I read from the official site that there is another expansion(?) coming out soon (for real card version) -- The Storm of Souls. There are soul counters and events. Wish that would be included in the iOS version in the future...
They said we'd get promo expansions too, so I imagine we'll get any other expansions that come along... it's just a matter of when, especially with them having so many games on their plate.
To all Ascension veterans, forgive my ignorance (I feel like a penguin in a sea of sharks) but I have just started playing this game and find myself hitting Play All at the start of my turns. Is there a strategic reason why I would not want to hit Play All every time? I'm sure there is, but I cannot think of it. Thanks.
Welcome to Ascension! To answer your question, it's best not to hit Play All except in the early rounds when all you have are Apprentices and Militia. The reason is that there are a number of cards that provide you more Runes and/or Power by playing them in a certain sequence. For example, if you play Runic Lycanthrope after first playing another Lifebound Hero, you get two extra Power.
@cprloe, thanks so much for that insight. Ascension is a great game. I confess that I am not overly fond of the artwork (I think it's an acquired taste!) but the gameplay itself is riveting. I love the deck building aspect of the game which is, AFAIK, unique to Ascension as far as iOS games go. (I think Battle of Gundabad might also be a deck building game, but I've not heard good things about that so haven't purchased it). There are a couple of points I would like to make: 1) The flavour text is too small to read comfortably on an iPhone. I know it's not a major flaw, but it would add to the atmosphere if I could read about the cards. 2) I wish there was more cards as there doesn't seem to be that many at the moment. I hear an expansion is due out shortly; I hope that is the case and we see it before Christmas!
Are you talking about the text on the cards? Zoom in on a card by double-tapping. More importantly, you can then swipe right/left to go from card to card, still zoomed in. That will make play on an iPhone much easier.
Oh my god is this game f*cking great. I've never even crossed paths with it until a group of friends told me about it, and I looked into it. Read the rules on their site, thought the artwork was mediocre, but good enough, the game didn't sound too complicated but they seemed to be having fun with it (and not to mention, it has asynchronous play) so I took the plunge today and got it. My god... I wish I would have known about it much sooner!!!!
If you guys like this game i suggest buying the real board game Ascension and its expansions including Storm of Souls. Theres another board game called dominion which is similar to Ascension too. They are worth the money =]
More cards are on the way. Return of the Fallen is the first expansion, and it will be available very soon. Maybe even today ;-) Storm of Souls is a stand-alone product that uses the same rules as Chronicle of the Godslayer, so you can mix cards from all 3 sets if you wish, but they aren't necessarily designed to go together. SoS will be available for iOS early in 2012. You don't want to hit Play All when you have cards that interact with each other in your hand. The order in which certain choices are made can significantly affect how much you can acquire/defeat during your turn. Also, in Return of the Fallen, there are Fate effects that can occur when a card enters the center row. It's good to only play the cards you need to play so that you'll have some in your hand when one of the Fate cards appears. Battle of Gundabad is a Dominion rip-off. It's not a bad implementation, but probably better to wait for the official version of Dominion, which should be coming soon.
Just to give everyone a heads up: Ascension servers will be offline for a significant amount of time today to prepare for an update. This means online play will be unavailable. We'll let everyone know when we're back up and running. Once we're confident the server changeover will be successful, we'll release the update for the app. It might still be awhile between when you can download the update and when online play will be available again. You will have to download the update in order to play online.
Cannot wait for that update. I can't stop playing Ascension in any case, but it will be nice to enjoy some new content when I hit that chronic.
Even zoomed in, the flavour text is hard to make out, particularly the Mechana cards which use a funky font. Anyway, it's a relatively minor oversight by the developer and I get the feeling they don't intend fixing it anyway, as the developer has not mentioned it in subsequent posts. I didn't know about swiping zoomed in cards (it's not mentioned in the tutorial), so thanks for that. Looking forward to seeing the forthcoming update. Anyone know how many cards are in the Return of the Fallen expansion?
Oh snap! So it has already been approved by Apple and it's just a matter of you guys flipping the switch once you think all is clear for take-off?
I almost feel like reinstalling on my iPad to play it again with the expansion ... but than I risk addiction again
When did you submit the update to Apple? around this time of year it normally takes them about a week to approve.
The update has already been approved. It took 5 days. We're holding it for release until today's server work is done.
And many more. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/blog/164/ios-board-games Unfortunately, very few devs have shown the level of quality and features as Incinerator Games and the Carcassonne devs so far; I'm hopeful though! (Neuroshima Hex will have asynchronous play soon as will Caylus, when it's released in early 2012.)
