Review: KeyForge (Fantasy Flight)

Some years ago, legendary game designer Richard Garfield had a wild idea for a card game.

Every deck would be completely unique right out of the box. Players would focus on playing, not deck building and card collecting. Just grab a deck from your stack and start playing against your opponent.

It took some time, but printing technology finally caught up with Garfield’s imagination. The result is KeyForge: Call of the Archons from Fantasy Flight Games. Billed as the world’s first “Unique Deck Game,” it’s truly a new product category, offering fascinating possibilities while creating an occasionally strange player experience.

Here are the top five things you need to know as you enter the realm of KeyForge.

Completely Unique Decks

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When Fantasy Flight says that the decks are unique, they mean it. Their calculations estimate the KeyForge has 104 septillion possible deck combinations (that’s 104 with 24 zeroes behind it).

Each deck contains 36 playable cards, 12 cards each from three of the game’s seven factions. The 37th card shows your archon, the archon’s name, and a list of cards in the deck.

In an amazing application of digital printing technology, every card in your deck is printed with a unique back containing the archon’s name and the deck’s three faction symbols.

Custom, not Customizable

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Although every KeyForge deck is completely custom, KeyForge itself is not customizable like traditional trading card games. You never mix cards from one deck into a different one. Instead, you play only with the cards you originally received in the deck.

Your goal is to find your deck’s strengths and adjust your playing style to make the most of its powers. The deck won’t adapt to you; instead, you must adapt your playing style to match the deck. It basically turns the whole trading card game model on its head,

Thanks to a clever assembly algorithm, every deck is guaranteed to be playable, but some decks will be naturally stronger than others.

Factions Make the Game Go

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In addition to supporting the game’s backstory, the three factions in your deck directly drive your game play. On each of your turns, you start by naming one of your three factions. For that turn, you can only play, activate, or discard cards from the faction you named.

Each faction offers certain specializations. For instance, Sanctum cards focus on reducing damage with armor and protecting the weak, while Brobnar just wants to have a good fight. Making your deck work means understanding what your three factions bring to the strategic table.

Balancing Power with Chains

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In a departure from card game traditions, you can play and use as many KeyForge cards as you want on a turn as long as they’re from your chosen faction. Because of that, it’s as easy to bring a very powerful card into play as it is a very weak one. To balance that, KeyForge uses a concept called “chains.”

Powerful cards such as “Gateway to Dis,” which destroys every creature on the board, make you take a certain number of chains. Chains limit your ability to refill your hand at the end of your turn.

If you have one to six chains, for example, you draw one less card each round, but you also remove a chain. You use the starter set’s chain tracker card (or one you made yourself, more about that in a moment) to monitor your progress.

Many Ways to Play

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Since KeyForge introduces such a radically different design and game experience, it makes sense that Fantasy Flight’s organized play system offers several new tournament formats.

Some formats, like sealed (buy a deck and play it) and Archon (bring your own deck and play it) work just like they do in traditional trading card games.

More innovative formats include Reversal (players swap decks, playing against their own cards) and Gauntlet (bring three decks, but your opponent gets to eliminate one). Look for more new event formats in the future.

The Verdict

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KeyForge’s design is strong and the player experience is certainly unique. If you love trading card games but feel burned out on deck building, this might be the perfect game for you.

Starter sets are available if you want one, but you don’t need one to play. Just pick up some individual decks and download the rules from the Fantasy Flight website.

If you skip the starter, you’ll also need a number of tokens in several colors and a chain tracker card. Chips or plastic cubes make great tokens, and you can make a chain tracker yourself on a card or piece of paper by copying the chart from the instructions.

Good luck organizing your forces, Archon!