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Magic: The Gathering Creator’s New Game Will Sell Billions of Unique Decks
On Wednesday at Gen Con 2018, Fantasy Flight Games revealed the newest card game from legendary Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield, KeyForge.
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Similar to Magic, KeyForge is a 1v1 competitive card game, but instead of using the traditional ‘Trading Card Game’ format where you build a deck out of randomized booster packs, or the ‘Living Card Game’ format where you get all of the cards outright and then buy full expansion sets later, KeyForge will use an entirely new format called a ‘Unique Deck Game’.
What that means is that players will buy a premade 36-card deck that is a completely unique combination of cards from the game. No other deck in the world will be exactly like it, and it can’t be altered or customized in any way, even having its own unique card back and name to distinguish the cards in it.
There are seven ‘Houses’ in KeyForge, each of which has its own cards and playstyle. Every deck is made up of a random combination of three of those houses, and you won’t know what type of deck you are getting before you buy it. So you can keep looking for the right deck for you, and then try to master the decks you like.
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Magic creator Richard Garfield has been wanting to make a game like this for 10 years.
It’s a bold new idea and a vastly different kind of game format -- one Garfield says he’s been wanting to make for around 10 years, but the technology of actually randomizing and printing decks like this hadn’t been available until now. Now they can do it, and the amount of cards in the game means they could make billions upon billions of unique decks without ever repeating.
The intent, Garfield says, is to recapture that feeling of discovery and rarity that existed in the early days of Magic, before cards became commodities and the best deck lists were publicly searchable online. In KeyForge, finding a deck with a rare card means it stays rare, and players don’t have to drop loads of cash to get a few specific cards to stay competitive.
I got a chance to play KeyForge at Fantasy Flight’s Gen Con preview night and left with a couple of unopened decks to look through. While I love some aspects of its Unique Deck angle, I am wary of others.
For example, I like the fact that all I’ll need to play this game with others is two decks, and the barrier of entry for a friend to join me is just buying a $10 deck. That accessibility and randomization is thrilling when you consider how intimidating and expensive it can be to get into Magic.
I also like that you won’t be pouring money into randomized booster packs, but I hate the fact that you can’t at least see what factions you are getting in a new deck before buying it. Sure people won’t be spending tons of money on single rare cards, but that may have been replaced with spending tons of money on random deck boxes in the hopes of getting lucky with a great card combination.
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The low barrier to entry is exciting, but the lack of customization is the cost.
The game itself is an interesting mix of simple to pick up and complex in how many different things are going on and need to be tracked. It’s extremely far from a Magic clone, though, if anyone was worried about that. I am looking forward to playing more to see if I continue to enjoy it, especially as I start to learn what all the Houses do. You can read the full rules here.
KeyForge will have a $40 starter set that includes two set decks that will always be the same, two randomized unique decks, and a whole boatload of tokens to keep track of different points and effects. Both the starter set and the unique decks will be released in September, but you can pre-order them now here.
For more of our coverage from Gen Con 2018, check out IGN's tabletop page, where you can see everything from the show and more.
Tom Marks is IGN's PC Editor and pie maker. You can follow him on Twitter.