It’s here!

How apropos that I only recently did a rant about Summoner Wars 2.0 and its art. Because Plaid Hat Games has now announced the forth coming release of the game’s reboot. I’m pumped. Possibly more pumped than I should be. However, it’s been a rainy few days here and my head’s been sore. So really, I’ll latch on to whatever ray of sunshine I can grab. Thank you very much.

There’s not a whole lot to discuss from the announcement. They’ve posted some pricing tiers which don’t make a lot of sense. However, it’s early morning for me as of this writing so maybe once I’ve shuffled off the fog of drowsiness, I’ll be able to parse it better. However, along with the announcement they have given some sneak previews of a faction launching with the master set. It appears there will be six different groups in the main big box which makes me even more stoked! This was exactly what I wished for the original Summoner Wars. That was apparently released twelve years ago. Can you imagine? Time flies.

So with Summoner Wars 1.0, the game first launched with two duo faction boxes. You could choose to have the goblins versus the dwarves or the orcs versus the elves. I actually came to the game late, after it’s first “master box” set was released with six factions and I’m glad I did. First, six gives a good variety of gameplay that the single box can deliver it’s value of fun immediately. Second, each of these boxes comes with a board, set of dice, wound markers and the like which gets way too redundant if you want to purchase everything. I kept to the two large boxes and army expansion packs. So I never got to play those first four starting armies.

Anyway, I’ll spare my keen eye observations for this first round of news for later as there are a bunch of cards for me to clumsily review as well as speculation over what some of the new iconography means.

More important, however, there is a demo for their digital release and I’ve played a quick few rounds of it to get a sense of the core gameplay changes.

I must say, I’m liking what I see.

The demo is a curious conflict of Cave Goblins versus Benders and right of the bat, I really like the art direction for the new Benders. I personally lamented the lack of more Asian inspired flair on the original release despite the heavy insinuation in the game’s sparse lore that they were meant to be Asian inspired. So this new art is giving some much needed variation in its design. Anyway, art critiques later.

Let’s discuss gameplay!

First thing I noticed: Summoner health values are off the charts. 11 and 13 are crazy and I’m going to assume these are on the low end of the scale. Second thing I noticed, walls have been renamed gates. No! We’re not discussing fluff changes. Hm, your starting gate is 10 health but your “event” gates are only 5. Interesting. Wait, and there’s no more event phase. But, it looks like events are locked to different phases now. That’ll probably help with balance and hopefully open up some new design. It’s still the standard move three and attack with three units a turn. That’s fine.

Abilities are a little clunky in their wording but I’m going to assume that’s due to a standardization of game text. For example, Relentless on the Slingers could definitely be worded more efficiently but we’re working around game terms of “may” “extra attacking unit” and whatnot. Hm, those Slingers have insanely good cost value. A two ranged attack, one health for zero mana? Oh woof, Blarg’s text. I suppose we have generic tokens now to represent game effects? That’ll be cleaner too.

Ohhhh! Players start with magic now. I think this means that there’s a separate magic token counter divorced from the cards. It was cute and efficient to use cards as your magic “pool” in the base game but certainly led to peculiarities in game design. I like this change, especially giving a starting pool to the players means the first turn isn’t so hobbled. This will make starting setups more important, however, as your initial draw can suddenly have a far greater impact if you are able to reliably summon and attack with units.

Deck size is 25. That’s… curious. Smaller than it used to be. I’m assuming its still 3 champions per deck. Oh, and there’s four commons instead of three standard too. The summoning cost on these first two decks is much lower for commons. Champions are, on average, a little higher. Perhaps this will emphasize common play more. There appears to be inevitability. Not attacking during the Attack Phase causes your summoner one damage. That’s… less than ideal. Some mechanic is required to prevent players from stalemating themselves. This is the easiest implementation but I would have liked to see something more elegant with a core game mechanic change.

Oh well, at least something is there.

Oh my the dice are different. That’s… interesting. I’m not certain what to make of these symbols. But it appears that melee attacks have a higher chance of hitting than ranged. That’s a curious method of balancing the two. I kind of like it. I’m not sure what to make of this squiggle symbol. Does it represent like a power trigger? Hard to read into it with these two base decks, considering only the Benders interact with it in a tangential way that’ll I’ll cover in the Bender review.

Wow, gates can be built adjacent to your summoner! That’s an interesting way to pump aggressive play. It seems you can’t build a gate on the center lines without a summoner nearby either? I like that.

This is certainly an interesting tease for the game. Without the rulebook, this is a fair bit of guesswork for how the rules have changed, which is why you’re getting this stream of consciousness review. However, it looks more intuitive than the first game. And if you’ve played Summoner Wars 1.0 then this definitely feels very familiar. It looks like it’ll play how the original Summoner Wars was envisioned from my first examination. Wait, let me try killing my own units. Hm, it appears that the option to attack your own units at all has been removed. Bummer.

Also, this AI is pretty dumb. I’ll probably win even with all this testing. And there he goes suiciding into my forces.

Alright, well I think a summary of my initial observations might be good:

• Core game mechanics remain. You build gates. You summon units and move across the board. Attacks are dice based and your goal is to reduce your opponent’s Summoner to 0 health.
• Gates are both more constrained in their placement and more strategic. Can’t place in the centre of the board but you can place adjacent to your Summoner. Forward control of the board allows aggressive factions to push their momentum by giving forward summoning locations. However, non-starting gates are much easier to destroy.
• Events are no longer their separate phase. Instead, specific events are played during specific phases. They appear to be weaker than the original game but it’s hard to judge off two decks. Also, they can have a mana cost. So there are numerous levers for controlling an event’s power. They also do not have the Summoner’s portrait on them. Are they no longer tied to their faction’s summoner? Possible to deck build with different events? Could explain their weakening.
• Movement and Attack Phase are largely unchanged. However, units have undergone a complete rebalancing. Almost better statistics across the board. Commons are cheaper with greater health and attack. Health values are much improved while attack values have seen less increase. This will possibly make matches last longer though investment in commons will probably be better as there is a greater chance they survive more than one turn. Champions, conversely, appear to have their abilities drastically reduced while their stats have remained very similar. This is a huge push for common gameplay to be the core gameplay.
• You can still discard your cards for magic after combat. No apparent change here.
• Thank god the Draw Phase is at the end of your round! This was a houserule I’d implemented and it does wonders for speeding up the damn game. Perhaps the best change overall! And that’s not entirely a joke.

While this isn’t as large an overhaul as I was expecting, this is certainly good changes that should help revitalize this wonderful game that I love. And the fact that it’s going to have a digital release that will *fingers crossed* be much better supported can maybe mean I’ll be able to play it more often than around the Christmas holidays!

I’m not saying I’m preordering the game this very second. But I will say that I’m very tempted. Congrats, Plaid Hat, you’ve exceeded my expectations.