Friday evening some plans were made (in pencil) to possibly play some Keyforge Saturday afternoon. However those plans fell through. Well they were in pencil so not guaranteed. But I have to admit I was a little disappointed that the plans had fallen through. I’d been looking forward to it, especially since my mood had been a bit on the low side for a day or two. I was needing some gaming in my life to distract and attempt to change things.

Out of the blue Justin called saying that a couple of Keyforge decks had arrived and he fancied playing some Keyforge. Naturally I jumped at the chance to play me some Keyforge.

Once at Justin’s and setup. I ran through the basic rules of the game, and the turn structure. Sometimes it can feel overwhelming when rules are being explained and it’s easier to just jump in and ask questions along the way. Justin felt this way.

For our first game I used my Blindingly Fanatical Erkki deck (Brobnar, Dis, Logos). Now you folks will hate me but I forgot to make a note of the decks I played against. But Justin’s deck took off and before I knew it he’d forged two keys, and done a damn fine job of denying me ember, and from forging a key myself.

For some reason I thought this was my four horsemen deck. And for a while thought I’d be drawing one of them any minute, it’s why I didn’t play a particular brobnar card that dumped cards from the deck into the discard pile until you ran out of deck or drew a brobnar creature. I hadn’t wanted to miss those cards. I was down to the last four cards in the deck when it clicked the horsemen deck was one of the other decks.

It was looking like this game was going to be a whitewash, I needed to at least get a key forged to prevent that. And that was the only real thought going through my head.

I was using the ability to archive cards to set up one or two big turns with my logos cards.

Eventually I broke through and forged my first key. Phew the pressure was off. I was expecting Justin to forge his third and final key imminently. But I was frustrating his ember production.

Then a fatal mistake was made by Justin. He allowed me to get a board state of mostly Dis cards in place. Suddenly I was able to exhaust two creatures to reap and get Justin to discard two random cards from hand. Plus I could steal ember from him. I also continued to put logos cards into the archive setting up that mega turn. Waiting for my battlefield to destroyed and replaced by logos cards.

But that moment never came. I was controlling the game. All of a sudden I had my second key forged, and in a turns time the ability to win the game. Justin was not able to stop the inevitable.

Somehow I had gone from trying not to get whitewashed to winning. This had been a long game 40-50 minutes I think. But it was intense, with ups and downs. A great game.

Our second game saw me try The Underhanded Captain (Dis, Brobnar, Sanctum). This was my four horsemen deck. Justin played his other new deck.

This was a very one sided game and much quicker.

It was interesting to play, and went off to a flying start. Although Justin’s deck did well keeping the number of big creatures down on my side.

I’m not taking this game as any indication of how good this horsemen deck is. Justin’s new deck had archiving and the potential to get some power turns played.

This game had more going on that affected the other players turn, like not being able to play a house, or having to play a chosen house. Justin chose Sanctum for my turn at one point which totally screwed me over because I had no Sanctum cards in hand. But my only creature out was a Sanctum one so all I could do was reap.

Justin enjoyed his first experience of Keyforge. I had a great afternoon playing. The socialising had had the desired affect. I was certainly feeling better than I was before going out.

We now have four Keyforge players in town now that I know of. Is this a Keyforge community forming?

NEWS: Yesterday also saw FFG announce that in the Master Vault it has hit over 200k decks registered. That’s phenomenal. Naturally it doesn’t give us any clue to the actual number of players of the game or actual number of decks sold. Mainly because a lot of players have multiple decks, not all decks bought have been registered (for whatever reason), and some of those decks will be from the starter set. But still I don’t think FFG will be unhappy with the numbers they are seeing for the game. What we need to see now is more organised play events being held at more stores, and the nurturing and growth of a community. But I’ll expand on that idea in another post (if I remember too, I am old and forgetful don’t forget, you may have to remind me in the comments).

If you want to see my decks etc, you should be able to scan the QR code below or search for my unoriginal account name.