by dkartzinel
I've played Summoner Wars pretty extensively (and enjoy it) and I'm relatively new to Mage Wars.In terms of tactical movement, there is a limited amount of overlap. One of Summoner Wars' key restrictions is the limit of 3 moves and 3 attacks (forcing some very challenging. It does also have the unique magic system for killing your opponent's creatures. Hand management is absolutely critical. Deck building is important, but handled with extremely tight constraints (this is a good thing in my opinion).
Mage Wars has a completely different magic system, where you generate a fixed amount of mana (well not entirely fixed, modifiable by certain spells). I've not seen this in a game before, and I do rather like it. In terms of tactical movement, yes, you are moving cards around on a board, but that's about as similar as it gets. For Mage Wars all of the creatures will move, alternating between you and your opponent, one creature at a time. It does create an entirely different set of tactical options (and dilemmas). Hand management is quite less important, and most important, deck building is completely necessary to be competitive. That aspect is going to be much closer to CCGs, so as much as it pains me to say it, if you don't like that component of ccgs, I would stay away from Mage Wars, I think you'll miss out on the depth and what it is really designed to do!
To help make up your mind, I'd really suggest watching all the how to play videos on the Mage Wars site, and then watching the actual playthrough videos of an entire game that CritsHappen did on youtube.
As a big fan of ccg gameplay (although not the random distribution), Mage Wars seems to keep the parts of Summoner Wars I loved best, mix it with the best parts of a CCG (deckbuilding, combos, etc) and makes something totally new. It's not replacing Summoner Wars (so far), but I'm really excited about the CCG components it brings to the table.