KeyForge – Impact Review – Board Game Impact

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Have you ever played collectable card games like Magic the Gathering, or Are you looking for a new card game to play against others? Check out this episode where Bruce takes a look at the brand new, procedurally generated card game KeyForge: Call of the Archons made by Richard Garfield and published by Fantasy Flight Games. KeyForge has a lot of new and unique aspects that you will discover in this episode that set it in a whole new league of games while keeping the game easy to understand and is full of fun exploration for the players.

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To learn more about KeyForge:

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Check out all the discovered decks in the world through the Master Vault.

Transcription

00:00:06 - 00:05:03

Hello and welcome to board game impact a podcast where look into board games and related topics. So that way you can know the impact that they may have fear gaming group. Today. I'm looking into key Ford's call the are cons designed by Richard Garfield and published by fantasy flight games. My name is Bruce Brown and you can find me on board game geek, as Bruce Brown as well as on Facebook, Instagram Twitter patriotic as board game impact. So today, I'm going to give be giving you look at key Ford's call the Arcand from here on out and it's going to refer to it as key forwards key forge a game designed by Richard Garfield which some of you may be familiar with that name from one of our earlier episodes. When we talk to Erin dean about her book for the love of board games in which she interviewed Richard Garfield Richard Garfield is the one of the regional designers of magic the gathering and now several years later came out with eight new card game. And that card game is called key forge- so key is a card game in which each player has a deck of thirty six cards that are procedurally generated, I'll get into what all that means here in a minute, but they play with their deck, and they're going to be playing creatures artifacts and some other unique abilities or actions. And I. Homes and upgrade cards from their hand onto creatures in order to forge what are called keys keys are constructed by collecting amber during your turn. And if at the start of your turn you have six amber, then you get you must forge a key. And if you Ford's three keys you win the game. But you can only four Domecq some of one during that initial part of your turn. Now, how do you do all this? So what's kind of cool is that the game of key forge- the world? If key for realms of keyboard is divided among seven houses, an every single deck has three different houses in it. And each of those houses has exactly twelve cards in the deck. So, you know that a third of the deck is going to be one house third another house third, the third house. But at the start of your turn you choose a house that is represented in your deck. And what's fascinating is that is the only house as creatures everything else. Cards from that house. The only things that you can play or fight with excetera during your turn making the other two thirds of your deck, not usable. Now it's kind of fascinating. Or there are some synergies that you can do to use different neighboring creatures and things which are fascinating. I'll let you discover some of that and I'll talk a little bit about it here in a minute. But what you're going to be doing is by using the abilities of the creatures, or sometimes fighting or doing an actually what's called reaping. You're actually going to be collecting that amber. And again, if you have six at the start of your turn, you must Ford a key. Now what's nice is that this game is kind of tossing some traditional builders on its head in which some of the mechanics of drawing at the beginning of your turn things like that, that's not how this works. Actually, at the end of your turn, and I'm gonna get into some of that uniqueness here in a second, which one give you a foreshadowing. The other thing you can do is if your opponent has some creatures and you wanna stop them from being. Reaper you some of the abilities that are on this creatures, you can fight. But the fascinating thing is that your opponent has no hit points themselves. It's only only only the creatures. And so if you were to attack with let's say night, making up the names ear and night in your night has strength five, it's going to be a little red circle on the left hand side of the cardinals, say, five, and the, let's say you're tacking opponent, who has a bear type creature and that bear has a strength of four while the night's gonna take four damage from the bear, and the night will kill the bear because it's hitting it for five so that number is Representative of both the strength as well as the defense of that creature of the health points. Now there are also some shields on the right hand side of the card, and what those do they block one point of damage each per turn. But what's really nice is that those, those points of the shields will all he'll up back at the end of the turn. And again, if your opponent has no cr-. Features you can't fight them because they don't have any hip points as a person. But what's nice is you can just use your creatures than to reap which gets you closer to your goal of having six keys to six amber to then for a key. So some interesting notes about all this again, is designed by Richard Garfield. Richard brought the idea of key forwards too fancy flight back in twenty fifteen at the time he called it actually Technic that was in an article by Christian Peterson the former president of as day and head of has flight for a very long time. And so they been working on this for a couple years now.

00:05:03 - 00:10:05

Now what this game does is a kind of turns traditional collectible card games living card games any competitive type card game that we've seen before. Magic the gathering many many others and it flips on its head. So for the first time pretty much ever, you're not doing deck building. You're not going out buying booster packs, you're not doing any of that. And trying to who I want this card, and need to find three more of it because I have to form my deck. No, none of that. You buy the deck, and it's as is in many builders, or deck type fighting games card games, every card every creatures going to have some sort of, like energy or Mana or resource. Relative costs for you have to pay in order to play them. See I you'd have to pay that Reese play that resource down. Then I'll later turned us those resources that you've collected to then play a card. No. This is just in key. Just just if you have that card, and it is of the house, Evert claimed on that turn, or an ability with less. You play it play it. There is no resource cost the other thing, too, is that you actually draw your cards up at the end of your turn in many other card games drying up the feds, the first thing you do at the start of your turn. Oh it's my turn drama carts. No. You drop to your hand limit at the end of your turn. Which is nice because then you're able to see what's going on for your opponent end the cards that you just got. And not having to wait to see what am I gonna get? How am I gonna counter these things you're able to plan things out a little bit more, which also may actually speedups these games a little bit? Which is really, really nice. We're able to get more bang for the buck in the amount of time. The cool thing about it too is that although I said that this is a game read just get a deck as is every that opened if feels like someone went through and constructed it, but they didn't computer built it through an algorithm. And it was procedurally generated and on that note, getting into the some of the components, I'm going to go into what this procedural generation thing is so essentially in traditional games, you would have to you'd have to print, an entire sheet, and, and he'd have to cut it. And then you get it all set up for booster packs, and things and packaged up and sent out with key forge-, every deck has a unique what they call Arcand, which is the art on the back of the card. So if you think about it any other card game you've ever played any deck of cards. You've pretty much ever used it all has the same back. Right. Your back of your deck of cards of your thirty six cards are different than the back. Of anyone else's cards anywhere in the world. And in dish into that there's also a name of your deck on the back and on the front on every one of the cards making it so that way you know, that card is actually part of that deck. And so your deck is one hundred percent unique besides for the fact of the cards that are in it, but also because those names, etc. It's just incredible. Now, what that does though, is it creates this opportunity for you to have this ability to go in with the deck that you just have. And it's really nice. In the fact that this is century showing of how we've evolved, as a culture in terms of technology and access to because this legitimately just wasn't possible in the past without a Astra, nominal costs and the fact that you can do all this and just get a deck for ten bucks is incredible, and kudos FD for figuring this all out. Now, I will say that I did just say that every deck has a procedural generated name. Sadly, there has been a recall notice by fantasy flight games in the state that about point zero five percent of the decks will have to be recalled and what they're going to do is send it if your deck is one of the decks us recalled send it into them. And they will send you to free dex in return. These are just because some of them might not be the most appropriate just a computer that made it and the refining the system. But again, only point zero five at tops now why what? Makes procedural procedural generation kind of beneficial for us. So I did a little research, and I actually read part of a book. The book is called procedural generation in game design. It was made by Tanya short and tan atoms in two thousand seventeen but specifically in there was a chapter in it, that just fascinated me and it was the when and why you, would you want to use procedural generation as Darin, gray and Darren went into the fact that procedural generation can be great for the following reasons, and these are unique to procedural generation, first off procedural generation provides individual experiences that are unique for every single player, it's the opportunity for each player to soley possess, something that no one else has instead of going out and getting a box of chocolates.

00:10:05 - 00:15:04

This is more like the box of talk. Let's of Forrest Gump. It's like you never know what you're going to get. Another cool thing that Darren brings up is that it brings? New gameplay interaction typically if you've ever been to a magic, the gathering tournament or different card game tournaments you're typically going to be seeing one of four decks, being played, because those are the men maxed decks, that are just known to do really well, and you're trying to fight a way around that what's fascinating about this new gameplay though, is that competitions or not the same types of craft index rather a player has to be adaptable, and they have to be able to plan and adapt in the moment since they know or they are facing a unique deck that no one else has. No, it's kind of cool. Is that everyone of these decks has another card that lists all thirty six cards that are in a deck and that is public knowledge in some of the formats of the game? And so that means that your opponent can know what you have, and actually, there's some interactions in which you'll switch decks to play. And so you have to be able to adapt. And grow, which I think this is kind of really cool for the gamer of having to end encouraging the game or to have to be able to grow and be better. And just kind of advanced the how in the hobby, which is cool. I got two more Google things that this chapter kinda showed about procedural generation. The next one is that it actually is in human creativity. Now that might sound demeaning or bad, but it's not I didn't really know where it was going to first and then it just clicked. And so in human creativity if you think about it as humans were only able to think of so much. We tend to rely on different tropes. If you look back at some of the work of the hero's journey in the research, that was done on the hero's journey back by Joseph Cambell back in the nineteen forties, in looking back over generations, and generations and generations of literature in that every story of a hero, typically went through the same arc. We're gonna we rely on this, tropes. And having these XP procedural generated offers a new product. That's not been thought of because computers. Don't think about things the way we do nor in the. Realm of our nation this humans. And so they're able to think of things that we might never think of that being said, though, all of this is within a set of expectations, the algorithm as well as seven houses is a set list of cards, etc. So that actually these me too, the last thing of the chapter, and that was the inspiration of Infinity. So having the same deck size with the same houses being selected from this creates an interesting straddling effect or players have an infinite content at the fingertips that they can get lost in the joy of the potential, while still remaining confident because of the bay set of expectations that they will get. And so it's understanding that they have the tools to do the job. But seeing the open slate and canvas ahead of them, which is really interesting and unique. Now, I already talked a little bit about the public information and each deck comes with card. I talked about with the list. On that card. There's actually a QR code in fantasy flight released an application, that's on Android, an iphone. It's called master volt, this is centrally a companion app for key Ford. Now what you do is you pull out your phone open the app, and you scan that little QR code, and then in your profile, which is your asthma day profile, your deck is listed. It shows you the cards you have in it. It's good way to track all the decks you have cards, you have as well as you can also search decks and searched dex. I mean all decks, that have been Gordon, quote discovered in the world. And so as of this recording which is just a week after the game launched last Thursday. There is now a whopping one hundred seventeen thousand four hundred forty three decks already discovered around the world. That's incredible. Congratulations fantasy light now. Some of you may be saying, okay, well, scannon the deck. Does that mean I can play them online play them any where in the world that would be freaking sweet? However, the app does not facilitated any kind of game play like that nor does it have any other features at this time. But there's some things built in that we can see. There is a reward system built in, but we don't know what the reward Goto yet. In the future, though, they already talked about this in a live YouTube stream the fantasy flight hosted. And what they talked about, was the fact that it will have the ability to track your wins and track your losses at some of the some of the national worldwide or local competitions.

00:15:05 - 00:20:05

Now why that's important is because there's one thing I haven't talked about yet, and that's called chains. And so what chains are is chains are on some cards. It'll say wipe out all creatures which also means owned by the way, all creatures meaner on, they'll say, like friendly or unfriendly, if it's trying to be specific. But all creatures would mean all. And then it would say gained three chains and what chains are this is probably the most complicated part of the game for the first time player. But then it's really simple. Once you get going chains are on a one to six scale. So if you have between one and six chains, then you're max hand size is five, and if you are to have to draw card at the end of your turn, and you are below your maximum size. Well, guess what? You only draw up to five, and then every churn, we need you that you then lose a chain. And so after three turns if you had three chains, and you were had to draw up, each one of those turns you would have drawn up to five at the end of that third turn, you would have no more trains left. Now, what this does with the APO is, if there's a deck in your local community. That's just dominating. Well, with some of the features that they're going to be rolling out that, that deck itself might have chains applied to it. So that means that. Yeah. That player who is showing up and dominating everybody with this deck. Yeah. They can play with it, but they're going to have to have a smaller hand size at the start of the game. And essentially makes it levels out the playing field. Now there's nothing stopping that player from just going and getting another deck and having no chains on them whatsoever. And so for those who are able to adapt and able to lean into the diverse strategies and really pull. No, the synergies that can happen between different houses beyond one deck alone. They're going to be fine. And so it's really cool of this young, I'm going to support you in wanting to see you, if you like to use that deck. That's fine. But no, you're gonna have a hurdle that you're going to have to go through. But I'm also going to challenge you to try something new, which is something we haven't really seen before and as humans if you think about it when you go into a classroom and just go and sit down in the same seat. Well, what if that instructor you can sit in that seat? But I'm gonna put that same chair in a different part of the room. Etc. And so it's just this cool unique thing, the fancy flight is doing to encourage people to explore and that's probably one of the coolest things of this game. Is that it's really the card game itself is fun. But there's also that really cool like birthday present moment where your getting this deck, and you got to discover what's in it. You get to hold in your hand. Something that no one else has. And then you get to try and figure out how am I gonna wake this work? And so, with all that I think it's kind of cool, and it's and I'm going to get into some of the impact that key Ford's. I've seen with forage already and I've played it a bunch so that procedural generation has been present with video games for a long time. Now, actually, there's many open world games are different things where they'll just generate trees or random encounters etcetera. But we've never ever seen that in board games, because guess what board games have to be phys. Weekly manufactured, and that's really hard to do. Because typically in a manufacturing plant it's grab this part. Put it in the box closed the box seal the box in the box or stack up with the other boxes on the box now they have to be more intentional about how they do that. So the fact that figure fantasy flight and the technology is now making this able to happen is really cool. So magic during and other collectible card games or living card games had it where sometimes in the past, if you could afford to, you could just buy the cards you wanted and craft your deck inserted instead of just trying to have to go out there. And discover right. So sometimes there has been a negative stereotype of that money could equal victory with key forge, all decks, cost ten dollars out of the box, you open it. And you play it and you can play with it immediately. That's it. You're good to go. Now, the hard part is that not everyone's there yet, and that's fine. And there still are some who think that has to be this one way. Right. And inherently some decks. Yeah. They might be better than others. But the overall landscape keeps an importance on that discovery and being able to play that deck. Well, because you're never gonna face the same opponent. You're gonna have to be able to be adaptable. And so there are some cards that people feel are like, oh my God. I have to have this card, or the set of cards of this combination or these combinations of houses that's there on thought, and that's fine.

00:20:06 - 00:25:07

And actually, there was a set a set of cards called the four horsemen, and there was one deck that went viral on Reddit Facebook and everything, like crazy that contained two of each of the four, horsemen this person, put it up on EBay and just yesterday that deck sold for two thousand dollars on EBay within the. The first week of the launch now this is much more of the collectible card game reminiscent secondary market. But here's the thing, we've already talked about if that deck is that powerful. And first of all, I wish them the best of luck for that person, that's meant that because the person you just bought it from paid ten bucks. But if that deck is that powerful guess what? It's going to have chains on it. Meaning that you're gonna be limited from the get-go and I just want to encourage all to think about this things differently. It's not having to have these certain cards. It's how you play with them that's going to matter. Now when you look at change, and you look at a dull tes some hardcore gathering players in stores are showing more difficulty when adapting to this new idea and building custom decks and for some of them, that's our favorite part of collectible card games, and that's fine. I actually want to see magic continue. Magic is a great game that. Played an important part in my life growing up, and I wanna see it thrive. These decks are not these two games or not like the s they may pull some of the same players. But the audiences can also be very different. And then active discovery, I think is more of what's going on here. So I do want to say that fantasy flight has announced a couple different tournament formats for this. So the two things are, are con- and sealed Arcand is your most normal like card game type format in which every player is going to bring a deck that's reregistered to them and they'll play with it. Simple sealed. One though is every player will simultaneously open a box so one deck box. And they'll play with it. They're having to discover everything, right, then in that moment, which is really, really think about if you, if you lean into that, in addition, fancy flight is also talked about a couple of variations some stores can do on this to them in particular one is, which this is just fascinating. So it's a best of three match is called the adaptive format it could be for sealed or Arcand every player will play with their deck during the first round during the second round, the actually swap. And play with the deck. They'd just fought against if there is a third round. They need to bid chain. So limiting hand size banning. On whatever deck they want to play with so most likely that would be the same deck because if you played against the deck and lost, and the new played as that deck and one that's tied to around three so whatever deck, just one, y'all bid on it with chains say, I can actually start with three chains, which means again hand is a five. I only know what I think I can do it with a six seven chains, which would then be above six less than eight, and so you're with two chains to minus, so you're starting the game with only four cards in your hand which is kind of interesting. The second type of area that they talked about is called auction. What's kind of cool about this is, it's a sealed deck format in which all the decks that are purchased and opened with the sealed format they're all placed on the table with their houses showing whoever the organizer is, is randomly going to pick up one of those decks, and then all the players will bid chains on playing that deck. Once it's a final bid on a deck that player gets a play with it. And you keep going like that until every deck is in a person's hands. Now what's cool about this? And I'm glad they wrote it is that whatever deck you open while that's the deck that you leave the night with. So just because you didn't bid on it for change, etc. Well, you're going to go home with the deck that you opened which is I'm glad they wrote up. Some table presents this is very similar. If you see this, you're gonna think it's another card game. But arts pretty cool. So what if brought out and some of the players as always myself is you can simply play all the cards of the given house at the beginning, your turn, and you proclaim that to turn it means you immediately immediately, only one third of your deck is actually viable, and meaning that if you already have creatures and things out there, and you select another house, it'd be strict did from those cards, which is really cool. Now, what that did though is it made me be thoughtful in. How do I layer and how do I think about these houses differently recently as at board game, geek, con in Dallas which was phenomenal, by the way? Thank you game.

00:25:07 - 00:30:07

Geek, that was just a great time. Thank you for everything behind the scenes, and I was playing keyboard with another player. And they pretty really well they said they learned this from somebody else. But you need to play as one of two styles whichever one, you want to go with is up to you. You either want to build a skyscraper in which you're focusing on one part of your deck, essentially signet, singular house, and you're going to play. Everything into that house. And you're going to. Anaya late your opponent from that. Skyscraper, right? Like men in the high tout castle type mentality. The other mentality though, is building a house that welcomes all can stand its ground and offers versatility of experiences because a house has like a kitchen, how says living room houses, etc. But it is a way in which you kind of diversify what you have out, and you're trying to work off of each other because more of a communal approach, which I thought was like to cool ways. So you're trying to play from all three houses. So that way you have more options and play styles because every house does play a little different. And they have some unique things. So overall thoughts, I personally do not have the time or resources, just or capacity right now to actually keep up with the collectible card game. Like magic even though it would be a lot of fun. And I've enjoyed them in the past key forge- scratches that each, it's a phenomenal outlet for me and it's a lot of fun to finally be able to competitively play again with a low barrier of entry. There are those who are having a hard time embracing all this, and that's okay. Some think it's there to replace magic, and I said that before, but I believe that both can live in the same space, and we'll have some but not complete overlap and players the. Fact that the decks are only ten dollars make this makes us game very affordable, and the perfect perfect for the holidays. Small gifts for gamers as each deck is unique. And you can tell them that tell them like you have a deck. No one else has that is awesome. It'll be interesting to see how players continue to react is key. Forge- moves forward, and he's decks are more and more more and more seen across the world and, and how these tournaments rollout and to see what happens because we're all still in the beginning here now, you may have a question. When you go to the game store, I want to address this really quick, so there are individual decks, and we've talked about a lot them a lot. There's also a starter set. The starter set contains two unique decks within it. So essentially, two of those individual dex, it also contains two decks, that are the same to dex in every single server set, essentially, these are just to balance dex that show off six of the houses that can help teach you the game. It also contains a start rule guide as well as tokens for the ember and keys, etc. For both players. Now it's important to know is the game does not the starter set nor the individual dex nor do they come with the actual full rule set for all of that you have to go online to fantasy flight, which makes sense that way, they can keep up with things, and make sure that the information that's put out there is updated and that people don't go. Well, here it is printed here, in my rulebook. Well, you have to look at the website and not having to competing sets of information. It makes sense, but I know some people think, hey, this should have included it. But I want you to be aware of that. So if you want the full rules, just go on the flight website, it's free and they also have a watch it played video on the board game beak site as well, but I think that you could honestly, be good to go if you have tokens that you can use to represent things like the damage on your creatures. The ember that you collect as well as the keys that you forge. And as long as none of those things are dice because you cannot use Dyson fantasy flight competitions for this because of the potential of dice. Rolling or being knocked and the number of pips changing. So just has to be easily identifiable and good to go. But honestly, key forges pretty sweet. And I do recommend. Check it out for the this just ten bucks. It's a really good thing for you to go out. Get to dex find a friend and play with them. And so I wish you the best of luck in trying this out if you ever wanna play you can actually play online at a free website called the crucible. So if you wanna check it out, check that out. It's pretty sweet. If you wanna see all the different cards that are potentially in the decks, you can go to website called the amber tree. And but either way, I just want you to go out and enjoy. This is a cool, new and unique thing for the hobby, and that whole procedural generation is going to be something that is really cool. But it could be very interesting for the future of games and some different ways and so something to keep her eye on definitely. Again.

00:30:07 - 00:31:46

My name is Bruce Brown and you can find him on board game geek, as Bruce Brown. Thank you so much for listening to board game impacts. I hope that you learning about what experiences that I've been having is making a positive impact on you and your gaming group and your involvement with this hobby. You can learn more about me and board game impact of hitting the website for game impact dot com. If you have a topic that you'd like to have discussed, please Email me at board game impacted Email dot com. Follow me on Instagram board game impact, like the Facebook paid board game impact, actually, as a side note on both of those things. I'm starting to do some live videos. And if you're listening to this as soon as goes out on, I'm going to be doing some key forge- opening some live for opening. So that way you can see the art of discovery that comes of this game and see kind of what kind of cards I'm getting if you wanna check that out head over to Facebook by cannot thank enough. My phenomenal patriot backers. As well as people donors for supporting the show. This is something that I'm doing to engage with the hobby and it's a labor of love. And so if you enjoy content. I encourage you to go on learning more about our patriots some of the cool stuff. I'm trying to do. But also, if you could please, please, please go onto ITN's or whatever you're listening to, and just like or rate, the show greatly appreciate that. And until next time I just wanted to you to go out and have a positive impact on the world. I'm so thankful for everything that is going on this hobby. So this is coming out right before thanksgiving. And I'm just so thankful for getting to do this, and it's next time have a positive impact on the world.