Hey, you got your Ascension in my Star Realms!
So this deckbuilder just got a simultaneous digital release on PC, iOS, and Android. It’s good! The designers of the boardgame are the same folks who designed Ascension, and the four factions will immediately remind you of Mechana, Void, etc - with less cringey artwork. But there is a Star Realms-like component in which you directly attack your opponent and/or their cards, usually with escalating damage.
A few cool innovations: certain cards can be “fast-played”, which means that you use the ability immediately and then trash the card, rather than putting it in your discard pile and waiting for it to show up. It might sound like a waste of resources, but if you are building a green deck but want to thin your deck with a purple card, it’s nice to have the option to use it once without it forever clogging your deck.
Also, there is a Mastery resource that you can build every turn. As it goes up, your cards unlock new powers. When it reaches 30, one of your cards gets the “Instawin” power. An interesting option for people who want to focus on an economic engine instead of damage.
The digital version was developed by Temple Gates Games, who also developed the Race for the Galaxy app. If you liked that UI, then you will be very comfortable with this one.
I think this game is terrific. If anyone wants to join our Shardy Party on Discord, where a bunch of qt3 folks and Ascension folks hand out, lemme know! It’s sort of a ladder system that I invented and a few of us have tweaked, and it features some permanent achievements and requires two games per week.
Right up my alley. Thanks for the heads up.
I played the beta on iOS. Nicely polished. I love the ability to fast-play mercenary cards. That and the scaling card powers off the mastery resource are both great additions. Anyone familiar with ascension will feel right at home after 2-3 hands. Not sure about the ai. The medium ai became quite easy for me to beat after I had played a little. I should try the tough ai.
I tried this last night. I LOVE ascension but wasn’t a big fan of Star Realms. This seems to fit in a nice place inbetween those 2 games.
@Dave_Perkins I’d be interested in an invite to the discord channel. Also up for some Ascension.
This is pretty great. It’s very similar to Star Realms, but I like the art better and it’s cheap. Plus the way champions and mercenaries work is pretty good, and I love the level up mechanic. How did I miss this so far? Thanks, @magnet. Putting in an order for the physical game, too, along with the expansion.
I just bought it on IOS. The tutorial runs fine but I started getting it crashes after the first turn. Has anyone else had this problem?
There is a known crash bug on iOS with Medium AI. Already patched on PC and Android, iOS fix coming.
Hey, I help make the game! Thanks to everyone for trying it out!
As mentioned, Medium AI is messed up on iOS. The patch should go through Apple review any time now. But if you have this issue independant of Med AI, I’d love to hear about it, or get screenshots or any info you have. You can email [email protected] too. Same goes if you stumble across any other bugs or issues.
That’s weird. Medium ai was fine in the beta.
Yeah we did an update to improve the Hard AI (it’s much harder now) that inadvertently broke the Medium AI. Oops, -10 points to Temple Gates Games.
I presume you have to buy it on both PC and iOS, i.e. there’s no buy-once play anywhere scheme like with Star Realms?
Thanks for the info. Easy mode worked fine now I’ll try hard.
Hard works too and it beats me . 😁
Just bought this one for Android. I have high hopes.
Looks like the patch to fix the medium AI on iOS is out now.
Yeah sorry, we use the Stores to manage purchases/ownership of the game. We don’t have any infrastructure like Star Realms, so yeah you’ll have to buy for each different platform on each store.
Not only that it looks like my App Store purchase on the iPhone doesn’t transfer over to the iPad?
If both ipad/iphone use the same apple id, it should be valid on both (like all apps). Could be a glitch with Apple and need a restart or wait a bit or something. We don’t do anything to disallow that (and I’m not sure you even can). If it continues to not allow you to get it you should talk to Apple.
(The only weirdness we know about in that department is on Apple, in app purchases don’t transfer among Family Accounts, which seems wrong and we don’t really understand why it works that way, but doesn’t affect anything until the expansions)
Bought today played the tutorial and lost my first game to the Easy AI when it hit 30 Focus Points (or whatever they’re called).
I don’t understand why some attacks cause me to lose Focus Points. It’s not addressed in the tutorial and I don’t remember seeing any cards with that ability.
