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With thousands of titles released every year, it’s easy to nurture hyperfixations in this hobby when a particular style or gameplay loop inevitably gets its claws in. Recently, my own obsession (triggered by an impromptu first game of the infamous Dominion with my sister-in-law) has been with a specific mechanic: deckbuilding. Tracing its origins back to the aforementioned ‘grandfather’ of the genre, this is a customisable form of card game where you start with a simple deck of resources and build exponential layers on top of it to create grand armies, bustling civilisations, or even intricate spaceships in more modern titles like Moonrakers.
Over ten years ago, Ascension took the foundation laid down by Dominion and built a veritable circus on it, filled with swirling, psychedelic artwork and new twists on the established formula, not to mention a mystical theme much more compelling than… ew, nondescript mediaeval europe? We’re still doing that?
‘Like a River Flowing’ - Key Mechanics
Players begin with a simple deck of seven 1-cost currency and two 1-strength power cards. Where Dominion plays with stacks of 10 preselected cards which will never change for that particular round, Ascension centres around an ever-shifting row of cards drawn from a massive, shuffled deck. Players compete to buy more powerful creatures and spells to more efficiently generate strength or purchasing power to buy even more cards and defeat fearsome monsters, which grant powerful one-time-use effects. As with all true deckbuilders, there's no need for a board, player pieces, miniatures, or dice; it’s the cards played from each player’s personalised deck which generate all the currency and strength they need to progress through the game, and when their draw pile runs out, they shuffle it again, introducing all the shiny new cards they bought in previous rounds into their deck. Defeating monster cards, legions of demons and horrors spawned by the game’s unseen antagonist, Samael, will be your chief source of honour, the game’s victory points, but many of your cards also grant scoring bonuses when you play them or enact certain effects. Once the pool of victory points (30 honour per player) runs out, the game ends, and you add your current honour tokens to the honour values of your cards to determine the winner.
The ‘river’ of cards is what truly sets Ascension apart from the titans of the genre the game stands alongside; cards are simply replaced with new ones from the top of the deck whenever you purchase or defeat one. To analyse this mechanic is to open the discussion of the fact that Ascension is made up of a few fresh concepts (well, fresh upon first release, over a decade ago now) which don’t spice up the genre enough on their own, but which come together to create a unique and intriguing beast.
This is because, in many ways, Ascension is ascensionly– sorry, essentially, just Dominion with a few bells and whistles, and I don’t mean that as an insult. In the latter, you could ‘attack’ other players with abilities like forcing opponents to discard cards, or clog up their decks with score-reducing curse cards, but making military strength an actual numerical metric alongside currency which you can choose - or, as we’ll see, sometimes be forced - to adopt as your deck’s strategy adds a whole new layer to this cardboard cake.
‘Factional Equations’ - Strategies
Ascension’s theme could be called ‘generic fantasy’ by the untrained viewer. But the mechanics mesh so seamlessly with the theming in so many cases that the unique strategies offered by the game’s four factions come together with the colourful, sketchy imagery to create a playground for player experimentation, and that prospect alone scratches so many places I itch.
The Enlightened, a group of warrior monks (already far cooler than knights, the more obvious choice for any blue-toned ‘good guy’ faction) are the simplest to understand, and one of the most powerful, focusing on drawing more cards while sometimes providing bonuses. This means an Enlightened card which gives you currency or a victory point then lets you draw a card is functionally just a free bonus if you have it in hand, but these obviously combo with other cards which have effects whenever you do draw a card, and already you can see the potential for juicy engine-building starting to rumble.
From their artwork, the Void seem to be a blend of demon samurai and shadow mages. I'm already sold. These guys focus on attack strength, but also offer the concept I find most brain-tickling in games of this type: deck thinning. By banishing cards from your hand or deck, permanently removing them from the game, you can cycle out the more basic options so your chance of drawing your most powerful cards only increases with each card removed. It’s a delicious puzzle and one which must be carefully danced around like an arcane ninja lest you end up with beneficial cards in your hand which you may inadvertently have to discard.
After around thirty games of the 10th Anniversary set of Ascension, I’ve found that these two factions are by far the most viable. Meanwhile, the faction which borders most closely on the generic, the Lifebound, is also the weakest. Don’t get me wrong, forest druids are all fine and dandy, there’s a few werewolves sprinkled in there, and these guys benefit from playing other Lifebound cards on your turn with the ‘Unite’ ability (unlocking additional bonuses if you’ve already played a Lifebound card), meaning synergies with the Enlightened to draw as many of your other Lifebound cards as possible is a nice avenue to victory. Like their theming, though, their strategy just isn’t as impactful as other factions.
I’ve saved the best - and, somehow, also, worst - for last: the Mechana, a faction as frustrating as they are tantalising. More than any other faction, the gears of these steampunk, robotic engineers revolve around ‘construct’ cards, a type of card we haven’t mentioned yet which sits in your player area and provides either an ongoing passive buff or once-per-turn triggered ability. Mechana cards, however, are among the most expensive in the game, and as a number of their constructs boost only their other constructs, it feels like the strategy always runs out of steam and backs up, breaking down into a sort of mechanical ouroboros, eating its own efficiency to increase its yield. In simpler terms: Mechana are sloooowwwww. With 180 cards in the main deck, you might not even see half of them each game, so when the Mechana construct card which decreases the cost of other constructs each time you play a construct crops up early, the mad dash to purchase it will result in either a great foundation for a Mechana-focused deck, or will sit uselessly beside you while your opponent tinkers with something more effective.
‘Adapt and Overcome’ - Deckbuilding
But that’s just it. I started getting better at Ascension from the moment I realised the game rewards the foresight to not just create the most efficient engine, but to manipulate your deck, plugging in different parts and tossing out old ones as the terrain of battle changes. Consequently, lots of cards exist in an in-between state, allowing you to pivot to attack if more monsters appear, or go total ‘big money’ if the most powerful cards of each faction are cropping up instead. A Mechana Initiate, for instance, gives one attack power or one currency when played. It’s not hugely useful, but it’s a stepping stone, and it’s cheap; all four factions contain similar multipurpose cards.
However, therein lies an issue. It was remedied by later expansions, but in terms of the base game, card draw is the most efficient avenue to victory. A deck stuffed with Enlightened cards will allow you to cycle a large proportion of your cards in a single turn. These heroes obviously have to appear in the river of cards for you to purchase, but it only takes a few ‘draw a card’ cards to notice your turnover increasing exponentially. Add some Banished cards which permanently remove slower, less useful cards from your deck, and you’ll have a trim little system running. That’s what I meant earlier when I was ranking the factions in terms of their power creep (getting unintentionally more powerful over time, upsetting the game's balance). Adding any Lifebound or Mechana cards to this mix would just throw a spanner into your carefully oiled mechanism, jamming it up.
Yes, there are a handful of cards in some of the other factions which allow you to draw cards, but four Lifebound cards in a deck of 180 is pretty slim odds. This is where the river of cards becomes the game’s biggest blessing and curse all at once. The system rewards cunning, considered play as you can never guarantee which cards will come up. But… You can never guarantee which cards will come up, so the factions which rely on their own allied cards - like Lifebound’s ‘Unite’ ability and Mechana’s endless loop of constructs benefiting constructs - fall by the riverside. Plus, some of the effects from monster cards are horrendously disproportionate depending on which faction your opponent is playing. I will banish the Sea Tyrant (destroying it without triggering its effect) whenever I see it, even if it would benefit me to keep it around to trip up my opponent. This is because it destroys ALL but one construct an opponent controls, and I find it uncomfortably mean-spirited. Good luck if you were running Mechana this round: your entire game strategy was just swept clean by the current. One could argue this card’s existence is the necessary evil to offset Mechana players snowballing out of control, but… When the chances of specific cards appearing are so statistically slim, there’s sort of a built-in deterrent already.
‘Flurry of Blows’ - Attack Cards
To return to what Ascension does better than its contemporaries, a big annoyance in Dominion, especially late-game, is leftover currency on your turn. I have 7 buying power, but a province
costs 8. I don’t want to clog up my deck with a bunch of lower-cost cards, so that’s essentially a wasted turn, or I could just buy MORE money, which is about as gratifying as it sounds. Ascension avoids this with one copy of a single card called the Cultist. It sits all alone at the top of the board, and can be ‘defeated’ as many times as you like on your turn for just a single attack value. It isn’t discarded (representing the endless flow of Samael’s human worshippers), and only provides a single victory point. But this is enough trickle-down to mean that a high percentage of turns in Ascension - even ones which pull off dizzying combos and utilise dozens of advanced cards - end with giving this punching bag a swift kicking to snaffle up a few precious extra victory points. It’s the little cherry on top of each turn; it adds player agency, acts as a soft timer for the round itself (the game ends once available victory points run out), and very often negates that ‘ugh, next turn’ feeling so common in Dominion. Attack cards in and of themselves also do away with physical victory point cards, which in one way admittedly abandons the risk-reward of adding them to your deck (as they were the only way you could actually, you know, win, but also clogged up your hands of cards as they offered no other perks) and in another way strips back a clunky mechanic and focuses entirely on the quickfire efficiency of your deck structure.
The Cultist does, however, mean games can peter out quickly. As the game ends once the honour pool runs out, final turns very often consist of absent-mindedly pinging the Cultist a few times and ending the game. Not exactly the big swing, homerun final turn so many other games manage to pull off, especially in a genre where comedy skits are created to address the phenomenon of cycling practically endlessly through your almighty juggernaut of a deck in the final rounds while opponents twiddle their thumbs.
Due to the nature of the central ‘river’ of cards, with only six cards on display there sometimes won’t even be a single monster on the playing field, and attack-focused decks can end up bottoming out and throwing all of their accumulated strength at the Cultist. I’ve seen players rack up fifteen victory points (a quarter of the entire pool of victory points for a two-player game) in a single turn just by pinging the Cultist over and over again because they had no other options. Is that strategically satisfying? Perhaps not. But is it more charitable than that attack strength completely going to waste? Undoubtedly. The Cultist also offsets the issue of there being substantially fewer monster cards than faction-oriented hero and construct cards, meaning in turn that attack strength isn’t quite as viable a strategy as card draw or financial gain.
‘Twist of Fate’ - Hidden Considerations
But here we come to the crux of the matter. Ascension, in many ways… is actually something of an anti-deckbuilder in disguise. Besides knowing which cards exist in the game (and believe me, you’ll get very familiar with these cards), the draw deck is completely randomised, meaning forethought and planning can occur only speculatively. Because of this, you must shift your strategy, tailoring your deck not to create the most efficient use of one pathway but rather to be as versatile and flexible as possible while simultaneously trying not to turn it into a master-of-none. It’s an elegant puzzle which demands universal balance, making the driving gameplay elements pleasingly thematic for a game containing celestial beings.
The introduction of enemy cards to be defeated as an integral part of the deck you’re buying cards from to accelerate your own stack of abilities and units openly discourages filling your deck with money early on so that you can just buy whatever you want. If the central row fills up with monsters, throwing coins at them isn’t an effective tactic in the fight against the underworld’s champions, and you’ll waste more turns buying attack power, slowing your deck’s tempo. Like chess, constantly putting pressure on your opponent and making each turn as efficient as possible is key. The river of cards also offers the choice to block other players by attempting a little card counting; you may decide not to buy a card if you’re confident they won’t be able to afford it next turn either, as buying one will always reveal a new card for your opponents which might perfectly aid their strategy. Conversely, can you afford to buy a few low-cost cards to reveal potentially more powerful ones, or is it too late in the game to toy with the risk of throwing all your money away for mediocre benefits? In turn, tripping up your opponent’s strategy by buying cards which you know they’ll have their eye on can be just as worthwhile. It makes Ascension a more directly competitive puzzle than Dominion, where you’re just tinkering away at your own isolated forges rather than battling one another for… well, dominance. Ironic.
‘Heavenly Glow’ - Components
This 10th Anniversary set tweaks some cards for balance, but more crucially updates all the artwork. I wouldn’t say it’s drop-dead gorgeous, but there’s certainly some cards which stand out as genuinely excellent pieces of art. My favourite is by far the Shade of the Black Witch, whose almost entirely monochrome purple artwork depicts a glowing-eyed demon samurai clutching a katana emblazoned with blue sigils in one hand and an octopus, of all things, in the other.
The component quality isn’t terrible, and that’s the best I can say about it. The cards aren’t linen finish or double-cushioned poker quality or anything, but they’re serviceable… when sleeved. The massive deck, a problem also faced by Everdell, is impossible to shuffle effectively unless you do it in bite-size chunks which are never shuffled together, or purchase card sleeves (not included). The deck is just too thick and heavy, and the cards too thin, to have any kind of effect; the same groups of cards remain bunched together with each shuffle. No, sleeving is essential, and I think it’s high time that deckbuilders - in a genre where near-constant shuffling occurs throughout the course of the game - need to start being packaged with said sleeves. At least Ascension is published by board game accessory goliath Ultra Pro, so their cheap and cheerful sleeves are compatible.
The honour tokens are nice, made of transparent resin in smaller white chunks to represent single victory points and larger red ones to represent five. They’re also non-uniform, like the aember tokens of Keyforge’s in-game currency, adding an organic quality which is much appreciated.
'A Higher Plane’ - Final Thoughts
Ultimately, this base set scratches the surface of Ascension’s potential. Whether it elevates the genre to new heights isn’t plain to see from this base set, where strategies and match-ups are quickly exhausted if you play regularly. To compare it unfavourably to Dominion for perhaps the first time in this review - which is not to say I dislike Dominion, because I actually think it functions better as a ‘pure’ deckbuilder - the latter has three million unique combinations of 10 Kingdom cards in the base set alone, whereas the cards in Ascension do not change, and are merely shuffled into a different order each time. When a majority of these cards have duplicates, the rate you exhaust all Ascension has to offer is even faster. After dozens of games, the once-innovative river of cards begins to look more like a stagnant pool. Introducing this blindly-drawn row of cards to a family of games entirely built on manipulating the odds of your personal shuffled deck not only refreshes the genre in an exciting way, but essentially doubles the random chance at play, which has an undeniable knock-on effect. If Dominion is the grandfather of deckbuilding, Ascension is its rebellious uncle.
But I do know for a fact that many of my issues are almost immediately addressed in subsequent expansions. The problem of the monster cards feeling a little tacked on is alleviated by trophy monsters, who sit in your player area with a one-time-use effect to be activated at a moment of your choosing, rather than just doing something small when you defeat them then disappearing; you need look no further than Assimilation Plant, a Mechana card which turns ALL your Mechana heroes into constructs, to decide whether Mechana’s unsatisfying slow-burn strategy was enhanced down the line; and there are plenty of cards added to all the factions which increase card draw without diluting those faction’s unique strategies. Truly, we have to look at Ascension 10th Anniversary Edition in context as the foundational pillars of creation for a whole shangri-la of deckbuilding potential
