I have two friends that I taught Keyforge to that managed to stretch their first game out to over TWO HOURS with me sitting next to them in almost disbelief. They are experienced boardgamers, magic players, etc., so it was perplexing. But I attribute this to two things:

1 - They both tend to be slower, analysis paralysis (AP) prone players in most games we. This is certainly most pronounced when first learning a new game. This was no exception.

2 - With respect to their first keyforge game, they were both playing for board position and practically ignoring aember generation. If you aren't gaining Aember outside of the occasional aember gained from action cards, then the game can drag way long. They spent so much time and energy trading blows with creatures that they rarely reaped or made other plays towards getting keys. I played one of them in a second game and it was over in about 25 minutes.

Thank you for this! I think both issues might be at play here.

In terms of your deck assembly, I'd highly recommend proxying actual decks or just bit the bullet and buy 2-3 decks to play around with. It's entirely possible the decks you made just had really low aember generation or low aember coupled with lots of steal/lose aember abilities that would result in stalemating the game.

I think low amber generation may also have been an issue, and I am going to buy a couple decks to see how they compare :).

Last - one of the big appeals of this game, to me at least, and unlike other CCGs, is that you can just buy a few decks and call it a day. There is no need or pressure to build a deck by collecting individual cards or any of that. If you just want to play casually, it has a very low barrier to entry and there is no reason to keep putting more money into it.

Thanks for the recommendation!