And so it comes.

So, there was this little release back in Summoner Wars original run called Alliances. It was an interesting big box packed full of goodies and surprises. The concept behind it was the various game’s factions paired up like an elementary school’s Valentine’s Day social and then awkwardly stepped on each other’s toes at the evening dance while realizing with sinking despair they had nothing in common. 

No doubt they hung out with each other afterwards regardless of this fact. 

It was a fascinating little project, however, as it created interesting thematic and mechanical mashups. The decks featured some of the most complicated rules and some of the most creative ideas. But were they good?

Well, that’s a different story. 

Alliances came out near the end of Summoner Wars life cycle and so the designers had a better eye for what was strong and what was not. Alliances thus… struggled with trying to present interesting, innovative and compelling decks that did not tip the balance for those that had come before and were still dominating the discussion amongst the enthusiast community. Which is to say the decks were hobbled in their design to make sure that their parent factions wouldn’t be grossly unbalanced from their release.

As such, the mashups of the generally considered weaker factions were better than those that were formed from the originals considered powerful.

Which led us to the Tundra Guild.

I hate the Tundra Guild. Frothingly so. 

And here we have the Tundra Guild returned. 

Don’t be fooled by Plaid Hat’s marketing speak. The Polar Dwarves are not the first new faction. They’re those disgraced little snow midgets trying to sneak into the club with some fresh fake IDs. You thought no one would notice? Ha! We notice. And we’re keeping a close eye on you. 

I’ve been skeptical of Svara and her little frostbitten fleas since they first previewed. And now, getting my grubby little hands on them I am proud to proclaim…

… well, I must admit that they aren’t half-bad. I so desperately wanted to hate them. But, dare I say, they’re actually quite good. And the more I play them the more I like them. Are they strong? I actually think they are. There’s a fair bit of layers beneath this ice. They’ve also got their own unique tempo compared to the other factions. 

Furthermore, they absolutely abuse the new Build Phase and I love them for it. 

My initial impression of the faction was in the gutter due to my preconceived bias. But I think they’re the third strongest in the box. Perhaps, with some time, I may even consider them the second? And hey, at this rate, they could be the best deck by the end of the year!

So what makes Svara stand tall amongst giants?

It’s certainly not her stock standard stats. Her ability is further unremarkable on first blush. Pushing around gates like some frigid, battlefield Sisyphos. 

Granted, this is some mild spoilers, but her ability is meant to address the weakness of her slow cursed common yet to be previewed. However, shuffling around gates isn’t necessarily a terrible idea. You can’t really talk about Svara without getting a little into the weeds about the new Build Phase so, I suppose, let’s get into it. 

The original Summoner Wars had the infamous walls that rather dominated the discussion and tactics of its release. These 10 health absolute units could only be placed on your side of the board and, for the most part, once down they never moved. You only had three of them, giving the tantalizing prospect of smashing all your enemy’s walls and leaving them unable to summon anything for the rest of the game.

Course, you didn’t, because 30 health worth of attacks in the last game where health pools were tiny and attacks were off the chart meant that you never really had a chance to swing for the fences when it was always better to be eating our opponent’s forces for lunch and preparing to have your champions duke it out in the mid or late game. 

But here, in new Summoner Wars, things are different. For one, your bonus gates are half the health now. But you have an extra one to compensate. Furthermore, gates can be placed anywhere so long as they’re adjacent to your summoner (as well as the back three rows of your board). This means you can get aggressive summoning points rather handily on your enemy’s side which is a terrific source of pressure. 

Svara, naturally, has these same capabilities. But even more than that, she can drag her gates with her. So any gate dropped early for funnelling or to clear your hand can eventually migrate like the ancient glaciers to your opponent’s side. And there’s really no better way to block an enemy’s summoning point than parking your own gate right in front of it. 

Svara draws this weird ice curtain with her cold war, shrinking your opponent’s movement options as the game drags on. Naturally, “just shoot the gates” is a reasonable suggestion. Except it’s hard to do when feral bears are ripping your face off at the same time. 

Not to mention Svara has the amazing Parapet. This is a stupid waist high wall of the shooting genre fame. It won’t let you summon from it but you can fire over it while your opponent is absolutely baffled that you disappear from sight mere moments after lobbing some snowballs in their face. It doesn’t just provide your units a shifting shield of five health – it actually shuts down lanes as no one wants to leave their units vulnerable to the parapets’ defenders while they try to blow up the stupid thing. 

Then, to lend Svara a hand with her gate rolling, she has Glacial Shift. Once again, we’ll get into how this event helps your little construct common later but even having it for repositioning all your gates and parapets is pretty damn helpful. And while I’m starting to find myself burning gates in other decks for the magic, you can be assured Svara is going to play all three of hers. 

And with all these structures littering the field, Ice Ram becomes such a lovely little tool. 

This is worthy of Svara’s epic slot. The dream, of course, is to pair Ice Ram with Glacial Shift to just come crashing into your enemy’s face with all your buildings. However, I find even getting 1 or 2 assured damage and some reshuffling of enemy units to be worth it. Svara has some decent tricks in her event suite that she isn’t reliant on to secure an advantage. They’re merely additional threats that may, or may not, come out and this keeps your opponent on their toes.

Finally, if those poor fools do think “Man, these ice gates and walls really are ruining my day, why don’t I just kill them?” Svara has Ice Repair to make them regret having this entirely justified and rational thought. This is, perhaps, the best healing card we’ll see. Costless, two health across the entire battlefield is probably not going to be replicated for anyone else. And I’m not mad about it either. 

And this is what I find beautiful about Svara. She’s got an excellent suite of event cards that you don’t need to hold for the best moment. On the other hand, you can carry one or two for an opportune moment and still get a good payoff for it. I never really find myself saving a card for “just the right moment.” I can squeeze some value from her events at any point. 

Thanks Svara for making me eat my words.

Well, this came out much faster than I expected.

So, I finished my NaNo! Woot! An entire novel done in a month and do I feel accomplished. Alas, it did take up a lot of my time and motivation, so I was not able to track progress in pretty much everything else in my life. So that’s unfortunate. But I’m in full celebratory mode for the moment so I can’t be bothered to be fussed about it!

I was doing a rather in depth look at the reboot of Summoner Wars. Except, as it turns out, my project came to a conclusion just as access to the beta came about! So there goes all my wild speculation! Now I can get some actual experience with the game which now makes it poorly based speculation!

For those who are only mildly interested, and to give myself a little more time to get familiar with the decks against things that aren’t boneheaded AI, I’m going to do a quick summary of my thoughts for each of the decks releasing in August. Don’t fear, I still plan on doing deep dives on the others. Largely because I don’t have much else to share on the blog currently.

So let’s get into the quick faction breakdowns!

We’ll begin with the factions already covered more in depth in my April reviews. First up are the Breakers. Who I will no doubt misname as the Benders. These mistakes happen with IP updates, I’m certain. Just bear with me. 

Tacullu

Tacullu got a face lift but that has not dampened her power. He was a terror in 1.0. And I think she’s a terror in 2.0 as well. She’s got a rather economic deck packed full of powerful ranged units. With the odds to hit change, however, her lack of melee options is now significant. To compensate, she simply has a large store of dice to throw. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got bad accuracy if you and your friends are all packing uzis. 

More important, however, is that Tacullu still retains her control over the battlefield. I was pretty cold on Mind Control when I first previewed it but now that I’ve seen the other factions, it’s a very good epic event. Its usefulness, however, is matchup dependent and I think this will add to making the Breakers a more difficult faction to master though they do allow a lot of mistakes as well. 

They’d be what you’d call a high floor and high ceiling faction, I suppose. However, their tricks have few counters from what I’ve seen. Positioning was always important in Summoner Wars and now with commons sticking around longer, it’s more important than ever. Tacullu has unfettered control over where units will go and how you can block out her attacks. With all her pushing of allies and enemies, expanded movement on her own soldiers and limited movement on her foes, it’s very hard to keep her out. She can assassinate, she can trade with her high base attack and she has several pressure release valves if the opponent gets on her too strong. 

And that’s not even getting into a discussion of the economic advantages you can squeeze out with Mind Capture. 

Overall, she’s probably one of my favourite factions so far and I think we’ll be seeing a lot of her in the future.

Sneeks

On the flip side, we have poor Sneeks. 

The Cave Goblins certainly capture the feeling of a descending horde of gnawing rats. Unfortunately, I don’t think they do well against a field littered with giant cats. 

Sneeks offers some fun tactical consideration and planning with Sly, however. And it’s great not having to be concerned about your economy since most of your units and champions are free. However, their low health and attack make them rather tricky to wield effectively. I think the key to success with the Cave Goblins will come down to effective use of their fairly respectable suite of events.

However, when one of your strongest units has a measly 1 health, things are a bit tricky to squeeze out a victory. 

I will say, however, that Sneeks has the best chance of benefiting from the expansion of the game. Almost all of combo synergies revolve around 0 cost units which are common enough across factions that I think he’ll have a rather expansive pool after all is said and done to make him a tricky deck to face. 

Does that compensate for his poorer base deck? Well, I’m not one to judge.

Abua Shi

Kait’s favourite faction has returned with a much more theme fitting name as the Savannah Elves.

They feel more like alliance faction between the shadow and jungle elves from Summoner Wars 1.0. Which is weird because mechanically they’re the most similar to the Deep Benders. 

Oh well!

A base mechanic in Summoner Wars 2.0 is the boosting mechanic and the Savannah Elves are here to showcase it on release. They are, however, still focussed on large wild animals but this time they need a little tender loving care to become the big scary beasts from before. All of their units interact with boosting in one way or another. Either they get stronger from boost tokens or they help give boost tokens to their friends. 

On the flip side, everything is expensive. Course, given enough time, the Savannah Elves can turn their regular commons into cheap champions in terms of strength and health so it feels warranted. However, they also feel rather slow. Losing their investments in time and events also feels rather poor, especially if you can’t get decent trades for them either.

I personally find them in this weird middle zone. They’re capable of rather surprisingly powerful turns off a summon or two combined with some token shifting and events. But in between these bursts of power, they struggle to keep up with their opponents. 

They’re a tricky lot to pin down but I’m not certain their tricks are as potent as the Breakers so familiarity will leash their effectiveness. 

Which, I guess, is accurate to their 1.0 incarnation. I feel they’re more effective than the Cave Goblins but have struggled to get them rolling compared to the others. 

Svara

I’ve been taken aback by the Polar Dwarves. Yes, they’ve been touted as Summoner Wars 2.0’s first new faction. But let’s not kid ourselves. Beneath that sheet is Old Man Hogar and we don’t really need the Mystery Machine gang to figure this one out. 

I won’t ever hide my disappointment with the Tundra Guild from the alliances box. When Svara appeared, I was expecting… well… more disappointment.

Even my first impressions were pretty low. I’m coming around to the idea that this may have simply been biased.

I… kind of like Svara. I think she’s pretty strong. Her whole deck revolves around structures which have had a rather tumultuous history in Plaid Hat Games. And this might be the first time they’ve actually done them well.

She’s a defensive deck that sports a very powerful punch. I originally thought she’d be very combo event based but I think those are just some cute tricks she can do to catch her opponent off guard rather than relying on Glacial Shift and Ice Ram shenanigans. Ice Mages pack a huge and cheap punch. And the massive health pools are actually difficult for her enemies to take down. Ice Golems are terrifying with the sluggishness hardly a brake on their strength. Shifting structures is simple enough with Svara already but that they can be summoned like structures and serve as mini gates makes them hard to avoid.

And if you’re ever worried that their attack is too weak, just toss some Ice Smiths on them to make the problem go away. If that’s not enough, you’ve got some Bear Cavalry in the back pocket.

Svara’s biggest weakness is that she has possibly one of the worst champions in the game. But she also has some decent ones as well so it’s hard to be chuffed. This is a very strong deck that is slowly growing in my evaluations.

Sera Eldwyn

Sera is back with a vengeance baby! Tired of being considered one of the worst factions, the new and improved Summoner Wars 2.0 Vanguards are insane. 

Absolutely nuts. 

I will say, I like the mechanical similarities she shares with Ret-Talus. It really does feel like an opposite sides of the same coin sort of relationship. They both pull into their discard for units and such, but Sera’s has a rather impressive ceiling to it. It comes with a cost, however, which makes her deck exciting.

In order to recycle your units and have access to infinite magic, Sera Eldwyn must be on the frontlines attacking enemies. It puts her in a precarious position which is good because her deck has a phenomenal potential for crushing any game that gets into the late game. To get there, however, she has a very rocky early and mid game to contend with. Her units are expensive and, honestly, a little weak. Their cost is more of an investment, however, since you can play six, seven or more Citadel Knights in one game. 

Which does feel oppressive. Granted, you’ve got to keep something alive on the board so there is some counterplay. 

She’s a tricky one to navigate, I feel but has the punch to really be effective if done well.

Ret-Talus

Summoner Wars 2.0 is really a story about redemption. 

Barring the Breakers, all that was dusty and old is new and shiny. Ret-Talus had a rather poor reputation which was only ever polished up in the last days of Summoner Wars 1.0. 

This time, however, he’s coming out of the gate swinging. 

And what he’s swinging are noodles.

Sorry, I’m not going to make this about his art. Ret-Talus is a rather powerful, exciting, combo-oriented deck all about murder, death and unlimited power. Power.

Power.

Unlimited power.

Sorry, I’m still just blown away by how good this deck is. The basics are simple. Stuff dies, you get stronger. But it gets better. See, killing stuff is necessary to win the game, so your opponent rebuffing your assaults works in your favour. And to rebuff your assaults, it leaves units for you to kill to get stronger. And you really don’t care about your stuff dying because you  just bring it back for the low, low price of a little health. Oh, are you near death? Just heal up after a massive turn of delicious massacre and repeat the whole process again. 

That there’s a bunch of ways to force the sacrifice of your units, which then makes all your other units stronger, is simply gravy. You’ll have these board states where one unit dies and it causes a whole cascade of effects that ultimately result in your enemy dying. 

It’s fantastic and I’d say Ret-Talus is about on par with Tacullu as the deck to beat.

Now, I may think there’s a ranking of power between these decks, but I do want to emphasize that the balance of Summoner Wars 2.0 is a lot better. I think all the decks are much closer in effectiveness. You’ll probably notice the imbalances when you’re playing the extremes rather than anywhere else. And even then, the Breakers can lose to the Cave Goblins. Kait’s done it in the demo already. Which is great news if you’re a sucker for underdog factions. It’s also exciting since it makes predicting what’s good or how matchups will shake out rather murky. 

I’m excited to really crack this nut open and I’m so happy to see Summoner Wars returned to form having clearly learned all the lessons of the past and much improved because of it.

Last but not least for our second Summoner Wars 2.0 faction preview is the head honcho of the Benders herself, Tacullu. And might I say, she’s never looked better. Because she’s a he now. And everyone loves a nice set of boobs, right?

I’m not certain it’s going to be possible to discuss this first set of factions without referencing the old Summoner Wars games. Partly, Plaid Hat brought this on themselves by filling the first release with a whole bunch of old factions. And since they all appear to be a refinement of their prior incarnations, a little context feels necessary.

I mentioned before how Tacullu in the original was incredibly oppressive to play against. I don’t think he was the best summoner in the game but he was certainly a strong one. However, he was pretty miserable to play against. This lay in a one-two combo of his summoner ability and his events (though his commons certainly weren’t helping much there either). He bore the dreaded Magic Drain event, which was a pretty hefty economic swing that also encouraged passive play and murdering your own units. He also had Mind Control, which let him steal commons that tread onto his side of the battlefield. Mimic let him snipe your events from your hand. 

And then there was Counter Summon as his summoner ability. 

Now, Mind Control and Counter Summon both required magic on their part. Which meant, once again, Tacullu was best served by burning all his resources so he could steal or dispel yours. Which meant that he wanted to sit back in a safe location to build up those resources while forcing your units to come in through precarious attack lanes that would allow him to steal or kill any force that came at him. Champions could easily be Counter Summoned if they were cheap or strong. And powerful commons gave him the double swing of you losing the unit and magic spent on it while he gained it. 

You would think the best tactic would then be to flood his board with cheap, weak units that weren’t ideal to steal. But then we get back to his commons which were, on average, slightly ahead of the curve for slightly less than standard price. So it wasn’t a great exchange either. 

It’s with these issues in mind that I think we need to examine Tacullu 2.

First thing’s first. Tacullu launches with arguably the best stat line of the first six summoners. This is a surprise, to be sure. It’s a bit of a dangerous line to walk, as well. I believe the reason she has 13 health and 3 range strength is because she’s stolen old Summoner Wars Gulldune’s Mind Capture ability. Frankly, this is a better way to deal with permanent mind control. I really didn’t like Gulldune and considered him one of the Bender’s worst champions. Ironically, his ability on Tacullu is way better.

First, you have access to Mind Capture from the first turn. Part of Gulldune’s issue was that you couldn’t rely on getting the champion out when you needed him. Either you could draw him in your opening hand when you had no magic, stuffing your draw if you really wanted to save. Or, worse, you never draw him because he’s in the bottom of your deck. Even with A Hero is Born in the deck, he was too unreliable to build your strategy around and too inconsistent to use opportunistically. His 2 range attack ran a decent risk of missing altogether. Furthermore, you could only really reliably capture units that had almost no health, basically feeding that magic back to your opponent when your turn ended. He was essentially best for getting those last few dice on a summoner hiding behind his own units which is a pretty niche role to fill.

Tacullu, however, always gets a benefit from Mind Capture.

Sure, you are still losing the magic from outright killing the unit so you don’t want to use it willy nilly. And yes, the units are less apt to immediately snag you the victory as you’re probably capturing those that are on your side of the board and threatening you. But that’s the beauty of having the ability on your summoner. It will always be there regardless of what best use of the ability arises. The only time you’ll miss great opportunities is if Tacullu is out of position or she misses. 

And I think that’s where the higher strength and health comes in. I get the feeling Plaid Hat wants Tacullu to be a more aggressive summoner, pushing forth with her mind controlled units to overwhelm her opponent with the brainwashed masses. She has the strength to threaten most commons on her own and the health pool to afford a few reticent dice rolls. 

Will that be how Tacullu ends up being played?

Ehhh… I’m skeptical. I think she will still work best passive: let enemies trickle in, capture choice targets and methodically pull apart the enemy’s plans and economy. But the option for aggression is there, which is to her benefit. Especially since, once again, she doesn’t really come with anything that forces uncooperative enemies to her. 

This brings me to her epic event Mind Control. 

This event has been incredibly reworked. And, I think it works best as an offensive tool. Which, ironically, makes it arguably her weakest event in the deck. 

For 0 magic, you can take control of all champions and commons within 2 spaces of Tacullu. This is incredibly powerful. Except it’s subject to the regular rules of the game. Primarily, this means that you can only move and attack with three units. And since you’re apt to have your own out, getting a hold of a huge army for a single turn is a lot less useful. Furthermore, you don’t get magic for killing your own units. So while you’ll probably play this as a pressure valve to turn the enemy’s troops against each other, you won’t be getting anything for your trouble. Especially since it’s played during the Summon Phase so you’re at the mercy of your opponent’s movements for how effective it is.

And now Mind Control has to contend with Tacullu’s Mind Capture itself. Why take a common or champion for one round when you can have it permanently?

Ideally, you wouldn’t. Now, I can see this event getting higher priority if you need to push in against an entrenched foe. But between your Wind Mages and Archers, you’ll likely be applying enough ranged pressure that your enemy will want to come to you. 

Also complementing this awkward “best as an offensive event but you’ll likely not be playing like that” event is Blast. With a rather mundane name, this event is anything but mundane. It’s a surprisingly flexible tool which, much like Mind Control, will likely really benefit from the discard pile changing to hidden information. 

Blast can work defensively, unlike Mind Control, as you can use it to murder weak commons during the movement phase. And, unlike Mind Control, you can actually position to use it most effectively. This can allow one of your units to get through a blocking line to deliver some surprise damage upon your enemy. Or it can soften up a choice target for Mind Capture. Or it can just move a pesky unit out of the way so you can get in a Wind Archer strike. This flexibility certainly warrants its 1 magic cost. And yet, ironically this cost generally prohibits me from using it all that often. 

I find Wind Mages generally address my movement needs most of the time while also adding another body to the board and 2 strength range to boot. So, it’s not bad, I just find it’s redundant most of the time. Certainly not something I’d be keeping in my hand.

Tacullu’s third event is the peculiar Hypnotic Call. This card is both powerful and limited. Being able to target commons and champions anywhere on the board is fantastic. Being limited in where you can move them is less ideal. It’s a good balance but moves Call into a more niche roll. Perhaps its most consistent use is providing Tacullu that extra strength on attacking that unit, helping to secure a Mind Capture on a valuable enemy with a bit more health. More rarely, you can move a blocker out of the way for a Wind Archer. You can even use it on your own units, though the movement restriction makes it a bit unwieldy to use it in that context.

Finally, we come to what I consider Tacullu’s best event. Perplexing Tempest is fantastic because it actually really helps Tacullu’s defensive game. Possibly more than her offensive though it would certainly be of benefit there too. Reducing the enemy’s movement by 1 can halt an advance or guard against a fresh defence. And getting both two turns in a row can really swing a game as it lets you just eviscerate your opponent with multiple Mind Captures and powerful ranged barrages. And the best part, there’s really no point in the game when it won’t be good. So you can play it immediately upon drawing and almost always benefit. 

So it’s not that Tacullu’s events aren’t bad. It’s just that her units are better and the events don’t compliment them as well. I mentioned that Sneeks is an event driven summoner who really revolves his strategies around their timely play. With Tacullu, however, I think you’re more apt to be building them for magic. They’re just a little too restricted. They’re a little too narrow in focus. And their payout simply doesn’t justify holding them when you could be drawing and paying for your champions. 

Now, certainly as the end game begins to crystalize, you might be able to see where some might be determining factors. A timely Blast in the last few rounds can be vital. But Tacullu largely wants to play reserved. Perhaps, if a Deep Dwarf faction releases or something else in the big box shows some surprises, these will become much stronger. But for now, they’ll mostly be filling up my magic bar.

Regardless, I’m going to make a bold prediction and say that Tacullu will be one of the strongest summoners out of the box. Perhaps one of the strongest in the game for a long time to come.

The new Summoner Wars Benders remind me very much of the old standard for a faction. They have several strong commons which they’ll play while playing defensive on the board while they build up a large pile of magic to summon powerful champions to seal out the game. I’m not sure if this tactic will shake out to be the best, but it appears that it’s Tacullu’s initial gameplan. 

Thus, her suite of champions should really encapsulate that strategy with some really powerful cards. And… it’s not too far off the mark. Certainly, they’re more intimidating than Sneeks but Sneeks also will likely have some of the thinnest champions in the game.

But first, let’s address the elephant in the room. 

Gwalark returns to Summoner Wars as a core champion this time. However, much like his prior version, there’s a lot left to be desired with him. Certainly his improved strength is a boon and 3 more health helps to make him a bit tankier. But, and it’s a big but, he still leaves me wanting for something that costs 6 magic. I can grab three Wind Archers for his price and they have a greater strength and longer range than Gwalark. Mind Witches have equal strength for a sixth of the cost. Is 8 health enough to justify that large investment?

I’m not so certain. I think it’s got a decent chance of sticking around for a turn but for his cost, Gwalark better have a banger ability to make me want to really consider him.

And Levitation isn’t that ability.

It’s not bad, per se. It’s merely niche. Gwalark can bypass an opponent’s defences, passing over structures and units alike, to bring his 3 strength where needed. He can even grant this ability to nearby commons. And that’s pretty much the best case scenario for him. Soaring over your enemy’s blockers with an archer or two to try and deliver the finishing blow. However, he’s not packing the biggest punch to do it himself. And he’s in a deck that already has such great movement control that comes for a cheaper cost. Between events and Wind Mages, you can probably already disrupt their formation and sneak through for a fraction of the cost. 

So Gwalark really shines if your opponent is fortified two units deep but still in range of a fly-by attack?

I’m just not feeling it. 

In contrast to Gwalark, we have the return of Kalal. Originally, Kalal was… meh. Incredibly expensive, for the first Summoner Wars, she came a little hardier and much stronger than her peers. And, frankly, she’s at it again. Yes, she clocks in at a staggering 7 magic. But you’re getting a lot for that magic. Granted, over Gwalark, you have only an additional strength. But strength is good. Plus, you get her greater push. Wind Mages are fantastic for clearing blockers or pushing enemies into archer firing lanes and Kalal can do this at a greater range giving you even more power in pushing your opponent around. 

And she’s immovable herself. So she’s a reliable blocker. At least for the moment. We’ll have to see how many force effects get printed. But thankfully Steadfast is more of a perk than an important component of her toolkit. Do I think she’s worth the cost? Yes, and largely because she’ll outlast Gwalark. Gwalark’s issue is to play him effectively, you’ll be throwing him into the lion’s den. Kalal, however, can be put to the board and protected, extending the presence of her 4 strength while enabling the rest of your forces. It’s a slower, grinding style of play but seeing that the defensive advantage hasn’t been eliminated from the game, I think Kalal fits far easier into the Bender strategy.

Lastly, we have Gulldune. And boy is he different.

I mean, he had to be considering that Tacullu stole his identity. 

New Gulldune is a bit of an oddity in the Bender lineup since he’s their only melee option. This means that the Benders are a little less accurate than average. It also means that strength stats are even more valuable for him since each die is more likely to hit. Furthermore, Gulldune stole the best champion’s ability from old Summoner Wars!

So yes, 4 melee is great. And sure, 6 health is a little unimpressive for a melee champion. But when you’re getting Telepathic Command and the ability to give your high strength commons an additional attack each turn, you’ll be glad you made the investment. In comparison to the old version, tying Telepathic Command to 3 spaces from a melee attack against an enemy does neuter some of its power. Gulldune is going to be putting himself in danger. Your opponent will prioritize him when he drops to the field. But on the other hand, he’ll probably assist in blowing up anything that was on the board when he drops. So he’ll ruin pressuring champions, forward gates or wiping out a massive weenie rush. He’ll likely give you plenty of opportunities to reverse the momentum of a game in your favour. 

And goodness, does he look good.

So, as a Bender, I’ll be holding onto a champion. Maybe two. And I’ll wait to get that magic pile built up to throw them down. Kalal is great for bolstering your board state with a powerful artillery piece or building pressure against a defensive opponent. Gulldune is fantastic for power plays, either sealing a victory or eliminating your opponent’s present threats. 

Gwalark is best as a point of magic.

Well here we are with more Summoner Wars previews. Gosh, how I’d missed this game giving me easy blogging content. We’ll be looking at the new, improved, remodeled and ready for action Breakers 2.0. Tacullu is back and has never looked better. Because she’s a girl now. And has boobs. Everyone loves boobs. 

But seriously, I couldn’t be happier with the visual redesign of the breakers. I didn’t hate the original Summoner Wars envisioning of this weird, catsuit clad psychic lady faction but it was disappointing that these people were, ostensibly, the representation for an Eastern civilization and they had none of the flair. I wouldn’t mind seeing some recycling of that old design (updated of course) and, you know, we have Cloaks sitting there on the horizon. Considering the Cloaks originally were just dirty Benders, here’s a great opportunity to just shift those visual directions a little.

Anyway, I still don’t like the style even if I’m over the moon with the direction. I’ll take my wins where I can get them. But we’ll save art comments for the units themselves. Let’s take a look at what we’re getting. We’ll try things a little differently and begin with the factions commons this time. 

New Benders look like they pull a lot of inspiration from the Benders second summoner Shiva. And that couldn’t make me any more happier. First original Tacullu was a nightmare. Sure, he was a top deck but his gameplay was so awful. I’m usually one for “control” style decks in card games. But Tacullu epitomized the stalemate strategies that bogged old Summoner Wars down. He punished opponents for crossing into his side of the board and, thus, opponents were better of sitting and waiting for him to come to them. Except, there was no reason for him to go to them (in most cases) so you just had two players staring at each other and playing chicken.

It was awful. 

Original Tacullu was somewhat fixed with the Owl Gryphon even if, to this day, I think the champion is hot garbage. Shiva, however, took the idea of control and made it less oppressive on the enemy. Instead of outright stealing units, Shiva pushed and pulled them, making it hard for the enemy to get where they needed to be. 

And for our first new Summoner Wars Bender unit we have the Wind Mage. The Wind Mage will bring back memories of the Controller. And, it some ways, it’s not as good. Telekinetic Blast obviously has greater application, triggering move abilities and targeting summoners alike, but Push has an advantage over it. You can Push without requiring an attack, so no more weird hitting your own gates or units to get that one card you really need it to be. 

But there’s more to the Wind Mage that makes it stand out. I mean, first it has 3 health which makes it infinitely more survivable than the Controller. And with an equal strength to the old attack value too. All at the cost of 1 magic. That’s insane for stats but we’ll have to see other faction reveals before we can determine just how favourable this shakes out for the Wind Mage in the end. 

Now, it could just be the limited matchup in the demo, but I find while the Wind Mage is good, I generally don’t rely on them too much. I want to keep one or two around or in reserve for getting some tricky pushes so my other units can get into position but overall they aren’t a priority summon for me. 

That said, they partner extraordinarily well with the Deceiver.

I cannot say how complete a re-imagining this unit is from original Summoner Wars. So I won’t bother. The new Deceiver was so successful at deception that we had no idea it was really a Guild Dwarf Defender in disguise. 

Original Summoner Wars Benders were a faction known for being paper thin but hitting hard from a range. With a 4 health common at 1 magic, I don’t think this categorization is true anymore. Between that and Stupefy, Deceivers are very, very hardy. Turning special results into lower damage while the attacker is beside a Deceiver is an interesting way of pumping a unit’s defence. It gives any ranged attacker’s target the equivalent of the old Toughness ability. It also brings melee attacks down to a 4/6 probability of hitting. And the Engage ability means that their 1 strength attack is negligible. 

You’re not really throwing dice with this unit. You’re putting Deceivers out as walls and forcing your enemy to smash their faces against them. They’ll want to throw their high strength units on the Deceiver as they’ll be more effective in bringing them down quickly. Thus, those precious attacks are directed away from your more fragile core pieces. And they can’t simply walk around because they take a damage each time they move past a Deceiver. And then you’ve got the Wind Mages that can force a unit away from the Deceiver for some automatic damage too. I think they’re fantastic but I’m not sure if that conclusion is biased from just how effective they are against the Cave Goblins in particular. 

I feel like this was a weird matchup for the demo as I feel like the Benders have an advantage over Sneeks almost solely due to the Deceivers. 

Course, as I think about them some more, I’m not certain the probabilities of Stupefy are accurate. Whatever, this is a quick look, I’m not going to sit and do math for it. I suspect it might be even better than my initial impression though. 

Next up is the Mind Witch and wow has she gotten better. A boost to strength from the original version seems to be uncommon. Plus, she got a magic discount! And her ability got even better! 

Ok, the Mind Witch has lost the ability to mimic enemy champions and summoners. However, being able to target your own commons makes her far more reliable. Old witch was really matchup dependent but now you can ensure there are plenty of good targets for her to copy through your common choices. She can be an additional Deceiver, giving you four more (albeit much weaker versions) of those lovely tanks. She can be a surprise Wind Mage, getting your units that extra space you need to close out a game. And she can take anything good your opponent has kicking around the table. That she mimics after the summon phase really means there’s not a lot of options your opponent has to stop you. 

Her inverted stats compared to the Wind Mage comes out more favourably too. There’s no getting around strength is better than health and I’m not sure what the breakpoint in health values are in this game yet to know if 3 health is on the line of usefulness or not. 

And so far, the Benders are incredibly affordable on their common list. 

Their last unit is their one expensive unit. Coming in at 2 magic is the Wind Archer. Two health is pretty fragile in this game but 4 strength is fantastic. That all of the Bender’s commons are ranged makes them a little less reliable in their attacks but this woman is almost like an improved Cloak Sniper from original Summoner Wars. Swift is great, making it hard to hide from her. And Far Shot, an ability I’ve long considered terrible, works much better in part thanks to Swift. Your opponent is going to really struggle to keep away from that 4 strength and, if they’re melee, it might be hard to punish the Archer thanks to her range. 

She’s wonderful for trading enormously well with champions and commons alike. With that said, I’m less inclined to summon her if I draw her in the early game. Generally, I want to be building up my magic pile and the cheaper Bender commons are serviceable at the start. However by mid-game, she’s hard to pass on and in the late game she shines when your opponent is left with very few options to deal with her. 

And has anyone else noticed how odd she holds her bow? No? Just me?

Overall, I’m blown away by how good the new Benders are. We’ve broken the Plaid Hat curse (where every faction released with at least one bad unit) as each of these units, at the very least, play different roles in improving the effectiveness of each other. My standouts are the Deceiver and Wind Archer for their plain effectiveness but I’m not disappointed to draw either Mind Witches or Wind Mages. 

And looking at their symbols I’m starting to get a better grasp of these subfaction categories. Clearly wind is a faction, so any unit that will bear wind in its name will have that symbol. The eye is likely to be representative of Benders or perhaps Tacullu in particular as it looks suspiciously like the third eye on her mask and deals with more psychic-like capabilities. It’s interesting but we’ll have to wait for more releases to get confirmation on these suspicions.