Age of Ascension

From Archon Arcana - The KeyForge Wiki
Age of Ascension starter set
Age of Ascension
Houses:
Brobnar iconDis iconLogos iconMars iconSanctum iconShadows iconUntamed icon
Set Number:
2
Symbol:
Age of Ascension set symbol
Released:
May 30, 2019
Cards:
370
New Cards:
204
Design and Development:
Brad Andres, Skaff Elias and Richard Garfield
Languages:
10 - English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Thai
Followed by:

Age of Ascension is the second KeyForge set, announced in a FFG live stream with Richard Garfield on February 12th 2019 and released on May 30, 2019. In Europe, the game launched with a Sealed Vault Tour at UK Games Expo in Birmingham. With 388 players, this is the largest KeyForge Organized Play event to date.

Keeping 166 cards from Call of the Archons and adding 204 new cards, Age of Ascension again contains 370 cards, spread among the same seven houses as: Brobnar, Dis, Logos, Mars, Sanctum, Shadows and Untamed

New Set Mechanics

New Keywords: Alpha, Omega, Deploy

New keywords introduced in Age of Ascension were Alpha, Omega and Deploy: restricting when certain cards can be played and freeing others from the constraints of standard placement. These are keywords that are considered "evergreen" as they regularly show up in subsequent sets.

Legacy Cards

Age of Ascension introduced Legacy cards. These are cards from a previous set (such as CotA) that are not part of the current set, but on very rare occasions can appear in a deck. Legacy Mavericks are also possible and extremely rare. Legacies occur in about 8.4% of AoA decks, but legacy mavericks are only found in about 1 in 11,000 of them. Legacy cards have continued to appear in subsequent sets.

Gameplay

Age of Ascension features more board based abilities and less Æmber bonus cards than Call of the Archons, and introduces abilities that punish or stop reaping. This creates a more complex and interactive gameplay, which along with improved house strength balance made Age of Ascension especially enjoyable in the Sealed format.

Iconic and powerful combos include Martian Generosity + Key Abduction in Mars and Drummernaut + Ganger Chieftain in Brobnar. Grump Buggy, Proclamation 346E and especially Heart of the Forest are artifacts that change the flow of the game considerably. Another popular combo is Binate Rupture + Interdimensional Graft in Logos, and Archimedes was one of the best cards in the game before the errata (the previous ruling stated that it could archive the player’s entire battleline when a board wipe was played).

Special Rarity Cards

Special rarity cards include Ambassador variants (in Sanctum) for each other house, as well as the three Key Imps. “Fixed” cards are Ortannu the Chained that always appears together with two Ortannu’s Bindings, as well as Timetraveller with Help from Future Self.

Each house also contains a unique Shard artifact, which always appears with at least one other Shard from another house. Cards that always appear with another card are Grumpus Tamer and Project Z.Y.X.

Routine Job always appears at least in a pair, while Plague Rat is the first card introduced that always appears with minimum 3 copies in a deck.

Card Distribution

This table indicates how many cards are in each house of Age of Ascension and how many are of each rarity. The bottom section displays the number of reprints in each house and the set from which they originated.

Rarity Brobnar icon Dis icon Logos icon Mars icon Sanctum icon Shadows icon Untamed icon Total
Total 52 55 52 51 56 52 52 370
Common 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 112
Uncommon 16 15 15 16 15 16 16 109
Rare 20 20 20 19 19 20 20 138
Special 4 1 6 11
Set of first appearance:
New in AoA 28 31 28 28 33 28 28 204
CotA 24 24 24 23 23 24 24 166

Reception

More than 100.000 Age of Ascension decks were registered in the 3 weeks within release, but AoA did not match CotA’s number of registered decks or competitive success. To date, no Age of Ascension deck has won a non-Sealed Vault Tour or Grand Championship event.

Competitive Success

Most Popular Cards in AoA Vault Tour
Winning Decks, by Rarity
Commons
Shadows icon Nerve Blast (5)
Shadows icon Ronnie Wristclocks (5)
Shadows icon Sucker Punch (5)
Shadows icon Life for a Life (4)
Uncommons
Shadows icon Brend the Fanatic (3)
Dis icon Gongoozle (2)
Untamed icon Mimicry (2)
Shadows icon Murkens (2)
Shadows icon Oubliette (2)
Shadows icon Too Much to Protect (2)
Rares & Specials
Logos icon Neutron Shark (2)
Dis icon Onyx Knight (2)

A deck from Age of Ascension has yet to win an Archon Vault Tour; the highest Archon ranking the set has achieved is second place in the 2019 Krakow Archon Vault Tour and 2019 Madrid Vault Tour. The set contains several powerful combos, such as "GenKA", the Martian Generosity/Key Abduction combo which often allows the player to draw many cards and forge a key for free. Of the fifteen Age of Ascension decks that made the top cut of an Archon Vault Tour, however, only three were GenKA combo decks. Instead, decks containing Dis, Shadows, and Logos were the most common. Brobnar, Sanctum, and Untamed were the least represented houses among Age of Ascension decks making the top cut of Archon Vault Tours.

Most Popular Cards in
AoA Vault Tour Winning Decks
Card House Rarity Count
Nerve Blast Shadows icon Common icon 5
Ronnie Wristclocks Shadows icon Common icon 5
Sucker Punch Shadows icon Common icon 5
Life for a Life Shadows icon Common icon 4
1-2 Punch Brobnar icon Common icon 3
Brend the Fanatic Shadows icon Uncommon icon 3
Dusk Chronicles Shadows icon Common icon 3
Furtive Investors Shadows icon Common icon 3
Lamindra Shadows icon Common icon 3
Lash of Broken Dreams Dis icon Common icon 3
Mars First Mars icon Common icon 3
Throwing Stars Shadows icon Common icon 3
Whistling Darts Shadows icon Common icon 3

Last updated on February 7, 2020

Products

Name Model Description
KeyForge: Age of Ascension Archon Deck KF03a
KeyForge: Age of Ascension Display KF03d Contains 12 Age of Ascension Archon Decks
KeyForge: Age of Ascension 2 Player Starter Set KF04 Contains:
  • 2 Age of Ascension Archon Decks
  • 6 Key tokens
  • 2 Chain trackers
  • 24 Damage tokens
  • 26 Æmber tokens
  • 44 Power and Stun tokens
  • 2 Poster paper playmats
  • Quick rules insert

See also

All cards in Age of Ascension
• Cards with an errata: Drummernaut, Life for a Life, Yzphyz Knowdrone, Pain Reaction
Deck registration data
Competitive success among houses


KeyForge Sets
Standard: Call of the Archons • 
Vault Masters: 2023
Non-Tournament Legal: Unchained 2023 • 
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