Summoner Wars: Cloaks – Second Summoner

Same rating as core game.

Additional faction to expand the game options.

I received a second copy in the mail. I will trade it with the extra promo cards that came with it as well. It is new in shrink.

Jexik is great fun, and his common units are an excellent addition to the Cloaks' possibilities.

Summoner Wars is probably one of my favorite strictly 2p games, if not my favorite… I’m a eurogamer, but SW is awesome! However, it’s not a game I’m fanatic about, so I haven’t bought any of the Reinforcement packs; I don’t want to spend too much time (and money…) on Summoner Wars, and I generally don’t like to build decks – if you play against players who have built their own decks in games like Mage Wars, Android Netrunner etc., you’ll probably lose with a pre-made deck, and I just don’t want to spend the time and put that much effort into a single game. But I do want to own all of the original as well as the second summoners.

The Cloaks faction is a sneaky one that is best handled by a skillful player (well, d’oh, so are all of the factions!) What I mean is that it does require some more effort to play it well, while a faction like Phoenix Elves or Tundra Orcs or Guild Dwarves are rather straightforward. The abilities of the cards and the events mean that a game with the Cloaks Second Summoner probably will take a little longer. It is an okay faction, and I imagine I’ll rank it higher with repeated plays. Spider is a cool champion that really feels like a Cloak unit because of his sneaky ability to get to the back row, and Kyra has a strong offense and makes your opponent spend extra magic points, as do the common Bruisers. The Renegades are extremely versatile (which is, quite fitting, the name of their ability), and the assassins can be cheap champion slayers in the right situation. The ability of Jexik, the summoner, is quite cool as a unit can suddenly move 4 spaces, and coupled with the sneaky event cards the Cloaks Second Summoner is a slightly better than average faction in my opinion.