Universal Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer [Dreamscape expansion]

Enh. It could get better but it doesn't do much for me in it's current form.

As you may have already read, it's a lot more I think like a hybrid of Dominion and Magic the Gathering than Ascension.

The game's big gimmick, that can also be the big turn-off for many, is its linking mechanic. The cards seem to come in two varieties, Actions and Agents, and each of these cards have three colored circles (2 little and 1 big one) up on their upper left corner. When you play a card in this game it must link up to the other card played before it. If your big color circle (the card's primary color/faction) matches either one of the two smaller circles of the last card played you'll have a valid move. When it is your turn you can play as many cards from your hand as you want as long as you can arrange them in a way that they all link up appropriately to the card played before them. As an even cooler little twist, most cards have a Kicker effect listed on them that is an extra added effect (usually helpful to the player laying the card) which is only activated if the newly played card is linking to a card of the indicated color/faction.

During a round each player plays out how ever many link cards they want and play than passes to the next player who has the option of building onto this existing chain with as many cards from his hand as he would like. This continues until all players have had a chance to add to the current chain of cards. Once all players have had their chance to play onto the chain, all of the cards in the chain start resolving their effects in the reverse order of how they were played (so the last cards resolve first). These cards will then result in some actions being played out and or agents being summoned into play.

One of the nastier twists in this game is that actions indicated on the cards MUST be resolved if their is any valid target, even if that mean having to destroy your own agents in a case where they are the only available target at that moment! So one must always consider carefully when playing cards onto the chain, "Sure I can play this card but would the indicated effect on the card help or harm me at this point?"

My biggest gripe with the game currently is that there are so few cards in this initial set. Not only then does it feel like you're running into the same few over powered combos of cards the players vie to setup, MANY OF THE INDICATED KICKER EFFECTS ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO ACHIEVE (the kicker effect for example might only occur if this card were linked to a green card...but there currently are no green card in the game that could ever link to this one).

The real world game has already released many expansions and it appears they're ready to add them into this iOS version since day one as there is an option to enable these various expansions when setting up a game, but they have yet to release them. While in other games, like Ascension, where these expansions are a cool optional extra, I feel in this case we're getting an incomplete game without the expansions as so many potential color links are missing from this initial set of cards (and since there are already kicker effects based on linking these two particular colors, there must be some case where they can be linked within the expansion sets).

Perhaps it is just me but imagine playing Magic the Gathering with one of the cards describing some really potent effect...but you'll never be able to use it as it requires another as of yet unreleased card for this power to take effect.

 

Hey guys, why initially popped in, does anybody know how to view another player's online profile? It might be nice when joining a game to know if your playing with a real pro or some massive disconnecting twit.

 

Yeah, I'm still hooked hard by Ascension. I guess it is just the right combination of skill and luck for me and I love how each session can develop so differently.