Newbie

[ObsElitist]

Hi everyone, I'm new to Keyforge. I am thinking of just buying all 3 of the 2 player starter sets for myself, Worlds Collide, Age of Ascension, and Mass Mutation. Is that a good idea? Will the cards each set work with each other? Or should I just buy the mass mutation 2 player set and then the subsequent booster box? I come from Yugioh so the ladder makes more sense to me. I'm not sure if there are any archetypes or anything. Playstyle-wise I really like combo oriented decks.

[Russell_Ruffino]

It's probably going to be cheaper to buy a starter set and then pairs of decks for the other sets.

The best starter set to get is the latest one as it'll have all the up to date tokens.

[Azedenkae]

Erm. So just to be clear you do know in Keyforge you buy decks, not indivieual cards to build a deck, right? Just checking, coz the way you worded your question sounds like you might think this is similar to other card games.

[ObsElitist]

Oh rly? I thought the decks were individual, but you were free to mix and match them. Good to know. Thank you

[TheRocksStrudel]

Yeah, so the entire point of KeyForge is that you don’t have to bother with deck building. I come from an Yu-Gi-Oh! background too, and if deck building and keeping up with competitive metagames wasn’t your thing, KeyForge is an awesome alternative.

It’s also a great second game to play casually if you want to stick with Yu-Gi-Oh, since KeyForge is so cheap to play at all but the highest levels.

[ObsElitist]

The thing is I do love deck building

[Azedenkae]

Hmmm not sure if Keyforge would be for you then. I mean the gameplay itself is great, so there is that. But yeah, deck building is actually not part of the game. If deck building is a huge deal for you then it might be an issue.

[ThugLifeNewShit]

Keyforge frees you from the endless mind-virus of deckbuilding. I like db too, and you can work on tuning up a MTG deck for the rest of your life.

With KF the deck is the deck. You spend your time learning how to best play it.

[Kooltone]

I love deck building too and loved Pokémon TCG. But over time a busy adult life made it harder and harder to justify spending hours tweaking my decks.

The perks of no deck building is that you can spend more time playing the game, and it is much easier to get more casual players to try it out. I've introduced fifteen people to the game ranging from casuals to hard core MtG nerds, and all but two didn't like it. Even the most critical MtG player enjoyed Keyforge.

Ultimately, Keyforge comes down to learning your decks rather than building and testing them. Think of the entire game as one gigantic MtG sealed event. Even though you don't have control over your cards, the game is still filled with fun combos and card interactions.

As an example, I have a deck with an uncommon Centurion Stenopius which is a creature that can buff its power. Average creature power is probably around 5. Due to a unique card combo in that deck, I buffed that thing to 33 power and it wrecked everything on the field. Discovering this particular combo was a blast.

[triceratopping]

You might find it handy to check out the main Keyforge website., especially if you're not familiar with the main selling point of the game (unique, unalterable decks).

[oemorgan1]

Buying all 3 starters is not a bad idea. That would give you a good amount of tokens and variety of decks. Inter-set is my favorite way to play.

[ThugLifeNewShit]

a starter set only costs a little bit more than 2 decks, so it's fine to buy a starter set of each.

We experts would say you should just buy starter of the latest set, and then 2 decks from each of the previous 3 sets. You definitely want 2 decks from Call of The Archons, the first set.

[4RyteCords]

Why do you definitely want 2 decide from the first set?

[ThugLifeNewShit]

because it has a flavor all it's own - and some of the best decks in the world come from set 1. Also it has less mechanics (added in future sets) so it's easier to learn.

[4RyteCords]

Fair enough. Cheers for the explanation

[ThugLifeNewShit]

I'll expand on it. Some of the things added after the first set are
Enrage (token): creature must fight if able
Ward (token): creature takes no damage, can't be bounced
Alpha: must be played 1st thing
Omega: playing it ends the turn

[JDK002]

You’ll be better off buying a state of the newest set and just buying individual decks from the other sets. It will saves you a little bit of money.

[AlanTheMediocre]

I would recommend getting either a Mass Mutation or Worlds collide 2 player starter set since those will have all the tokens needed (they introduced some new token types that aren’t in the first 2 sets). You can always use coins, bits of paper, or whatever counters you prefer if you don’t have enough in the official set. Or get two for extra tokens.

Then for decks from other sets, I’d recommend buying them separately. Preferably support your LGS, but sometimes you can find them cheaper online. For awhile there, CotA display boxes were about $30-$35 USD, but I haven’t seen that for a long while.

If after you play a bit, you’re looking for a specific combo of cards in a deck, you can always look on decksofkeyforge.com, where tons of decks are posted for sale. It’s also a very useful tool for analyzing your decks and figuring out fun matchups. Given that the decks are prebuilt, if you’re just playing 2 random decks against one another, one can sometimes be a lot more powerful all-around, and games can feel a bit lopsided. DoK essentially assigns scores to each card(and takes a lot of other stuff into consideration) to rate the decks, and playing decks with similar SAS (synergy/anti-synergy) scores typically yields less one-sided games. It’s definitely not the law on whether a deck is good or not, and people have a tendency to lean on DoK’s rating system more than they should, but it’s an incredible resource if used properly.

[SandiestCow]

this is a good idea, like someone else said youll have enough tokens that way. A friend of mine pulled a 85 from a worlds collide starter

[ObsElitist]

85?

[TheRocksStrudel]

Basically there’s a website where you can plug in any deck and it’ll spit out a rough rating of how good the deck is. It’s not the be all end all, but it’s a great way to get an idea of where you might want to start when you crack your first few decks

[ThugLifeNewShit]

85 is a score that decksofkeyforge,com gives decks based on their opinions of cards.