Keyforgery

So excited about this novel experience, I arrived at the Omni Atrium just after 0800 Saturday morning. There were a dozen staff members setting out table tents and starting up computers. Around 0900 the registration desk opened up, and I checked in that I was here for the sealed Vault event.at 1000.  We were called to order at the appointed time and seated so that they could count us off. One hundred and twenty-eight of us were there, many having registered beforehand and a few taking up no-show slots. I was given three decks: Austere "Old School" Ludvig Dourly Real Festus Umberto, Bastionother Expert After much agonizing at leaving Shadows on the table, the Archon I picked was Austere "Old School" Ludvig, a Logos/Sanctum/Dis deck with good card churn from Logos, a lot of capture from Sanctum and some creature removal and artifact control from all three. One specific flaw in this deck that I overlooked was the presence of Three Fates in a deck with so many ...

Vault Tour Day 1 – Saturday Morning Got up before my alarm. Even with the time change, I got up later than I normally do. Looking forward to the event definitely helped, plus I didn’t know how far I would be walking or how hot it would be this morning. (Last night, arriving at 9:30 local time, the temperature was still in the high 80s and humid. Miserable enough that my first action upon arriving in my hotel room was to take a shower.) The temperature is only 72 right now, and the sunlight creeping up on the buildings looks a lot like the opening credits of Paprika . There’s a Waffle House just across Centennial Park so I got breakfast there and definitely know where dinner can be had if I don’t feel like walking far tonight. (Saturday night in downtown Atlanta is something I haven’t seen for over a decade. I have no idea how busy and active the area here stays.) The Omni Atrium is densely packed with tables, about half dedicated to X-Wing. (Those tables are a little wider th...

I love the rules of Keyforge. They are simple at their core, with a systemic theme of card interaction driven by the decisions of the active player. It is a testament to the robust attention to playtesting and editing that there is (currently) only one card errata out of the first set of over 350 cards. Nonetheless, the intricacies of the wording of the rules means that players have to exercise great care in how effects are implemented in order. (Yeah, Library Access and Wild Wormhole, I'm looking at the two of you troublemakers.) So I'm creating a running list of questions I have raised about certain cards. I'll answer those issues as best as I can, citing the rules, glossary and FAQ directly. This will give me practice in learning the rules and more importantly help train my mind to implement the rules correctly Also, I'll add to the list as new incidents arise that I want to dissect. But here's what I've run across so far: Q1: Is a creature friendly to i...

Today I am gonna talk about the elephant in the room. Not THIS elephant, although those anthropomorphic crows are SUPER racist. No, the elephant in the room is Magic: the Gathering. Introduced in the 1990s, it has reigned supreme as the game that introduced most of the world to the novel concept of the Collectible Card Game, or CCG. Its success spawned a number of immediate copycats, including a few titles from companies that should have known better (yeah, I'm looking at you , Illuminati: NWO.) I was a fan of the Illuminati BEFORE Beyonce made them cool. The introduction of any new CCG (and sometimes even a non-collectible Card Game) invariably invites comparisons to Magic. The comparison is encouraged in no small part because Magic patented the concept of "tapping" and that really is the best mechanic to indicate whether a resource represented by a card has been used yet in a turn, making the process of tapping cards ubiquitous in the CCG arena. So when I wa...