Eric Lucero

I wanted to take a moment to spotlight a game. Many of you have probably had a chance to play Ascension at some point. It’s a fun deck building game that has been one of the most successful to date.
I’ve never recommended the game before because quite honestly, if you are only going to get one deck building game, it should be Dominion. After that, you’ll need to decide for yourself if Ascension is worth spending all that money on (let’s face it, if you buy this, you’ll want to buy expansions too). There may be good reason to recommend trying this game but never to recommend buying this game.

Until now.

Enter Ascension: Apprentice Edition. A fully playable, 2-player deckbuilder made from select cards from previous Ascension games complete with 100% brand new art and card design. MSRP $10.

TEN BUCKS!!!

The game has take criticism in the past for it’s art design, but no worry about that here. The game looks gorgeous now. You may say to yourself, “but I already have a ton of deck builders.” Ascension may not stand up with Dominion as far as game design goes, but it still is better than most deck builders out there. It also has things to offer that Dominion doesn’t. It’s very portable. It’s fast, and easy to play. Set up/take down is almost non-existent. Did I mention this one is only ten bucks?!

I have several deck builders. I also have Ascension (set 3 + Expansion) because it really is a fun game (especially for 2). But I also bought this to be a separate game, meaning I’m not going to mix it into my bigger set. Why? Well, like I said, it’s fun, and this version by itself is very portable. It also provides a different experience than my main set being all different cards. Finally, it’s the perfect version to teach the game with. Make no mistake, this isn’t some lame basic version of the game. It contains fan-favorite, powerful cards that are fun to play with. It’s just more streamlined, and because it’s a smaller set, there aren’t an overwhelming number of card interactions to process. But most importantly it could hardly be more affordable. When I teach this game, and the other person loves it, I know they’ll have no problem adding this to their collection because it’s ONLY TEN BUCKS! (and that’s if you pay full MSRP)

Ascension isn’t the best game you can buy, but there isn’t another game that comes close to giving you as much bang for your buck as the Apprentice Edition of Ascension. I cannot recommend this release highly enough.