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Clearly if they didn't want the game around they would have just cancelled it so it's nice that they came out and just announced a long term delay. It's not really surprising in some sense given that they're still having a lot of distribution issues. The algorithm being "broken" is definitely a strange one. Apparently the outside company/team doing the digital implementation is good so that probably bodes well and is less likely that Asmodee bean counters are going to pull the plug on it.
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Sep 11, 2021 13:35
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The digital game should be a massive benefit to KeyForge if done right. The game is perfect for an online implementation.
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Sep 11, 2021 14:00
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what's the difference between keyforge and solforge. they both appear to be richard garfield products https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stoneblade/solforge-fusion-hybrid-deck-game
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Sep 26, 2021 21:08
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ilmucche posted:what's the difference between keyforge and solforge. they both appear to be richard garfield products Solforge was a digital card game made by Garfield that had 3 years of early access before dying less than a year after its official launch. I'm sure it's been long enough to reboot it now though to tap into nostalgia for the game, after all it died way back in *checks notes* 2017
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Sep 26, 2021 21:36
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Besides playing different, Solforge 2.0 is trying to add a very small amount of deckbuilding. So instead of one random deck, you get randomized half-decks and smush them together to make your deck. Kinda like Jumpstart from Magic, whose existence alone foretells a bad fate for Solforge.
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Sep 27, 2021 00:20
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https://comicbook.com/gaming/amp/news/keyforge-ghost-galaxy-asmodee-acquisition/quote:Asmodee has sold the KeyForge card game and intellectual property rights to a new company managed by Christian Petersen, the founder of Fantasy Flight Games. The dormant card game will now be owned by Ghost Galaxy Inc., a new company founded by Petersen that is developing a "next generation software engine" for developing procedurally generated card games similar to the system that generated KeyForge's decks. Ghost Galaxy has also brought on several of the original principals involved with KeyForge's first run at Fantasy Flight Games. Ghost Galaxy says it will announce news about the future of KeyForge in the coming weeks. Very optimistic about this news.
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Jun 29, 2022 04:33
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Their new site has a bit more detail, and a peek at the next set's distinct mechanic, tokens. Still no ETA on Winds of Exchange release date, or on the return of organized play, but I'm cautiously optimistic. (Anyone know anything about Ghost Galaxy?)
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Jun 29, 2022 04:46
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Weird Uncle Dave posted:(Anyone know anything about Ghost Galaxy?) They didn't exist until today, so besides Petersen leading it, not really.
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Jun 29, 2022 04:59
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I'm pretty happy with the news, never expected them to sell it off but I'm glad to get away from Asmodee. Guess they weren't actually working on it and just shopping it around though. Hopefully Ghost Galaxy is more communicative.
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Jun 29, 2022 05:41
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There is a unique 'Battle of the Forges' that will be playing out over the next few years. It is a good time to be into unique card games. Solforge Fusion is a very good game, and with Keyforge coming back, I have a hard time seeing how both can exist... As a recap, Solforge actually predates Keyforge. A big MtG champ named Justin Gary started designing games, and met Richard Garfield after learning that Garfield was a big fan of his game, Ascension. They collaborated on a digital only card game named Solforge, and eventually launched it. It was popular, but Hearthstone dominated the market. Solforge's servers were shut down after a year or two in 2017. Keyforge was launched in 2018 as a collaboration between Richard Garfield and FFG. The company was still run by Christian Peterson at the time. Apparently Garfield had a different name in mind for the game, but FFG's marketing liked Keyforge. Garfield was against having another game with 'Forge' in it associated with him, but since Solforge was apparently dead, he didn't fight it. Of course, FFG was bought by Asomdee and I'm assuming Peterson got a good chunk of cash from it. As FFG imploded post-acquistion and during COVID, Peterson bought back pieces of his former company. He bought FFG's headquarters and event space in Minnesota, calling it Gamezenter. He also bought their POD printers. And now he bought Keyforge back. Meanwhile, Justin Gary saw Keyforge as a good model on how to bring back Solforge. He retooled the game to for physical release, launched a moderately successful Kickstarter, and is launching the game later this year. Kickstarter patrons (like myself) have just started to get their copies, and the TTS mod is extremely good. It is actually one of the best TTS mods I've used. So now we have two algorithmic deck games, both with Richard Garfield's fingerprints, and both with Forge in their names. Comparing the gameplay, Solforge Fusion is a much better game in my opinion. It learned from many of Keyforge's mistakes. There are two big innovations. First, the game allows for simple deck customization. Each random deck is actually a half-deck, and you smash two half-decks together to form a full play deck. This means you can just pick two random halves for the full Keyforge experience, or find two halves that complement each other well for constructed play. Second, the game has a unique 'level up' mechanic for the cards. Each card you play has a higher level version put into your discard. So when the discard inevitably get reshuffled into a new draw deck, you'll have access to stronger versions of cards. This is very cool, and gives the game a 'Dominion' feel where you are building your deck during the course of the game. I could babble about how Solforge 'fixes' Keyforge in many ways, but ultimately I am a fan of both games. I think Keyforge is in good hands, and am excited to see where it goes. Perhaps there is room for both... Solforge is designed around more competitive play, and Keyforge is certainly more casual. One way or the other, it is a good time to be into these kinds of games.
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Jun 29, 2022 13:34
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Does Solforge Fusion have any kind of retail presence? That's where the battle is won and lost. I've just looked and it seems the starter kit is late in the UK (predicted Q2!) with no stock available, which is a bad start. Solforge the digital game had like 2000 concurrent players at its absolute peak. That is not popular. I recall it being a bad game and was disappointed after having backed it. Hex was a similar story. If it's straight up a fight between "the two *Forge games that Garfield was involved in", Keyforge does not lose out. It has the market penetration and it had a big splashy launch. It's struggled after the hack/whatever but it's a giant compared to Fusion. I also don't really know how to process the claims on Solforge Fusion being the better game, seeing as the KS only started shipping a few days ago. edit: Oh, there's one thing cleared up by the KS anyway quote:For the first print run of SolForge Fusion, we will only be shipping to the USA. lol edit #2: quote:Got my copy this morning, likely quick because I live about 15 minutes from the facility where this was produced. I'm pretty shocked at the poor quality. The playmats look nice enough, however, the rest of this production uses shockingly poor quality materials. The box is what I'd expect from a print-on-demand production for a prototype, certainly not a long tail LCG type game - upon opening the box from the shrink, the sides are already coming loose. The paper playmats are both showing massive wear from just a single folding - after a few uses, these will very likely rip where the current wear is already showing. The card stock is abysmal, if you bend this quality of stock even slightly, it will crease or hold the bend, I'm fairly shocked at this due to the nature of the game and how consistently these will need to be shuffled. Not only does this quality of paper not have "snap", the edges where the cards are cut already show white wear just from packaging, shuffling them a few times will increase this wear substantially. While they can do amazing things with procedural printing, Artiforge doesn't have access to quality core paper and this result really feels this product feeling amateurish (which is bonkers to me considering the pedigree of the folks who worked on it). quote:Literally was just about to post this exact thing. Just got my cards and am beyond disappointed with the quality quote:I am also quite disappointed in the quality. This definitely does not look like a finished product. quote:The card stock is extremely annoying. And sleeving won't fix the issue as that would mean you would either: quote:I got mine today and the quality is definitely not up to par. How do you not include the rule book. The box is bad and card quality is not up to ascension standards. I hope the game is still good since I enjoyed the app. quote:I was definitely confused right away by receiving such a small parcel. Surely this could not be the base game and all the boosters, dice and playmats I ordered? Yet...it was, and I share the disappointment in the quality. I was expecting the base game to be packaged at least like a Keyforge base set, including rule book and everything else needed to play a basic game. I definitely expected more given the pedigree of the creators and greatly fear for the long-term life of the game. I unfortunately think this will be one of those projects completely forgotten in a year, and that's a shame. The price point is too high for what you get, again compared to Keyforge, and the quality seems much lower. Let's hope the gameplay blows everyone away which is the only hope this game has got! quote:Just came here to post the same things. It's funny you mention it's "print-on-demand-prototype" quality because I received a Kickstarter about a month ago that was more-or-less exactly that and it's significantly higher quality. lol #2 Thirsty Dog fucked around with this message at 14:21 on Jun 29, 2022 |
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Jun 29, 2022 14:16
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Thirsty Dog posted:Does Solforge Fusion have any kind of retail presence? That's where the battle is won and lost. I've just looked and it seems the starter kit is late in the UK (predicted Q2!) with no stock available, which is a bad start. Retail is on the way worldwide. It's coming by the end of the year. They wanted to print stateside, but they got a bigger retail response than anticipated. The price vs quality equation doesn't work out well in the U.S., so they decided to print their retail boxes overseas. The Kickstarter copies are U.S. printed. Christian Peterson ran into the same problem with his new LCG Earthborne Rangers. Personally I don't have an issue with the quality but hopefully the Chinese printed version meets the standard of whatever random BGG guy you got that from. Their response from GAMA was good, so they had a lot of retail preorders. They also got the support of Team Covenant, which pulled in a lot of players and retailers. They have all sorts of plans for organized play, but we'll see how that works out. Having played a lot of Keyforge, and a lot of Solforge Fusion on TTS (as well as a few games physically), I think Solforge is much better designed. In Keyforge, a lovely deck is a lovely deck and there is nothing you can do about it. You just wasted $10. In Solforge, each deck in theory can be partnered with something to turn that zero into a hero. Also, bad anti-synergistic cards on Keyforge will clog your hand, and basically result in dead draws. This is mitigated in Solforge since only two cards are played out of a five card hand. Duds can just safely not get played. This also means that situational cards are better because they don't waste a draw or card play, but you'll be happy to see them when the situation comes up. But ultimately I agree with you in that Solforge has an uphill battle against Keyforge. There is a huge built-in player base with millions of existing decks. That being said, it has a lot of inherent flaws that turned off a lot of more serious players I have introduced it to. We had a Netrunner group that was looking for the next thing after the death of Netrunner, and they bounced off of Keyforge hard because of the imbalance and lack of control over the decks. To some people this is a feature, and to others it is a bug. So I wouldn't call Solforge DOA yet, but it is certainly an underdog. Personally, I enjoy playing both games. I have no interest in playing Keyforge competitively, but it is certainly a lot of fun to play casually with friends. On the other side of the coin, I would love to go to a Solforge tournament and am excited to see how the meta shakes out in a way I haven't felt since Netrunner.
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Jun 29, 2022 15:22
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Rusty Kettle posted:Retail is on the way worldwide. It's coming by the end of the year. They wanted to print stateside, but they got a bigger retail response than anticipated. The price vs quality equation doesn't work out well in the U.S., so they decided to print their retail boxes overseas. The Kickstarter copies are U.S. printed. Christian Peterson ran into the same problem with his new LCG Earthborne Rangers. That's not a random BGG dude. That's a bunch of quotes, each from a different person, on the biggest feedback thread in the Kickstarter comments. In other words, a bunch of backers who just got their product in the last few days and were primed and excited to enjoy the game. Fusion is a niche product that seems to have serious production flaws, up against a relative behemoth in Keyforge (2.7m registered decks?), with no international support and definitely no localisation. It's comical to me that you framed this as a "two games of the same type, only one can survive!!" when realistically Keyforge is a runaway train and Solforge appears to be a a pushcart just trying to make a living. I cannot see any way that Fusion becomes the more popular product even if Keyforge never prints a new expansion. It's starting from such a small base. Completely agree that the procgen nature of Keyforge turns some people off and that a "bad" deck is always going to struggle, but then that does sort of suggest it's only ever going to be playing against better decks - logic dictates there's plenty of decks that are on the same power level. For the competitive game these are just dead decks; for the more casual game (which, let's face it, is going to be what makes a card game survive and thrive commercially) it acts as a handicap system of its own and allows for the discovery aspect, even if the discovery is "this deck just can't do what it seems to be designed to do" and you move on to another one.
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Jun 29, 2022 15:41
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Have they fixed the RNG in Solforge? I played a lot of it and my main issue was that if most of your lvl 2 cards were not drawn after the first shuffle, you could expect to lose. Just not a lot you could do against lvl 3 cards if you had a bunch of 2s.
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Jun 29, 2022 16:03
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We'll see what happens with the production flaws. They switched printers for retail, so perhaps it'll get better. Or not. I don't know. All I know is that it doesn't bother me. I also don't know about localization or international support, but it sounds like Keyforge might be limiting that too:Article on Keyforge posted:We can tell you that with our small team, it is almost certain that some (if not all) localizations may be discontinued. In any case, our focus will be on English-language releases. So both games are on equal footing there. I also agree on the player base. Keyforge is huge, and people arent going to throw away their 2.7 million decks. That being said, the 'runaway train' verses 'hand cart' analogy is poor. It is a big derailed steam train that is going to take time, money and energy to get back moving at the scale it once was. Meanwhile, there is a small, more efficient diesel that is picking up momentum. I'll gladly ride both trains because I love trains, and leaving the analogy, I love card games. I firmly believe these games will live or die on a digital client. These kinds of games beg for a phone app to play your physical decks on. FFG hired some third party to work on one a while back for Keyforge, but who knows the status of that. The lack of mention in the recent announcement makes me think it is a long time coming, but maybe they are saving it for a GenCon announcement. Also, the game itself is poorly suited to phones anyway. The board state can get very wide, which will be a pain to parse out on a small phone screen. So they've kinda designed themselves into a corner here. Solforge started as a digital game, and was designed around having a digital client someday. The strict 5-lane limit helps significantly. StoneBlade has a good track record on their card game apps with Ascension and Shards of Infinity. That being said, as far as I know, they haven't started working on this yet. Maybe I am wrong and Solforge is DOA before it even hits retail. Or perhaps I am wrong and the two games can coexist. One way or another, I am very excited to see how it shakes out because one way or the other, there is a unique card game to play and explore.
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Jun 29, 2022 16:17
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Snack Bitch posted:Have they fixed the RNG in Solforge? I played a lot of it and my main issue was that if most of your lvl 2 cards were not drawn after the first shuffle, you could expect to lose. Just not a lot you could do against lvl 3 cards if you had a bunch of 2s. Solforge is physical now so the RNG is how good you are at shuffling. I've played about a dozen games or so, and a race to level 3 hasn't been a dominant strategy from what I've seen.
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Jun 29, 2022 16:21
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Rusty Kettle posted:We'll see what happens with the production flaws. They switched printers for retail, so perhaps it'll get better. Or not. I don't know. All I know is that it doesn't bother me. I also don't know about localization or international support, but it sounds like Keyforge might be limiting that too: That's not an equal footing. Even if they never do any more localisation work, there's still a ton of foreign language product out there. And, well, they're actually distributing to more than just the USA. quote:I also agree on the player base. Keyforge is huge, and people arent going to throw away their 2.7 million decks. That being said, the 'runaway train' verses 'hand cart' analogy is poor. It is a big derailed steam train that is going to take time, money and energy to get back moving at the scale it once was. Meanwhile, there is a small, more efficient diesel that is picking up momentum. I'll gladly ride both trains because I love trains, and leaving the analogy, I love card games. I don't know/understand why it's more efficient in this analogy but <2000 Kickstarter backers and a bunch of day-0 complaints about production issues are not what I'd call picking up momentum. Realistically this game needs to have major retail presence before we have any real idea if it can compete with the big boys, of which Keystone is but a minor one. It's not that it's impossible. Star Realms' original KS was less popular by far and that went gangbusters when it came to retail. But it is far too early to say if it's going to succeed or flop, hence it being a little funny that it's being angled as genuine competition when right now it just needs to survive on its own for a bit. quote:I firmly believe these games will live or die on a digital client. These kinds of games beg for a phone app to play your physical decks on. FFG hired some third party to work on one a while back for Keyforge, but who knows the status of that. The lack of mention in the recent announcement makes me think it is a long time coming, but maybe they are saving it for a GenCon announcement. Also, the game itself is poorly suited to phones anyway. The board state can get very wide, which will be a pain to parse out on a small phone screen. So they've kinda designed themselves into a corner here. It's certainly going to be a benefit if Fusion can produce a good digital client in good time. Partly because it sounds like it needs it - there's a lot more maintenance required and it's one of Keyforge's USPs that it's literally just "have some basic tokens, buy a deck, boom you're done" so the ease of play in the physical version somewhat negates the need for digital. Obviously Covid made a huge difference but even then the unofficial client and TTS both kept the popularity up. A genuine client would've been a huge boon even with Keyforge's ease of play; Fusion could definitely make inroads if they do it right.
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Jun 29, 2022 16:49
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Thirsty Dog posted:That's not an equal footing. Even if they never do any more localisation work, there's still a ton of foreign language product out there. And, well, they're actually distributing to more than just the USA. I think we have a fundamental disagreement here. If there is no more localization, then the product out there is the only product out there. It will sell, it will get played, it will dry up, and it will die. These games are a product that need to generate revenue to survive, and no revenue will be generated, even if players are playing with old stuff. The growth will fizzle in these markets as the product dries up. Both games will have English products available, both in the U.S. and some markets overseas. I know you can preorder the retail version of Fusion in the U.K and Australia. Thirsty Dog posted:I don't know/understand why it's more efficient in this analogy but <2000 Kickstarter backers and a bunch of day-0 complaints about production issues are not what I'd call picking up momentum. Realistically this game needs to have major retail presence before we have any real idea if it can compete with the big boys, of which Keystone is but a minor one. I cannot read the future, but they claim to have a lot of retail preorders after demoing the game at GAMA. They also have the support of Team Covenant, whose opinion holds a fair amount of weight. Keyforge also has their support. I stay away from reddit, bgg and Kickstarter comments, so this is the first I've heard of production concerns. But it is an easily fixable problem. Thirsty Dog posted:It's not that it's impossible. Star Realms' original KS was less popular by far and that went gangbusters when it came to retail. But it is far too early to say if it's going to succeed or flop, hence it being a little funny that it's being angled as genuine competition when right now it just needs to survive on its own for a bit. I agree that it is too early, but this is the first competition to Keyforge in the unique deck game genre. Right now, if you want to grab a random deck and play a game, it is Keyforge or nothing. By the end of the year, it will be Keyforge or Solforge. Both will be available to buy online, at least. And if Stone Blade's propaganda on retail preorders is not just them blowing smoke, then it will be available in a lot of local stores as well. I don't know for sure. Thirsty Dog posted:It's certainly going to be a benefit if Fusion can produce a good digital client in good time. Partly because it sounds like it needs it - there's a lot more maintenance required and it's one of Keyforge's USPs that it's literally just "have some basic tokens, buy a deck, boom you're done" so the ease of play in the physical version somewhat negates the need for digital. Obviously Covid made a huge difference but even then the unofficial client and TTS both kept the popularity up. A genuine client would've been a huge boon even with Keyforge's ease of play; Fusion could definitely make inroads if they do it right. This is where you lose me. Both games are literally just "have some basic tokens, buy a deck, boom you're done". That is why I'm comparing them. That is the whole genre. Technically with Solforge there is a small choice in picking which two halves to combine, but most of the time I've just done that randomly. A pro/con for Solforge is the 'buy a deck' step. The smallest unit you can buy for Keyforge is a $10 deck. It might suck, but you are only out $10. You just throw it in the closet and never play it again. For Solforge, the smallest unit is a $30 box containing four half decks. You can combine these into six different decks, and you can split the cost between two people if you want. The upside is that while some of those six combinations might suck, there is a pretty good chance that at least one of them is playable. So a con is that the smallest unit costs $30 vs $10. The pros are that this $30 gives you enough for two players to play random decks so you can split the cost if you want, and you are less likely to throw cards into the toilet.
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Jun 29, 2022 17:49
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drat shame they don't have the resources to keep the international language versions going. Game was still fairly popular here in Taiwan, and while a lot of people here do speak/read English not having the local version is going to hurt it from getting as popular again. I remember complaining ten years ago that FFG wasn't doing enough to market their games internationally and they listened and announced the Chronos Protocol tour. I felt like that was a good step in trying to push their games globally, so it's sad to see FFG completely gut their OP division and now Christian is back to basically just the continental U.S. market.
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Jun 29, 2022 19:08
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if you live in the northeast us they got plenty of decks at ocean state job lot and ollie's
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Jun 29, 2022 20:57
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If I learned anything from the unique deck building of KeyForge, I wouldn’t be surprised to drop $30 for four half decks and trash them all. After Experiencing Solforge as a Kickstarter backer, I don’t trust Stoneblade to do a good job. Just now, I had difficulty finding the rules of Fusion and had to watch a someone explain it on YouTube. The changes to Solforge in Fusion seem really good, but I don’t see any appeal of playing this game in meatspace with having to have 3 copies of every card. The whole point of Solforge was to be digital only because that’s where it works.
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Jun 29, 2022 21:06
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John Romero posted:if you live in the northeast us they got plenty of decks at ocean state job lot and ollie's That sounds cool. I haven't seen any at the ones near me. I haven't grabbed any since I'm still trying to convert people to Netrunner/NISEI but this game continues to fascinate me.
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Jun 29, 2022 21:28
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Snack Bitch posted:If I learned anything from the unique deck building of KeyForge, I wouldn’t be surprised to drop $30 for four half decks and trash them all. After Experiencing Solforge as a Kickstarter backer, I don’t trust Stoneblade to do a good job. Just now, I had difficulty finding the rules of Fusion and had to watch a someone explain it on YouTube. The changes to Solforge in Fusion seem really good, but I don’t see any appeal of playing this game in meatspace with having to have 3 copies of every card. The whole point of Solforge was to be digital only because that’s where it works. The rules are on their website. They have apparently made changes to the game to simplify it for tabletop, but I cannot tell you what they are. I've never played the original digital version. The three card upgrade system doesnt take much time to get used to. I've been playing lunch games with my old Netrunner group at work, and they picked it up pretty quickly. In Netrunner, you count out the right amount of credits and throw it in the bank. Here, you find the upgraded card and throw it in the discard. It's essentially the same amount of work. That being said, remembering that dead creatures get banished and not discarded has bitten me a few times. Muscle memory has me moving them to the wrong pile. Keyforge got better at generating decks as time went on. I just bought a whole bunch at Asomdee's fire sale, and the average SAS for Mass Mutation is low 70s. There is one in the 90s and a few in the low 60s. This is much better than at launch, where the bell curve was extremely wide. I have no idea how to score Fusion decks in a similar manner. I'm sure someone will come up with something. Every half deck is good at a few different things. The ranking synergies and anti-synergies depends on who it is paired with. That being said, there is at least one modifier that sucks, and if I see it in a deck, I'll think less of it. I'm sure turds exist, and if turds exist, then there is a probability of getting four turds in the same box. At the moment, it feels less likely that will happen than getting a low SAS Keyforge deck. And they could always publish decks that polish those turds in a future set, so I have an incentive to hang onto them. The low SAS Keyforge decks live in a box in my closet, and some day that box will get thrown in the trash.
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Jun 29, 2022 21:54
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Rusty Kettle posted:I think we have a fundamental disagreement here. If there is no more localization, then the product out there is the only product out there. It will sell, it will get played, it will dry up, and it will die. These games are a product that need to generate revenue to survive, and no revenue will be generated, even if players are playing with old stuff. The growth will fizzle in these markets as the product dries up. Both games will have English products available, both in the U.S. and some markets overseas. I know you can preorder the retail version of Fusion in the U.K and Australia. There is a _lot_ of Keyforge product still available, and sales are still pretty good according to a couple of people I know but that might be very UK-centric. Keyforge, despite not being able to produce any 'fresh' decks, has managed to continue selling for a long time - largely helped by the procgen nature of the decks meaning that the concept of a full set is totally dud, so there's always reason to buy decks from any season. Growth will stall, absolutely. No argument there. quote:I cannot read the future, but they claim to have a lot of retail preorders after demoing the game at GAMA. They also have the support of Team Covenant, whose opinion holds a fair amount of weight. Keyforge also has their support. I stay away from reddit, bgg and Kickstarter comments, so this is the first I've heard of production concerns. But it is an easily fixable problem. If you're not even looking at the Kickstarter I'm not sure where you ARE looking at!  TC do good work but their backing doesn't mean a great deal. They've put a lot of time into games they liked that haven't really done a huge amount from then on. But it's great that the game has their support, undeniably. quote:This is where you lose me. Both games are literally just "have some basic tokens, buy a deck, boom you're done". That is why I'm comparing them. That is the whole genre. Technically with Solforge there is a small choice in picking which two halves to combine, but most of the time I've just done that randomly. That's the bit I'm referring to - it stops being a self-contained deck and becomes something with a lot more complexity/time attached. I will add that the game itself is allegedly quite a bit more complicated than Keyforge and that it needs a lot more in-game maintenance and tracking than Keyforge, but with the HUGE caveat that that info comes from Keyforge players and original Solforge players who might well have reason to play this down! quote:A pro/con for Solforge is the 'buy a deck' step. The smallest unit you can buy for Keyforge is a $10 deck. It might suck, but you are only out $10. You just throw it in the closet and never play it again. For Solforge, the smallest unit is a $30 box containing four half decks. You can combine these into six different decks, and you can split the cost between two people if you want. The upside is that while some of those six combinations might suck, there is a pretty good chance that at least one of them is playable. So a con is that the smallest unit costs $30 vs $10. The pros are that this $30 gives you enough for two players to play random decks so you can split the cost if you want, and you are less likely to throw cards into the toilet. To be honest no Keyforge decks are unplayable and I don't expect Solforge ones to be unplayable either. It's definitely too early to say what 'competitive' decks will look like in SF - it might be that you need one of a small percentage of decks to be even in with a shot of winning a tourny, or the power range might be much narrower. Just don't know yet! (I also don't think it matters that much if they can get product to enough casuals, and if 'lesser' decks are still a fun puzzle to play).
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Jun 29, 2022 22:17
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https://gamefound.com/projects/ghost-galaxy-games/keyforge-winds-of-exchange I noticed this when someone linked to the Pueblo reprint in the board game thread. I think it just went up yesterday?
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Aug 4, 2022 22:35
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Yeah, makes me a bit nervous if they require crowdfunding to get this running again. Also sounds like the algorithm isn’t done yet.
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Aug 6, 2022 06:36
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So the crowdfunding was a big success, and they just announced tournament formats which….includes constructed. You can bring X decks and from that make one deck of three houses. Besides the logistics of each deck having a unique card back, it just seems to run counter to the simplicity of the game. And also no mention of the best format, Reversal 
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Oct 8, 2022 15:39
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I think technically you’ve always needed opaque sleeves, so the card backs thing isn’t much of an issue. My cynical bitter side thinks that requiring two decks for Sealed (and the minimal construction you would need for that) is just a way to sell more decks.
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Oct 9, 2022 01:17
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Why would you need opaque sleeves to use a regular deck?
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Oct 9, 2022 03:56
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Pants Donkey posted:Why would you need opaque sleeves to use a regular deck? Just a long standing rule in tcg/ccgs to prevent you from being able to know what a card is by its back. Obviously cheaters themselves aren't deterred by this, but if your card is worn or gets scratched on the back, just through regular play, it can be an issue. If the same thing happens to a sleeve you can just swap to a different sleeve. If you're playing a game with foil cards then a sleeve can also stop them from warping as bad.
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Oct 9, 2022 07:33
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Ghost Galaxy and Petersen are really hanging their hat on the game so I expect them to make it work. The constructed play thing sounds more like a way to just monetize what some people are already doing rather than being a central focus or anything. We’ll see how things turn out but I’m cautiously optimistic.
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Oct 9, 2022 09:23
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Maybe I’m in a minority, or just a filthy casual, but pretty much the only thing I play is Whatever We Call Old Sealed. I don’t have to worry about going through dozens of decks to see what has the best combos and the highest SAS and I know my opponents didn’t do that either. I can show up, give the FLGS  , fling some tokens around. If there’s no official support for this, not even at the casual store level for ambershards, it’ll probably die and I’ll be sad. Why did I do the $400 level of the fundraiser 
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Oct 9, 2022 19:41
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IMO the best events were the "show up, open 3 decks, pick 1 or 2, then use those" ones. Keeps the spirit of using what you get, but gives some leeway for bad luck - and also room to show skill in choosing which deck will perform best.
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Oct 9, 2022 20:02
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Yeah, I'm not a fan of mix and match with sealed either. My favorite events were sealed ones too.
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Oct 9, 2022 22:36
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I could maaaayyybe see sealed constructed going okay? Like open 3 packs, make a deck out of 3 different houses from those packs, then use that. Still loses a bit of the magic, though. That being said, there probably is some demand for more recognizable formats, so whatever. I guess in theory you could even have a draft format where people draft houses from sealed packs?
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Oct 9, 2022 22:45
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Doesn't this defeat the whole point of the fixed decks that made this game distinctive? If you want a $$$$$ card collecting deck building game, there are plenty of other options for that. I've certainly never played anything else than a single sealed deck and don't intend to.
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Oct 10, 2022 13:37
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Entropist posted:Doesn't this defeat the whole point of the fixed decks that made this game distinctive? If you want a $$$$$ card collecting deck building game, there are plenty of other options for that. I've certainly never played anything else than a single sealed deck and don't intend to. So there's three types of tournament play they're testing: Sealed - 2 unopened decks. Open the decks and then use those 6 house options to make 1 deck. My guess is that this is to try and help add more strategy, less RNG, and a very simple deck building element into the game. Does seem somewhat of a weird way to do it though, but leads into the Alliance format so I can see what the goal is. Archon - 3 opened decks. You bring three decks, your opponent chooses one you can't play, then you choose one of the remaining ones to play. Alliance - 1 deck made up of houses from up to three of a player's owned decks. This is the most likely "money format" as good pods will probably sell for more than good decks that you could use in Archon. Obviously created so that older decks, and/or decks with a weak pod, aren't just collecting dust. It's also probably done to applease the people that want to have deck building, but I doubt this will be enough for the hardcore players. I am kind of curious to see what the "best" deck that could be built looks like though.
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Oct 10, 2022 19:19
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Had a friend over and we played for a while. He did the Kickstarter, so hopefully he'll be getting decks of the new set in January. What a great game. I'm half tempted to snipe some of those Black Friday clearance deals to get some old decks for like $2-3 a pop. Is there a reason Age of Ascension decks are so cheap? Was it just overprinted? I'm having a hard time finding Mass Mutation and Dark Tidings discounted anywhere. We did play Solforge Fusion beforehand, which made Keyforge's gameplay even better. Solforge Fusion isn't a bad game, but the bookkeeping on it is miserable. Every time you play a card, you have to search your side deck for the next higher level version of that card and pop it in your discard, and then your spells/creatures get banished once they resolve/die, respectively. It means you're constantly riffling through your set aside cards and not paying attention to the game, and you're getting five new cards each turn so you have to process a lot of new information every turn. Definitely don't get it if you're thinking Richard Garfield was trying to do something similar to Keyforge.
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Nov 15, 2022 22:03
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LifeLynx posted:Had a friend over and we played for a while. He did the Kickstarter, so hopefully he'll be getting decks of the new set in January. What a great game. I'm half tempted to snipe some of those Black Friday clearance deals to get some old decks for like $2-3 a pop. Is there a reason Age of Ascension decks are so cheap? Was it just overprinted? I'm having a hard time finding Mass Mutation and Dark Tidings discounted anywhere. It was overprinted and the community is pretty cool on it as a set outside of a few combos. I personally like it a lot, especially if you play it against itself. Mass mutation is seen as one of the best ones so product sold pretty fast, dark tidings should have some sales here and there but don't know how much FFG put out before they stopped working on Keyforge.
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Nov 16, 2022 00:13
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 09:21 |
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LifeLynx posted:Had a friend over and we played for a while. He did the Kickstarter, so hopefully he'll be getting decks of the new set in January. What a great game. I'm half tempted to snipe some of those Black Friday clearance deals to get some old decks for like $2-3 a pop. Is there a reason Age of Ascension decks are so cheap? Was it just overprinted? I'm having a hard time finding Mass Mutation and Dark Tidings discounted anywhere. The hate for AoA is a bit overboard IMO. The biggest problem is there was just nothing different. It’s really just more of CotA and it was overprinted. The other sets had smaller runs and offer new houses and mechanics so there was more interest.
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Nov 16, 2022 03:28
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