Ascension: Card game for iPhone/iPad/paper

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shoptroll's Google spreadsheet of who's playing on iOS and what sets they have.

GWJ vs Quarter To Three tournament thread

GWJ Ascension league thread

Hey Fed,

The games are good and close so far!

With our second game I tried pursuing a straight up Heavy Infantry only plan. I think I only had about 4 or 5 actual non-basic cards in my deck. It seemed to work out fine though, which is a bit worrying as it is pretty boring and non-interactive.

I tried it as when I lose to the AI it is often with them just spamming Heavy Infantry and picking up Mechana constructs.

I read a post on BGG where one of the testers was saying that the baseline strategy for the AI was to just buy basic cards because that's the baseline (Kind of how in dominion the idea is that your buy should be better than a silver).
I'm still looking for strategies other than buy the best card you can afford, so any tips would be great.

Get cards that let you banish cards from your deck. Ideally, by the end of the game you have none of your starting cards because they're very weak and basically clutter your draws. Personally, I'm big on cards that either draw multiple cards or draw one and do something else.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:

Get cards that let you banish cards from your deck. Ideally, by the end of the game you have none of your starting cards because they're very weak and basically clutter your draws. Personally, I'm big on cards that either draw multiple cards or draw one and do something else.

Same here, although I may be buying those deck-enema cards too early in the game.

Sorry I didn't notice the invites until just this morning.

Props to ASCENSION for having async multiplayer, but where are the notifications?

Am I just missing something, or does this game NOT push notify you when it's your turn in a multiplayer game? This is incredibly annoying.

The iOS version of CARCASSONNE is really the absolutely gold standard in ports, IMHO. After seeing how good online play can be in that app, this really suffers by comparison.

EDIT:

Holy crap. This game doesn't even support multi-tasking/fast app switching? in 2011? How is that possible?

Matt - Ascension has exactly the notifications I'd want; make sure yours are turned on in your iPhone Settings/Notifications/Ascension.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Matt - Ascension has exactly the notifications I'd want; make sure yours are turned on in your iPhone Settings/Notifications/Ascension.

I swear I looked there and didn't see an entry. Just rechecked, and magically it appeared. Damn wizards.

Ok, I picked this up. Easily some of the best dollars I have spent on any app for my iPad.

I'm reading this thread because I have an iPad, but I still don't know what Ascencion is

I find my games tend to turn tremendously on whether or not I get the "Arbiter of the Precipice" early on. That's the one that lets you draw two and banish one of them. Such a game changer to be able to get rid of those apprentices/militia early.

The similar cards that force you to discard from your existing hand or your discard pile are very fickle, since unless you happen to be on a turn where you have anything in your discard pile, you have the unfortunate choice of having to forfeit a rune/power on your current turn in order to get the card out of your deck.

Also, has anyone gotten the "Tablet of Time's Dawn" to work? I banished it from my discard pile, but I didn't get a free turn. I'm guessing that means it has to be banished from in play, but I don't know of any cards that do that.

Mr Crinkle wrote:

Also, has anyone gotten the "Tablet of Time's Dawn" to work? I banished it from my discard pile, but I didn't get a free turn. I'm guessing that means it has to be banished from in play, but I don't know of any cards that do that.

Just toss it out onto the play field. Worked like a charm for me.

Mex wrote:

I'm reading this thread because I have an iPad, but I still don't know what Ascencion is

I have an iPhone, and don't know what Ascension is.

cube wrote:
Mex wrote:

I'm reading this thread because I have an iPad, but I still don't know what Ascencion is

I have an iPhone, and don't know what Ascension is.

If only there was some sort of system of linked computers which would allow for the searching of random topics....

Or...

iTunes store link for universal iPhone/iPad app:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ascen...

iTunes store link for free "lite" version of app:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ascen...

SommerMatt wrote:
cube wrote:
Mex wrote:

I'm reading this thread because I have an iPad, but I still don't know what Ascencion is

I have an iPhone, and don't know what Ascension is.

If only there was some sort of system of linked computers which would allow for the searching of random topics....

This is why people don't like people who play card games

Mex wrote:
SommerMatt wrote:
cube wrote:
Mex wrote:

I'm reading this thread because I have an iPad, but I still don't know what Ascencion is

I have an iPhone, and don't know what Ascension is.

If only there was some sort of system of linked computers which would allow for the searching of random topics....

This is why people don't like people who play card games

To be fair, I've never played a card game in my life before starting to tinker with DOMINION and ASCENSION.

I'm just naturally a dick.

Hey, I pimped Ascension mercilessly in both the iPhone games and iPad games threads before starting this one!

Also: Tablet of Time's Dawn has worked every time for me, but I've read enough about various cards to suggest that there may be a few bugs to squash. I haven't noticed any myself so far.

And SommerMatt: Seems like the notifications have stopped working for me, even though they are turned on, so maybe there are some issues with the system after all.

This game is fantastic. I'm editorcook if anyone wants to add me.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Same here, although I may be buying those deck-enema cards too early in the game.

I don't think you can buy them too early. The sooner you eliminate all the less useful things, the sooner you start to really hum. I have yet to run a game where I got as many self-banish cards as soon as I could and found myself out of cards I wanted to pitch.

Mr Crinkle wrote:

I find my games tend to turn tremendously on whether or not I get the "Arbiter of the Precipice" early on. That's the one that lets you draw two and banish one of them. Such a game changer to be able to get rid of those apprentices/militia early.

The similar cards that force you to discard from your existing hand or your discard pile are very fickle, since unless you happen to be on a turn where you have anything in your discard pile, you have the unfortunate choice of having to forfeit a rune/power on your current turn in order to get the card out of your deck.

Blech. That one's my least favourite mostly because of the forced discard. It's fine early, but even in the mid-game I find that I too frequently have no cards that I want to turf. Void Apprentice is nice because it's cheap (and the banish is optional), the void hero that gives +2attack with the optional banish is great, and defeating the vulture (Abomination? Something like that?) is awesome.

I think Arbiter of the Precipice is very good, just my 2 cents.

And I have run out of cards in my deck to banish, though not lately.

I have now won two games by sick margins by taking a lot of Mechana Constructs. Again I wonder if they are so good it imbalances the game. I suppose there may be counter strategies, like trying to banish them all from the center.

I think the best way to counter the construct strategy is to try to burn down the honor quickly with a power and banish heavy deck. That's what I was trying to do in our game, but ye gods, I just couldn't get the banish cards so I couldn't ever control the middle. And then those fricken constructs just kept appearing, and the Fedaykin train had left the station by about round 10. There was no stopping you at that point. I was stuck taking cards I didn't want just because I really, really didn't want you to have them.

One strategy that occurred to me yesterday is, if you can get out to an early honor lead playing conventionally, switch to taking constructs/building up "deck points". Seems like it's often easy to maintain the lead in "game points" once you have it; then you just don't want to lose because of an imbalance in "deck points".

Fedaykin98 wrote:

I have now won two games by sick margins by taking a lot of Mechana Constructs.

Guess I should feel special that you only beat me by 4 points

Btw Matt - my notifications weren't working last night and this morning. Around lunch, they came back. Possibly a hiccup with the notification system.

And twice in the last two days, I have run out of original cards to banish, both times when I got a deck-cleaner very early. While I love Arbiter of the Precipice, he becomes a dead draw at that point, unless you want to banish cards that grant deck points. I don't. I think one Arbiter is all I'd want in my deck.

The more I play, the more I see that the subtle ways to play better involve the order in which you play your cards, and card synergy. Many games come down to a 3 point margin or less.

I don't know if I'm imagining things, but it seems like my battery life has been horrible since turning on notifications for this game.

There can be some pretty darn close games...
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Do you think adding achievements or leaderboards would add or subtract from the game? I kinda think I'd like to see my W/L record, but then again, if it was poor I would probably stop playing the game.

In the meantime, I guess I can just focus on my positive achievements and post them here :D.

Here's my video review from last year

Of the two videos that SommerMatt posted, pay most attention to the first one, by Tom Vasel. There was some hoohaa about the makers of the second one, Board to Death which made me question their review process and judgement.

FWIW I made a video explaining, in very basic terms, what a deck-building game is. I wish I'd seen something like this before I started reading up on newer games.

1Dgaf wrote:

Of the two videos that SommerMatt posted, pay most attention to the first one, by Tom Vasel. There was some hoohaa about the makers of the second one, Board to Death which made me question their review process and judgement.

I'm relatively new to the whole BGG scene, so I have no idea what you're talking about in regards to the BOARD TO DEATH people. Hoohaa aside, the video is basically a "how to play" sort of thing, and it didn't seem to be anything strange-- I think they gave it a 7/10, which seemed like a fair evaluation to me. I agree that Tom Vasel's reviews are better and more in-depth.

TheWalt wrote:

Do you think adding achievements or leaderboards would add or subtract from the game? I kinda think I'd like to see my W/L record, but then again, if it was poor I would probably stop playing the game.

In the meantime, I guess I can just focus on my positive achievements and post them here :D.

I have never been a big "achievement whore," so I wouldn't care if they institute achievements or not. CHAT, however, seems to be a pretty grievous omission. That, and fast app switching.

I really want to like this game, as I already find it more fun than DOMINION. Something about the tactics and strategy, though, just isn't clicking for me yet. The iOS app makes it pretty difficult/impossible to follow what the other players do on their turns, so I wish the built-in tutorial was a bit deeper.

I must like it, as I'm also thinking about buying the physical game AND the expansion.

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