Squirrely Temples
Ascension hopped onto the Deck Building scene all the way back in 2010 [fun fact: the first ever copy was obtained by now esteemed reviewer Jeremy Salinas.] Published as a tactical counter to Dominion, this “row-based” DBG has now published its ELEVENTH expansion.
This iteration has players visiting the valley of Alosya (as opposed to the more frequently used plane of Vigil), where power is precariously balanced in the land’s three temples. Throughout the game, players will be employing the denizens of the aforementioned world to gain control of said temples, with the goal — as in any game of Ascension — being to collect the most honor by game’s end.

On the surface, this expansion seems to have a lot going for it: the fellas at Stoneblade have introduced two supplementary mechanics so the game, seemingly, won’t focus all around the temple tug-of-war. The Enlightened faction have Serenity, an ability that triggers when your discard pile is completely empty. On the other end of the spectrum is Void and their Echo keyword, an ability that activates if you have another Void card in your discard pile. Rounding out the faction identities in this expansion are Mechana, who have an inordinate amount of cards that interact with the temples, and Uterra with the tried and true Unite ability.
There are also several cards with really interesting, almost elegant, designs. Jubilant Monk (shown below), for example, rewards players who can surgically banish their decks.

The design and promise shown in previews; however, is not realized after players sit down to actually play the game. For starters, there is a HUGE advantage given to the player who goes last: the two secondary temples are each worth 5 honor apiece, and the main temple is a whopping ten honor. What this means, oftentimes, is that
1.) A player will lock down one or more of the temples in the extreme-late game.
2.) A card will cause a shift of the temples from one player to another, meaning ONE interaction has caused, at minimum, a 10 point swing (+5 v. -5) in honor.
For a hyperbolic example: one of the larger monsters in the game gives 4 honor and possession of BOTH smaller temples when defeated. If your hapless opponent happens to have both of those temples, that’s a TWENTY FOUR point swing (+4, +10 v.-10) in one go. This gut punch feels incredibly unfair, and sadly, seems to be something happening with much greater frequency in SBE’s designs.

Secondly, while Serenity is an easy “Pass/Fail” mechanic to check (i.e. a quick glance at your discard pile can determine if it’s empty or not), Echo quickly becomes more fiddly than fun. Sure, I like that the faction associated with death has an ability tied to the dead/used pile, but sifting through your discard pile (or arranging the cards so you can figure out if there’s a void card in the pile) slows down game play more than I’d like. There’s a reason a card with a similar mechanic {Ogo tracker} was only a promo rather than something included in a full set.
Lastly, as a long time fan of the game, there are several things about Ascension that are starting to bother me:
1.) If you go through the cards, expansion by expansion, there seems to be an over-reliance on glue cards (i.e. cards that supposedly NEED to be included in a set in order to make things flow properly). There’s always a card that gives 2 Runes and does something related to the central mechanic, and that’s balanced by a card that gives 2 Power and does relatively the same thing. Likewise, there’s almost always a low cost Uterra card that gives ~3 honor and has something relating to the expansion’s core mechanic in order to give 3 more honor. I honestly think an experience player could, at this point, go through a previous expansion after hearing the central mechanic of the 12th set and correctly predict 80% of the set.
2.) After Storm of Souls, SBE went in-house for playtesting. This, supposedly, was to hasten the process and churn out expansions faster. What this actually seems to have achieved is very narrow designs. Sure, there have been a few hits (Dreamscape, War of Shadows) but the large percentage of releases since then have had terrible mechanics (e.g. Rally) or been ridiculously swingy (Energy, Multi-Unite). The tacit mantra now seems to be “BIG SPLASHY EFFECTS ARE GOOD!!” without any concern about strategy or how to mitigate things once those effects alter gameplay.
3.) Aside from fanboys and employees of the company, I doubt there are many people out there who would argue with me when I say Stoneblade is a REALLY poorly run business. One need just look at their handling of multiple Kickstarter campaigns (there are STILL backers who haven’t received the Collector’s Edition box 3 years after the campaign ended), or their shuttering of the SolForge servers after improper budgeting for evidence.
Now, in hopes of getting more money, SBE has moved away from the “Block” format of releases (i.e. One Large set and One small set that can be integrated with it) in order to push two large standalone sets per year. While this allows SBE to bring in more money (large set $ > small set $), it also has the unintended consequence that, if a large set has problems, there isn’t additional content to “correct” them. Sure, you can make your own custom cube using all the cards, but the onus of doing so shouldn’t need to be something players have to do in order to fix a set. +

Sadly, I can’t recommend anyone pay full price for Valley of the Ancients. Honestly, I can’t recommend anyone pay ANYTHING for the analog version of this. After Gift of the Elements, this is SBE’s second miss in a row. At this point, if you’re still playing Ascension, just migrate over to solely playing the digital version and save yourself a gob of money.
Review Details:
8 plays: 3x with 4P, 1x with 3P, 4x with 2P, 3 Demos at GenCon 2017
Copy of VoA was obtained, via my own money, at GenCon 2017
