Ascension co-designer announces Shards of Infinity, a ‘bold successor’ to the hit deckbuilder

Former Magic: The Gathering pro and co-designer of Ascension, Justin Gary, has revealed his next project: a sequel to the smash hit deckbuilder.

Gary is working on the follow-up to his fantasy-themed card game with Gary Arant, who worked on a couple of the sets for the 2010 title, which has apparently since sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

Shards of Infinity is described by Gary as being a ‘bold successor’ to Ascension that takes the deckbuilding gameplay in a new direction while being “faster, more strategic and more streamlined than any deckbuilding game on the market”.

Shards is another two- to four-player competitive title but, in a change from Ascension, victory is attained by directly defeating the other players, rather than racing to vanquish monsters and gather the most points.

In deckbuilder fashion, players begin with a basic deck of cards and gain cards from a central row of six cards. The extra piles of cards seen in Ascension have been removed.

One of the game’s touted features is mastery points, which are acquired by spending one of the gems that serve as currency. Increasing mastery enables cards to use more powerful abilities, so you’ll be powering up your deck both by gaining new cards and upgrading the cards already in your collection.

Another tweak to the deckbuilding formula are mercenary cards, which can either be acquired like normal cards or used instantly from the centre row – which stops a player being able to use them multiple times, but might be useful in a pinch.

Players start with 50 health and win when either all their opponents are defeated or they reach 30 mastery and use the ultimate power of their infinity shard. (Only one gem can be spent to increase mastery each turn, so it’ll take a little while – play time is pegged at around half an hour.)

It sounds like an interesting take on the well-worn deckbuilding genre, and sounds like the buy-in will be relatively reasonable at $20 (£14) over in the US.

We’ll see if Shards of Infinity can deliver on its promise when it lands on tables this March.