Gimme Games: Ascension: Storm of Souls

A couple of weeks ago I did a review of the Apprentice Edition of Ascension. Today we are going to look at that game again, from a different lens. I bought the expansion starter set Ascension: Storm of Souls at Nexus the other day, and have some additional thoughts to add, due to it's new rules and gameplay.

This expansion set me back about $45, but for a game I really enjoy seems reasonable. The chances of me putting out that money for a blind buy are close to nil- I'd have to know the game first.

Storm of Souls comes with everything you see here:

• The box which can hold all of Storm of Souls, Immortal Heroes and the Apprentice Edition
• 50 Deluxe Honor tokens (25 red ones, 25 clear ones (those gems you see))
• 200 cards split into four ten card starter decks, one Cultist card, six Fanatic cards, 26 each of the Heavy Infantry and Mystic cards, and 101 center deck cards
• The rulebook

My initial impression was of glee, for I like shiny things. The honor tokens caught my eye. The small plastic gems are a nice upgrade, if somewhat unnecessary compared the the cardboard chits, and perhaps easier to forget the value of, as they have no marking as to their value. This hasn't been a problem yet, however.

After that magpie moment I took a look at the cards, shrink wrapped in two decks. I was a little confused until I realised they were not colour coded. This is a drawback for me, as I find the cards take more time to sort after a game. As they move forward with the game, I hope they will consider making more of the cards colour coded, like in the Apprentice Edition.

The next thing I noticed was the slight difference in art on some of the cards. The main set of cards, to be specific (The Apprentice, Militia, Mystic, Heavy Infantry and Cultist). They were more in keeping with the style of the rest of the cards than the ones in the Apprentice Edition. I can't understand why they changed the art for the Apprentice Edition, as the original art (seen in Storm of Souls) is much more cohesive with the rest of the cards.

Then I spotted the Fanatic. A new Always Available card, it costs more than the Cultist to destroy (three instead of two) and is a "Trophy Monster". This is a new mechanic in the Storm of Souls set. Trophy monsters are not banished immediately upon being destroyed, instead they give you their Honor, then stay with you until you banish them. 

Next up were Events. These come into play immediately when flipped into the center row, and are superseded by any new event to enter the row. They add new effects to the board, and have an Event Trophy (which took me a while to figure out- you need to banish a Fanatic to get that effect). 

So far I have played three games with the Storm of Souls set, once with it alone, another with three sets combined and the third with the solo variant. All in all I quite enjoy the new game play offered by the new cards, the events certainly offer a new obstacle to work around in some cases, and new boons in others. 

The solo variant is quite challenging and really requires you to plan your moves to the nearest Honor, for Nemesis will beat you silly if you don't. I will cover how to play solo Ascension on another Gimme Games. Until then, the things to note are:

• The cards in the larger sets are NOT colour coded like the Apprentice Edition. 
• The Honor tokens are now small plastic gems, rather than cardboard chits.
• All of your standard Always Available cards are here, along with the new Fanatic
• There are now cards called event cards
• There is a solo play variant

Tune in next week when we look at Ascension: Immortal Heroes!