SPALDING WARGAMING CLUB
a very lively game, not too lengthy and surprisingly thoughtful for something that appears so luck-driven and swingy Keyforge comes from the mind of designer Richard Garfield, the man who gave us King of Tokyo and, of course, Magic: the Gathering. There's a blog analysing the game in depth and comparing it to Epic.
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In this game, as you'd expect, you are gods or super-wizards or something called Archons and you gather a team of critters from different realities to fight over a resource called aember. Why? So you can use aember to forge mystical keys (get the name now?). Why do you want mystical keys? Never mind. Three keys and you win.
The premise may be bland but the game construction is innovative. You buy a deck of cards for £8-9 and this consists of cards from 3 'Houses' made up of commons, uncommons and rares. The Houses are Brobnar (giants and trolls), Dis (demons), Logos (cyborgs), Mars (kitschy Martians), Sanctum (paladins), Shadows (rogues) and Untamed (forest-folk). Crucially, every deck is unique. There are no booster packs and you never add extra cards in. There are billions of possible permutations.
Game play is simple. Each turn you declare a House and then play, use or discard as many cards as you like of that House (but not any of your other Houses). The fun comes from the exceptions. All sorts of cards tell you to draw more cards, activate other cards or wipe all cards from the table. You're trying to use your creatures to reap aember, but of course you want to kill your opponent's creatures to stop him doing the same. Then again, you can steal or capture his aember too.
It's a very lively game, not too lengthy and surprisingly thoughtful for something that appears so luck-driven and swingy. As you get to know your deck, all sorts of card-engines and contingencies emerge, especially if you can archive cards for later use.
But the main pleasure of the game is social. When you go up against a new deck, everything changes. You'll face cards you've never seen before and some of your old sure-win stratagems will fail. The way every deck is transformed by fresh synergies when it goes up against a new deck reinvigorates this game even for a deck you've played dozens of times and know inside out.