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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Renewable economy, Malenatar’s got it.

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

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

Multiple attacks – Malenatar’s got it.

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

Mobility – Malenatar’s got it.

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

Additional heath – Malenatar’s got it.

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

Powerful champions – Malenatar’s got it.

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

Victory – Malenatar’s got it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then there was Saturos.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well this sort of crept up out of nowhere.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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