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

Ken B. wrote:

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.

At some point years ago, Magic was publishing pre-built decks that were tournament semi-finalists. In theory, those should have been good decks to just grab and play.

Shellhead wrote: At some point years ago, Magic was publishing pre-built decks that were tournament semi-finalists. In theory, those should have been good decks to just grab and play.

We tried some of those. The ones we tried were based around essentially landing one combo. Once you figure out the combo in each, games played out almost exactly the same between experienced players. Good in theory, but essentially one-trick ponies.

The Return to Ravnica era of Standard had a lot of decks that rewarded high levels of skill and played out differently from game to game. I should probably someday just make my own "boxed set" of the powerful decks from that era and just be done with it.

It's basically like sealed deck in Magic (one of my absolute favorite ways to play), but with no ability to remove three-fourths of your pool.

Richard Garfield has a nice little writeup at the back of the rulebook:

In the early days of trading card games, they were played in many ways
– and some of my favorite ways disappeared over time. Among those
were sealed deck and league play. Both were awkward to manage
because cards had a tendency to get lost in one’s collection. Also, players
could only play with trusted friends because it was easy to cheat by
improving one’s deck surreptitiously.

I have often wondered if I could get back some of that really exciting
play, which was characterized by tools that weren’t universal. Each player
had treasures no other player had, but also had less powerful cards
that needed to be used in clever ways to get the most value. One’s
sealed or league deck was never ideal – but it was unique, and there
was a great deal of skill in getting the most out of it.

While I enjoy constructing or drafting decks, I am often longing to play
cards that are not powerful enough to compete within these formats.
When playing with sealed or limited decks, these cards often become
viable, since you can’t just replace them with top tier cards. I find special
pleasure in winning a game using cards that many people ignored
or overlooked.

I have always been attached to good procedurally generated content.
Game worlds generated in this way really feel as if they belong to me,
the player – I am discovering them as I play; the designer didn’t even
know they existed. Often games without such content are extremely
managed experiences; everyone goes through the same story lines
and can experience the same gameplay by making the same decisions.
Everything they experience feels planned. The contrast feels to me like
the difference between exploring a jungle and walking in an amusement
park. When trading card games first came out the feeling was like
exploring a jungle – and as the cards became more like commodities, it
became more and more like an amusement park.

In the amusement park there are experts telling you how to play the
game, the safest strategies, what net decks to use. In the jungle you
have the tools you have. There is every chance that you are going to be
the best in the world at playing your decks – you can’t just look up what
the synergies are or the weaknesses; you will only find out by playing.

Welcome to the jungle!
Richard Garfield
April 2018

I'm inclined to try it out, and if it has any legs, probably try to get a 3-5 person play group going. I miss CCG's, but do not have the time, inclination, or money to keep up with one - I love sealed and limited formats and am forever trying to put together play groups to play cubes or drafts, but that entails me curating the collection. This would scratch that itch.

I love Garfield designs - with MtG being his most impressive as far as impact and reach and its place as THE FIRST, but it's definitely not even close to his best design - Netrunner was amazing - This could be crazy chaotic fun.

I think the big question is whether the game is a Magic: The Gathering variant. If it is, I don't think playing it in this format would make for a much more interesting game.

The issue I see is that slotting random cards is more of a bussiness model than actual game design. I can understand Garfield's attempt, and I think it's great that he's explorining it, but I think it relies more on naïveté than actual card availability.

You'll never find them now for less than a fortune,* Ken, but the 1997 MtG Championships decks were fabulous. I still have and play them.
Jakub Slêmr - 5-Color Black
Svend Geertsen - Monogreen Stompy
Paul McCabe - U/R Tempo is what we'd call this now. Guy was 10 years ahead of his time.
Janosch Kuhn - U/W/r Control

www.wizards.com/sideboard/article.asp?x=...lts/ptworlds97_decks

Aggro, Control, Midrange, great sideboards, really cool stuff to tease out of each. I agree with your thoughts on the others—they got very gimmicky (Buehler's Monoblue, Finkel's Tinker, &c). But they utterly nailed it in 1997.


I like games like this. I like deckbuilding, there's probably 50,000 words from me on the topic in HEARTHSTONE fora, but I'm tired, man. Sometimes I just want to play.

*Looked it up: $50 to $75 each

It is an interesting idea, now that I understand it more. I understand where he is coming from. I have been itching to do a draft tournament again (I haven't played Magic in a number of years) because I quit the online CCG that I was playing competitively.

Instead, I have been working on my own way to scratch the itch. I designed a 52 card deck (each player uses 14 cards) with 7 different colors, but you can only play two colors each turn. It is called Control: The Fates of the World. You can find the files on BGG. Also, you can play in Tabletop Simulator. I have recently upgraded the look of the cards, but I haven't uploaded them yet (still working on a few details).

It is interesting to me that KeyForge has some similarities (7 Houses, play 1 per turn).

The hard sell here is that "pull out and play with decks of dubious balance" is not a unique value proposition. All the different LCG core sets offer that same proposition. Summoner Wars had 16 fixed single faction decks. BattleCON has 80 decks. Smash Up even did the same faction combination thing that KeyForge does, with a ton more factions. And to me that's the comparison that sticks - I could probably get the whole KeyForge experience with 7 x 1/3 decks. That's about half the cards in a starter. All they needed to do was to make a better Smash Up, but the monetization scheme got way out of hand.

Stormcow wrote: The hard sell here is that "pull out and play with decks of dubious balance" is not a unique value proposition.

I mostly agree with your points, though I think the game could still be worth getting into (though I doubt I will). They have found the middle ground between customizable games and asymmetrical games, which, in my opinion, is not a good place.

Asymmetrical games promise a balanced experience. In those games, you can practice the various matchups and improve your play.

Customizable games allow you to dig in and make something yours. You can be crazy or competitive or thematic or whatever.

The thing that this game offers is an easy to make sealed tournament, which was Garfield's intention. Instead of opening 3 packs and taking time to put something together, you just get a box and play. I don't think it is really a big benefit though. You can learn how to play your deck better and better, but it will likely get stale after a while if you do not have a large number of opponents.

The QR code makes cheating more difficult, but I imagine people will try to make whole-deck switches during a tournament with a good one that the opened at home before going.

I think the idea of putting them into opaque sleeves is the best, if the game turns out to be interesting. However, only being able to play one House per turn does limit the combos, though I think that is a necessity for the kind of distribution they are doing. The designers made each House knowing the max potential combo in each, but they don't have to worry about a mix of things from multiple Houses.

EDIT: Well, I guess the biggest hook is that any deck you open could be the best deck in the world, and only you would have it. If this game takes off, I wonder what the secondary market will look like. It will be really tedious to dig through the decks for sale. It will be a large hassle for stores to deal with that too.

For me, as much as I love Richard Garfield designs and adore sealed deck, the problem is exactly that: I can already *play* sealed deck. The only difference is that this enforces "no cheating". I've been running sealed deck magic leagues at the high school I teach at for a couple years now, with dozens of players, and cheating by modifying your deck was only an issue with one kid, who was quickly shunned. Everyone understands the importance of keeping the decks pure; it's not an issue that needed solving. I do hope this introduces more people to the beauty of having unique decks and carpools though; the lack of that was the turnoff about living card games for me.

Ken: I built a Innistrad/Return to Ravnica gauntlet, but it is EXTREMELY expensive. If you're looking for a much more affordable gauntlet of decks that are still high-powered, check out this Pauper Gauntlet:
magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/ma...-gauntlet-2018-08-01

I chose that block primarily because it was my favorite but also I was heavily into high-level Standard at that time and own all of the good cards from that era. Thanks for the link though, will give it a look.

Saw this story in general on BGG, then saw this tweet that Legomancer retweeted:



Unreal

If this takes off those rogue cards are going to be $$$$$$$.

I do not get why they are not recalling this...oh yeah, publicity.

Helped run a prerelease today. Everyone had an awesome time. This game is something to behold in motion. Hopefully FFG can keep it fresh over time, but even if they never did anything else with it it's still a really enjoyable game on its own.

Question- is it worth buying the starter set? I don’t give a shit about the “learning” decks and who cares about the tokens, which will almost certainly be upgraded by third parties. I’d rather get 4 random decks than 2 fixed ones and 2 random.

I am interested after reading the rules...the “pick a suit” mechanic is VERY neat. I think the look and feel is on trend, which is smart. But I still think this needs to be aimed at the Yugioh/Pokemon age bracket, not older.

I do not believe for a single instant that people are not going to build their own decks with this. But I am sure the sanctioned tournaments will require sealed deck purchases.