Sometimes we like things that we shouldn’t. Children can’t get enough of ice cream. Americans can’t get enough Adam Sandler. My sister can’t play enough Mountain Vargath.

Continuing my review of some older Summoner Wars decks, I come to an important transition point. Last week, I covered the abysmally performing Cloaks and their feeble line of champions and commons. This week I’ll be looking at the mountain goats. Both of these factions are notable for two reasons. One, they have a consistent low performance across tournaments. Second, they’re both near and dear to our hearts.

The Mountain Vargath had an equally poor showing as the Cloaks. They claimed two victories in our Master Set tournament. They claimed nothing in the Kitchen Sink Combat. The only reason they edge out the Cloaks is because one of their two victories was against the hapless rebels. And… well… someone had to be on the bottom and frankly the Cloaks have an overall worse deck than the Vargath.

But after these two we actually start entering murky waters. The nice thing about the goats and rebels is that they are clearly, distinctly terrible. When calculating a rough ranking for these factions to decide how I’d post them, most of the factions were fairly close. But the Cloaks and Mountain Vargath were half the ranking of their peers. No matter who played them or how we approached the decks, these two factions kept falling on their faces. For the Cloaks, we could see that pretty much every option they had to field for battle was both brittle and underwhelming.

But the Mountain Vargath are oddly the opposite. There’s not a single 1 health unit in their ranks. They actually have access to two attack commons fairly effortlessly. And their champions aren’t quite as terrible as the Cloaks.

So what went wrong?

I’ve discussed before the difficulties of aggression in Summoner Wars. There’s inherent design that makes charging across the battlefield to combat your opponent a noticeably weaker strategy than sitting back and waiting for the enemy to come to you. Most of the factions that are effective at aggression have some advantage to match the ability to instantaneously reinforce and surround an attacking force.

I believe the Mountain Vargath were the first faction to try and address this. Looking at their numbers, they’re kind of insane. Unfortunately, in order to leverage their advantage, the Mountain Vargath kind of reveal new issues that being aggressive hadn’t revealed before. I think, in their attempt to fix one problem, the designers stumbled into other ones.

Sunderved (3M-7W-Command)

Alright, I tried to ignore it but I can’t. I have to say it. I hate the Mountain Vargath art. It’s not just because of their dopey faces. I hate that they are just bland, brown smudges. From their commons to their summoners and across their champions, they’re all just brown, boring blobs. There’s no interest. There’s no inspiration. Even the colour palette is chosen to just get lost in the greater whole. And the poses are pretty lacklustre. The only way I can tell a champion from a summoner is to read the name.

Anyway, let’s put the bad art aside.

Sunderved is the standard for aggressive summoners. He’s melee so to cash in on his shorter range he gets an additional health and an additional attack. It’s a pretty good bruising stat line. Of course, if you’ve read my Alliance review, you know that it’s a bit misleading. You don’t lead the charge with these summoners. You still lose the game if they go down and while seven health is hearty, it isn’t insurmountable.

Course, this is where Sunderved’s ability comes in. And what an ability it is. Every Mountain Vargath common within 2 spaces of their commander gets an additional attack.

Let me repeat that. Every common in two spaces of Sunderved gets an additional dice in their attack.

Moyra only gives one common one additional dice. You can get a bonus three with this goat. Course, the catch is you have to use commons. And, unfortunately, Sunderved lives and breathes in the time of catch-up events and common hate. We just saw a summoner who had two powerful events that only trigger on having less commons than his opponent. And Assassinate only goes after commons. And Vlox isn’t even the meanest to commons. And his opponents are mostly going champions.

But that’s not to take away from the fact that Sunderved gives his a nice boost. And the boost is good against anything be it walls, conjurations, summoners or champions. He makes his commons quite the threat on his cheap little kids.

So, yeah. It’s good.

Unfortunately, not everything is as rosy. Sunderved’s events don’t measure quite as well as his ability. Let’s start with the lowest hanging fruit.

Torodin’s Advance is awful. It’s your one off event and isn’t even impressive for something you have to dig through over thirty cards to find. And it’s a combo card requiring you to have the matching champion Torodin on the field to have any effect. So surely it must do something spectacular right?

Wrong. You can move him two additional spaces.

Like, this is the definition of a bum card. It’s awkward to pull out. It’s not something you want to stuff your hand to play. It doesn’t even do anything good when you actually play it.

Sadly, things don’t improve much from here. Next up is Superior Planning which is an event tutor. Yet, you have two of these and the aforementioned Advance makes it so one third of your events to search for don’t do anything. They can pull from the discard, though, so they aren’t the worst tutors. And if you draw them before your other events you can at least thin your deck.

Next we have Muster which lets you pull two commons to your summoner. It should be good but it ends up not being that useful despite Sunderved wanting units around him. Partly because, once again, it’s a combo card. You either need commons really out of position or have them in your hand to summon when you get the card. Or you’re trucking it around and stuffing your hand slowing down your draw and magic generation.

Greater Command is probably the best and all it does is extend Sunderved’s command range to four spaces. Not bad but not something to call home about either.

Then you have Fall Back. It’s necessary to allow Sunderved to retreat from a failed advance. Unfortunately, retreating from your opponent ends up weakening your chances of victory.

You see, nothing adds to the survivability of Sunderved’s forces while he’s charging headlong at his enemy’s face. So while he’s trucking across the battlefield, his opponent is raising walls and surrounding his army. Two health, while better than one, is still quite easy to take down in a single turn as players are apt to prioritize their own cards with two or greater attack. And once those wounds start landing, Sunderved can do nothing about them.

In fact, the fastest way to stop Sunderved is to get four wounds on him. Not a herculean task especially since you’ll have two or more turns while the goat tries to angle a good position on your summoner to accomplish this. With only three health left, the goat has to bleat and retreat and once he’s cowering on his own side of the battlefield, he’s significantly less of a threat.

And that’s been the story of Sunderved in nearly all battles. Rush forward with glory and fame filling your eyes, get man handled for a turn or two and run crying back home. Sunderved is a bully in the classic sense of the word. He’s all bluster and pose without anything to back up his big words.

Brute (1M-2W-2M-Knock Around)

My sister hates the brutes. I think they’re decent. You probably won’t pay for a lot of them, however, because that 2 magic could easily be 2 more warriors. However, they do give Sunderved a little bit of trickery. Opponents can sometimes forget that you can knock around your own units and you can fastball special Sunderved into the enemy’s face. Preferably with a Fall Back primed since for the manoeuvre to work you need to put 1-2 wounds on your summoner (a rare situation where the lack of a “may” in a seemingly positive ability turns out to be a negative). The 1 attack at 3 health isn’t a particularly popular statistical spread mostly because of how poor 1 attack is. However, keep them close to Sunderved and that’s easily a 2 attack at 3 health for 2 magic.

Unfortunately, their ability isn’t all that impactful. Positioning your brute to propel enemies in useful directions is far more clumsy than you’d imagine. They’re really good at punching enemies away but getting them to throw a helpless victim into the middle of your herd is far less likely. And if you’re just trying to keep an enemy away, the opponent can simply walk it back to place next turn especially since you have no other movement options to cover lanes.

They make good bodyguards for Sunderved. Alas, they are hard to get into position. This underscores the biggest issue facing a Sunderved assault. Moving all your pieces ends up being incredibly cumbersome and slow. You want to keep units around Sunderved to reduce the number of attacks that are directed his way. However, you also need to advance Sunderved to keep his warriors and rushers gaining his command boost. With only three movements per turn, you can’t move Sunderved and cover all his flanks. This is one of those primary issues facing aggressive factions that the Mountain Vargath revealed. It’s not just health that’s needed to keep a forward force to apply pressure against an enemy but mobility as well to get that force across the middle line.

And you aren’t going to use Brutes to overcome that issue. Their requirement to wound a unit to knock it around removes the natural health advantage of the Mountain Vargath commons. If they aren’t within range of Sunderved, their attack also has a non-insignificant 33% failure rate. And if you were relying on that knocked unit to cover Sunderved’s side then you’re in a massive heap of trouble.

So we’re looking at a rather unappealing stat line on an active ability that’s only relevant when the attack lands and doesn’t do a whole lot when it occurs in the first place. And it has limited utility outside of smacking enemies.

I don’t fault my sister for not being a fan.

Rusher (1M-2W-1M-Rush)

The rusher is as uninspiring as his name. He is, unfortunately, the only mobility option available to the Mountain Vargath. So, unless you’re relying on finding those Musters, these are the guys that can easily reinforce an active assault from your walls. Sadly, after their first turn, their ability essentially turns off. Kait loves nothing more than pitching these people across the field to perform hapless single dice attacks against her enemy. They’re great for being a diversion in that regard but unless she’s fighting one of the more fragile summoners like Endrich then these guys are rarely threatening.

They do benefit the most from Greater Command, however. That four space reach means that their constant forward charges can still pick up Sunderved’s bonus dice. However, their usefulness dramatically falls off as the enemy gets their walls raised and lanes blocked. Their mobility isn’t too difficult to work around and since you have such a limited window they never present an assassination threat.

They’re cheap, however, and can easily keep within Sunderved’s sphere of influence so maintaining them as 2 melee 2 health isn’t that rare.  They won’t be winning awards but they aren’t Vlox’s scrappers either.

Warrior (1M-2W-1M-Battle Frenzy)

Warriors are the most over powered common that no one talks about.

It’s funny. The Mountain Vargath warrior, on paper, is a beast. One magic for a unit that can, pretty easily, be a 2 melee or 3 if near Sunderved. With 2 health. By the numbers, this card should be absolutely broken. And yet, somehow, they seem unable to pull Sunderved from the bottom tier.

So what went so wrong?

For one, their bonus die is reserved for commons only. Yeah, champions are all the rage, but surely these guys can apply pressure before champions start dominating the field. Except, that bonus die isn’t applied to the enemy summoner either. So you need Sunderved right behind them if you want that scary 2 melee for 1 magic baseline. But if Sunderved is behind them then either he’s exposed or you’re already late into the game that champions are appearing. And late drawn warriors have a lengthy march to catch up to their fearless leader where they can be peppered by slings and arrows before they ever get to a face to smash.

Furthermore, these guys are pretty helpless against walls. Two attack isn’t fantastic against the nine health obstructions which your opponent is immediately going to crawl behind when they see the goats take the field. Your opponent knows that these guys are basically blank when on their own side and, because they are such a good unit if aggressive, your hand is basically forced by their presence. Woe to the Mountain Vargath that has to struggle through any early wall cards their enemy might throw down.

It’s almost a catch-22. Warriors are great so you want to use them and shape your strategy around maximizing their effectiveness. But because they are so good your opponent is going to avoid them and prioritize them. Unfortunately, there’s nothing to alleviate that pressure and Sunderved, as mentioned, has no preservation skills. They don’t have any tricks to get out a burst of crippling damage and they don’t have any sustain to survive a war of attrition. Worse still, they aren’t great on defence. You’re better off with rushers as at least they maintain their mobility.

I feel it’s necessary to point out they aren’t ranged here.

It was definitely a balancing decision to keep the Mountain Vargath from having really any range option. Sadly, they weren’t compensated with anything to make up this short coming. I think the designers erroneously felt that the extra bit of health would let them weather the first volley that a range attack grants. However, defensive archery units are quite capable at limiting retaliation angles so the lack of mobility hinders the Mountain Vargath yet again. They really needed more durability to survive the enemy’s defensive fire. While the designers gave them quite an astonishing amount of attack dice, they ended up being far too frail to leverage those attacks.

Growden (3M-6W-6M-Sunder Hammer)

Growden is the champion that you don’t want to play but you’re likely to keep in your hand just in case you need him. Nothing brings an assault to a screeching halt that one or two wall cards hedging a timid summoner in. Those nine health speed bumps are more then enough to stall a game for a proper defence to be summoned and for Sunderved to be surrounded. And it’s trivially easy to attack the Mountain Vargath if they attempt to siege a walled position given their lack of ranged pressure.

Growden can break that line. Two auto wounds is a sufficient barrage to rip down a wall in about three turns. His base three attack is also threatening enough that once those pesky walls are down he’s still a problem. He can even keep breaking down those obstructions while murdering the defenders. So why not summon him all the time?

Well, as mentioned, Sunderved is a common focused leader. He gains little to nothing from Sunderved and you want to be using his hefty six cost to play more rushers and warriors. He’s also not the best against other champions. The best of the elites have powerful abilities that make them even more threatening in a fight. Growden’s hammer won’t ever give him the edge in a head-to-head conflict with another champion especially if they can be reinforced through a summoner’s abilities or events.

He does address a problematic tactic, so in that case he’s useful. It just always hurts whenever I have to put him on the table.

Quen (2R-4W-5M-Chain Lightning)

Phew, Quen. You are the sole ranged option available in Sunderved’s base deck. And, consequently, you’re far more costly than other equivalent ranged champions in other decks. But since you’ve got a monopoly on bows, you’re begrudgingly worth the price.

It further hurts that the old girl demands more magic for her ability. But then she does have 4 dice at range which is enough to be a sizeable killing threat if she can have a safe corridor to advance on the enemy summoner. But that four health. Phew. So much for the goats being hardy. She needs almost as much protection as Sunderved.

But she can be quite the surprise if the enemy forgets that the goats can sling shots. She’s the champion I try to field the most and it is often to your benefit to chain lightning against two different targets if you can clear the board of the threats. Otherwise, she’s your best answer to other champions so you want to hold on to her until the first of the enemy’s chosen falls so you can retaliate with her electricity.

Unfortunately, your hand can get pretty clogged if you’re waiting with Growden, Quen and some events in your hand.

Torodin (2M-7W-6M-Trample)

You’d think that, given he’s the only champion with his own event, that Torodin would be some kind of monster. And yet, he’s easily the worst champion in Sunderved’s arsenal. He has the lowest attack of the group (if you take in the fact Quen can pay to double hers). Two attack on a champion is grossly lacklustre when you remember that the mighty warrior can have 2-3 depending on circumstances. To make up for it, Torodin has the mighty trample ability. He can pass through common units to inflict an automatic wound against them. Sadly, he has no improved movement capabilities so we’re looking at a single auto wound. On a common. You know, those units that your warriors are trained to murder wholesale.

And since he can’t trample champions, he’s straight up inferior to most in a head-to-head fight. He’s designed to combat the thing that the rest of Sunderved’s deck is design to combat but yet he ends up being worse at it. Use his 6 magic to get six warriors. They are better in nearly every way.

Build him and his awful event for magic.

I can’t help but find the Mountain Vargath interesting. Though their design ended up missing the mark, I feel they were on the right track. There’s a number of good ideas for making a hyper aggressive faction here. But to understand the difficulties facing aggression requires an intimate understanding of Summoner Wars more wonky attributes.

We all know the adage, “A good defence is a strong offence.” Sadly, this isn’t true (yet) in Summoner Wars. The nature of the game’s mechanics put a significant benefit on being defensive. It’s a combination of summoning off walls helps defenders more than attackers and the limitation of 3 moves and attacks a turn put a greater benefit to ranged units than melee. Wall summoning ensures that defenders can get their melee units into range on the turn they summon them – an advantage attackers sorely lack. Having to fight around their walls typically lets the defender determine attack avenues and limit options for their stronger units to get surrounded. And stopping to attack walls means that defenders get first strike when they summon defends to protect them.

And when assaulting units fall, it’s really hard to reinforce them. Unlike defenders, who can spawn infinitely from their walls (which can appear instantaneously away from crowding forces), attackers must march their units after their forward advance, often giving a free turn or two to finish off the first wave of weaken and destroy the reinforcements. This is even more dangerous for Sunderved who needs to be amongst his units to boost them to effective levels. Whenever a common falls, it opens up Sunderved’s flanks.

So what are hallmarks of a successful attacking force?

The nice thing about Alliances is that it’s a refinement of prior ideas and attempts. Moyra is essentially Sunderved 2.0. While Moyra’s presence only boosts one common, it also gives them a bit more movement to catch up with the rest of the force. She also has cherubim as her primary attacker, a unit with swiftness and slipperiness so that the little angels can catch up easily or wiggle through defenders to get into good positions. They’re ranged, so without Moyra’s influence, they have a threat zone of six spaces. That’s one more than the rusher and doesn’t put the cherubim out of position as it does the melee Mountain Vargath.

But having a stronger core unit isn’t the only advantage Moyra offers. Her defenders and blinding light toughens up the entire force, increasing survivability of the primary force and increasing the odds they can survive the inevitable counter attack. Moyra also intervenes on key units, taking the hits for them. She also has Father Benjamin to ease the pressure of the inevitable wounds that come her way to keep her presence on the front lines.

The other methods for more successful assaults are to overwhelm defenders with bonus movement and attacks like the Cave Goblins or to get forward summoning points that matches the defender’s wall advantage. Rallul can summon off his stone golems. Swamp Orcs are built entirely around overwhelming the enemy with vine walls to block summoning points and give them forward spawns.

So the Mountain Vargath serve an important point in design history for demonstrating that the bar for assaulting needs to be just a little higher. They were a valiant attempt, however. I can respect the design philosophy even if it came up short. I have more forgiveness for these earlier summoners as they tread new waters. It remains to be seen if their second summoners address these issues, however.

Well April is nearly upon us which means I’m going to be neck deep in work and wholly disinterested in emerging to post to this illustrious site. So, I have two options. Either I follow my co-contributors and politely ignore the Internet’s existence for four weeks or I prepare some entries ahead of time. Course, I normally don’t know what I’m going to write until the day that it’s due so I need some topic I can cover for four weeks that can be of some interest to someone out there.

As it so happens, Plaid Hat Games has started to preview eight new summoners for their card meets board game Summoner Wars. Hey, I remember doing this last year so let’s try this again!

We’re going to do something slightly different this time. Or, really, it’s something familiar. I’m going to be reviewing stuff that came out aeons ago and everyone has seen, experienced and forgotten. But I’m incessantly behind, like a cultural anthropologist dusting off ancient relics from a forgotten dig site. As I have mentioned, whenever I get some new Summoner Wars goodies, my sister and I immediately sit down for a tournament to gauge its usefulness. Well, this series is going to take a peek at some of the results of these tournaments.

Much like my review of the Alliances set, I’m going to be looking at eight factions and how they stacked against each other over two tournaments. First was the Master Set Throw-down wherein the six factions from the first big box of Summoner Wars battled against each other and two independent summoners for top billing. As with the Alliance Tournament, my sister and I rotated playing each faction against the other until a winner emerged.

Supplementing this result is the Mucho Grando Tournament where we had everything and the kitchen sink thrown into brackets to compete. Unlike the other tournaments, factions were seeded into rankings and a regular competitive format was followed, obeying double elimination rules. This tournament is notable in that factions didn’t fight everyone. Decks that hard counter others had the potential to entirely miss their strongest match-ups and created a very fortune driven competition.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that some factions did wildly different across the two matches. However, I’m glad to start off my review with one that was not. This faction was inspiringly consistent: they always came last.

Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you to the worst faction (across these two tournaments) in Summoner Wars: the Cloaks!

Having won a total of two matches across both tournaments, this placement is free of any controversy. The Cloaks have earned their dead last spot and participation award through blood, sweat and many, many tears.

But who are these noble losers? Why do they struggle so much? What is up with their summoner’s gagging collar? Let us dive into these pressing questions and get to the root of what makes a summoner bad in the unending war for Itharia.

The Cloaks come from the old guard – that first wave of releases which everyone likes to criticise. They have the hallmarks of the first forays into the game’s design. Is there catch-up events that trigger when you have fewer units that your opponent? You betcha. Is there built in common hate cards? Why, of course. Are there cards which no sane person would ever play and exist solely to be tossed into the magic pile? Well, the Pope poops in the woods, does he not.

I think the Cloaks were an attempt at a combo faction that was meant to rely on esoteric set-ups and trickery to snatch victory. In fact, they were probably meant to encapsulate the “assassination” style of play – wherein the opponent uses superior movement and abilities in order to isolate and deal a game winning number of wounds to his enemy before she is able to utilize a more traditional and board domineering strategy to regain control and strangle out a win. I mean, with events called Assassinate, Cloak of Shadows, Raid and Spy, how is the faction not suppose to represent this underhanded and roguish style? And is there truly any style more frightening than the omnipresent threat of losing the game from a single turn chicanery?

Well, yes. Turtling is more frightful and more successful. Assassination focused decks encourage turtling and generally lack any means to defeat it. A defensive player can generally keep themselves locked away behind impenetrable corridors stuffed with tough defenders or unshakeable walls. Perhaps more egregious, so worried were the designers of the effectiveness of assassination (since, you know, victory is actually only determined by the summoner’s death and no other metric) that Plaid Hat took every opportunity to make the Cloak’s natural playstyle as much an uphill battle as possible. And if there’s one problem that persists across the faction is a surprising dearth of high attack options in a faction that’s meant to strike hard, fast and fleeting.

And for the Cloaks, there isn’t any other avenue left to them. If they can’t get a shocking win in a one turn pile-up on the enemy’s summoner then they’re not ever going to win. Their results demonstrate this problem. They only ever managed a single win in either tournament, the sort of results you’d expect through sheer dice hate alone. The path to victory for the erstwhile rebels is mostly through devote prayer to a higher power and hoping your enemy is cursed with many 1s while you get nothing but 6s.

Vlox (2R-6W-Master of the Art)

Vlox is remarkable in almost how unremarkable he is. He sports the generic six health and two attack at range of the summoner line-up. Oddly enough, however, he’s rather expected to shoulder a lot of the assault despite lacking the additional health or attack that aggressive summoners generally sport. His strength lies directly in his ability. Master of the Art allows him to copy the ability of any Cloak unit on the board. This can create really strong combos. It can also mean that some turns he may be stuck with a Greater Sneak or Raid that can’t trigger because you were just curb stomped by a more effective opponent. At the very least, you choose during the event phase so you can summon whatever ability you want so long as you’re holding it in your hand or manage a lucky draw. It’s the sort of ability that has infinite scaling and is only limited by the releases Vlox can access.

It’s a good and necessary ability that would have been faction defining if it were in a deck that was more effective. Unfortunately, because there are so few decent tactics for the Cloaks, it makes their strategy a bit one note. Your enemy knows that you’re going to try and abuse the potential for Master of the Art and will do what they can to limit the effectiveness of Vlox while pinning him in and trying to force subpar mimicry. They don’t have all the information, however, so you can still pull some surprises against even the most attentive opponent. But the more wise your enemy is to your ways, the harder it gets to slip a scrapper by unnoticed.

His events aren’t awful, however. Though anyone sporting Magic Drain can hardly be considered to have terrible events. Yes, even in the Cloaks, Magic Drain is silly. There’s a bit of anti-synergy with the Cloaks as Vlox would like to have more units on the board in order to leave him as many options for Master of the Arts as possible but he also needs to have the threat of a double Magic Drain ruining an enemy’s planned counter attack. That said, Assassinate is great for taking out hardy commons – the biggest weakness that Vlox can face as he has little response for those. Assassinate is fantastic against the Filth since it not only eliminates a dangerous mutation but refunds the cost as well.

Just to give a comparison for Assassinate, however. Plaid Hat have just revealed a 2 magic cost event in the new Shadow Elf summoner repertoire. Not only does the Shadow Elf get to draw two cards when they play their paid for Event but they are also able to give every one of their units the ability to summon – for free – a unit from your hand if they manage to kill something that turn. Vlox, in comparison, can remove a single common. To make it even worthwhile, you’ll want to target a 2 magic or more card. Otherwise, you’re paying through the nose in order to open a firing lane.

Cloak of Shadows also costs 2 magic (essentially because why are you wasting this event on a common). It’s good since it means you can only be hit by dice rolls of 6 for a whole turn. And you’ll need to save it almost universally for Vlox after he’s managed to sneak his way into trouble.

Spy is fantastic if inconsistent. Being able to mess with the opponent’s draw is something we haven’t really seen at all in Summoner Wars which is unfortunate since it’s a powerful and interesting mechanic. But if you can’t get a pivotal champion in those five cards to pitch immediately into the discard, then there’s not a lot of advantage to be gained. Most events either have multiples in a deck or aren’t super important if one is discarded. Throwing walls to the bottom of the enemy’s draw is great but throwing garbage commons is rather disheartening.

Raid is fine and only held back by the criminally low number of thieves in Vlox’s deck. It can be used as a Greater Sneak substitute to get Vlox on a summoner or to get him to the back line in order to teleport out of the enemy’s territory if you’ve overextended, however.

Gunner (1R-1W-1M-Greater Sneak)

Gunners are pretty lame, I won’t lie. Rarely do you want to spend what precious magic you have on them. One attack is lackluster. One attack on a one health is pitiful. Greater Sneak can be great for assassinating but you’re not assassinating anything with a single dice. You’re pinging and praying. I generally try and keep one of my starting alive to give Vlox the option of a solo three extra spaces move. These gals just fold under pressure, however. And, sadly, there’s not a whole lot of anything in the deck to alleviate pressure on them. They’re your go to magic fodder.

Scrapper (1M-2W-1M-Blindside)

Scrappers are your surprise factor. They can help teleport a Cloak of Shadows Vlox right on to the enemy if you’re able to get one to the enemy’s back row. That is, of course, assuming you hit. With only one die (yet again), you have only a 66% chance of getting that wound that will let Vlox jump. If you whiff, then you have a weak, low health twit standing in the middle of enemy forces looking stupid. Sadly, this is your only option for a survivable Cloak common without dipping into second summoners and that extra health is sometimes worth praying on to get a little more utility in a second round. They aren’t particularly threatening, however. And don’t think that having other scrappers capitalize on Blindside is a threat. Three gentle one dice love slaps isn’t going to give anyone nightmares. Course, this threat would also require each successive scrapper to hit too. So, yet again, slap those hands together in prayer and hope you got a good 6 streak in you.

Thief (1M-1W-0M-Steal)

Thieves are probably the best common in Vlox’s deck. That’s kind of worrying when a zero coster is your only hope. Unfortunately, the base deck doesn’t have lots of thieves. Their lack of a cost is great for taking off pressure on your economy game. And if you’re able to get them to the back of the opponent’s board, they can do some damage to your opponent’s plans. Seriously, though, the Cloak player should choose what’s stolen at random instead of giving the opponent the option to just toss whatever useless common they have in their hand. At least then you could pray to pluck a key champion your enemy is saving for. Unfortunately, don’t expect to get many steals off. One health is easy to pick off and you don’t have much of anything to distract from raid runs. Your best bet is to summon off a forward wall, Raid down an empty corridor and then destroy your thief for a 2 magic swing.

It won’t win you a game, like ever, but you’ll feel better about yourself. That’s really the best victory you can hope for. These small victories. You are playing the Cloaks, after all. Oh, you can also copy a thief, move Vlox to the enemy’s back row and destroy yourself to spare the pain of actually drawing out games. That’s cool too, I suppose.

Dagger (2M-6W-6M-Backstab)

Alright, so the commons are duds. Maybe the champions make up for it. I mean, this wouldn’t be the only faction with awful commons that are made good by their champion line up. There are the Deep Dwarves who… no wait. Well how about the Benders… hm, nope. Or maybe the Guild Dwarves… no they have defenders. Hm, all the good decks have at least one good common. Weird.

But there’s Dagger! He continues the theme of hitting like wet ramen. He has an ability that gives him a bit more bite but is incredibly tricky if not impossible to pull off save for the most fringe cases. At least he has 6 health. Yeah, that’s a positive! Dagger has six health! And unlike the scrappers, his boots cover his toes! That’s two positives. He has average health and proper footwear! And have you checked out that codpiece? Man’s practically on the cutting edge of fashion.

Scam (2R-5W-5M-Escape)

Ah, Scam. You’re really the only other option for a Cloak victory. If your scrapper gambit is going to fail, Scam represents your alternative. Save as much magic as humanly possible, drop this guy to the board and run around being annoying with both Vlox and Scam fretting away your magic pile. Is it effective? Of course not! If it was, the Cloaks would win more than the rare game on a blue moon. But at least you can nettle your opponent. Nettle! That’s worth the price of admission.

Scam’s on the lower end for champions which is the best I can say about him.

Violet (2R-4W-4M-Whirling Blades)

Violet is literally the only good unit in Vlox’s forces. Two range for four magic is a pretty good deal. Sure, she’s paper, but that’s hardly something new for the Cloaks. She’s a decent candidate for Cloak of Shadows and a fantastic target for Vlox to copy. She’s not Satara levels of good but if I made a list of top champions, she could certainly squeeze in there on the bottom. That she can hit multiple units means she’s really going to do more damage than a two attack would normally. Course, her status as the only threatening thing to hit the board means she’s going to attract aggression way more than a three legged cat limping past a pack of starving wolves.

Don’t stare at her legs, though. She hates when people do that.

So, yeah. The Cloaks weaknesses are apparent and their strengths are obtuse. I’m not entirely certain what went wrong with them but their weaknesses are so ubiquitous that they have to be intentional. For whatever reason, Plaid Hat wanted a deck full of low attack, low health units with expensive events and situational powers. It’s the poster child of a drawback melting pot. Its designed path to victory is not only difficult in its own right but made even more difficult by the pieces that are suppose to accomplish it. The Cloaks don’t even struggle against specialized enemies. A simple 1 attack 2 health common will give the cloaks problems since they can’t kill it in one attack but their own units can die immediately to the counter attack. And this doesn’t even address the fact they have no answers to a strong champion focused game.

They don’t really have an answer for anything. An aggressive faction like the Cave Goblins will overwhelm the Cloaks with their additional attacks, movement and cheap bodies. The Cloaks will break against a defensive faction’s protections. And they have no way to protect themselves from other assassination attempts. Even the Alliances assassin wasn’t the greatest but Marek certainly has a lot more tricks than Vlox does for getting wounds on the enemy. Not to mention it isn’t too difficult to get three ranged attacks on Marek’s hunters against an enemy summoner.

So they don’t do anything well. They can’t respond to anything well. And… well… they just lose.

One thing not mentioned about my sojourn to Japan was the long hours reserved for myself away from friends and creature comforts of home. One of the defining element of our lives which we hardly pay much attention to (or too much depending on who you ask) is the importance of entertainment. Part of the whole idea behind the Industrial Revolution was to develop more leisure time for the average individual that they could enjoy personal pursuits and self-improvement without being enslaved to the daily toil of the farming life.

Which, given Victorian sensibilities, I can only assume is code for them trying to get people to stop drinking so damn much.

Well, unfortunately, I’m already on that Victorian bandwagon and am hardly going to fret away what few pounds sterling I have on something so ephemeral as alcohol. And in this glorious age of technology, we’ve done a pretty thorough job of expanding the options for amusement. Games, movies, television, songs and art are all available for a pittance with the connectivity of global telecommunications.

But despite the global reach, there’s still a strong regional influence. All of this is to say that there’s not a hell of a lot to do in Japan if you don’t like watching Japanese variety shows, observing Japanese baseball games or drinking in Japanese pubs. I didn’t have my precious computer either so most online options were restricted especially given Kait’s rather spotty Internet provider.

Thankfully, some of the local ALTs thought to band together and hold a boardgame night. Unfortunately, they did it once while I was there. However, it did remind me of the digital program for running the games I owned at home. Course, then I remembered that Kait hates the digital interface and won’t play with me on it.

So, the long and the short of it is I ended up spending a fair bit of time playing Summoner Wars by myself. How’s that for a rambling lead-in?

Yes, this is going to be another damn Summoner Wars post. Yes, this is mostly because I’m busy with other work and haven’t done much that’s exciting since coming home other than lie in bed and try to recover from this flu. Such is life.

Actually, if I’m being honest, my discourse today didn’t come quite as organically as I pretend. What truly got me thinking and poking around with the game systems of the heavily flawed game was the four hour bus ride to Hirosaki. I tried to download some Android app games to amuse us on the road only to find that most mobile games are utter trash. Sorry, that’s elitist. Most mobile games do not meet the stringent requirements of my refined tastes.

That’s better.

However, while we spent most of our time lobbing digital artillery in a free version of battleship, I remembered that one of the things I found fascinating with Derek’s smartphone (back in the day) was how he was able to play the boardgames we usually pulled out when I visited on his bus rides to and from work. I poked around what was available (read: free because I’m not convinced I’m going to use any app enough to warrant a purchase) and lo and behold Plaid Hat Games had a version of the game online. I gleefully downloaded it, then had the damn thing crash on my four or five times while I refused to register my Google account with its psychographic services.

I did manage to get it working… somewhat. I’d be more annoyed if I properly signed up for it and it was still this unstable. But I’m not here to review the software. Instead, playing the game repeatedly with only the Phoenix Elf summoner Prince Elien made me realize something important about Summoner Wars:

It’s a bad game.

I know, I’ve complained about its design before and at this point I’m unlikely to be selling anyone on it anyway. My continued discourse around it, once again, lies in my sister’s interest and the fact that it is so simple that analyzing it is much easier. It’s like learning to dissect a fetal pig before plunging wholesale into a dead body trying to figure out what killed it. I’ve listed the numerous issues that Summoner Wars has faced before. But it wasn’t until I was playing match after match against the AI and soundly trouncing it in games against decks and cards I’d never even seen before that I realized just how poorly the game is made. And we can argue subjectivity and whatnot until we are blue in the face but I can categorically state the game is bad on one objective criteria:

Summon Wars is highly unintuitive.

This is to say, the way to win at Summoner Wars is not the way you’d expect to play when you first look at the rules. Course, pick up any game and you’re not going to understand its intricacies or nuances, however the design of the game itself seems to underline the intent of its design. Perhaps I’m putting too much credit in the programmers hands, but when the official mobile app isn’t even programmed to play in a manner that would lead to victory it makes me think that the design itself is doomed to failure.

So what am I getting at? Simply put, Summoner Wars hates commons. It’s a game that, thematically, is meant to simulate a combat between opposing armies. But all of its gameplay elements discourage or outright punish you for fielding an army. Common units are the most prominent piece of a player’s deck and are easily the least valuable. Worse than that, they’re negative value.

It was rather remarkable, actually, watching the AI lob legion after legion of its own forces against my side churning into an unending meat grinder of points that skyrocketed me to victory no matter which opponent I set myself against. It didn’t even matter if I tried playing with my faction’s worst cards as the matches continued to be lopsided so long as I didn’t mimic the suicidal tactic of wasting all my resources on buying the rank and file soldiers of my deck. I couldn’t help but think how discouraging this must be for newer players to be presented a system, given a baffling rundown of how it works and then intuitively play over and over again in a manner that only assured defeat.

Seriously. Can you imagine what chess would be like if the very act of moving your piece towards your enemy was categorically losing option? If you, as an uninformed player, are told the rules of a game, the mechanics shouldn’t work against the general idea of how you expect to play.

So why do commons suck so much in Summoner Wars? A shorter question to answer would be “when do commons not suck?”

Let’s look at a basic component of the game to highlight the issue. The two primary combat phases–movement and attack–are both regulated by the same restriction: a player–unless a card specified otherwise–can move with and attack with a maximum of three cards per turn. Ok, seems harmless enough. Except, the goal of the game is to kill the enemy’s summoner, a card which is permanently on the board and in play. Given the short length of the board, the high value of the summoner and the importance of keeping her alive, you’re most likely going to be using one of your three precious movement/attack options on your summoner. There is no benefit to putting a unit on the board which you aren’t planning on moving or using for an attack since there are almost no passive abilities that give you a general benefit. Playing your summoner defensively is far easier than offensively since the situations that allow instantaneous reinforcement don’t usually happen on the enemy’s side. Thus, you’re able to use your summoner with far less risk than someone attacking. Thus you’re incentivized to play defensively…

Another issue with common units is that they’re just so fragile. The vast majority are one or two health and getting two or more dice on an attack is pretty easy. This is to say that your poor common is, on average, going to live one round. If you can’t hit with it that round then you’ve just wasted your magic summoning it. Ambushing units on your side makes it more likely that you can get into position than marching them across the enemy’s empty spaces. Thus, defensively you’re at an advantage and…

It just keeps piling up. The real nail, however, is in the game’s fundamental economy. The resource you have for using many of your events and summoning your units is magic. Magic is composed of the units killed by the forces you control or the cards dropped from your hand. Since you always draw up to five at the start of your turn, there’s really no reason for you to hold onto the numerous commons that make up your deck. Furthermore, putting them on the table costs magic and if they just turn around and die to your opponent then you’ve given them magic. Most commons cost one or two magic. Champions, on the other hand, cost around six. So they’re about a turn of discarding your hand, have double or even triple the attack and health of a common and usually have unique or stronger abilities in comparison too. Champions, with their larger life, are more likely to last more than one round so can make the treacherous crossing into the opponent’s territory. They have the attack value to actually do damage while alive too. They’re so expensive you’re not likely to have many out at the same time and since there’s a limit on unit movement and attack, it’s hard to deal with them strictly through commons on the enemy’s side. Especially without using more magic to do so.

Champions are better in every way. They have a downside, of course, and that’s their cost. All decks in Summoner Wars have 32 cards (2 walls, 9 events, 3 champions, 18 commons) in them so that puts a hard limit on the amount of magic a player can generate in an entire game. If you only want to summon champions and let’s say you want to summon all three, you have to devote 18 magic to them. Using your own cards to build magic is the most assured way to get your magic so you’re devoting over half your deck to summoning those champions. And that’s not even taking into account any of the 9 events you may want to play or your 2 walls buried in there as well.

Let’s do some math!

3 Champions at 6 Magic = 18 Magic

32 Deck – 18 Magic = 14 Cards

14 Cards – 2 Walls – 3 Champions – 9 Events = well I’ll be damned.

So, in conclusion, Summoner Wars restricts the number of commons you can use per turn and makes them compete with higher valued champions and summoners. It designs them to be fragile and unable to compete with champions and summoners in a one-on-one engagement or even with each other. It then forces you to decide whether you want those commons in the first place or would you rather have the economy to afford those game winning champions. Because every common you put on the field is a common you have to kill of your opponent’s if you want a champion.

And if he’s saving up for his own champions then… well…

But this isn’t all doom and gloom. I’ve been working on an idea.