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.