Summoner Wars Master Set Review

This past Gen Con had a plethora of awesome games, both for purchase and demos! One game that our store actually had the opportunity to purchase early was the Summoner Wars Master Set by Plaid Hat Games.  Not only were the demo runners helpful and pleasant, but the owner allowed us to buy 4 new copies for our store 2 weeks before release.  Kudos to all of them for helping out hobby stores!  The Master Set received an incredible amount of attention by both new and experienced Summoner Wars players, so I thought it might be time to write a review. 

First, let me tell you a little about the previous editions of Summoner Wars. Prior to the Master Set being  released, there were 2 Starter Sets available, which were great for 2-player battles.  They also had Faction Decks and Reinforcement Packs, some of which are pictured below.

All of these decks and packs are fully compatible with the Master Set, and there are even extra slots in its packaging to fit them!  Conversely, any player would be able to set aside the more special, customizable cards for easy use, or another pre-made deck if that was preferred.

OPENING THE BOX

When we first open the box, we see the 21-page rulebook, the 2 sides of the board, a bag of 5 dice, punchable tokens, and 6 separate decks.  All of these are individually shrink-wrapped, sorted according to Faction, and are ready to play right out of the box. Notice the extra empty slots for more decks, both of your creation and future expansions of Plaid Hat Games.  Now that's what I call planning for your company!

PLAYING THE GAME

First, each player must choose a deck, whether pre-made or customized.  The two sides of the board should be lined up like so...

...and the decks should be placed in the proper spaces.  As you can see, there are 3 card sections for each player; Draw Pile, Magic Pile and Discard. Each player picks their Deck, find their Reference Card, and begins the Starting Setup show on the Reference Card.  The remaining cards are shuffled and placed on the Draw Pile.  Roll a die to determine who goes first, and you're ready to go!

TURN SEQUENCE

As board and card games go, Summoner Wars has a few more steps than average.  They are;

1. Draw
2. Summon
3. Play Event Cards
4. Movement
5. Attack
6. Build Magic

After all steps are completed, it's your opponents turn.  Can't remember all of it?  Don't worry, everything you need to know is in the easy-to-understand rulebook, including game terminology, victory conditions, lists of expansions, how to set-up the game for 3-4 players, and helpful tips on creating a more customized deck. 

All in all, the Summoner Wars Master Set is the perfect starting place for gaming newcomers or enthusiasts.  It has many decks already available, a very clearly written rulebook, easy to use cards and simple rules.  On a gamer learning scale (1=extremely new to gaming, 10=gaming professional), I would mark Summoner Wars as a 3.

 But that's just my opinion...why not pick it up and play for yourself? We have a copy ready to go in our Dragon's Den Library, so if you're in the area stop by for a quick game or demo!

Stasi "Dengirl" King

Gen Con 2011 The Best 4 Days of Gaming

Welcome back from the "BEST 4 DAYS OF GAMING" also know as Gen Con!

So we got back from Gen Con last night, and it was a fantastic show! We had a chance to try many different games, check out product that is not released just yet, and see all the greatest product that could be seen.  We are going to share some pictures, share some stories, and give some insight into some games.  To make life easy, I'm breaking it down by vendor so you can see the different areas you'd like more info about.  So if you are ready to read on and want to learn more, continue through the trip to Gen Con 2011!

Wizards of the Coast:

There is a lot to talk about with WotC. They had a great booth set up as a ruined castle, and a live action D&D event behind it.  The booth was amazing as was the D&D Mega Adventure that was set up through out Gen Con with QR Codes.  The players got into trying to find the codes and earn points for their faction.  All of this was for the soon to be released Neverwinter campaign setting.  Away from the booth you show the two locations for all the events: The Sagamore Ball Room and the TCG Hall.  At the TCG hall you had so many Magic events, it was almost overwhelming, with the highlight being Nationals!  So many players going in and between events, it was incredible to see.  Upstairs in the Sagamore there was Dungeons and Dragons. It was not just the RPG though, they also had 3 Dragon Ante, all the board games, and the D&D National event as well.A big announcement was for the Lords of Waterdeep board game which is a Euro style board game set in the Dungeons and Dragons world.

Wizkids:

What can I say about Wizkids other then WOW! The new Star Trek game that involves fleets of Federation and Klingon ships looks amazing.  The price point at first looked a bit high, until you started to count up all the ships you got in the base game.  We would love to get a copy of this game a give it a try to get the Trek fans into a great looking ship to ship minis game.  Another game that they had out was Quarriors! Quarriors is a fantastic game involving dice that is similar to the deck building games.  We had such a blast playing this game, that I had to buy a copy for myself then and there.  It played fast and had the option of adding new abilities to the dice without having to make all new dice.  We will be demoing this game soon and getting players excited to try a new type of game.  I really can't talk about Wizkids without mentioning the Heroclix.  They had a number of great items out for sale including Heroclix, Street Fight, and Gears of War... BUT the items that had people looking were the painted pieces (not on bases) of The Lord of the Rings and Pathfinder.  They all looked great!  Check back as more information becomes available we will be writing more.

AEG:

We had the opportunity to go over and talk with the people at AEG as well as attending their Big Game Night.  I would have liked a little more structure to the big game night and maybe in an area that was a little quieter so that we could really check out the games.  We did have a chance to play Ninja, which is a very secretive board game involving Ninjas and guards set in the L5R world..  It was a blast! We will have a copy in this week and will be running some demo games to give players a chance to check it out.  We also got a chance to see Thunderstone, Parthenon, and Legend of the 5 Rings CCG.  AEG has a bunch of really great games out now and if you are looking to give something new a try, they would make a great choice.

Gary Games:

Gary Games is the publisher of the game Ascension.  This is a great deck building game that was created by a number of Magic players who were looking for another game to play between Magic.  The same design group also created Redakai, but we can talk about that later.  I had a chance to play in a tournament for Ascension, but sadly came in second in my pod, so did not advance.  They also had a number of great promo cards that you could pick up at their booth.  We also had a chance to discuss the Dragon's Den becoming a part of the Game Day program that they run, so hopefully we will be a part of the next one which is coming up soon.  

Fantasy Flight Games: 

Well the big announcement here was that Fantasy Flight Games picked up the rights for Star Wars.  To show case this, they had several games on display and were running demo games of several of them.  Star Wars X-Wing looked fantastic! It is a miniatures ship to ship combat game that takes a few elements from Wings of War.  Instead of a deck of cards for movement, each ship has a disk that you pick your movement from and place face down next to the ship (for that hidden movement similar to Wings of War).  They used different templates then for movement and attacks.  They kept some of the flavor with the weapons and abilities on the different star fighters, but we only got to see the X-Wing and Tie Fighter.  They also did a new card game for the Star Wars universe, but we did not get a chance to demo that game.  Some other items of note at the booth would be their release of the Gears of War board game and the new revised edition of Dust Tactics. 

Plaid Hat:

Plaid Hat is the maker of Summoner Wars.They have a new starter box that will be coming out in a month or so... or maybe we will have several copies in a few days! We had the chance to demo the game with them at Gen Con, and they allowed us to get a few copies while we were there.  The new starter has new factions, which if I remember correctly is an addition 6 new factions.  It also has a double board so that it is a little easier to play on and see your side of the board.


I hope that you have found some new information or got to experience some of the Gen Con trip from the write up.  We will be adding more information over the week and get some other impressions so you can hear about some other games and events.  There will always be more to add about Gen Con, but I think this is long enough, so watch for the next post soon.

Sean "Striderlotr" Banks