Questions from returning player

By Lillumultipass, in KeyForge

Posted at
Hi everyone,
I discovered Keyforge at the end of last year with the release of Call of Archons. I bought a few decks, played a few decks 2-handed (i.e., against myself) to get a feel for them, 2 games with a friend, but then, Keyforge was "tossed" aside, I am not sure why. I guess there were a few reasons : at that time, we had more trouble organizing our game night and we were mostly 3 people and I did not find multiplayer rules that I liked. Also, I received quite a few KS boardgames that I wanted to try, the beginning of this year was a bit tiring as my youngest daughter was not sleeping well and constantly ill...
Also, I was probably a bit dismayed by the lack of "strategy" content. I have played CCG-style games most of my life and something I enjoy quite a bit (sometimes more than playing) is reading a well-written strategy piece.
Anyhow, back to today. Worlds collide is out and I am intrigued by the new factions. Also, as I just got Marvel Champions LCG, who shares a similar drawing mecanism (i.e., draw up to your max hand size at the end of the turn), I was reminded of keyforge.
Hence, here I am, with a bunch of questions :
  1. How has Keyforge developped in your area ? Is the community still active ? Stiil growing ?
  2. How is the meta and the competitve side of the game ? I lost track about all formats and I am not sure I want to take part in tournaments, but I used to be a rather competitive person. What I am worried about in Keyforge is that the Archon format seems to be dominated by "extreme" decks, i.e., those at the top end of the distribution. Is that true ? Do chains in chainbound events alleviate the matter ? What about larger events ?
  3. A related question : how would you weight skill/luck/deck as critical to winning. What formats seem to be the most skill-intensive?
  4. How many decks do you own ? What do you do with decks you dislike, either because of playstyle or because they suck ? Do they sit in a cardbox, such as the bunch of commons you accrue over time when you play a CCG ? Do you keep the worst ones to play reversal ? If say, you have a larger collection than your friends, do you do "blind" games whereby each player chooses a deck at random ?
  5. I have this deck, which, according to decks of keyforge is quite good : https://decksofkeyforge.com/decks/b9783188-0743-4894-ba6d-48ae14ce3577 Does it really mean that it is in the top percentile in terms of expected performance (according to this metric) ?
  6. Are there some good multiplayer rules now (ideally for 3 players)?
  7. What are the best content creators, both in written form (my prioriry) and vids ?
  8. What is your background ? What's your favorite thing about Keyforge ? Do you player other card games or board games?
Well, that was quite a lot of questions ;-)
thanks a lot for any answer !
Posted at

1. There are FB groups and Discords used for MN Keyforge players to join where they talk about all the upcoming events and coordinate for going to things like Vault Tours, etc. There are about five stores I see regularly posting, but I am sure this will increase now that Store Leaderboards are a thing.

2. Sealed and Archon are still the main ways to play, but there are reversals here and there. Store/Prime Championships seem to have brought the competitive side up a notch (it brought me out after leaving for the exact reason of 'I can play decently, but for what?'). Store/Prime events don't use chains, so you will be playing against some pretty strong decks, just make sure you know what cards combinations are popular in your area if you want to try to bring something against it.

3. I would say that if you are going to play in the competitive events, know what you deck does. Skill and deck will play the largest factors against other skilled players. I played my CoA deck versus some interesting AoA at the last event before WC came out.

4. I would say I have over 50, but less than 100. I prefer aember rush strategies or aember denial, personally. My other decks I have together to use to teach people or give away. One of the players in my area brings a "Deck Orphanage" where you can take a deck and leave a deck. Seems like a neat idea. I am thinking of going through mine and making boxes of 4-5 decks that are in the same power ranges to maybe trade/sell to newer players.

5. It is going to be dependent on how well you are able to realize when to go for what cards. This goes back to "know your deck". Your deck could be the "best", but if you play it poorly, then it obviously won't feel like it.

6. Still no official rules, the only ones I have use is you can only do things to the player on your left with three players and the same + range of influence 1 for more players (if you have a card that affects everyone, it only hits the players to your left and right).

7. There are some out there, the only ones I follow are the people who brought cameras to record their matches where I would play. You might be able to find podcasts that describe good combos to look for in certain houses, or how older cards may work better against newer decks (Guilty Hearts is good against Exhalted creatures).

8. I have played card games for about 23 years starting with Magic (still play) and jumped onto KeyForge because it was a Richard Garfield game. What was really interesting is that my other friends were more interested in it when it was coming out, but they burned out quickly and I was luke-warm at first and love it just as much as Magic. My favorite thing is probably the names followed by the community we have here in MN. There are a lot of good winners and losers, there is much less salt than Magic, but it really isn't fair to compare the two games otherwise. I love Magic since it is basically my lifeblood and identity since it was the first thing I learned after moving from a different state as a kid. I try to bring that kind of experience to people who are new to games in general by teaching them KeyForge or Ascension.

Posted at
22 hours ago, KandyKidZero said:

6. Still no official rules, the only ones I have use is you can only do things to the player on your left with three players and the same + range of influence 1 for more players (if you have a card that affects everyone, it only hits the players to your left and right).

I'm still holding out hope we'll get an official multiplayer set one day... 🙏

Posted at

I played at the store today and quite a few people came by. We've not been organized, yet, but next week we'll have a sealed tournament with about 6 players, in a rather small town. The first batch of WC is already sold out. I Player ..