Unofficial Variants, Tournament Structures, and House Rules

KeyForge lends itself well to a wide variety of variants, tournaments, and house rules. Below are some of those commonly found in the KeyForge Community.

Unofficial Variants

Adaptive short

(Also known as Adaptive Modified or Adaptive Best of One)

This is a shorter, one-game version of the Adaptive variant, where players immediately proceed to choosing and bidding for decks. If both players choose their own deck, they play a regular match. If both players choose their opponent's deck, they play a Reversal match. If both players choose the same deck, they bid chains as in the third game of an Adaptive match.

Modified Triad

(Also known as Triad Best of One) After benching one of their opponent's decks, both players simultaneously pick one of the remaining decks to play in a best of one.

Blind Sealed Reversal

In this variant, players receive a Sealed deck and prior to each round they swap decks with their opponent. The opponent cannot look at the decklist and plays "blind", without knowing the contents of the deck they're playing.

Speed Sigil

In this variant, players play as if there is a copy of Speed Sigil constantly in play, meaning that the first creature played each turn comes in ready.

Unofficial Tournament Structures

Duplicate

There are multiple suggestions for applying principles of duplicate bridge to KeyForge:

1. blinkingline's version can be found on reddit.
2. Another version, also from reddit.

Obfuscation

Aurore Inara created a tournament structure that rewards players both for their play and their deck and matchup evaluation skills.

Tesla

Mortivas' Tesla tournament structure sees rounds alternate between the solo and reversal variants.

House Rules

Chess Clocks

KeyForge's asynchronous play lends itself well to the use of Chess Clocks, both as a time keeper and a handicapping mechanism. The winner of the game is the first to forge three keys or have their opponent run out of time.

Tiebreakers

Chris Steele suggests modifying the rules to read:

"When time is called for the round, the game continues until the active player finishes their next forge a key step or either player forges their 3rd key. If neither player has achieved victory (forged three Keys) by that time, they must follow the steps below, in order, to determine who receives a win for the current game."