Every tabletop enthusiast has a favorite mechanic. My deck is construction. i am an avid player ascendan intermediary in Magic the Gatheringa lover of glomhaven, and a vampire to all the other staples of the genre. to say I was excited to hear that Richard Garfield (creator of) mtg) and Justin Gary (producer of .) ascend) were making Soulforge Fusion Together is a minority. After several months of Kickstarter tracking and Reddit forum searching, last week I finally got to uncover the trail for the Forge during this year’s General Con in Indianapolis.
Basically, the game is a revival of the original soulforge (a free-to-play digital card game released in 2016), Fusion Was designed as a trading card game that can be playable for players of all skill levels. This is meant to introduce a deck building mechanic that avoids the trap of overpowered “net decks” (created by a player, uploaded to the Internet, and copied by the public to crush opponents) and reduce startup costs.
Another important goal for the devs Fusion He was crafting the story and the lore. On a call for this story, Gary mentioned that over three years of arcs have already been written, and the game’s official release is just over a month away. That’s an impressive feat considering it’s helping shape the future of players. Soulforge Fusion Universe – Each narrative tree will branch and change based on the outcome of storyline events (contests once per release that decide the outcome of future plot points), the first of which is taking place at Gen Con later this week.
I played my first match on Tabletop Simulator ,TTS) with Gary, and we started by setting up our virtual tables. With our decks connected and Forgeborn chosen, each of us pulled out our hand and it was time to see who would start with the Forge.
The game chose Gary to start, so it was time for me to sit back and watch his game. When your forge is lit, you can play a card in front of any of your five lanes or draw a card from your hand, plus take any free action. Once a card is played, deck upgrading begins. The lower level version of the card is discarded and the next level version is placed in your discard pile.
He finished his turn and it was my chance to answer. On my turn all elements of the game were the same except that my creatures were played in the back rows of my alleys. After two rounds of each of us, the fight started. Creatures in the front row attack and damage other creatures or hit the opposing player directly. Only the creatures in the back row could defend.
We went down street one by one, exterminated the war-killed creatures, adjusted our lives for the damage received, and ended the battle phase. With this our first deck phase is completed. The forge was then passed to me, and we drew a new hand of five cards to begin the next deck stage. The game continued until I reached zero health. If neither of us had reached zero by the end of the fourth deck cycle, whoever had the most health left would have won.
After my initial game with Gary, I did my own tests to get to know the game better.
Image: Stone Blade Entertainment
There is a distinct learning curve to the gameplay. I see that opposite mtg either ascend, Soulforge Fusion There is no slow ramp-up. Strong spells or creatures don’t require any land or resources to play. In some ways, I loved it. Instead of dragging the game with nothing on the board, the game stopped immediately. Unfortunately, this feature can be intimidating for new players because there isn’t much time to learn the turn flow or deck cycle before throwing them on the field.
I also noticed that my teammates and I forgot to use our Forgeborn powers. We are often distracted by other drama elements or simply confused as to what did. It takes one to two games with cards from a faction to really understand the synergies and how to play them. With limited game time and access to online only TTS version, it was difficult for us to engage in any strategy.
Another pattern was the sweeping victory. Especially between two new players, wins are by a rather wide margin of a few points. In my play tests, one player often wins one game, then loses the next spectacularly. Once a solid line of creatures was played, it was nearly impossible for the opponent to avoid taking more than 20 damage in a single turn. Even on the officially sanctioned livestream I saw employees of developer Stone Blade Entertainment pitted against each other, with the gameplay trending toward players in a landslide versus finesse win.
However, there are many interesting and entertaining aspects to the game. One-of-a-kind decks keep drafting and fusion feeling fresh. Deck building never really ends, as you continue to build as you play. The same fused deck can behave completely differently depending on the cards you play and upgrade over the course of the game, which is a major draw.
Gary and Garfield have removed some barriers for new players to be interested in the title. Booster sets and packs can be combined in thousands of ways, allowing players to get the most out of the game without buying expensive decks right off the bat. The game is also a hybrid deck builder, so it will be launched TTS and concurrently for tablets. Unlike other titles with companion apps, such as ascend, Players can scan the unique decks they have created and upload them. This avoids online play being just a virtual platform, and allows the real game experience to be achieved both online and off.
play Soulforge Fusion Feather TTS is not perfect. Loading errors and design flaws (such as overlaying my five lanes with my opponent’s) eventually force players out of the game. Especially for those new to the platform, the interface can take a lot away from learning and enjoying the game. There have been several delays in the release of the game and I’d love to see the devs use that time to build a companion app built with the same scan-and-play capability.
One cool element that Hybrid Launch offers is that officially sanctioned tournaments can be held online instantly. The deck and players will also be out of competition levels. This prevents newcomers from being dumped by professionals, and also provides incentives to raise the level of the deck to compete in higher level events.
But will the game be able to sustain the interest of casual players, or will it fall into a primarily competitive loop? There’s great replay value and there are unique deck building aspects that I certainly appreciate, but I’m not sure the gameplay itself is anything new. Is it heavily dependent on the attractiveness of the competition and the variability of the deck? Only time will tell.
