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

Yeah but then there's this.

This is going to be the bad idea that keeps on giving.

Michael Barnes wrote: 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.

Nah, you don't need to bother with the starter. Just get decks and whatever trackers you want. It's cheaper and you don't have to put up with FFG's crappy tokens.

One of the people I taught today is a former Ashes and current MTG player. He commented that managing board state/board control in this is a completely different kind of puzzle, and one he really wanted to spend more time figuring out. The house picking is genuinely novel and leads to some great decisions. I enjoyed this game when I was just playing random decks but I'm really happy to finally have "mine". Helps that it churns out a wall of bodies with barely any effort.

Michael Barnes wrote:

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.

I thought the whole point was that the deck backs were different, so that you couldn't put together your own deck, legally or illegally. Sure, you could sleeve it, but a cheater would get caught pretty quickly.

One of my coworkers is kind of stoked to give it a try, so I'll probably grab a deck and try it.

Oooooooh...OK. So the image in Demetri’s post is the cardback for the whole deck then. That makes sense.

I’m going to check it out, I think my son will really like it. I may just get a deck display and resell any porno name decks for $500 each.

Not Sure wrote: Yeah but then there's this.

This is going to be the bad idea that keeps on giving.

The real question is who scrubbed their random word generator? Racism, wang? WTF guys, rookie mistake.

Why would they? I guarantee that these decks are going to shoot up in value. And that will sell deck displays. There’s no possible way a company of this size and means doesn’t think through the probability that randomly generated groups of words would come up with bad things. Either it’s been deliberately ignored or they let it go thinking it would be too isolated to make a big deal out of it.

I’m telling you “Scion of Rimjob Holocaust” will be $500 on eBay.

So, about those unintentionally funny/strange/offensive archon names…

www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2018/11/9/archon-names/

Going to officially quit writing forever, because I will never come up with something as good as that card.

It even has an awesome house combo. If that becomes a worlds winner I won't even be surprised.

So my local opponent brought some KEYFORGE decks over yesterday.

For those unaware, this is a new card game from Richard Garfield, designer of MAGIC: THE AFFLICTION . The big thing with this game is that EVERY DECK is a self contained unique deck. There is no deck building whatsoever. Each deck has 3 factions ( out of a possible 6 ) of 12 cards apiece and has a unique randomly generated name ( some photos are already popping up with some face palm names like WANG THE BRUISED ) . What you get is what you play with. While this may dismay the hard core CCG players, its also way less intimidating and doesn't suck up the time of deck contruction. You pop open the deck and play with what you got.

Mechanically it also breaks a few time honored traditions. First off, there is no card cost. No matter how big a monster or whatnot, you can play it from your hand. Each turn you pick one of the three factions in your deck, and you can only play cards of that faction. So there can be ebb and flow as you empty cards out of your hand of one faction, then refill your hand and possibly not getting that faction. Cards enter play exhausted/tapped, so their is a lag time effect. Overall this game doesn't feature the lightning fast play of some others - for instance STAR WARS DESTINY can feature some brutally short matches. Here play is a bit more paced. Its swingy at times, some cards can wipe out all your creatures. There is also no decking out, so no milling strategy.

You win by forging 3 Keys, each of which cost 6 resources. It takes a bit of time, I'd say our three plays lasted on average of 30 minutes.

I don't know whether it has long term staying power. My friend went to the pre release on Saturday and said they basically sold out. The lack of deck building will appeal to some ( like me ) and not appeal to hard core CCG player. It seems tailor made for sealed deck events at stores.

Over time despite the lack of deck building, there will probably be some sort of meta that forms. Each faction has certain traits - one faction steals resources, another is a tank , another is sort of a small creature/speed type I think. So certain faction combos may play one way vs other faction combos.

Its certainly cheap, relatively speaking. $10 per deck is kind of expensive for 37 cards ( the deck assembly and different card backs for each deck make it more expensive to print ) . But there will be no urge to buy entire booster boxes in search of rare cards. Each deck has what appear to be a pre determined mix of common, uncommon and rares ( although some had 3, some had 4 rares and its not one per faction necessarily ) . And since there are no Black Lotus type cards, card sleeving probably ain't gonna be necessary.

The graphics are decent, but we felt there could have been better distinction between Action, Creature, Artifact cards.

The setting is kind of generic/bland . Some aliens ( Mars little green men ) and some fantasy but nothing that really resonates. At least it's not Terrinoth ( FFG generic fantasy setting ) . I'd have preferred some more elf/troll/dwarf type as I would think it would make the factions easier to identify with .

Oh and I'd echo Barnes about skipping the starter. While its certainly a bit token/marker heavy, a few fistfuls of dice and you're good to go.

Its certainly an interesting concept .

Thanks, Msample. This is the first actual summary of the game that I've read. When you say that you can only pick one faction each turn, that doesn't seem like too much of an inhibitor if you can, as you play things at no cost. But it sounds like there is a constraint? Every brief description I've read of the game so far has said something like "You can only play one faction each GAME", which sounds insane, since you're reduced to playing 1/3 of your unique deck each time (Replayability!) is the constraint because you don't refill your hand or drawing is restricted to 1 or 2 card/turn?

It’s pick a suit per turn, not per game. You choose one and can play everything of that suit in your hand.

The turn flow goes like this:

Forge a key if you can afford it.
Call one of your three houses. These are the only cards you can play/use on your turn.
Do all your actions.
Untap everything.
Draw up to the hand size of 6.

The kicker with the house selection is that you can't use creatures/artifacts on your board unless you call the matching house, so you often have to choose between building your board and using it.

Game seems neat but I have a hard time justifying it when I've got MtG, Ashes, and Summoner Wars cards that I've hardly had time or the right people to play lately. Buying something totally random that could have a bad matchup if I just buy two for my wife and I seems less than ideal.