6. The Art of Sequencing in KeyForge

[00:00:00] Learning how to sequence well in Key Forge is a lot like learning how to sequence well in editing a podcast. If you get it wrong, it sounds

Welcome to Key Forge Public Radio with your host, Zach Armstrong. Welcome, dear listener. My name is Zach, and today we are talking. About sequencing in Keyforge, we're going to help make you a more informed Keyforge player by making more informed Keyforge plays. So, what is sequencing? It is what order are you going to play your cards in, or even use your abilities in, that are occurring on your cards.

Because, during your turn in Keyforge, you will determine what order you will play, discard, and use cards in. Sometimes this order won't matter really that much. You've picked your house, the game plan is clear. And then you can sequence out from there and there's nothing too complicated. Sometimes there's a correct answer.

That's tough to [00:01:00] see, right? Something to sequence properly, where you actually get to a pretty good or special or, or just powerful result, but there was only one way to get there through your sequencing. Sometimes that's tough to see depending on the board state. Other times you're going to have multiple options with dramatically different effects on the game state, which could take you in completely.

Different directions, right? And sometimes sequencing incorrectly is going to lose you the match. And the key forge timing chart step three is when you can play use and discard cards of the active house in any order, the first two steps being forge a key and then choose a house. That's step one and step two, respectively.

Step three is where the majority of sequencing decisions occur. So like what order should you play use and discard your cards in? Well, as you probably know, if you've tried Keyforge at all, there's not going to be this kind of straightforward, super exact math in many turns. Sometimes it is a little more straightforward, but there's no mathematical system because all of our costs, remember, are opportunity [00:02:00] costs in, in what we choose.

If we choose one thing, we're not choosing another thing. And perhaps the thing we're choosing is obviously better than all the other possibilities, but perhaps it's not. Perhaps it's a Perhaps it's a bit inscrutable. It's a little difficult to perceive exactly where the game will go, depending on what decision you make.

And that is one of the great things about Key Forge. So during your turn, the step three, right? You are playing cards from your hand, using cards on the board and discarding cards of the active house sometimes. So what order you pick to do all of these things in, all of these, all of these actions, all of these choices, you want to figure out how to do them for maximum effectiveness.

So here's the thing about an episode on sequencing, as I put this together, right? Perhaps there's a few heuristics, but the first step to sequencing correctly is to determine, well, what's most effective for my turn, right? You've got your turn, you're looking at the battle line, the entire board state, the game state, [00:03:00] right?

Okay, what's, what cards are in the opponent's discard pile? What is in their battle line? What... artifacts do they have out? And what are all those same considerations for your side of the board, right? What are the big outs on their deck list that you haven't seen yet if you're playing Arkhan or Alliance, right?

You get access to that information. What might you need to play around so that you're not creating such a big out and a big play for your opponent? What outs can you play to for what you haven't seen yet? Do you need to be digging for a specific card? So you really need to prioritize card draw or getting rid of cards from your hand is your board state in a place where you can really push and take advantage of that.

Right? Is there a threat you need to deal with on your opponent's board before it pops off, or maybe it just looks like a threat, and it's not actually going to pop off later, it's just a scary looking card, right? So, [00:04:00] what is effective? How do you select a goal for each choice you will make and turn, from what creatures to fight with, to what creature to target with said fight, whether to reap instead, and when to play the cards from your hand?

So, there are a lot of choices to make here and we need to pick our goals and figure out what is an effective goal for the context. So, our goals are going to fall into kind of two categories here. Our goals are going to fall into two categories here. Strategic goals and tactical goals. Okay? So, a strategic goal is, is the bigger questions of the whole match.

Really the, the... The strategic goal is the bigger question of the match. It's the, how do you get to three keys, right? Going back to episode one of this podcast, Key Forge is a racing game. How do you get to three keys, right? Making strategic choices for your matchup that will, that will get you there. So a strategic choice.

Is a strategic choice are related to questions like these. What big outs are you [00:05:00] playing to? An out being an advantage you can get to, right? Perhaps you can fight down your opponent's board so that they only have a few creatures, you have a lot. And then you can play a mass buyout and get a ton of amber pushing you really far ahead.

Right, mass buyout giving you one amber for every two creatures you blow up, and that happens on both sides of the board. So maybe you're playing to a big out, and so how can you push yourself towards that big out no matter what else is going on during the turn? Another strategic question to another strategic goal phrased in a question here, right?

What card do you need to hold so that you don't lose the game based on something your opponent does? You hold that card so you can respond. Or you're holding that card because you know your opponent is likely to create a situation where that card is a huge out for you. What outs might your opponent go for which you need to be ready to respond to?

What puts you in the best position? Later in the game, these are questions you can ask from a strategic perspective saying, okay, let me look at the big picture. How do I get to three keys? What are the big [00:06:00] things I need in this particular matchup to get there? Now, here's the thing about strategic questions.

They're very hard to answer. Even experienced players are not going to get these right. all the time, right? It takes a lot of deck knowledge, knowing your own deck. It takes a lot of strategic knowledge of the set and the matchup you're playing against, right? If you're playing against a deck from a particular set, you might know what's in that set, what's not in that set.

You know the kind of things that deck will do. And then also just having experience with your deck, playing against all sorts of different matchups. What happens when your opponent is able to just flood the board with creatures? What are you doing then? What happens when your opponent bursts with Amber going up to, you know, say double digit Amber.

Out of nowhere, how does your deck respond? How is it equipped to handle those situations? So a tactical goal is a smaller scale goal. Let's say it's a goal that is kind of appearing on a specific turn that you could really dive into, right? One phrase I [00:07:00] like to use here, see Bravnar, use Bravnar. If you've got a big Bravnar board and you've got a.

Bravnar card or two in hand. That might be a situation, especially in winds of exchange, where you could pretty easily fight down their board to keep them from gaining, you know, Amber or advantage from those creatures. You can reap out, you can play a few cards to get you some more token creatures or to ping your opponent for some more Amber, as you push yourself forward, where you have evaluated the game state.

You've evaluated the board state and you've said, okay, I've got Rob NAR. Yeah. There's some great cards later in my deck, but I got a big advantage right here. And I don't think like they already discarded their board wipe on turn two. Cause you know, they, they didn't need it at that time and they chose to get rid of it.

Let me go ahead and push my advantage where I can keep keep the board. In my favor, there's an old key forage term called the Delta, which is how many creatures do I have in my house with the most creatures on board? If we're in this Brabnar case, let's say we've got four or five creatures on board.

And then how many creatures does your opponent have in their house with [00:08:00] the most creatures on board? And the difference between those two is Delta. It's just a simplified way to understand how far ahead are you. on board relative to your opponent. If I've got five Brobnar creatures on my board and my opponent has two Unfathomable creatures, that's a delta of three.

And that means I'm in a good position relative to them. Simply oversimplifying here and looking at, if I call Brobnar, I can read five times or just take, you know, five actions with these creatures, five uses with these creatures. And if they call unfathomable, they're only getting two. So a very simple way to think about balance and advantage on the board there.

One important way to think about Delta is if you have those five Robnar creatures, right? Say they have five creatures as well, but they have two creatures from unfathomable, two creatures from Ecuador, and one creature from Mars. And so the delta is still three there, even though we both have five creatures on the board.

So what your goal might be there, if it fits with your strategic [00:09:00] goal, and this tactical goal is looking good, right, is you might call Brobnar and then fight down at least one creature of each of the house with two creatures. So that now your delta, you fight twice in your delta. goes up to four, because you fight off a creature in Equidon, you fight off a creature in Unfathomable, now they have one Mars creature, one Unfathomable creature, one Equidon creature, and you still have five Brabnar creatures if they all survived the fight.

So, now the delta is four, because they're going to have to pick one house. And unless they have some house cheating, they're only going to get to use one of those creatures. Of course, it might also be advantageous if you've got some splash attack in Bravnar or something else, right? To go ahead and just blow up all those creatures.

But it's one consideration is the Delta representing what is the difference between your creatures on your board? So, and the Delta is a big part. Of making a tactical decision, what's your tactical goal, right? The, the example we just talked about with, you know, five creatures [00:10:00] on the opponent side, five creatures on our side, we have Bravnar, theirs is divided up.

That was a very good tactical goal to fight down to fight down their board to something to something much smaller, right? To something much smaller. The board state itself gave us a pretty clear answer. Should you be pushing some advantage on the board? Yes, we can actually fight with our Brobnar, keep the opponent down, and they're gonna have many fewer options on their turn as we threaten to reap out and continue to fight them down as we both advance our game plan while keeping them down.

So, to review so far... A strategic goal is how can I set up a big out for later, a big play for later, a combo, perhaps. What cards do I need to hold, if any, to either answer an opponent's large threat, perhaps Amber Burst or a specific high, you know, high high threat creature? Or what do I need to hold in case there is a big out for this card later?

Where I can play it to gain a huge [00:11:00] threat because of the board state. What am I suspecting this game will look like later, depending on the match, that I can push to? Do I need to be digging for cards just to keep cycling? Or do I really need to play the board here? Because I don't think they can. They can push much past it that they're not going to be able to find an answer.

So strategic goals, strategic goals are the big questions about how over time you're going to win this game. A tactical goal is really just this, the single, this single turn goal, right? Now, other people may have other definitions for these things. But generally looking at just how these words are used and how we're going to apply them to key forge, that's how I'm using strategic goal and tactical goal, right?

And so we're going to evaluate our goals from these two perspectives. We're going to evaluate our turn. What does the board state look like? And then decide if we're going to make a strategic choice or a tactical choice. Right in this board state, given what we have in our hand, and then you're going to move forward and you're going to try to order your cards properly to achieve the [00:12:00] best version of that goal, right?

Perhaps you have a way to exalt an enemy creature. Right. Where you put an Amber from the common pool onto that creature. And then you can blow that creature, blow that creature up with some, you know, with a fight or a removal effect. Right. Generally speaking, you're going to want to put that Amber onto that creature before you blow it up so that you get it.

It seems intuitive. It's often easy to miss all these little advantages that come up during a Key Forge game. And if you miss one or two, that might be okay, but sometimes the difference between a win and a loss and Key Forge is razor thin and that choice. You know, lose you the game if you make it incorrectly or suboptimally because all of these little choices are going to add up, which is why it's important to evaluate a turn strategically and then tactically and make sure you're getting yourself as many advantages as possible from correct sequencing, because they're all going to add up and that may push you over the line to where you get to win instead of your opponent.

So one question to ask as you're looking at strategic and tactical goals here is can. Mm hmm. Some [00:13:00] cards be used properly to create bigger outs for other cards you can use or play this turn. In the example where we were exalting that enemy creature and then blowing it up instead of trying to do it the other way around, right, we created a slightly bigger out for blowing that creature up.

Usually blowing that creature up just involves, okay, great, we've taken away a creature from our opponent and that's really all we've done. Unless we're getting some other reward for it. And in the example, if we exalt it first, then we get the amber. Pretty straightforward. Another example from Winds of Exchange is Membership Drive, right?

Which reads, play, create a token creature. Then gain one amber for every token creature that you that you control, every friendly token creature. And so, if you have other token creature making abilities, you're going to want to use those before membership drive. Unless you're, unless there's a particular amount of amber you don't want to hit for fear of your opponent you know, punishing you for that, for some reason.

So, that's a good example of a single turn, like, tactical setup for a big out, right? [00:14:00] That membership drive, that membership drive setup, creating as many token creatures as you can before playing membership drive. Now, what you might want to do is, during your turn, can some cards you control in play or in hand help you set up a big play or combo?

on a future turn. For instance, if you have Mars Needs Amber, which is an action card from Mars that reads each damaged enemy non Mars creature captures one amber from its own side. And from its own side, of course, meaning your opponent's pool, that amber goes onto their creatures, the damaged enemy non Mars creatures.

And then once those creatures blow up, hopefully you're going to get that amber by default, right? Because it's amber on an enemy creature. They're leaving play, so the amber comes to you. So, some choices you can make during any given turn, even if you don't have Mars Needs Amber in your hand, is, is there an easy way to get extra damage onto these enemy creatures?

Can I spread this damage out? Maybe if a creature is already damaged, I use, you know, this damage pip to damage a different creature. Because you're trying to set yourself up [00:15:00] for that large out of using Mars Needs Amber on those non Mars enemy creatures, and then having that be some pretty significant Amber control, right?

So you'd be making choices a little bit differently than if you just wanted to blow up a single one of those creatures and stack your damage and fights into one single creature. If you think those creatures living for a few turns is going to be just fine. You can go ahead and be spreading that damage out among those creatures in hopes that you see your marginates Amber soon, and then you play it and boom.

You have slowly but surely taken a lot of amber from your opponent, right? And a smart opponent is going to be seeing this and will go, Oh man, they are generating a threat. They are generating a bored state where their Mars needs amber gets even better. How do I, how do I deal with this? Do I keep all these creatures out?

Because I believe my out. You know, I'm going to be pushing my board so hard that I can survive a Mars needs Amber and maybe still win, or are they scared enough of that Mars needs Amber that they need to be getting rid of their own creatures, fighting them off the [00:16:00] board or otherwise blowing them up, right?

So a lot to consider here. A lot to consider here, and it comes with, it just comes with intentional repetitions with Dex, where you're paying attention, you're taking some notes, maybe at least just mental notes, and you're seeing what happens and learning from that, right? How do you play over time? How do you play to set up a big out?

Another kind of sequencing that's really important in Keyforge is ordering simultaneous effects. Ordering simultaneous. Effects. So there are sometimes going to be effects which occur at the same timing window, and then the active player picks what order the effects are resolved in. From the rulebook, it says whenever multiple effects happen in the same timing point, the active player decides the order in which those effects resolve.

Let's look at some after reap abilities which actually affect each other if you place them all on the same creature. For instance, Praetor Marius is a Saurian common, it's a creature, and it has the after reap ability. For each exhausted creature, Praetor Marius is left, capture one amber. [00:17:00] If you have a bunch of exhausted creatures to its left, of course, you're capturing a bunch of amber.

This combos well with things like Epic Poem and Inspiring Oration from Saurian and Winds of Exchange. Now if your Praetor Marius has the Mars Upgrade Ironics Propaganda on it, this upgrade says this creature gains after fight slash after reap Mega Token Creature. So what happens is when you reap with a Praetor Marius that is upgraded with Ironics Propaganda, You now have two after reap abilities occurring at exactly the same time.

The make a token creature, and then the capturing one amber for every exhausted creature to Praetor Marius left. Now, what is generally the most advantageous thing to do is you, as the active player who have just reaped with this upgraded Praetor Marius, you select the Ironix Propaganda after fight after reap ability to occur first.

Now you make a token creature, You place it over on the left flank of the battle line, which is going to be to Praetor Marius left, no matter what. Hopefully Praetor Marius is far over on the right. And now you have another exhausted creature to [00:18:00] Praetor Marius left. And now you go to the next After Reap ability, capture one for each exhausted creature to Praetor Marius left.

And so now you've just increased that number by one, and you're capturing one additional amber. It's a small thing, but it very much could matter, especially if you're not only taking that amber from... Your opponent, right? But you have an inspiring oration or an epic poem, both of which give you pretty big advantages, one for one, for every amber on a creature.

Looking at destroyed effects, there are very interesting and important ways to be stacking your destroyed effects and picking what order they resolve in when it's really important. This one changes whether this is under your control or your opponent's control, okay? So we have Ironix Vatminder, a three power, one armor creature from Mars and Winds of Exchange.

It has the destroyed ability. Make a token creature. Pretty good. We like that a lot. There's also a rare Mars artifact called replay pod, and it says each friendly Mars creature gains destroyed. Place this creature face down under replay pod. [00:19:00] Okay. So what we have is this IronX Vatminder now has two destroyed abilities, both of which are going to occur when the card is destroyed, one is place this creature face down under replay pod.

And the other is make a token creature. So if the IronX Vatminder is. We have these two destroyed abilities, and generally speaking, we say, Okay, we want to make the token creature first, and then place Iron X Vatminder underneath the replay pod. Because if we pick place this creature underneath the replay pod first, then all of a sudden, Vatminder is upside down in a different zone of play, and we don't resolve the other destroyed ability, right?

So we have skipped making a token creature. Now, perhaps you don't want to make a token creature in this instance. There's a card you're looking for and you don't want to tokenize it because it would be so hard to get back. That's fine, right? But if you're generally trying to push for the board, make some more token creatures, and trying to get maximum value out of making token creatures with Iron X Vatminder, you're going to make the token creature [00:20:00] first, and then place it face down under replay pod.

Now, of course, it's the active player who makes all decisions. So, if you are the opponent, and you have blown up your opponent's Iron X Vatminder, and there's an replay pod in play on your opponent's side. You could, of course, if you don't want them to make a token creature, go ahead and pick the place this creature facedown under replay pod destroyed effect first, so that the other one won't resolve.

Now, of course, maybe you're in Bravnar and for every enemy creature you destroy you're getting some benefit, right? Like you get to make a token creature with feats of strength, something like that. So maybe you actually want to go ahead and make that token creature because you know You can just go ahead and blow it up.

And you know, if they don't have recursion from their discard pile, it's a great idea to go ahead and try to get a key card tokenized and then put into their discard pile, right? So those are the kinds of things that really matter when you're picking what order to have simultaneous effects resolve in.

And I [00:21:00] would love to create a list of every situation where simultaneous effects could occur, especially in cross set play, but there are so many interactions that honestly it would be impossible to number all of them. Which is one of the things I love about Key Forge. It's the infinite puzzle. You need to practice and have good instincts for how the game works, and good practice in how the game works, and knowing that well.

And that's what you apply to all of these myriad of situations, right? It's not just small memorized. It's a vast list of interactions that you have to, that you have to consider. So, to summarize, you've got to pick your goal for the turn at the start of your turn, right? Are you going to make a strategic play or a tactical play?

Are you going to make a strategic play where you're choosing a line? Right? A way to play your cards that sets you up for long term success in this particular matchup. Setting yourself up for a bigger out later. Maybe hand crafting, right? Where you're playing just a few cards from hand of a house you've already seen a bunch to increase the [00:22:00] chance you're going to draw in just into your other two houses as you go.

Are you going to prepare for a combo? Or prepare an answer for an opponent's large threat that they're going to present. Or are you going to make some more tactical plays? You have a big board of six creatures and there's nothing to worry about on your opponent's side right now because they're not drawing well.

Go ahead and reap out, right? Go ahead and reap out, get to check. That's great. Maybe you have a unique opportunity in the game state which you can exploit to great advantage. Something you weren't really... prepared for you haven't seen before, but you can actually just really pop off with something, something really interesting happening in the board state that you can take advantage of right now.

Or maybe a great tactical play is goodness. If your opponent makes a mistake or a suboptimal play, they left one of your threats unanswered, right? And now you have the opportunity to exploit an issue that your opponent left wide open. Always keep an eye. out for that. Now remember, now remember, because you're in, if you're playing competitively here, you're going to want to take advantage and punish [00:23:00] that mistake.

That's what competition is about. Don't be a jerk about it, right? Don't be a jerk at all. But if there's a mistake on the other side, really, as a competitor, if you want to take this seriously and try to win, You've got an obligation to go ahead and take advantage of that mistake, unless of course there is some much bigger out that you have that the opponent's mistake doesn't even, you know, the out from the opponent's mistake isn't comparable to your other big out, right?

So think through the optimal order of playing and using and discarding your cards to achieve that goal in the house best suited for it. Are there any risks associated with the plays which must be considered, right? As you're doing these, think, what is the worst case scenario? Am I comfortable risking that worst case scenario?

And then are you keeping in mind your opponent's big outs and how your plays move the game state closer to, or further from those big outs? And when you're improving your sequencing, when you're thinking about this in a game of Key Forge, it's really easy to give into analysis paralysis, right? It's easy to think of all the [00:24:00] options, how complicated it is, and just start to start to freeze up or not know what to pick.

Strategic and tactical plays are complicated. And are, you know, these different ways that we categorize the goal and these decision paths, these, all the different possibilities. This is often a really dense stuff. So remember one of our mindset lessons from episode four hand plus board, where we let the hand plus board be a teacher, right?

Let yourself get it wrong. If you're unsure and especially right. If this is in a game where you're practicing with a friend, you're training on TCO, let yourself get it wrong. That's okay, because when you get something wrong, or you have a loss, and maybe you didn't even really cause an issue that led to the loss, you can say, what went wrong there?

You know, did I make a mistake? Did I make a misplay? Could it possibly have been different if I had sequenced differently this turn? Now, making a bad play or making a suboptimal play, I mean, usually doesn't feel good, right? But you can learn from it. You can move on. [00:25:00] It can move on and improve, and then you are even more equipped in your next game situation, where you face a similar choice to say, Aha!

No, let me play this line because I think it's going to give me the biggest advantage. Make a choice and go. Then reflect. And guess what? If you do that a bunch, you're gonna be a more informed Keyforge player. As usual, thanks to our loyal Patreon supporters at the Airwave Advocate level, and that is, for now, Paul Roadrunner.

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Not very good, and then you have to go back and fix it or just stick things onto the end of the episode. It's terrible, really.