Relentless Creeper

Power Creep, Why the Game of KeyForge Needs an Alternate Format, and the Case for Adaptive

Prologue

If you are familiar with the game of KeyForge, you have probably noticed a stark increase in power level of the cards and decks released in the most recent expansions, Winds of Exchange and Grim Reminders, when compared to decks that were released closer to the game’s debut. This isn’t exactly revolutionary or damning – if you’re familiar with virtually any card game that features expansions and players building or playing their own decks, you have almost certainly noticed the same trend there. The truth is, KeyForge always had this, but managed it relatively well from Call of the Archons through Dark Tidings, before things really took off in Winds of Exchange.

Card gamers of all kinds are universally familiar with the term “power creep.” It is the concept that as a game’s life span goes on, the strength and power of the cards increase with it, leaving the older cards and expansions underwhelming. There is a litany of reasons for it, some more justified than others. The most obvious one is that card game producers are (usually) run by for-profit companies, and they have to ensure the financial viability of the game, which can be done by ensuring the players want to actually buy the latest releases. To do that they make the cards stronger and thus more desirable to competitive players. Another reason is that producers are always trying to innovate and try new things, and as you run out of obvious ideas to try, you inevitably will end up with things that are more powerful.

Over time, power creep really takes a toll on a game. Late stages of card games become almost unrecognizable from the earlier years due to added complexity and obsolescence of earlier cards. KeyForge’s early sets are largely rescued by their relatively massive print run sizes, but if you buy a sealed deck from any of the first 3 sets, it likely won’t stand a chance against a sealed deck from Winds of Exchange or Grim Reminders. With some exceptions, most decks that used to be competitive in Archon format fall short in the modern meta due to the increased speed of the game.

How do we as players adjust to this reality in KeyForge? What do we do with our old favorite decks that don’t have enough gas in the tank to keep up with the modern game? Throughout this article I will be sharing quotes from Richard Garfield, the designer of KeyForge, that he gave during his interview with the Call of Discovery podcast on Episode 63. I highly recommend you give that a listen (or re-listen – it is that good) to supplement your reading here. I also request you give a listen to our (Sloppy Labwork’s) Bottom of the Beaker podcast episode 74: What’s the Deal with Archon?, where we discuss this same topic in audio form.

Part 1: Archon’s Callback

“One of the most exciting things for me with KeyForge has been this idea that people have a very difficult time telling other people what the best way to play is.”

~ Richard Garfield

If you recall from the early days of KeyForge, the game had a number of different organized play formats. Most popular was always Sealed – there is an inescapable charm of opening a new deck and playing it versus someone else doing the same. Right alongside it in popularity was Archon, the flagship format of KeyForge, where you bring your own deck and play it. Lagging further behind in popularity (although each with a cult following) were other official formats: Reversal (bring a deck to make your opponent play each round), Triad (bring 3 decks and let your opponent ban 1 before you start play), and Adaptive (which utilized chain bidding for the deciding game as a means of balancing two imbalanced decks). At most levels of organized play, Archon also had a balancing mechanism wherein decks that won games in prior events would accrue chains, so the best decks in theory would be handicapped by having to play with 1 or more chains at the start of the game. These formats made KeyForge truly a game for everyone – no matter what kind of gamer you were, or what kind of game you were looking for, there was a format for you (whether or not there were other players who wanted to play that format with you is another question).

Today, in Ghost Galaxy’s iteration of KeyForge, the only official organized play formats are Sealed, Archon, and Alliance (construct a deck using 3 “pods” [houses] from different decks in the same set, and play that deck throughout the event). Most of the old formats were removed and replaced, including formats that were specifically intended to balance decks against one another, allowing players to bring their favorite deck to an event and have a chance regardless of how weak it might be. Even in current Archon there is no longer the chain accrual mechanism that used to be in place to attempt to balance the format.

Notably, 2 of the 3 modern formats have the same singular goal – bring the strongest deck you can and beat your opponents mercilessly with it. Archon and Alliance are both formats for the Spikes of the KeyForge world. If you’re not a Spike, you have Sealed. If you don’t like Sealed, or if you are looking for another avenue to compete that doesn’t feel as random, you are currently out of luck. Sure, you can do what many players and communities do, and make your own formats, rules, or restrictions in order to find an enjoyable game, but you don’t have any official organized play support from Ghost Galaxy.

Part 2: Ruins of Archon(is)

“Seeing how people engaged with KeyForge was very interesting, because some people were all about trying to balance the decks, or finding balanced decks. Other people were about trying to find the best decks and beating people with it, which I think is sort of a poisonous way to approach this game.”

~ Richard Garfield

During his interview with Call of Discovery linked above, Richard Garfield referred to the only bring-your-own-deck formats now actively supported by Ghost Galaxy as “a poisonous way to approach this game.” That is just one person’s opinion, but that is a very strong statement from a very notable person, and it should make us rethink how we approach this game.

Consider the impact of power creep on formats like Archon and Alliance. As cards and decks become more powerful, the race to 3 keys becomes shorter. Games that used to take 10 turns and were filled with “big” swings like Tribute and Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus to steal 4 or more æmber are now replaced by 6 or 7 turn games where the swings are the Bräkken band fighting your board empty while gaining 5 æmber in the process, or a legion of Scholars reaping for 6 and drawing 6 cards every turn. When the race is shorter (directly, as in number of turns), there are simply fewer decisions to make in a game. A 6 turn game has far fewer decision points than a 10 turn game. With more and more decks offering the ability to gain 6+ æmber in a turn repeatedly, or forge keys for free, you are leaving less room for players to be able to respond strategically.

When you combine the exacerbated power creep with the only official formats of the game being made for Spike and other high end competitive gamers, you are playing with fire. You are telling your players that they have to spend a great deal of money (or get lucky) in order to compete in the premier events (Vault Tours and World Championships). More importantly, with this much power creep, Archon doesn’t feel to me like the same game that it used to be. Others still enjoy Archon, and I’m not telling them not to. But I need to find what I enjoy about KeyForge again.

From the business perspective, if Ghost Galaxy continues the trend of power creeped sets, they need to offer something for players more than new decks that are better versions of old decks. With Archon/Alliance as the primary focus of organized play, they have no choice but to continue the power creep in order to have successful sets. Why would I, as a player, invest in a less powerful set if the only bring-your-own-deck formats require you to bring something as powerful as possible? What happens when players catch on and get tired of spending top dollar every 6 months to stay relevant?

You might point out that every card game requires players to spend to stay competitive. Why should KeyForge be any different? Producing KeyForge is a business, and it has to be profitable for it to keep coming. Well, KeyForge is uniquely positioned to buck the trend of needing to spend extravagantly to stay competitive. It was designed and released with mechanisms to make it immune to the problems power creep brings to every other game. No other card game I know of has a built in handicapping system to allow players of all types to compete in any given game, regardless of which deck they bring to the table.

Part 3: Eureka!

“You get a lot of good play out of a game where handicaps are embraced by the players. Go is the premiere example.”

~ Richard Garfield

There is an obvious solution to this that experienced players will already know: embrace Adaptive. While it may not appeal to every player (and it doesn’t have to), it does solve the issues presented above regarding power creep. It appeals to a broader set of players than Alliance. It makes KeyForge once again a game for the people, like it was upon release. KeyForge was at its peak popularity when it supported formats for everyone. It was a welcoming game that had unlimited potential. Now, it is a game that is trying to appeal to the Spikes of other card games through Archon and more directly Alliance, while forgetting about the players that it captivated from the start.

If you engage these Adaptive players again, the scale of the game grows well beyond what it currently is, and these types of players will add to the profitability of the game in a way that a few hundred whales cannot. If you focus on new expansions that are fun, you will sell decks to this crowd regardless of how strong they are.

KeyForge is not given the credit it is due for the level of strategy it offers. It has always been plagued by the perception that it is “pay to win” – that you simply had to buy the best deck that existed and you could be successful. It doesn’t matter that this isn’t true. What matters is how people who don’t play KeyForge view it – people who could potentially become KeyForge players themselves. This perception turns off a lot of people to a great strategy game. Not only is this problem fixable, it is right under our Sniffers, waiting to lose its elusiveness.

By bringing back Adaptive, you also tap into the game’s strategic depth more than you can by continuing power creep. Players are rewarded for their knowledge of interactions, and their ability to pick up a deck they’ve never seen before and be successful. It also tilts the scales towards player skill, and away from deck selection. Although KeyForge is a game of matchups, allowing players to use a balancing mechanism written into the rules from day 1 will truly showcase who the best players are and remove all doubt about the impact deck strength had on the outcome. This is a feature that even Spikes will appreciate.

Earlier this month, Ghost Galaxy made one of their biggest gameplay announcements since acquiring KeyForge by issuing an errata to the card Ecto-Charge to no longer allow it to forge a key for free. This has a massive impact on how the card is played, and follows months of spirited debate in the online community about how this card was overpowered upon its re-release in Grim Reminders when compared to how it was printed in anomaly form in Winds of Exchange, with a floor of 6 for the cost to forge.

The funny part about this issue, though, is that it doesn’t actually matter what the card does in an Adaptive match. Both players know what the card does and have a chance to bid on it accordingly. Chain bidding as a means of balancing the matchup doesn’t care if the card allows you to forge for 0 or forge for 6, as long as both players are playing by the same rules. The same can be said about any other power creeped cards. The problem of the ever-increasing power level of cards that is ubiquitous in every other card game is actually irrelevant to KeyForge if we are playing Adaptive. Ghost Galaxy can design powerful cards to their heart’s content, and Adaptive will continue to be the same skill testing format that it is today.

Epilogue: We Can ALL Win

I have heard all of the arguments against Adaptive from its detractors. Some people don’t want to play someone else’s deck. Others think chain bidding adds more variance to a game that already has a healthy amount. Still others say that the logistics of running premier level Adaptive events are too daunting. All of these criticisms have extremely valid counter-arguments, but the fact is, we don’t really need to debate. Players that don’t like Adaptive can continue to play Archon or Sealed. Like Richard Garfield said, “One of the most exciting things for me with KeyForge has been this idea that people have a very difficult time telling other people what the best way to play is.”

KeyForge’s original appeal was that the game was flexible enough to accommodate all different kinds of players. Right now, high level organized play supports three different formats for players – Sealed, Archon, and Alliance. Archon and Alliance have a lot of overlap in their target audiences, however, and if Ghost Galaxy only believes they can support 3 different formats at high level play, they are doing themselves and their players a disservice by having Archon and Alliance compete with each other. Adaptive is the only widely accepted format that removes the need to bring a highly powerful (and often expensive) deck in order to compete. Bring in Adaptive to grow your player base organically and the game will be better off for it – financially and competitively.

While the other original formats of Triad and Reversal also have their own contingent of fans, only Adaptive can say that it has a successful online league being run exclusively in this format for 10 seasons, with the “KAGI” (“KeyForge as Garfield Intended”) league being run on the Sanctumonius Discord server. The league just wrapped up its 9th season with the 10th starting in the coming weeks. Over its run of 9 seasons, it has seen over 100 unique players, and averaged about 30 players per season, with the most recent seasons being the most popular - but still with room to grow.

If you don’t like Adaptive, you don’t have to play it. I, on the other hand, miss it dearly, and there are other diehards like me that love the game of KeyForge but don’t enjoy the modern Archon and Alliance formats. But we can all get what we want (well, almost all – if Ghost Galaxy only wants to offer 3 formats at premier level events, something has to go) if we embrace Adaptive alongside Sealed and Archon. This trinity of formats attracts the widest base of players to bring the most attention to KeyForge and keep the most players engaged.

If you would like to discuss this topic further with the Sloppy Lab, the best place to find us is by joining our Discord server.