Yesterday in a FFG Live simultaneous broadcast on Twitch and YouTube, FFG sprung an announcement about the next Keyforge set.
Coming in Q2 of this year is Keyforge Age of Ascension.
This new set will be a combination of old and new cards. The new card pool of 370 cards will be a combination of 166 old cards and 204 new cards. From the live stream Garfield said a lot of the cards dropped from the first set were commons. The reason being so that players are more likely to see the new cards.
In the live broadcast there was mention of three new keywords, deploy, alpha and omega. Deploy will allow you to insert a creature in between other creatures on the battlefield, instead of just on one of the flanks. Alpha means that card has to be played at the start of the third phase before anything else is done. Otherwise it can’t be played. Whilst omega is the opposite, it is the very last card you play in the third phase.
Naturally there will be a new starter set, that will contain the following:
As you can see the starter decks are gone. As are the power and stun cards, which have been replaced with cardboard tokens. A much much better option, and practical. It was mentioned that the tokens in this starter set are smaller than the original starter set ones, “to make it easier to fit everything into a deck box” (their words paraphrased from the live stream). Instead of the starter decks, they are replaced with two,poster playmats. I’m not sure how I feel about this. Great for teaching the game. But durability is a concern. Plus is this just something being put in to justify keeping the rrp at the same cost as the previous starter set? I’m also convinced that the reason for the smaller tokens is cost, and the fact they are printing 44 more than before.
The this starter set will sell, because players will want those new power and stun tokens. But will it offer value for money? Is all the extra stuff on top of the two included decks worth the difference between buying the two decks separately?
UPDATE: Taken from Facebook – “Just a heads up about the new set regarding prices….
The new RRP for decks is £9.99 which is a £1 increase
The new RRP for starter sets is £23.99 which is a huge drop of £12”
£4 for the tokens? I could live with that.
End of UPDATE
During the broadcast there was also some reveals about OP play, and some of the stuff you can get. They showed off two playmats. One was a four horseman one. They looked ok.
Apparently there will be alternative ways to get stuff from the prize wall if you can’t get to an event where there is one. Well that’s what I read afterwards in a comment on Facebook. I didn’t hear them say that myself. But I did skip through some of the game play. Which if that’s the case, is a good sign and shows they are listening (maybe).
I appreciate that FFG are doing these live events on a regular basis. But they need to improve the production quality. It was annoying during the live gameplay with the new decks when they went to show the new cards they were not shown, or there was a delay for the image to appear. I know this is all new for them, and they are learning. Maybe they need to talk to the Tap,Tap, Concede guys about their live MtG coverage.
You can read the full FFG announcement here and watch the video here.