Last but certainly not least, our Summoner Wars 2.0 relaunch concludes with my estimated strongest faction from the box. It’s a classic tale of good versus evil here, with dusting off the old and making them shiny and new. Last time, we saw Sera Eldwyn return better than ever. Her time in the spotlight, however, is short lived. 

Because most improved has got to go to old Ret-Talus. 

Old Ret-Talus was a snotty little punk with far more bark than bite. As ruler of the undead, Ret-Talus liked to play in his graveyard. Naturally, as everything ends in the grave, to compensate for this strong ability, the old Fallen Kingdom units were very expensive for what they did. The design was meant to be the other side of the same coin with Sera: attrition based faction designed to wear down your opponent. But whereas Sera healed her units and kept them in fighting form, Ret just pulled his back again and again.

Well, Sera does that now. So thematically and mechanically, the pair are tied even closer together. While Sera’s new Summoner Wars simply requires her to attack an enemy unit, Ret-Talus has been learning from his old pupil Mad Sirian. It’s Ret’s life that’s on the line now. Which is great, since giving life to power feeds into his “sacrifice” element. 

However, Ret’s dead raising has received a facelift. He can now raise during the summoning phase, which lets his fresh monsters their own turn to move. This will make positioning easier. Furthermore, Ret doesn’t have a small health pool like his old incarnation. Though his stats are painfully mediocre so don’t expect much on that front. Two strength range is weak so it’s a good thing that late game you’ll be relying on your dead than yourself to finish out the game. 

Of course, the old caveat (and the same as Sera’s) still applies here. Ret needs things in his discard in order to bring them back. Granted, with the new graveyard rules, you’re assured anything that’s destroy will be available so your opponent can’t lock important units in their magic piles. That’s a lovely quality of life improvement.

Granted, his ability is restricted to undead units, so there’s currently a hard limit on who benefits from his ability and no doubt this limitation will be utilized to keep Ret-Talus in check as much as possible for future releases. Much like with Sera, I don’t see a lot of Citadel or Undead being printed though, of the two, I expect to see more undead. 

Now, while I think Ret-Talus’ summoner ability is one of the strongest, it really only shines because of his epic event. 

Sacrificial power is a faction defining card and you will definitely be playing his matchups with this in mind. As Ret’s opponent, you need to be cognizant of his sacrificial potential. As Ret himself, the availability of the pyre will dictate the pace of your plays. 

But it’s certainly worth it. I mentioned before that Ice Repair was the strongest healing event in the game. Well… I lied. Sacrificial Pyre takes the smoke. An active event which accrues boosts for doing the thing needed to win the game: destroying units. Barring exceptional circumstances, this will generate 4-6 healing in one play as you should reasonably expect each player to destroy 2-3 cards on their turns. At least, that’s what they’ll be trying to do. Being able to dump that much healing right on Ret-Talus (which can then be turned around and recycled into more undead units) is simply fantastic. This healing can also be used to save a champion in a pinch – making a hard hitting lynchpin unit even that more difficult to remove from the battlefield. 

Furthermore, there’s not a whole lot of counterplay open to your opponent when the pyre gets lit.

Sure, they could just refrain from killing things. But if I had the option of taking an event that said “your units can’t be destroyed for one turn” that would probably get heads to turn. It’s ultimately hard to justify keeping dangerous units on the board and simply not conceding the healing to Ret.

However, Ret isn’t even at the mercy of his opponent’s whims. If he really wants to be accruing tokens for the pyre, he can drop a handy Purge. And if Sacrificial Pyre is good, Purge is phenomenal. 

On first blush, destroying a unit for 2 assured wounds may not seem great. But it’s the fact that Ret-Talus really combos off destruction that makes purge all the better. Triggering in the move phase means that you can hobble your wounded units into advantageous positions before making them pop. And the damage from purge will most definitely leave what remains softened up for the attack phase. Pairing purge and pyre, you can probably reliably generate 4 boost tokens on your own turn between blowing up your own units and killing theirs.

But purge is great because it doesn’t need to combo either for it to be value. Purging is like the old Summoner Wars old magic denial trick. Your sacrificed units give no magic to your enemy. Anything they leave behind turns into lost cash and can tip the economic balance in your favour. And it’s free to boot!

While these two events represent Ret-Talus’ best, his other two are no slouches either. 

Hellforged Blade is like a less reliable purge with a chance to give you continual value. I mean, it likely won’t. Either it’ll blow up its user (denying that unit’s magic in the process) or leave your enchanted common weakened to be killed by your opponent on their turn. As such, it’s less valuable but giving any melee unit an additional 2 more strength (which is essentially them dealing 2 more wounds) isn’t the worst play. If the unit somehow survives and you get another round to attack with it, then you’re just laughing. 

Oh, and it can also combo with pyre – either through ensuring your unit kills what it’s attacking or it blows itself up. Or even both at the same time!

Last, but certainly not least, is Blood Summons. This lets Ret-Talus keep up the pressure against his opponent. He’s an even more conservative summoner than Sera, preferring to keep well away from any attempted harm while he saps his own strength while waiting for the high of a strong pyre. 

Blood summon lets him turn any of his units into temporary gates. Even better, you get to summon for free! Well… sort of. The unit needs to give up two health. Which can destroy itself. Which can in turn give pyre an additional boost! Or you could blood summon off a bunch of units, move them forward then purge them for huge gain!

So, while on its own, blood summon may have marginal effect, it easily pairs well with the best of Ret-Talus’ events. 

And that’s what makes his suite so strong. Each event improves its others. And with so many triggers occurring on unit destruction, you can create a lovely cascade of power effects. His turns can get quite complicated, yet it’s a very good kind of complication. Comboing all these triggers makes them stronger, so learning the best order to blow up your units is both a fun process of discovery while also being very potent in advancing the game in your favour. 

However, to really shine a light on how good all these self-blowy-uppy powers are, we’ll have to take a look next week at Ret-Talus’ units.