kpr_ep10_vtphilly_v2 === [00:00:00] Cold Open --- The Philadelphia Vault Tour in early July, 2023 was the first Vault Tour back in 41 months. KeyForge is back baby. And let's dive in. Introduction --- Welcome dear listener. And thank you so much for tuning in to KeyForge public radio. And I am so excited to talk about the Philadelphia vault tour. It occurred earlier in July when this episode is releasing on the seventh through ninth. This is our first data point back. As far as the meta goes at official organized play accepting of course KeyForge celebration. Kind of a beta test and a number of ways for many things, but this is the first official vault tour back. Winds of exchange is going to be in retail soon. And so everything is really coming back for KeyForge now. And I'm so excited to see just [00:01:00] how far this can go. So I got to attend a vault tour. Philadelphia, of course, if you listened to my, how to enjoy a vault tour, Even when you go, oh, to episode from a few weeks back, you know, that already. So, I won't touch too much more my personal experience there, with the double elimination format and things like that, this episode is all about the meta game. What did we see? What showed up, who showed up? This Vault Tour was double elimination. Meaning as soon as you get your second loss, you're out. The people in the top cut plate anywhere from only five games. If they went five, oh, all the way up to eight or nine games, getting up into that top eight, that top four. So pretty big variance there. As far as how many games you had to play to actually get up to the top. We had 99 players in the Archon event and 19 in the Alliance, we're going to touch on Archon first and then Alliance there's of course, some special situations around Alliance being so new. That we're going to discuss as we dive in, there are con however, with 99 players, that's a pretty good sample size to see who's coming. What are they bringing in then? What [00:02:00] performs out of the group stage? Playstile.com Testing --- One other experiential note is that this is where ghost galaxy launched the use of Playstile. Still very much in beta, you can find it at playstile.com. Play style, spelled P L a Y. S T I L e.com. This is tournament software developed by a sister company. Now, what I mean by a sister company is that Christian T. Peterson, president of Ghost Galaxy has a company called strange stars. And the under that he has companies doing different, but various things technically separate organizationally, right? So ghost galaxy is working on KeyForge. And then there's the company Artiforge that technically prints the decks and saw kind of divided up business wise. But it's pretty clear of course that because they're all sister companies, they're all related, via strange stars. They do a lot of work together. So it was in beta for Philadelphia. What's really convenient about this software is that it uses your key bringer login. So it's all one, it's all one sign in system. And what the idea is that you go to it on your phone, your mobile device at this event, [00:03:00] and you log in to play style and the really convenient thing, because it's you to log in via key bringer. Is that as soon as I went, I just clicked log in because I was logged in, into the master vault in my browser. I just logged right into Playstile. Super convenient. I will say it was lovely, easy to use UI. Right? You could view your time for the round on it. You could report on the round. There were a number of bugs to work out in a couple of pretty big quality of life features that I know are being fought for. Take it in for the next big events. And I'm honestly excited to see what plays style, what plays style becomes for the KeyForge community. A couple other notes include that play style will be the software that we use locally in local events, which I think is, could be really good to have a centralized place for all that it was going to automatically tying in, like it did it at Philadelphia to the master vault where you can actually scan in your decks. And it knows exactly how to go talk to the master vault for that purpose, which is really exciting. So using it for local events is going to be cool, especially as it gets upgraded. There were a number of players at Philly without phones for just various [00:04:00] various reasons. And so they did have to go manual report and they didn't have a way to of course check their time easily without their own device there, um, at the table. So hopefully there are going to be some solutions to keep things equitable for anybody not having a phone on them. Um, but overall I think play style is really cool. A couple of key things to keep improving. Cause it was definitely in beta for this first big event back. But overall I'm excited about it, especially the applications for local play because exciting quality local play at finally local game stores. Is going to be absolutely. One of the biggest things. That needs to go right for KeyForge to be really huge. So looking forward to everything that gets implemented there. Tournament Summaries - Winners --- The big data points from the Philadelphia vault tour is that the Archon tournament where you bring one unmodified deck. Was won by devin aka flaming hobo of team rebound and the ancient bear republic online league if you've been online a bunch you may have heard about that and his deck was a call of the Arcons with library access battle fleet key abduction Combo deck that he opened or a teammate [00:05:00] opened as a seal deck just a few months ago so really cool that that deck was discovered so recently and now it's one of vault tour this is also devin's second vault tour win, which is awesome devon's a lovely guy totally deserving now he's won an Archon Vault tour and a sealed vault tour so some great feathers in his cap there The alliance tournament was won by jason aka j power of team sas With a mass mutation efficiency brew lots of draw pips to double draw pips on two Chronuses in this Logos Mass Mutation pod completely bonkers If you're recognizing jason's name that's because you're probably listening to kpr and he was our interviewee for how to build for alliance jason of course. Before that episode was the most decorated alliance player so far as far as actual tournament accolades and now he won the first vault tour back on the alliance side with one of his bruise with his wisdom so that just gives more credibility right to all of the stuff he shared to all the wisdom he shared for building And enjoying the lines back on that episode so i recommend you check that out if you haven't or [00:06:00] go back and check out His entire build iterate upgrade segment about how to actually approach alliance and how to build for it, how to iterate make it better and start to shoot for that top cut Archon Metagame --- So the Archon metagame Archon means unmodified deck and so Archon they used to call it Archon standard just means you bring a deck that you've already opened you play that and in this double elimination tournament this was all best of one until i believe the top four or the finals. KeyForge is a game of high variance so i was hoping for some best of three action in the top eight especially because we had most of the day on sunday july 9th, the last day of the tournament for this top eight and i was hoping to see some of that variance reduced for these decks but that's how it was played For the Archon tournament, there were 99 players who entered. That was a great number. Very happy about that. As far as set percentages from this whole field that came in, we had a mass mutation at about 30%, just under one third. We had winds of exchange at 21% call of the Archon. At 17% worlds collide at 14% age of [00:07:00] Ascension at 12 dark tidings at 3%. And then Vault Masters 2023 at 2%. Vault Masters 2023 for the uninitiated is a set that you can only get at Vault Tours. It's got an exclusive set of houses that have never been seen before and pulling from quite a bit of the card pool. They're very cool, very fun tournament legal. And so a few people got their goodie deck this vault master 2023 deck and then actually played it in the event, which was pretty cool with 99 people, 2%. That's about probably two people who played there vault master deck. So this spread is honestly what I ex about expected to see mass mutation at 30% feels about right. A lot of the diehard players like myself, who've been around for a while, took advantage of various sales over the past several years where we got a lot of cheap mass mutation. And on average it's a pretty strong set. So seeing that they're at 30%, that makes a lot of sense to me. That makes a lot of sense to me. There's a lot of good decks there. There's good efficiency in logos, logos, mass mutations, just one of the strongest, just solo houses[00:08:00] that you can get. And then the winds of exchange with 21.4% there's a pretty good floor to winds of exchange. And I think the set's just fun. It's pretty high variance because of tokenizing cards. You might miss a key piece. But it's a lot of fun. It's relatively powerful, which is good. I don't think it's totally overpowering for Archon. But I think, I think it's good. And I'm really excited that the new set had a full 21% representation here. That's really good call. The Arcons always going to be a strong set, 17% worlds collide, and then downward. Those are about the numbers. I'm I expected to see. Dark tilings. I do think there are some dark tidings decks that really came compete here. And so we just didn't see as many of those, I think the dark tiding superfans perhaps were just not able to make it to this. Unfortunately. Now we got a house break down in the ghost galaxy article, but it didn't tell us exactly. Which. Which set some of these breakdowns came from, it says we had 63 logos decks. Which makes sense. Logos has been in all sets except winds of exchange. So here's the thing. It was six logos was in 63, [00:09:00] out of 99 decks. But about 21 of those decks were winds of exchange. So that's going to be about 78 decks that could've had logos and 63 did. So that's only 15 decks that exist in a set with logos where logos was not selected as one of the houses in that set. Via, you know, selecting the Archon deck. So that's pretty telling, right. That's pretty telling. Unfathomable was the lowest 11, Obviously one of the newest houses, although Ekwidon only has one set it's so strong and wins the exchange. I'm not surprised that it got at least 12, right. And then cards. They listed the cards in this article as well. 31 Infurnace. No surprise there it's in both worlds, collide and mass mutation. Which together make up about 44% of the entire field. And so 31 Infurnace makes a lot of sense. The good thing though, is that's not as many Infurnace as I perhaps would have worried about seeing it is easy for, in furniture to create a negative play experience. Cause they just, you know, Take away Amber and your good DEC pieces all [00:10:00] at once. Right? However, just at 31, that's a bit more that's a bit better. I think people, as, as we're going to the top eight here, you're going to see how people and pilots have selected decks where yes. Infurnace was in a number of these, but especially in the top eight Infurnace was only present in 50%. Of the mass mutation decks in the top eight and it was not included. In the worlds collide deck that was in the top eight. So while Infurnace is still very good, still maybe a little bit too powerful. What I think is good is that people are identifying what is strong about their decks outside of, Infurnace. Right? I think there's a lot of growth in the community. A lot of, um, a lot of intelligent deck selection going on into the community. Aware. Because we're not seeing Infurnace and literally everything. 30 wild wormhole. Great for speed. Great for speed. If you didn't listen to Call of discovery, my previous podcast, there also used to be another KeyForge podcast called the Wild Wormhole. We had this intense rivalry. I'm just here to say, Hey. I'm a grown up. I'm [00:11:00] over it. This is KeyForge public radio. The guy from wild warm home, whatever his name was, is doing something unplayable. I don't know. He's playing, he's playing with Disney princesses now. I think so. You know, um, I'm past the whole wild berm, whole thing, lovely card it's in plenty of decks gets you lots of speed. It's got some good combos if you're, you know, drawing extra cars with library access. So that makes sense. It's funny because you're never going to pick a deck only because of the wild we're home walls, but like a lot of other logos picks wild warm home makes things better. Now, of course, this next card daughter at 25 is logos as well. Um, so well-represented at 25, 25 instances of daughter. Now I will say that cards two and three are from the most popular house. Right? Logos card. Number one. Infurnace is not from the most popular house it's likely the second most popular house would love to have that data. So Infurnace, definitely overrepresented as far as there were fewer Dis decks, but Infurnace was the most that showed up. So while I am very glad about the Infurnace composition in the [00:12:00] top eight rank showing that one is not super overpowered in two, that players know how to pick something that's not Infurnace and still, make the top eight in a big, very mature meta in this way. Still Infurnace is ahead of two logos cards, right? Card number four Effervescent Principle. This is going to be pretty big in mass mutation, right? And the other sets it's in, it's in several other sets, but it's especially big and massive mutation where you don't have a lot of scaling. Amber control, a lot of Amber control that really punishes the opponent for going high. Now the answer of course, against that for Effervescent Principle, still to go as big as you can because you just get cut in half. So if you somehow get to 12, you're still on check. Right? But effervescence still a very powerful tempo tool overall for a mass mutation deck. You already want to pick logos anyways with mass mutation. Cause it's such a powerful efficiency house. Then coming in a time for fifth is running wrist clocks and info morph. In Fillmore again, mass mutation also appears in dark tidings gives those to draw pips. It's a comment you want the drop pips all [00:13:00] day. So those are great. And then Ronnie Wristclocks. You're going to see that in your worlds collide and your age of Ascension to play. If they have seven or more steel to, you know, otherwise you're stealing one. Very good card. Not surprised to see it represented here in spot number five, even though it's not in mass mutation. So showing that that's the good stuff from some of those other sets, that's really showing up powerfully. So that's the general view, right? Of the, of the tournament. Anybody who entered, you had a one in three chance to be playing against a mass mutation. Deck wins the exchange called the art comes worlds collide, really coming right up on that with some age of Ascension. So there was a lot of variety. You're going to see a whole lot of variety out of vault tour, especially in these Archon events. You really never know what you're going to go up against. So moving to the top eight, right? Then now the reason of course we're looking at the top eight is because we have the 99, the group stage, what did everybody bring? But then what was represented in the top eight? What actually rose to the top. And here's the thing with the top eight right now, maybe some of these decks could regularly reach [00:14:00] top four or regularly win at a couple of different vault tours. Really? If you reach the top eight, that's a huge accomplishment. And especially with best of one's existing in the top eight, that's a lot of variance, right? That's a lot of variance in our. Top cut. Anybody in this top eight. Perhaps could have won, right? If they got the right role, they got the right matchup. Now looking at the top eight, we had two call of the Archons decks that had relatively similar game plans. With library access, battle fleet and key abduction. So comboing off and just finishing the game with the combo all at once. Very powerful. So we had two of those. And so that was the only column the Arcons represented in the top eight was this library, access battle fleet key abduction combo. Now where the decks were the most different to where, how they were acquired by the pilots and their respective teams. One deck piloted by the eventual champion. The deck is called And it was opened from a pile of sealed codex a few months ago. The other deck pink fraud one, two voluntourism then sold at auction for [00:15:00] $3,600. So a pretty funny that they're relatively similar decks as far as their core combos concerned, but they couldn't be more different in how they got to this tournament, right. With, you know, the $10 likely less than $10 deck. If it was bulk. DEC winning the whole thing. We had one worlds collide. That made it up to the finals with a whole lot of Eyegors and Exhumes in the Tribute, exile combo. Those Eyegors, and Exhumes helping make sure that combo fires every time really brutal, really well played by Jovi the pilot. There was an interview with Jovi about his run up to that championship, that final, that those finals on the KeyForge public radio YouTube. So check that out. If you haven't lovely guy, lovely interview. One winds of exchange deck made it up here. It's got Brobnar Ekwidon and unfathomable, which is kind of the common knowledge for what the hot house combination is. There are several other that are very good. I think a, but Brobnar, Ekwidon on fathomable. It's kind of the hot stuff right now. And of course that token, that token creature was prospector. [00:16:00] Notably not a ton of the, um, action uncommons from unfathomable in this deck. No befuddle or Abyssal Sight, but just a whole lot of good stuff in there. So props to the pilot for, you know, piloting something new up to that top eight. Very impressive. In the top eight it is 50% mass mutation. Now Mass mutation, didn't even make it to the finals. I'm sure. You know, you shake it up. Do a few more vault tours. Mass mutation will be in those finals. But we have four mass mutation decks in the top eight . So for those keeping track at home, that's a 30% mass mutation and field up to 50% mass mutation in the top eight call the Arcons 17% in the field. 25% in the top eight. But one archetype of deck, one worlds collide one-on-ones of exchange, right? No dark tidings vault masters. Or age of Ascension. Up here in the top. Cut. these four Mass mutation decks, they have some similarities. So three of the four decks are dis logos and something else. All three have a different third house though, which is great. There's not just one [00:17:00] single house combination, absolutely dominating. However, that dis logos is going to be super strong efficiency disruption, all in one deck. Right? Plus whatever tool is you getting from the other house. And so only two of these three Dis Logos decks. Had only two had Infurnace and only one had mark of dis. So that's really good that these cards aren't completely met a defining the very good they're very strong. They definitely make a deck way better. They're worth looking at a pot if they've got several of them and things that combo with those cards, . Mark of disk and Infurnace. But they don't completely rule. The other fourth mass mutation deck that didn't have distant logos did have logos it was logo Shadows and Star Alliance so efficiency stealing and then more efficiency and other tricks efficiency and maybe some draw. Very interestingly no dark amber vault anywhere anywhere in this top cut and no dark amber vault which was a little surprising given what a terror dark amber vault has been and perhaps the community events on the online space for the past few years So no dark amber vault here And so a reasonable amount of deck [00:18:00] diversity among the four mass mutation decks no DAV, only two Infurnace only one mark of this and then a pretty good variety among the ones that exchange in worlds collide one. one deck a piece in there and then two COTA deck with a very similar game plan So that's what made up the top eight right so A couple of thoughts here So mass mutation is remaining very strong and relatively diverse in its strength but do some. And logo's a certainly weighted as far as what the strongest is right so no DAV, only 50%. Of the top cut mass mutation decks had Infurnace that worlds collide deck didn't only one of the four decks had mark of Dis. so i think that's good for how almost over tuned these high performing mass mutation decks are It could be a lot worse it could be much more homogenous and it's not so uh, i'm pretty happy about this i do think it is again a sign that that it's a bit over tuned However none of these made it to the finals and they had some pretty good diversity and shout out of course to the logo [00:19:00] shadow Star Alliance deck that you know did make it up there Takeaway: Consistency is King --- if you're really sharp minded and you've been paying attention to what i've been saying here Only one deck and the top eight didn't have logos And that was the winds of exchange deck with the Prospector token where logos quite literally is not an option So Here's the thing about that as far as this first vault tour is concerned Consistency is king Consistency is king in KeyForge. KeyForge is generally a high variance game you're going to see all sorts of situations you can hardly ever play the same game twice when you go to a tournament you really don't know exactly what you're going to be up against as far as the specific tech a weird rare a couple of weird commons that just totally make an opponent's deck work and you've got to figure it out on the fly right that's the magic of KeyForge That means it's higher variability which also means if you have a lot of consistency you're going to be maybe beating out that variability if you can perform consistently over and over again so Uh yeah that's where we are currently. [00:20:00] We'll see how much winds of exchange without logos in there, shakes it up. i think the consistency in winds of exchange decks may of course be what wins out but we'll see we'll see what happens i'm also excited to see what comes along with grim reminder so Uh it's a logo's world we live in right now it's a logos world we live in Takeaway: Winds of Exchange Needs Time to Develop --- Winds of exchange doesn't really have enough time to be properly represented yet it was about a fifth of the field that made one in the top eight i think people are still lots of people are still opening deck some people are still just getting orders much later than other people did and people are still opening their decks practicing with them figuring out what is actually good what are the match-ups like so i think winds of exchange needs some time to mature with the player base especially the competitive player base and we'll see what comes out i do think we're going to regularly see someones exchange in the top cut I think there's going to be a lot of prospector i do think some people can find some other types of consistency outside of the pure draw things like prospector and Ikwiji outpost right Ganymede out post. And i think we will see winds of exchange [00:21:00] decks and breaking into that top cut Because they high roll a bit and maybe they high role quite often even if they don't have traditional consistency but they high role right In tucked into that top cut. Takeaway: COTA Combo Can Still Get In Done --- So And here's the thing we had two of those coda combo decks coda combo can still get it done whether it's a $3,600 double vt winner or a deck that was just opened and wanted its own vt to its name Boom There we go coda combo can still get it done Alliance Metagame --- Now the Alliance meta game, this is going to look quite a bit different for a few different reasons, right? Because Alliance totally new. This is the first. You know, the first avant tour where the lines we had KeyForge celebration. Now we've got the vault tour with Alliance only 19 people signed up for this thing. And I know that it was originally about eight to 10. And then the word kind of got out that the pool for Alliance was so small. And remember, all of this is cash prizing. First place gets 3002nd place gets 1000. So as far as a percentage of sets that were represented, winds of exchange was a [00:22:00] full one. Third of the decks call of the Arcons was about 16% age of sension worlds, collide, mass mutation. All at 16.7%. So pretty even spread of what people were, trying to break. We have the lions, right? What they were trying to push. Um, and I do like that winds of exchange was so well represented. I think there's a lot of really powerful lines arc types there, and I'm just always excited whenever the most recent set, right. The one that's going to be on shelves that people can buy readily from ghost galaxy and the friendly local game store is what people are playing and what's performing. So I think that's great. That's really exciting. How about top houses? Of course, logos was the most common. That's just going to be the theme across the whole thing. Brobnar was the least common here in Alliance. We did have a sweet Hallafest with a couple other things, Hymn to Duma, heavy subsidies represented in the top eight, which was pretty cool. Doctor and Infurnace where the number one cards. Which makes sense. They were probably well-represented across the sense they appeared in, [00:23:00] um, and are kind of keys to victory in. You know, a lot of those kinds of pods. So I'm not too worried about those other stats. It's such a small sample size that we're going to look at the top eight here. Right. But it really just took two games to get locked into the top eight. For anybody who was competing that day. So we'll talk about some other analysis regarding, Alliance, but a lot of the data points. It's it's too. It's too small to determine an actual, real meta, I think simply from seeing people build online and what performed here. You know, mass mutation consistency is a very real thing. And here's the thing. There were multiple Whirlpool decks from a Wednesday of exchange in this top. Cut. We're going to talk about those too. The data we get from Alliance, you can't really determine an overall meta, but there was a spirit of excitement around what actually made it into this top. Cut. And what performed well from winds of exchange. And the variety of stuff we did see in this relatively small sample size. So in the top eight, it was a [00:24:00] full 50% winds of exchange. It was a third of the field and 50% of the top. So these decks won their way into the top. Cut. Right. They won their way into the top. Cut. Two of these winds of exchange decks are a particular archetype, Whirlpool cleric. It is an archetype. It showed up and it was 50% of the winds of exchange decks. In this top eight. It was a full 25% of the whole, top eight. Whirlpool cleric. This is awesome. This is one of the most KeyForge things that in my opinion has ever happened, that we get a top eight at the first actual Alliance event, even though it's only 19 people. And we're all the Whirlpool cleric. The Whirlpool cleric archetype is real and it's effective. So we had two different Whirlpool cleric decks here. Whirlpool of course, giving at the end of each person's turned the creature on their right flank to their opponent's left flank. And so the trick there with Claire gets to capture an Amber at the end of the turn, it moves over, and then eventually you kill it off. So these two decks that a few different approaches. One had light [00:25:00] bringer outpost to where you can move a card to the bottom. Move a card to the bottom of the deck to capture three, so that you're getting up to possibly four on your cleric before it goes over. And then the other world pulled deck, had an antiquities dealer. That brought in Pincerator this rare shadows artifact from a few sets back that deals one damage to each flank creature at the end of every player's turn. And the active player gets to pick the order of events here. And so you're going to make a cleric. Your turn is going to end. You're going to trigger Whirlpool, have that send over and then you're going to, then you're going to pick Pincerator to go, boom, that Amber is yours right off the bat. There was also a Hallafest, heavy subsidies Hymn to Duma deck which is pretty exciting. Just Halifax to being the Brobnar. Absolutely. Just pop off. You know, band members combo with all those creatures, have the subsidies and him to Duma supporting supporting that. And then the other one relying a lot on Legionnaires' trainer making a whole lot of senators that token in sarin and winds of exchange. [00:26:00] As well as also pulling in an Etan's jar from antiquities dealer, very, very valuable pod. If you find an Etan's jar antiquities dealer and take the other pod that is worth its weight in gold. To AOA decks made this top eight. Both of them were Marsha in generosity. Key abduction. There's a couple of different ways to build a couple of different ways to totally capitalize on this and kind of maximize it. Logos is definitely in there of course, by age of Ascension marsh and generosity, key abduction, and one of the most accessible and successful builds you can make for age of Ascension Alliance. And then of course, the two mass mutation decks had lots of speed and disruption, both packing Etan's jar. And these were the two decks that ended up in the finals. Alex, AKA Lord of winter versus Jason, AKA J power, both people I know. Personally and was very excited to see them in the finals against each other. And of course, these control decks one out and they, made it to the finals. These two control decks from mass mutation, lots of efficiency. I made it up to the [00:27:00] finals. Jay, power's got a really super powered one I'll point out a few of the really cool things about it in a minute. We'll have to see if this type of mass mutation deck regularly beats out the other stuff., I just don't think this meta in this 19 person group is anywhere near developed enough to really be a true test of how well that can be beat. Takeaway: Pods with Bonus Pips --- A couple of considerations here, right? We saw them to mass mutation decks in the finals. Pods with great bonus. Pips are a top tier consideration. Right pods with great bonus. Pips are a top tier consideration. Bonus pips are good, especially Infomorph and Chronus. Those are absolutely fantastic. The variety of archetypes was really encouraging. I loved singing. I love seeing all the different archetypes that did make it into this top eight. We do need to see whether that mass mutation speed disruption. Archetype with Eaton jar, mark of dis that sort of thing. Is that going to win out constantly or as we get more and more a variety of archetypes, which we know we had the seed of here. We had the seed of here as we get more [00:28:00] and more variety of archetypes is something going to the challenge then? I hope it does. I hope it mixes it up right. Takeaway: Winds of Exchange making 50% of Top 8 --- Winds of exchange being four of the top eight is really, really good. There's a lot of absolutely I think busted stuff in Alliance, which is the whole idea. No restricted list for the winds of exchange Alliance builds yet. Right. Um, but I love that it was so heavily represented here in the top eight. That's really good for the game, because these are the new decks that everybody's going to be able to get. If Alliance is dominated by winds of exchange among with thing, you know, a couple of other strong archetypes from, from other things I'm happy. I'm happy because that's what players can get their hands on. That's what new players can get their hands on. Those are going to be exciting and you can keep buying decks from your friendly local game store. Looking for it. You can do Alliance winds of exchange Alliance nights at your local store. I, this is good. That is nothing but a good thing, right? Nothing but a good thing. And again, I mentioned this earlier in the episode. But it was the most KeyForge thing that's ever happened that a Whirlpool cleric archetype came out of nowhere. [00:29:00] Right. It came out of absolutely nowhere. I had no idea that was going to be a thing that was so exciting that multiple people found that multiple people played it and made it work, made it to that top eight in a group of 19. Very exciting. Quotes from the Aliance Champion --- One last note on Alliance are some quotes that I heard attributed to Jason J power, our vault tour champion of Alliance. And so I reached out to him before recording this episode to verify these quotes, because I thought they were really good and I wanted to share them with you widely. Jay power said two things. First thing. Alliances for the dreamers. If you can dream it and you can build it and you can iterate and you can pour all your time you can pour all your time into building iterating finding new pods testing figuring it out trying to perfect that concept trying to break that game mechanic right so alliance is for the dreamers i love that He also said at least 95% of the viable alliance arc types remain unexplored i think that is easily correct right we only had 19 people coming in [00:30:00] To alliance here we had a number of different archetypes present um several very similar arc types present based on what people have seen each other do. If you have any interest in alliance and you think you want to build for it Look at your collection find find something you can break What's what's your favorite What's your favorite absolutely broken thing you can try to do In alliance and then try to do that right because i think it's very possible you could show up you could show up and with an alliance deck to evolve toward doing something that nobody had anticipated and i think that is both true in Archon and i think it's going to be true in alliance is just more dependent on your creativity and your dedication to the idea So i love that thanks to jason for confirming those quotes alliances for the dreamers and at least 95% of the viable alliance archetypes remain unexplored Very cool Final Notes: Team Performance --- just a few final notes on a player performances so a team sas had two players in the top eight Archon and one in the top eight alliance so [00:31:00] really great representation by one of KeyForge is all this teams there with team sas Rebound had the Archon champion which is great georgia my state And the united states was well-represented with the athens forgemasters netting a top four and alliance from red brags. so great job buddy very proud of you very good performance Um oh and he also used just two local povs and then one of lord of winters pod so just all pods within his immediate immediate circle which was pretty sweet and then atlanta in spirit because he doesn't live there right now it was lord of winter as the runner up in alliance so that was pretty awesome The rest is a mix of players most without a team affiliation many of whom um, i know of or have heard of or i knew who they were associated with when they were in there So a great mix of players and then Jovi, of course. A long time fan and player showed up knocking out everything up to the finals so that was great And I'd quick note if i missed a team affiliation then make sure your team has a current and functioning website because nobody really does i only know rebound because [00:32:00] i know devin is on reap out because i've been around for five years in this community if you're on a team and you all want to win things and have people know you win things please update your websites I'm not going to call out anybody i just talked about earlier but You need to update your website People like me are going to be covering these things right and hyping up KeyForge generally for the sake of KeyForge Update your tang websites Outro --- So that's about it for all the analysis on the on this fall tour again this has been KeyForge public radio we are so generously supported by our amazing patrons subscribers who believe in KeyForge and KeyForge public radio couldn't do this without you and a special thanks to our air we've advocate Level of subscribers like paul Roadrunner. 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When you join the Patreon, you'll receive access to votes on content, sneak peeks, early knowledge of interviews, access to the [00:34:00] Discord, and other benefits. So come on down, I'd be honored if you joined us. Follow KPR on any social media platform you frequent, just search for KeyForge Public Radio, and we're probably there. This show is produced by Rooster High Productions, which is me. And remember, dear listener, the most important part of KeyForge is the person across the table.