I am one of those people who does not get along with dice. I can break averages but never in my favour. If my only loss condition is four ones in a row, I can expect to get those four sequential rolls. I have a personal motto when dealing with this type of “dice hate.” I always assume my opponent will hit every attack and I’ll miss all of mine. It may be a pessimistic outlook but at least I’m never shocked by terrible outcomes.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that another of my favourite factions from the Summoner Wars Alliances master box is the Fallen Phoenix. A brief summary of this guy would be “Prince Elien done right.” Now, neither my sister nor I own original Elien and we have not played on the iOS so we’ve been spared the apparent frustration that the original Phoenix Elves inspire. Part of the draw and, consequently, part of the frustration of that parent faction is their entire identity is built around bypassing the inherent chance of Summoner Wars. They are the primary faction to feature the precise ruleset. How precision works is simple: instead of rolling dice to wound you automatically inflict a number of wounds equal to the number of dice you would roll. Thus, if my character has three attack and precision then he auto-wounds three times every time he swings.

As you can imagine, this is strong. This is especially good against cards who are design around being hardier than normal. Toughness and lumbering are useless abilities when faced against precision. It’s Satara levels of power without her one in three chance of flubbing. This makes some match-ups against the Phoenix Elves very one sided. On the other hand, they fare less well against factions like the Tundra Orcs who have abilities like sluggishness. Overall, however, it’s a net gain and the surety of knowing how your wounds will be allocated is an incredible boon for the savvy summoner.

Thankfully, Immortal Elien did not fall into this trap. The Fallen Phoenix have very little honest precision in their deck. Instead, they revolve around Elien’s Will–the summoner’s ability that allows the player to spend magic in order to increase die results. The Fallen Phoenix will give you your accuracy but it comes at a cost. As a player, you need to weigh the pros of turning a miss into a hit and whether those will outweigh the damage you’ll inflict on your economy. Most times, I would say it does not. However, you’ll be glad for the ability when you spend two magic to inflict the last two wounds on your opponent for victory. For, you see, the true evaluative cost is over how much you will spend to win the game. And, as American healthcare demonstrates, there is no limit to what one will pay for a life.

Except Elien does have a limit of a three magic total each time dice are rolled. So, technically, if you roll all ones on a four attack card, you’re not going to be making them full hits. Now, by my reading of this, each card has a separate attack so you can trigger his ability as many times as you trigger abilities and attacks in the Attack Phase. So, should I be truly rolling in the dough, I could spend nine magic across my three attackers. Should some of those be Harbingers and Warriors, I can spend even more to activate their abilities. Furthermore, Immortal Elien can increase die results on his opponent’s turn. For the most part, this isn’t a boon unless you want to debate the damage you can do with a successful Magic Burn skeleton death.

Truly, the best part of this mechanic is that it’s–theoretically–the same as precision but functionally it’s far more interesting. It leads to lots of hard decisions for the Fallen Phoenix player. And I’m all about directing the game towards more hard decisions. It’s an effective design too, by our measures, and saw the Fallen Phoenix edge the Swamp Mercenaries out in the tier rankings. I’m mostly surprised with how happy I was with the deck and its concepts even with its insane lack of ranged options. And though my power comes at a cost, it’s always intriguing to see just how much I’m willing to spend on it.

Immortal Elien (3R-4W-Elien’s Will)

Immortal Elien returns as the only summoner to offer the existential crisis of fighting oneself without requiring a mirror match. I’m curious over the metaphysical implications of the Fallen Phoenix matching against the Phoenix Elves but I’ll leave the discourse over wrestling one’s inner demons to the philosophers. The one thing consistent with Elien is that he’s a paper kitten. Four wounds is very easy for all factions to apply in one turn. This is a summoner that you need to baby. The three attack is a misdirection–you will almost never use it. It’s great that Immortal Elien can exert his will across the entire battlefield because if he had a range restriction like Endrich or Moyra, he’d be all but unplayable. Clearly, one of Immortal Elien’s weaknesses is his vulnerability to swarms and being rushed. But since he’s partnered with the Fallen Kingdom, he isn’t held back by early loses. Quite the contrary, Immortal Elien relishes his own casualties.

Immortal Elien, much like Glurblub, has a weak economic game but he was one nevertheless. His event suite is a grab bag of good and awful. The good ones are really good. The bad ones never saw a single play in our tournament despite my sister and my best efforts.  Starting with the worst, Forced Conversions is such a situational card that it is hard to actually imagine it ever having an effect. In order to trigger, you need a cultist you control adjacent to an enemy common schmuck at the start of your turn. In essence, it’s a punishment for the opponent failing to kill the cultist. However, it’s your lowest attacking common so unless you’re rushing with Helkar, they aren’t really part of your force in the first place. To further compound the issues with it, you can’t even be assured the unit you sacrifice your cultist for will even be able to attack anything of value.

But it gets precision so that’s something.

Purge you have three but since all your units are melee it’s hard to use it without hitting something you’d rather not. Or you’re getting few wounds from the target. Once more, it’s mostly a punishment for an opponent failing to kill a unit with their own melee attacker. The only positive thing I can really say about both Purge and Forced Conversion is that both destroy your unit so you get the target back as magic. Yeah, they’re nothing you’ll be writing home about and if you can’t play them in the incredibly niche circumstances when you draw them, you just build them anyway.

Which means that your third event, Burnt Sacrifice is typically reserved for dredging From the Ashes back. This is the weak economy engine which Elien has. If you play both your From Ashes, you get a saving of four magic from the summons. Get two more Burnt Sacrifices and you’re looking at eight. Plus, you recycle two units for the sacrifice so it’s a little better. This isn’t the sort of economic game that will win matches but it helps to ease pressure off the fact the faction has no cheap options. Overall, Immortal Elien’s event suite is rather weak in comparison to many others but he the big draw is his ability itself.

And speaking of his Will, it’s hard to really gauge how much magic you’ll spend on it in a game. In most circumstances, I pass on increasing a die result. The most tempting ones are the rolls that are off by one. Even then, it’s often better to save the magic. However, when you do end up using Elien’s Will, it will be in those circumstances when it’s really necessary. It’s hard to evaluate the worth of an ability that can force a Warrior’s jump to an important lane block, the conjuration of a burning skeleton that can get the finishing blow on a cowering summoner or triggering a cultist’s cursed blade to cut down an enemy’s expensive champion. And I like that it isn’t something that needs to be used every turn. That it will make the Fallen Phoenix player pause and debate is enough for me to consider it a good mechanic. And for someone like me who is constantly cursed by reticent dice gods, being able to will a result I need is  priceless.

Cultist (1M-3W-2M-Cursed Slash)

Cultists are, in my opinion, kind of meh. I can see their usefulness in a deck built around them but as just a throw away unit in Immortal Elien’s deck they leave a lot to be desired. All of Elien’s commons are priced the same which makes evaluating their effectiveness a little easier. In the cultist’s case, he sacrifices attack for extra health. However, if you roll a six on his attack (or want to throw the money at a three result), he can do an unexpected three damage. Often, this will kill himself in the process and deny your opponent the magic while giving you a bit of a refund. It isn’t a huge momentum swing but it is a net gain for the Fallen Phoenix overall.

And they do get better with Helkar. Every additional die they cast is another chance for hitting that six. More than that, a two attack with three health for two magic is a pretty good savings and having the cult leader to jump them around is always nice. I don’t usually run this strategy since you either need Helkar to come up before a lot of your cultists, have a lot of cultists on the field or be saving your From Ashes resurrections for cultists. In most games, I fail to meet any of these requirements. I’ll summon the odd one but really their standout feature is they’re slightly harder to kill than Harbingers and Warriors so unless you desperately need something tanky immediately, I usually use them for fuel.

Harbinger (2M-2W-2M-Burning Conjuration)

I like Harbingers. Probably more than I really should. I’ll often try to trigger their ability over using my From the Ashes. I don’t care. I just love the psychological effect of tearing down two or three enemy units and replacing them with fiery undead. It’s really easy for an opponent to start losing faith when your forces double for no magic investment on your part.

That said, their conjuration is pretty bad. Skeletons almost always die on the enemy’s turn before you get any use from them. Thus, they’re kind of a bad idea because they just fuel my opponent’s economy. However, if you can get Magic Burn to trigger–especially if you don’t have to spend money for it–they are incredible. I simply love that the skeletons leave your opponent with two bad decisions. Either they ignore the two attack conjuration and get clawed on their next turn or they try and remove it and thus waste time not dealing with the actual summoning threat–the Harbinger–and running the risk of ruining their own economy in the process. The one win I talked many moons ago against Marek when “the stars aligned against her,” yeah it was against this deck and it was burning skeletons that kept draining her magic pool so she couldn’t even use escape to flee my forces. Don’t expect it to happen, but at a fifty percent chance to return to your conjuration pile, these guys can do a decent chunk of damage to your opponent’s game plan. I’ve been known to throw them a bit of magic on their death to help that process along as well.

Unfortunately, the biggest issue with Harbingers is that the burning skeletons aren’t tied to them but their summoner which means they have little export value. They can see some use under Queen Maladaria but for the most part, I feel they’re an Elien staple and little else. And though spending one magic to get a skeleton out is the expected cost for the conjuration, you don’t want to make a habit of it since the whole point of the ability is to be “cost efficient.” That said, if the Harbingers aren’t summoning you undead, they’re kind of a bum unit. They don’t withstand attack and if you don’t have the skeletons to distract, they’re prime targets for your opponent to focus.

Warrior (2M-2W-2M-Hellfire Step)

The warrior is as equally uninspired in naming as his fellow cultist. However, I find these guys make the major thrust of your attack forces. Their Hellfire Step is important for offering the maneuverability of other factions while also serving as important bodyguards for the inevitable rush downs that Immortal Elien faces. Sadly, the warrior can’t step then attack but they can sometimes catch your opponent off-guard by killing a common on one side of the board then reinforcing your forces on the other. Furthermore, they have a tendency to be overlooked compared to Harbingers so if you have some skeletons rising up, likely your warriors will be the ones angling into position. But even more so than the Harbinger, I won’t pay to trigger their ability unless that step is necessary to stay alive in the game. They become incredibly cost inefficient if you ever have to pay to step even once so try to avoid it at all costs. Alas, with the faction’s lack of ranged attack, it will often feel like you’re out of position and all you’ve got is a lucky roll from a warrior to correct that.

Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and pay the piper. That said, if I were to start tweaking Immortal Elien’s deck, I would probably look at replacing warriors first. The hard part, however, is that the Fallen Phoenix events can be finicky once you get out of including cards that count as both Fallen Kingdom and Phoenix Elves. And they have value in fulfilling both those triggers alone. They’re a solid but not a stand out unit and that’s about it.

Helkar (1R-8W-6M-Leader of the Cult)

I got very little use from Helkar. As mentioned alongside the cultists, I found very few games where I wanted to invest in her strategy. The few times I did, Kait did an excellent job of nullifying Helkar and making her a huge investment in the most annoying pellet gun. In a deck that’s swimming in cultists, I can see the appeal but since the Fallen Phoenix cultists leave a little to be desired in the first place, Helkar gets shoved to the side more often than not.

However, of all the champions, if you draw her early she’s the one most worth carrying between rounds until you can afford her. Between her summoning cultists and hellfire stepping warriors, you can be surprisingly mobile and bring the front line to your opponent faster than they may otherwise be prepared.

Hellfire Drake (3M-9W-9M-Greater Hellfire)

For an ability with the word greater in it, Hellfire Drake certainly got the short end of the stick compared to his older brother. Don’t expect to use his ability often. Statistically speaking, you need two enemies beside him for it to be more advantageous than just regularly attacking. So you’ll be saving the auto-wounds for either Lumbering foes or desperate turns where your drake is going to be overwhelmed and murdered in the next turn. He’s a huge investment and probably not one that Immortal Elien wants to make very often. He seems like he was designed more for Ret-Talus and his events that can summon champions on the cheap than something where the Fallen Phoenix will get much mileage. I mostly played him in my games just to get a feel for his potential than to actually win me a match. Nine health is intimidating but it also never lasts as long as nine magic investments would typically be worth. Barring extraordinary circumstances, I’ve always felt it was better to just build the drake for magic. And really try to resist throwing  it out while you’re winning for bragging rights–that’s a tactic that can easily turn matches away from your favour.

Karthos (2M-5W-5M-Wrathful Dead)

Of all the champions, Karthos gets my vote for the Fallen Phoenix’s best. He’s at my favourite five magic sweet spot even if technically he’s overpriced by one magic for what you’re getting in return. He costs you both an attack and you have to pay the cost to summon back one of your units. Because that summoned unit doesn’t get any movement, it’s quite likely that you aren’t hitting much. Note, this makes cultists awful targets since you can’t trigger their cursed slash while they have precision. However, what Karthos does really well is block lanes and keep Immortal Elien save behind an ever replenishing wall of commons.

The other note to remember about Karthos is he only digs in your enemy’s graveyard. So he’s near useless in the early game when your opponent may not have many of your troops occupying his discard pile. On the other hand, he’s crazy good against Ret-Talus and Mad Sirian as he can steal their units for you so if you know you’re going to be facing them, he’s probably a smart include. Ultimately, with him being my personal pick of the bunch, it should go without saying that of all the areas the Fallen Phoenix struggle in, it’s with their champions. If you have deck building options, this is the first place I’d address.

However, there’s not a whole lot that is really necessary for Immortal Elien laying in his parent faction pools. There’s a few options that can work but nothing that makes you look at them and get excited. There’s no obvious Satara here. Corpse Wyrm can be good if you want to be really aggressive. Anica is decent if you want to threaten more of the economy game. Fire Drake is always good (if expensive). Laleya is just generically decent. And… ummm… Skhull? I guess? Neither the Phoenix Elves or Fallen Kingdom are really known for having spectacular champions and the Fallen Phoenix demonstrate that.

It’s just another example of pushing the common focus game. And Immortal Elien wants there to be commons. The easier things are to kill, the more chances he has to trigger From the Ashes and Burning Conjuration. The more he can bring up skeletons and jumping warriors to scare his enemy into making poor decisions, the better he does. Immortal Elien doesn’t really do well against strong rushers or turtlers, however. I suspect in the grand scheme of things, he’ll probably end up being a sort of middle of the pack faction. While his minor economy game and consistency puts him above the Alliance decks, I think he’ll routinely struggle against the classic top decks and mechanics.

Which is fine. If the Fallen Phoenix are the new standard for mediocrity than they’re a good baseline to achieve. And at least now that they’re a little more undead they can stop looking like plastic mutant people.