Oldin vs Elien

In Summoner Wars this match-up between the Guild Dwarves and the Phoenix Elves is a classic one. Both are among the strongest factions available on android / iOS now. Personally I prefer the Phoenix Elves in this match-up, especially considering my deck build isn’t geared towards them specifically. Both decks have no mercenaries or second summoner units in them. In this playthrough I’ll describe my deck build, basic strategy and how the individual turns went. At the end there’ll be an overview of the game and an evaluation. Note: This game ended prematurely, but I feel some of the concepts that occurred made it interesting to post nevertheless. Summoner Wars is a game by Plaid Hat Games.

Regarding this match-up: My deck includes Baldar who is pretty much useless due to precise. Also, both Magic Drain and Reinforcements probably won’t be too much use against the defensive Phoenix Elves. Another thing to consider is that pressuring their walls will be relatively hard considering Burn / Warriors killing my units. And finally Oldin in general lacks assassination techniques which can be very useful against Elien. Not good.

At the start I considered a few possible strategies
1. Kill my own units as fast as the Phoenix Elves and go for a champion on champion end game. I don’t like this idea as Gror & Baldar won’t win this for me and Elien + warriors will beat out Oldin. Also, I want to try being offensive in these kind of match-ups.
2. Go full on aggressive and pressure their walls while meanwhile ignoring Magic Drain. I don’t like this either as the magic swing for the Phoenix Elves will enable them to bring out all their champions, which would be very hard to beat with the Guild Dwarves.
3. Balance the two out and be as aggressive as possible while trying to stay ahead in the magic economy by avoiding Magic Drain and trying to set up a situation in which you can do one yourself. I ended up going for this strategy.

DeckTurn 1Turn 2Turn 3Turn 4Turn 5Conclusion
Screenshot_2015-01-07-21-15-37

Starting setup. I’m second.

Deck build
– 1 Grog
– 1 Baldar
– 1 Thorkur
– 6 Defender (2 initially)
– 6 Spearman (2 initially)
– 1 Engineer (1 initially)
– 3 Ballista
– 2 Guardsman

Screenshot_2015-01-09-00-59-57A mediocre first hand as Baldar is useless when the Phoenix Elves still have all their events and I’m unlikely to be able to use the Reinforcements card. My basic idea this turn was that I really want to kill that Warrior while not being too susceptible to Magic Drain and not giving away magic needlessly. My turn ended up being: 1) Left Defender right & up, 2) Engineer 2 up and 3) Spearman 2 right. With the basic idea that if my Defender doesn’t kills the Warrior, I’d let my Spearman kill my other Spearman (for 5 versus 5 units). Naturally this could go wrong and in that case I’d probably only have built 0-1 cards so that I’d only end up with 1 magic in hand. The real turn ended up going along the first scenario; all my hits landed and the Warrior, Defender and Engineer all died giving me three magic. This bit of luck made me choose to build everything but Gror giving After turn 1.me the option of immediately summoning him next turn (and scaring the opponent of course). Note: Baldar was a pretty easy choice to build, I spent the most time considering whether I wanted to build the Reinforcements card as a Burn and / or Greater Burn might make it relevant the next turn. This leaves me with an end position which I’m pretty happy with, the Archer can attack yes, but that would leave him open to an easy counter attack and I’m threatening to hit multiple units with Gror.

Screenshot_2015-01-10-14-33-45

My opponent tried killing both his archers and got one of them. He also built three cards and moved back his units, good choices all in all. I didn’t think too long about this turn, my idea was to summon Gror and start moving towards Elien / start wall bashing while having only 0-1 magic so Magic Drain won’t hurt. I moved both the units at the right side up as that way the three units attacking are grouped up most coherently. I ended up choosing not to attack with Gror as I wanted to keep his flank safe / not kill my own Defender. Maybe I should have as that would have enabled me a few more hits on the wall and if I’d killed my own Defender a chance to build more magic for Screenshot_2015-01-10-14-54-20more offense. This definitely highlights Gror’s weakness as a tool against single walls. In retrospective an interesting and possibly better choice would have been to summon the Ballista in front of my own wall and kill enough units to get down to three. That would have protected against a Magic Drain and I would have been hitting his wall for three dice per turn unless he does something about it.

Screenshot_2015-01-10-16-11-14

My spearman got burned and Gror got greater burned. And my opponent built up two magic to go to seven magic total. A possible Fire Drake incoming next turn.  I wasn’t too happy at this point. Gror doesn’t have many targets to hit (other then my own units) and I’m not doing a lot of damage to his wall. In the end I decided to continue my plan, by summoning one Spearman, moving it into Gror’s spot and moving Gror to the left of the enemy wall, thereby getting at least two attacks in on the wall (and forcing my opponent to respond next turn). I knew killing Gror would be impossible as he still has five health and Fire Drake + Burn is a maximum of four damage. I once Screenshot_2015-01-10-16-59-18again didn’t attack with Gror as I didn’t want to kill my other two units. Also, I prioritized the wall over the Guardian as any extra unit the Phoenix Elves have on the board is to my advantage (and it can’t move / kill my Defender anyway). Finally: Note that I also summoned the Spearman to make sure I would still only have one magic after building a Hero is Born.

Screenshot_2015-01-10-17-44-35

As expected, Fire Drake. My opponent misclicked and used Breath of Fire instead of attacking so Gror only took one damage. Lucky. Other then that, not much happened. I did get both Heroic Feat and Thorkur in hand. Heroic Feat especially was nice to see as I wanted to use it against Fire Drake / the wall at the same time. The turn itself was somewhat troublesome as Gror is probably going to die next turn and I probably won’t be able to kill the wall this turn (I’d need to hit 7 out of 7). Also, if I do swing with Gror at the wall & Fire Drake I hit both my commons. I ended up taking that route; especially since that would put me at six magic, enabling a possible Thorkur next turn. Screenshot_2015-01-11-01-55-05With a Besiege The Walls there are even possibilities of hitting dice on Elien. Note: An interesting move would be moving Gror back one square and hitting my own Spearman. That way I’d still be able to hit both Wall & Fire Drake while being at a position in which Fire Drake and Elien can’t both hit me. I didn’t end up going for that as I wanted to move up Oldin / the Spearman. I ended up hitting 6 out of 7! Note: Another consideration here was that him killing Gror would result in me having one less unit enabling Reinforcements and / or Magic Drain.

There was no turn 5 for me. My opponent misclicked again with Fire Drake which ended up leaving Gror with one life. Frustrated he immediately afterwards resigned. Not necessary in my opinion, but understandable considering the missed chances. Note: He summoned a warrior to attack Gror from behind, which I assume would have gone in front of Elien to prevent my possible Thorkur attacks Elien plan. I’m pretty sure he would have tried to make sure he only had one magic in hand at the end of the turn, but I’m not sure that was possible.

I wasn’t entirely happy with how the game went. Although I won, I feel my end position was inferior due to Fire Drake being alive and Gror being dead (and having built Baldar, Thorkur is my only other champion). In retrospect I think I should have used the Ballista on turn 2 instead of Gror thereby leaving the threat of Gror + Heroic Feat in the game. That could have cost me a Magic Drain but once he summons a champion / warriors to deal with the Ballista I can return that favour. And yeah, that’s not too aggressive, but Guild Dwarves need every edge they can get in this match-up in my opinion. Another thing I considered was switching to full on aggressive instead of still killing some of my own units. I think not doing that was a good choice as the Guild Dwarves commons are so vulnerable to instant death (and free magic for Elien).

Lessons learnt
– I should consider more whether there’s a need to quickly build magic at the start. In this match-up there was no real urgent need yet to build that much magic in the first few turns as the Phoenix Elves aren’t too aggressive. And Baldar would have been better in an eventual end game, so it would have been interesting to keep him for awhile. Also: I should reevaluate Baldar compared to the other Guild Dwarves champions because of this match-up.
– Playing around catch up events effectively remains hard. I did it pretty well this time, but was it worth the cost? Killing your own 1 magic unit after summoning it costs 1 magic and burns through your deck faster while a 2 card magic drain has a net effect of 3 magic. Tough call: I would say that in this case it was probably not worth it as the summoned commons didn’t do much.
– Gror is not good one on one with anything but a one health common. Also: Part of his strength is the threat of him coming out, once he’s on the board he’s so much easier to avoid.

Turn overview

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2 Responses to Oldin vs Elien

  1. Maks says:

    Enjoyed reading your report!
    Is the next one in the pipeline?

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