh, you can also copy a thief, move Vlox to the enemy’s back row and destroy yourself to spare the pain of actually drawing out games. That’s cool too, I suppose.

Dagger (2M-6W-6M-Backstab)

Alright, so the commons are duds. Maybe the champions make up for it. I mean, this wouldn’t be the only faction with awful commons that are made good by their champion line up. There are the Deep Dwarves who… no wait. Well how about the Benders… hm, nope. Or maybe the Guild Dwarves… no they have defenders. Hm, all the good decks have at least one good common. Weird.

But there’s Dagger! He continues the theme of hitting like wet ramen. He has an ability that gives him a bit more bite but is incredibly tricky if not impossible to pull off save for the most fringe cases. At least he has 6 health. Yeah, that’s a positive! Dagger has six health! And unlike the scrappers, his boots cover his toes! That’s two positives. He has average health and proper footwear! And have you checked out that codpiece? Man’s practically on the cutting edge of fashion.

Scam (2R-5W-5M-Escape)

Ah, Scam. You’re really the only other option for a Cloak victory. If your scrapper gambit is going to fail, Scam represents your alternative. Save as much magic as humanly possible, drop this guy to the board and run around being annoying with both Vlox and Scam fretting away your magic pile. Is it effective? Of course not! If it was, the Cloaks would win more than the rare game on a blue moon. But at least you can nettle your opponent. Nettle! That’s worth the price of admission.

Scam’s on the lower end for champions which is the best I can say about him.

Violet (2R-4W-4M-Whirling Blades)

Violet is literally the only good unit in Vlox’s forces. Two range for four magic is a pretty good deal. Sure, she’s paper, but that’s hardly something new for the Cloaks. She’s a decent candidate for Cloak of Shadows and a fantastic target for Vlox to copy. She’s not Satara levels of good but if I made a list of top champions, she could certainly squeeze in there on the bottom. That she can hit multiple units means she’s really going to do more damage than a two attack would normally. Course, her status as the only threatening thing to hit the board means she’s going to attract aggression way more than a three legged cat limping past a pack of starving wolves.

Don’t stare at her legs, though. She hates when people do that.

So, yeah. The Cloaks weaknesses are apparent and their strengths are obtuse. I’m not entirely certain what went wrong with them but their weaknesses are so ubiquitous that they have to be intentional. For whatever reason, Plaid Hat wanted a deck full of low attack, low health units with expensive events and situational powers. It’s the poster child of a drawback melting pot. Its designed path to victory is not only difficult in its own right but made even more difficult by the pieces that are suppose to accomplish it. The Cloaks don’t even struggle against specialized enemies. A simple 1 attack 2 health common will give the cloaks problems since they can’t kill it in one attack but their own units can die immediately to the counter attack. And this doesn’t even address the fact they have no answers to a strong champion focused game.

They don’t really have an answer for anything. An aggressive faction like the Cave Goblins will overwhelm the Cloaks with their additional attacks, movement and cheap bodies. The Cloaks will break against a defensive faction’s protections. And they have no way to protect themselves from other assassination attempts. Even the Alliances assassin wasn’t the greatest but Marek certainly has a lot more tricks than Vlox does for getting wounds on the enemy. Not to mention it isn’t too difficult to get three ranged attacks on Marek’s hunters against an enemy summoner.

So they don’t do anything well. They can’t respond to anything well. And… well… they just lose.

One thing not mentioned about my sojourn to Japan was the long hours reserved for myself away from friends and creature comforts of home. One of the defining element of our lives which we hardly pay much attention to (or too much depending on who you ask) is the importance of entertainment. Part of the whole idea behind the Industrial Revolution was to develop more leisure time for the average individual that they could enjoy personal pursuits and self-improvement without being enslaved to the daily toil of the farming life.

Which, given Victorian sensibilities, I can only assume is code for them trying to get people to stop drinking so damn much.

Well, unfortunately, I’m already on that Victorian bandwagon and am hardly going to fret away what few pounds sterling I have on something so ephemeral as alcohol. And in this glorious age of technology, we’ve done a pretty thorough job of expanding the options for amusement. Games, movies, television, songs and art are all available for a pittance with the connectivity of global telecommunications.

But despite the global reach, there’s still a strong regional influence. All of this is to say that there’s not a hell of a lot to do in Japan if you don’t like watching Japanese variety shows, observing Japanese baseball games or drinking in Japanese pubs. I didn’t have my precious computer either so most online options were restricted especially given Kait’s rather spotty Internet provider.

Thankfully, some of the local ALTs thought to band together and hold a boardgame night. Unfortunately, they did it once while I was there. However, it did remind me of the digital program for running the games I owned at home. Course, then I remembered that Kait hates the digital interface and won’t play with me on it.

So, the long and the short of it is I ended up spending a fair bit of time playing Summoner Wars by myself. How’s that for a rambling lead-in?

Yes, this is going to be another damn Summoner Wars post. Yes, this is mostly because I’m busy with other work and haven’t done much that’s exciting since coming home other than lie in bed and try to recover from this flu. Such is life.

Actually, if I’m being honest, my discourse today didn’t come quite as organically as I pretend. What truly got me thinking and poking around with the game systems of the heavily flawed game was the four hour bus ride to Hirosaki. I tried to download some Android app games to amuse us on the road only to find that most mobile games are utter trash. Sorry, that’s elitist. Most mobile games do not meet the stringent requirements of my refined tastes.

That’s better.

However, while we spent most of our time lobbing digital artillery in a free version of battleship, I remembered that one of the things I found fascinating with Derek’s smartphone (back in the day) was how he was able to play the boardgames we usually pulled out when I visited on his bus rides to and from work. I poked around what was available (read: free because I’m not convinced I’m going to use any app enough to warrant a purchase) and lo and behold Plaid Hat Games had a version of the game online. I gleefully downloaded it, then had the damn thing crash on my four or five times while I refused to register my Google account with its psychographic services.

I did manage to get it working… somewhat. I’d be more annoyed if I properly signed up for it and it was still this unstable. But I’m not here to review the software. Instead, playing the game repeatedly with only the Phoenix Elf summoner Prince Elien made me realize something important about Summoner Wars:

It’s a bad game.

I know, I’ve complained about its design before and at this point I’m unlikely to be selling anyone on it anyway. My continued discourse around it, once again, lies in my sister’s interest and the fact that it is so simple that analyzing it is much easier. It’s like learning to dissect a fetal pig before plunging wholesale into a dead body trying to figure out what killed it. I’ve listed the numerous issues that Summoner Wars has faced before. But it wasn’t until I was playing match after match against the AI and soundly trouncing it in games against decks and cards I’d never even seen before that I realized just how poorly the game is made. And we can argue subjectivity and whatnot until we are blue in the face but I can categorically state the game is bad on one objective criteria:

Summon Wars is highly unintuitive.

This is to say, the way to win at Summoner Wars is not the way you’d expect to play when you first look at the rules. Course, pick up any game and you’re not going to understand its intricacies or nuances, however the design of the game itself seems to underline the intent of its design. Perhaps I’m putting too much credit in the programmers hands, but when the official mobile app isn’t even programmed to play in a manner that would lead to victory it makes me think that the design itself is doomed to failure.

So what am I getting at? Simply put, Summoner Wars hates commons. It’s a game that, thematically, is meant to simulate a combat between opposing armies. But all of its gameplay elements discourage or outright punish you for fielding an army. Common units are the most prominent piece of a player’s deck and are easily the least valuable. Worse than that, they’re negative value.

It was rather remarkable, actually, watching the AI lob legion after legion of its own forces against my side churning into an unending meat grinder of points that skyrocketed me to victory no matter which opponent I set myself against. It didn’t even matter if I tried playing with my faction’s worst cards as the matches continued to be lopsided so long as I didn’t mimic the suicidal tactic of wasting all my resources on buying the rank and file soldiers of my deck. I couldn’t help but think how discouraging this must be for newer players to be presented a system, given a baffling rundown of how it works and then intuitively play over and over again in a manner that only assured defeat.

Seriously. Can you imagine what chess would be like if the very act of moving your piece towards your enemy was categorically losing option? If you, as an uninformed player, are told the rules of a game, the mechanics shouldn’t work against the general idea of how you expect to play.

So why do commons suck so much in Summoner Wars? A shorter question to answer would be “when do commons not suck?”

Let’s look at a basic component of the game to highlight the issue. The two primary combat phases–movement and attack–are both regulated by the same restriction: a player–unless a card specified otherwise–can move with and attack with a maximum of three cards per turn. Ok, seems harmless enough. Except, the goal of the game is to kill the enemy’s summoner, a card which is permanently on the board and in play. Given the short length of the board, the high value of the summoner and the importance of keeping her alive, you’re most likely going to be using one of your three precious movement/attack options on your summoner. There is no benefit to putting a unit on the board which you aren’t planning on moving or using for an attack since there are almost no passive abilities that give you a general benefit. Playing your summoner defensively is far easier than offensively since the situations that allow instantaneous reinforcement don’t usually happen on the enemy’s side. Thus, you’re able to use your summoner with far less risk than someone attacking. Thus you’re incentivized to play defensively…

Another issue with common units is that they’re just so fragile. The vast majority are one or two health and getting two or more dice on an attack is pretty easy. This is to say that your poor common is, on average, going to live one round. If you can’t hit with it that round then you’ve just wasted your magic summoning it. Ambushing units on your side makes it more likely that you can get into position than marching them across the enemy’s empty spaces. Thus, defensively you’re at an advantage and…

It just keeps piling up. The real nail, however, is in the game’s fundamental economy. The resource you have for using many of your events and summoning your units is magic. Magic is composed of the units killed by the forces you control or the cards dropped from your hand. Since you always draw up to five at the start of your turn, there’s really no reason for you to hold onto the numerous commons that make up your deck. Furthermore, putting them on the table costs magic and if they just turn around and die to your opponent then you’ve given them magic. Most commons cost one or two magic. Champions, on the other hand, cost around six. So they’re about a turn of discarding your hand, have double or even triple the attack and health of a common and usually have unique or stronger abilities in comparison too. Champions, with their larger life, are more likely to last more than one round so can make the treacherous crossing into the opponent’s territory. They have the attack value to actually do damage while alive too. They’re so expensive you’re not likely to have many out at the same time and since there’s a limit on unit movement and attack, it’s hard to deal with them strictly through commons on the enemy’s side. Especially without using more magic to do so.

Champions are better in every way. They have a downside, of course, and that’s their cost. All decks in Summoner Wars have 32 cards (2 walls, 9 events, 3 champions, 18 commons) in them so that puts a hard limit on the amount of magic a player can generate in an entire game. If you only want to summon champions and let’s say you want to summon all three, you have to devote 18 magic to them. Using your own cards to build magic is the most assured way to get your magic so you’re devoting over half your deck to summoning those champions. And that’s not even taking into account any of the 9 events you may want to play or your 2 walls buried in there as well.

Let’s do some math!

3 Champions at 6 Magic = 18 Magic

32 Deck – 18 Magic = 14 Cards

14 Cards – 2 Walls – 3 Champions – 9 Events = well I’ll be damned.

So, in conclusion, Summoner Wars restricts the number of commons you can use per turn and makes them compete with higher valued champions and summoners. It designs them to be fragile and unable to compete with champions and summoners in a one-on-one engagement or even with each other. It then forces you to decide whether you want those commons in the first place or would you rather have the economy to afford those game winning champions. Because every common you put on the field is a common you have to kill of your opponent’s if you want a champion.

And if he’s saving up for his own champions then… well…

But this isn’t all doom and gloom. I’ve been working on an idea.