Vlox deck build (Cloaks)

The best possible Vlox deck gives your Cloaks as many options as possible to either assassinate or outlast the opponent with the tricks you have at your disposal. This guide will be about how you can keep your viable options maximized so you can adapt to the draw or situation. It will not include a second summoner (none is out yet) or any mercenaries until I’ve got some experience with them. Do note that I’ll update this guide based on further experience. Summoner Wars is a game by Plaid Hat Games. It’s available on android / iOS / Vassal.

Strategy
To start this off: I feel the Cloaks are one of the weaker decks to play competitively. First of all their units have low health and relatively low attack values. Secondly a lot of their events and abilities can be countered by careful play when facing expert opponents. And finally you often need to combine multiple events or abilities to be effective; which can cause clogged up hands and can suffer from bad draws. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the crazy stuff you can pull off with Vlox, I just generally feel that if the draw is bad or if your 2-3 card combo play doesn’t work out perfectly you can quickly get crushed.

At the start I’d recommend building magic towards a champion as they are pretty cheap and can be copied. Your units are weak so be careful not to give away magic unnecessarily. I generally kill off a few of my units. One of the gunners and the thief are probably best for that. The scrappers can do some offensive positioning and possibly get into position for a blindside. An early sniper can also be extremely powerful against some factions. Don’t be too afraid to take some risks or even leave Vlox in a slightly risky position as I feel you need to force your opponent in an uncomfortable position to have the best possible chance with him.

Next step is preparing for some combo’s based on the cards you’re dealt. To do this, you need to maneuver your units around, prepare in advance where possible and each turn ask yourself whether there’s some insane move you can go pull off that will not kill yourself too much. Be it a double raid on one thief or a scrapper attack followed by multiple blind sides or Vlox moving in with a raid and escaping with the gunners ability. For the raids: Try to get a second wall up somewhere where there’s room for a thief + raid combo. Also adapt depending on what champion shows up first. The Admiral in example will allow you to be more aggressive than if you pull out Hawk.

With all these, do weigh the risks and rewards or you’ll lose horribly in the resource war. Remember that Vlox has a lot of ranged options, so you can often get the first hit in. And not every combo has to be against their summoner; taking out a few commons or a key champion for free can have more impact. Anyway, if you don’t manage to assassinate your opponent and you didn’t accidentally suicide Vlox you’d better have such an advantage or you’ll be in trouble in the end game. One exception is Scam, who can win you most end games as long as you have the magic.

Tactics
– It can be useful to keep commons of a certain type on the board to maximize your options with Vlox. This is why I try to not kill of both Gunners immediately. Another thing which is useful is to pay attention to how many of each type of common you still have left on the board and in your draw pile. If you run out of one type, you’ll not be able to use that ability again.
– As with other factions with Magic Drain: Don’t be afraid to kill your own units. Keeping your unit count lower can be more important than the board position. Choosing to hold on to events like magic drain can seriously clog an opponent’s hand (while you can use yours).
– Open lines and assassination options tend to be important with the Cloaks so you generally want to place walls aggressively and not too close together. Wall killing can be quite hard, so work around walls or block them off with units.

Deck build (17 / 9 magic for the champions / commons)
– 1 Scam (against champions / for end game)
– 1 Hawk (against commons)
– 1 The Admiral (support champion)
– 3 Scrappers (2 initial)
– 2 Gunners (2 initial)
– 4 Thieves (1 initial)
– 5 Slashers
– 4 Snipers

This deck is about having as many options as possible. That means including a decent amount of pretty much every common type so Vlox has a lot of flexibility in choosing which ability to use in what situation. And picking a set of champions that’s flexible and that can deal with both a common rush and with heavy champion play. Add in a gunner or two for a slasher and / or sniper if you miss their ability.

Regarding the champions: These are in my opinion well-balanced as every champion has potential and there are only a few combinations I’d recommend against. The reason I ended with the three as above is that you can both win against most champions / in the endgame (Scam) as go common heavy (The Admiral) and deal with heavy common play (Hawk). Hawk could be exchanged for Sin-Sin and The Admiral or Scam for Violet and / Dagger. I generally wouldn’t exchange both.

Match up analysis (incomplete)
Tundra Orcs is a very tough match up due to their high hit points and dice. Another faction I’ve had experience with is against the Vanguards. That was also pretty hard as they have very high health champions and if they keep Sera safe against assassinations it’s quite difficult to get the champions killed.

First summoner specific cards

Card	Deck	Notes
	Base	His ability to copy an ability from another Cloaks unit is one of the best abilities in the game. It gives him an extreme amount of flexibility. Make sure to have him participate actively.
	Base (x2)	Good event. It's already cost-efficient when used against a 1 magic common. Useful for removing key commons. However, I have found myself building it regularly though, often in situations in which I want to get a magic drain off or am defending against one. Also, if you can kill the common without assassinating it, the advantage is even bigger.
	Base (x2)	Powerful late game event which can be useful to build if gotten very early. I don't like using this on a common unit unless it's in example a sniper or slasher that's making an important attack. Very powerful to use when doing something very dangerous with Vlox.
	Base (x2)	Easily the most powerful event in the deck. I generally base my play around using this (and dislike having to build it). Don't be too afraid of it being played on you though or it will paralyze your play.
	Base (x2)	Use when possible to get a raid off; otherwise build. It can also be used to give Vlox a movement boost like copying a gunner.
	Base	Build for magic if your opponent has less then 5 cards as you won't be able to discard then.

Generic cards

Card	Deck	SSCF*	Notes
	Base	-1	Dagger is good if you can get to backstab with him. Very good if you can get him and Vlox to both use backstab at least once (a 5 die ranged backstab). A good opponent will generally make that very hard to pull off though, so he becomes situationally good.
	Base	0	Her damage capability is insane for the magic she costs. Also, it's harder to prevent her from using her attack a second time as there are a lot good reasons to keep units together. Still, she also dies very quickly. Nice trick: Attacking through one of your own units to hit two enemy units.
	Base	0	I consider him to be the best Cloaks hero. Partly because he's the only real option to hard carry an end game. And because you can move directly after he attacks (so you can let another ranged unit get a 2nd hit in from the same angle). Another trick is to have him attack a wall and then move again just to get a better position.
	Base (x7)	0	Highly situational due to the one dice. Still, because it has two health and allows you to teleport your units around the board it can be pretty effective. In example, move one scrapper forward and when it attacks successfully, move 1-2 (with i.e. Vlox as a Scrapper) deep into enemy territory. Note: You can also have Vlox attack normally first, then attack with the scrapper and have Vlox teleport to (relative) safety.
	Base (x7)	0	Good for getting Vlox out of sticky situations. Other then that I tend to have very few of these in my deck.
	Base (x4)	0	Not making use of thieves reduces your chance of winning significantly in my opinion. It's very easy to summon a thief next to a forward wall and play a raid immediately afterwards to get an essential card from the opposition.
	Base (x3)	W
	Reinf	-1	Very good anti-common champion who is perfect for Vlox to copy. Especially in a situation in which there's a wall in between. And his ability doesn't even exclude attacking!
	Reinf	-1	Another anti-common champion who excels in making weird stuff happen on the board. As you can also use the enemy's abilities. Remember that you can also use her ability on your own commons for in example a second move with a thief. Biggest drawback to her is that using her ability only allows you two attacks.
	Reinf	0	He can be used to soak up damage for violet, sin-sin or important units (snipers!). Mostly a support champion because of that. Which can make it annoying if he only comes around at the end of the game.
	Reinf (x5)	0	I generally include a few of these to have Vlox copy their ability while cloaked. Having a two die slasher roll is pretty powerful against high health commons or champions. Another option is to summon it, use it on a high health unit and then kill it with a ranged unit from behind. Free attack.
	Reinf (x5)	0	Excellent addition to Vlox his deck. They are extremely fragile though, so use very carefully. Also note that attacking a wall isn't safe against a faction with ranged units. It can be very good to have one on the board / in your hand to suddenly take a 5 range attack with Vlox. And it can be used to safe guard lane's.

References
– All Cloaks cards (especially strategy section and comments are useful)
– A Doug’s Guide To Summoner Wars podcast (strategy discussion and community news)
– Mythacle Battleplan for Summoner Wars (deck builder and I got the images from there)
– Summoner Wars on iOS by Playdek (I played some test games here)

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