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Richard Garfield Announces ‘KeyForge’ Draft Format
ROSEVILLE, MN — During a press conference at Fantasy Flight Games HQ, Richard Garfield announced the intended draft format for his new zany game, KeyForge: Call of the Archons.
He calls it, “Deck Drafting.”
Whereas collectible card games like Magic: The Gathering ask that players draft individual cards to build a deck, Garfield’s vision for KeyForge requires players to draft individual decks.
This is because while collectible card games like Magic: The Gathering have individual cards that range in quality from “hopelessly bad” to “distressingly overpowered,” KeyForge breaks the mold by having entire decks that range in quality from “hopelessly bad” to “distressingly overpowered.”
“First, you’ll receive a randomized stack of 15 KeyForge decks, which you’ll fan out in your hands to evaluate which one you’d like to add to your pool,” Garfield explained at a demonstration table, clumsily trying to hold and read 555 cards at once. “This deck, ‘Aunt Mary the Bizzle-Futz,’ has a list where each house totally undermines the strategy of the next, yielding a cyclic loop of self-caused catastrophe. I’ll pass this to my left.”
“Ah-ha, now we’re talking!” he then chortled. “This other deck, ‘Nar Nar Finks the Ascender-Noodle,’ has Mars/Logos Archive interactions that let you Time Walk your opponent about once a turn, and a Brobnar selection that literally makes your opponent’s amount of Amber a negative number.”
“I’ll keep that one,” he said with a wink.
After three draft rounds, each player will end up with 45 decks — “A ‘deck of decks’ if you will,” interrupted Garfield.
They’ll then play 14,175 best-of-3 rounds in order to compete with each other player, using every possible pairing of decks.
“Over three and a half years of entertainment,” Garfield observed.
“That’s a lot of value!” he added.
Each game of KeyForge already uses gobs of cards…
Garfield’s next game, tentatively titled “Rage of Mages: The Beckoning,” is rumored to require drafting decks of decks of decks, further revealing that Richard Garfield is dangerously out of control.
