Deck of summoning

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Type	Miscellaneous item
Name	deck of summoning
Icon

A deck of magical cards, depicting a range of weird and wondrous creatures.

The deck of summoning deals with cards that summon allies (and in some cases, enemies) for the player. It is one of Nemelex Xobeh's decks. Under Nemelex, you can hold up to 13 cards.

It contains the following cards:

• the Dance (16.6%)
• the Elements (16.6%)
• the Illusion (16.6%)
• the Pentagram (16.6%)
• the Rangers (16.6%)
• Swarm (16.6%)

Strategy

Summoned monsters are always useful, and Nemelex is one of the best gods for them. Most cards can create multiple monsters, meaning you have meatshields to hide behind. Over the course of the game, the average strength of each card diminishes, though a clone of yourself or a pandemonium lord will kill just about everything up to Zot.

Triple Draw lets you avoid hostile summons from the Pentagram, but otherwise is poor for card efficiency. Even then, you could just keep drawing until the situation's clear. If you need to save on turns, Draw Four is a strong ability: it creates a true swarm of allies for when you really need to block line-of-fire.

See Also

• Cards
• Decks

History

• Prior to 0.23, this deck was a physical item.
• Prior to the deck simplification in 0.19, the deck of destruction was an archetype deck, with physical decks of destruction only pulling from the archetype. It was one of 4 decks to be kept in this version.

The possible cards across versions in this deck are shown in the table below.

pre-0.14	0.14	0.15	0.16 - 0.18	0.19 - 0.26	0.27 onwards
the Bones the Crusade the Dance Foxfire the Herd the Pentagram Repulsiveness	the Bones the Crusade the Dance Foxfire the Herd the Pentagram Repulsiveness	the Bones the Crusade the Dance Foxfire the Herd the Illusion the Pentagram Repulsiveness	the Crusade the Dance the Elements Foxfire the Illusion the Pentagram the Rangers Repulsiveness Water	the Dance the Elements Foxfire the Illusion the Pentagram the Rangers	the Dance the Elements the Illusion the Pentagram the Rangers Swarm