Playdek continues to add expansion after expansion to its various games, and after the new factions added recently to Summoner Wars, Playdek has brought the Dawn of Champions expansion to Ascension (Free). If you haven’t played Ascension, this is a deck-building card game that was one of the first games to re-think the deck-building mechanics of card games; instead of each player building a deck from cards usually found in packs (like Magic the Gathering, for instance), in Ascension both players build their decks from a common pool of cards. So, in very basic terms, each turn you can either acquire Heroes and Constructs (both of which award Honor points) to build your deck the way you want to or defeat Monsters to earn Honor points. At the end of the game, the player with the most Honor points wins.

This refreshing take of card games really won over many fans who enjoyed Ascension‘s fast pace and relative randomness that leveled the plain between players (some disliked the game specifically because of its randomness). Still, the game has grown to be extremely popular among gamers who enjoy deck-building games (our forum thread currently sits at 416 pages). Ascension owes at least part of its popularity to Playdek’s fantastic work on the game’s digital version that really stands among the greatest physical-to-digital ports on the App Store. In addition to the great app, Playdek has kept itself busy porting over many of Ascension‘s expansion – Return of the Fallen, Storm of Souls, Rise of the Vigil, etc – that have expanded the game’s replaybility tremendously as you can pick and choose which expansions to play with.

Yesterday, Playdek brought Ascension‘s latest expansion/stand alone, Dawn of the Champions, which adds a new card type, Champions. Each Champion has “Reputation" Powers that determine how he or she can get various rewards. This expansion also adds a new keyword, “Rally," which allows you to acquire or defeat a card without paying its cost. Dawn of Champions continues with the theme of Multifaction Heroes and Constructs, originally used in the Realms Unraveled Expansion, and also adds factions to various Monsters so they can be affected by the Rally and Reputation mechanics. Overall, this is a fun expansion with mechanics that truly alter Ascension‘s gameplay. The expansion costs $3.99, and it’s available as an IAP.