KeyForge: Call of the Archons - The World’s First Unique Deck Game coming soon

Michael Barnes wrote: Will the cards explode if you put them in opaque card sleeves then?

THAT would be worth buying one deck for.

Cool enough to buy a $10 deck, not cool enough to buy a $40 starter set.

Judging by the style of the art, they are hoping for a chunk of the Pokemon GO fanbase.

Looking at it through the WOW lens, unless you can control the probability by tailoring the deck, there would seem to be more luck than skill involved in using the deck. And maybe that will be cleared up in further communication, how much chaff can you eliminate from the deck to get your "character" to do what you want in a battle.

If tactical play is really emphasized in the game, the issue of an overpowered deck is unlikely to be a problem. We already know that every deck will have 3 Houses, which seems to be comparable to a 3-color Magic deck. In KeyForge, all cards are free, but you can only play cards from one House each turn. So if you have a seven card hand (I think that is standard for Garfield's CCGs), you will usually have just two or three cards in your hand for a given House each turn. Maybe you get to replace cards as quickly as you play them, so you might start a turn with 3 cards of your chosen House, and then luck into drawing another 1 that you can immediately play.

One potential drawback might be the lack of card combinations between the Houses. If you can only play cards from one House each turn, then there can't be any card combos between cards of different Houses unless there are cards that stay in play for an extended period of time. But maybe the card combos within each House will be sufficiently strong and dynamic that people won't miss cross-House combos.

From a reddit thread:

Keyforge first impressions
Keyforge is a new card game announced by FFG last night, and they gave out decks to everyone attending their GenCon conference. I played it last night and thought I'd write a bit about it for anyone with questions.
HOW IT PLAYS
First, this is very much in the same style as Magic and Hearthstone, but streamlined. There are no resources to spend on cards, and the player has no health. To win, you have to forge 3 keys. Each key is made of 6 Aember.
On your turn, you first forge a key if possible (ie you have 6 or more Aember). Then you choose a house. Each deck has 3 of the 7 houses in it. Whatever house you choose, you can only play cards of that house, attack with cards of that house, get Aember with cards of that house. Then you play and activate however many cards of that house you want. So if you have 5 cards in your hand of the Untamed house, you can play them all. When you attack, you attack a specific enemy creature. Their health is also how much damage they do, but they also have armor to negate an amount of incoming damage. Damage dealt is persistent. Creatures enter play exhausted (summoning sickness).
At the end of your turn, you untap anything that is "exhausted" and draw back up to your hand size, which is 6 to start.
In the game I played, my opponent had a bunch of control stuff to bounce my creatures back to my hand. I captured on of his and held it in my archive where it was out of the game until I accessed my entire archive. I couldn't keep my creatures out long enough to generate Aember (creatures can be tapped to generate Aember instead of attack.
A balance element is if you play cards with Chain, your Chain increases. If it increases by 1-6, your hand size is reduced by 1. If your chain hits 7, it's reduced again. This can continue until you have a hand size of 2. If you know your opponent has a much stronger deck than you do, you can start him off with a higher chain to balance.
DECKS AND DECKBUILDING
There is no deckbuilding. None. Zero. You cannot by the rules take a card out of your deck and replace it with a new one. The back of your card has your Archon's design on it. Each deck you buy has 37 cards, 1 is your Archon with a qr code and check list of what cards are in your deck. 12 of each of your 3 houses make you actual deck.
IS IT FUN?
We learned to play and played in a short amount of time. It's very much a competitive card game. At the conference they talked a lot about discovery and uniqueness. This is pretty interesting. The balancing mechanism to handle randomly OP decks I don't particularly like because it just reduced a stronger deck's ability to play, denying that player actions effectively. Also my opponent's deck had a card that helped only a specific sub class of creature called a Niffle, but he had exactly 1 card in his deck that could benefit. It's not optimised. That's intentional. That will drive some people crazy, but I like it. I haven't played Magic in many years, but the idea of showing up to a tournament, buying a deck for $10 and throwing down without even looking at the cards and learning on the fly with everyone else sounds really fun to me.
Anyway, I'll be around when I can to answer questions. In at GenCon so I'll be trying to play games, not type on my phone, but I'll try to get to you if you have a question.

As someone who has zero interest in building a deck but has always been interested in playing these kinds of competitive card games, this looks right up my alley. And I like that it's trying something so different and potentially messy. I'll definitely be picking up a couple of decks when it's released.

If nothing else, I like that it is so disruptive. Nobody really knows what to make of it. It seems DOA but singular and it’s not a fucking Kickstarter. It’s a fresh, even if shitty concept.

I almost think that this could be HUGE with -kids-. It should be aimed at 8-15 year olds, not gamers. The “starter” should be a $10 deck, not a $40 hobby thing. I can totally see my son and his friends really getting into the unique deck thing, and they are at an age where any imbalances and quirks don’t mean jack shit. They’d be all into the unique deck thing, and at $10 that is in the realm of allowance money possibility.

But I’m afraid FFG will blow it by aiming it at middle age hobby men.

the_jake_1973 wrote: Also my opponent's deck had a card that helped only a specific sub class of creature called a Niffle, but he had exactly 1 card in his deck that could benefit.

That's extremely bad. I agree it's a neat idea, but there has to be some sort of sensible constructor if they're going to have shit like keywords and specialized cards!!!

Michael Barnes wrote: It should be aimed at 8-15 year olds, not gamers. The “starter” should be a $10 deck, not a $40 hobby thing.

Wait...it's $40 a *deck*? Am I reading that right?

The starter is $40, the decks are $10 each.

Michael Barnes wrote: The starter is $40, the decks are $10 each.

Glad you clarified that man. Thought I had gone to looney land.


Magic I've always loved but also wanted the ability to buy a pre-made or randomized deck and just...play. Yet every pre-built Magic deck ever made has disappointed me on some front in regards to this, whether it's power level, adherence to its central theme, or just balance between other similar products.

I'll keep an eye on it but at this point I still think it's a pass for me.

The $40 starter set contains four decks. Two unique decks and two non-unique decks that will be the same in every starter set. The rule book will probably make frequent reference to the cards in the non-unique decks, and there will probably be a tutorial at some point that uses the two non-unique decks.