Explore the Crucible and the distinct houses of KeyForge through a gorgeously designed collection of the game's masterfully created art!

This vibrant artbook explores KeyForge's contest of power and wit with hundreds of illustrations that demonstrate the countless possibilities that are available across every deck, showcasing the whimsical and exciting art in glorious detail!

This tome is a must-have for readers ranging from the most dedicated Archons to casual fans of games and science-fantasy! Join the legions of players who've made this game a smash success, and witness the Crucible for yourself!

HC, 8x12, 208pgs, FC

A new sourcebook for the Genesys Roleplaying System set in the KeyForge Universe!

In the center of the universe hangs the Crucible, an enormous artificial world created by the enigmatic Architects and home to countless beings and cultures. Here, impossibly advanced technologies mix with arcane powers to make for a setting unlike any other. Uncovering the secrets of this mysterious, artificial world will take all your skills—but the possible rewards are boundless...

This 272-page sourcebook allows you to undertake fantastical adventures and uncover the Crucible’s many wonders and dangers. Lost civilizations, cryptic conspiracies, bizarre environments, mutated monsters, and more await!

Secrets of the Crucible contains new character creation options, unique weapons and armor, new skills revolving around the mysterious Æmber permeating the world, bizzare adversaries, and a new adventure builder that puts all these aspects together!

Are you ready to discover a world where anything is possible?

The Keys of Discovery
The first portion of Secrets of the Crucible introduces new character creation options. The Crucible is a diverse landscape full of uncountable species. This book contains 11 of these species to choose from when creating a character, including Giants, Martians, and Robots. But Secrets of the Crucible also features a full set of rules for creating your own species, making your character creation options truly limitless! Traverse the land as an aquatic horse-type species or roll through the Crucible as a giant rock; the choice is always yours!

Of course, selecting a species is just the beginning, Secrets of the Crucible also contains a set of fresh new careers for players to explore. Battle for æmber and glory as a mighty VaultWarrior, or acquire wealth and fortune as a mercurial Trader! Each of these careers has access to a wide variety of new skills and talents introduced in Secrets of the Crucible, including the powerful new Æmbercraft skill, which invites you to learn the secrets of the mysterious substance permeating the Crucible.

Of course, you're characters history and future will inevitably be intertwined with the various factions of the Crucible. Given the enormous number of beings on the Crucible, it is no wonder there are untold millions of groups, factions, houses, associations, and other ways for them to band together. Referred to as organizations, these groups range from congregations of belief systems followed by thousands of species to a singularly immortal hive mind linking a multitude of small protoplasmic blobs. Wherever there are beings who share beliefs or desires, organizations are formed. Does your character hail from the fierce legions of Brobnar, or from the scientific minds of Logos? As always, your character is yours to craft.

Master of the Vault
But Secrets of the Crucible isn’t for players alone. Game Masters are offered plenty of advice for running adventures in the world of KeyForge! Games set on the Crucible can be as divergent and expansive as the world itself, and it may feel a bit daunting to craft adventures. The wild mix of species, super-science, and fantastical technologies may seem too large to handle, but its beings have motivations and needs that everyone can understand—and thus adventures on this world can be both fun and familiar for players as they explore the Crucible with their characters.

Much of the chapter focusing on the Game Master is devoted to exploring the Science Fantasy genre, depicting life on the Crucible, Introducing NPC templates, and working Æmber into your adventures. The rest of the chapter offers a way for you to quickly create adventures featuring prominent or common elements of the Crucible with an adventure builder template. The adventure builder uses a modular format, allowing segments of the adventure types to be reused to create different combinations each time. The resulting framework may include unexpected twists, moral quandaries, and some of the general weirdness inherent to the Crucible.

These modular adventures are similar to the encounters found in Shadow of the Beanstalk, but with a Crucible twist. The adventure builder contains three categories: Hooks, Escalations, and Climaxes. By combining one of each, you can create your own story full of adventure, twists, and a satisfying conclusion.

Hooks are the initial enticement and incentive for your players to get involved in the adventure. These work best when they are clearly presented, so the players don’t spend a lot of time wondering what the possibilities are. Hooks can be quite cliché, which is great for telegraphing the basic intent of the adventure and can help set up unexpected events later on. Perhaps an Æmber Hunter needs you to fight off a Martian scouting party, or the PCs find a hot lead on a valuable artifact.

An escalation raises the stakes or difficulty of the adventure. Sometimes it challenges the morality of the situation as the PCs decide how far to go in their pursuit of their ultimate goal in changing conditions.

Climaxes are more open and nebulous compared to the hooks and escalations. They represent broad categories of possible resolutions that can always be greatly impacted and even circumvented by PC actions. We’ll take a look at each of these aspects in-depth in a future preview!

Unlock the Secrets
The world where anything is possible is colliding with the roleplaying system of boundless adventures, what adventures await you when Secrets of the Crucible releases

Age of Ascension, the second set of KeyForge

In 2018, legendary designer Richard Garfield introduced the world to KeyForge—a game where every deck is as unique as the player who wields it, coming pre-built and ready-to-play. Wits and tactical prowess win the day in a fast-paced game of cosmic competition where death is temporary, but glory is forever.

Along with this groundbreaking design came a lush, endlessly diverse world to call home. The Crucible, an artificial planet filled with secrets known only to the Architects, acts as the perfect setting for the world’s first Unique Deck Game, as the pieces of countless worlds gather to change the landscape every day to create something new and incredible. Now, you are invited to journey deeper into Crucible as your quest to unlock the power of this planet and ascend to a new plane continues.

The Power in Your Hands
Beyond the cards themselves, you may notice other subtle differences in Age of Ascension, highlighted in the set’s new starter. The KeyForge: Age of Ascension Two-Player Starter Set features all the tools you need to either begin or expand your adventures on the Crucible, including two unique Age of Ascension Archon Decks, a Quickstart Rulebook, two paper poster playmats for easily organizing your play area, and all the keys, tokens, and chain trackers you and your opponent need to start playing.

Unlike the Call of the Archons Starter Set, this set does not include two standardized learning decks, and you'll also discover that stun and increased power are now marked by tokens rather than status cards. Both the Call of the Archons Starter Set and the Age of Ascension Two-Player Starter Set provide excellent points of entry for new players, and as the game continues to grow, the power is with you to choose the option that’s right for you.

A New Dawn Rises
Become a new Archon in Age of Ascension! As a new set of KeyForge, Age of Ascension mixes up the cardpool with 204 brand-new cards, joining 166 cards first introduced in Call of the Archons to create an entirely new pool of 370 cards and billions upon billions more Unique Decks for you to discover, learn, and master.

Importantly, Age of Ascension is a companion to Call of the Archons, not a replacement or a sequel! You don't need to start with Call of the Archons in order to reach Age of Ascension, and you don't need to switch to Age of Ascension Archon Decks in order to remain competitive. Archon Decks from each set are equally matched against one another, which makes Age of Ascension an invitation to embrace even more of the spirit of exploration and discovery that makes KeyForge unique.

This new set further explores the gameplay of KeyForge with new keywords, restricting when certain cards can be played or freeing others from the constraints of standard placement. For example, the Brobnar are well known for their love of battle and their eagerness to land the first strike. Age of Ascension offers a new tactic for the House with cards like First Blood (Call of Ascension, 7) that feature the Alpha keyword, meaning that they can only be played as your first action during a turn. If you can establish a solid battleline, filled with the greatest Brobnar warriors, First Blood lets you open your next turn with a devastating alpha strike.

On the other end of the spectrum, the darkest creatures of the Crucible gain the power of Omega. The varied beings of Untamed can call upon a Duskwitch (Age of Ascension, 320), while the demons of Dis can make use of an Unlocked Gateway (Age of Ascension, 67) to destroy each creature—but the Omega keyword guarantees that this card must be the last card you play on your turn. While this gateway does not force you to take chains like Gateway to Dis (Call of the Archons, 59), this destructive power still comes at the cost of an opportunity, preventing you from playing any creatures unless you are willing to sacrifice them.

Finally, the new Deploy keyword mixes up your ordinary approach to building your battleline. Rather than building outward from the edges, a creature with Deploy can enter play anywhere in your battleline! You will find this keyword on only the quickest, like Lamindra (Age of Ascension, 272), and the most skilled warriors of the Crucible—those who can create order even in the middle of a chaotic clash between rival Archons. "Lion" Bautrem (Age of Ascension, 211) of House Sanctum grants power to his neighbors. With the ability to place him anywhere in your battleline, you have the freedom to select your most valuable creatures and bolster them, perhaps keeping a creature holding captured ?mber alive for a little longer, or granting one of your warriors the strength to destroy a particularly troublesome opponent. With these new keywords adding to the depth of the Crucible and the games that you play, you'll be able to further develop your personal playstyle and discover brand-new decks that can reach their full potential in your hands.

The previously unseen cards of Age of Ascension are seamlessly mixed with 166 favorite cards from Call of the Archons to create new synergies and allow you to rediscover familiar cards in a fresh light. Cards that appear in both sets, such as the Witch of the Wilds (Age of Ascension, 369), have different card numbers from their Call of the Archons counterpart (Call of the Archons, 347), but all other text and abilities remain the same. Additionally, while the new card pool does feature the return of favorite cards, you will never find an Age of Ascension deck with only cards that originally appeared in Call of the Archons. In every deck you open, you are guaranteed to see new faces like House Mars's monstrous Xanthyx Harvester (Age of Ascension, 173), and perhaps even meet some new allies who give you a sense of d?j? vu, like Archimedes (Age of Ascension, 108), who keen-eyed players may recognize as the loyal companion of Quixo the Adventurer.

Even cards that do not carry over from Call of the Archons to Age of Ascension have the chance to make an appearance as new Legacy cards. Like the player-favorite Mavericks (which continue to appear in Age of Ascension), Legacy cards are plucked from their normal settings and placed in new situations to unlock even stranger synergies. In KeyForge, any card that has existed in any previous set can be pulled forward to become a Legacy card included in a current Archon Deck. For instance, even though Quixo the "Adventurer" (Call of the Archons, 144) is not included in the Age of Ascension cardpool, he still has a chance of appearing in your Age of Ascension decks as a Legacy card. A new age is about to begin and no one on the Crucible is willing to be left behind.

A Softer Side
Each of the seven Houses first introduced in Call of the Archons gain new allies and tools in the Age of Ascension—and some of the most lively characters and deafening machines are found in the renewed ranks of House Brobnar. Hailing from snow-capped mountains inaccessible to all but the hardiest creatures of the Crucible, this House is known for their love of a good fight and anything that creates noise and destruction. But not all in their ranks share this desire for destruction. For example, Culf the Quiet (Age of Ascension, 20) wishes for nothing more than to be left in peace, borrowing the Elusive keyword from his fellow goblins in the House to avoid confrontation. But as a giant, Culf still possesses six power if you call him to battle, more than any other elusive creature currently in the game!

As the world of the Crucible continues to grow, you will encounter new and wondrous species in every corner of this growing planet. Among the ranks of House Brobnar, we have seen goblins, humans, and giants. But there are beings, old as the mountains themselves (or potentially even older) that dwarf even the grandest giants. Lollop the Titanic (Age of Ascension, 14) is one such creature. As a grand titan, Lollop can withstand the blows of an entire enemy team with his incredible eleven power, even if he doesn't deal any damage when he is attacked.

One may not think it when first looking at these intimidating warriors, but the members of House Brobnar are quite fond of pets, and in true Brobnar style, their favorite animals are those who create lots of noise and destruction, such as the Grumpus. These creatures are half wolf, half rhino, half tank, and all grumpy. Only the strong-willed Brobnar would look at these beasts and think they could be tamed. But giants like the Grumpus Tamer (Age of Ascension, 39) have domesticated them… kind of. Now, this House can use their beloved monsters to pull vehicles like the Grump Buggy (Age of Ascension, 24), which can bring your opponent’s progress to a standstill if your team possesses the power needed to control the wild beast. But perhaps they are at their most effective when the Brobnar simply aim a War Grumpus (Age of Ascension, 52) in the direction of their enemies and let it loose. There may be a whole new world to discover about House Brobnar, but they will always be the proud brawlers players fell in love with from their first appearance on the Crucible. They're just a bit more... grumpy.

Return to the Stars
The world of the Crucible is vast—what will you uncover in your journeys? Are you ready to seek the knowledge of a new age? Let your curiosity lead you to new discoveries and step into the Age of Ascension!