So this is the accompaniment article to last weeks disappointments of 2018. And, more than anything, I hope to bring attention to a little gem of a game that I feel has not received as much buzz or attention as it really deserves.
Last week I pointed out Artifact which is a digital card game by Valve Software and is really well made. Well, this time we’re looking at another game but this one is wholly physical.
For those that have followed the gaming posts on my blog, you are probably aware of my love for Summoner Wars by Plaid Hat Games. Despite being a bit niche amongst my board game friends – to the point I only know of Kait and myself who enjoyed the game – I managed to play a lot of games and actually buy many of the new armies for the game. It got to the point that Kait and I developed eight custom factions as well, so we could play decks both new and more tailored to our tastes.
The process of variant creation was an interesting one for me. It helped me to view the game through a different lens and I appreciated and despaired over different design directions key to Summoner Wars. On one hand, I came to really appreciate the element of luck and uncertainty that the dice provided. On the other hand, I did not like the use of high health walls for deployment and instantaneous response it provided along with the timing of discards and card draw.
Overall, however, I really enjoy Summoner Wars and my only regret is that I cannot find other people to play. Sadly, this carried over to Plaid Hat Game’s newest release: Crystal Clans.
I don’t know any other way to describe Crystal Clans other than it’s Summoner Wars version 2.0. This, unfortunately, turns off pretty much everyone I know because they do not like Summoner Wars. So a far more intuitive game with better balanced objectives and alternating game mechanics is not enough to alleviate people’s concerns. So, in order to do Crystal Clans a greater service, I shall attempt to describe it better.
Crystal Clans is an area control board game that pits separate clans represented by unique decks against each other to fight for the coveted crystals. Cards represent different forces of an army which move across a battlefield and vie for two of three crystal locations necessary to claim a crystal card. Players can contest crystal zones by moving their own armies into the space and duking out with their enemy.
Each clan deck is composed of six different commons and three hero cards. Two of the common cards form the backbone of the clan with six copies of those units while the rest have three copies each. There is only a single copy of heroes but heroes are generally stronger and cheaper commons.
Well, that’s the best I can really do. It is near impossible to discuss Crystal Clans while ignoring the Summoner Wars lens and, I feel, something only possible by a player who has never played Summoner Wars. But let me just tell you why I love Crystal Clans far more.
First, the game design is really slick. Clans have a reference card which denotes the signature ability of their faction. This ability isn’t found on all their cards but usually represents a core strategy for the clan. For example, the Skull Clan has Undying as their signature ability. This allows their warriors with that ability to be summoned from their graveyard as though they were in their player’s hand. Unsurprisingly, this represents the classic “undead” faction in fantasy games.
However, these aren’t your stereotypical graveyard robbing ghouls with an unhealthy obsession for black and mortification. One of my consistent gripes with Summoner Wars was how woefully shallow its theming was. Well, Crystal Clans is a terrifically beautiful game. While the style is a bit too cartoonish for my taste, I can’t deny how consistent and committed it is to that style. Those aforementioned necromancers are more Day of the Dead themed with lots of flowers, bright colours and – yes – an unhealthy obsession with skulls.
Curiously enough, only about a third of the undead faction is actually undead. The rest are units built around supporting them with necromancers allowing them to deploy outside of your clan’s home zone or devout cultists which allow a free undead unit summon to their space when they are killed.
Contrast the Skull Clan with their distant kin the Blood Clan. These swamp rednecks are most easily associated with the swarm like factions in fantasy battles. Typically its represented by goblins or something and not bayou farmers and their colossal crocodiles. This faction, however, is fun since they are not restricted by the number of units they can use to form an army. Stack them up as high as you can and form an old school Civilization III stack of doom to terrorise the board!
And this transitions into my next point about Crystal Clans. One of its immediately tangible departures from Summoner Wars’ formula is this squad formation mechanic. You can stack up to three units into one space (for most clans) with only the top unit contributing its special ability while every other unit lends its strength and defence to the whole. This eliminates the need for spells or buffs since any card can, essentially, turn into a persistent improvement to a single card’s power. But there’s more consideration here. Most battles will remove lost troops from the top so you may want to organize your forces to accommodate expected loses so the unit you want to live is buried on the bottom.
Even more interesting, every card also has a “battle effect” tied to it. See, Crystal Clans removes the oft maligned dice mechanic from the game. But to maintain that same element of uncertainty, when two armies battle, each player provides a battle card to their side in an attempt to turn the outcome to their side. The battle effects are split between two options and serve as a simplistic rock-paper-scissors mini-game. At the start of a battle, cards are revealed and you compare your chosen battle card with your opponent. Bold beats Guarded, Tricky beats Bold and Guarded beats Tricky. Generally speaking, stronger effects are regulated to the stronger pairing. For example, Big (Blood Clan Hero) provides an additional 8! attack if you happen to play him into an enemy’s guarded card. But if your opponent played a tricky or bold themselves, then you only receive 4 attack for the fight.
For most games, this little contest will typically be treated as a random effect that you pay little attention to. However, as your understanding and skill with the game improves, you may realize that you can pop your Dandelion Knights out from a horrible Meteor Clan knight stack in your home zone and scurry to crystal zones for the final score by initiating a battle and utilizing your Pollen Faeries battle effect.
And this is what I most love about Crystal Clans. It looks like a cutesy, simplistic version of Summoner Wars with streamlined decks, clearer objectives and much smaller battlefield. However, my experience has been anything but. Crystal Clans mechanics are simple to understand but much harder to optimize. I still don’t know how to “properly” play the game – which is to say I am never certain which action is the best one to take at any turn. This is very similar to Artifact where the mechanics are simplified by the strategy is far more compelling.
Compounding Crystal Clans decision making matrices, its resource system is far more elegant and far more tricky than Summoner Wars. Crystal Clans uses an “initiative track.” There is a numbered ladder on the side of the board and you track your spending by moving a marker up this track towards your opponent. Once it crosses the 1 threshold on your opponent’s side, it is their turn. However, actions cost different amount of initiative. For example, you make take a summon action which allows you to play 1 to 3 cards from your hand to your home zone. This alone can cost anywhere between 0 to 9 or more initiative depending on what you play. If you were on the neutral 0 space of the tracker, that could give your opponent a whopping 11 initiative (since play will only pass back to you once it cross your 1 initiative space on the track)! Scoring is likely the most expensive action since you need to pay the cost of a crystal in order to grab it for your side. Crystals are, on average, about seven initiative themselves and this is not accounting for the initiative you need to spend to control two of the crystal spaces.
Sadly, despite digging how sly its mechanics are plus the unique and coherent design of its clans, Crystal Clans simply does not seem to be catching. I know Kait was pretty lukewarm to it and my friends who didn’t care for Summoner Wars weren’t big fans either. Somehow Crystal Clans managed to alienate both those that loved Summoner Wars and those that hated it. There was a delicate line to walk between too familiar and too different and from my experience Crystal Clans failed to attract those turned off by its predecessor or draw along its ardent fans. I’m really digging their expansion clans who provide very interest twists to the basic game mechanics. I’m also eager to see how Plaid Hat Games finalizes their deck building rules before I start dropping too much money into the game.
And I certainly have not played enough of the game to do a deep dive into its balance but my initial experience seems that while the core box offers pretty good options, there’s a few standout clans. Stone and Flower are distinct among the rest but for opposite reasons. Stone Clan is all about building a strong board presence with immovable armies that destroy the enemies. But all their units and activations cost far too much to really get that board built. On the flip side, and perhaps the fuel for my bias, Flower is incredibly tricky and fast. It’s a pretty frustrating match-up (that I’ve played too many times) and Flower is both able to run circle around Stone (and the other clans for that matter) while also providing rather powerful punches given the power of their signature clan ability Sleep. If you want to try Crystal Clans and really enjoy rolling a game, I suggest picking up the faerie clan.
As of today, however, I’m very happy with Crystal Clans with my only disappointment being that I have no one to play and, given the battle card component of its battles, I’m unable to play by myself. I’ll shamefully admit that I’ve played Summoner Wars on my own many times with only mild conflict of knowledge. But truly randomising the battle cards really strips out a key component to the game.
Of all the things I’d like to see the most in later releases, however, are more crystal cards. To win, one side needs to collect four and they’re purchased from an open set of three. So you can see quite a lot of the same ones through multiple games especially if they’re close. I’d also like to have the option to remove some crystals from rotation and allowing customization of the crystal deck would be fantastic.
So… yeah, if this long rant piqued your interest, I encourage you to give Crystal Clans a try. It might not click at first which is its biggest weakness. But it’s such a lovely little refinement that I just want it to do well enough to see even more!
Maybe it’ll even encourage Plaid Hat Games to put the rest of their clans on their card browser which, to date, still only has their launch cards listed. Or maybe it they could even release more scenarios which also haven’t been seen since launch. There’s so much promise here, I would hate to see it squandered.