Summoner Wars (Plaid Hat Games + Playdek) [Universal]

[rekirtS]

I can play in the tourney.

PE
TO
JE
VG
CG

are five factions I can play.

[rekirtS]

Haven't been posting in awhile but here are some thoughts from me from the last few pages. I consider myself pretty good at this game.

TO are not overpowered. I challenge anyone to play me otherwise 1v1. they're not even close to being overpowered nor do i think the best faction in the game. They're just an easy pubstomp faction.

90% of this game is definitely skill, not luck. the # may be a tad high but its definitely +75%, closer to 90%. calculated risks are still skill. every dice roll expect to deal .66 damage and you'll be good, but have a plan if you miss. i've won lots of games where the dice arent in my favor and i've lost a few where i had some godly rolls. theres players with some ridiculous records who are not winning by luck.

dont see how PE vs VG is a bad matchup for either side.

PE vs CG on the other hand is tricky cause true damage vs one hp but maybe not too bad if you can get some shots are elien.

next tournament should just be double elim with no restrictions on factions. i bet you TO would not take home first place.

fighters suck already, no need to cap them to reduce their fun. fighters are really awful though. average damage is one (i think) which is not nearly up to par with other 1 costers. if a TO player actually ever summons a fighter its pretty comical. not even their best common which goes to thrasher (no damage unless all hit) for being annoying as hell.

~.2% chance to have someone roll 5 furies in a row. WITHOUT factoring in all rolls hitting. calling total bullshit sorry.

imo (probably change and im biased just doing this for fun.)

no order within 'tiers'
best factions: JE, TO, GD.
medium: CG, VG, PE.
worst: FK, Cl

even fk and Cl aren't too bad though. Cloak's Spy event is godly broken, and thief steals are good too. FK gets free champs which let him outmagic his opponent and lets him out-unit him eventually. some FK tips: use cultists! most there other units are bad. archers decent for starving magic but one attack doesnt cut it. reapers are bad they give opponent extra magic. zombies bad.

and thats it.

no offense intended with any of this just contributing what i've learned.

and lastly: hi Camzee. long time no see been playing strat games with you for a while now. you've always been a smart foe in ascension, kard kombat, and the third game i can't remember name of.

[Deadza]

Saying FK gets -free- champions sorta makes me not take you seriously. Sorry. They are discounted sure. But really, the strategic cost is very high and you have to plan ahead.

[Exact-Psience]

^aw... you revealed my FK secret.

Yeah... I have 10 cultists in my deck. And im currently 8-1 with FK. The reason cultists are so good is that they can kill one on the turn it was summoned, and potentially kill another one when they die, basically making them a 2 for 1 card.

I agree with TO as just pubstompers. Find a way to deal with the Smashers and Thwarters, and then the Summoner himself, and you'll have a better chance at them. For me, Smashers are their MVP. At 2 cost, his stats are very cheap. A Smasher and a champ closing in on the enemy is difficult to deal with, and having 2 smashers escorting a champ is just plain scary.

PE is the top faction for me right now. That guaranteed 1 turn kill on your champ or that unit in your way or the summoner himself is pretty strong. If luck is against you, i bet using PE will make you happy.

As for GD, those Defenders are near broken IMO, and Gror with HF is the most efficient board clearer in the game right now. And Baldar, he's just unkillable unless bitten to death by ants. The only thing holding them back is the lack of higher attack Common units, but it's good they have the Defenders to tie up those champs in place.

One faction i find very interesting and very skill-dependent, is Cloaks. One of the factors that make this faction strong is having the right skills for the Summoner on every turn, and making those decisions are difficult as smashing beer cans with boobs. Scam is the best hit n run champ in the game, and the Admiral can make for some great synergy with their commons, most especially thieves. Spy is just plain strong, and cloak of shadows can destroy your planned strategies unless you plan out the possibilities of CoS. And then there's assassinate. Yeah the faction is a mana-hogger though, that's why i have a good number of thieves to make up for it, since theyre free, and they are good mana candidates as well.

[rekirtS]

Originally Posted by Deadza

Saying FK gets -free- champions sorta makes me not take you seriously. Sorry. They are discounted sure. But really, the strategic cost is very high and you have to plan ahead.

free magic where i was obviously making the point. take me as seriously as you want. part of the same sentence was to have more magic than your opponent.

PE champion is too brittle to be the best imo. 4 hp = average of 6 dice which is easy for alot of factions

[sapphire_neo]

Okay, I'm going to respond piece by piece.

Originally Posted by rekirtS

TO are not overpowered. I challenge anyone to play me otherwise 1v1. they're not even close to being overpowered nor do i think the best faction in the game. They're just an easy pubstomp faction.

TO aren't overpowered a lot but one of the key things that's keeping win percentages with them high right now is the wrong implementation of Freeze. Because it can't be removed outside of your own turn right now a TO player can effective use it like a semi-Chant of Negation. It can be used to nullify Defenders, Guardian Knights, Baldar, Thorkur, Thwarters, Skhull and other units with defensive abilities. Even Summoners like Oldin have defensive abilities which can be nullified with Freeze to make an attack more effective. Outside of that issue the annoying thing, and this is just a pet peeve, is that they are a gambling faction and I simply don't like that. Neither while playing against them or as them. Plus there's the fact that Grognack is a beast and can stare down champs on his own.

Originally Posted by rekirtS

90% of this game is definitely skill, not luck. the # may be a tad high but its definitely +75%, closer to 90%. calculated risks are still skill. every dice roll expect to deal .66 damage and you'll be good, but have a plan if you miss. i've won lots of games where the dice arent in my favor and i've lost a few where i had some godly rolls. theres players with some ridiculous records who are not winning by luck.

No doubt, I agree. There's a ton of strategy and skill involved regardless of which faction you use. And at the same time the dice can turn at any minute, giving you 7 misses in a row, it's just the nature of the game. Not to mention the luck of the draw.

Originally Posted by rekirtS

dont see how PE vs VG is a bad matchup for either side.

I think onewithchaos can answer this one better since he's the VG mainer here, but pretty much all factions have trouble with PE because of the ability to deliver an exact number of wounds per turn. This gets worse for VG because of how Guardian Knights can be circumvented by burns. At the same time, VG has its own means of delivering surgical strikes to champs and sometimes even Elien with an SS+Wall combo. So it's not a particularly bad matchup, but it's tough for VG.

Originally Posted by rekirtS

PE vs CG on the other hand is tricky cause true damage vs one hp but maybe not too bad if you can get some shots are elien.

That is definitely a worse matchup, but it comes down to using your Hordes to take down champs and using Sly effectively. It's hard but it can be done. Again, a PE matchup is bad for almost all factions except CL, which can poke Elien very effectively unless the PE player gets some walls early.

Originally Posted by rekirtS

next tournament should just be double elim with no restrictions on factions. i bet you TO would not take home first place.

fighters suck already, no need to cap them to reduce their fun. fighters are really awful though. average damage is one (i think) which is not nearly up to par with other 1 costers. if a TO player actually ever summons a fighter its pretty comical. not even their best common which goes to thrasher (no damage unless all hit) for being annoying as hell.
~.2% chance to have someone roll 5 furies in a row. WITHOUT factoring in all rolls hitting. calling total bullshit sorry.

That wouldn't be a wise bet, TO is a brutal faction in experienced hands, especially with the broken Freezes. As for Fighters, I don't want to get into that anymore. Theoretical percentages sounds fine but when it happens it's ridiculous. Colby thinks it's fun and a vast majority agree with him so that's okay. As for it being comical, Fighters can be combined with Freezes to deliver precise wounds to a Summoner at little cost and it's always worth a gamble at some point given you're already committed to a dice rolling faction. I'm not sure exactly what you're calling bullshit on. That it never happened? I can assure you it happened. There are even testimonials to turn zero wins at the PHG forums, which would need something like 6x Fury.

Originally Posted by rekirtS

imo (probably change and im biased just doing this for fun.)

no order within 'tiers'
best factions: JE, TO, GD.
medium: CG, VG, PE.
worst: FK, Cl

even fk and Cl aren't too bad though. Cloak's Spy event is godly broken, and thief steals are good too. FK gets free champs which let him outmagic his opponent and lets him out-unit him eventually. some FK tips: use cultists! most there other units are bad. archers decent for starving magic but one attack doesn't cut it. reapers are bad they give opponent extra magic. zombies bad.

Those are definitely personal picks, PE, CG and even CL/FK fare much better in experienced hands. PE is pretty much a top tier deck along with GD. It's easy to maintain a 85-90% win rate with either if you hone your skills on them exclusively. I would say Spy is pretty powerful, but CL need a powerful event to make up for their other weaknesses. More often than not, Assassinate will serve you better than Spy. As for Cultists being the only good unit, Zombie Warriors are hugely effective and Reapers are great meat shields that can also be used with NaanNaashi at endgame to surprise most folk. Not to mention Cultists aren't good shields at endgame, even with their Death Curse. And as a side note, it's always fun when you can surprise someone with a FS+Wall combo.

Originally Posted by rekirtS

and thats it

Phew, sure is. Finally, a vet over at PHG forums collected these faction stats from physical game reports. It makes for fun reading.

[sapphire_neo]

Originally Posted by Exact-Psience

One faction i find very interesting and very skill-dependent, is Cloaks. One of the factors that make this faction strong is having the right skills for the Summoner on every turn, and making those decisions are difficult as smashing beer cans with boobs. Scam is the best hit n run champ in the game, and the Admiral can make for some great synergy with their commons, most especially thieves. Spy is just plain strong, and cloak of shadows can destroy your planned strategies unless you plan out the possibilities of CoS. And then there's assassinate. Yeah the faction is a mana-hogger though, that's why i have a good number of thieves to make up for it, since theyre free, and they are good mana candidates as well.

You haven't even scratched the surface of the crazy stuff that's possible with CL. They are my favorite deck and I do reasonably well with them. The sheer level of flexibility in deck building, along with the flexibility on the board make this an immensely fun faction. It's hugely disappointing there aren't more CL mainers around.

[rekirtS]

Originally Posted by sapphire_neo

Okay, I'm going to respond piece by piece.


TO aren't overpowered a lot but one of the key things that's keeping win percentages with them high right now is the wrong implementation of Freeze. Because it can't be removed outside of your own turn right now a TO player can effective use it like a semi-Chant of Negation. It can be used to nullify Defenders, Guardian Knights, Baldar, Thorkur, Thwarters, Skhull and other units with defensive abilities. Even Summoners like Oldin have defensive abilities which can be nullified with Freeze to make an attack more effective. Outside of that issue the annoying thing, and this is just a pet peeve, is that they are a gambling faction and I simply don't like that. Neither while playing against them or as them. Plus there's the fact that Grognack is a beast and can stare down champs on his own.


No doubt, I agree. There's a ton of strategy and skill involved regardless of which faction you use. And at the same time the dice can turn at any minute, giving you 7 misses in a row, it's just the nature of the game. Not to mention the luck of the draw.


I think onewithchaos can answer this one better since he's the VG mainer here, but pretty much all factions have trouble with PE because of the ability to deliver an exact number of wounds per turn. This gets worse for VG because of how Guardian Knights can be circumvented by burns. At the same time, VG has its own means of delivering surgical strikes to champs and sometimes even Elien with an SS+Wall combo. So it's not a particularly bad matchup, but it's tough for VG.


That is definitely a worse matchup, but it comes down to using your Hordes to take down champs and using Sly effectively. It's hard but it can be done. Again, a PE matchup is bad for almost all factions except CL, which can poke Elien very effectively unless the PE player gets some walls early.


That wouldn't be a wise bet, TO is a brutal faction in experienced hands, especially with the broken Freezes. As for Fighters, I don't want to get into that anymore. Theoretical percentages sounds fine but when it happens it's ridiculous. Colby thinks it's fun and a vast majority agree with him so that's okay. As for it being comical, Fighters can be combined with Freezes to deliver precise wounds to a Summoner at little cost and it's always worth a gamble at some point given you're already committed to a dice rolling faction. I'm not sure exactly what you're calling bullshit on. That it never happened? I can assure you it happened. There are even testimonials to turn zero wins at the PHG forums, which would need something like 6x Fury.


Those are definitely personal picks, PE, CG and even CL/FK fare much better in experienced hands. PE is pretty much a top tier deck along with GD. It's easy to maintain a 85-90% win rate with either if you hone your skills on them exclusively. I would say Spy is pretty powerful, but CL need a powerful event to make up for their other weaknesses. More often than not, Assassinate will serve you better than Spy. As for Cultists being the only good unit, Zombie Warriors are hugely effective and Reapers are great meat shields that can also be used with NaanNaashi at endgame to surprise most folk. Not to mention Cultists aren't good shields at endgame, even with their Death Curse. And as a side note, it's always fun when you can surprise someone with a FS+Wall combo.


Phew, sure is. Finally, a vet over at PHG forums collected these faction stats from physical game reports. It makes for fun reading.

i've read those stats before. good read.

freeze annoying but i wouldn't say its the difference between OP and not.

guardian knights shouldn't be the backbone of a VG deck lol. I just odn't see how this matchup is bad at all for VG. maybe a good PE player could play me and we'll see how it goes lol. PE likes people to come to them but you can't do that versus VG and VG will get three champs on the field backed by heroes. i'd say the matchup is even but just me.

i just dont believe that ~ .037% chance to happen has actually happened. but I wouldn't believe that if ANYONE said .037% chance to happen has happened so its nothing personal. are you SURE it was all during one turn, and your champ was at FULL hp? and the fighter not the TO champion? not saying it cant happen just saying its more likely that someone would be stretching the truth and or misunderstanding whats happening rather than .037% actually happening.

cultists are great end-game cause unless you're up against VG or JE, they can't heal, and resummoing them gives you another win-con: they can't kill your cultists without killing themselv.

i know CL need the good event. i know they're good in good hands, as i said they're not even that bad compared to others. CL just cannot kill big champs like Miti, Fire Drake, VG strats, cause the most they can hit for is two. but if you can spy and kill the champ or thief and discard it then you're in buisiness.

[sapphire_neo]

Originally Posted by rekirtS

i've read those stats before. good read.

freeze annoying but i wouldn't say its the difference between OP and not.

guardian knights shouldn't be the backbone of a VG deck lol. I just odn't see how this matchup is bad at all for VG. maybe a good PE player could play me and we'll see how it goes lol. PE likes people to come to them but you can't do that versus VG and VG will get three champs on the field backed by heroes. i'd say the matchup is even but just me.

i just dont believe that ~ .037% chance to happen has actually happened. but I wouldn't believe that if ANYONE said .037% chance to happen has happened so its nothing personal. are you SURE it was all during one turn, and your champ was at FULL hp? and the fighter not the TO champion?

cultists are great end-game cause unless you're up against VG or JE, they can't heal, and resummoing them gives you another win-con: they can't kill your cultists without killing themselv.

i know CL need the good event. i know they're good in good hands, as i said they're not even that bad compared to others.

You don't think playing Freeze on a defensive unit on your turn is an issue? The thing is, right now you can say people should watch out for defensive units being frozen on an enemy's turn, which is fine. It's a manageable issue, but it's not how Freeze was designed and is effectively an abuse of the event.

Guardian Knights are very important, they can be used to nullify wounds on your champs and that can be key to delivering Heaven's Rain with Jacob on multiple turns or keeping Kalon alive while Sera comes to his rescue. And they can be your final defense when someone is trying to take a hit on Sera. You should try playing onewithchaos, he has about 100 games with VG.

You can choose to believe what you want :shrug: Just because it has a low statistical probability doesn't mean it's not possible. That's the whole point of abilities like Possession and Fatal Slash, which are very rare but do activate occasionally. (on 6+, I might add, not 5+)

Cultists are not good shields for endgame, because they do die, regardless of whether they inflict that one wound or not. If you pack your deck with cultists you might end up in a situation where you have no units to shield Ret with. But they are great, I usually use 3-5.

Yup, CL are great and fun as I've said before.

[rekirtS]

Originally Posted by sapphire_neo

You don't think playing Freeze on a defensive unit on your turn is an issue? The thing is, right now you can say people should watch out for defensive units being frozen on an enemy's turn, which is fine. It's a manageable issue, but it's not how Freeze was designed and is effectively an abuse of the event.

Guardian Knights are very important, they can be used to nullify wounds on your champs and that can be key to delivering Heaven's Rain with Jacob on multiple turns or keeping Kalon alive while Sera comes to his rescue. And they can be your final defense when someone is trying to take a hit on Sera. You should try playing onewithchaos, he has about 100 games with VG.

You can choose to believe what you want :shrug: Just because it has a low statistical probability doesn't mean it's not possible. That's the whole point of abilities like Possession and Fatal Slash, which are very rare but do activate occasionally. (on 6+, I might add, not 5+)

Cultists are not good shields for endgame, because they do die, regardless of whether they inflict that one wound or not. If you pack your deck with cultists you might end up in a situation where you have no units to shield Ret with. But they are great, I usually use 3-5.

Yup, CL are great and fun as I've said before.

i wouldn't say freeze is a huge issue. small issue.

well .037% just makes more sense for me not to believe without more evidence is all. def not impossible.

yes phantom and slasher both activate on +6... so? only ONCE for them to actually pay off lol. thats a very realistic 16%. and both abilties are much better than fighters.

cultists are the only unit i'd ever resurrect from FK but thats just me. zombie has 1 attack which is pitiful and unreliable. i'd go with the strategy just mentioned of packing 10 cultists with barely anything else... but just me.