When a player gains a Soul Gem, it is placed in front of them like a Trophy Monster or Construct. That player may then banish that card at any time during their turn to gain the effect. The Soul Gem is drawn at random from a side deck of 40 cards. Some of the Soul Gems are more common, where others are limited to one in the deck. Banished Soul Gems are kept in a separate pile, which is then reshuffled if the Soul Gem deck is depleted.
Trophies added a lot of fun to the strategy of slaying Monsters, and this new set has a couple of exciting variants on the mechanic. The core of these new imaginings is the Ongoing Trophy. Ongoing Trophy Monsters are just like regular Trophy Monsters, except that their reward involves staying in play versus the one-shot use of the original Trophy Monsters.
As the second set in the series, Ascension: Immortal Heroes completes the Storm of Souls story arc, with players trying to wield the power of past heroes with new Soul Gem cards – representing the trapped souls of heroes from the past – to stop the rebel godling Kythis from fueling his mad ascent to godhood.
As with other Ascension titles, Immortal Heroes is a deck-building game in which players acquire cards from a central pool to add to their decks for use later; at the same time, they also combat creatures and other things that show up in that shared space. Both cards acquired and creatures defeated earn a player points.
Ascension: Immortal Heroes can be played stand-alone or combined with other expansions to Ascension and is now available from Gary Games for $29.99 retail.
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