Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer Card Game Review

Review by Aaron Lim

Rating: 3.5/5.0

Do you have what it takes to slay a god? Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer is a deck-building game from Gary Games that lets you recruit heroes and build constructs to aid you in your quest. Defeat monsters and cultists loyal to Samael in an effort to defeat the fallen god!

The basic gist of a deck-building game is that each player starts with a personal deck of cards and utilizes those cards to add additional cards from a common pool to their personal deck until some predetermined endgame condition is met, after which a winner is determined based on the prescribed victory conditions. After Dominion kickstarted the genre in 2008, various games have been published which use the same basic mechanic and Ascension is one of them. Throughout this review, I will constantly refer back to Dominion as it was my introduction to the genre and there are many parallels to be drawn between the two games.

At the start of each game, every player has the exact same 10 cards which form their personal deck (8 Apprentices, 2 Militia) and draws a starting hand of 5 cards. There is also a central randomized deck of cards, 6 of which are revealed as part of the “Center Row” and 3 piles of cards that are present in each game (Mystics, Heavy Infantry and the eternal Cultist). On each player’s turn, they can play any number of Hero or Construct cards, activate effects of Constructs they control, and acquire Hero and Construct Cards or defeat Monster Cards from the Center Row. Cards that are acquired are immediately put in their personal discard pile, while defeated Monster Cards are immediately put in a communal discard pile called the Void. At the end of the turn, all Hero cards played in the turn are also discarded to the personal discard pile and the player then refills his hand to 5 cards, and passes the turn. Constructs are not discarded and stay in play indefinitely. If ever there are not enough cards left in the personal deck, the personal discard pile is shuffled to form the new personal deck.

Pretty easy so far. So how do you acquire new cards? Hero and Construct cards usually provide either one of two resources when played: Runes or Power. These two resources are basically two different currencies. Runes are used to “buy” Hero and Construct cards while Power is used to “defeat” Monster Cards. To buy a Hero or Construct, just pay the Rune cost printed on the top right of the card and it is added to your discard pile. The Rune cost is only paid once when initially acquiring the card, after which it can be played for free. The effects of the Hero and Construct cards are pretty varied and some are definitely more powerful than others. Each card also has an Honor Point value printed on the bottom left corner. You can buy as many cards as you want as long as you have the Runes to pay the Man. Similarly, you defeat Monster Cards by paying an amount of Power equal to the Power Cost printed on the top right of the Monster. Defeated monsters are put into the Void, which is a central communal discard pile, and you can then claim your reward! Once defeated, Monsters turn into succulent Honor Tokens and also usually provide an additional effect. There is also another action called “banishing” which is to discard cards into the central Void for no effect.

Remember the Honor Tokens you get for crushing those hideous monsters? Well, once those Honor Tokens run out, the game ends. Every player who has yet to complete their turn for the round gets a final go, so that everyone has the same total number of turns. Then everyone tallies up their Honor Points from a combination of Honor Tokens and the Honor Point values on the cards in their decks, and the person with the highest total wins!

After that whole long ramble describing the game, it is time to get to my impressions of the game. To me, the influence of Dominion is still very strong in Ascension. It feels like someone took Dominion and tried to make it less “Eurogame-y” if that is even a term. A major change to the Dominion model was to have the actions and buys available to each player unlimited.

Dominion could sometimes feel very restricted, allowing only one action and buy per turn unless you had the right kingdom cards. This is not a bad thing as it made players really consider their decisions on how best to spend their action or buy. Ascension on the other hand, allows more freedom in playing actions and buying, and also provides “safety valves” in the form of the static piles of Mystics and Heavy Infantry and the eternal cultist such that there is always something to do on your turn.

Dominion had a very elegant tension built into the game where the object of the game was to buy victory cards which usually did not further contribute to the function of your deck. It presents a challenge for players to build a deck that can balance buying sufficient victory cards while still not letting those additional “dud” victory cards impede their ability to continue doing so. Ascension bypasses this by assigning point values to each card and using victory point tokens external to the deck. Dominion eventually introduced kingdom cards in the expansion that have those functions, but the limited nature of the available kingdom cards meant that this was not always the case and rewarded players for recognizing and capitalizing on those opportunities whereas Ascension makes this an intrinsic part of the game. However, what Ascension does is introduce the tension of having two separate currencies. Monster cards can only be “bought” with Power while non-Monster cards can only be bought with Runes. This challenges the player to balance Rune and Power production. Coupled with the freedom of having multiple actions and buys, this leads to a feeling that every turn is productive as you will get some victory points every turn. Very simplistically, while the challenge of Dominion seems to be to maximize the number of productive turns, the challenge of Ascension is to maximize the points gained per turn.

So far it seems that the design is shaping up to be some sort of feel-good sped-up version of Dominion. However, the main spanner in the works is the change to how the buyable cards are made available. Dominion has a limited set of 10 kingdom cards available for purchase, which can be randomized between games but are equally available to all players. Ascension has a randomized set of 6 cards available at any time in the game, with replacements being drawn from a randomized deck when a card is bought. The number of each card in that deck also varies, with some cards even being unique. This added layer of randomness is what can lead to frustration sometimes, especially when there are more players in the game. It reduces the ability of the player to plan ahead as the available cards are constantly in flux and leads to a more tactical focus of the game.

Another thing worth mentioning is the art and design of the cards. The style chosen for the art is fairly unique, and I like it on an individual card level. However, due to the muted color palette, it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish between different cards. The Mechana constructs are especially egregious and I find myself looking to the cost of the construct to identify the card as each Mechana construct in the base set has a different cost. The card design should serve to clarify this and generally works due to the different colored frames used for different factions, but the choice of light blue and grey for two of the factions could lead to some confusion. Fortunately, faction does not play that big a part in the game (at least in the base game). Overall, the art and design is very evocative but I feel it could have been improved to allow for better readability and identification. A minor quibble maybe, but I thought it may be relevant to point out.

Overall, I feel that the game is a decent entry in the deck-building game genre. Its heritage is very evident, but there are enough differences that the game feels quite different. What I like about Ascension is that feeling of playing an insane 20 card chain where I draw my entire deck and can now buy whatever I want, which definitely seems to occur more often than in Dominion. What I did not like was the increased randomness in the game due to the center row and some minor annoyances with the art and graphic design.

In summation, I would give Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer a solid 3.5 out of 5 Honor Points. It’s a great introduction to the deck-building genre of games, and a solid addition to any game shelf. Personally, I own both Dominion and Ascension, and they both scratch different itches to warrant an equal place on my shelf, but I can understand if some people decide to skip on one for the other as there are still many similarities.

Complexity: 2.5/5.0 (fair amount of text and unique effects)

Playing Time: 30 to 60 minutes

Number of Players: 2 to 4 players (player number can be increased with extra game copies or expansions)

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