Alright, are you ready for another full day of me gushing over how great the Polar Dwarves are?

I know I am. 

I do like how Summoner Wars reboot has made common units an integral part of faction identity and tactics. Commons are a far better unit to focus your deck around, largely because there’s far more of them in your deck. This gives you better consistency in your draw, which is an aspect of Summoner Wars that doesn’t get enough attention. It is a card game, after all is said and done, and no matter the dice results or your clever maneuvering, you can still be undone by a lousy new hand of cards.

The original Tundra Guild tried to manipulate your deck and draw for advantages. It failed. Thankfully, Svara ejects this principle. 

Instead, let’s talk more about structures with her standout common: the Ice Golem. 

Can you believe that Summoner Wars 1.0 analogue of the Ice Golem was 1 attack and 3 health for the same cost? Crazy eh? To make matters worse, you needed one of five other cards in Hogar’s old deck to turn it into a moving summoning post. Which only did so after the summoning phase so your opponent had a very good chance of just blowing your ice golem off the board before you could even use it as such.

But not Svara’s golems. These brutes swing for a respectable 2 strength. It’s not incredible but it’s enough to demand attention from your opponent. That five health pool is hard to chip down with the added bonus of failing to finish them off leaves them open for a lovely repairing on Svara’s turn. 

Moving only one tile a turn is not to be dismissed, however. You’ll be using a lot of Svara wiggles to get them into position. But these guys are really good at holding their position once you get them there. However, those first few rounds are brutal while you try to get them setup.

And that’s what I like about Svara. She really takes advantage of the board in this boardgame. Your golems are less mindless chaff pitched mercilessly against your opponent’s defences. They’re pillars supporting your massive battleline. And Frost Mages are the unsung heroes of your battles. Don’t let their meagre strength stat fool you, the real steal here is their 4 health for 1 magic. They’ll almost never be attacking at 1 strength with your plethora of structural support to boost their strength. And against most ranged options, they’ll be winning their exchanges. 

Only Abua’s Border Archers really offer a one turn threat to your mages and they’ll need to roll above odds to win. Plus, border archers are twice the price so even if it takes two mages to kill one, you do economically come out equal. And much like Abua, golems and mages are rather your main battleline. 

However, Svara’s other options are interesting in their own right. 

Bear Cavalry are, thematically, awesome. I’m less sold on them as a unit in general. They’re a specialist, needed for very specific moments but otherwise best sent off to the magic pile. Svara has no economic strength so a 3 magic unit is a tough sell. Their trample and 3 melee strength provide some reasonable damage against commons, however. But they’re no more durable than your golems – less so if you take repairing into account.

But the one niche where the cavalry shine is in conjunction with Ice Smiths. These little guys are mercifully free. They’re pretty flexible too. Two melee strength is pretty handy to have on call at any mana level especially since they can usually reach whatever target you need once your gate and golem line is established. Their special ability is interesting if a little slow to roll out. You basically have to decide upon summoning whether you want to sacrifice them to improve your golems and bears or if you’re going to attack with them since no enemy will let them live a full turn. Their ability – making any special symbol count as two wounds, is very nice. Obviously they’re best on the bears who have a higher attack. In the worst case, they will make sure all your attacks hit. But they can also make golems and bears effective champion slayers with a potential 6 or 9 wounds on a best roll!

It’s a pretty decent collection of units, after all is said and done.

Svara’s champions are no slouches either. 

Nadiana is the expected “a common but better” unit. She eases off the pressure for exacting structure placement with counting two spaces for her strength bonus. Her 7 health is on the low end but never forget that she’s even more effective behind a parapet than Svara is. 

Jarmund is a far more reasonable 5 magic. He really neuters melee focused decks, applying auto wounds to any enemies that end up adjacent to your walls. Like everything else with the Polar Dwarves, he needs a turn to start building his boost charges and wrecking havoc so your opponent can respond. Which is nice but ultimately doesn’t help them all that much. 

Last, and certainly least, is hands down the worst champion in the game. 

I’m glad Svara at least delivered something for me to hate. I cannot tell you how bad Ollag is. 

But I will certainly try.

Ollag has an incredibly awful ability. Sure, having no range limit on his health boost to all your structures is nice. And it’s probably the only thing I can compliment him on. Unfortunately, a boost of one health is pretty minor when all your structures already have such large pools to start. He’s also timing dependent – you get no benefit from this ability if you don’t have structures on the board that your opponent is going to attack. Which is to say, you need a bunch of golems out. 

And a minor ability would be fine if it came on someone who compensated with good stats. Yet, Ollag’s 5 magic, while low for a champion, is still too high for the magic pressed Polar Dwarves. Even worse, he has only 7 health so he’s not going to survive very long out in the wild (unless you hide him but then why did you waste 5 magic on a guy squatting in a corner when you could be killing with golems and bears?). Even worse, he doesn’t even have a good strength like Miti Kyru. And your smiths are unable to improve this at all so he’s left standing out there with subpar health, sub par strength providing very little durability to your forces who, albeit, lean heavily on their durability to win the game. 

There’s simply no good moment where you would want to summon Ollag.

But thankfully, he’s pretty much the only blemish on an otherwise well designed faction. I like that the Polar Dwarves are focused on being a mid game powerhouse, creating a formidable line of structures that are hard for your opponent to move around and surrounding them in crushing ice. It’s a defensive style that works aggressively while Svara slowly chokes all options out from her opponent until claiming victory over their suffocated corpse.

I really like this ice.