Tag Archives: Alliances

Voluntary Submission

“One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.”

– Bertrand Russel

Accessed from http://www.plaidhatgames.com/games/summoner-wars/cave-filth

Summoner Wars Alliances belongs to Plaid Hat Games. It can be found at www.plaidhatgames.com/games/summoner-wars/

Thus concludes the last of Kait’s and my exploration of the Summoner Wars Alliances master set. Today is our winner. It was a long, hard road to get to the top. Many worthy and less-than-worthy adversaries litter the way. But in the end, only one could be victorious. Only one could be the best of the best. Only one can be the top of our tiers.

This will likely also mark the end of my posting in April as I run out of pre-written entries while likely in the depths of frantic writing and despair. But that is neither here nor there. Simply put, future self, know that you shall get through this and at the end you shall have something worth all the late nights and long hours. Also, this would likely be an easier process if you adopted either caffeine or alcohol habits. Possibly both.

Anyway, neither of this has to do with the Cave Filth. They are the true stars of the show. At release, I was practically laughing with their reveals. In my mind, the Cave Filth stood above all others. In the end, this early analysis was true though not as clear cut as I had previously imagined. You can see the post on the Deep Benders for more details.

But to explore the Cave Filth more deeply is to examine the greatest lengths of Summoner Wars and its strategy. In my prior reviews of the game, I lauded how simple the game was to get into. It was the only reason I could coerce my sister to try it in the first place. And I think it ultimately kept her in it as well. The mechanics are straight-forward and the interactions between the different game elements are pretty easily grasped. The biggest turning point in learning the game’s strategy is understanding that killing your own units nets you the same magic that would otherwise go to your opponent. Once you walk the tight balance between killing your own forces while still overcoming your enemy’s is when you’ve truly reached the pinnacle of Summoner Wars strategy. Put simply, there’s a low barrier to entry but also a low ceiling to skill. At some point, the greatest part of strategizing is weighing the odds of you executing your plan and minimizing the losses you’ll receive should you fail. At some point, your fate is invested in the dice and this can lead to much frustration when you get to the higher echelons of play. You simply have to learn that sometimes, some games won’t be decided by the best player but by the luckiest.

So why point this out now and why with the Cave Filth? There are other factions that revolve around this luck within their own mechanics. The Tundra Orcs look to heighten the factor of chance by making them incredibly powerful if the dice happen to go your way. The Phoenix Elves eschew chance wherever they can, lowering their overall potential to rely more heavily on consistency. Well, there is another way to battle luck and that is in being prepared and being well equipped. Cost effectiveness is a key part of the Cave Goblins: they are near universally cheap so you aren’t as reliant on getting kills to keep your economy flowing and the cards hitting the table. Then you have the Filth which take the opposite route of cost effectiveness; everything they put to the table is far stronger than the investment you made. The weakness shared between the two was that, should your strategies fail, you are delivering a stronger chance for victory to your opponent. In the case of the Cave Goblins, you’ve littered the field with a mass of one health units ready to be picked off and used as fuel for their more powerful champions or commons. For the Filth, your units are fewer but reward twice as much economy when they fall making their deaths double the reward for your foe.

For the most part, this has worked better for the Filth than the Cave Goblins. By naturally being better units, their cards are harder for the enemy to clear and thus their negative is less likely to occur. Furthermore, the Filth are perhaps the most versatile faction in the entire game. And being able to change course or adapt to any strategy or situation is powerful in every strategic competition. It is this versatility that, no doubt, left it so the mutation mechanic remained firmly in the hands of the Filth and the few mutations in the Cave Filth deck are not transferable to Cave Goblins. It’s a lot easier to contain these strengths when they’re rife in only one faction than two.

Humourously, the one place where the original Filth truly struggled was in the champion department. Because their mutations served as essentially mini-champions, their full fledged champions were some of the worst available. The Cave Goblins, however, have some of the best champions in the game. Naturally, the union between the two bred some unholy monster that is between the Filth’s power and the Cave Goblins low cost. Truly, the Filth have no weaknesses now.

There is a slight temperance to this declaration. The alliance between the Cave Goblins and the Filth is anything but a mutual tryst. There’s a clear imbalance in power expressed through the flavour of the cards. It’s very clear the Filth are in control and the Cave Goblins are little more than subjugates to a rather enterprising and ruthless leader known simply as The Warden. With his introduction, Summoner Wars has a new mechanic called the Prison Pile. This pile, functionally, is no different than the magic pile save that it can not directly be used for paying the cost of units or abilities. The Warden, as the master of the prisons, can transform one prisoner a turn into magic. It’s a slow drip reminiscent of the Demagogue’s mutation cycling. But do not be mistaken–this isn’t a true economic advantage. The Warden isn’t a late game powerhouse because if he’s left alone he’ll have one of the highest economy engines in the game. In fact, I’d argue he’s more of a mid-game terror. His greatest uses of prison pile shenanigans are performed through events. Otherwise, that pile is solely for the use of those aforementioned champions. When played correctly, there is no waste in the efficient if brutal penitentiary scheme.

That’s a large if, of course. If you’re unfamiliar with the Demagogue and Filth mechanics, you’re apt to perform poorly. The Filth, by design, require you to have a very thorough knowledge of both your deck and the potential of your opponent. It’s the highest skilled deck offered in the game and it’s because the faction holds the answer to any situation. You simply need to know what that answer is. The Demagogue makes applying the proper course easy with his “free” tutoring ability. The Warden, however, is much more difficult. He doesn’t have any way to call what he needs to his hand so he’s reliant on his card draw and knowing what he’ll be burning through his deck to try and retrieve.

But once you know how all your cards interact and you learn the major combinations that are achievable, playing the Warden is very similar to being a master maestro before a symphony. You can make all the pieces sing in perfect harmony and your performance will be absolutely overwhelming for your opponent that you’ll be nigh unstoppable. Much like the Deep Benders, I have no good go-to strategy for defeating the Warden other than attack hard and fast in the early game and hope that his deck draw leaves him crippled long enough for you to score the winning blow.

Just don’t expect that to happen often.

The Warden (1R-9W-Ruthless Tyrant)

Alright, let’s talk about the Warden. There’s no skirting around it. This guy is strong. Nine health is found nowhere else amongst the other summoners in the game. And this is for good reason. Summoner’s health is basically the “difficulty” of the game–in a very simplistic sense. As the only determinant for victory is the death of the opposing summoner, the number of wounds required to accomplish this can generally give you an idea of your opponent’s plan. Most low life summoners must stay in the back and direct from afar. Those of four or five life can very easily lose the game in one round. Assassination is a real and present threat for them. Four life in particularly can drop to one single card in a large number of factions, should your dice be agreeable. Consequently, the summoners that play close and hard with their front lines are generally of higher health and strength to compensate for the fact your opponent will have an easier time getting cards and wounds on him.

The Warden shirks this trend. He is ranged. He is hearty. He only has one attack so you won’t even see him try and get into the fray. On its own, I find the one attack-nine health stat line very interesting. I think it can work in a different situation. But in a faction as powerful as the Filth, it is very, very strong. The Demagogue isn’t one of the best summoners for no reason. And his only true weakness is early aggression. If the Demagogue can survive the early game with his six health, he stands a very real probability of taking the match. There are two things that make the Demagogue weak to early pressure, however. First, he only has two cards on the board at the beginning and both have one life a piece. Second, his Mutagist power eats up an attack so he weakens his defence by using it.

The Warden doesn’t have this issue. His ability triggers without the sacrifice of a move or attack. He’s ranged, so he can contribute to fights at a distance and reduce the number of attacks that come his way. His starting line-up is very durable with a total nine health spread across the barrier of four units in front of him. His only downside is that half of his prisoners start on the field. They’re his only 0 cost option in the deck and those first early turns are going to leave you scrambling to get an economy going. The Warden is truly helpless if he doesn’t have any resources. He needs a magic pile to summon. He needs a prison pile to fuel his living shields and champions and he needs a discard pile to play his subjugations.

He does have an economy engine, though nowhere near as potent as the Demagogue. The Cave Filth are more similar to the Deep Benders in that their economy is driven through powerful events. Subjugation can generate six magic for the Warden which is two more than the Deep Bender Unlock. Enlist, especially if used for a carefully placed mutation, can save anywhere between 2 to 4 magic. It’s not great but it’s an advantage which is made all the greater when you consider that mutations–your priority for getting out on the cheap or free–are already cheaper than anything comparable in other factions.

Also, unlike the rest of the factions, all of the Warden’s events are really good. The only reason you won’t play a Cave Filth event is if you simply can’t trigger its requirements within a reasonable number of turns. Unholy Sacrifice is fantastic as it can wipe the board of troublesome, hard to reach single health units. It can also wound champions and has no range. It does cost you three prisoners to do max damage, however, so it requires that you’ve put in some work. Enlist, as mentioned, can pull out mutations for free but first you need the mutation in your prison pile–a feat unlikely to occur without the use of Subjugation. Overwork has good synergy with Enlist if you already have a wounded mutation on the field that you’d like out again. However, keep in mind that Enlisting mutations requires you to have a common in your discard to mutate which adds yet another requirement to a finicky power.

Living Shield is perhaps the event I build the most since your prisoners quickly become valuable resources. However, Living Shield can block a lot of damage and is great for protecting The Warden when he gets into trouble. This situation isn’t as frequent as you’d expect, however, since that nine health block is insane to eat through. If you suspect that your opponent is running some incredibly high attack options, though, Living Shield will see that you win champion exchanges. Or really any exchanges. At the cost of one prisoner, you can nullify all damage from that one source.

So, with all these strengths, it’s hard not to feel that the nine health on the Warden is just extraneous. Other strong summoners usually see a direct counterbalance to their power through the risk in being assassinated. The Warden laughs at puny attempts to snipe him from the backlines. Working one unit beside him is not enough. On average, you’re looking at needing around 13 to 14 dice to kill the Warden. That’s a lot of dice. And as someone who has to fight against him, it feels like a lot. The single attempt to balance this enormous health pool was to given him the lowest attack value of all summoners but I find that in practice this means very little. As I said, I like how unique and different this stat-line is and am curious how it can shape and affect play. However, it was simply unneeded for someone with the power the Warden already wields. It feels like a mistake for him.

Regardless, the Warden has it so opponents simply have to deal with it. As a consequence, you can play pretty aggressively or carelessly with the Warden. He can be up at the front of your forces, redirecting optimistic hits and easing pressure off your units. He’ll breeze easily through the early game and really stands no chance of dying in that period. Thus, the Warden is practically assured that he’ll hit the point in the game when he’s strongest. Then it’s just a question of how fortunate the draws and dice have treated you to that point. If you haven’t had horrible luck, you’ve likely won.

Prisoner (1M-2W-oM-Unwilling)

The Cave Filth only have two commons and the Prisoner is set up to be the core of the Warden’s forces. Except, you start with most of them on the board. The one thing I noticed with playing the Warden was that he has the opposite problem of the Demagogue. The original Filth summoner had way too many commons in his deck that you just don’t know what to do with all your zealots and cultists. The Warden has too few. After the first few are killed, either through the opponent’s rushing or your own attempts to cull the herd to get an economy going, you’ll be scouring for the rest. On one hand, having only four in the draw pile makes Unwilling an actual negative for a summoner who would otherwise be nonplussed for having a free prison addition. Frequently you’ll be scrambling to get your defences set while balancing your economy and need that prisoner out to accomplish something. Invariably, that prisoner will refuse on those moments. Then, when you want them to stay in the cell, they’re suddenly full of enthusiasm to cover your walls.

Outside of having too few of them, they’re a pretty decent unit. Their stats are the best you can possibly get for no magic investment. Unlike the Filth commons, however, I find they very rarely serve as mutation platforms. Most of my prisoners live and die naked since you’re not likely to have so much magic floating around that you can afford to hard summon your mutations. As such, I find that a lot of the time they’re not really worth whipping. The extra attack typically isn’t worth sacrificing the unit to your opponent as magic. I’d only recommend whipping if you can snag a worthy enemy unit for your prison pile or score a valuable two wounds against a key target. Otherwise, use them to eat some attacks and try to get them into your own cells. You need all the subservient suckers you can get.

Taskmaster (1M-3W-2M-Whip)

Whip it good.

Taskmasters are good but, oddly enough, not particularly important to the Cave Filth. Which is funny because both the Cave Goblins and Demagogue would love to include them and I find I build the suckers for magic more often than not. For Frick, Taskmasters are the best way to get Oafs into three dice territory. For Demagogue, I can imagine you getting some ridiculous assassination options set up through whipping Winged and Bestial mutations. Furthermore, I find I need some early units to spend magic on in order to jump start the Demagogue’s Mutagist rotation and taskmasters are the hardiest options now available.

For the Warden, however, you’re going to have a hand filled with amazing cards and when something has to go, the taskmaster is always the first on the chopping block. His low attack also makes him so unappealing when compared to your mutations. And since the Warden is struggling for his economy, he generally wants to be focusing more on his prisoners anyway. As for Whip itself, I find the setup to be pretty awkward. Don’t get me wrong, you can get some units into positions they shouldn’t have any right being in but generally you’ll get one whip off with a master and then sort of meander around with him pointlessly until he dies.

But this just demonstrates how ridiculously good everything the Warden has when taskmasters are considered his immediate go-to for magic creation.

Hester (0M-6W-4M-Prison Lord)

Holy cow, I love Hester!

This is my favourite card in the box. I don’t know if I’ve said it before but I mean it here. I love Hester. He’s insane. I played him every time I was the Cave Filth. I never once regretted it. For four magic, he’s a steal and he comes with six health. His zero attack is never zero when you’re the Warden and can stuff every kill into the prison–and I almost universally stuff every kill into my prison. Even better, this guy is fantastic if you get your Subjugations around him. Two Subjugations give him a total 3 attack. His mechanic is nearly the same as Leah Goodwin but, unlike Leah, he has no ceiling to how high his attack can increase. I’ve had a six attack Hester rampaging across the board and it’s been fantastic!

That said, I can’t comment on Hester without mentioning the other champions. Don’t think that you can’t run multiples; you can and should include Scabbicus, The Soul Eater or both in your deck. However, don’t put them on the field at the same time. There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing your other champions slowly draining Hester of his power. Hester’s meant to come out at the mid game, be absolutely monstrous and terrifying, inflict way more damage than a four magic champion should, and then be retired. Then you pull out your other big baddie to use up the prison pile you spent all your time dutifully building. Thus, every last scrap of magic is efficiently utilized amongst the three different piles you juggle.

And don’t forget that this guy is four magic. He’ll routinely ruin six or seven magic champions, can tear down walls like Hulk or simply run rampant amongst the enemy commons. He’s a beast and once you learn to feed him properly then you’re probably on the right track to having a masterful grasp of the Cave Filth.

Scabbicus (3M-7W-4M-Revolt)

Yet another four magic champion? No deck has this cheap of an offering outside of Frick and Frick has to cheat and use a 1 ranged attack 0 cost champion to compete. Scabbicus is another great card for his price. His ability is entirely negative so the only investment you have with him is in his very powerful attack and health numbers. I never really felt I was getting as much mileage out of Scabbicus but on the other hand, I was always playing him to die anyway. I’d actually prefer his ability if I had the choice to discard or not but then again, I’d always allow Scabbicus to take the extra wound. He’s basically Ugg from the Tundra Orcs but with one less attack and health but more survivable and for two less magic. So play him like Ugg. Try to keep the number of people that can attack him a round to a minimum. Don’t be afraid to let him take a lot of damage and perish. In fact, I’ll throw Scabbicus to the floor if I don’t even have any prisoners and he’s unique amongst the available champions in that he functions all the same if your prison is empty. He’ll just go down, on average, one turn sooner than if you had the prisoners to pay for his revolt.

As a side note about Revolt, if he dies to the wound from its ability, you get him back as magic. It’s just a small boost that usually doesn’t come up but if it does feel free to smile smugly at your enemy as you reclaim the heroic little goblin.

The Soul Eater (3M-8W-6M-Feed it Souls)

The Soul Eater is also incredible. Seriously, I’d be over the moon to have but one of these champions in a deck. Having all three simply feels greedy. At the very least, you can be more discerning in their use. For me, this means I’m setting up huge prisons for Hester. Scabbicus I’m pitching whenever I have the opportunity and he won’t trip over Hester’s toes. I’ll reserve Scabbicus and beeline for Soul Eater if the enemy is going common heavy.

The Soul Eater is basically the Cave Goblin Eater but on crack. Mutant, Lovecraftian crack, I suppose. His ability is great, assuming you can wield it properly. This is why I recommend this guy against common heavy play and suggest shelving him otherwise. It’s basically a fourth attack you can have per turn but one that will always murder. Once you kill two or so enemies this way, however, expect your opponent to stop dropping commons to the table. This is where having Hester come out first and already be dead is a boon. You must feed the eater and you will drain your prison pile. He the most wounds of your champions which means he’ll be around a little longer but he doesn’t have the flexibility of being a viable option if you don’t have a lot of prisoners and the enemy isn’t dropping commons. Unlike the Cave Goblin version, you don’t have the deck to support the Soul Eater’s addiction with your own minions. There’s actually been a few times where I’d rather the Soul Eater just wandered off rather than nullify my chances of being able to play my yet-to-be-drawn Living Shields but, alas, the troubles of uncooperative draws.

The Soul Eater is still a steal even though you’re paying two more magic for basically one more health when compared to Scabbicus. However, if you can get some auto-kills through his feasting, you’ve paid off the difference in spades.

Barbed Mutant (2M-4W-3M-Assault)

The Cave Filth have a lot to cover because they include the Filth’s mutations. As a quick explanation for how mutations work, in order to play a mutation you must summon them on a common that you control. The mutation then “replaces” the unit you had and overrides everything about that unit save the wounds it was inflicted. So, in theory, mutations are more expensive than they’re printed because you need to factor in the cost for what they’re mutating. In practice, both the Filth and Cave Filth have ways to either subsidize this cost or ignore it altogether through events. Also, both decks feature 0 cost commons as summoning bases. The only negative is that whoever gets the kill claims both cards as magic but you can auto-kill your own troops and get them back so, if you’re careful, you can mitigate basically all the drawbacks. You just need to make sure you have someone to mutate.

As such, near all mutations are one magic cheaper than you’d normally spend for their stats. Also, all mutations come with a good ability so you aren’t even mutating into, say, a useless Sand Goblin Scavenger.

This explanation is required for the Barbed Mutant because I consider this guy one of the worst mutations. So when I say it’s bad, you know the point of reference. The reason I’m not fussed about this guy is that he’s pretty expensive for a mutation. His ability is unlikely to trigger, especially since it’s designed against common rushes and you’ve got the Soul Eater as a better investment. Two attack is pretty low–for a mutation–and he has no movement or scary power. These guys are basically mini-champions but have the unfortunate issue of actually being measured against the Cave Filth’s amazing champions. And for one more magic I can have Hester or Scabbicus.

Bone Mutant (3M-4W-4M-Bone Shard)

Now this is a good mutation. It provides something that you’re desperately missing in the base Cave Filth deck: ranged attacks. And the bone mutant covers that with an astonishing three ranged! As a point of comparison, the Deep Benders and Sand Cloaks are paying the same for Kendre and Fink respectively and at the same price point. And the bone mutant has one more health! Alright, so if you’re actually using his ranged option, you’re bringing his health down but even still, he’s amazing. This is the guy you want to enlist and then after he’s taken a bit of a beating, overwork and then enlist again. Getting that four magic saving is always a plus but if you’re spending for it through hard currency, he becomes a lot less enticing. Once again, comparing to Hester and Scabbicus, he has significantly less health though the same attack value.

Bone shards do often catch your opponent off guard, though, so don’t forget that you can make him an archer. Your opponent likely will.

Burrow Mutant (4M-3W-3M-Burrow)

The Burrow Mutant is actually one I’m apt to spend cold, hard magic on summoning. For three magic he’s on the cheaper end for mutations. More importantly, however, is his four attack coupled with his burrow power. Generally speaking, I try to get a taskmaster or prisoner near a beefy target that they aren’t going to kill. If they survive the encounter, you can toss the burrow mutant on top of them and have a surprise four dice to pummel in their face. Being able to pass through units means you can sometimes get an unexpected two dice on a summoner as well, if they’re not being careful. He’s also good for refunding prior mutations since, once again, you want him against his intended target without having to move him. The burrow quickly reduces his effectiveness when you use it.

Other than that, I’m not too concerned when he dies. He’s sort of a surprise, one trick pony and I run him as such. Because Enlist places the target beside your summoner, I generally don’t bother using this guy for that unless I’ve put the Warden far ahead on the battlefield. Which, you know, is a viable strategy since the Warden has nine freaking health!

Grotesque Mutant (1M-4W-3M-Cowering Fear)

Another mutation that I’m apt to magic purchase, I find the Grotesque Mutant is a pretty niche option. He’s great if you’re under early pressure and you get him early. He helps to start that prison that you’ll be reliant upon late in the game. With only one attack, he’s basically a mobile mini-wall. I don’t usually bother even attacking with him unless I don’t have anyone else to use the attack. The great thing is he’ll often be successful as a rather annoying speed bump because the moment your opponent has lost a two magic or higher common to cowering fear is the moment they’ll hate this guy’s guts and divert resources to wiping the board of him.

That said, if you don’t pick this guy up early, he’s pretty darn useless. As such, he’s probably more effective in a Demagogue deck that wants to build a prison pile–as strange a concept as that is.

Legion Mutant (0M-1W-0M-Merge Flesh)

I don’t like the Legion Mutant. His biggest problems is that he’s such a resource sink for a regular champion. You can turn him into a five attack, six health champion which certainly has the highest base attack in the game. However, you’re looking at putting four magic into this plus your mutation target. Also, you can’t skirt any of this cost through your events. Granted this is four magic but, once again, at four magic I can buy Scabbicus and Hester. And while I’ll praise Hester and Scabbicus to high heaven and back, the reason the legion falls in comparison is that losing him is a big deal. Hester and Scabbicus, when they die (and they will die), only forfeit one magic to your opponent. The Legion is giving them a six magic point swing. Basically, when Legion drops, there’s a mad rush between you and your enemy over who can kill him the fastest. This draws away from the strength of champions–disposable murder machines. The one time I did play Legion I was successful in obtaining the killing blow so I didn’t lose anything from the experience however I had to play him far more conservatively than I would have with the other options available.

But hey, if you want to roll the dice, he’s fun in an Abomination, I-shouldn’t-play-this-card-but-I’m-going-to-anyway fashion. Oh, he also empties your prison pile. So really, his best use is at the end game as the last card to play when your opponent can’t benefit from a six magic swing and you have nothing relying on that prison pile in the first place. So, yeah, if you can get him as your last card of the match and you have four prisoners just lying around, he’s super incredible. Otherwise, I just don’t want to run the liability.

Poison Mutant (2M-3W-2M-Poisoned Sting)

Oh, poison mutant. Why on earth did they give the Filth the chance to have poison markers? The Filth were already incredible as it is.

Poison markers are like super wounds that make anything afflicted with them slower and more likely to miss. They’re a super anti-champion mechanic. Prior to this, the Filth sort of didn’t have a lot of options against really powerful champions. Ignoring, of course, the age old tradition of just pounding in their face. Well, now they can slap some poison wounds onto something you don’t like and call it a day.

For the Cave Filth, the poison mutant actually ends up ranking rather low. Since you have Scabbicus, Living Shield and other options for straight up murder, the poison mutant doesn’t feel necessary. And at three health, he’s not really a long living option either. He’s two magic though, so being cheap as dirt can see him come out just so you have a two attack option to upgrade your commons. I wouldn’t enlist him unless it’s specifically to take out a major threat, however.

This is mostly just an example of “the powerful get more power” type of deal than anything else.

As you can see, it’s no wonder the Cave Filth took the tournament. Even their worst cards would be considered many a faction’s best. Their prison pile, while can sometimes feel like an unnecessary extra step, doesn’t hold them back in any real way and gives them even more powerful abilities under the assumption that inconvenience will balance it out. I think the Warden is one of the few alliances that actually stands a chance against the top decks in the entire game as well. The combination of amazing champions coupled with the general Filth mutation mechanic is enough to put anyone into a top contender position. The fact that the Warden has such strong synergy between a lot of his components is just icing on the cake.

That said, if there was one thing I’d change about the deck, it’s getting more 0 cost commons into it. Mutations can take the spot of a champion or common, though, so getting the optimum number of each is much more doable with the Cave Filth. Though, unlike the Filth, you’re not likely going to give up on your champions here. You will, however, probably squeeze in that horror and winged mutant. Just watch out for the Demagogue. He won’t like your insubordination and, as the master of mutations, I’m not certain the Cave Filth’s champions can overcome his ability to take your best units from you and then utilize them to such a higher degree than you could.

Everyone else, however, is apt to bow their knee before your superiority. All hail the Warden and watch as the world becomes subjugated beneath your ruthless and indomitable spirit. You are the great general, oh fearsome tyrant, so relish in your conquest!

There Is No Spoon

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And then there were two.

Most of the discussion of the Summoner Wars Alliances balance between my sister and me was focused on these remaining two factions. Today’s second place standard is the reason why I can’t boast about my predictions in August. I fully expected this faction to be nigh unplayable. While I recognized it had some good components, I woefully underestimated the power of these strengths. And while I was pretty accurate in identify the major weaknesses, this faction was our dreaded expectant winner of the whole tournament after the first initial two rounds.

I am, of course, discussing the Deep Benders. They had a strong 5-2 showing in the round robin and either they dominated their match or it was incredibly close. In fact, despite my sister’s protestations, the finals were incredibly close, dice-off nailbiters with two highly wounded summoners on their last legs madly scrambling for desperate victories. But when you have an alliance amongst the Deep Dwarves and the Benders, it shouldn’t come as a shock that they would perform well. And there is one major distinction about the Deep Benders which sets them above the other decks in the box.

Accessed from http://www.plaidhatgames.com/games/summoner-wars/deep-benders

Summoner Wars Alliances belongs to Plaid Hat Games. It can be found at www.plaidhatgames.com/games/summoner-wars/

The Deep Benders are defensive.

Nearly all other factions are geared towards offense and offer no advantages to playing back and slow. Many of them actually burn themselves out quickly–like Marek–or simply lack any way to properly defend which is Immortal Elien’s issue through his dearth of ranged options. Not so for the Deep Benders. They pack the ever impressive Geopath who has the range of a sniper without the movement restriction. They have the high life value of the Gem Priestess who is excellent at stalling ice golems. Gorgons are amazing through sheer intimidation factor. And then there are the Deep Dragons. Oh, blessed deep dragons.

But though all units are better on defense than offense since enemy reinforcement is harder to accomplish, a true defensive faction needs to develop some sort of advantage by sitting back that passively puts pressure on their opponent and goads them into crossing the middle line. And this is where Endrich stands unique amongst the other seven. He has the best economy game in the box. Unlock is magic drain levels of turn reversal. Follow it up with well timed Reclaim and you can both deny your opponent potential magic and make a killing return on your free reclaim token investment. Both Kendre and Owl Gryphon are entirely economy focused and provide very underwhelming combat contributions.

That said, defensiveness isn’t enough to get you into the upper bracket. You must also be able to rush down like the best of them if my sister is ever going to get a win. And since a lot of Endrich’s early economy options are based on burst turn events, you can do just that. Back to back unlocked deep dragons will do damage to your opponent’s line. More importantly, geopaths are amazing at locking down avenues and slowly advancing with the threat of four ranged, untouchable dice. When ranged options are so limited in the game already, giving these guys five space shots makes them really good at penning your opponent. And since the Deep Bender champions are so restricted to working the economy, they are anxiety free magic builds if your playstyle naturally revolves around heavy common pressure. Endrich’s low life is also less of an issue when so much of the deck can be used for blocking, too. Boosted gem priestess and summoned Gorgons are never considered key parts of an assaulting force and are quite content to sit about Endrich, fawning him with large palm fronds.

As for Endrich’s boost mechanic, it really has less impact than I initially thought. I did praise the versatility of being able to choose at the moment of play whether you needed a cheap, throw-away unit or a much hardier, scary common and that this–in effect–makes the Deep Bender commons two cards in one. However, given the few number of cards in the deck, the generally tight economy of the game in general and no ability to recurse cards that are spent means that this isn’t a true consideration in practice. Of all three commons, only deep dragons are worth summoning unboosted while in a pinch. Their inherent two attack can still be good when you’re under heavy siege even if it’s less desirable than getting them out with three health and swiftness. Geopaths are near useless unboosted so you’ll always throw the extra magic their way. And gem priestesses you never boost. They’re there for banking unlock tokens if you didn’t manage to get double dragons in your draw. And with all the ways the Deep Bender fret away your economy, the gem priestesses’ heal is pretty forgettable.

At the end of the day, even though I conquered them in the finals, I still have no solid solutions to playing against this deck. My best advice is to rush them and pray the draw and dice gods are in your favour. That said, despite their dominance in this tournament, I suspect they will hardly make a dent against the bigger Summoner Wars threats. They boast the curious trend of being weaker to their parent factions (Deep Dwarves can play the passive economy game much better and trying to use boosted units against Tacullu is a great way to see your economy advantage stolen for a penny). Mugglug can also advance beneath his root cover to protect himself from geopath barrages then choke the Deep Benders through the long game. And the Demagogue’s fall is always determined by how well the opponent can crush him in those first three turns and whether those early walls can rise to his defence. And in these situations, I don’t think the Deep Benders turtle as hard as the better turtlers.

Endrich (3R-4W-Geopathic Command)

While the faction may have done far better than I imagined, Endrich himself is as useless as I thought. He’s Immortal Elien levels of threat without the global presence. Don’t expect much from this guy. Ninety percent of the time, he’s a measly four health with no ability. You can’t afford Geopathic Command for much of the game and you’re either suicidal, insane or desperate if you’re using his three attack in most situations. He’s a pretty sort of uselessness that wants nothing more than to stalk the back row looking for knee-high walls to crouch behind.

Call now for your free palm reading and crystal healing therapy!

More interesting is his event suite. Teleport is magic pile fuel. You never want to hold onto this card which makes it incredibly board and draw dependent. If you can’t use it immediately, it’s just going to uselessly clog your hand on the pretence of “maybe one day not being awful.” I won one game with it through a timely swap with a boosted deep dragon stuck on a swamp mercenary wall but I wouldn’t normally recommend such flashy maneuvers since they’re apt to lose you the game when you roll three misses and get slaughtered on the counter attack. It would have been a lot better if you could swap any units but then it wouldn’t be carrying its wonderful “requires boosting” restriction which plagues the deck.

Conjure Gorgon is a real steal. A one attack, three health for one magic is already a discount. The fact that they’re basically immune to melee attacks and common hating events and abilities is icing on a delicious, enemy infuriating cake. Tanky conjurations have never been a thing until now and this is when remembering that conjurations are only targeted by things that affect generic units makes you realize how uncommon that trigger is. And the fear of a death stare allows these weirdly adorned beauties to herd your enemy’s forces like enthusiastic sheep dogs. They’re great for crowding walls since your opponent has such a hard time dislodging them. And, of course, they’re essentially mini-walls which can offset the dependency of a defensive faction finding those two precious and impenetrable cards. Their real value isn’t in getting off their death stare but making your opponent worry that you will.

Reclaim is kind of meh. It’s not as good as the gorgons and it’s not as bad as the teleport. I have an unhealthy tendency for trying to set-up unlock/reclaim combos or trying to squeeze more value through Kendre-flinging. I wouldn’t recommend this as it’s apt to stuff your hand and slow your draw. Either throw it out when you don’t have the combo together or simply get rid of those near death boosted deep dragons and be done with it. I find I have a fifty/fifty chance of simply building this event for magic in my games.

Unlock is the real show stopper of this entire collection. I originally called it the magic drain that doesn’t piss your opponent off. Even better, your opponent is apt to dismiss its value and not react when you whip it out. Many a failed assault can be found from not reacting to those two free boosted deep dragons. And it is almost always two boosted deep dragons that get unlocked. I don’t think I’ve seen a single unlock not have a game changing effect on the board even when it only targeted a gem priestess and a geopath (because, once again, five space sniper shots are crazy). This is the event that Samuel Farthen and Spellsucker mutants exist to purge. If you can cut out Endrich’s unlocks then you’ve almost all but won the game. So just because it isn’t ripping two magic from your pile, don’t think that this card isn’t a big deal. It is.

Geopath (1R-1W-1M-Geopath Boost)

My sister is far better at using these guys than I am. I mostly use them for boost token delivery systems of which Kendre serves as courier. That said, being on the receiving end of multiple boosted geopath lane lockdowns is not fun. Five spaces is enormous amounts of board coverage and essentially nulls their one health statistic. You’ll never see these guys show up outside of the starting setup without a boost token. Now, I’ve complained before about junk abilities and how they decrease card value. I feel that the Deep Benders are the one faction where this doesn’t apply because their boosting is so good. Most far shot abilities extend only four spaces, meaning that retaliation, especially on a miss, isn’t necessarily impossible. Cloak Snipers are the only other guys that get five (that I can immediately remember) and they can’t move to do theirs. When commented on this, Plaid Hat said they were designed to compete with Gem Mages and Controllers. Well, I think they’re definitely on par with controllers. Outside of Tundle, I’d say they’re better than gem mages too. Be wary of using them to shell walls, however. With the free space from summoning, it’s easy for the opponent to kill these guys off and the real advantage of their reach is staying out of harms way (and cutting down on the magic you need to spend in buying replacements).

As a side note, these are likely the only guys to get a Geopathic Command since they’re apt to be the only ones near enough to Endrich for it to trigger. If you want to see my rant on why Geopathic Command is bad, you can look up my preview post. Nothing’s changed of my assessment after playing them. It’s a bum ability.

Gem Priestess (1M-2W-1M-Gem Priestess Boost)

Gem priestesses were the sort of card that you kind of look at on reveal and wonder if you’re missing something. You’re not. They’re pretty poor in comparison to the others. Sure, they offer healing to factions that traditionally don’t have healing but you’re unlikely to bother with that since it costs three magic for the first heal and two after (you need to factor in the boost cost as well). They make me constantly wonder why none of the boost units didn’t have an ability natively. These girls would be a lot better if they always had their heal and boosting served simply to give them more stats. I would definitely use them then. I’m sure it’s more balanced this way, however (because you’ll almost never use them). In fact, I’m hard pressed to think if we ever healed with them the entire game. Maybe it’s the pressure of the potentiality of a Gryphon fueled triage that makes these girls valuable.

As a side note, these girls have fun synergy with Tundle. Because Summoning Surge allows him to summon during the event phase, he can boost them for a measly one magic if he also plays a Wake the Father Gem. Which also gives him a free heal on that same turn. For that reason alone, I can definitely see them making a more consistent appearance in his decks (especially given the existence of bum miners and poor options in the reinforcement pack). Course, Tundle can use this trick for all the boost units–it’s just that extra one magic value point from the free heal that makes me mention it on this card. Also, the healing affects champions as well which does little for Endrich since his are so weak it doesn’t really matter but Tundle has hardier champions who would certainly love some free heals.

Deep Dragons (2M-1W-1M-Deep Dragon Boost)

It’s a little late to mention but units that are boosted can not have their abilities nullified. This is an enormous boon against Sand Cloaks, Abua Shi and anyone else that can cancel abilities. I’m mentioning this now with the Deep Dragons because they’re the ones that the enemy wants to nullify the most. For cost, they aren’t that fantastic. Unboosted, they’re naked shadow elf swordsmen. Boosted, they’re like an expensive stone golem (though they can move farther and attack). The thing with deep dragons that makes them so powerful with the Deep Benders is that you aren’t paying for them. These are the cards you unlock whenever you can. If you can’t unlock them, you’re flinging tokens from Kendre on them. Only a desperate Endrich will have them out without a boost token. And when you can get a two attack, three health unit for one magic then you are inherently winning the economy game. Deep dragons are amazing because they win the most boring aspect of Summoner Wars. But they do it with so much attack and health that you’re having too much fun to even care how ridiculous it is.

Your opponent, however, is all too aware. And she isn’t happy about it. No, not happy at all.

Kendre (3R-3W-4M-Redistribute)

I like Kendre. She’s the only Deep Bender champion that I can claim that statement. She’s cheap and I love cheap champions. She hits hard but, really, at three health she’s only hitting once. She isn’t an attacker; she’s the last component of your feasible economy engine. Step aside, Owl Gryphon, Kendre is the real star of making the Deep Benders ridiculously good. A few things to note about Kendre:

1) She has what should be Endrich’s ability. Do not be fooled. This is the Deep Benders true Summoner. Try and protect her as such and be sad when she dies. You killed the real force behind the Deep Benders–you monster.

2) She chews up a movement so you won’t be using her every turn. She also targets the donor after her move so you’re mostly moving her backwards and towards them if you are moving her.

3) She does not need to be within three spaces of the intended recipient for the boost. She only needs to be near the donor. This means she’s naturally positioned to be turning hard boosted geopaths into cheap deep dragon boosts on the other side of the battlefield.

4) She’s great at reclaiming boost deposits on gem priestesses. She’s also fantastic at setting up Reclaim for maximum magic return.

5) Cry a little whenever you draw her late in the game because she is near useless then.

Learn Kendre. Love Kendre. Mourn when Kendre inevitably dies because with three health, a stiff wind murders her.

Owl Gryphon (3M-6W-7M-Conserve)

Owl Gryphon is crap. I called it and it’s true. This card is bad. It’s an expensive three attack, six health. It saw one play in the entire tournament and all it managed to do was meditate once before being buried six feet under. The Deep Benders still almost won because the rest of their deck is just that good.

Seven magic is sillyexpensive for a deck that pushes common play. That’s the issue with it. Other champions that are so expensive are meant to be pivotal, game turning plays that can destroy at least their value’s worth if not more. You basically have to burn a fourth of your deck in order to pay for this sucker. That’s a quarter of your forces that you can’t bring out with the Owl Gryphon’s ability. It is a poor fighter and overpriced by one magic. So, even following the SSCF which doesn’t even evaluate the effectiveness of abilities, the Owl Gryphon isn’t worth the investment. Not to mention that it’s ability restricts your attack options which means when it does force your opponent across the middle line, you’re denied the whole point of the card and that’s to develop a greater magic advantage. And I’ve mentioned before how six health on normal contributing champions isn’t that much in a game where three and four dice attacks are fairly common. You can reasonably expect it to survive one round of aggression and that’s about it. Between eating two attacks a turn and not having any power to actually go toe-to-toe with other champions, it’s going to lose any confrontation it forces.

It’s bad for all the reasons why Etch is good.

Simply put, Etch is always a better choice to include in a deck over the Owl Gryphon. He’s four magic–half the cost–he only eats up one attack so your defence from the opponent’s reactive attack isn’t one third effective. He’s ranged so he can reduce the number of attacks he’d get when assaulted. He’s priced at 0 according to the SSCF. You don’t need to build half your force to play him. He doesn’t take seven turns to pay himself off. He can also stuff and damage enemy walls when you use his economy power. He isn’t some weird owl/lion chimera. Did I mention he was only four magic? And he works for Rallul and Rallul is one cool dude.

If you’re looking to include the Owl Gryphon in a deck then you’re deck building. If you’re deck building, you’d never take the Owl Gryphon over Etch. If you’re in a tournament or friendly agreement that doesn’t allow using mercenaries then you’d probably be better off not even using the Owl Gryphon in the first place. The only advantage is forcing your enemy into doing brash assaults on your side but Kendre can accomplish that on her own for half the cost (which means you start seeing the effectiveness of running that economic engine sooner). Also, your opponent may just assume you’re packing The Bird and rush you anyways accomplishing the exact same goal while not having to burden your deck with the card.

But the Owl Gryphon does serve a vital role: it fulfills the one bum card that seems to be required in every Summoner Wars deck design. Rejoice, Endrich, that your biggest bum is a champion and not a whole slew of commons like some others. That said, you might want to have a talk with your priestesses. They’re really not pulling their weight.

The Beautiful Dead

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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.

Accessed from http://www.plaidhatgames.com/games/summoner-wars/fallen-phoenix

Summoner Wars Alliances belongs to Plaid Hat Games. It can be found at www.plaidhatgames.com/games/summoner-wars/

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.

Plants Versus Zombies

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Welcome to our first top qualifier in our Summoner Wars Alliances tournament and my personal favourite–The Swamp Mercenaries.

The Swamp Mercenaries had a curious run in the tournament. I predicted they would do well since they revolve more around the Swamp Orc mechanic of taking massive board control by growing root walls (once again, don’t care about Plaid Hats official poor flavouring) but unlike Mugglug, the Swamp Mercenaries do this faster and more aggressively. Mugglug grows his swamp through the sacrifice of his own troops. He hides in the back of his expanding root network, picking off poor shamans and apprentice mages as his tendrils crawl across the field like some horror movie villain to choke the walls of his enemy. It’s very common for Mugglug to end a game with most the board wrapped in his twisted plants.

It’s a powerful strategy since these root walls block summoning points as well as give the Swamp Orcs the power to conjure from their depths. Walls also have a tendency for being pretty hardy and even with just two health, they will absorb one to two attacks a turn which protects your army as well as triggering the special abilities for hunters and shamans making them stronger. Mugglug performs very well against a large chunk of the Summoner Wars factions and the only downside is that he absolutely crumbles against a very select few factions who specialize in wall destruction. Oldin can, in one single card, destroy turns of work and investment on Mugglug’s part. And without his swamp, a large portion of his forces become significantly weaker.

Now enters the Swamp Mercenaries.

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Summoner Wars Alliances belongs to Plaid Hat Games. It can be found at www.plaidhatgames.com/games/summoner-wars/

I’m certain the Swamp Mercs will perform far better in Mugglug’s worse match-ups. For, unlike Mugglug, the Swamp Mercenaries are not tied so strongly to the success of their horticulture. The Swamp Mercenaries aren’t looking for an enormous swamp to drown their foes within. Their root walls are incredibly utilitarian. Glurblub (yes, they continue having stupid names) uses his walls for immediate pressure and not creeping doom. His goal is to sprout a wall in the enemy’s midst and rush forward with his forces at the same time. The opposing summoner must then choose between staving off the advancing rats, boars and swordsmen or addressing that single weed at her feet. Should she ignore it, suddenly reinforcements are pouring from her ill-kept lawn, quickly surrounding her and pummeling her into submission. If she stretches her green thumb then those critters are going to punch her in the face.

And, nearly every time, your opponent will go for your units. Much like Berlin, killing walls doesn’t give you magic. Which is perfectly fine with the Swamp Mercenaries. Their walls are precious because they’re so hard to get up. To compensate, they’ve been afforded the first four card event in all of Summoner Wars. Spore Carriers is Glurblub’s bread and butter and the reason he doesn’t fear Besiege the Walls. For one event, you can grow two root walls while reclaiming your units for magic. It’s the only way to get any return on your swamp rats and you’ll want to play all four of these during a game. It also works fantastic for denying your boars after their initial assault if the enemy failed to take them down (and they usually will). It’s a small economy engine if you get most of your swamp rats with it. But you do have to be more mindful of your swamps than Mugglug since most of the Swamp Mercenaries can not traverse the roots walls without getting stuck.

I think the most fascinating thing about the Swamp Mercenaries, however, is how my sister struggled with them. Perhaps it’s because she’s good with Mugglug and I am not which accounts for the difference in our performance. I won most of my matches with the Swamp Mercenaries and she struggled in hers. This does lead to a small snag in our tournament and the caveat when discussing our tier list. The factions that do the best are ones that need to be successful in both our playstyles. It won’t do that one of us can play a faction well and the other unable to get any results. Glurblub just squeaked into the finals ahead of Moyra for this exact reason. And there is a double advantage to the player who figures out a deck first–whenever they face against it, they know what tricks it can pull and develop better strategies to counter the ones their opponent is still learning. That the Swamp Mercenaries clicked so quickly for me provided a significant edge over my sister and partly because I think she was still locked in Mugglug’s mindset. The fact that she would self kill many of her units and I’d have to return her root walls was kind of a hint.

Glurblub (2R-6W-Vinemancer Sow)

The single card that makes this deck possible.

Glurblub is not Mugglug. That should be immediately obvious but the impact this has on the two decks’ styles can not be overstated. Mugglug is very passive despite boasting more wounds and attacks than the Swamp Mercenary summoner. He kills more of his units than his enemy’s in order to grow his swamps. Glurb, however, needs to get up in his opponent’s face immediately. But those first few walls are incredibly important and so I try to reduce as much risk of missing as possible when I attack. Whereas Mugg has a very standard and predictable opening, Glurb needs to be flexible. He needs to scout an initial target–hopefully a one wound starting unit on his opponent’s side–and he needs to maximize his chances for getting a kill. His forward rat and boar are intrinsic to his starting moves. If there’s a two wound unit on the far side (say a Deep Dwarf miner) then Glurb is going to move his rat forward, himself behind, attack with his rat, attack his rat with his boar to chase it away and allow Glurb to follow up for a kill.

If there’s a three wound unit at the forefront, things get dicier but you need to try and set up the boarboon getting a first attack and Glurb getting the killing blow. If given the opportunity, I almost always take first turn on Glurb unless there is absolutely nothing in his quadrant to murder. Going second is less desirable, especially if the opponent draws his forces back, as it leaves you hoping to draw a spore carrier in your first hand. If you don’t, then you’re looking at careful advancement of rats behind boars while you kill of your rear swordsmen for some early magic. Stalling Glurb’s tempo is the most annoying thing as it leaves him vulnerable to draws and getting those spore carriers firing.

And just because Glurb has to get his hands dirty to plant his roots, don’t think this leaves him vulnerable. Glurb is most active in the early game–the moment when his opponent lacks a lot of magic for summoning–and once he gets up some of his swamp, he slinks to the back to allow his commons to take the brunt of the labour. You’re only looking to plant three or four roots with your summoner, on average. The rest of your nuisance comes from your spore carriers. And with Glurb, those root walls are even more pressing than Mugg’s. Glurb has a lot of threats to throw to the field and it’s apt to paralyze his opponent on which tactic to take against him. Furthermore, between his sow and carriers, his roots are launched two or more tiles away from his forces as the advance guard. Throwing up your own walls doesn’t help as it inevitably creates cracks between which Glurb can grow his plants. And there’s nothing more satisfying as a Swamp Mercenary than summoning two rats off forward root walls and immediately expanding your swamp with a spore carrier.

These distant root walls are also important for protecting Glurb, however. If you’re going to vine snare, it’s going to be in those first couple of turns to keep retaliation from hitting Glurb. Plan to take a few wounds, though, and to shift your summoner behind your front line. This is where swordsmen come in handy. They make excellent reinforcements since they can slip past Glurb and occupy root walls or corridors to keep the enemy from summoning any threat on Glurb. Outside of his spore carriers, Glurb’s events are more situational and apt to be built. Of the four, Swamp Dominion is great if you can get it in the mid game when the first champion hits the field. Since Glurb is always hanging around on the periphery, looking for ways to snipe a kill and set up a new root wall, he almost always is easy to angle for a large attack that can wipe out a five magic or more investment that the enemy commits to the field. Don’t mistake it, however. It’s not a summoner killer. You’ve got lots of other cards for that. So hope you find your Dominion when they’re sitting on a fat stack of magic and get prepare to harvest some tears.

Vine lash, in theory, can be a really strong card but due to the nature of Glurb’s swamps, it rarely puts out more than two wounds. It’s nice for hitting something that’s tough but mostly it goes to my magic pile to store up for boarboons.

Boarboon (2M-3W-3M-Sudden Strike)

Suddenly, boarboons!

I actually love these dopey looking lugs. I was rather cool towards them on reveal. Their ability makes them a one magic point saving for the first turn they arrive but then they’re effectively overpriced (as they have no ability) after that turn. At three health, they’re apt to live through one turn too. What I failed to appreciate in my initial evaluation, however, was that spore carriers exist waiting to turn their sudden appearance into a root wall post that first turn usefulness. Not to say that a boarboon which is ignored after being summoned is useless, either. Two attacks natively is still a sizable threat to commons and champions alike. And since they no longer have any further use other than rampaging for you, it’s not a sacrifice to have them make suicidal dives on the enemy summoner. More than that, they’re brain dead easy to use which is a plus since it means they don’t need complicated set-ups in order to be effective.

There’s a decent number of the boars in the deck as well and are the main arm of my attacks. Once you have some magic built up from slaughter and your own building, you can get successive turns of sudden striking boarboons from your seeded walls and there are few factions which can deal with this. Even better, because of Glurb’s sowing, it’s hard for the enemy to wall off access as well without making a very limiting fort around their summoner. And the vast majority of summoners will be sent running after one attack from these guys.

So, in practice, their one magic discount compared to the swamp orc Savager ends up being a pretty big deal.

Swamp Rat (1M-1W-0M-Hide)

When I first heard of the rats, I hoped they would be just regular, creepy looking swamp animals. Alas, furries strike again. Oh well.

On their reveal, I wanted to like the swamp rats but I was too focused on the specific line of their hiding which made them useless to Mugglug to really believe they would be helpful. I’m happy to say I was wrong. I love the swamp rats and they are very effective in the Swamp Mercenary line-up. Glurb can’t build walls off his own units so the fact these guys run when friendlies try to harvest them isn’t a big negative. In fact, their flight can be helpful for clearing lanes. More importantly, however, they can attack after Glurb goes to sow and jump off his fresh wall to cover dangerous lanes. Any turn they survive is a turn you draw closer to your spore carriers to turn them into free magic (and a wall). They’re easy to underestimate, both by your opponent and yourself. So don’t neglect the rat. They’re really important in those first early turns when Glurb needs to get his snowball rolling and their free cost and blocking power is worth far more than their zero cost.

Swordsman (2M-1W-1M-Slippery)

Ironically, swordsmen are the unit I’m least crazy about. Sure, they’re my favourite 2-1 stat that I like buying for one magic. For the most part, however, I find that they very rarely serve as anything other than an emergency boarboon. They are your only unit which can traverse your swamp safely, however, so I will keep the first initial two alive if I can be aggressive against my opponent. They’re also invaluable for following behind Glurb to offer a quick blocker if things get too hairy. The on-call two attack is valuable, there’s no doubt behind that. But since Glurb isn’t reliant on assassination, they’re pretty much food for the enemy and I’ll take boarboons whenever I can.

Mik the Tusk (2M-6W-5M-Vinemancer Strike)

Mik is the champion that Mugg has always wanted. Unfortunately, Glurb got him instead. So, he’s more the answer Glurb has when facing the swamp orc adversary. For five magic, he’s at the sweet spot where I’ll blindly summon something in a pinch but don’t expect to get a lot of mileage from him in most of your games. I find he’s a great wall buster if you manage to get your swamp around one but he’s really easy to avoid as well. The nice thing about Mik is that he can serve as a panic button if your forces take sudden loses and you are being chased into your swamp. Don’t expect him to live long. Six health without any defensive ability can go down quick. But he’ll save you a few turns for recuperation.

That said, he’s insane against Mugglug. Remember, he doesn’t discriminate against roots and is quite happy to stomp into Mugg’s swamp and leave him a massive shiner for his impertinence. Best part about this arrangement is you don’t even have to do the work of planting the swamp!

Prong (3M-3W-4M-Vinemancer Drain)

Full disclosure, I’ve never used Prong. Kait did once. I think he died right away.

I know the story behind the guy so I know why he’s not great. Apparently, his ability could destroy root walls within two spaces of him and be triggered multiple times a turn. Thus, he fell into Thorkur levels of invulnerability. Quick came the Plaid Hat balance hammer and now he’s pretty much magic pile fodder. Unless you’re really fortunate, you’re not likely to be drowning the board in your root walls so losing them to keep the frog alive is usually more trouble than its worth. He’s also easy to dodge since he’s melee and spreading swamp isn’t really Glurb’s specialty. Prong can at least eat some wood to protect against lightning strikes or a Satara bounce but, really, you shouldn’t be pulling him out in the first place. At the end of the day, Vinemancer Drain is not worth the extra cost on this guy. You’ll probably get more mileage with him in Mugg’s deck and he might be a great choice there as Mugg can pad him with roots to keep him happy for days. And, more importantly, he’s a savager that can absorb an extra hit a turn.

Turt (3M-6W-6M-Lumbering)

I like Turt but I don’t love Turt. I wouldn’t put a ring on that but I might treat him to a few lovely dates. His appearance has a very significant psychological effect on the game. Three attack and six health is a sizable champion to drop but that he is only hit on five or higher is likely to stay your opponent’s hand. And for good reason. On average, it takes eighteen-ish attacks to bring him down. That’s insane. He lands on the board and you can expect to see the enemy shuffle to the opposite side of the field. He’s a shepherding dog that corrals your opponent where you want him. Remember that and don’t try marching him with your forces (or don’t be surprised when suddenly your opponent vacates the area leaving you with the obnoxious task of chasing him across the field). At one movement a turn, he’s incredibly easy to avoid if you don’t take care. That’s kind of the issue with the Swamp Mercenary champions in general. However, unlike the others, Turt isn’t restricted to where you’ve randomly cultivated your crop. Thus, I almost always use him to block off retreats while sending the rest of my forces around to pinch my opponent in. It’s pretty successful. And it’s very entertaining when your opponent drops a champion to get into fisticuffs. In a one on one, Turt is going to win in almost all circumstances (barring Satara, <3).

However, don’t get overconfident with Turt. If you send him too far out, he can get isolated and ganged up. Turt can fall after three rounds of concentrated attention. I know; I’ve done it. He’s not going to single handedly win you games so make sure you have a plan and support when you bring him to the fore. But with some good positioning, he can well make up for his cost. He’s also a fantastic wall buster since it’s so hard to dislodge him and you know the wall isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. If you’re bringing a champion to the table, Turt is it.

The Swamp Mercenaries are very much like Moyra in that they’re a very tight design that had an idea in mind and executed it well. Perhaps this was possible by neglecting any element of the mercenary portion of the alliance since the Swamp Mercenaries are essentially the second summoner for the swamp orcs. If that’s the case, then it’s a sacrifice I can tolerate because the way most of the deck utilizes Glurb’s aggressive swamp strategy is both effective and fun. There’s nothing more satisfying than getting a couple of root walls up in your first two turns and just laying on the pressure until your opponent buckles beneath your forces. The Swamp Mercenaries also have the distinction of keeping my belief in invading walls as a powerful ability alive. There’s not a lot to really deck build with the Swamp Mercenaries though they have an extremely expansive list of options to explore. Certainly the champions would be the first to address but, much like Rallul, Glurb doesn’t have a whole lot of reason to include the powerful economic engine called Etch. His rat/carrier combo generates enough magic to suffice and there’s nothing in his deck that is truly exorbitant in price. In fact, I’d be surprised if Glurb didn’t explore more of the swamp orc side for deck tweaking than the mercenaries.

So while it might not be the best alliance, it is certainly one of the best decks. And, ultimately, mechanics trump flavour which several of the prior alliances seem to have forgotten.

Once More onto the Breach

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Moyra and her Vargath Vanguard (hereafter known as the Mountain Vanguard because it’s more pleasing) concludes the last of our bottom factions of the Summoner Wars Alliances tournament. Of all the bottom factions, she is perhaps the most interesting one too. I originally predicted the mountain vanguard placing low in my preview article and while the final results are close to my soothsaying, it’s not for the reasons I’d conceived. Truly, and this is perhaps the most surprising result from the tournament, what held the mountain vanguard back was that they are actually the hardest faction to play out of the box.

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Summoner Wars Alliances belongs to Plaid Hat Games. It can be found at www.plaidhatgames.com/games/summoner-wars/

Weird, I know. You wouldn’t think that looking over their commons. But it’s true. The one faction considered the best for beginning players to learn is also the hardest of the batch to master (or, at the very least, perform well). I think this is because the more “difficult” factions have strong elements that can compensate for not understanding the deck design with the sole exception of the Sand Cloaks. Moyra also goes against the established wisdom of traditional Summoner Wars decks. She needs to be upfront and centre, the lynchpin of her forces and the pivot around which everything else turns. Every other summoner wants to hide in his back lines, goading his opponents to cross the threshold or extending his powers across the board. Not Moyra. She has an incredibly limiting two space range on near all her abilities. This is similar to the vargath design and I held that this would be Moyra’s downfall.

And for the first half of the tournament, it was. Sundervered demonstrated that a forward summoner is inherently weak since it pushes the player into disadvantaged positions and taking wounds on their leader which draws defeat ever closer. And unlike the vargath, Moyra has no way to extract herself from a terrible situation. She’s committed to the noble leader role or else her forces crumble despite inheriting the vanguard’s durability. In fact, for being a vargarth vanguard alliance, there’s very little vanguard in the force. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the parent factions share so much in common in the first place but the one distinguishing ability of the vanguard–their healing–is found on only one card in the entire deck. And this healing is very directed, denying most of Moyra’s forces its benefits.

That said, I suspect if we were to do the tournament over again, Moyra would wrestle a top position and have the potential to even rise into the finals. She accumulated her three wins all in the last three rounds with the first representing a significant turning point in her development.

For on the fourth round I had discovered the secret to Moyra.

My greatest contribution ever to Summoner Wars is this: place one of your die on your draw deck as a reminder to use Moyra’s Divine Presence before you draw. You see, it’s incredibly easy to forget to trigger Moyra’s ability. And we are playing with strict rules in our tournaments. If you miss a play window to perform an ability, then you can not do it. For the first couple of matches, Moyra kept forgetting to inspire her troops and was, essentially, without any ability in those battles. But that die on your draw pile prevents you from picking up your cards for the next round before you give the bonus attack and movement for your unit. And I think part of Moyra’s balance is insuring that you trigger that ability before you know what you can play.

And while the consistent bonus attack no doubt contributed to her sudden win rate, I think it also pushed us into a more tactical mindset. Moyra, above all others, is the queen of board positioning. She must own the centre of the table or else she will fail. However, conquering that important space is her specialty. She’s meant to march like a roman phalanx across the enemy lines, forcing them to throw up walls and units in inefficient positions to stop the juggernaut. All the while, her commons crowd around her, making Moyra impenetrable as a great wall of defenders and crusaders survive round after round of abuse. Cheribum weave in and out, laying down covering fire, removing key targets and being generally enormous nettling threats. Once a path is cleared, the little children flutter forth with their bows of light striking crippling shots into the summoner. And most will fall to three attacks from the little angels.

But the best part is, if no opening is afforded, Moyra is alright with that as well. She has the sustainability to win a long slug fest. Walls aren’t a true hinderance as she can easily crowd them and bring them down in a few rounds. Holes in her ranks are easily filled and if you manage to strike numerous wounds upon her, she is guaranteed to heal back up–fresh as ever–in the late game with the ever guiding hand of Father Benjamin. And the much improved event suite over Sundervered’s is important. Change Form is the only one that saw minimal use in our games but everything else had a significant role to play. Divine Intervention keeps the all important cherubims fluttering, blinding light makes reinforcement turns possible or sustains a wild charge forward. And Lightning Strike insures that either one wall or one champion is rendered wasteful. Two automatic wounds will make Turt and Bauble hesitate. It will set up the Cave Filth’s cheap champions for destruction on your attack phase. And even if there’s no champion on the board, it will wreck walls or Hogar’s foolishly enchanted ice golems.

It’s strong but different and victory hinges on expert placement. As Moyra becomes more knowledgeable of her opponent’s capabilities, she’s able to turn those tools to covering any weaknesses the enemy seeks to exploit while dropping her heavy attacks against their own vulnerabilities. It’s a hammer and anvil style of play and once you grasp it, it is incredibly effective.

Moyra (3M-7W-Divine Presence)

Divine Presence dictates how you will always play Moyra. You must keep her advancing with her armies. This has the downside of making your assaults slower as you must insure she has a front line to stand behind while using up a movement for, generally speaking, taking a position from which she won’t attack. But you need her within two spaces of her forces for that bonus die. That die, however, turns all her units into incredibly cost efficient units. You can get defenders that would cost most summoners two magic for half the cost. The extra movement typically means that reinforcements can catch up or that cherubims can get into position for their soft step into a deadly firing lane. Divine Presence also forces Moyra playing a very common heavy style. Thankfully, all her commons support that style.

Three attack does mean that any assaults which pierce Moyra’s common shield will fall to her counter attack. Seven wounds insures that she won’t balk at the first sign of trouble. Furthermore, her courage is steeled with the knowledge that Father Benjamin is waiting in the wings to splash her with water and pass on a Gatorade. Don’t take these stats for granted, however. She is not meant to be a dominant player in the back and forth combat. She is the final crushing blow, not the starting strike. You must insure that she is covered on all sides. Also, remember that she does not trigger most of her commons abilities either. She does not qualify for Hold the Line (even with a Change Form), though she does strengthen it. She won’t pick up the crusader’s shining aura either if she decides to pretend that she’s a cute little girl archer.

Also, don’t be afraid of divine intervention. It turns all wounds from an attack into one. While no one wants to wound their summoner, you do have a healing option and–if you’re positioning well–these are quite often the only wounds you’ll be taking. Furthermore, pulling a champion’s three hits into one on a target well buried in your phalanx can be game winning. It makes your exchanges incredibly one-sided. It keeps assassinating cherubims in position applying game winning pressure. You do have three of them, however, so don’t worry about hauling them through turns either. You just need one at key moments as a combined Lightning Strike and Divine Intervention will likely allow you to effortlessly remove an expensive enemy champion from the board with minimal losses.

And Moyra has no inherent magic economy so gaining it through combat superiority is her only way to seal victory. Make sure you’re fighting lots but also that you’re winning all those fights. Force enemies to target less key components of your phalanx. Unlike other factions, you’re game plan isn’t to give them no targets but lots of bad targets. Once you start leaving your opponent turns to choose between attacking full health, tough crusaders in the hopes of bringing down the attacks of Father Ben and cherubims, throwing expensive units in solo assaults against your back line artillery or praying to the dice gods they can bring down that entrenched and wounded defender then you know you’re doing your job well. Whatever survives your next turn–and something will–is going to get a free chant of growth anyway and should the unfortunate victim even miss once, you’re going to insure that they get punished for it.

The hardest part of Moyra is remembering to use her presence and it’s key to her success. When playing against Moyra, don’t let them get away with “forgetting” to trigger it especially if the opponent sees their hand. Part of Moyra’s difficulty is keeping track of your casualties and your likely draws so you know which unit can be aggressive and which need protection. That beginning of your turn decision is important so don’t make it flippantly. Once you stop seeing it as simply “one free die” but the wheel which directs your ship you’ll start to really unlock Moyra’s potential.

Cherubim (1R-1W-1M-Light of Foot)

When I saw this unit, I knew it would be the best. These little guys and gals are the whole reason for this deck. They have slippery swiftness, making sure they can move through your column to get into attacking position. They’re two ranged attack so long as they’re within two spaces of a crusader when they notch their bow. They’re three attack if Moyra inspires them. Truthfully, they’re apt to be pumped more by crusaders than Moyra but that’s still alright. You’ve only paid one magic for them and it’s a steal for everything you get. And when the opponent realizes that their power is being pulled from the crusader, they’ll be tempted to turn their attention away from the little angels and towards the heavily armoured knights. And you want them striking the knights.

Cherubim are one of those units which you’ll play every single one of them and wish your deck had more. Be sure to always keep one in hand, however, for those final turns. It’s amazing how often a summoner will put himself in a bad position in the last moments going for desperate set-ups that can then be perfectly exploited by the hoofed children.

Crusader (1M-3W-2M-Shining Aura)

The crusader is your most important piece of your phalanx but also the one which you need to field the least. Most of these guys will be built for magic. Their two cost is generally more than you’ll want to swallow. For the most part, you want to keep them decently protected. They’re support units all the way. They’re there to make cherubim hit harder and defenders defender better. They’re the perfect personal guard for Moyra as their three health will keep them around far longer than the opponent will want. They’re also apt to have a natural Lumbering like defence thanks to Moyra and a forward defender. They’re funny in that you don’t want them dead but you kind of want them attacked sporadically to ease pressure on your other forces. Play them as though they’re your favourite child but simply shrug if they fall. When battles start going sideways, they’re likely going to be Moyra’s target and a two attack, three health is decent enough.

There’s not much strategy to them. Keep them close, keep them safe and let them just make everything better.

Defender (1M-2W-1M-Hold the Line)

I was rather flippant of these guys but I love them. It’s true that you’ll get them up to needing five or higher dice rolls to kill and still watch them fall to a single two ranged attack. However, they’re equally likely to survive three rounds of attacks and that’s an incredibly demoralizing result for your opponent. And if you get two of them beside each other, they both feed off the other’s abilities and gain toughness. They are your front line and they’re incredibly effective at it. Keep pumping them with Moyra and their attacks will wear your opposition down. This is your anvil. Defenders have a tendency of being tougher than they have any right and being dirt cheap to boot. Be quick with your reinforcements when they fall and you’ll find that they’ll keep your phalanx going indefinitely.

Keep in mind, however, that they can not cover summoners or champions. They do nothing by themselves when beside Moyra or Qayla. A solitary defender is a sad defender. These units do, however, improve the line. Your defenders are the pieces which determine your column’s shape. Angle it so the opponent’s attack options are positioned against units boosted by the most units. You want the closest or only target to be beside two or three mountain vanguard and one of those has to be a defender. This will give your commons persistent Blinding Light. For the most part, you want these two front liners to be defenders but in practice this won’t always hold. Ultimately, your goal is to force your opponent to go after these guys to soften up the rest of your forces. Every time your enemy has to attack a target they don’t want in order to get at the target they do pulls you ever closer to victory.

Father Benjamin (2R-4W-5M-Return to the Light)

Daddy B himself. This is your best champion even though he’s expensive as all get out. He’s inherently one more magic than his stats are worth. His ability then requires you to spend even more magic in order to trigger. It’s a bitter pill you simply have to swallow because what he brings to the table is too vital to pass. Big Daddy B is your answer to the late game, a surprise collapse of a phalanx or persistent bad luck that’s dragging you down. You’ll almost always toss him on the bottom of your deck to insure he comes at the end when you won’t be stressing over how to spend your magic. Don’t worry about the trigger for his ability. While needing him to die (and thus giving your opponent the power to determine its trigger) by the enemy’s hand would be a huge negative, in practice, Daddy B will get himself killed every game. He’s funny because, while you spend most of your game trying to keep all your forces staying well past their welcome, Daddy B is pulled to the field specifically to push daisies. Get him near a crusader and your enemy will go for him every time. They have to! Three ranged attack is not something anyone can truly ignore. Four health is too tempting to pass up. He’s the old man with a death wish and that’s precisely why he’s the champion you always want to make sure you afford. But keep in mind that he’s effectively a seven to nine cost champion (making him one of the most expensive in the game) and don’t ever put him on the field without making sure you have enough magic to heal when he does collapse.

Korbolden (1R-6W-6M-Electrocute)

Korbolden is the hideous growth on an otherwise extremely attractive woman. It’s the blemish that you keep telling yourself not to stare at but you can’t politely ignore. Korbolden is bad. Nah, Korbolden is one of the worst champions in the game. I literally lost a match because I put him to the table. Never, and I repeat this, NEVER play Korbolden. Build him for magic. He’s Tundra Guild Balanced and yet another reminder that Plaid Hat’s design is all across the board. I would have railed against Father Benjamin’s prohibitive costs more and how it seems mindlessly high for what it accomplishes had Father Benjamin not served a necessity that you will begrudgingly pay every time.

Korbolden has no such purpose. Korbolden is just pure, unadulterated shit. Let’s look at him. According to the SSCF, he is priced at 9 magic. His stats are 1 attack plus 1 ranged plus six health for a whopping 8 magic worth. Out the gate, Korbolden costs you one more magic than what you’d expect. Thus, he must have an ability that is worth this extra cost.

Nope, he has an ability that costs extra magic. Thus, he will forever be at best overpriced by one magic (and taking the hit in his attack value too which is the last thing you want to lower). Hilariously, though, it gets worse. In order to trigger his ability, you have to be adjacent to your target and, thusly, negate the ranged bonus for which you paid extra. Alright, so even making the foolish choice to try and us his ability now makes the champion overpriced by two magic. And we haven’t even started electrocuting yet!

Electrocute itself is a poor ability. In effect, it costs one magic. But, unlike every other card ability that costs one magic, this one adds the double whammy of never being fueled by your opponent’s units. Thus, it always costs you a card from your deck to pull off. Why is this bad? He is an early game champion but with a mid to late game cost. Korbolden is useless the moment you deck yourself. He forces you to stuff your hand on the assumption you’re going to hit (and if you don’t, you’ve now not summoned or played an event because you assumed you’d be spending it). If you have intentions of using him again, you’ll be holding onto extra cards and not building them for magic otherwise you run the risk of getting a hand of necessary cards and having nothing to fuel his ability (thus leaving him exposed and weakened). And, of course, there’s the further weakness that you can’t rely on his ability since he does crap all if he misses (especially since that means he did no damage). He’s designed to take on champions with the potential for auto-wounding and he gets destroyed by all of them by trying to man fight while falling victim to any abilities that make his opponents tougher (like Lumbering). On top of it all, if you do pull it off, he’s now overpriced by three (naturally overpriced, not actually ranged and now you’ve spent a magic to use him). Each turn you do succeed with him drives his cost up further and further.

There is nothing good about this card. Hilariously, I assume the designer thought he was balanced because he’s priced as a two ranged, six health champion even though his ability lets him be a three ranged one instead! No doubt this was considered a one magic saving! In practice, he’s an incredibly swingy one wound or three wound champion who is never worth the price of putting him on the table. There is no situation where you wouldn’t be better served by playing one of Moyra’s commons. They’re one sixth (or one third) the price, they hit harder with Moyra’s presence and they can get improved by crusaders and/or defenders. All of these bonuses come for free and you can get up to six more for the cost of this useless goat.

Don’t ever play Korbolden.

Qayla (3M-6W-7M)

Alas, wherein Moyra’s commons are steals in terms of value, all her champions are not. But unlike Father Ben, neither Korbolden or Qayla require you to play them. Qayla has the distinction of not being utter rubbish, however she’s not someone you’ll see often either. At seven magic, she’s one magic more than her stats are worth but Form Rank isn’t that powerful to really compensate for that price. It’s good and I won’t argue otherwise. Simply put, it’s not necessary. And the seven needed for her can be banked up for Father Ben instead. You’ll only really see Qayla when you’re ahead in the game and she basically keeps Moyra’s advantage rolling instead of turning the tables. Forming rank lets you reinforce an assault incredibly easily and three attack on her means you’ll have the luxury of doing two pronged assaults. But if you’re under pressure or you draw her early, there’s no point even debating whether to try and get her out.

She’s ok but she simply does not offer enough that spending her magic on more commons wouldn’t give. If I were deck building, I’d probably cut her simply because the times you really want champions are the times when you wouldn’t select Qayla. While she cements a lead, I’d rather have something that can pull me back from being on the back foot. For that, I need something either with a killer ability that isn’t offered anywhere else (Father Ben) or some cheap, hard units that can do more than what my commons would do. Since Moyra is all about super powered commons, there are very few candidates that fulfill those requirements. Varn gives you more power for less magic, Leah can use a great Father Ben reserve while utilizing your crusaders and Coleen can make your phalanx really impregnable (and gets boosted by crusaders yet again but crusaders were essentially designed to make bad Vanguard champions not suck).

Moyra is perhaps the best example of the Alliances shift of focus from champion gameplay to common units. I’m curious to see how these decks will measure up against the older factions which have a number of events that hate against commons. The large amount of units needed for Moyra to form her phalanx will open her up to reinforcements, magic drain and into shadows that could prove to be problematic for her style. That said, outside of her problematic champions, Moyra is a well constructed deck who I’m excited to see played more as her style gets refined. But unlike the last couple of factions, there’s lots of strength in her composition demonstrated in her abilities to take down the higher performing factions once we wrapped our heads around her mechanics.

So don’t let her seemingly simplistic cards fool you. Moyra is a complicated but powerful summoner prepared to take on any comers. She focuses on a tactic that has been absent from the game for so long I’m not even certain what would make a good counter to her. But if she’s a herald for a new era of Summoner Wars strategy, then I welcome her with open arms.

It’s Irritating and Gets Everywhere

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“I do like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.”

~ Anakin Skywalker, on the Sand Cloaks

The Sand Cloaks are everything that the Tundra Guild is not in the Summoner Wars Alliances master box. They’re fun. They’re fast. They’re aggressive and scary. They’re also terrible, so I suppose they have one point of commonality.

I’m a little sad by the Sand Cloaks performance. I had high expectations for them, mostly because I drank the kool-aid from the playtesters who trumpeted how they were the next best thing since sliced bread. I’ve mentioned before how the “accepted meta” in the game is to hard turtle and drag the game out to boring stalemates. Well, the Sand Cloaks break that handedly. Or, at least, they presumably break that meta handedly. I don’t know because my sister and I don’t play like that. We’re fun. We’re fast. We’re aggressive and scary. Ironically, this is the very thing the Sand Cloaks are weak against.

However, they are the Yin to the Tundra Guild Yang. I don’t keep drawing this comparison for no reason (other than to continue to harp on how much I hate the northern dwarves). The core mechanic of the Sand Cloaks–and the unique addition the alliance brings to the Summoner Wars table–is near identical to the rune system. There is a very distinct difference between the implementation, however. Marek’s works.

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Summoner Wars Alliances belongs to Plaid Hat Games. It can be found at www.plaidhatgames.com/games/summoner-wars/

Called Event Abilities, Marek’s entire event suite is composed of nine abilities which represent all the unique traits that make the sand goblins and cloaks the tricky, maneuverable and highly unpredictable factions that they are. However, unlike Vlox, Marek does not learn all the abilities of her peoples but spreads that knowledge around. She flings truths. She tosses knowledge. She is the most effective short term memory focused teacher the world has ever seen. And she demonstrates that reading can be both cool and deadly. So why do Even Abilities work wherein runes do not?

For one, opponents can do nothing to displace event abilities. There is not a two magic dispel tax associated with them. You want an event ability off the board then you’re going to have to work for it.

Second, Marek has nine of the suckers. She isn’t stuck with getting them all in her hand in the first draw or having the game end before she ever has a chance to put one to the field. They’re not balanced as some events are better than others but they all have some use no matter the game state thanks to clever design of her commons. Marek’s Hunters and Scholars are the real highlights for the deck but even more than that, their design is such that they won’t unbalance either the Sand Goblins or the Cloaks either. They’re necessary tools in Marek’s arsenal and though this cuts into her deck-building options, it doesn’t feel overly restrictive because the style of play they encourage is so entertaining that you don’t really feel like you want to replace them.

In many ways, Marek reminds me of MaxX from Netrunner. MaxX is a new anarchist runner whose style is so very different from others. She encourages the player to go aggressive on their opponent from the word “Go” and to only ever let up in short instances to refuel the next barrage. More than that, however, there’s no grand design to the runner. You basically play the cards you draw and Marek is very much in the same boat. You can’t compose an overarching strategy the moment you realize who your opponent is because you have no way to insure that your pieces will ever come together to pull it off. But that’s ok. You’re not trying to build awkward combos like Ret-Talus or Rallul. You’re simply going to apply whatever you draw to solving the issue at hand. If that fails, you’re getting a new hand to pull new tricks against your opponent. You aren’t forced into the ridiculous misdirection of Vlox and are more a magician holding your opponent enthralled with the question of what you’ll do next.

My personal choice for best event ability and one of the key cards to Marek’s strategy.

Unfortunately, because you are so aggressive, you have no way to properly defend against a strong push into your territory. That very same unpredictability makes properly holding off the tides near impossible. Marek is quite capable of throwing off consistent multiple cheap two-three dice attacks a round but nothing she has is strong enough to survive the retaliation. All her units are fragile as glass. Marek wins quick or loses quick in our games. Don’t expect to do wall assaults much or even to see all the walls hit the battlefield when she deploys. And woe to anyone foolish enough who thinks they can turtle and effectively defend against her. You can not so stop sulking in your backlines and strap some armour on–this is going to be a wild one.

And more than anything else, that’s what makes Marek so great. She’s the most effective assassin in the game and while this makes wildly swingy games, it also means they’re always incredibly close. Of all Marek’s losses only one was a true stomp due to a once in a lifetime draw set-up. Outside of that, all of her matches have been decided upon a die roll and you can’t get more exciting than that.

Marek (2R-5W-Master Teacher)

Marek is not a fighter herself and she isn’t meant to be one either. Her whole goal is to stand back with her scholars, pouring over books and shouting commands like a royal general-strategist. Master Teacher is incredible as it means your units will always have the ability they need no matter where they are. More than that, Master Teacher makes it so that your key unit has more than one ability each turn. Remember, Hogar is capable of doing this but at the very real and significant risk of losing both those abilities the moment it becomes his opponent’s turn. Marek pitches powers like it’s a sunny afternoon in the backyard and she’s teaching her kid to play fetch. Note, this doesn’t trigger the attack boost of the hunter’s Pack Mentality but that’s fine since it still counts as an ability to share with the rest of the hunters (thus spreading Marek’s teaching even further).

Her play style is pretty straightforward so let’s talk about those events in greater detail. Marek is the prime candidate for some key powers. She’s incredible with Marked Target. This way you can be assured all your hunters will have that extra die against champions and the summoner without worrying about losing it to the assault. Camouflage is wonderful against ranged opponents as it makes Marek incredibly hard to target and Swift sees her able to position to safer quarters when the opponent rushes to get her. Flee and Escape can be wielded to decent effect when you are being hunted as well.

And the other component to what will make your opponent sweat bullets in matches.

Save the Greater Sneak, however, for someone else. Far shot is particularly useless as well as it only extends range to four squares. Blitz is incredibly niche especially since most of your units are ranged and you’re not looking to throw your scholars into the fray in the first place. And, of course, Retribution is one hundred percent useless in the deck and only exists for Marek’s deck building options. And what deck building options she has! While Marek isn’t particularly strong with her base deck, both her parent factions boast some incredibly powerful champions. The Sand Goblins have strong and cheap options aplenty and the Cloaks can make their tricky but difficult to trigger abilities almost effortless. I can’t wait to try a Swift/Greater Sneak Dagger to finally give that champion some fangs. And, of course, Spider is downright scary with all the movement capabilities in her little red book.

Hunter (1R-1W-1M-Pack Mentality)

I was whelmed when these cards were first revealed. I thought they might have potential but their one health makes them incredibly vulnerable. And that’s exactly what they are.

Able to create two range for one magic is a strong trade-off but these little guys will never survive a counter attack. You must realize that when you play them. The moment they hit the board, you’re looking to apply their dice in the most effective place immediately. They’re a scalpel. You slice short and fast and then they’re gone. Don’t hold illusions of mega-hunters stalking the board and winning you the game. I tried it and, while having three hunters with camouflage, far shot, swift and marked target is terrifying, there is a lot of common killers out there. This tactic lost me the game from a very timely play of Unholy Sacrifice which wiped me of all those attackers, positioning and abilities in one fell swoop. It might be tempting to look at sand goblin shamans as tempting alternatives, but I don’t want to underplay the power of getting three or more abilities on your hunters. They can stack up so many powers to create a very real threat.

Granted, the most common use will be summoning one with Greater Sneak, having Marek teach him Marked Target and flinging him at the opponent’s summoner but that’s fine as well. At five movement, they become impossible to block. And if you turtle up and try and hide from them, they can strike from camouflage with far shot and take the enemy forces apart piecemeal without much concern for retaliation. You’ll quickly learn that there are simply not enough hunters in the pack. Period.

Scholar (1M-1W-0M-Archive)

It is simply cruel that the Scholar exists for Marek and not Hogar. They are everything scribes wish they could be. Scholars allow you the ever vital ability to shuffle around your event abilities on the field. And this is a vital gear in Marek’s machine. You will be throwing down unoptimized abilities on less than desired targets. Whether this is Flee on Marek to get her out of trouble, Blitz on a Scholar going in to nobly hold off a pressing wave or Far Shot on a Tinkerer to get that extra dice out, you will want to swap these abilities back to your hand. You can then pitch them for some extra little magic on your next turn or put them on their primary target; it’s all up to you! However, I find these guys are Greater Sneak diggers more than anything else. Those scampering hunters that are crawling across the field to terrify your opponent are going to die and if you’re going to keep throwing bodies into that deadly meat grinder, you need one of these guys to pull that sneak from the graveyard. But be careful, that one magic tax can add up so only do it when you know you can pull of those important blows. But they do it during the event phase so you’ll know whether you can do it or not.

Tinkerer (1R-2W-2M-Null Machine)

The horribly underrated Tinkerer needs far more love. These guys are game changers and it’s important you don’t make the mistake I did and build them all for magic. Sure, you’re not throwing them all to the field like hunters but you shouldn’t have a single game go by where you don’t have more than one kicking around (and no, your starter Tinkerer does not count). Three range on their null machine is incredibly and it can’t be blocked by walls or other units. This allows you to kill Hogar’s forces while laughing at the thought of having to spend money to get rid of runes. It also nullifies champions and makes them all over-priced meatbags so long as your tinkerer is flicking his fingers. They will become high priority targets the moment Satara is reduced to a bumbling one attack klutz. Don’t let their cost fool you–this is a good thing. Every attack thrown towards the tinkerers is an attack that isn’t at your hunters or champions. Their two health isn’t there for nothing. This unit is key to keeping you afloat in the mid-game while you search for that final opening to land your killing blow.

Barston (2R-5W-6M-Cover Fire)

Barston is overpriced and too fragile for my taste. I don’t know if cover fire is really worth the extra magic that makes him cost more than 5 magic to summon. I didn’t really get much use from him since, by the time I had six magic accumulated, I had too few units to really benefit from his extra move. Honestly, I’d rather funnel that magic to hunters and all the tricks they can do. If he was perhaps one more health I might consider him. If there exists one thing with which Marek struggles it’s her economy. I find that I’m almost always running a pretty tight ship and two ranged attack is simply too little for the price since he doesn’t even grant another attack. And Greater Sneak is more effective than his cover. He can be a surprise the moment he hits the battlefield, however, so I won’t say he’s without value.

Bauble (2R-3W-5M-Survivalist)

Bauble is the exact same problem I have with Barston but with even less health. Three wounds is far too little for me. And he’s even more overpriced than Barston. You’re getting six magic worth of stats for eight. Even worse, his ability is a drain on your resources if you have to pull events from your discard to keep him bubbled. Thus, either you’re relying on luck draws, stuffing your hand, or leaving five magic on the board with only three wounds to cover it. I especially don’t like that you have to choose to discard your event before dice are rolled.

That said, he is ranged so you can probably position him so he’ll only receive one attack a round. Just remember that Satara will eat him for breakfast and things like Burn and Greater Burn will roast him immediately. So watch out for factions that do wounds without attacking as you’re then paying lots of your precious economy in order to paint a very lovely crater on the field.

Fink (3R-3W-4M-Copy)

I like Fink. He’s the cheapest of the bunch, the strongest of the bunch and can be the most surprising of the champions. This guy can grab an obscene amount of abilities (of course he’ll have to survive a round to do it) but remember he can copy a hunter and gain all their shared events. Because of awkward timing windows, you will have to decide whether to then teach Fink or the hunters which seems like a silly restriction but presumably someone is still fuming over a super-Fink summon turn where he appeared out of nowhere and ruined a tester’s parade.

But really, the biggest selling point is his cost. You’ll be hard pressed to find a greater deal and you won’t have to cut into your hunter allowance to get it. Marek’s champions are underwhelming in general, however, and we had far more games where not a single hit the board than ones where they turned the tide. So don’t feel bad about building them all for magic. They’re not the stars of the show anyway.

Granted, most of Marek’s deck is unlikely to be exported beyond her control. Only two of them aren’t ability-less when working for the cloaks or sand goblins. And of the two, I feel only Tinkerers will see consistent borrowing. However, Marek is very interested in the options that her alliance brings. Because she isn’t restricted at all in her teachings, everything works beneath her. She simply makes things that are good even better. And there’s a staggering number of combos that are available. She can give Hawk a way to trigger multiple aerial strikes in a single turn. She can make Dagger able to trigger his backstab more than once in a match. She can turn Spider into an unending terror that will destroy hesitant opponents and force them into unfavourable positions. Then there is the Admiral which simply enhances the basics of her deck, Sin-Sin which makes her assassination abilities even more terrifying and Kreep can have his negative completely compensated making him the best value champion. And this is without considering the uses of marked target slashers, swift bruisers, camouflaged snipers or retaliating renegades. There’s just so many options available that it’s really hard to consider all the potentials.

Sure, Marek had few wins in our tournament but there’s nothing really in her deck that drags her down. Had her champions been a bit better priced, I think she might be able to bump her wins up to a more acceptable level. As I mentioned before, she was always so very close to victory. The real issue is that her style is very boom or bust. Assassination is an all-in strategy. You expend an inefficient number of resources in order to bypass the back and forth slugfest of most match-ups in order to deal damage directly to the opponent’s summoner. If you succeed, you win. If you fail, you’re down economy, board position and units. It makes recovery difficult and certainly swings tempo heavily in your enemy’s favour. This usually prompts her to be even more aggressive on Marek and pushes Marek to commit to even greater long-shot plays.

Thus, matches tend to snowball into one-sided and quick affairs. For us, it put Marek on the losing end more often than not. But at the very least, those loses are fun. It’s almost a Zen-like effect where you’re focused on the moment to the exclusion of everything else. And when you’re done, you want to go again.

This Ice Is Not Nice

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The Tundra Guild in Summoner Wars Alliances holds a very important place in my heart. It has the gloried distinction of being my least favourite faction in the entire box. It’s important that the Tundra Guild exist so that I can at least look fondly on the other factions which do poorly. In order to understand love, we must experience loss. Bliss is possible because we feel pain.

And the Tundra Guild brings the pain in spades.

It does not, however, pose a threat to its enemies. Every time I was forced to play this downright dreadful deck, I felt like I was basically stalling the inevitable. I can speculate over why Melundak was given such poor commons. I’ve even come up with some deck builds where I would want to use all of them. And, of course, Melundak has his outstanding champions so even if his commons need to go directly to your magic pile, you’re building towards something strong. Or at the very least, you’re building towards something fun.

Hogar is simply a deck composed of thirty-four crap cards. Well, that’s unfair. He has three walls. So thirty-one crap cards.

The only explanation I have for how this awful, awful deck came into existence is that one playtester managed to have one game where he absolutely dominated the lead playtester. Furious and vindictive, each card was sent out to the back of the shed and shot in the knee. Prior, I joked that Plaid Hat Games concept of balance was to make everything so bad no one would want to play it. I’m convinced this is how the Tundra Guild was designed. I want to blame the community who spent so many words complaining about how broken or unfun or annoying the Guild Dwarves and Tundra Orcs are to play. This is their penance. Hogar was, presumably, crafted so those factions would have nothing to bolster their ill-repute. In that sense, the Tundra Guild is a soaring success. Grognack and Oldin won’t touch anything from this deck with a mile-long pole. I can see Bolvi taking a few cards but, really, that’s only if he wants to force a square peg through a round hole. And Hogar himself? I reckon he will never see the light of day outside of forced tournament appearances. There is no saving this summoner. He is terrible. I’ll probably have to houserule him heavily to get him even playable amongst my kin.

And I say that in all seriousness. Hogar is to bad, useless design as original Thorkur was to bad, overpowered design. As a brief refresher, Thorkur was the three ranged attack Guild Dwarf champion who could spend one magic in order to ignore all wounds dealt to him by an attack. This was not limited to once a turn or anything so the easiest way to win with the Guild Dwarves was build your entire deck as magic, summon Thorkur and then just march him across the board as an invincible juggernaut. He stands as the only card to receive errata in the entire game. I think Hogar deserves to be the second.

I didn’t win once with Hogar and Kait did manage a surprising win against the Cave Filth with him. Course, this was after we had an informal “no dispelling his runes” agreement installed. And the idea behind his deck isn’t the worst. It’s a noble aspiration to attempt to provide options to the wholly under performing second summoners of the Tundra Orcs and Guild Dwarves with the deck’s construction. In fact, as with the Jungle Shadow, I can appreciate the attempt to tie the Tundra Orcs and Guild Dwarves around similar gameplay elements. This takes the form of the Rune mechanic.

Runes compose the majority of Hogar’s events suite and are treated like the upgrades from Bolvi’s deck though they can be applied to any card instead of just those with the Built ability. Torgan also had three ice armours which would go beneath a common to make them a little more survivable as well. On their own, Runes would have been a really neat mechanic. Unfortunately, they are not unique and are simply a drastically worse version of the Sand Cloak’s Event Abilities. But we’ll cover that on another day. The one benefit that Runes have over its cloaky counterpart is that they can be stacked beneath the same card. The one detriment makes the whole Rune system absolutely useless.

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Summoner Wars Alliances belongs to Plaid Hat Games. It can be found at www.plaidhatgames.com/games/summoner-wars/

For, you see, any rune can be dispelled by the enemy for the simple cost of two magic. Even more egregious, that two magic will remove ALL runes on that one card. Thus, the only benefit Runes had over the Event abilities is immediately destroyed by its weakness. You want to stack your Runes because that’s the only way to make a strong threat in the Tundra Guild deck but the moment you do the opponent is going to remove all those runes on his turn for the incredibly cost effectiveness of two magic. Thus, if you want a juggernaut, you’re stuck hoping to have a fistful of runes in your hand while your opponent has no magic to immediately counter it. Even worse, you only have four runes for enchanting your own units so the loss of one is a pretty big deal. What’s more, there’s only one recursion card in all of Hogar’s deck and it is, hilariously enough, another event cutting into his stock for enchanting. And of course this Master Rune is further restricted by forcing you to play the rune you search for the moment you play it, thus stuffing your hand with a dead card until the opportune moment may–or most likely will not–arrive.

The Tundra Guild encapsulate the Tundra Orcs reliance on luck but in the worst way possible. In order to do well with the Tundra Guild you have to be lucky in your draws. Because of its atrocious card spread, you need to receive the exact necessary cards at the exact necessary moment. But what cards are these? Well, they change drastically with how the opponent plays. You’re dictated intrinsically by the tempo of your enemy because you’re always playing at a deficit. At any moment, your opponent can counter the whole power structure of your deck and this tip-toeing around his actions makes you reactive, defensive and useless. If the stars align, you can be extraordinarily powerful… for a turn. You better hope that in that incredibly brief window you’re afforded you get all sixes because otherwise you will lose. And the Tundra Guild don’t lose gracefully. They stall and lag it out like no other faction.

In short, they’re boring, weak, slow and incredibly guarded.

I hate them and I wish they were never made.

Hogar (2M-6W-Ice Fortress)

I like that Hogar’s art accurately represents him. He’s some preening young dwarf, trying his damnedest to look like a real warrior. But the manicured beard, toy battle axe and faux-fur coif meticulously crafted to look like a bear’s head but fooling no one with any sense of anatomy reveal him for the pretender he is. Hogar is not a combatant. You will run him into the corner of the board and keep him cowering and quivering for the entire match. Two attack is pretty poor. His power, Ice Fortress, does nothing to help him win the game. It simply makes Walls–stupidly indestructible on their own with their nine health–even more tiring to destroy as now they’re only hit fifty percent of the time. I can count on one hand the number of games won through wall destruction. This ability isn’t going to win you anything. All it means is that Hogar has to draw his walls early to stuff up the lanes and draw the game out as long as possible.

Alright, so he has a poor stat-line and awful ability. Maybe this was made to balance an event suite that is ridiculously good? Well, if you’ve read the lengthy preamble, you know this is not true. His Runes have built in dispelling which is hilarious given that Tinkerers, Luka, Chant of Nullification and probably a bunch of other nullifying abilities already exist in the game. And what are these grossly overpowered abilities that need to allow the opponent near instantaneous removal? One gives a bonus attack. Another lets five and sixes count as two hits. The last is the Twarter’s Ice Shield (all dice rolled against it need to count as hits in order for any of them to hit). These are standard powers on the Tundra Orc commons (or, you know, the side effect of giving Sand Cloak Hunters another ability). Rune of Shielding is perhaps the best of the bunch AND it has the further restriction that it can only be played on commons.

Seriously, Plaid Hat Games? Seriously?! What was the worse case scenario that made you so terrified of these damn cards? A Heroic, Powered, Shielded Ice Golem swinging a whopping two dice for one turn?! So, not only does Hogar need his walls early but he also needs to pick up his runes in an ordered fashion, playing them one at a time and forcing his opponent to considered whether he wants to dispel them or not. If you draw too many runes early, you’ll stuff your hand because you can’t discard them as you have no way to retrieve them (unlike the Sand Cloaks). Draw them too late and you won’t have anything to enchant. Your best target for enchanting is your stupid marauders who only become ranged with the damn Rune. So you want to throw one of the attack runes on them so your only ranged unit can throw some decent dice (yes, the Tundra Guild have 0 range even including their champions) but they only have two health so you need to throw a shield on them as well. Oh wait, you’ve double enchanted your unit so your opponent is going to remove half your Runes from the game on his turn for a crippling one magic apiece.

So what events are cutting into his nine total that leaves Hogar with so few runes for himself? Well, there are two runes that go on the enemy. Shackling gives a common or champion Slow but it’s not even a debilitating slow because the opponent can spend one magic to ignore the effect. Which is an incredibly bloody stupid option since they can spend two and get rid of the rune altogether. Why does this have a one magic cost on it? Hell if I can ever figure it out.

There’s Rune of Nullification which would be “ok” as it cancels the ability of a common or champion but, once again, it’s mostly just a two magic tax. And, of course, you want to throw it on a champion for its greatest effect since nullifying a common is probably the biggest waste as the opponent will just kill their common. Or summon another.

And then there’s avalanche and hailstorm. I kind of like both but not as singles in the deck. You can’t base anything off them because they’re so random. Also, avalanche is stupid because you have to spend three magic if you target a champion (who you’d want to because you only have one of these damn cards) AND the opponent can easily free the card on their turn by attacking the wall. There’s just additional checks upon checks upon checks to make all his cards incredibly atrocious. Hailstorm would be good except you can only play it after you have enchanted a couple of ice golems (chewing into your limited four Runes again) as well as had an Avalanche be attacked. So… yeah, that’s not happening so this card is a complete dud (as Hogar can’t get ice walls any other way and it only targets ice walls because–screw you I’m Hogar and I’m awful).

In short, Hogar is “Plaid Hat Balanced” around Runes of which he has almost none in his deck and they’re incredibly easy to remove in one turn anyway.

Ice Golem (1M-3W-2M-Runic Transformation)

Let’s get him out of the way. This bastard is going to make me look like a liar. The whole advantage of ice golems is that you can create walls on the opponent’s side. And yet, the two decks that excel at aggressive summoning in Alliances are the two bottom factions in our tournament. Granted, actually making ice golems into walls with Hogar is more difficult than you’d expect for the above mentioned reasons. And, truly, ice golems are incredibly useless as well as being your most prolific common. One attack is never going to win you a match. A rune of power makes these guys hit for about average amount of dice on a melee unit. Three health is good because they’ll stick around a few turns. Unfortunately, you only want to wall them when they have no wounds and you want to give them shielding. In theory, three wounds hit only on four or higher and needing all rolls to hit in order to be wounded is an incredibly durable unit.

But, of course, there’s the hilariously counter that the moment you enchant an ice golem, your opponent will just dispel it on his turn then destroy the golem or at least make it so wounded that there’s no point in re-enchanting the guy. And Hogar doesn’t have any ability to summon during the event phase so your opponent will always destroy your mobile wall before you ever get a use of it.

I build them for magic.

Marauder (2M-2W-2M-Runemetal Axe)

Kait swears marauders are the key to the deck. Their strength does lie in the fact that they’re a decent summon off a forward ice golem-wall with an immediate rune of power to give them three range. It’s a good hunting combo that, once again, requires perfect set-up and board positioning. Unfortunately, ice golems have no mobility options and the easiest way to stop one is to place literally any card in front of one since their one attack means they won’t break through anytime soon. And, even if you manage to get one through and your ranged marauder on the board then you better hope you’re hitting with all your dice because two health is incredibly easy to remove on the opponent’s turn. Or you could shield him and have both his runes removed immediately! Oh the choices! There’s a reason I’ve never been a fan of the 2-2 stat-line for melee.

I just build them for magic.

Scribe (1M-1W-oM-Inscription)

In my preview of the faction, I held the scribe as the most useless card in the Alliance box. I don’t know if I can claim that now, however. It’s a stiff competition against everything else in this faction. The scribe at least has the distinction of being free to throw to the board. Its ability is even worse than I thought since it doesn’t combo with the champions (or at least Zuggdin) at all as it forces you to draw. I suppose if you had multiple scribes hiding with Hogar in the back you could get them to arrange your deck favourably and get your hand stuffed with the forced draw–assuming you’re lucky enough to get a bunch of scribes out and you draw the appropriate cards. And you have a champion on the board. Oh, and those champions are incredibly expensive.

So I just build them for magic.

Raldag (2M-6W-6M-Rune of Aggression)

According to the SSCF, Raldag is overpriced by one magic. I’d argue he’s overpriced by two. Rune of Aggression is a terrible ability on a melee unit since you’re essentially giving up your champion’s attack in order to improve the attack roll of a common. That’s right, you’re not even increasing the number of dice with Raldag, you’re just making it more likely you’ll hit. Except there’s no units in the Tundra Guild that do anything when successfully hitting (or are even required to make all their hits successful though two thirds of their commons are one attack so it’s irrelevant).

He’s awful, expensive and I just build him for magic.

Vognar (2M-8W-7M-Construct)

I never once got Vognar on the field. Why? Because he was always on the bottom of my deck below Zuggdin and/or Raldag. When building my entire force for magic, I was inevitably under pressure from my sister (who plays every faction like the Cave Goblins) and so I had to waste my entire economy on the other big champions. Of course, to really get mileage from Vognar, you need to get him early or, at the very least, before a bunch of ice golems. At two attack, he isn’t threatening himself (and if you enchant him, the opponent will remove the rune immediately). His only value is in creating an economy advantage by flooding the field with free ice golems. But then all you’ve accomplished is flooding the field with useless ice golems.

At seven magic it’s incredibly unlikely you’ll get him and another champion out so I just build him for magic.

Zuggdin (3M-6W-6M-Rune Smith)

Zuggdin is a card that will never see any play. That’s because he’s 100% useless outside of Hogar’s deck. In Hogar’s deck, he’s not great but he’s the only thing I ever get out and he’s the only thing that ever gets anything done. Chances are, you’re not hitting a rune when you attack with him but at least he’s natively three attack so he’s somewhat scary if you don’t get any runes on your deck top. He’ll tempt you to stall your draw and, honestly, it’s not a bad idea since there’s nothing worth digging in Hogar’s deck anyway. Rune him and it’ll just immediately get dispelled so you might as well leave that rune on the top of your deck so the opponent can’t stop him from essentially having a Rune of Power.

Of course, he’s six health with no defensive capability and you’ve probably built most your commons to put him on the board in the first place. He can’t be shielded or protected and he’ll die in one or two turns. But maybe you can wound the opposing summoner enough that you can get a lucky rune marauder kill over the next seventeen turns you spend cowering in a corner behind your stupid, everlasting ice walls.

I play him every time and he’s lasted me two turns at his longest. I also like to imagine that he always lugs that enormous anvil into battle and conquers his foes through impressive smithing and furry orange cloaks.

So, what would I do to fix this faction deck? I’m considering a couple of options. Since I don’t have the power to rework Hogar’s entire Rune suite (which I would), I’d remove the option for the enemy to dispel runes by spending two magic. In theory, this is meant to create economic advantage for the Tundra Guild as it’s a half effective Magic Drain on the opponent’s economy. In practice, we don’t dispel that much in the first place barring one game where I was demonstrating how stupid that mechanic is against my sister (she lost horribly when I did). Removing Runes at the cost of magic is basically just kicking a man while he’s down. The Tundra Guild have to do enough tricky maneuvering as it is in order to get their golems into a useful position. The faction is, almost ironically, stalled by their opponent’s walls as they posses no true way to take them down. The lack of ranged options is also hilarious since nothing in the deck justifies that glaring weakness. Honestly, at this point ignoring the Runes dispel effect and then replacing the vast majority of the commons with Tundra Orcs is probably the safest bet.

To truly fix the Tundra Guild, they need to go back to the shop and have a massive overhaul. If they’re only going to have four playable events on their own units, then they need a way to pull them out from the discard pile. I like that runes can be played on enemies as it makes it slightly different than Event Abilities but it shouldn’t come at the cost of making your ice golems even more useless. I’d probably give the ice golems a 2 attack, 3 wounds for 3 magic spread like the stone golems from Rallul’s deck. That will make them a greater priority. While I like Hailstorm, Avalanche and Ice Fortress they just don’t synergize at all with the Rune mechanic. Ultimately, the Tundra Guild’s focus is too split between the runes and the ice walls and it doesn’t even do one of those adequately. Though, as I consider it now, you could change scribes and marauders to enhance those capabilities if we turn ice golems into the central attacking unit of the common spread.

Also, we need to pitch Raldag. I can see how he would be tempting with Torgan’s Smashers (and Shamans in general) outside of that niche use, he’s wholly not worth the cost. You could make him far cheaper so he’s a true “support champion” or find something that enhances runes or ice walls instead. It’s all “safe” design in that half his cards are useless outside of his deck–since they have abilities that only trigger on rune events–but those same cards are useless in his own deck as well.

As it stands, if I were to make a power ranking now, Tundra Guild would be hands down the worse faction in the game. With our better knowledge of the game, if my sister and I don’t agree to certain “houserules” they stand no chance of winning. If anything, this faction still demonstrates that, while Plaid Hat Games has come a long way in understanding their games mechanics, we still have a long way to go before we get into a really good design space. Which is telling when the greatest accomplishment this deck achieved was by not being offensive to people that complain about its parent factions.

I Cast a Long Shadow

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My sister and I have this wonderful tradition. Whenever we obtain a new box set of summoner wars factions, we immediately organize and play a comprehensive tournament wherein each faction plays the other with us rotating between them. In this manner, we’re able to objectively rank the factions and determine with accuracy a suitable tier of power amongst the pre-built decks.

Thusly, we discovered that the Shadow Elves from the Master Set are the fourth best faction in the game.

Alright, the system isn’t perfect primarily because we have no damn idea what we’re doing as it’s the first time either of us has played with the new cards. I feel that’s part of the charm and really this method allows us to get in a lot of practice with the cards while also encouraging us to discuss the game’s designs and theorize why certain things are effective and where the true power lies. Outside of our strange Shadow Elf performance (wherein they went 6-1 in their round robin before getting absolutely destroyed in the semi-finals), we found the usual offenders rising to the top of the heap. So our rankings are certainly influenced by personal performance and preference. To excel in our tournament, the faction needs to strike a chord with both players else they can get locked out of the finals if one of us really doesn’t get them even though the other plays them flawlessly (yes, I’m still weeping over the elimination of the Deep Dwarves).

So, why the long preamble? Well, I’ve been silent on the Summoner Wars front because we finally received the Alliances Master Box after waiting well past Christmas for the magical delivery truck to make it’s way across the Canadian border. I’m also cheating a little in this early discussion since we haven’t completed the tournament quite yet. However, one element is known and I wish to discuss that today. I’ve decided that I’m going to review each faction from the box individually because, hell, I can milk this content for a good month or so!

And since the tournament is still ongoing, the only real way I can organize this lengthy review is to start with the worst and work my way up to the tournament’s Grand Poobah. Thus, I present to you soft reader the worst of the Alliances: The Jungle Shadow!

Accessed from http://www.plaidhatgames.com/games/summoner-wars/jungle-shadow

Summoner Wars Alliances belongs to Plaid Hat Games. It can be found at www.plaidhatgames.com/games/summoner-wars/

But who are the Jungle Shadow? Their leader, Melundak, represents the union between the Jungle Elves and the Shadow Elves. One thing I do like about the alliances is that the faction design is a lot more focused than past releases. Specifically with the elves, the deck attempts to encapsulate the shared elements between its jungle (really savanna but I won’t dredge up that argument again) and shadow parts. Course, the Shadow Elves are kind of a terrible faction with no real defining traits and this is where we start to come into the Jungle Shadow’s issues. But before we get into that, let’s talk about the positives. The Jungle Shadow are fast, perhaps the fastest deck in the game. They take the jungle concept of rushing across the board to the extreme. Near all their cards have a way to increase the number of spaces a unit can move and Melundak possesses arguably one of the best summoner abilities in the game to keep pressure on his opponents. The ability to summon on the opponent’s board is incredibly useful and unlike the other factions capable of said feat, the Jungle Shadow need only to have one of their units surviving on that side to pull it off. The essence of the Jungle Shadow is to bring the battle to his enemy and overwhelm with superior mobility so his opponent is left with no quarter in which to retreat.

Unfortunately, the faction is rife with weaknesses otherwise I wouldn’t be talking about them today. While they possess the Jungle Elves strong mobility, they lack the damage of their wild counterparts. For better or worse, the Jungle Shadow commons are more akin to the shadow parent which is to say they’re weak, fragile and for the most part ineffective. Their heartiest unit has a whopping two health which is incredibly fragile in a game where two and three dice options abound in practically every faction. Furthermore, their strongest unit is the shaman who–while being a two attack at range–has only a single life and is the most expensive common in the pack. Needless to say, he always draws the enemy’s attention and you’re assured only one turn before he falls. To compensate, the factions champions also lean heavily on the shadow side. They’re cheap and also quick suggesting the deck is meant to be played like the old first summoners: burn what you can until you have enough to get those beefy champions to the board and try to win through the heroes. It’s actually quite surprising how easy the Jungle Shadow can get all three champions out in a game–something quite rare in our games amongst the other factions.

Now, neither Kait nor myself are fond of the slow plod of the champion rush. Calling it a rush, in fact, is a pretty big misnomer. Since champions cost so much, they encourage a slower, defensive style of play which I feel goes against the spirit of the Jungle Shadow. And that’s probably the largest issue with the faction. Their design is like the Shadow Elves: disjointed. They want to rush the enemy and overwhelm them but are forced to hold back and play defensive while they build up an economy and draws to pull-out their champions. If they try to overwhelm with their commons, they’ll be too magic starved to get out their strong champions. However, none of their tools assist them on the defensive and with five life, Melundak is a push-over if his side ever gets invaded. They’re left with two options: you either rush the enemy and watch all your commons get eaten and lose or you hold back and try to flood the field with your champions and get overwhelmed by your opponent and lose.

Either way, you’re going to lose. But let’s take a closer look at the units to really break down where the deck went so wrong.

In order to analyze the cards, I’m going to use what is called by the members of the Summoner Wars community the SSCF. This is the Simple Summoning Cost Formula. I did not invent it and think there’s quite a few weaknesses for using it as an evaluation tool. However, it’s the simplest way to compare cards. How it works is pretty straightforward. It generates a value of a card based on its health and attack and compares it against a standard cost one would expect to pay for that stat-line. Essentially, it represents the most common price scheme for cards in Summoner Wars. For example, there are quite a few common cards with a two melee attack, one health for one magic in the game. Thus, it assumes this is a standard price. When I drop one magic on a common card, I should expect to receive two attack and one health. According to the SSCF, this would be a card with a cost 0. If I paid two magic for a 2-1-1 then it would have a value of -1 indicating that I’m overspending by one magic for that card. Basically, the calculation for commons is (Health + Attack + 1 if ranged) – (Magic Cost + 2). For champions it is (Health + Attack + 1 if ranged) – (Magic Cost + 3) since champions are designed to be stronger than commons since you’re restricted to only one of each kind (and three in total) in a deck. The additional cost for ranged is simply because range attacks are universally better than melee.

Now, Summoners don’t have a summoning cost so they can’t be evaluated using the SSCF. But let’s look at Melundak first anyway!

Melundak (3R-5W-Shadow Weave)

Melundak comes with the more fragile Abua Shi stat-line. In my opinion, this is a weak and defensive combination of attacks and wounds. Five health is right on the line for common one turn KOs. Three attack at range is great but with so little health, any amount of damage is crippling meaning the attack value is only ever going to see play when the summoner is being cornered. For Abua Shi, this is fine since Abua Shi is quite happy to sit in the furthest reaches tossing a bonus damage to his units or simply being a coward. Selundar and Nikuya Na both possess two attack and seven health and both summoners have a penchant for getting up into the fight. Melundak wishes he was as tough as his two cousins but has to spend all his time at family reunions hanging out with smelly grandpa and imagining what it’s really like to be a warrior. This is even more annoying since Melundak’s event suite would be really great for an aggressive summoner. Consume in Darkness is a rare summoner heal which only triggers when Melundak is rubbing shoulders with some fools (including the opponent’s summoner!). Likewise for Track, Shadow Snare and Out of Shadows. And those three events can indiscriminately target Melundak, commons and champions alike. In fact, they get better the more units you have on the battlefield. Unfortunately, unless you’re Tracking into an Out of Shadows combo with perfect positioning for covering common Shadow Snares, you’ll never have Melundak enjoying any of this.

So, he’s one of the few summoners with a suite of powers that he can use but the stats for a summoner that doesn’t want to use any of them. This is what I mean when I say the deck is disjointed.

Now, that said, Melundak’s ability Shadow Weave is amazing. It allows Melundak to summon one common every turn from a Jungle Shadow unit instead of a wall. I highly value summoning on the opponent’s side and Melundak has the easiest requirements to fulfill in order to gain this advantage. The primary faction for this advantage is the Swamp Orcs and they have to build their vine walls across the board to achieve the same effect. So, they need a combination of both units and events whereas Melundak will get it simply by playing the game like everyone else. Unfortunately, since it only targets commons, it’s an incredibly awful ability in the Jungle Shadow deck. As I’ve mentioned, all the commons in Melundak’s deck are fragile as glass and are terrible for summoning platforms. Thus, Melundak needs to rely on his champions to transport his army across the board. But if he’s buying champions then he’s building his commons for magic meaning he won’t have many (if any) to summon once his champions are in place. It’s an amazing ability that almost never sees any use in our games.

Basically, Melundak is a tiny, five wound baby that sulks in his back row waiting for one of the seven other bullies in the alliances box to come across and punch him once before stealing all his lunch money.

Shadow (1R-1W-1M-Scatter)

The first of Melundak’s useless commons and perhaps the most controversial amongst my sister and I. She thinks they’re absolute garbage. I… am torn. I was underwhelmed when they were revealed but after playing them I can see the design idea behind them. They’re meant to represent the magic denial found in the original Shadow Elves faction (called Shadows just so you really catch that design point). They’re the indirect economy card that, unlike other factions, isn’t focused on generating you more magic but denying your enemy his own. Unfortunately, the faction has no way to affect the opponent’s own Build Magic phase so what disruption they cause is minimal at best. At their strongest, they’re a free one ranged attack that won’t block attack corridors (as you can pull them to your hand and then build them leaving you without a change in your total magic pool). Had they been in any other deck, I’d probably be apathetic to them. Since they’re in Melundak’s, they’re pretty bad. Also, the second part of their ability saw a total of 0 play in our games as it makes them more expensive to “insure” a summoning point. However, since the unit is ranged in the first place, we weren’t running them across the board anyway. And if you’re paying to re-summon shadows then you’re not saving for champions. Overall, I played Shadows the most, Kait always built them for magic and she’s the only one to win with the faction. Thus, they seem pretty bad. Their SSCF is a 0.

Stalker (1M-2W-1M-Chant of Transformation)

I hate stalkers. I tried to love them. I tried to understand them. I think they’re awful and the reason the Jungle Shadow are the worst faction. They are the reason I wanted to talk about the Simple Summon Cost Formula in the first place, however. Looking at them, you wouldn’t think they’re that bad. One attack and two health for one magic is okay. Their ability basically makes them a two melee, two wounds for two magic with swiftness. I can appreciate the idea behind variable costs. You can choose how effective but ultimately expensive a card will be thus it’s two attack when you need it to hit harder but it can still be a cheap defender in a pinch. Cost wise, it comes out at a 0 on the SSCF so what is wrong with it?

This is the biggest problem with the SSCF. There is no consideration for abilities in its formula. If I summon a stalker and never use Chant of Transformation, I’m paying one magic for a one attack, two wound card with a blank ability. No other card gives this. Every single one attack, two wounds comes with something. Even the Cave Filth’s prisoner, whose ability is bad ends up being cheaper because it’s ability is a liability. Stalkers are overpriced because in comparison to every other card for its cost, it is worse. Furthermore, it’s transformation is an ever increasing magic drain. While cards, especially two health ones, aren’t apt to live more than one turn if your opponent doesn’t kill your stalker after you’ve transformed it and you use its ability on the next turn, you’ve now overpaid for its stat-line. It’s almost like Smeege’s Magic Junkie without the cost efficiency for Smeege’s stats or–more importantly–the health pool. Truly, I hate stalkers because they aren’t rhinoceroses. They take the place of a strong, sturdy Jungle Elf common which would be perfect in the deck. Melundak needs a common that costs three magic but has the stats and ability to survive two turns. The stalkers is his most survivable common at all and it’s so fragile and weak.

That said, I don’t think the stalkers is completely useless. In any other deck, I can see it being a boon. Alright, that’s a lie. I can only really see the stalker having value beneath Abua Shi’s command but at least it would serve the old man far more than Melundak.

Shaman (2R-1W-2M-Chant of Haste)

Shamans. In any other deck, I can see…

Ok, that joke was not worth the set-up. Shamans are the hardest hitting unit in the Jungle Shadow common arsenal. They’re akin to the Shadow Elf Hunter in stats and cost. Much like the stalker, shamans fall into that problem where they basically have no ability and are overcost for their primary function which is throw dice at a range. Between Track, Shadow Weave and almost everything has built-in swiftness, there’s really no pressing need to haste a unit for one magic. Furthermore, your target needs to be within two squares of the shaman which you wouldn’t think is that much of a problem but does end up being more annoying than the ability is worth. That you have to spend magic for a single target effect which you get for free from Track ends up being too pricey for a faction where everything about their commons is too pricey in the first place. Chant of Haste simply has too many restrictions to be of any use. Spend one magic. Target only commons. Target only units within two spaces. Can not target shamans. It’s one can’t after can’t after can’t. Furthermore, shamans have the hilariously unnecessary restriction of being excluded from Abua Shi’s event as well. At least, I say it’s unnecessary. I’m sure the testing group would say that was done on purpose for “balance.” Of course, this concept of balance means the unit won’t see play outside of standard deck use. It can’t be broken if no one drafts it!

Gargos (3M-6W-6M-Spirit of the Bat)

Honestly, I thought Gargos got a bonus movement with his ability up until I was writing this review. Oops! That said, I never pulled the jerk out in my games so it’s not like I was cheating either.

Oh, Gargos. You were hailed as being “Impossible to exclude from every deck!” when you were first announced. I’d play without you. It’s not to say you’re bad. You aren’t. You’re just standard is all. You’re like the stalkers where, if I’m not sinking more magic into you, you’re a blank at cost card. Even if you were priced at 5 magic I might justify your inclusion since you’d have at least one valued transformation. But you aren’t. You have three attack which is the highest in your faction and your ability does give you bonus movement if only because you can flee (which sounds less glamorous than pretending you’re Batman but let’s not pretend here). Where does Gargos excel? He can get at sniveling, hiding summoners. Problem is, he doesn’t have a way to close the distance like the his other Jungle Shadow counterparts and though six health is beefy, he’ll attract a lot of attention. And six health can only get you so far when the rest of your supporting faction is weak as paper and as threatening as a soggy bowl of noodles. Kait won with him but once you remember that Jungle Shadow can move through units and you just need to stack your blockers two deep, his effectiveness really drops off. At the end of the day, he’s simply “ok” but in a faction that has so prohibitively expensive everything else, “ok” is simply not good enough to carry the rest of his burdening brethren to victory.

Also, what’s that shade of your lip gloss? It’s fabulous.

Satara is life. Satara is love.

Satara (1M-5W-5M-Shadow Barrage)

Satara is the highlight of the Jungle Shadow. I can not properly communicate how amazing she is so to convey my proper respect for her, I didn’t start her review with a joke. Honestly, Satara is perhaps one of the best champions in the entire game. She is that good. I thought she was decent when I first saw her. Playing with her, though, just opens your eyes to her potential. This girl is nuts. And, humorously, according to SSCF, she’s overpriced by two for her value. Of course, if you take Shadow Barrage into account, she’s closer to being equal value (but we’ve already established the SSCF doesn’t take ability into account). Let’s look at what we get with her. One attack is forgettable. Five health is one off Gargos so is comparable. That five magic makes her real affordable.

And then there is Shadow Barrage. Oh Shadow Barrage. I would compose sonnets and stand beneath your window sill singing sweet serenades to get your attention. I would secret photographs of you while you weren’t looking and fashion a collage of you in my locker from every wayward glance cast my way. I would stand over you while you sleep, running my hand through your hair and watching the soft rise of your breath while you lay in gentle vulnerability…

Seriously, Shadow Barrage is amazing. It gives Satara two bonus movement. It lets her move through units. It lets her ATTACK those units she moves through in the movement phase. It pierces through most defensive abilities because it doesn’t actually count as an attack. It’s so hilariously powerful that it makes me laugh at how shamans are “balanced” when cards like this is released alongside them. Satara can bounce off a single card multiple times to do additional wounds–something trample can not. Satara ignores Toughness and Lumbering. Satara chews through Shield of the Hopeful as each bounce is a separate instance of damage. Satara opens up lanes as she moves through, allowing you to double back on persistent cards should your first pass fail. If the enemy lines up three units then she can effectively have four attack in a turn. Or you can do your hops with Satara and then attack with someone else that hits stronger giving you four attacks in a turn.

There really isn’t anything Satara can’t do. She almost single-handedly won me the game against the Warden. Had he only one less health…

Satara is the auto-include that Gargos is not. Always include Satara. Always play Satara. Always love Satara.

The Child (2M-5W-4M-Swift Scatter)

Full disclosure: I love this ugly, creepy, chin strapped midget. It may because he has a pet red panda. Er… blue panda.

Sure, he’s a melee Sairook. Sure, Sairook is probably better because he’s ranged. I don’t care. The Child is four magic and, damnit, I love me my cheap champions. So what’s good about him? He has built in swiftness with the shadow’s scatter ability. So what’s bad about him? He’s four magic with the shadow’s scatter ability. I like that the card clarifies you remove wounds from him before returning him to your hand as though it expects you to either glue wounds on your card or to spill them all across your lap. Thanks for the advice, Plaid Hat Games!

The Child is an impromptu rhino. He’s survivable enough to last one or two turns on the enemy’s side. He hits strong enough to be a threat to most commons. When he gets too hurt you can pull him to your hand to open up a fire lane and deny your opponent his magic. He’s kind of like Smeege where the enemy is discouraged from killing him because he’s just pathetic enough to not be worth the hassle or the attention. If they do target him then they’re not going after units of actual value. Course, the problem with the Jungle Shadow is, unless the rest of your forces is comprised of the other two champions, there’s nothing of value for the child to serve as distraction. At four magic, you could probably re-summon him several times too for added annoyance though, in all likelihood, if you’ve pulled him to your hand you’re probably throwing him in the magic pile. Honestly, I’d like to have seen him undervalued for his abilities but this is the Jungle Shadow we’re talking about here and their whole identity revolves around being more costly than they’re worth.

Take that away from them and what would they be? Good?

In conclusion, the Jungle Shadow are awful. However, they’re a curious awful. I think there’s lots of potential here that simply can not shine with its cobbled together pieces. Take them apart and start playing with the pieces and I feel that Melundak has the makings of a top tier deck. The champions in the deck are top-notch. And, thankfully, they are one half a faction which boasts some of the best commons in the game. There’s so much stuff in the Jungle Elf arsenal that’s just screaming to be included. Hasted Elephants and Lioneers? Melundak can do that. Greater sneak Xaserbane with lionesses that can also move on that same turn? Melundak can do that too. Want to summon two units on the enemy’s side each turn through Shadow Weave and Shadow Elf hunters? Melundak can do that as well. And you don’t need to worry about finicky events that exclude unit type or certain summoning costs like his brothers which opens up even more deck building options.

It’s just a shame that what he launched with, and what he’ll be known for, is the same disjointed and unfocused forces that plague the Shadow Elves. Melundak deserved better.