Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer took many players by surprise with it's simple deck building mechanic with an ever changing board state. One year after it's initial release, Gary Games has put out the first expansion to it, entitled Ascension: Return of the Fallen. Of interest, it's not only an expansion, but can be played as a stand alone two player game, and when combined with the original set, enables up to six players to play.
VG30 got hold of our pre-ordered copy of Ascension: Return of the Fallen, and immediately brought it home to play. Pre-Orders were to receive a special card,
Kythis, the Gatekeeper. Unfortunately, our store did not receive any of the pre-order cards, so we were very disappointed by that. There wasn't a list or anything on the Ascension website of who would be getting them, and our store, The Gaming Goat, did not, for reasons unknown to them or us. Gary Games, this needs to be fixed for us and future expansions. Anyway, time for the unboxing!
The box is smaller than I expected for some reason. I would say about half the size of the original box, which makes sense since it's designed to support two players by itself. Let's open it up.
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| A little bit better idea of the box size |
Okay, fairly standard, the same kind of plastic insert that was in the original, only smaller, a sealed deck of cards, and a small baggie with counters in it. Pretty standard fare. But the size of the deck is pretty impressive, as it should be for the $29.99 MSRP on the game.
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| Pretty good chunk of cards |
Nothing left to do but open the cards. The first thing I noticed was that these felt
different. They didn't feel like the high glossy thick Ascension cards that I was accustomed to. I ran down to the basement to retrieve my copy of Ascension for a quick comparison. Sure enough, these cards are a different stock and a different gloss then the original set.
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| Original on left, new on right |
It's a little hard to tell from that picture there, but you can see that the light reflects smoother on the new card than the old. It's not as thick, and my wife worried that they were more likely to fall apart than the older set and thought we might have to pick up sleeves for them now. That's when it hit me, maybe they did this for the people who did want to sleeve. There had been many complaints about cards fitting tightly into their sleeves, so maybe they printed a very slightly smaller, slightly thinner card to help facilitate that. In any case, I'm not a fan of having different printings of the cards.
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| One last example, old cards on top, new cards on the bottom, twenty cards each |
After the initial setup, we shuffled up the cards and began play. For purposes of Part 1 of this review, we're only going to talk about Return of the Fallen by itself. We'll cover it's integration with the base set in Part 2. Right out of the gate, we noticed a power level shift. After a few rounds we were stringing 6 - 10 card combos together to come up with huge amounts of runic power. Common cards in the set, in which you banish a card from your hand (usually an Apprentice or Militia) and replace it with either a Mystic or Heavy Infantry, allowed us to tear through high costing heroes and constructs quickly.
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| The wife strings together a 9 card combo mid way through the game |
Constructs, particularly Mechana Constructs, are much more prevalent in this set than in the original game. Originally you could potentially have 2 - 3 constructs in play at a time. In our game, I had 8 constructs in play at the same time, and there was very little that my wife could do about it.
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| My wife believes if your constructs out number the center row, you should lose |
There's a few new tricks that the cards allow you to do in this set. The big new mechanic is one we discussed in the review of Ascension called
Fate. Cards with the Fate mechanic trigger when they are first played in the center row, even if it's during initial setup. Most of these cards are good and don't do a whole lot in the way of disruption. You may end up drawing a card, acquiring a Mystic, or banishing the cards around a newly placed creature. The effects add an element of surprise to the game. Other new abilities will have you staring into the Void, as it allows you to battle monsters and retrieve heroes and constructs from it, making banishing more of an inconvenience than a permanent solution.
So the important question here is "How does it play?" I'm happy to report that the expansion brings an epic feeling to the game. Chosen heroes, impressive
costly constructs, and the big bad demon himself, Samael make appearances and carry the power with them that they deserve. If Ascension were to be described as a battle, this can be described as a war, and it feels good. There's enough here to warrant the expansion, and any fan of Ascension needs to go out and pick this up.
Check back with us next week when we take the expansion and combine it with the base set to get a real feel for how they play together. We also have a couple other Ascension related surprises in store that you won't want to miss, but until then, Happy Gaming!
