‘Summoner Wars: Second Edition Master Set’ Board Game Review
It’s been thirteen years since Plaid Hat Games debuted with the original Summoner Wars. An expandable system, rather than a completely standalone game, Summoner Wars sought to capitalise on the success of Magic: The Gathering and other, similar competitive card games, whilst simultaneously offering players a more spatial, chess-like challenge, and offering a fixed price point for expansion content.
At the time this approach was successful, and many individual decks followed for a few years. Unfortunately, the original core and master set content was rarely reprinted, and interest more or less fizzled out. In 2021 however, Summoner Wars: Second Edition Master Set was released, bringing with it new decks, a new art style and a few rules tweaks, and I’ve been keen to sit down and dive into it, having missed out on the original game and the subsequent, infrequent reprints. Considering it’s been more than ten years since the system was created, I was curious as to whether it would like up to modern standards – let’s find out.
Firstly, I should mention that even though the rules are very similar, Summoner Wars: Second Edition Master Set and all Second Edition decks are completely incompatible with the First Edition content. I don’t know enough about the original to tell you why this is, or whether a workaround is available, so I am just letting you know that if you do decide to invest, you might as well ignore everything related to those older, more elusive sets. The Summoner Wars: Second Edition Master Set has six decks in the base game, and others are available as expansion content, so you’re unlikely to run out of things to do with this new release anyway.
At its heart, Summoner Wars: Second Edition Master Set is very much a hybrid between classic duelling card and board games. The players each have a deck and occupy one side of a board, with the twist here being that cards are played from hand onto the board, at which point they become similar to Chess pieces in terms of how they occupy or control space, and in how they move. This is quite different in feel to a game like Magic: The Gathering, because in that kind of card game, the space between the players is somewhat temporal, with cards considered to be more in “states” than in “zones.”
Each card costs energy, which is tracked on the edge of the board at which each player will sit. The players are represented on the board by a special Summoner card, which usually has a fairly high health, as well as powerful attack and/or ability. Each game round has a number of simple phases which include spending resources to summon cards onto the board, moving units, attacking enemy units and then placing building cards (which work ever so slightly differently to units, but not much.) The final step of each turn is to gain energy, which is then added to the tracker I spoke about before.
The real magic of Summoner Wars: Second Edition Master Set is this simple, fast-paced flow. In fact, Summoner Wars: Second Edition Master Set propels players towards their opponent so keenly that if a player fails to make an attack on their turn, they actually take damage. In addition to being easy to pick up, Summoner Wars: Second Edition Master Set has a fair bit of depth. Each Summoner comes with a prebuilt deck, and I was surprised by how varied the different choices are. One Summoner can effectively move his units around the board when enemy cards are defeated, whilst another fields almost all ranged units and has a number of Event cards (which are played beside the board) which slow opposing units and manipulate them.
My personal favourite character is Sneaks the Goblin, who has a deck made up of largely zero or one cost cards, allowing him to field a massive army almost as quickly as he can make space for himself to do so. On that note, units can only be summoned via Gates, which can also be targeted and destroyed by enemies. Putting your summoner further up the field allows reinforcements to spawn closer to the fight, but it also puts your main characters closer to harm – leading to different tactical choices which are again affected by who you have chosen to play as, and who you are up against.
Whilst I am not familiar with the original aesthetic of Summoner Wars, the new Summoner Wars: Second Edition Master Set has a really lovely, somewhat grown-up cartoon style finished in a relatively soft colour palette. Every character is detailed and interesting to look at, and each deck has several Hero units alongside the Summoner, who add a good bit of personality. Combat is largely determined by dice, and the included dice are customised with swords, lightning bolts and similar on them, giving them a premium feel. Overall my only complaint with the components is that the box is massively oversized, and I would be discarding it in favour of a tupperware solution were it not for the board – I am sure a cloth or neoprene play surface would have sufficed and could have reduced packaging by about eighty per cent.
For me, Summoner Wars: Second Edition Master Set is a really good head to head card game that offers a really low barrier of entry, but a high reward for players who take the time to learn it. Even within the base decks, there are lots to consider and to master, but for seasoned players the game also offers deck-building rules, and of course, there are several additional decks available as expansions that could further enhance your experience. So in short, Summoner Wars: Second Edition Master Set does live up to expectations despite the age of the core design. Other card and deckbuilding games have come and gone since the original was released, but I hope this second edition sticks around and receives the support it deserves.
**** 4/5
Summoner Wars: Second Edition Master Set is available online at 365Games.co.uk, or at your local games store. Don’t know where yours is? Try this handy games store locator
