Summoner Wars Review: A Blast From the Past

For someone who doesnt like chess you used the Queens and kings gambits really well in this analogy

The Chunky Wunkie is the most powerful unit of the NPI faction.

There’s video game with the same name as board game lol

I've bought this game after this review 😄

Great review! With a lots of layers. Like onion.

That music selection tho 👌🏼

The new artwork in this edition is AMAZING, I would dare say that it equals the awesome success of the new Heman reboot, Masters of the Universe! Good job game makers!!!

just to comment that the Kings Gambit is actually more exciting 🔥 and less straight forward than the queen's gambit 🙂🤣🤣🤣

<3

My whistle is severely wet.

Yeah, Plaid Hat calling it a Master Set is thoroughly misleading.

I waited for the pirate hat and I was rewarded for it.

Hi there. Stopped by to say that in the USA, cheez-whiz comes in BOTH forms: you can find it in a jar, AND a can. I’ve been listening to your most recent podcast, and thought it was important you knew this about our gluttonous country. Thanks for your time.

Your shirt is awesome and tripy i love it

Thanks again for a great review. Even though I'm not interested in Summoner Wars, I had to watch it because your video are always entertaining and really well done!

Your content has been excellent ever since I stumbled upon it a month ago!! Looking forward to more and more 😊

Your videos are top notch!

Was the teach zone influenced by the eyeball zone?

you did the "rules" part in a pirate hat and was disapointed their wasn't a twist where you explained every thing you taught their "there more like guide lines"

It's called Master Set, because it's a reimplementation of the old Master Set. 47 years ago, in the 17th century, when this came out, there were core sets with 2 factions (2 was considered to be a lot back then)...

Efka said "soupçon" so nicely, i had to comment for "référencement"

Hmm, getting heavy Duelyst vibes which is no bad thing.

hei! this is for the algoritm

Weirdly enough, I found it odd there was such a focus on the dice. Sure they add some unpredictability, but they are the most generous dice I have seen in such a such a system. 5 out of 6 being a melee hit and 4 out of 6 being a ranged hit is generous enough that you are never sure, but you are very unlikely to completely whiff. Just have a backup for when you don't score max damage or just build you plans about doing one damage less than you'd hope.

always wanted to play that one

Oh the teach zone as in Edward Teach hence the pirate hat. Very clever Efka.

I don’t know why but this video has a way different vibe than most of NPI’s videos. It’s almost like they’re sarcasticically reviewing the game.

I half expected Efka to start talking about eyeballs when we entered the Teach Zone. There were definitely some Eyeball Zone vibes.

Funsters

This is going to be a bit long, sorry about that.

I think this is doing a big disservice to this game to call it Chess the card game. This is how this game was introduced to me a long time ago and to this day, this is still one of the rare game I truly hate and I think it is because of how it was introduced to me.
I enjoy playing chess so I was quite excited to play this game that was basically introducing powers and piece management on top of it. I thought it would be a nice change of pace to basic chess while retaining the same philosophy.

Chess is a head to head game where you are trying to maneuver in order to gain an advantage over your opponent. To do so, you can use tactics and/or strategy, you can try to analyze a move and its implication over the next X moves, you set plans and evaluate them, etc. As you pointed pretty accurately, you are trying to solve a puzzle. This might be an exercise that doesn't appeal to people, but this is basically what chess is offering you.

Summoner wars looks like it offers this too. You try to set a plan, decide where you are going to summon your units, which units to summon, which ones will attack and which ones will try to defend your summoner, what could your opponent do. You find a great plan, you execute it and... and now, you flip the table because all you carefully crafted plans, all your preparation, all your hopes just got crushed by the laziest game mechanism of all time: dice rolls.

Imagine playing chess and when your queen is about to take your opponent pawn, you roll a die. And if you fail, the pawn can now take your queen. Everything you have done so far, your mana management, your units summoning, your moves, in order to gain an advantage over your opponent, they don't really matter anymore. If the dice don't roll to allow you to execute your plan, it was all for nothing. Going back to the idea of solving a puzzle, Summoner Wars completely throws that out of the window because you can't solve a puzzle when you can't predict the result of your actions. This single decision to resolve combat with dice rolling makes this game switched from a chess like deterministic activity to a poker like probabilistic one.

There is absolutely a place for randomness in games but introducing randomness in a chess like game felt very out of place to me. In chess, you are always trying to prove yourself wrong. If you evaluate a move and your opponent can respond with move A that wins you a pawn, or move B that let's you mate him 3 moves down the road or move C that loses your knight, you simply can't play this move even though you have a 66% chance of a positive result because you can't expect your opponent to miss the 33% chance of them to beat you. In Summoner Wars, you may have planned 5-6 moves ahead, prepared your mana to drop your big unit, move your summoner to a good spot so your summon would be ready to strike, launch a distraction attack somewhere else to thin out the defenses and go for it, at the end of the day, you can't know whether this plan is good or not because if your dice whiff, nothing of what you did before matters (and your soul will leave you!).

So to summarize, I think that when a game is introduced as chess like, there is a certain expectation (especially from chess players) of what the game will feel like and I think Summoner Wars couldn't feel farther away from that feeling.

Great skirmish/tactics game. Wife and I used to play the original 47 years ago. Scratches the itch of Heroscape and similar games but with quick setup time.

I really wish master set wasn't sold out in Australia :')

HELLO AND WELCOME TO THE TEACH ZONE

There's this game on Kickstarter called AracKhan Wars which look really similar to this...

I believe the Master Set moniker is borrowed from Heroscape, which used that naming for its core sets. It's a game that influenced Summoner Wars heavily, and which Colby Dauch and other Plaid Hat veterans made content for back in the day. I agree it's a bit dated and silly, but I also think it's a cute nod to its roots :)

Great job guys!

This review had layers

Is that the standard reference onion or some form of metric onion equivalent, like 3.28 chalottes?

I now understand why some of our players have said our game, which uses minis instead of cards of in this case, reminds them of Summoner Wars.

Small thing, Summoner Wars is a LCG not a Collectable Card Game. I hate to nitpick here but CCG’s usually have a chance/ loot box type purchasing , and Summoners Wars isn’t that aggressive in purchase price to get all of it. I know if I hear a game is a CCG I run for the hills as I don’t have enough money for Magic The Gathering or Flesh and Blood etc. but I do have enough for Living Card Games where By purchasing a pack or the master set I get everything I need.

How can I get my soul sent to the Teach Zone? Sounds lovely!

I already preordered the game after listening to your podcast cant wait for it to arrive

The concept looks like a heavily simplified version of Warmachine (which itself is a 50/50 blend of MTG and Warhammer with limitless options;))

Wait... Onions vary in size based on how many layers they have...How big were those onions? Could you show us an onion next to a standard reference pear?

That's a LOT of onions in one box