Keyforge

[Cyneheard]

Heard good things about it from Magic friends, mildly interested myself, but haven't had time to try it thus far

The interesting part I've seen is the hostile reactions from Magic players, at least when it was originally announced.  On the somewhat neutral ground of r/boardgames, most threads about Keyforge had Magic players ranging from "why would you gimp your Magic without trading and deckbuilding" to "you're a loser idiot who wants the game without the work."  There absolutely is a large audience both intimidated by Magic deckbuilding and turned off by the secondary market.  Glad to hear Keyforge seems to be doing well.

Some of the Magic stores in my area have cut their less-attended formats, and switched to Keyforge for those nights.

The chains system is RIPE for abuse if high-level tournaments take into account lower-level results. Back when Magic had an ELO rating to determine competitive rewards, top-level players had horrible incentives to not play Magic, since it could bring their rating down (especially in local events).

This would give a player an excuse to intentionally lose with their broken deck just before a big tournament.

[BRickAstley]

Disclaimer: I have only done one competitive event, but i've done a lot of casual play. It's been incredibly fun casually and we haven't really had any massive power level imbalance issues. SO I don't care as much about the top level play stuff.

[Cyneheard]

Disclaimer: I have only done one competitive event, but i've done a lot of casual play. It's been incredibly fun casually and we haven't really had any massive power level imbalance issues. SO I don't care as much about the top level play stuff.

Makes sense. Basically, I'm saying that if there's tournaments with larger prize pools than a $1k, you're going to see some shenanigans to gain an edge if they're not very careful in how they handle the chains issue.

[SevenSpirits]

Disclaimer: I have only done one competitive event, but i've done a lot of casual play. It's been incredibly fun casually and we haven't really had any massive power level imbalance issues. SO I don't care as much about the top level play stuff.

Makes sense. Basically, I'm saying that if there's tournaments with larger prize pools than a $1k, you're going to see some shenanigans to gain an edge if they're not very careful in how they handle the chains issue.

My understanding is that the publisher, Fantasy Flight, doesn't do monetary prizes at all. Any such tournament would be run by a third party and I would suppose they'd use a format that doesn't fall prey to that problem, like sealed, or switch decks / bid chains to choose who plays which one. But who knows, sometimes tournament organizers make bad decisions.

(I've played a couple games of this, and it seems like a pretty cool game actually, but I'm not interested in taking up a game like this personally.)