So, it’s been awhile. Kait and I have been very busy. Derek hasn’t been seen for years. Thus, our blog has sort of been neglected for a bit. For that, I am sorry. We’re working on something… that should be announced soon. Hopefully. It’s been taking a lot of time and we’re desperately short on that resource.

However, I have something to share today. If you’ve come for gaming news, you might have noticed that I talked quite a bit about Summoner Wars here. Well, for those not up-to-date, Summoner Wars is dead. The company that made it has retired the game after releasing the last second summoners for the factions that hadn’t received it. It was perhaps a touch bittersweet. I’ve been playing and thinking about Summoner Wars for a couple of years and now it is finished. The cards, of course, still exist and we can play it at any time but there’s something to be said for the excitement of new releases.

On the other hand, however, Summoner Wars had some issues which I’ve discussed. It was a flawed little gem. It was fun, different but held back by intrinsic design flaws that could never truly be designed around. In some sense, it was like Team Fortress 2.

Unlike Team Fortress 2, however, Plaid Hat Games has announced a sequel.

Alright, that’s a lie. Plaid Hat has done no such thing. But they have released a new game that contains a number of similarities that it’s hard to not draw a line between the two products. I’m talking about Crystal Clans and I’m excited to share some of my initial thoughts with you about the game.

Crystal Clans represents a first for me. It released in March and I’m talking about it in June! That has to be a record for relevancy from me. Typically I’m a year or more behind on the latest hotness. Three months makes me almost cutting edge! It’s also the first game I’ve purchased sight unseen. I typically like to try things before I buy them. I’m a cautious consumer and hate “wasting money.” Anything I get needs to be used enough for the purchase to be worthwhile. So if it’s something that isn’t enjoyable I’ll still feel a compulsion to play it.

Which makes things difficult if the game is two player.

I had been meaning to hit up a boardgame cafe and try Crystal Clans. I was eager about it when Plaid Hat announced it almost a year ago. Unfortunately, there’s been very little floating around after its release so I was a touch nervous committing to my purchase. But I recently bit the bullet and here we are.

Consequently, I haven’t put enough time into the game to provide a proper review. You’ll have to wait for that whether you want it or not. What I can do is talk about my initial reactions and feelings. Because those are valuable, right?

Let’s start off with a general overview. Crystal Clans is a competitive two player battle card game that involves moving your cards across a board. Each deck represents a unique clan with their own heroes and units. Sounds familiar right? Crystal Clan’s relationship to Summoner Wars is both a blessing and a curse. It offers a level of familiarity that puts off those originally unsatisfied by the predecessor and lures in those that wanted a bit more of the same.

However, outside of its superficial qualities, Crystal Clans is very much its own game.

For one, there is no enemy summoner. In Summoner Wars, the game was one only once the commander of your opponent’s army was killed. In Crystal Clans, you are fighting with your opponent over the game’s namesake. There’s a dozen or so crystal cards (sorry, I don’t actually have the game beside me and I’m too lazy to get up and count them) that form a deck, three of which are ever available for acquiring. To get these crystals, you must march your little armies out and hold two of three special crystal spots on the board, king-of-the-hill style.

And when I say army, I don’t mean some strange metaphorical extraction of game pieces into a fantastical representation. You can literally stack three of your units into one cohesive force. This adds their defence and attack together, while also slowing the battalion down by the most sluggish unit amongst the lot. However, only the top card of the stack benefits from its unique ability (generally speaking). Thus, there’s some strategy to how you organize your units. For example, if you’re the Meteor clan, you probably want your Titan Knights leading charges across the battlefield because they reduce the activation cost of your battalion while they lead. But once you reach the frontlines, you want to swap things around so that your Citadel Knights benefit from both their tactical expertise and allow you to trigger the clans unique ability, Prediction.

But it’s not just stacking your units that is a massive departure from the Summoner Wars formula. Your deck is only composed of units. There are no events in this game so everything can be thrown on the board. There’s also no dice. This may seem like combat is a boring deterministic affair where the person who draws the best squad first wins. However, when two armies meet, both players must play one card from their hand (or their deck if they are unfortunate enough to have no hand). These units now act as battle cards and each unit in your deck has different effects depending on the relationship of the symbols played between you and your opponent.

There are three types of battle cards. I don’t really care what Plaid Hat calls them, they’re the Bull, Turtle and Fox. Generally speaking, Bull battle cards add attack to your squad. Turtle adds defence to your squad. Fox does random things. But there’s more interaction between these types for each battle card has two effects whether its played against its antagonist symbol or not. One effect is typically stronger than the other. Bull (attack) beats Turtle (defence). Turtle (defence) beats Fox (random). And finally, Fox (random) beats Bull (attack).

It’s an interesting sort of guessing game wherein you’re trying to either wipe out your opponent or save your stack while figuring out what your opponent is going to play. There’s an emphasis here on attack that makes exchanges generally a bloody affair. There’s a reason for this: it makes the game all about the cost of exchanges.

For there’s a very interesting mechanic that separates Crystal Clans not just from Summoner Wars but most other games I’ve ever played. The economy of Crystal Clans is built and played out by a shared initiative track. Whenever you summon a unit, you pushed the little crystal down the track towards your opponent. Once it passes a neutral band, your turn ends and your opponent’s begins. It’s a fascinating exchange wherein the more you spend, the more you give your nemesis. Expensive turns produce explosive counter plays. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that conservative play will rule. The specialized design of the clans means some benefit from rushing while others want to slow down and grind things out. Furthermore, crystal scores are highly expensive acts, costing upwards of eight or nine initiative to snag a crystal. Lastly, ignoring crystals and constantly butting heads means you’ll eventually run out of your deck. When that occurs, you shuffle your discard and make a new draw deck but your opponent gets a free crystal without needing to pay or control two zones.

And every action costs you. You want to draw cards? That’s three initiative. Want to move your units. Depending on your battalion, that’s one to three initiative. Attacking requires spending initiative (unless you perform it at the end of a move). You can also force your opponent to discard cards if you control their home zone but this action also costs you three initiative.

There’s a strange flow in this initiative passing that I haven’t quite wrapped my head around. Intuitively, it makes sense to try and leave your opponent with as little initiative as possible. But sometimes a large summon can force your enemy to spend more to respond to it. In fact, because drawing cards requires spending initiative, I feel that the game is less about favourable economic exchanges in terms of summon costs but more about economic exchanges in terms of card usage. If you can win a battle using two units to your opponent’s three, then you can force them to draw more than you. Do that enough times and they’ll run out of deck and you’ll get a free crystal.

Alternatively, if you score three crystals, then you effective put your opponent on a timer. If they run out of deck, you’ll automatically win when they have to reshuffle and claim the fourth and final required crystal. There’s a tempo here that’ll take time to understand and utilize and it’s one of the things that leaves me most excited for Crystal Clans.

As I’ve said, Kait and I have only just begun to play the game. Of all the changes to the Summoner Wars formula, I feel the biggest is in Crystal Clan’s simplicity. Summoner Wars struggled with some fairly counter intuitive mechanics and play elements like killing your own units for economy and the dangers of crossing the middle line due to reinforcement and board control based on wall plays. In this regard, Crystal Clans makes sense. You want to rush your units out and claim those crystal zones. You want to win battles. You want to beat your opponent’s units. The hardest thing to grapple, outside of learning the strengths and weaknesses of six fairly unique decks, is figuring out when to do these. Winning a big battle and taking board control is great but if you score a crystal without a hand, you could open yourself up to a rather brutal counter attack as you have no control over your battle card plays. Learning when to discard cards in your hand, when to replenish, when to push and when to score definitely takes some time.

I’m happy to say, however, that the game doesn’t feel as unfair. Without dice, there’s always a sense that you could have done something else to take back the match. There’s still some element of luck. You can’t control what crystals are available for claiming. You can’t control what order your cards come up in your draw pile. But really outside of that, it’s all on you. And at least for now, it feels a lot more fair.

Hopefully later I’ll be able to go into more detail about the clans, once I have more experience playing with them. But I’m excited that I could spend a whole post just talking about the mechanics without any mention of all the unique cards or the clans special mechanics. Each one changes a fundamental aspect of the game and while some are certainly far better than others, that they give each clan an identity is great design.

Plus, Plaid Hat Games has announced six new clans to be released at a future date so there will be plenty more Crystal Clans to discuss in the months to come!