Ascension - Tips & Strategies

Per Gary Games, this is the official Ascension variant, 2v2 Team Play.

We have been testing a variant of Ascension around the office that we have been having a lot of fun with and I wanted to share it with our fans here on Board Game Geek.

I have always been a fan of team game variants for TCGs (e.g. Two-headed Giant in Magic: The Gathering) and so I am excited to present our official Ascension Team Variant Rules:

Number of Players: 4 (in teams of 2)
Rules:
Teammates should sit across from each other.

Your teammate is not harmed by any monsters you defeat (e.g. if you kill a Corrosive Widow, your teammate does not have to lose a construct)

You may spend one additional rune when you acquire a card to add that card to your teammate’s deck instead of yours.

At the end of the game, combine your honor total with your teammate to determine the winner.

Try it out and let us know what you think! For us it has been a fun experience that offers some new strategic options for a 4 player game. I particularly think that fans of the 2 player experience will like this variant because you have a lot more control over what cards go in your deck and over what strategy you want to implement.

Originally posted here.

While this isn’t my favorite strategy, when done well, it can be very effective. Your start by focusing your purchases around combat centric cards. These should be supplemented by things that let you banish cards in the center row. Many monsters offer as a reward either the ability to banish another card or force the discard of an in play construct. Use these to control the key cards you can not purchase yourself. Any remaining combat can be used to reap the rewards of non control monsters, but remember leaving some monsters in place can be beneficial. If you find that you are the only player going for a combat themed deck, be sure to choke up some of the spots with monsters you know your opponent can’t kill. Drain the honor off the board by killing cultists, and pop the center row monsters at strategic intervals. It will take some practice to get used to the timing, but in the end, it works.

Despite the best efforts of the playtesters and a very vocal crown on the main Ascension forums, there is an infinite combo in Ascension (and I couldn’t be happier about it). It requires the RotF expansion and is relatively difficult to pull off, but can occur.

To start, you need some way to thin/banish your deck down to the bare minimum. My preferred method of doing this is Black hole, as it doesn’t clog up your deck by way of drawing it multiple times. You will also need ONLY the following cards in your deck:
1x Hedron Link Device
1x Reclamax
1x Tablet of Time’s Dawn
2x Mystic
1x Lifebound Initiate

Basically, you need all the constructs in play. Crack the Tablet to take an extra turn, then pay 5 (gaining 1 honor in the process), discard Reclamax, and bring the Tablet back to your hand.

At the end of your turn, draw up to 5 (Tablet, Reclamax, 2 Mystics, and an Initiate). Later/Rinse/Repeat taking X number of consecutive turns and gaining 1 honor X number of times, presumably running the honor pool out and/or gaining enough honor to win the game.

All those cards in the center row are really appetizing, but if you start the game just going for center row cards, you’ll get off to a slow start. The buying power and military might acquired from early heavy infantry and mystics (except when you can get strictly better cards in the center row) give your deck the edge it needs for an early boost.

Additionally, an early buy of arbiter of the precipice will do you wonders in thinning your deck of weaker initiate and milita cards. It is difficult to thin your deck in this game, so the earlier you start the better.

I know it should go with out saying but you have to keep an eye on what your opponent is “drafting”. It’s easy to get lost in your own strategy and forget to “hate” draft a card that would compliment your opponents deck. Banishing creatures from the center row is a great way to hurt a heavy infantry strategy.

Also be mindful of the end game. I always try and maximize honor gained to try and seal the deal. This is especially true in the IOS version where the game moves so fast you might not be aware of the end game creeping up!

The 6 cards in the row are all superior, rune for rune, or power for power, to the Mystic, Heavy Infantry, or Cultist. So when you get the chance, deny your opponents cards from the row.

This strategy works best in a one-vs-one game. With more players, you’re likely to confront different strategies at the same time, making it impossible to deny all opponents the row cards. Your goal is to leave nothing on the row that your opponent can buy or kill that will help them build momentum in the early game, or grab meaningful points in the late game. If your opponent is playing a power-heavy deck, leave only expensive purchasable cards on the row. If they’re playing a purchase-heavy deck, get rid of all the cards worth buying and let the row fill with monsters.

There are two ways of denying row cards to your opponents: Buying/killing them or banishing them. To pull this strategy off well, you’ll be doing some of both.

The most common way to lock the row is to be playing a rune-heavy (buying) deck yourself, while your opponent plays a combat-heavy deck or tries to balance the two. It’s harder to pull off a monster-heavy lock, because you’re less likely to redraw a new monster when you take cards off the row. Also, the cheaper price of combat cards makes it easier to pivot into a combat strategy from an economic one if your opponent figures out what you’re doing in time.

Some golden opportunities to keep an eye out for for are the Avatar of the Forked Path and the Mephit. The Forked Path is the most pure card for pursuing this strategy, especially when taken in combination with a thinned out deck that will redraw it often. And the Mephit (or Mistake of Creation) is a one-shot row-control opportunity that your opponent will soon turn against you if you don’t grab it first.

Like all strategies in Ascension, the luck of the draw is a factor, and you have to know when to make a play for this one and when to save your efforts for other strategies. If there’s too many cards on the row that are tasty for your opponent’s deck strategy, locking the row is a distraction. It’ll help you to get rid of the ones s/he wants most, but your efforts are better spent building your own deck than trying to block their every play when the draws aren’t playing along.

It’s also worth knowing which cards you can safely leave for your opponent. Cards like the Mechanica Initiate or Void Adept combo poorly with many decks, actually making them less tuned. It’s often safe to leave these on the row, letting your opponent pollute his deck with cards that work contrary to his strategy. The Thorn Witch, so powerful in a thinned-out redraw-heavy deck, is a waste of runes as a late game buy for a bulked-out deck in the late game. In the last third of the game, the time to buy most (non-mechanica) Constructs is past. Knowing the cards you can safely leave for your opponent to buy is another key to this strategy. Just knowing your opponent’s playstyle preferences may often give you the chance to leave a card on the row that you know they will refuse.

It’s rare that you get the chance to make a major play of this strategy – more often it’s a minor compliment to the core strategies of building a tight deck and grabbing the best opportunities. But when the draws give you the chance to pull it off at the same time, it’s a key factor in the most runaway victories you’ll ever see.

Short version:
This is a rare strategy that gives you the chance to walk away with HUGE victories when it goes big. In a 2-player game, watch for your opponent to blunder into a combat heavy or balanced strategy in a game where you’ve chosen economic (rune) power and the deck has played along with you. Use selective buying, killing and banishing to deny your opponent the cards that would compliment their deck’s strategy.

One of the better strategies I’ve seen in this game is focusing only on cards that either: Add power, or banish center row cards. it lets you do 2 important things, Kill bigger monsters (fairly reliably), and cycle through the cost cards your opponent can use. Once it’s working, it’s a very tough nut to crack, and scores very highly, particularly in 3-4 player games.

This is a well balanced game; there’s no single winning strategy. Every card can be good in the right circumstance, the key is to ****** up the combos that the row offers and adapt as it presents new opportunities.

As a rule of thumb, most colors/factions combo with themselves, so grab multiple cards from the same color and you won’t go far wrong. For example, if there’s a Void Adept (1 cost purple) and a Shade of the Black Watch (3 cost purple) in the row at the start of the game, jump on that. This is a natural combo that will thin the trash out of your deck, leaving you with mean power combos by the last third of the game. If there’s a Snapdragon (5 cost green construct) and anything else green on the row at the start of the game, dive for that. Again, you’ve got a natural combo.

Not all cards that share a color are natural combos. Experience will teach you the many exceptions to this rule. Until you have experience, look for a chance at the opening to specialize in a color or two early on.

When a card in the main row gets banished or purchased, replace it with the card below it instead of a random one from the deck. Then, replace the bottom card with one from the deck. This allows you to develop a little more strategy to your choices and cuts down on the randomness a bit.

In the iOS version of Ascension, the computer is programmed to automatically buy the card that gives the best cost to honor ratio. This is why you will often see your computer opponents purchasing an inordinate number of heavy infantries and mechana constructs. Having this knowledge under your belt can sometimes help in deciding what card to purchase (i.e. you can rest assured that it will be in the center row next turn if a better cost: honor card is present)