Summoner Wars

I've been staffing a transition seminar for TCKs since last Monday, which has been awesome, but which also meant very little time for blogging or RPGs (I scheduled the last three posts over a week ago). I did encounter two things which may be of interest to my readers. The first is a strategy board game called Summoner Wars that uses cards as pieces; I realize that CCGs generally get little love in the OSR (with some exceptions, of course), but this game has set decks that you don't have to buy in random packs or organize to your advantage. In fact, in the standard game, there is no "deck-building" whatsoever. Instead of continuing to explain it, though, I'll let them do it much better:

This game struck me as a cross between chess, wargaming and CCGs (mind, I've done very, very little wargaming or CCGing so I may not know what I'm talking about) and was a lot of fun. Each faction has different strategies that work best, from sudden berserk charges to sneaky backstabbing attacks to slow advances or setting up defenses and letting the enemy kill themselves on your walls. If you want to try it out for free, there is an app you can download here (though you have to pay for more factions). It's a very simple, well-designed game with really tight rules.

Plaid Hat Games also has a game called Dungeon Run which I wish they had an introductory video for. The rules are free to download, but I haven't had a chance to read them yet. They say, "If one of your fellow players comes away from Dungeon Run with their feelings a bit hurt, that's how you know you were playing it right." It looks similar to Lego Heroica or Dungeon!, but since I haven't played those either, I could be totally wrong about that.

Plaid Had Games' website is here. As usual for a review, I haven't had any contact with them besides playing Summoner Wars three or four times this last week.