Keyforge AoA pre release event Results and Thoughts

Thursday was the launch of the new Age of Ascension set for Keyforge. My FLGS scheduled a sealed event for that evening.  This was my first organized play event for Keyforge so I was a little nervous. It didn't help that I hadn't played regularly in a bit more than a month.  But the crowd was friendly and the decks we all got seemed to be in roughly similar power levels. I opened The One who sadly Believes in Sadness.  Its quite different from my best two Call of the Archons decks. The board state is much more pronounced and there is much less pure aember generation. Stormcrawler was an MVP all night helping slow down decks while Tantadin was effective at emptying one opponents archive through our game. I will need a reminder for my Grovekeeper to remember to actually do his ability as well. I do however have to get a bit better with Exhume and not finished with you, and when to pull them. I was also a little disappointed by just how vulnerable Duskwitch is.  Her ability is very good, but she was pretty easy to remove it felt like.

Overall I like the deck, but I ended up just 1-2 on the evening. The first game was tight and I was up 2 keys to 1 with a good board state and a chance to reap and win the following turn. However my opponent played Martin Generosity and Key Abduction to generate a ton of aember and essentially 2 keys. The second game I won pretty handily. My opponent ran out of gas after a quick early key and I was able to keep his board pretty barren through some fights and Natures call. The last game my opponent had a good shadow thief deck and just kept stealing aember. I couldn't get down to my pixies either to help protect myself. Also I kept trying to ping his Bad Penny's back to his hand and get Tezmal to lock them there but it never worked out right.I think with a little more experience this deck would be a very fun one to play, and can time itself correctly to have a huge oppressive board.  The event was a ton of fun and hopefully Ill get to do some more here in the near future.

Keyforge Deck Analyis: Keekhling, the Crony of the Depths

Finally getting a chance after the holidays to get back into a normal gaming schedule.Which has meant lately quite a bit more Keyforge.  I've still been laying a lot of The Terror that Purifies Togetherness, and it still continues to perform wonderfully.  But, I've added a few other decks, and this is one of them.

Keekhling, the Crony of the Depths
This is a creature heavy deck, featuring 20 creature cards, 11 actions, 3 artifacts and 2 upgrades.  This deck has a similar synergy between the Mars and Sanctum houses with Commander Remiel and Ulyq Megamouth helping to use creatures form other houses.  You could chain them together to be able to get 4 Aember on a turn when all four are out.  Mantle of the Zealot also lets you do some house cheating, getting a chance to trigger Stampede on an untamed turn to really fire things off. There is also a little ability to archive some cars with Mars, to try to help set up some bigger plays or protect a wounded creature to return later with Zyzzix the Many and Vezyma Thinkdrone.  

Overall though this deck does not play very well. The large number of creatures is a bit of an illusion since 15 of them have power 3 or less with little or no armor. It makes it very susceptible to board wipe effects. It also lacks any wipe effects of its own, besides  Qyxxlyx Plague Master which is limited to humans. It also hits a large chunk of your own creatures and kills most outright. Ammonia Clouds is similar that you'll end up removing most of your own pieces. It also lacks any real aember control for your opponent. No steals outside of stampede and only a couple captures. 

I have yet to win a game with this deck. It might work well against a deck that features less board presence so it's small creatures can't just get bullied or wiped.  There's a little ability to jump Aember from Untamed, but its just too little I think for this deck to be consistently a winner. 

Keyforge Deck Analysis: The Terror that Purifies Togetherness

So I've fallen into the Keyforge trap.  I played several games last Thursday with my friend who has purchased about 15 decks so far.  There is a pretty large player pool here, so I decided to pick up a couple of decks.  The big thing with this game is of course the random deck you get.  That I think makes the analysis outside of playing the deck important as well, since you need to have an idea of what the deck wants to do before you can just try to pilot it.

The Terror That Purifies Togetherness
This is the first deck I purchased, and so far I've gone 3-1 with it.

Breaking down the deck, there are 12 creatures, 20 events, 4 artifacts and no upgrades.  Being that light on creatures means the board presence in the deck is going to be small a lot of the time.  This is further reinforced by the fact that a majority of the creatures have 3 or less power, making them a little susceptible to board wipes.  Luckily though, this deck is pure gas when it comes to Amber creation. Thirteen separate cards generate Amber on play, and several more generate or steal on entering play (such as The Terror and Urchin).  The two copies of Full Moon also will generate if you're able to get several Untamed Creatures into hand.

This deck has several combo plays that can quickly generate a lot of Amber.  The aforementioned 3xThe Terror and either Gateway to Dis or Three Fates with Arise could very easily net you at least 12 Amber on a turn.  Untamed has a similarly powered engine with Full Moon, Niffle Ape and Troop Call being able to get 8 on a turn.  The Sting also pairs well with these combos above, give you potentially a huge Amber reserve, or with Lash of Broken Dreams and Murmook to force your opponent to spend more Amber than they potentially want to, to give to you.  The 2xSilvertooth are also a nice piece to have with something like Pawn Sacrifice, since you can Reap with one and then possibly remove 2 creatures as well.

The one downside to this deck is that each House wants to have explosive turns, which means you have to get them assembled.  There are not many set in play and let them generate value cards, since most creatures are small enough to get removed by a lot of potential Board control pieces.  It can mean there will be some turns where you are making plays that you aren't really wanting to make, but that you need to clear a little hand space to get to your real combo piece.