Summoner Wars - Tips & Strategies

This isn’t my concoction – this is The Boy’s, but he rubs his hands with glee every March, so I thought I would share it with you. 🙂

With 16 Factions – Summoner Wars is built for a Bracket Challenge Tournament.

Divvy up those factions among your Gaming Guild, build those decks, design some nifty headbands and t-shirts, and have at it!

Some general rules from The Boy:
*Until Second Summoner Packs are fully instituted throughout all factions they are not Tournament Sanctioned
(This was a direct quote. He is such a doof!)

*Reinforcement packs are fair game

*The first round is a blind match-up. Entering Round 2 and above remaining factions are notified of their opponents and can build their deck accordingly

*Once Mercenaries are out of the tournament – remaining factions are allowed to pick through their deck and choose one alternate Champion or Common Squad

* A set of Faction Dice from the Plaid Hat Games store makes a good trophy for the winning faction
That’s my rule! 🙂

Sadly, I’m usually out in Round One. 🙁

This year I had Cloaks . Seriously???!?!

*sigh* Those dice would have been nifty…

(…if I was the Phoenix Elves!)

This game has a number of units that are pump-able when they have cards added underneath them. This can turn your lowly little commons into hero killers. It’s a lot of fun to do too.

The downside is that usually these units aren’t the best at sticking around. They get killed pretty quick, especially the more powerful they get.

This can be bad because all those cards you used to make the little guy big go with him to your opponent’s magic pile when he’s killed.

Rather than give your opponent the kind of magic that might let him summon a champion from one kill, kill off the little guy yourself so that you can reinvest that magic towards your own needs. It just doesn’t pay to push your luck the other way.

A great strategy for this game, if you are able to do it reasonably, is to take out the opponent’s walls. The Guild Dwarves seem best-equipped to do this, with units that get bonuses for this. Without walls, or open spaces adjacent to walls, a summoner cannot summon. Likewise, be willing to place units to block the oponent’s wall spaces. It’s a really good control strategy for the game.

I realize the Master Set is probably seeing the most play now, but I began with the Phoenix Elves and Tundra Orcs Starter, so they will always have a soft spot in my heart. One suggestion for using Phoenix Elves is to take advantage of your warriors’ blaze step ability. If you are choosing to use commons (versus trying to hold out for champions), the warriors make a great hit and run force, attacking and possibly doing two damage and then retreating out of range to a wall that could be on the other side of the battlefield. Playing against the Phoenix Elves can be frustrating, and these guys are one of the reasons.

This may sound like “duh” advice, but I have seen many games lost because someone didn’t use a special ability on a card. Every card has one, there are no “generic soldiers”. Also know your enemies abilities before making your move.

A friend of mine came up with this, but it’s a great help, so I’m sharing.

The card wells in the Master Set box curve in at the bottom, and it’s enough that if you’ve sleeved your cards the corners of the sleeves get bent a bit.

My buddy’s solution was to cut the corners of the card wells out – just the bits that were pulling in at the corners where two sides and the bottom meet. Only removing that corner bit leaves the wells plenty strong enough and keeps your sleeves from getting all bent out of shape.

I know that among a lot of players, the Mayday sleeves (Chimera Premium seem to be the most recommend of them) are pretty consistently recommended even with the occasionally wrong sized sleeve.

I’d recommend folks go elsewhere for their sleeves. Not because there are obvious, better choices – there aren’t – but because Mayday as a company is not trustworthy.

They’ve done things like reselling as new returned and defective products, creating multiple accounts on sites so that their main account has “supporting voices” and they’ve absolutely, 100% ignored customer requests for restitution of refunds until things were made public.

Their sleeves appear to be their most consistent, good offering and I still can’t bring myself to use them because they’ve burned too many of my friends with their snake oil salesman techniques.