(Theoretical) Advice for Playing Draw Steel's Summoner

 The Summoner, Draw Steel's first new MCDM-released class following the core rules, is presented as a "Master" class. While initially intended to be part of the core rules, the class design struggled to make it all work until the game developed its version of Minions, which came after the classes had largely been finished. (The upcoming Beastheart similarly needed them to have figure out how Retainers would work).

Players are encouraged not to start with the Summoner if it's their first time playing Draw Steel. And I think, sure, yeah, that's probably wise.

But...

But I kind of want to play a Summoner, despite never having played Draw Steel before.

Now, unlike D&D, which is a game that most of my friends are pretty familiar with (I've met many of them by playing D&D) and a handful have tried their hand at DMing (my best friend, who was one of my original players, now does it professionally as part of an after-school program for kids, and for sure has more hours under his belt. He also has an actual play stream that I make maps for!) But I haven't even had an opportunity to run Draw Steel, so I expect that if I ever get a chance to play it, it'll be a while (though maybe I just need to get over my internet shyness and find a game via the MCDM Discord).

Anyway, it's understandable that the class could daunt new players, and for the other folks at the table, it could be frustrating if a player dilly-dallies during their turn.

There are, however, a few design decisions that I think will make it a fair bit quicker. The primary one is that, with some exceptions, most minions don't have any roll to make when they attack. They only have free strikes, and so you can just... do the damage. If I have three Phase Ghouls out, they're going to be doing 3 damage each, so I know that 9 damage is going out there into the world.

However, another really helpful bit of the Summoner document is on page 58, where there's a whole section on Summoner advice. In particular, I find the Summoner's Flow section could really streamline peoples' turns:

While you can do things in many different orders, this suggests that by default, you should take your turn in the following order:

• First, collect your resources. You'll get your two Essence at the start of your turn (or 3 later on, I think) and then you'll place your free signature minions (assuming you even do get them - if you have both of your squads using heroic minions, you won't be getting your free ones).
• Next, you should summon any minions you want to on your turn. I believe that this is always going to use your "Call Forth" main action, which feels like the bread-and-butter of Summoner actions (though if you have what you need on the board or really need to do a heroic ability, you might skip this).
• Third step, now that all the minions are out on the board, you can move them all. This, I suspect, will take the longest time to resolve, as you might have yourself and up to 8 (or even 12) minions. Remember that free strikes can be ranged, so unless you really need your minions to get some benefit from a melee attack (which some minions will want) your positioning doesn't have to be all that precise. 
• Finally, once all your minions are in position, have them do what they were planning to do, whether that's a maneuver or a main action. If you haven't used your action yet and have been saving it, you can do it now and then end your turn.

I think this 4-step methodology will really make your turns go faster. Draw Steel of course by default has players take their turns in whatever order the party wants, so if you need some time to figure out what you're going to do, you can let a teammate go first (though note that the battlefield might change if you do so, so you will need to revise your plan as you go - be sure to pay attention to what's happening on other turns).

Now, I think the next challenge is bookkeeping.

The Summoner comes with a Minion Tracking Sheet, which gives you a separate row for Squad A and Squad B. Each squad is going to share a stamina pool, like the Director's minions, and each squad only gets one type of minion, so you should do the following:

So, combat begins, and you decide to fill Squad A with your Skeleton minions (a classic!) When the whole fight starts, two of them pop up. So, you can write 2 and then another 2 (the Stamina for a skeleton minion). At the start of your turn, you get three more for free, so assuming you choose to summon all three (and why wouldn't you?) you'll put them on the map and write three more instances of 2 in Squad A. Now, when they take damage, you'll subtract from the first instance of 2 until it's reduced to zero, and then remove the skeleton that took the damage. Then, continue on with any remaining damage.

One way that you might make this easier, actually, at least with low-stamina minions, is to make tally marks or dots instead of numerals. Simply arrange these tallies in a grid, with columns representing individual minions. Now, you can just work your way down each column from left to right, erasing one tally or dot at a time equal to the damage taken, and each column that is cleared represents a minion getting slain.

There's also a space on the Minion Tracking Sheet to write down the statistics of each minion type. One way that you could make it potentially easier to track is to make these into little cards - each minion has a pretty compact stat block. While you'll eventually have six kinds of minions (not counting champions) to choose from, you're never going to have more than two kinds of minion out at a time, so you can easily just keep the inactive minion types in your "deck" and pull out the cards for the minions you're actually using.

If you're making these cards or just writing the stat blocks onto your sheet, consider also filling in the actual potencies on their abilities. If your Necromancer has Husk minions, at level 1 their Rotting Strike figure will affect targets with Might less than 0 (unless they team up to raise the potency) and their corruption and poison immunity will be 2. Then, when you hit new echelons and your stats go up, update these to the new values.

One thing you might also consider is just writing an M for melee or R for ranged next to the minion's name if they are more effective at one or the other. While you're certainly become familiar with your minions as you play, early on having a quick reminder that Husks do an extra effect when they make melee free strikes and not ranged ones, and knowing that Shriekers have an extended range on their free strikes. And if you have a minion that doesn't really do anything different in melee or at range, like the Skeleton, you can just leave that space blank.

Also, while minions easily come and go, many of them (especially Elementals) will leave some effect on the battlefield when they die.

The document already advices using flat token for minions so they don't disrupt line of sight of the battlefield for the players, but the other benefit is that if the tokens are two-sided, you can flip them over when they die and leave behind an area effect. Skeletons (yeah, we're sticking with Undead signature minions until we need another category for an example) leave behind Bonetrops when they die, so if you can get a token that indicates an animate skeleton on one side and a bunch of sharp bones on the other, you can just flip it over when it dies to show where the caltrop-like remains are.

This won't work for everything - some elemental minions will leave behind a larger affected patch than their own size (like the Flow of Magma) so you'll either want to have separate tokens for those, or access to whatever wet-erase markers the DM is using for the map. But for those minions who just leave behind something occupying their own space, a flippable token is great.

It might be hubristic, but I honestly think with these methods, I actually think I might be able to efficiently play a Summoner, despite not yet having actually played Draw Steel.