Keyforge’s next set Dark Tidings gives your unique deck an evil twin
Introduces new house Unfathomable and changing tide mechanic.
The fourth Keyforge set is next year’s Dark Tidings, bringing a new house, changing tides and evil twin decks to the card game.
Announced as part of Fantasy Flight’s In-Flight Report stream, Dark Tidings is the latest expansion for Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield’s ‘unique deck game’, adding more than 250 new cards to the potential pool assembled into pre-made decks by an algorithm. According to Fantasy Flight, the set introduces “billions upon billions” of potential deck combinations.
As in previous Keyforge sets, Dark Tidings introduces a new house to the game. Unfathomable will take the place of Dis, which has been in the game since first 2018 set Call of the Archons. The faction focuses on exhausting opponents’ cards and forcing players to suffer penalties for performing certain actions, giving the active player control over the battlefield. Unfathomable will have the possibility of being one of the three random houses that make up a player’s deck, with decks containing Dis still supported but not appearing as part of the latest expansion.
Dark Tidings includes a new gameplay mechanic: hide and low tides. Every Dark Tidings deck will include an additional card that can shift between ‘high tide’ and ‘low tide’, with cards in the set referencing the current level of the tide and granting potential benefits for keeping the tide favourable to one player or the other.
The upcoming expansion also plays with Keyforge’s much-touted promise to make every deck in the world unique. Evil Twin decks will feature identical card lists to existing decks, but with a new card back and deck name. Fantasy Flight described the decks as “dark reflections of other decks”. The cards will similarly be altered ‘Evil Twin’ versions of the cards in the existing deck, featuring more powerful abilities that come at the cost of harming the player that uses them.
Dark Tidings will release in February 2021, with a two-player starter set, deluxe decks and archon decks available at launch.