On  Nov 16, 2018, the new game KeyForge was first played in Robert’s room. The game KeyForge is made by the creator of Magic: The Gathering (MTG), Richard Garfield.

The game consists of a random deck of cards. A gimmick of the deck is that it has a random phrase on the back that is unique to that deck. This helps keep you from losing cards when playing.

A downside to this is that the decks can’t be mixed, unlike MTG.

“In this game, you can’t customize your deck which is a big feature of MTG,” Kim Tehranipour said.

The reason for this is to prevent giving the player an unfair advantage. Otherwise, it would be like spinning the wheels on a slot machine individually.

This game seems to be quite a decent card game. “[KeyForge] is pretty good,” sophomore Nato Panitch said.

The mechanics of the game are as follows; you get keys [tokens] when you accumulate six Æmber [coins]. This is checked at the start of each turn. You win when you get three keys.

The Æmber is obtained when you “reap” with a card and other card mechanics. The cards are not cookie cutter, they each have unique actions.

There are three different card types: creatures, artifacts and actions. Actions are cards that can only be used once and are useable instantly. Creatures can be used as long as they are not killed and are exhausted when placed. Artifacts are immune to attacks and can be used every turn.

You can only use cards (all types of cards) of a single faction per turn, which you declare at the start. This has the most effect when you have a diverse set of cards in your hand.

When you fight creatures with creatures, the damage is applied simultaneously and the damage is the same as the maximum health. This means that a strong card both deals and takes damage easily. Another stat is the defense which is how much the damage is lowered prior to being applied to the target card by simple subtraction.

The damage and other variables are counted with tokens. However, they also can be recorded on a sheet of paper, dice or any other method of information storage.

Keyforge is an interesting game, and at $10 a deck, it is a good introduction to tabletop gaming.