I’m a big fan of Ascension: Wrath of the Godslayer on iOS. It introduced me to an excellent deck-building card game and provides some excellent transatlantic asynchronous multiplayer fun. Always a bonus.

I’d been intending to check out the physical version for some time but hadn’t seen a copy of it anywhere. Until today, that is, when I found not only the original Wrath of the Godslayer set, but also a new package known as Storm of Souls.

I shan’t get into the nitty-gritty of Ascension‘s mechanics here as those of you reading this will either already know what it’s all about or have the good sense to look it up for yourself. Suffice to say its a deck-building game with some superficial similarities to Dominion, but a much faster pace of play and a greater focus on “combat” of sorts, though not specifically against another player. Rather, all participants in the game compete against the game itself, and whoever does the best is declared the winner and the Lord of All Awesomeness, or something. There is a plot, but as tends to happen with many board and card games, it has little to no importance on how the game actually pans out.

For those already familiar with Ascension, Storm of Souls adds a few new bits and pieces. Firstly, it adds a bunch of new cards. These can be combined with Wrath of the Godslayer‘s cards to have games for up to six people at once. I haven’t tried this yet, but I can imagine it’s a very different dynamic to two-player games.

Secondly, a new Event mechanic allows cards to enter play that have ongoing effects. For example, one Event strengthens the Cultist “cannon fodder” enemies, making them more difficult to defeat but also making them worth more points. Others add modifiers to certain cards, some of which require you to think about the order in which you play your cards much more than in Wrath of the Godslayer.

Then there’s the Trophy mechanic. Rather than Banishing certain monsters, putting them out of the game forever, certain monsters can be kept as trophies and banished at a later time for various benefits. This adds an extra layer of strategy which is very welcome.

As with many deckbuilding games, the joy of Ascension comes in building good synergies of cards and then unleashing them in a vast combo attack that looks suitably impressive. While it takes time to build up to this point in Dominion, in Ascension you’re there within a turn or two, particularly if you pay careful attention to Events and the type of cards you’re playing.

So is the new version any good? Most definitely. Tonight has been an all-nighter of play, hence the lateness of this entry — haven’t been to bed yet! I hasten to add that it hasn’t been Ascension that we’ve been playing all night — we also took on Dominion and Last Night on Earth. Ascension was the clear favourite though, particularly as its setup is straightforward enough to make three games in a row a very practical prospect.

So, I shall certainly look forward to playing it more in the future, and if you’re a fan of the deckbuilding subgenre of card games, I suggest you check it out. And if you don’t want to splurge on the physical edition, be sure to check out the excellent iOS version — a faithful adaptation that is very well designed for the small screen and the mobile platform.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I better get some sleep…