Ascension : Chronicles of the Godslayer

Customer Reviews

The little deck builder that could Review by Chillosophy

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The first thing that I want people to consider about Ascension is how playable it is. It's easy to play, easy to set up, easy to tear down and forces players in to a larger variety of situations.

Yes dominion is more strategic but players often put themselves in a situation to play the game the same way just because it works. Everyone fights for the same cards in other deck builders and everyone's deck is same is same with some variance. Ascension forces you to react to a new board every turn.

I love how you can play multiple games of Ascension without hesitation, other deck builders require you to clean up and select another market, by that time your already half way into a game of Ascension.

Strategy isn't always a games best feature, just saying (Posted on 4/30/12)

Fun but not perfect Review by Charles

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Easy and fast. Non-gamers tend to catch on after a few rounds, and soon start trying to create their own combos. The theme is rather abstract so some folks will not really "get" it. Worth purchasing if you want a light deck-building game that doesn't take hours to play. (Posted on 8/24/11)

At the mercy of "what's on the board" Review by Fong Chun

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Anyone who has played a deck-building game like Dominion, will feel right at home with Ascension. In Ascension, players assume the role of ordinary warrior attempting to rise from relative anonymity to become an ultimate hero. To do this, players recruit the help of other heroes and skills through the purchasing of cards with runes. These cards will in turn help you garner more honor (ie. victory points) through defeating monsters and accumulating other cards.
What makes Ascension different from a deck-building game like Dominion is that there is a physical board rather than just supply sets of cards. This board serves to reveal which cards or monsters are currently in play for players to either acquire or attack (if it is monster card); All these cards get drawn from a single stack. Therefore, there are no "supply stacks" of the different cards like Dominion, but rather players have to utilize the concept of "playing with what is on the board." This leads to an intriguing strategic element where players have to find the right balance of cards to acquire, but also making tactical decisions on whether any cards they decide to pass up are not critical cards for other players. So the trade-off of acquiring cards that do not fit your overall strategy to make sure they don’t fall into enemy hands is a decision that players have to deal with every turn.
While this leads to some interesting strategic play, I found that the strategic element is neither as versatile nor as in depth as a game like Dominion. Due to being forced to play with what's on board, your strategy is at the mercy of what gets drawn on to the board. And while certain cards exist in duplicates, more powerful and critical strategic cards only exist as singletons. And since you can only acquire cards on your turn, an untimely revelation of important cards to you could result in them being banished (ie. Removed from the game) or worse snatched by one of your savvy opponents preventing you from achieving your overall strategic goal. And don't always count on going through the supply deck since it is by no means a minuscule size. So be prepared to be frustrated when an essential card you are awaiting for never actually gets drawn onto the board.
Taking the above into account, this makes deck specializing more difficult compared to other deck-building games. And this issue is amplified by the tiny number of cards that can be used to banish and draw additional cards. And ironically, the usefulness of banish cards do not correspond to the cost of them as they are all extremely cheap costing only 1-2 runes. And because there is no concept of number of buys per turn, more often than not, they appear in a series and get taken all by one player which leaves a stench of unfairness, unlucky, and imbalance to everyone else.
One interesting feature of the game is team-play which allows players to combine the strength of their cards and rune buying power to wreak havoc on their opponents. Sounds wonderful does it not? Bazinga! The team-play variation can hardly be considered team-play. The only element it adds to the game is that teammates can send cards on the board to their teammate should they have the runes to purchase the card and an additional rune to send the card. The packaged card gets placed onto their teammates discard pile. But due to the limited number of card drawing cards in the game, to actually go through your deck of cards is a frustrating and slow process and typically occurs only a few times in the game. So any sent cards have very little impact on the game; And thus, team-play is weak at best.

Overall, I would classify Ascension to be a decent deck-building gateway game. It is simple, yet strategic enough to arouse the interest of those new to these types of games. But don’t expect for superb strategic but rather “what’s on the board” to win games. If you are already into deck-building games, then a game like Dominion would definitely serve your interests better.
(Posted on 1/10/11)

-Dominion's little brother- Review by Maxime Yazz

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Ascention: Chronicle of the Godslayer is a fast deck building game that as a very familiar feel. it comes with a board, a few points tokens, a deck of monsters heros and constructs, and a few starter deck for 2 to 4 players.

This game is very familiar to Dominion another deckbuilding card game, but it has a few differences. The card are not divided in small packs in the middle of the table but are randomly selected from the main deck wich contains many differents kind of cards. In Ascension you get two ressource from the start, Rune and Power. Power allows you to defeat monster, that give you certain effect or benefits. And Rune allow you to buy additionnal cards to complement your deck.

The games has a little less strategic depth that dominion offers, mostly because of the luck base mechanic. They are a few different factions of card that give a little flavor to the game. All in all a fun and quick little game. A very good game to introduce the deck building genre to a new comers to the gaming hobby. (Posted on 9/19/10)