Hey I'm Ben, I'm a college senior. I enjoy playing piano and board games.

My good friend introduced SW2 to me last summer (2021) and I fell in love with it. I had played Hearthstone as a kid and while that game lacked intricate strategy and was pay-to-win, I always liked something about the deck-dueling vibe. Summoner wars is everything I wanted from the genre! Just grab a deck with a friend and have fun! The design is impeccable and has a massive skill ceiling while simultaneously a very elegant ruleset that is super easy to get into (what is it about second edition games being so good?!) New games usually overwhelm me, but for this it was just 'oh yea move, get three attacks in, and I'll figure the rest out later.' (The magic and discard system is also brilliant and adds so much more complexity to the 'draw one card at the end of your turn and facepalm' dynamic I was used to.) When the only friend who was at the same skill level as me lost his enthusiasm for the game, I joined the league to get the butt-whipping I deserve :)

Favorite card is Frost Shamans because they hit three dice every time. Unwieeeeeeldy Maaaaagic! Ret-Talus (or his lesser known secret name, Raz-Taz) was my first love: in my second game ever my friend played him against me and I was blown away by what this game can do. In other card games a combo deck often means sitting around all game until specific cards fall into your hand, but not this one! Every card combos so well with every other card that no matter what you draw there’s bound to be some synergy. (This game has such brilliant design!! Every single deck has this high level of craftsmanship.) But really I go through phases of being excited to play one faction and then another for each of them. I could never choose one, I love them all. (… except for Sera and Svara but shhh) Recently I’ve been really enjoying Grognack and Tacullu. Grognack's just always a swell time, while I found Tacullu the hardest deck to really understand when I first started playing—there seems to be so much complexity with Wind Mage positioning that I'm just now starting to figure it out. Being bad at a deck and trying things out is really the best fun in this game for me. (Kindly ignore all of the times I have raged about not understanding a deck.) Update: Well the Cloaks have all the positional complexity of Tacullu... times a billion. These guys are crazy hard for me. Update 2: I've recently discovered that Sera can actually be kinda fun if you just discard like mad. Also, Kuldak is my spirit animal.

Svara's the only faction that I don't look forward to playing (because my brain's too small for all that slidey math) (EDIT: Out of Shadows math has definitely competing for the title now). I would Temper the Ram-Shift combo somehow with the goal of limiting your options so that instead of thinking for 20 minutes you're only thinking for 10. I would go about it by making one of the cards cost 1, and then additionally adding one of the following restrictions: (1) limit the number of times Ram can trigger a turn to 4; (2) change Ram to only target enemy units; (3) make Shift target only 2 structures instead of 3. 2. Original Gate art for each faction. Man can it get difficult to scan the board in some situations. 3. Buff Sera... somehow. I'd vote for 2/4 archers, 3av Sera, 0 cost mass heal, and 4 cost Jacob.

My favorites games: Galaxy Trucker, Escape Curse of the Temple, the Crew, Monikers (write your own cards edition), 6 Nimmt, Innovation, Railroad Ink, Skull, Captain Sonar, Inis. I also adore Spirit Island and Gloomhaven, though my friends and I have played them to death at this point. Honorable mentions: Dominion, the Search for Planet X, the Quest for El Dorado. As for videogames, I loved all Mario games (platforming and 3D) for the Wii, 3DS, Wii U as a kid; and a bit later Minecraft, Terraria, and then Soulsborne games.