Ascension

We had ordered Ascension from coolstuffinc.com in June and hadn't received it until Friday August 12. The way coolstuffinc.com works is they ship your whole order together, but if you ordered something that is a pre-order, they won't ship everything until it the whole order is fulfilled. So anyway, we went to GenCon and learned how to play Ascension for free (oh yeah). And it was amazing!

Ascension is a deck building game (like Dominion) and plays a lot like Dominion and Magic mixed together. Unlike Dominion, there are only 8 cards total for you to look at at any given time. 3 of those cards are permanent cards that never change: Mystic, Heavy Infantry, and the Cultist. The other 5 cards are constantly changing.

Examples of changing cards: Heroes, Constructs and Monsters.

The upper right hand corner is how much the cards cost if they're in a Rune (the triangle) or how much militia it takes to defeat them (if they're in the red).

On your turn, you start with 2 Militia cards and 8 Apprentice cards. You shuffle these and draw 5. This is your starting hand. You make the other 5 your face-down deck. Your deck will start growing as the game goes on.

Game Play:

So you use the abilities on your cards to acquire new cards, put used cards into your discard pile, and then draw your new hand of 5. Some cards will let you gain honor and all monsters you defeat will get you honor. Whoever has the most honor at the end of the game wins.

We have played this game almost every day since we've received it. We love it! It's a pretty quick game for the most part. It plays 2-4 unless you get the expansion then it plays up to 6! We played with 5 yesterday and it played a little slower than 2-4 players, although 2 of the players had never played before. I think I like it best with 3.

One last picture of the whole game board set up before I end: