Summoning as an issue + Potential Fix

[ukrocky]

Morning all,

After recent discussion with some good players as well as my own experience in games, I honestly believe that summoning, specifically master summoners, have a negative impact on the game for a number of reasons:

 

- Tournament games with summoners tend to be slowed down massively - Not always true.

- Non-summoners have to select their crew blind, whereas summoners can adapt much easier - Part of their style.

- Activation control in summoning crews is always massive, and activation control is something important and oft talked about in the game at present.

- The sheer amount that can be summoned, especially with little resources, is sometimes incredible.

- Some strategies and schemes there is *zero* chance of competing with a summoner. 

 

To give some examples:

- Dreamer's summoning is insane. Summoning 2 stitched a turn, both can then get reactivate and be on 2 wounds is just crazy with the pushes and activation control available. Let alone Lilitu and lures etc. It's not really that card intensive due to neverborns card draw, and saccing a daydream for masks. Can easily get 40+ss a game out.

- Nicodem's summoning is similar. He can get a horrific amount of cards, especially combined with Phillip, a lack of fast, and sheer model count coming out slows the game and makes VPs auto in some strats/schemes.

 

The reason summoning isn't sweeping the tables is that at a top level, the playstyle is boring and slow for many players. Other players who do well with them, I don't begrudge and enjoy games against them, but I personally wouldn't play a summoner as I'd just get bored and be wary of my opponent finding the game boring and frustrating.

Long story short, that's my honest thoughts on summoners - I'm not saying they are correct, but some factions simply can't compete with masters Like the dreamer in certain strat/scheme pools due to activation control, flexibility, weight of numbers and so on.

My proposal to fix would be:

A master can only summon SS per turn equal to those not spent at the start of the game, totems are excluded.

Eg, The Dreamer selects his crew and spends 40ss. He can then summon 10ss a turn, not includiing daydreams.

This brings summoning into the list building part of the game, and limits the current horrific amount of activations summoners can get, whilst still allowing them to summon plenty of models. 

 

I suspect lots of disagreements with this post, but that is my honest current view on malifaux, where summoning is imbalanced. (Note: It's not always overpowered in all strategies and schemes, but some it is - hence imbalanced rather than OP)

[Kadeton]

Having played a lot of Ressers lately, I definitely disagree with this. In all my recent games, it was far more effective for me to rely primarily on my various Masters' other offensive and support abilities, summoning only occasionally to add pressure to critical areas of the board or to replenish losses. Just sitting back and summoning would have allowed my opponents to secure all their VP before I could react. (That's not counting the Masters that essentially can't sit back and summon, like Molly.)

If summoners aren't crushing top-tier events... where is the balance problem? Surely that's where it would be most obvious. If you think it's just because summoners are boring, perhaps we've met different high-level players. Many of those I've met would take any advantage offered to them in a tournament, even if it was something boring or ridiculous.

I've faced a lot of Dreamer and Nicodem crews piloted by very good players, and yeah, the amount of summoning they can do can be pretty overwhelming. I've finished games where my opponent has several more models than they started with, and I've got almost nothing left. More often than not, I've won those games. I'm yet to come across a scheme pool that has left me thinking "If my opponent takes a summoner, I can't win this." In GG2016, that's even less likely. VPs are never "auto".

I feel that your proposal would essentially end summoning as a viable playstyle for all but the most dedicated summoners, and even they would become non-existent in competitive events. Have you ever tried playing 8-10ss down? It's a hell of a slog. I don't care what you can summon, you're going to really struggle. Still, feel free to try it out as a house rule and see how you get on.

[bertmac]

Straight up summoners arent really that much of a problem if I am playing competetively although the ones that draw cards and generally negate the negative affects of summoning, eg slow/drawing cards do seem to have no real downsides.

Masters who summon whilst killing your stuff are probably worse as they are doubling the activation advantage.

[solkan]

2 hours ago, ukrocky said:

The reason summoning isn't sweeping the tables is that at a top level, the playstyle is boring and slow for many players. Other players who do well with them, I don't begrudge and enjoy games against them, but I personally wouldn't play a summoner as I'd just get bored and be wary of my opponent finding the game boring and frustrating.

This is the point where your argument falls down, and I lose respect for your position.    The claim that the mechanic is overpowered but because it's "boring" you never see it happen anywhere comes across as petty.  More importantly, I can point you to at least one notable incident in the past few months for a counter example involving rats.

 

[Munindk]

I dont see summoning as an issue* SS wise as its generally balanced out by other factors and for a lot of masters its actually a trap to use every AP to summon in models. I also dont get the time issue, it can easily be solved by using chess clocks for tournaments. I dont see summoning being anymore of a negative play experience than gunlines or denial lists.

Summoning is already a big part of the list building proces, as most summoning lists have to include support models to generate card draw/scrap markers/corpse markers/wounds to summon off and so forth, basically summoners are spending SS to get access to the required summoning resources.

Theres a few issues that your rule suggestion doesnt seem to take into accout:

There are henchmen (and a totem, and at least one minion) who can summon

Theres at least sne summonable model that doesnt have a SS cost (seishin)

Would you count Ikiryo and Lord Chompy bits as summons too?

If you think summoning is an issue in your meta, arrange a tournament where there's no summoning allowed or play some Henchman hardcore

 

*but then I'm a Resser player who thinks the Dreamer and Ulix look fun.

[D_acolyte]

Wow, I just posted a thing on summoners and if my computer was not acting strange it would have been up this week end.

Summoners are a toolbox, no different from any other model. As for them being overpowered, being a toolbox comes at a cost through the game often as stones or cards.

6 minutes ago, Munindk said:

Theres a few issues that your rule suggestion doesnt seem to take into accout:

There are henchmen (and a totem, and at least one minion) who can summon

Theres at least sne summonable model that doesnt have a SS cost (seishin)

Would you count Ikiryo and Lord Chompy bits as summons too?

There are a lot of summoners and ways to do it, from rat catchers and guild autopsy to Karies or Dreamer.

Because he is not specifying action summoning vs event summoning I would defiantly think Ikiryo and Chompy count.

[ukrocky]

47 minutes ago, solkan said:

This is the point where your argument falls down, and I lose respect for your position.    The claim that the mechanic is overpowered but because it's "boring" you never see it happen anywhere comes across as petty.  More importantly, I can point you to at least one notable incident in the past few months for a counter example involving rats.

 

Thanks for your reply, appreciate it. Couple quick things:

 

- First off, if I come across as petty, I apologise. But myself and another top player in the UK both see summoning as a massive NPE that isn't a good style. That's just my honest opinion. I dislike playing against summoners where I have no interaction.

- Secondly, not sure I understand your counter example involving rats? Ratjoy will hardly scratch dreamer IMO, and still relies on a mass of activations which is a frustrating area of non-competition from a TT PoV. 

 

 

[Kadeton]

3 minutes ago, ukrocky said:

Myself and another top player in the UK both see summoning as a massive NPE that isn't a good style. That's just my honest opinion. I dislike playing against summoners where I have no interaction.

I think that's a fair position. Everyone has the styles that they enjoy playing, and the styles they don't enjoy. Perhaps, rather than a suggestion that would make summoning unplayable, you could suggest ways in which summoning could be made more interesting for the opponent to counter-play? Some models (like Taelor) have abilities that can potentially give summoners headaches, but they've been somewhat limited in scope so far and a little too easy to stymie - if you have some ideas for future models that could expand on those roles, that sort of thing has a far greater chance to influence the future of the game than asking for changes to the core.

[Fetid Strumpet]

I think, personally, summoning isn't as big an issue as the OP makes it out to be. Though I am personally getting a little tired of how ubiquitous it seems to be, and how a large portion of the community, whenever a new master or mechanic to be added to the game seems to be a chorus of:

"Let him/her summon X"

That said, I feel if there is an issue with summoning it's that, especially after wave one, many of the restraints on summoning, which I felt personally kept it in check seemed to be loosened. I remember well all the arguments over Nicodem in the first Open section of the playtest, and I especially remember Justin's article on his blog (Justin more posts on the blog please! Here's the relevant article: http://justindrawingdead.com/?p=239) about what the design process and thoughts were behind limiting the summoning mechanic. Namely that it should be resource intensive, and require a positional element. I also approved of how in wave 1 it was expensive for masters to get their extra required resource on turn 1. If Nicodem wanted Corpse Marker on turn 1 there was no cost efficient way to do it. Canine Remains needed a specific highish suit, and their entire AP for that turn if you luckily got it. You couldn't hire Mindless Zombies (which was a VERY good thing they couldn't), there were no minions less that 4SS that you could hire and easily kill with your own AP to get the corpse (A massive problem in v1 of the game), and even the 4SS minions were not easy kills making it not efficient to hire them to kill them. So if he wanted to get the engine going on turn 1 he needed to hire an expensive Henchman to utilize that resource from turn 1. I would argue that getting away from that mechanic without massive rebalancing is what causes the issues I personally have with the summoning mechanic. 

Taking Nicodem for example. For Nicodem to really reach his potential as a summoner you have to invest a significant amount of his SS, AP, High cards, and stones at the beginning of the game  in order to get the engine rolling, and those SS and AP aren't doing much in the game other than helping get the summoning train rolling, and his summons still don't come in at full strength, and as the games go on summons are less and less effective, because they have less AP to contribute to the fight, and they can't interact on the turn they are summoned. I've ever had one issue with Nicodem's summoning because he has to actually pay a ton for it, and he doesn't get any way to get extra AP to take extra actions after summoning. My issue with his summoning is that it is mostly unrestricted. I don't like how he didn't get a specific Keyword to summon other than Undead. In the lead up to book 3 you even saw exactly this thing in one of the podcasts Justin did where he said the models designed for the ressers were all designed to be living, or enforcers, and so on so that they didn't add anything else to the summoning pools. Frankly my opinion during the open beta, and my opinion now is that Nicodem should not have been able to summon any Undead resser minion, but a different keyword, so that it doesn't limit the design space of the developers by going "Well we'd like to create this new undead minion, but if we do Nicodem can summon it, and that just doesn't work." That way undead minions could still be created, but which ones were summonable would have been more able to be tailored. (The Hanged should never have been summonable btw. Should have been made better for hiring purposes because at present they are rubbish hires, but way too good as summons)

On that topic, don't forget that the summoning mechanic also skews the costs of most of the minions created. Punk Zombies are a good example. They are certainly not worth hiring at 7 SS, but they are balanced at that cost for summoning purposes. Any changes to the summoning rules in general would necessitate rebalancing all costs of summonable models for all factions, because ALL factions have access to summoning in some capacity.

Kirai is an example of of where I think the summoning Rules began to fray and is an example of the Summoning I personally have issues with, and it's not the Ikiryo. Her summoning action just isn't kept in check well enough. The positional element that gets limited by corpse markers isn't in effect for her. She summons off her own models, which means that hiring models that are extremely wound to cost efficient (like Flesh Constructs) provide her batteries for summoning that are available cheaply on turn 1, and getting them close to the enemy is only a good thing whereas compared to Mortimer it just seems to be to be too good synergistically). When you kill an opposing model, THEY get to determine where the Corpse marker drops in relation to their killed model (which has to be living or undead to get the marker), which means they have some ability to make it more difficult to actually see or get to the marker, and they get some ability to limit where the summoned model comes in play, because corpse based summoners almost universally summon the model in base to base contact with the Corpse Marker, and thus the enemy has some minor ability to limit the summoned model's ranges or positioning. Kirai can also summon off of ANY of her minions, not specifically keyword dependent, and to top it off, one of her signature abilities is the ability to mover those summoned spirits around, so that even if she summons the model in the backfield she has little difficulty getting it into a position where it will be very useful to her. She also got the ability to do damage at range equal to good beater models (via one of her upgrades), and self protection and movement abilities Seamus envies. 

And that trend of getting away from the limitations of summoning as initially established I think is one of the biggest issues with it. I can't comment on the Dreamer, as I haven't faced him in M2E yet, and though I own him, there are very few players in my neck of the woods. So I can't comment on him, but the existence of Summonable stitched, without any required real resource investment, as well as the ability for him to just get the suits he needs via his Daydreams have always left me uncomfortable. That said I don't think all summoners that break that mold are bad, IF they have enough balancing mechanisms built in to make the summons fair. Molly is a good example I feel. Molly's summons on first glance are everything I dislike, but they built  very good amount of balance into it. Firstly her summons require positional elements, as if you actually want to keep the model you need to be close to enemy Models. Unless the enemy is clumped up her summons come in basically in the one hit will kill them range (with the exception of hard to kill models like Punk Zombies) Consider that a heavily clumped up enemy might have 3 models close enough in range for her summon, and that is still 1 shot kill territory for any decent enemy beater, which if the enemy is clumped up, there almost certainly will be. Molly also has to expose herself to danger to summon, and she is one of the easier to kill Resser Masters as she has the lowest wounds, and a resource intensive method of healing. Additionally her defenses are counteracted by the desire and ability to summon. If Molly wants to summon she needs high cards, and her Defensive method drains one third of her cards in hand any time she wants to use it. Kirai however synergizes with her ability to summon and keep herself safe. And it's a trend that has continued with Models like the Dreamer, which I think was a mistake as one of the best counters to summoners is to put direct pressure on them so they need to use their resources to keep themselves safe. When summoning models gives the opposing model more targets for their abilities to keep themselves safe I think it's a problem.

Finally, other "problem" with summoning is a psychological one, and it's one I see exemplified by the advice given for low SS games. The issue is it isn't something that is the expected norm. What I mean by that is when two players sit down to play a table-top war game there are baked in expectations. There is an expected element that each player will remove opposing models, and that in most games the player that kills the other player's models the best wins. Breaking that expectation by one player then bringing back models creates a dissonance in that pattern. Especially in a game where killing isn't always the best option, though it is an important one. In 1.5 Malifaux the problem was reversed. Support masters, unless they were ungodly good at what they did to the point they could lock up VP that couldn't be taken away very rapidly (Colette), basically were worthless as if you couldn't kill your opponent's models fast enough with your master, you might as well not play. There were many games I played where the game basically boiled down to, whose master is more killy and was able to drain the other master out of stones faster. The general wisdom currently is that summoners are unbalanced the lower in SS level you go, which if summoners aren't available it becomes the lower in SS value you go the more unbalanced killy models become. 

I personally don't have issues with summoning. I don't have any problem with all factions having access to it. I have problems with how efficient and low cost it is for some models in the game where sufficient balance wasn't given to how they operate. Off the top of my head I'd adjust the summoning of some models if this was the adjustment in the lead up to M3E.

I'd adjust Kirai's summons such that she would be given an aura ability that whenever one of her models in the aura was damaged by an enemy it would automatically gain a condition equal to or perhaps half the damage done which wouldn't go away at the end of each turn, and that she could then summon a keyword model in bases to base with the damaged model with wounds equal to the condition # then remove the condition (possibly with some wording to reduce the condition proportionately if you healed it). I might also make it so that if the Ikiryo was present on the table that the summon action couldn't be taken, though that would take some testing to make sure it wasn't too weak, though she shouldn't be able to summon off the Ikiryo. That way there would be more interaction possible with the opponent. The opponent could kill and damage models outside the aura without giving Kirai more fuel to summon. Positonal abilities would become more important against her as models could be moved into bad positions for summoning, and the opponent would have some say in where summoned models would come into play as they determined which models would actually get the condition, and if they could kill a model before Kirai could summon from it they could remove a threat. However if they mauled a model in the aura but didn't kill it you could potentially have a vengeful spirit popping up nearby which would be coming for you.

I'd also begin removing or scaling back super AP efficient summons in some way. If you are doing significant damage and summoning, I'd break that apart so that it would be one or the other.

I'm not saying this Should be done, but it would be how I'd go about it if it was called for.

 

[lusciousmccabe]

I'm inclinced to agree with Kadeton here. I've been playing the Dreamer a lot lately and haven't found myself flooding the board with models as seems to be expected. My opponents (if they're any good, which they usually are) put too much pressure on the Dreamer either directly or indirectly to let me do that, so I end up spending my AP and cards on things other than summoning. 

Similarly when I played Hamelin the only time the rats ever actually got out of hand was when the game got itself out of hand for my opponent. Most of the time people could kill them off before they became a problem and often without too much of an AP investment, and potentially deriving some sort of benefit from the easy kills. I had the one game where it was definitely a NPE because my opponent was new, had poor luck and ended up drowning in rats and blight, but that was exceptional. 

Neither of these masters have a resource they need to summon but they pay a soulstone premium for it (The Dreamer's upgrade and Hamelin's awful cache) and do have a positioning/activation element to make things awkward (Dreamer wants things to activate near quickly and heal, Hamelin takes ages to summon anything worthwhile). As a result their crews aren't typically as powerful from the get go as others so they need their summoning to bring themselves up to par. They can of course make their crew more powerful than the enemy given time and opportunity, but Perdita (or the like) can do the very same, just by removing models rather than adding them. 

I don't think summoning in general needs to be altered on the grounds of what either of those guys can do or any experience I've had playing against other Masters. 

FetidStrumpet raised a lot of issues with Kirai that I would most certainly agree with, but they're not problems with summoning, they're problems with Kirai being too good. She's seems kind of similar to The Dreamer on paper, but is absolutely a cut above in practice and is easily the most competitive summoning Master in my opinion. 

Similarly someone mentioned the advantage of summoning off of kills and again, that is an issue with Kirai being too good and Leveticus being too good. It doesn't warrant a change to the general rules for summoning, it's just a feature of both those Masters being over the top.

[Fetid Strumpet]

Agree. I want to clarify I'm not specifically complaining about Kirai, as I think most of the masters that got away from the way wave one laid down summoning generalities are problematic. I personally think the Dreamer is too good as well, but I have no direct experience with him, so anything I have to comment on is all based on Theory, and therefore isn't very useful as anything other than an opinion with no direct weight behind it.

I do think that summoning is becoming too ubiquitous, though as a business decision you can't fault Wyrd for wanting to use a popular mechanic to sell their miniatures, in a similar way that Duel faction and cross hiring rules do. And I agree with the above that it isn't a problem with the rule generally, its more with how specific applications of it are handled. 

[bertmac]

One issue for me with summoners is in pool events I think summoners benefit massively from this and maybe non summoners should be able to hire an expanded pool by say 20ss.

[lusciousmccabe]

15 minutes ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

Agree. I want to clarify I'm not specifically complaining about Kirai, as I think most of the masters that got away from the way wave one laid down summoning generalities are problematic. I personally think the Dreamer is too good as well, but I have no direct experience with him, so anything I have to comment on is all based on Theory, and therefore isn't very useful as anything other than an opinion with no direct weight behind it.

I was specifically complaining about Kirai. ?

Personally I think The Dreamer is top tier, but herself and Leveticus are top tier +1.

[LunarSol]

1 hour ago, lusciousmccabe said:

FetidStrumpet raised a lot of issues with Kirai that I would most certainly agree with, but they're not problems with summoning, they're problems with Kirai being too good. She's seems kind of similar to The Dreamer on paper, but is absolutely a cut above in practice and is easily the most competitive summoning Master in my opinion. 

Similarly someone mentioned the advantage of summoning off of kills and again, that is an issue with Kirai being too good and Leveticus being too good. It doesn't warrant a change to the general rules for summoning, it's just a feature of both those Masters being over the top.

Yup.  This.  Very much this.

Summoning is a bad mechanic to try and solve unilaterally because for the most part, each summoning ability is completely unique.  I think the individual rules have enough dials to fix with personally though.  Shorten the range of summons to put the summoner in more danger, weaken the results further, even something really weird like forcing a chain activation can make a big difference.  There are definitely summoners in need of a fix, but their problems need to be defined a little better, as they're more specific than simply having access to the summon mechanic.

[katadder]

I actually prefer to face summoners as it means their master is usually doing something else with his AP rather than scoring strats/schemes or doing damage to my crew. It also tends to be resource intensive so they are using their high cards and often stones to bring stuff in that is usually damaged so is actually easy to kill. If nico spends all his AP bringing in a couple of half wound things and I can kill them in a couple of AP then it balances out.

I have faced good players that have used Nicodem, Kirai, Ramos and Dreamer and so far havent had issues. In fact when facing ressers in recconoiter (or its 2016 equivalent) I have expected Nico and been able to counter it happily. I would rather face some of these summoners than some of the other masters the factions bring (if you want to bring summoners to tourneys craig rather than Lynch I would be happier  )

[Math Mathonwy]

13 hours ago, katadder said:

I actually prefer to face summoners as it means their master is usually doing something else with his AP rather than scoring strats/schemes or doing damage to my crew.

It's very common that Summoning is the best way to score strats for a Master. And Summoning, e.g., Necropunks is kinda like accomplishing Schemes (only on the next turn).

[KrazyIvan]

On 6/6/2016 at 10:53 AM, katadder said:

I actually prefer to face summoners as it means their master is usually doing something else with his AP rather than scoring strats/schemes or doing damage to my crew.

I'm interested in your thoughts on Levi.

[KrazyIvan]

For the record, I've played against Gremlin and Resser summoners plenty. I've never had a problem with it except in a three way game that I played against So'mer and Ulix. There was simply too much going on to follow with the various Bayou and Pig summons, and there combined turns took forever. It was not fun to play in that game.

That was an edge case scenario however. Normally I don't find summoning to be a NPE catalyst for myself.

[lusciousmccabe]

4 hours ago, KrazyIvan said:

I'm interested in your thoughts on Levi.

I wouldn't really count a master as a summoner unless they have an action which does nothing other than summon a model. Levi just gets to make dudes as another feather in his oversized cap.

[katadder]

4 hours ago, lusciousmccabe said:

I wouldn't really count a master as a summoner unless they have an action which does nothing other than summon a model. Levi just gets to make dudes as another feather in his oversized cap.

this, hes not a real summoner, yes I can summon using him but its a side effect of killing things and aboms whilst annoying will usually only get 1 in a turn so not massive summoning anyaway

[Eclipse]

18 hours ago, katadder said:

this, hes not a real summoner, yes I can summon using him but its a side effect of killing things and aboms whilst annoying will usually only get 1 in a turn so not massive summoning anyaway

Yeah, Leveticus is not a real summoner, but he can get a model from one of your models dying. This is very cost-efficient, a "two for one".

[Sklertic]

My biggest gripe with summoners, is that they can get away with filling most of their list with high cost minions and then fill out the gaps with summons as the game starts. You get all of the advantages from having high cost models AND activation control. Doesn't matter how killy your master is at that point.

[lusciousmccabe]

They don't necessarily have activation control in the early game if they do that. Plus if you want to summon for extra activations you need to activate your master early.

[Da Git]

For me when I play Kirai, I can bring in all the support models I need (Chiaki, Flesh Construct, Nurse, Datsue-ba, maybe Phillip, etc) and a big beater enforcer like Rogue or Izamu and then I can summon in other beaters like Shikome or Hanged as needed.  I find myself only summoning in maybe 2-3 models a game really as I also like her other stuff too.  I also usually find I can get at least 1 Gaki per game from her trigger and occasionally another from the Datsue-ba.  That's also not including Seishin whom I usually get 1-2 a turn.

Then again, I think we all know Kirai is simply amazing at what she does...

[Yvarre]

As a Thunders player, I do find it to be challenging to play against summoners in Reconnoiter and Interference.  It's not to say that I can't win, but it is certainly harder to keep up with factories that pump out more bodies in these strats.  I find that I really need to take out most of their support models/beaters in the first couple turns to even out the activations later in the game.  With models like Sensei Yu and Mr. Graves to help me advance quicker and masters like Lynch (with Beckoner support), McCabe, or Shen Long, I find that it's pretty easy to start the game off with a bang, taking out irreplaceable models early.  Many summons often come in weakened as well, and I'll generally hold back answers to take them out before they can heal or even activate, which further keeps activation advantage in check.  The difficulty comes into play with keeping my own models alive and budgeting AP for scoring points.  Obviously, keeping my opponent's model count in check in these strats at least helps me score strat points and hopefully denies my opponent the same, but if I let them muster their forces with impunity then I'm in trouble.  Likewise, if I spend all my AP killing off models, then my schemes might suffer, though there are usually schemes to work into the balance and even some that support wholesale slaughter like Hunting Party and Mark for Death etc.

I actually played Dreamer for the first time at Nova last year, and made the mistake of losing McCabe and Sidir, who I took Bodyguard on, on turn 1.  I did, however, severely reduce my opponent's initial model count, and I was able to stay in the game with my dogs scoring scheme and strat points.  I lost 7-6 and learned a good lesson.  In subsequent games against Dreamer playing Recon or Interference, I made sure not to hand important models to swarms of Stitched on a silver platter.  I also found that Austringers are pretty good at taking out Dreamer's summons before they heal, and I haven't lost to Dreamer since.  Likewise, I lost closely to Kirai the first time I played her in Interference but have won by landslides in subsequent games.  Similarly, I recently played Ramos for the first time at a tournament and lost 9-7 because I chose one of my schemes incorrectly and wasted AP on spiders that could have taken out other unique targets.

I feel that there is a learning curve when going up against any play style/master for the first few times.  Learning what targets to prioritize and how to score and deny points can be vastly different across factions and masters.  Personally, the threat of a late game horde is much less potent to me than the possibility of masters like Sonnia or the Viks nuking most of my crew in the first 2 turns, and masters like Ophelia, Perdita, and Lynch can be absolutely terrifying to be near.  Yes, summoning is a great toolbox mechanic that can get out of hand if left unchecked and serves as a great AP sink to distract from scoring points, but there are ways to mitigate these advantages with practice and foresight.  In playing the faction with the least summoning potential, I use my maneuverability and tricks to hand out + flips, fast, and, in the case of McCabe, reactivate to apply constant pressure to my opponent from turn 1, dedicating fairly efficient AP to target elimination and still managing to score points.  We Thunders also have a great deal of self-healing and otherwise resilient models who can stay the course of the game, efficiently taking out troublesome threats while maintaining activations through the game.  When it's pretty likely you'll be facing a summoning master, just figure out what strengths your faction has to deal with an influx of models through the course of the game.  Many of these strengths can be applied more broadly, even in the case that summoning isn't on the opposite side of the table, and it doesn't have to feel like your whole crew is just there to counter this particular mechanic.