Ever argued with your Summoner Wars opponents about which units are the best? The most undervalued? The most worthless? Back in the olden days when we still summoned our forces on maps of paper and timed tournament matches with a sundial, each player's argument was mere opinion. Now, with Clarissimus' Summoner Wars Power Rankings system, the quality of each unit is an indisputable fact!

Just kidding, of course. What Clarissimus HAS provided the Summoner Wars community, however, is an indispensable starting point and check back point for discussion and argument over Summoner Wars units.

Here's what Clarissimus has to say about the site: “The site was first launched on May 4, 2011. Since that time the site has had over 13000 hits, with 71% from the US and 14% from Canada. In all, users from 32 countries have visited the site. We currently have 55 registered users, but the average user has only ranked about half the units."

All those visits and less than 60 people have ranked the units? That's far too few of us determining the rankings. Get to it Blagog readers!

The Summoner Wars Power Rankings system can be found at swpowerrankings.com. At the site, you can register an account, and with that account, grade each unit with an A, B, C, D, or F. (You can skip any units you don't have experience with.) Then, you can sort or filter the rankings in all kinds of ways. You can view all units, or just Commons/Champions. You can also sort by unit name, faction, average grade (ranking), or even standard deviation.

Future improvements are on the way as well. From Clarissimus: " In the future I'd like to give users the option to leave a short comment explaining the rankings they give to each unit. These comments would be posted for each unit (anonymously if desired) and other users could uprate or downrate said comments."

I didn't input my own grades for a long time, but last month I found out how quick and easy it is. Not only can you rank all the units from one page, but when you roll your mouse cursor over a unit name, an image of the unit appears to the right of the table, so you can reference the units on that page as well.

Where did this idea even come from? Clarissimus explains: " The idea to build swpowerrankings.com came from a couple of sources. The first was the power rankings thread over at Heroscapers, originally created by spider_poison and now maintained by Jexik. Summoner Wars was a new game but no expert had stepped forth to offer his opinions. Rather than make a thread of my own I decided it would be interesting to offer a community site where everyone could vote on what they thought about the units."

Head of the Class

The top Champions as of this writing are (in order) Gror, Mook, Miti Mumway, Glarg, Silts, Anica, Kalon Lightbringer, Sorgwen, Rukar and Gror. Gror is no surprise at the top, since combined with Heroic Feat, he is the single most deadly unit in Summoner Wars. Mook is just outrageously cheap. 5 magic for 2 melee attack and 7 life is kind of ridiculous. Compare Mook to Coleen Brighton, who has a similar ability (except that it has a shorter range and is limited to Common units), the same attack value, one less life and costs one more magic.

The top Common units as of this writing, in order, are Defender, Swordsman, Shaman, Gem Mage, Phoenix Elf Warrior, Cave Goblin Fighter, Lioneer, Gorilla, Deceiver, and Spearman. The Defender is no surprise. The Gem Mage, with the help of a Scholar, routinely rolls 4 ranged dice, which is a little crazy. Nothing says value like a Goblin unit, and the Shaman certainly qualifies. 2 ranged attack for 1 magic?? Count me in! The Spearman in the top ten? That bugs me a little, just because the Sand Goblin Shaman beats him on all counts.

Considering Holding Them Back

At the bottom of the list of Commons, in order starting with the worst, is the Owl Familiar, Miner, Scout, Engineer, Reaper, Guardian, Phantom, Climber, Stalwart Archer and Reaver. Although I understand most of those, I take exception with the Fallen Kingdom units . The Phantom can turn around a game headed for a dead end. A Reaver can live forever. And the Reaper has been underrated since the beginning, especially with use of Raise/Greater Raise. I am also sad to see the Scholar in the bottom half of the rankings. 3 life for 1 magic, and positioned correctly, can add 3+ dice to your attacks in a turn.

Here are the ten lowest-rated Champions as of this writing, starting with the worst: Rahlee, Raechel Loveguard, Gruggar, Dragos, Malidala, Halvor, Scagg, Kaeseeall, Blagog and Sin-Sin. Once again, I take exception. Malidala can live a long, long time in the right situation. Blagog rolls 5 dice every single attack (and has a blog named after him).

Thanks so much for Clarissimus for building this system. Use (but don't abuse) his system. Over all, what impresses me most is how there are no broken units in this game, and how for every unit you think sucks, someone else thinks they're great. Colby's brigade of playtesting minions have done their job well.

Here's Clarissimus' own observations about the results: " I don't think anyone is surprised that units like the GD Defender and Gror are topping the rankings, but the biggest surprises for me have been the outliers, the few people who give a poor ranking to a unit I think is really good. For example, someone ranked Mook as a D and someone else said Jacob Eldwyn was an F!"

Posted by Joe Ellis