Only two more factions to go before we have covered the entirety of the Summoner Wars relaunch! And these next two factions are quite the dozies! 

First up, and by my estimation the second most powerful summoner, is Sera Eldwyn. She’s returned with her feisty Vanguard but this time she’s got a lot more heft in her hammers. This isn’t your old peace loving girl. This one is prepared to punch in your face. 

The concept behind the Vanguard faction is simple enough: win through attrition. In Summoner Wars 1.0 this meant you had high (relative) health units, low attack and a boatload of healing capabilities. The Vanguard were meant to really drag their opponents into the mud, slowly whittling down their health and resolve while keeping the fighting spirit in tip-top shape.

In practice, this manifested as the Vanguards hitting like wet noodles, being completely run over by the rampant high attack factions and champions and overspending on mediocre healing effects and units that could hardly defend themselves. 

Sera was bad. And Sera was sad.

However, it seems that in the intervening years she’s really been hitting the gym. She threw aside her triage skills, instead learning that people really only respect one thing: power. And boy howdy, is Sera’s new ability power. Now, whenever she shoots feebly at one of her enemy’s units (alright, maybe she wasn’t hitting the gym that hard), she is able to pull a Citadel unit from her discard into her hand. 

If anyone recalls The Demagogue from Summoner Wars’ old Filth faction, they’ll understand how strong this ability is. It allows, in theory, an infinite amount of economy with the only limit being how many things Sera can shoot and what you have in your graveyard. There’s also small print on her ability – she needs to have a Citadel unit on the field. So keep in mind there’s (a little) counterplay to this. 

But there’s additional perks in being able to draw from your discard: you can be assured having a common you need on the next turn, you can build the card you’d play for magic prior to give yourself a discount on its summoning and you need to worry about stuffing your hand with important units. You can also endlessly recycle your best common. Imagine if Abua Shi could have infinite border archers. Crazy bolts!

There’s a caveat here, outside of just killing all of Sera’s Citadel commons. She needs to be flicking pebbles at something to do this, so she does need to position herself a little aggressively to get this benefit. It certainly reduces the amount of economy she’ll generate compared to old Demagogue but with greater health pools in the new Summoner wars, this is less a concern than you may think. 

As for Sera’s events, let’s start by looking at her worst.

I mentioned how Svara’s Ice Repair was fantastic and frustrating. Well, Sera’s unit version, Mass Heal, is… something I almost never play. First, it costs a magic. And when we see Sera’s roster, we’ll understand there’s not a lot of magic to go around. 

Because her stuff’s expensive.

Second, she can only heal units within two spaces of her. And yes, the Vanguard play tight but even so this is a bit too tight to get a whole lot of benefit from. If you’re really pressed about healing in this game, Sera has a much better option for one magic and we’ll be discussing that later. Basically, you want to get at least two units with this to be effective. But, honestly, letting Sera’s units die is actually beneficial if it opens up firing lanes for her to drag them back from the discard. 

Thankfully, the rest of her options are much better.

Guarding Spirits is wonderful. Kait might not be sold on them but I think this is a fantastic common event that I’d probably throw into as many decks as I can. All units within 3 spaces of your summoner suffer only 1 damage from the first attack against them? Yes please. Sure, striking that unit with a weak attacker first eats this protection. But then that means the enemy a) needs to have weak attackers out and b) needs to position at least two attacks on their target thereby assuring that none of your other units will die in their remaining attack phase. 

Unless you’re the Cave Goblins, I suppose. Rejoice, Cave Goblins, you’re good in one specific instance!

Sera’s epic event is suitably impressive. Holy Judgement gives all your common units, regardless of position, an increase of 1 strength. In theory, she can have this event last for three turns which is a potential for 9 damage from one event! Granted, you’re unlikely to have this event last that long. Your enemy would be focussed on killing our units regardless of it ending your event sooner or not. But getting even 3 bonus damage from one event without paying a dime is wonderful. You’re laughing if you can get it to last two rounds. 

Last, certainly not least, and arguably her best event, is Renewed Hope. This event has so many benefits for Sera. First, you can summon multiple units from the same spot which has marginal usefulness. More importantly, is being able to use Sera as a mobile gate for a turn, allowing summoning from her during the movement phase, attack phase and even the draw phase! This allows Sera to immediately capitalize on, say, magic from killing units, clearing blockers, fresh defenders drawn after she triggers Citadel’s Might or even anything tantalizing that she gets in her new draw. And these units are guaranteed to come down defending Sera?!

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

I will note here, however, one hesitation I have for Sera. With so many of her abilities triggering off the Citadel keyword, it means she has a very limited potential for deck building. Unless we get word of deck building, I’m not certain there’s going to be a lot of decks that carry such a faction specific keyword. Whereas say, Sneeks, is merely limited by summoning cost and so is more likely to see a wider variety of options as the game goes on.

On the one hand, this means that the balance on Sera can be controlled a lot easier. Any future release that will synergize with her will be done very deliberately. No needing to worry about crippling a hypothetical Alliance box set with weak decks to keep her in line. Ultimately, however, it probably means that she’ll really only have what we see to play with. So either her decks are all going to be the same or she’s going to have to lean into some other synergies and combos that reduce the power of her Citadel’s Might ability.

The good news is her events are faction agnostic so it might not be that dire in the end.