Ascension: Card game for iPhone/iPad/paper

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/108784/ascension-storm-of-souls

Looking forward to it, though to be honest I'm still unraveling the mysteries of Return of the Fallen

I just picked this up on the iphone and iphone and I am loving it! Never played it before but it's pretty easy to pick up. I just need to start learning strategies.

My Gamcecenter ID is TempestBlayze for anyone who wants an easy win or a newbie to learn with.

Just a heads up: I dont have the expansion. I want to learnt he regular game first before I confuse myself with new cards.

TempestBlayze wrote:

Just a heads up: I dont have the expansion. I want to learnt he regular game first before I confuse myself with new cards.

Might be better to just take the plunge with the expansion since CoTG has a much smaller scope of abilities and won't prepare you to play with any of us.

I just declined your last invite and re-invited you. When proposing games, make sure your time limit is set for 7-14 days. I have no problem playing a CoTG game but the 30 min time limit is restrictive.

demonbox wrote:

Curious-

ChrisGwinn wrote:

Summoner Wars isn't the next expansion for Ascension. Summoner Wars is a different game entirely that Playdek is also adapting for iOS.

The next ascension expansion is called "Immortal Heroes" and is supposed to be out this summer.

SommerMatt wrote:

From boardgamegeek:

One minor item we were not expecting is that Playdek says Storm of Souls will support up to six players if combined with other Ascension games.

Did the boardgamegeek author mistakenly think Storm of Souls was an Ascension expansion or did Playdek change Storm of Souls to fit into the Ascension universe?

I'm talking about the next expansion to the physical card game. He's talking about the next expansion to the iOS game. It was suggested that the iOS version might be kept one expansion behind the physical game intentionally, so that we would be getting the current expansion ported to iOS at the same time as the next expansion comes out in boxed form.

Here's how it stands:

Chronicles of the Godslayer: Base game, out in physical and iOS
Return of the Fallen: Expansion designed to be paired with CotG, out in physical and iOS
Storm of Souls: The second base set, but can be combined with the previous expansions if desired. Out in physical now, available in iOS next month.
Immortal Heroes:Expansion designed to be paired with SoS. Out in physical this summer, no announced iOS date.

Gary Games has been alternating small and large sets, which can all be intermingled, but are designed in large + small sets. If you have more than one box, you can play with more than four players, since there are enough tokens/mystics/militia to do so.

TempestBlayze wrote:

Just a heads up: I dont have the expansion. I want to learnt he regular game first before I confuse myself with new cards.

I hear that fairly often from new players, but I don't think it's a good idea. The expansion really cleans up the game and opens up a broader range of feasible strategies. Base + expansion is a better game than just base.

ChrisGwinn wrote:

Base + expansion is a better game than just base.

Storm of Souls alone is even better I think.

shoptroll wrote:
ChrisGwinn wrote:

Base + expansion is a better game than just base.

Storm of Souls alone is even better I think.

So I've heard. I'm looking forward to trying it.

I wonder if we'll get a choice whether we want to play with Storm of Souls with the original base game or without. Based on how they handled the RotF expansion, I'm guessing we will.

Storm of Souls is awesome on its own but I'm curious how well it plays with the base game. I'm guessing not as well as on its own.

So I dont know what happened with that last multi game. I pressed end play but it was constantly my turn over and over again. Weird. Next time I will se the time limite to days instead.

TempestBlayze wrote:

So I dont know what happened with that last multi game. I pressed end play but it was constantly my turn over and over again. Weird. Next time I will se the time limite to days instead.

That's what happens if the other player's timer runs out.

The way the timer works is a little unintuitive - it's like a chess clock. So the setting is the total amount of time they have to make all of their turns, not the amount of time they have to make each turn.

ChrisGwinn wrote:
demonbox wrote:

Curious-

ChrisGwinn wrote:

Summoner Wars isn't the next expansion for Ascension. Summoner Wars is a different game entirely that Playdek is also adapting for iOS.

The next ascension expansion is called "Immortal Heroes" and is supposed to be out this summer.

SommerMatt wrote:

From boardgamegeek:

One minor item we were not expecting is that Playdek says Storm of Souls will support up to six players if combined with other Ascension games.

Did the boardgamegeek author mistakenly think Storm of Souls was an Ascension expansion or did Playdek change Storm of Souls to fit into the Ascension universe?

I'm talking about the next expansion to the physical card game. He's talking about the next expansion to the iOS game. It was suggested that the iOS version might be kept one expansion behind the physical game intentionally, so that we would be getting the current expansion ported to iOS at the same time as the next expansion comes out in boxed form.

Here's how it stands:

Chronicles of the Godslayer: Base game, out in physical and iOS
Return of the Fallen: Expansion designed to be paired with CotG, out in physical and iOS
Storm of Souls: The second base set, but can be combined with the previous expansions if desired. Out in physical now, available in iOS next month.
Immortal Heroes:Expansion designed to be paired with SoS. Out in physical this summer, no announced iOS date.

Gary Games has been alternating small and large sets, which can all be intermingled, but are designed in large + small sets. If you have more than one box, you can play with more than four players, since there are enough tokens/mystics/militia to do so.

Thanks for the explanation.

I picked up the base game yesterday, and after playing through the tutorial and 2-3 AI games (and winning, yay) I just grabbed the expansion as well. This is the 1st deck building game I've ever played, so stepping into unfamiliar territory Feel free to add me (Game Center ID is Tamron) and invite me for what will probably be easy win games, at least for a while

Tamron wrote:

I picked up the base game yesterday, and after playing through the tutorial and 2-3 AI games (and winning, yay) I just grabbed the expansion as well. This is the 1st deck building game I've ever played, so stepping into unfamiliar territory Feel free to add me (Game Center ID is Tamron) and invite me for what will probably be easy win games, at least for a while :lol:

Is this considered a deck building game since each player starts out with the same starter cards and play from the same pool? I'm not much of a card gamer (besides the iOS Ascension games) but my understanding is magic: the gathering is a deck builder since you can purchase base decks and supplement those decks with add on packs to build the strongest deck.

The deck building mini-genre in current board game parlance (ooh la la) is that all players start with a very small starting deck of basic resources, and over the course of the game will add cards to their deck, building it as the game goes along. Dominion, the one that kickstarted the mini-genre, and many others like it give all the players a common pool of 10-12 types of cards to buy, with multiple copies of each available.

The difference in Ascension is that instead of having the same batch of buyable cards throughout the game, the buyables are a constantly shifting group of six cards, which adds some nice randomness to things.

So basically, the genre kind of takes the metagame aspect of Magic deckbuilding, and makes that be the game.

The distinction is basically that you begin a game of Magic with a deck already constructed, but Dominion/Ascension/etc has the construction of the deck as part of the game. The basic design idea of Ascension is taking card drafting as a core game mechanic.

When I am starting a new ai game I can pick a green bar or two yellow bars. I assume this is difficulty level, but is there another level above this and how do I enable it?

LeapingGnome wrote:

When I am starting a new ai game I can pick a green bar or two yellow bars. I assume this is difficulty level, but is there another level above this and how do I enable it?

Yes. That is the difficulty level. Afaik, playdek has been working on a hard level but don't have it in the game.

So, either their servers are down or I'm having weird difficulties. Happened about 3 seconds after I got notification that it was my turn in bigred's game, so that's who I'm blaming for breaking the servers.

Sometimes there's an issue with gamecenter or the app. I restart my phone every now and then when I have trouble connecting to online games. Seems to fix the problem.

Ready for some MP. Send them to cyraxGWJ. Picked up the expansion as I felt the base game was lacking in variety.

"Storm of Souls" was supposedly submitted to Apple for approval last week. It should be arriving, I'd guess, sometime THIS week.

SommerMatt wrote:

"Storm of Souls" was supposedly submitted to Apple for approval last week. It should be arriving, I'd guess, sometime THIS week.

Is it an IAP for the base game or is it a separate app (as it's a standalone game)?

Introduced my brother to the game (physical edition). It was his first time playing; I've played like a hundred games or more. He beat me 99 - 57

shoptroll wrote:
SommerMatt wrote:

"Storm of Souls" was supposedly submitted to Apple for approval last week. It should be arriving, I'd guess, sometime THIS week.

Is it an IAP for the base game or is it a separate app (as it's a standalone game)?

IAP, from what I've read. I don't think it would make much sense to split their user base that way.

We were informed by George Rothrock of Playdek that Ascension: Storm of Souls, an in app purchase expansion to Ascension: Chronicle of the God Slayer, has been submitted to the app store. This means, if all goes well, we should see it available for download on iTunes in the next week or so.

George ensured me that the expansion will feature an IAP manager to help you restore previous purchases on multiple devices. This feature will also be part of the Summoner Wars app. Check back here later in the day for a screenshot of the upcoming expansion.

IMAGE(http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1305399_md.jpg)

EDIT:

Also,

The Storm of Souls update will include the first cycle of [Ascension] promos: Vedah, Pathwarden, Deep Drone, Void Mesmer, Kythis, and the Rat King.
SommerMatt wrote:

IAP, from what I've read. I don't think it would make much sense to split their user base that way.

That makes sense. Logo looks nice.

Oooo. Promo cards!

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Introduced my brother to the game (physical edition). It was his first time playing; I've played like a hundred games or more. He beat me 99 - 57

One of the nice things about Ascension is that there's enough luck that a new guy can beat a veteran, but not so much luck that they can beat them consistently. My record over about 300 2-player games is pretty strongly weighted towards winning, but I'm never sure I can beat anyone.

This expansion is coming at the perfect time to re-energize me. Suddenly very excited!

Awesome! I have been playing a lot against the AI since I tried the game out two weeks ago. I was just thinking earlier today I really like the game but I want more.

I see there are four spots for players, but against the AI you can only play 1v1, does this expansion open that up or are additional players only available against other players?

My gamecenter id is LeapingGnome if anyone wants to play a game. I have never done ANY multiplayer on iOS before so not sure how it all works exactly.

LeapingGnome wrote:

Awesome! I have been playing a lot against the AI since I tried the game out two weeks ago. I was just thinking earlier today I really like the game but I want more.

I see there are four spots for players, but against the AI you can only play 1v1, does this expansion open that up or are additional players only available against other players?

My gamecenter id is LeapingGnome if anyone wants to play a game. I have never done ANY multiplayer on iOS before so not sure how it all works exactly.

Let's find out together since no one's sent me a game. Do you have the expansion?