I’ve been playing a lot of Keyforge lately since a few of my friends are really into it and I finally feel like I can write something that will be helpful or at least something that will be good food for thought. I’ll be writing in painfully specific terms and I apologize to the seasoned “Keyforge Pro” but most of our regular readers aren’t incredibly familiar with the game.

In all games of Keyforge one of the biggest decision points is the decision of choosing when to fight (exhaust your creature to attack one of theirs) or Reap (exhaust your creature to gain an amber).

When to Fight!

When your opponent has an incredibly powerful creature that will gain an incredible amount of value in relation to the length of the game. A really obvious example: Its the beginning of the game (around a time when zero or one keys have been forged) and you have a 5 power creature and your opponent has a Mother, Succubus or Hunting Witch. Sometimes you are dealing with something with insane next turn implications like Witch of the Eye and you can’t afford to let her live so incremental value goes out the door.

When your fighting will protect a character of yours that you consider incredibly valuable.

When you want to value attack – kill one of their creatures without having one of yours die. I think this is only for early in the game and falls under protecting creatures but sometimes it also is meant to prevent your opponent from reaping on the following turn. If your opponent’s creatures are spread between a few houses but there are a larger amount of one consider attacking the ones with many to deny them a big reaping turn.

The hard part here is that sometimes you need to make the tough decision of choosing a house that can fight/reap vs one that can play cards from hand. Rarely will a house gain you a great ability to fight and play cards from your hand, but you do want to set that up as much as you can. Fighting pays the highest dividends early but so does playing creatures that can reap.

When to Reap!

When your reap threatens the forging of a key on the following turn. This is pretty obvious but we have to start somewhere. There are a bunch of cards that punish people for having seven or more amber but generally speaking there are more cards that punish you for having exactly six. When you have 7, a lot of the time, your opponent will have to use two cards to stop your forge.

When you can set up a forge in two turns and the one you will get this turn is very important. This is something I haven’t been great at and its also something that will be easier when you know your deck really well since you know what cards you are more likely to draw.

When you have nothing else to do. When your reaping isn’t impactful it will generally be better to set up your board but if you had a random ready creature hanging out remember to get that money!

Sometimes you can choose between reaping to threaten to forge or play more cards from your hand. That decision is incredibly contextual but somethings to think about are:

How impactful are things you are playing? Do you definitely want to use those cards in the next turn or are you just playing things because you want to play cards? Perhaps you want to draw into other cards?

Whats the tempo of the game like? If your opponent will threaten a forge at the end of his next turn playing a bunch of cards might not matter and it would be better to reap and pray they can’t disrupt you. This decision is also dependent on what you are hoping to draw to prevent them from forging.

Try thinking about the following turn and, If you can, the turn after.

Thanks for reading. I hope this was helpful to some. These are the type of things I think about when I’m deciding between reaping and fighting. Take care and as always…

QUIT STEALING MY AMBER, YA JERKS!

-NJCuenca

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