KeyForge Impressions from Gencon 2018

Hello all, I am back from Gencon 2018. It was a fun time with cosplayers, friends I only knew previously via online, and of course more board games than I can count. One game that particularly caught my eye was Fantasy Flight Game's new game from Richard Garfield, KeyForge: Call of the Archons. The combination of FFG and Richard Garfield is almost always guaranteed to pique my interest, as both are veterans in the gaming industry, with Garfield being most famous for Magic: The Gathering. I got a chance to demo this game and it is easily my most anticipated game I saw at Gencon, and I can't wait to get my hands on it.

I wanted to explain a little bit about what the game is, how it is played, what my experience was playing it, and then talk about my thoughts on the Unique Deck Game archetype.

So first, a little about KeyForge: This is the world's first Unique Deck Game. Every deck available is completely unique (with the exception of 2 of the starting decks, as they are fixed). Every deck stars an Archon, that has a completely unique name, that is never repeated. And each deck is also never repeated. That being said, there are 350 cards in the set split among 7 different houses. Each deck has 12 cards from 3 of the houses, and those cards vary in rarity and quantity. The claim is that there are more than 104,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible decks in this first set alone. That's crazy. Each deck also comes with a decklist and QR code that will be able to be uploaded to the upcoming companion app that will be released alongside the game. This will allow you to track your decks, see other decks, and monitor all sorts of statistical goodness in the world of KeyForge.

How does it play? (Rules)

KeyForge is played over a series of turns, with the goal being to forge your three keys to unlock the Crucible Vaults. The first to three wins. This is what your turn order looks like:

1. Forge a Key
2. Choose a House
3. Play, discard, and use cards of the chosen house
4. Ready Cards
5. Draw Cards

So, in the first step, you can attempt to forge a key. Typically, forging a key requires you to spend 6 Ember (the game's currency), although the cost may vary depending on various card abilities. You can also only forge one key during this step, although it's possible that some card abilities can allow you to forge a key during your turn.

In the second step, you must choose a house to activate. This is where the meat of the game is. You must choose one of the three houses assigned to your Archon, and then you may only activate, play, discard, and use cards from that house during your turn, although this can be done in any order. There are four card types: Action Cards, Artifacts, Creatures, and Upgrades. Cards in KeyForge do not really have a cost attached to them, barring some specific abilities, which means you can in theory play all of a house's cards on a turn all at once. Creatures and Artifacts come into play exhausted, and cannot be used the turn you play them. They have various abilities, and the creatures have a power and armor value, which contribute to how combat works. Action cards get played and then discarded, and Upgrades get played on Creatures in order to give them...well...upgrades. Some cards give you Ember as well as another effect.

When you use a Creature, you may do a number of things: Firstly, you exhaust said Creature, then you choose whether to reap, fight, or trigger an Action ability on the Creature. Reaping means you gain one Ember, and that is the easiest way to gain Ember. You may also fight, where you declare a target Creature for your attack, and both Creatures deal damage equal to their power simultaneously. Damage is applied via tokens and stays from round to round. Defeated Creatures get discarded. A Creature's life is also equal to their power.

The next step has you readying all of your cards, preparing them for the next turn. Then, you draw cards up to your hand limit of 6 (normally). If you ever run out of cards, simply reshuffle your discard pile to create a new deck.

There is also a Chain mechanic. A player may gain Chains through card abilities during the game, usually as a cost to play a powerful card, or a punishment against your opponent. The game comes with a Chain tracker, and the more Chains you gain, the lower your hand size becomes. In my demo, we never gained enough Chains to get past the first tier, so we only ever had our hand size reduced by one card, but if you get 7+ Chains your hand size is -2, 13+ is -3, and 19+ is -4.

And that is generally how the game is played. You can read the rulebook here.


So how does it actually play? (Demo Experience)

I only got to play the demo once, but it was a full game that went back and forth over many turns (I even managed to play through my entire deck and reshuffle), so I feel I got a good look at the game. I apologize for the lack of pictures. I should have taken screenshots of my decklist and the various cards, but I just got caught up in the demo and didn't want to take too much extra time, as there were lots of people trying to demo the game.

The choosing of the House step was very interesting, and it really forced me to make a ton of decisions. For example, I play a bunch of Creatures and Artifacts from the Brobnar House on my first turn. On my next turn, do I activate them and do stuff with them, or should I play cards from the Logos House, of which I have a full hand? Most of the time, it is not that extreme, which makes the decision much harder. Sometimes I chose a House and played/activated only one card from that House. There were a ton of decisions to make. Even just looking at Creatures and what they can do forces many decisions. Do I attack with my Creature and defeat an opponent, even though that doesn't directly fund the winning goal of gaining Ember to forge a key? Or should I just reap and gain Ember, and risk not disrupting my opponent?

The decks we played were also pretty well balanced, although they did play differently, despite us sharing several cards. My Houses were Brobnar, Logos, and Untamed, while my opponent I believe was Mars, Logos, and Shadows. My deck was very controlling and stalling. I had 3 copies of a card that reduced everyone's Ember by half. My Brobnar cards were all very fighty Creatures, with Artifacts and Actions that helped me keep fighting, and even gaining Ember when I fight. Logos had a lot of tricky Creatures that were very weak, but gave me several abilities to use and were very disruptive. Untamed had a couple of very large Creatures, several upgrades to make them even larger, and many Actions that had bounce effects that allowed me to remove opponent's Creatures from play. Overall I think my deck was pretty good. Controlling decks tend to be high caliber, and in an expert's hands I think it could have dominated. That being said, our match was actually very close.

My opponent managed to forge 2/3 keys before I even got one, due to some good Martian Artifacts and Logos Actions. However, I pulled off a 2 key turn after a devastating Brobnar turn: I had two copies of a Brobnar Artifact that when exhausted, gave me an Ember for each Creature defeated during a fight during the turn. I swept the board and gained something like 8-9 Ember. Then, on the following turn I forged a key normally, and then used a Logos (I think) Action card that allowed me to forge another key. It felt epic. The rest of the game, I got into a groove of stalling and delaying my opponent, all the while reaping with extra Creatures and slowly gaining enough Ember to forge my last key. Another key card (that seems ridiculously good), was a Logos card that allowed me to steal Ember until I had more than my opponent. This led to some huge swings. We both had the card in our decks, and if my opponent played it in his turn after my huge Brobnar turn I would have gotten crushed.

The game turns were quick, and there was very little downtime. Most of the time, I barely had enough time to read through my new hand of cards before it was my turn. I got to see my whole deck during play and frequently drew 3 cards a turn. I really liked how fast pace it was. I also really liked how my deck was constructed. Richard Garfield said it is not random, and that there is an algorithm, but how it goes about doing that I have no idea. It seems as though the decks have a theme to them and a strategy in general. As I said, my deck felt very controlling, while my opponent's seemed to be about building a resource engine and compiling massive amounts of Ember. It was a fun matchup. The cards have a ton of cool abilities, and the way you use them will greatly determine how you go about winning. After reading the rulebook, there were tons of abilities that I never saw, but I look forward to what they look like while playing. So overall my experience was very positive, and I yearn to play some more. Also, I personally really like the art style and theme choices. It feels very Smash Up-ey, which is ok in my book. The lighter theme helps with the lighter style of formatting.

Unique Deck Game?

I had many thoughts upon first hearing about this game: How can the decks be unique? How can you prevent cheating? Won't there be random crap decks that have no synergy? This feels so disorganized. How is there prize support? How could there be a genuine competitive scene in a game where you are randomly given your deck? Of course, not all the thoughts were negative: A game that is solely like a booster draft or a limited format, sign me up! No deckbuilding/netbuilding? Countless hours of preparation not needed? Really cheap cost of entry?

A lot of this will remain to be seen once the game is released, but after talking with several of the people running the demos, looking through forums, and reading/listening to Richard Garfield's take on the game, I feel a little more comfortable.

The decks are built using some kind of algorithm, so they are not completely random. You won't have to worry about getting a deck full of Action cards that require a robot with no robots in the deck. Cheating in the game would be very difficult due to the fact that each deck has a decklist, a QR code that backs this up, and every card in each unique deck has a back that has the unique Archon's name printed on it. Now this has a negative side, meaning that if a card gets ruined, that deck is essentially ruined. Sure, maybe you could try and substitute the same card and use opaque sleeves, but that may not be tournament worthy or whatever.

Each deck is only $10. If you want the correct tokens then the starter is $40, but that includes everything you need, 2 static decks, but also 2 random decks. The barrier of entry to this game is very low. Playing an LCG is far more expensive, and even similar formats in Magic are more expensive. This should be a very beginner-friendly game.

The algorithm also takes into consideration card interactions and strategies, so the deck shouldn't be a complete random junkpile, but have some good combos in it automatically. Prize support is a little more iffy, as you can't exactly have promos, but upgraded tokens and playmats are definitely possible. Now will the game be competitive? I dunno. I can't wait for fun tournaments where everyone buys a new deck, cracks it open, and then see who can win. I ideally want to have tournaments at my local gaming store, and at the end of each tournament, they take a picture of the decklist like a team picture, and put the plaque on the wall. Perhaps there could be a mini league where you play the same deck throughout the season, and the decks get rated by the league and handicaps are implemented to make it more equal. The rulebook actually talks at length about this concept with using Chains as the handicap for "better" decks. Using Chains as a bidding option in the beginning, or gradual assigning of Chains when it is obvious a deck is really good.

I really like the concept of the game. I don't play Magic competitively, but I do enjoy playing in Midnight Release Drafting parties and stuff like that. My favorite format for the Epic Card Game is Limited, where you are drafting cards from "packs" and have to make your deck work, even with suboptimal cards. So this game scratches that itch. I appreciate Richard's attempt, even if it doesn't completely pan out. I doubt the competitive Magic players will love this game. At best, it will be a fun distraction, and not considered to be legitimate in terms of competitive play. And that's fine. This game can appeal to other people. Plus, if you really miss deckbuilding, nothing is stopping you and your friends from getting opaque sleeves and deckbuilding to your heart's content.

The upcoming KeyForge App

Richard Garfield has said that he wanted to create a game that had remnants of what Magic used to be. Before the age of the internet, when two Magic players would meet for a game, there were likely cards and decks that a player had never seen. There was an excitement at seeing a new card played against you, or a new strategy, and that excitement has lessened due to the information age we live in today. Richard also mentioned talking about how fun it was to have to use a deck that wasn't optimal, that had some cards that most thought to be weak, and that winning with a deck like that made it so much sweeter. He also loves procedurally generated content, because there is a real sense of ownership and discovery when you know you are the first person to see and use something. Something that the designers may have not even seen. He likens this to the difference between walking in an amusement park and walking in a jungle.

I really like this quote from Richard about this game: "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!"

I for one can't wait to get into the jungle. I hope you enjoyed this article. Wait with me until Q4 of this year, and happy gaming!