Call of the Archons
The first KeyForge set, Call of the Archons, was announced at Gen Con on August 1st 2018 and released on November 15, 2018. Created by legendary designer Richard Garfield, this is the world's first unique deck game.
Consisting of 370 cards, Call of the Archons introduced the original seven KeyForge houses: Brobnar, Dis, Logos, Mars, Sanctum, Shadows and Untamed.
CotA also introduced Mavericks: extremely rare instances where a card appears not in its house, but in another house. For example, Urchin is a Shadows creature, but in this deck it appears as a Maverick in house Brobnar. Mavericks appear in about 4.1% of Call of the Archons decks.
Gameplay
Call of the Archons features fast and dynamic gameplay with many cards that award an Æmber bonus, and a large number of stealing abilities, both of which makes board presence comparatively less important than in other sets. House Shadows, with its heavy focus on stealing, is the most dominant house in the set, and this was especially true before the errata of Bait and Switch (when the card’s effect would repeat unlimited times, as long as the opponent had more Æmber). Restringuntus and Control the Weak are cornerstones of highly competitive Dis control decks in this set.
Another popular deck archetype is Untamed “Rush”, with cards like Hunting Witch, Dust Pixie, Nature’s Call and Chota Hazri that allow massive Æmber gain and forging a key in the same turn, especially when combined with Speed Sigil. The Library Access + Nepenthe Seed combo enabled decks that could draw the entire deck and win the game in one turn, prompting an errata for Library Access (which is now purged after playing). The Battle Fleet + Key Abduction combo provided Mars competitive success in an otherwise mediocre house. Some of the initially most sought after decks included the four Horsemen in Sanctum or a double Timetraveller in Logos.
Special Rarity Cards
CotA introduced Special rarity cards. “Fixed” cards like the four Horsemen always appear together in a deck, and Timetraveller always appears together with Help from Future Self. Cards that don’t have the Special rarity symbol, but also always appear together with other cards are Faygin, Niffle Queen, Bear Flute and Troop Call, while Routine Job always appears at least in a pair.
Another type of Special rarity cards are “variant” cards, where different versions of a card exist, such as: Master of 1, Master of 2 and Master of 3.
Reception
Call of the Archons was received extremely well upon announcement. More than 30,000 decks were registered in the Master Vault app on the first day, and more than 500,000 just two months after the release. Sales exceeded FFG’s expectations and caused temporary product shortages. In October 2019, just 11 months after release CotA surpassed 1 million registered decks.
Products
Along single Archon decks, a Call of the Archons starter set was released. It included 2 unique Archon decks and 2 standardized learning decks, 6 Key tokens, 2 Chain Tracker cards, 22 Damage tokens, 26 Æmber tokens, 10 Power cards and 10 Stun cards.
Card Distribution
This table indicates how many cards are in each house of Call of the Archons and how many are of each rarity.
| Rarity |
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Total |
| Total | 52 | 54 | 53 | 52 | 55 | 52 | 52 | 370 |
| Common | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 112 |
| Uncommon | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 112 |
| Rare | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 140 |
| Special | 2 | 1 | 3 | 6 |
Competitive Success
Call of the Archons is widely considered a very successful set in the competitive Archon scene. It dominated Archon Vault Tours for a long time, winning every Archon Vault Tour until the release of Worlds Collide. The set contains many extremely powerful cards that are useful in both control and rush deck archetypes, allowing the set to remain competitive for a long time.
The most popular cards in Call of the Archons Vault Tour winning decks are as follows. The data includes all Vault Tour winning Call of the Archons decks from the 2019 Eindhoven Vault Tour to the 2020 Albany Vault Tour. While this list includes the most popular cards among Vault Tour winners, it is important to note that there are many powerful cards that did not make the list. The data is biased toward the most competitively successful Call of the Archons houses, which are Shadows, Dis, Logos, and Untamed.
| Most Popular Cards in CotA Vault Tour Winning Decks, by Rarity | |
| Commons | |
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| Uncommons | |
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| Rares | |
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| Most Popular Cards in CotA Vault Tour Winning Decks, by House | |
 Brobnar
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 Dis
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 Logos
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 Mars
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 Sanctum
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 Shadows
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 Untamed
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See also
• All cards in Call of the Archons
• Cards with an errata: Library Access, Bait and Switch, Magda the Rat, Biomatrix Backup
• Deck registration data
• Competitive success among houses
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