[Aleph]

I play SP. It's a caveat worth mentioning.

Three pages in and no one has mentioned my favorite early summon spell in the game - crossbreeding. Granted, usable only by a small number of nations, and requiring particular scales to be really effective, but it's pure joy when it works (IMO, a basilisk alone is more than worth the cost of casting).

Sans Blood, often I find my early-mid summons are more driven by what I have that's disposable than what I really want. For example, in any game where I have death magics, I find that a serious chunk of my early game death gems are going to Skull Mentors. So I rarely think all that much about any death summons early on. Corpse Man Construction, on the other hand, is a great spell for those capable of using it, even early on. You pick it up on the way to Skull Mentors, you also grab the Lightning Rod on the way there as well (which doesn't use Air gems to create, so you're saving that resource for the corpsemen), and it uses air gems which aren't known for their great summons. LA Caelum loooooves corpsemen.

PrinzMegaherz - I watched your little animation all the way through, twice. Pretty funny.