Sunday, May 1, 2011

Summoner Wars First Hand



A couple entries back I wrote a bit about Summoner Wars from Plaid Had Games, musing that this might be the card game to hook this die-hard miniatures gamer.

My plan was to wait until the upcoming Master Set came out in June, but I couldn't wait. I ordered a Pheonix Elves/Tundra Orcs Starter Set a few weeks back. When it arrived, I excitedly opened it up a re-read the rules. I had read them previous thanks to the PDF provided on the Plaid Hat website. I'm still impressed by the simplicity of the rules. They're smooth.

At the time my wife was out of the country visit friends in New Zealand, so I wasn't able to rope her into playing. And my duties around the farm, not to mention watching after my wonderfully rambunctious 6 year old daughter and taking classes online kept me from getting together with my gaming buddy, Dan, for a game.

Well, my wife came home and last Thursday night I was able to meet up with Dan and introduce him to Summoner Wars, getting my first game in in the process.

We had a blast. Despite neither of us having played before (and me being very inexperienced in the world of card-based games. Dan is the patriarch of a die-hard Poke-family) the game went very smoothly. I only had to refer back to the rulebook a couple of times during the game. I played the Phoenix Elves and Dan fielded the Tundra Orcs. I was amazed how quickly the tide changed over the course of the game. Dan had me on the ropes, and on my turn I would be hemming in his commons and be chasing down his Summoner. Dan squeezed out a narrow victory in the end.

I'm looking forward to more games (including a rematch with Dan), and expanding into other factions. I'm still very excited about the Master Set, and looking forward to picking one up at Origins next month in Columbus, OH. Summoner Wars is a fantastic game, and I highly recommend it.

In fact, earlier today I was listening to The Dice Tower podcast with Tom Vasel and Summoner Wars came in at #2 on his Top Ten Card Games of All Time list. Check it out for yourself at Plaid Hat Games.

No comments:

Post a Comment