Bit on the fence about this one.

I'm torn between Transformers TCG (big TF fan) and this one.

I like that this game is cheap and accessible. And without 'rares' and all that nonsense.
But I hate the lack of 'theming' and adapting.

Most reviewers seem at least moderately pleased with the game and system.
But one guy made an interesting remark. They had 2 decks. One was clearly a bit better than the other. Winning distinctly more often.
While his own due to the randomness for instance had a card that played off artifacts. But there was only one artifact in the deck.

...that does seem like it risks having a good middle ground but also sometimes a bizarrely awful or bizarrely strong deck.

It seems on one hand good for tournies and casual play. Get a deck and play with it.
At the same end it seems bad for tournies and casual play. As premade decks may randomly be much stronger than the other one.

It partially circumvents the 'guy with 10 boosterboxes' has a cardpool advantage over the guy who can but afford one.
But on the other hand it seems to advantage the guy who can buy a lot of decks 'en masse'.

Has FFG released any more info on the spread of card balance etc?

Beauty of this game is that you can play both (if you have the time). Buy just one or two decks and this is easily playable alongside a more costly ccg/tcg like Transformers.

What's your end goal? If tournaments and intense league play are your thing... nobody knows how big this will end up being in that area. This game is just too new and different for anyone to have any solid information here.

For casual play, you can use the handicap system, which I presume will be assisted by the companion app, to balance out deck strength differences. Which I haven't noticed to be too great (no deck winning more than 2/3 of its games, no matter what opposing deck it faces, or losing more than 1/3 of its games.)

I cannot afford to play tcg anymore so the choice was easy for me. Doesn't transformers have some extremely rare cards in their model?

I’m doing both. I’ll buy the starter for Keyforge (or just 2 decks).

Ill buy a starter and X boosters. X = until I get Starscream and some Jets.

i think game play, edge Keyforge, collectibility is Transformers.

So I say do both!

5 minutes ago, Ywingscum said:

I’m doing both. I’ll buy the starter for Keyforge (or just 2 decks).

Ill buy a starter and X boosters. X = until I get Starscream and some Jets.

i think game play, edge Keyforge, collectibility is Transformers.

So I say do both!

Same here, except starter and 4 keyforge decks and I'll be going for Dinobots.

Funny thing: Keyforge is by Richard Garfield and it uses "Exhausted". While Transformers uses "Tap".

Guess Hasbro/WOTC owns the trademarked term and not Garfield. It still feels odd seeing a new CCG use the term "tap".

Yes it is. I saw Garfield in a video teaching Keyforge and tripping up on the tap thing

10 hours ago, blindside14 said:

I cannot afford to play tcg anymore so the choice was easy for me. Doesn't transformers have some extremely rare cards in their model?

Yes but only two very rares. Which I Will ignore. IT is the “chase” Cards like that Which are a veritable trap. For casual play starter and 2 boosterboxes should Be plenty. Or very casual 2 starters and One boosterboxes. Still not big on the tcg approach though. If not Transformers I would auto skip.

39 minutes ago, Darthvegeta800 said:

Yes but only two very rares. Which I Will ignore. IT is the “chase” Cards like that Which are a veritable trap. For casual play starter and 2 boosterboxes should Be plenty. Or very casual 2 starters and One boosterboxes. Still not big on the tcg approach though. If not Transformers I would auto skip.

Yeah, at first glance the game doesn't seem very deep. But hey it's transformers. And thank god they didn't go with michael bay movie stills.

I just want my CCGs based on 80s cartoons dammit! (Still sad we never got that G.I.Joe card game)

6 minutes ago, Robin Graves said:

Yeah, at first glance the game doesn't seem very deep. But hey it's transformers. And thank god they didn't go with michael bay movie stills.

I just want my CCGs based on 80s cartoons dammit! (Still sad we never got that G.I.Joe card game)

Oh God no, not Bayformers!

Gi Joe had a nifty tcg many years ago but it failed.

Transformers has wider appeal but to Be frank I Will Be surprised if iT lasts beyond 3 years.

Hasbro has the awesome comic, game and boxart to draw from though. I would not mind a bayformers set aimed at that fanbase as long as they cram iT in One set I can skip. Beast Wars, Armada, RID etc could Be standalone sets. That way we can pick and choose.

2 minutes ago, Darthvegeta800 said:

Oh God no, not Bayformers!

Gi Joe had a nifty tcg many years ago but it failed.

Transformers has wider appeal but to Be frank I Will Be surprised if iT lasts beyond 3 years.

Hasbro has the awesome comic, game and boxart to draw from though. I would not mind a bayformers set aimed at that fanbase as long as they cram iT in One set I can skip. Beast Wars, Armada, RID etc could Be standalone sets. That way we can pick and choose.

My friend had the same reaction when I told him there would be a transformers CCG.

I was half expecting them to go with RID. Imagine my happyness when they went with the trading card art.

One thing gotta be a bit careful on when evaluating decks is that just because Deck A beats Deck B more often than not doesn't mean Deck A is stronger. Deck B might have a much better matchup against Decks C and D, and so potentially be a more viable tournament option.

Due to the nature of the game a lot is likely to be missed due to play at the moment only happening with a couple of decks.

3 hours ago, Darthvegeta800 said:

Transformers has wider appeal but to Be frank I Will Be surprised if iT lasts beyond 3 years.

Same, actually I think the first year will be the biggest hurdle. I would imagine this year especially is a bad time to launch a tcg with the warhammer, keyforge and transformers all coming out at nearly the same time. TCGs are such a risk, if you invest in one that's not mtg you have a 98% chance your cards are worthless in 2 years, so hopefully you still like the game by then. Probably the saving grace is that the game is by the titans in that genre. CCGs and maybe this new UDG genre are a better model for the consumer imo, I just dislike tcgs. I've been burned by far too many.

Don't blame the decks, blame the players. That's what I always like to say. A great player with an average deck will win more often than an unskilled player with a top tier deck.

A knife might seem like a poor weapon in a gunfight, but a knife in the right hand can end a gunfight before it starts.

8 minutes ago, RedMageStatscowski said:

Don't blame the decks, blame the players. That's what I always like to say. A great player with an average deck will win more often than an unskilled player with a top tier deck.

A knife might seem like a poor weapon in a gunfight, but a knife in the right hand can end a gunfight before it starts.

To a degree and only in the competitive scene.
During casual play the one that has the better deck has a key advantage.
Hence if the card spread isn't good enough you'll end up with some weird things going on with Keyforge.

Will depend also heavily on how 'get an engine running' or 'get combo's off' -centric the game is.
If these are crucial elements of gameplay. Randomisation can very strongly handicap you.
If their system for creating random decks takes it into account it should more or less even out for 80% of us.

I suppose we'll find out quickly in the first months.

14 minutes ago, blindside14 said:

Same, actually I think the first year will be the biggest hurdle. I would imagine this year especially is a bad time to launch a tcg with the warhammer, keyforge and transformers all coming out at nearly the same time. TCGs are such a risk, if you invest in one that's not mtg you have a 98% chance your cards are worthless in 2 years, so hopefully you still like the game by then. Probably the saving grace is that the game is by the titans in that genre. CCGs and maybe this new UDG genre are a better model for the consumer imo, I just dislike tcgs. I've been burned by far too many.

On the plus side if it crashes and burns... could end up being easy to pick up a ton of packs on the cheap.
Also if you end with a decent card pool you'll still have a good play experience to keep playing for years to come.

Problem is usually if you 'step out' of an ongoing game that does not work with blocks. Can be hard to get back into.

Personally if they keep it going 3 years i'll be content IF they keep promo and weird rarity nonsense out of the game.

...and bring out a starting deck that makes sense with the rules in it + some quality and logic behind it.
Current one I know is aimed at the youngest players but including a little rulebook is a minimum to me. But apparently including rulebooks in a TCG deck is 'passé'.

There's one aspect of the unique deck feature that I'm not seeing discussed much, but which I feel adds a significant strength for keyforge.

Assuming they get online play going, the potential amount of unique game play is astounding. Consider the experience of the Hearthstone ladder system, or any CCGs version of standard, where the majority of games are played against roughly 4-8 known quantity netdecks (some may differ by a card or two but are otherwise the same deck list). The reason many of us give up on that type of game play is the boring/repetitive nature of replaying the same match ups versus the same decks. Where as in an online keyforge format you could play 100s of games and rarely see anything resembling the same decks.

Even if 2 decks have similar houses they will likely have very different cards, resulting in unique games. Considering only the current set list, there are upwards of 50+ cards per house. Those are distributed as 16+ commons, 16+ uncommons and the rest in rares/specials (basing this on the incomplete card lists on reddit). With each house having only 12 cards (mostly common and uncommon) from that list, duplication of card lists will be infrequent at best. Imagine that you managed to get 10 decks with the exact same 3 house combination, which at 1/35 chance would take roughly 3500 decks to accomplish, there should still be substantial variation in the commons and uncommons between each of those 10 decks based on this distribution model.

** As an aside, I think people are seriously underestimating the probability of finding similar "powerful" decklists. People will need to sort through hundreds or thousands of potential decks depending on how selective they are being. What FLGS will have that type of supply? Even on eBay that would require a massive secondary market and a huge amount of time.

As a player, the thought of that variety in game play amazes me. Each time you use a different deck it multiplies the possibilities. So essentially if you enjoy the game but find yourself getting bored with your deck, a simple $10 purchase starts it all over with a unique deck. To say nothing of the possibility for expansions.