KeyForge Winds of Exchange Deck Display (Set of 12 Decks) - Discover The Merchant Compacts of Ekwidon! Card Game for Kids and Adults, Ages 14+, 2 Players, 30-45 Min Playtime, Made by Ghost Galaxy

So you couldn't wait for Ghost Galaxy to rebuild Fantasy Flight's printing algorithm and went back to your MTG mothership only to be reminded that you are now an even smaller fish in an even bigger pond with no way to financially compete with all the IT Dept types who totally raked it in during the pandemic because every company had them drop everything and quickly design work from home software even though they only have a high school diploma? I feel 'ya. I get it. But when you think about it, are you happy? Do you feel included? Do you feel like you have a real presence in the midst of the meta? Do the cards have any humorous flavor text with pop culture or classic culture references? Do they still pay homage to Boris Vallejo's art style and quite frankly, you have mentally moved on from that kind of look and now you want a color scheme that emotionally lifts you up in these dark times? If these are questions you have been asking yourself every time your Magic The Gathering opponent squeezes out an effortless win because they rich and you ain't, returning to Keyforge just might be the answer. Now, will Ghost Galaxy be able to establish a weekly tournament at your local game store? No. I don't see that happening anytime soon. Only 22 retailer stores across the United States made a retail pledge in the Grim Reminders campaign on Gamefound. That is a HUGE drop in product confidence that cannot be bounced back from. But, what Ghost Galaxy has successfully done is reach a target audience of extremely intelligent players who are single, good people, who just happen to get the short end of the stick at work with only 30 cent to $1 an hour raises each year. They still at least get a raise each year because they are that good at their job. So they can just barely keep up with inflation while still remaining single. These include elementary school teachers, small town pharmacy techs, call center "team leads" (but not supervisors), security guards, miniature painters- basically what's left of the middle class; those that make between $48,120 to $58,730 per year. Anything higher than that and someone might actually date them and then their potential offspring will force them to buy Lorcana instead 'cuz kids just gotta get their sparkly foil fix. The exception is Italy. For some strange reason, there are wealthy Italians religiously playing Keyforge. In an effort to bring new players up to speed, I'm skipping the whole "each deck is unique" spiel and going right for the history so you know what you'll be getting yourself into, and why you should even bother. The first set was Call of the Archons. It was designed specifically to give players a better chance at opening a deck with high synergy card combinations. It was a mega hit, unseating the mighty Yu-gi-oh for a brief spell and at that time the top 3 selling TCGs were Pokemon, Magic the Gathering, and Keyforge. Yu-gi-oh fell to number 4 or 5. Then Fantasy Flight thought, "Hmm...guess we should release the next set called Age of Ascension prematurely without getting all the bugs out first or we will run out of product." It was bad move then, but a great move for us players now because that set has some broken combos in it that can still win major tournaments today. Then, after a third of the players left because of the broken combos, Fantasy Flight made 2 brilliant decisions: they fixed the broken card combos or retired half of them, and then they gave us house Saurian, which is kind of a Dark Crystal-inspired solar powered dinosaur urRu house that was created as a defensive match for the board-wiping demonic house of Dis. After that, they came up with pip enhancements for the Mass Mutation set, which basically turns the whole lottery ticket aspect of the game up a notch. You'll see the enhanced cards on the deck's card list in blue font, but you won't know what kind of pips ended up on those cards. Sometimes you'll see one of these decks for sale on eBay, and the seller won't risk being the one to open the deck because they are worried the pips (which have to be resolved first in play) won't be ideal to the effect of the card which gets resolved right after. But you take the risk, buy the deck, and sometimes it works out fine (like getting 2 capture Æmber icons on a Covetous Hema creature who already captures 3). Then we had the Dark Tidings set, whose tide mechanic slowed the speed of that set down too much to be tournament worthy (although I still like that set because of the Evil Twin cards). That, combined with the pandemic and a disgruntled ex-employee who is rumored to have given their log in password to a ransomware company sealed the fate on Fantasy Flight's involvement. Personally, I think the whole story was at least partially made up because Fantasy Flight just wanted to unload the lemon onto some of their upper management who both still believe in Keyforge and who also just weren't that interested in being part of a Star Wars TCG when the Star Wars movies have been getting progressively worse and worse. The most recent set, Winds of Exchange, introduces token creatures for the first time in Keyforge, at the expensive of about 10 to 30 percent of your draw deck. They are fun, competitive, mostly unpredictable, and with 28 different token creatures to choose from, you are bound to eventually open one that matches your play style and is a good fit for you. WOE decks will be seen in play at major Keyforge tournaments for years to come. The next set, Grim Reminders, will be as close to Yu-gi-oh's graveyard zombie deck play mechanic as Keyforge is ever going to come. So if you enjoyed activating abilities because of something in your graveyard, but you don't play Yu-gi-oh anymore, you should also give Keyforge a try when the Grim Reminders set releases in 2024. It has a Tim Burton kind of feel to it- discarded everyday items held together by a ghost and some Christmas light strings that light up without the benefit of being plugged in, LOL. So why play? Because of the money. Because you actually have a snowball's chance in Dis of winning at a local $1000 - $3000 or online $500 - $800 prize tournament. There are 4,844 followers of the Grim Reminders Gamefound campaign, but only 2,274 backers. I don't know about you, but I like those odds. I am not one in a million. I am one in a few thousand. And it costs less than an hour's pay to purchase one deck that might take me all the way to the top. Beat that Magic: The Gathering. "Princess Leah, what did Ghost Galaxy send us?" "Hope."1/13/2024 Edit: Ghost Galaxy recently announced that they will no longer be offering cash prizes, but rather non-cash prizes that "will still be wonderful." So I'm removing a star from my review. I love the game more than any other TCG, but if the company is going to axe the possibility of recouping my investment, that will directly affect the justification I had for purchasing 12-deck display boxes. Now I will only buy 2 or 3 decks per set release going forward. I do at least appreciate that they updated the rule that you could only attend tournaments after accruing 50 Æmber credits (1 credit per deck registered). However, this new move feels less like they are getting away from the private club feel the game currently has, and more like they just wanted to stop the sneaky few who quickly bought up cheap display boxes of the old Fantasy Flight 2019 Age of Ascension set in 2023 to meet the tournament access requirement, when they should have been making GG more money by buying the decks that they print today. I didn't do that, of course, but the eBay sales of that set and deck registration lists on The Vault website right before the 2023 Vault Tours spoke volumes. Seriously GG, I don't need a framed wall poster of a deck list I already have memorized in my head. I don't need house logo pins without an official Ghost Galaxy lanyard to put them on. I don't need a Floomf plushie for my dog to automatically assume is hers. If we're talking merch, fine. How about a Keyforge-themed Chess set where Fuzzy Gruen is the pawn for white and Floomf is the pawn for black? Or an exclusive deck with house Shadows in it that has creatures who are part of a football or roller derby team since they have the protective padding gear in their artwork already to justify it? The roller derby creatures could do what Soleft and Flounderight do, and the football creatures could push your opponent's creatures back onto the top of their deck as an after reap effect. How about a Brobnar house logo belt buckle? Or an exclusive playmat for the latest Keyforge Adventures Game? Or getting to choose which Menagerie packet you get in a Menagerie Deck? But whatever you do, don't do the usual PR marketing fluff like a small coffee mug, or a potato chip bag clip, or a fridge magnet so thin it can't even hold up a business card, or a cheap BPA-lined water bottle where the plastic curly straw has partially shattered, or a pen with all the ink inside already dried up, or a ballcap with a dome so high we look like we're in our late sixties and going on a fishing trip the moment we put it on.