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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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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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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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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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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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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 18:02 |
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LifeLynx posted:
I do have to say that all the bookkeeping you mention becomes second nature after a few plays. It kinda reminds me of Netrunner where initially calculating the breaker/ice strength compared to credits seems like an impossible mental feat, but eventually it becomes effortless and you just automatically do it while thinking about something else.
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Nov 16, 2022 03:42
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