It’s been quite a while since we at Ghost Galaxy talked about KeyForge’s Organized Play. We felt now was the time to revisit the conversation and update the community.

We know many of you have been looking forward to an update on Organized Play and its schedule. Since the announcement at KeyForge Celebration, we’ve held many discussions both internally and with external partners to figure out how to make them the best events possible that you, the community, would be proud of.

We understand some in the community have grown frustrated over the lack of updates from us on OP. These discussions and decisions take some time to have. We are a small team wearing many hats working to get KeyForge and the Winds of Exchange set out into your hands. Rebuilding the OP scene and events takes a lot of time to get right.

We hoped to pass along more information on Organized Play by now, but much is still being worked out. However, here is where things currently stand to help you all see the progress made.

World Championship & Invites

Let’s start with the end goal of our OP schedule. As previously stated, each OP season will end with the KeyForge World Championship held in Roseville, MN in November to crown the best KeyForge players in the world. We are happy to announce that the event will take place November 10 – 12, 2023 at our retail partner Gamezenter, located just a few steps from our home offices. Some of you may be familiar with this as it is the venue we previously held KeyForge Celebration 2022. Details and ticket information on KeyForge World Championship will come at a later date.

Players wanting to compete in the World Championship will need to qualify for their spot. You will qualify for a seat in the Archon and Alliance tournaments through a few methods. The first being through winning a National Championship held in various countries around the world. A reminder, The U.S. National will be held at Gen Con in Indianapolis, IN on August 3 – 6. You will need a Gen Con ticket to attend. The second will be through placing in the Top Two at one of 10 Vault Tours being held worldwide. We will also announce additional ways to get into the World Championship at a later time.

A question we’ve heard from the community is, “What happens to those that qualified for the KeyForge World Championship in 2020?” This event was to be run by Fantasy Flight Games at the time. As many of you know, this was set to be held in the fall of 2020 before the pandemic hit the world.

While we understand how hard those of you who worked to earn those invites, Ghost Galaxy decided we will not be honoring previous invites for our World Championship. Those with invites or past prizes that have not been fulfilled are directed to please contact info@fantasyflightgames.com with their situation.

The KeyForge World Championship will feature a select number of the best players competing for a prize pool of $50,000, split across two tournaments, Archon and Alliance. The top player from each tournament will take home $12,000. Those who don’t qualify for the World Championship Tournament will still be able to attend, with side events for all to enjoy!

The Problem with Regionals

Our initial vision of organized play saw a step structure using Regionals, Nationals, and World Championship. This plan looked at each of these events as large scale events where players from neighboring cities and states would travel to. This meant running a limited number of Regionals in each country, depending on size.

We posted an interest form back in late January to seek out those wanting to organize these events. We received a lot of applications back, which we want to quickly say thank you and we greatly appreciate those that sent one in! After looking through the applications, we began discussions with a small group of applicants to gauge viability in running these events.

During our discussions, some concerns began to formulate around Regionals and the value they bring to both players and the tournament organizers who would run them. These concerns stemmed around the need of such an event and why a player may want to attend. Some feedback given to us pointed at the prize of “a bye at the National championship” as not being a strong enough pull for a player to travel for. This is especially true when a player could still attend a National regardless of competing at a Regional.

The further we discussed this feedback internally, the more it became apparent many might opt to do just that. This would hurt our TOs’ ability to put on a worthwhile tournament for players. So we began to look at what alternative prizes could we offer without impeding on our vision for Worlds. Despite numerous discussions and ideas, we ultimately could not come up with reasonable prizing and ensure success for our potential regional TOs.

This led us to make the tough decision to remove Regional events from our OP vision. This decision does not come lightly, but we feel it is the right one. With the removal of Regionals from our OP plans, we already began working on restructuring the prizing that will be offered with Store Championships in 2024. This will see the removal of the winner getting a bye for winning a Store Championship, but we drafted up a number of initial ideas we think are great. We will be working to finalize that prizing over the next several months ahead of 2024 Organized Play.

2023 Vault Tours

This leads us to Vault Tours. We’ve been working hard to finalize our TOs, secure the locations and venue space, and pick out dates. We made a lot of progress with these in the United States, but still working to do so internationally.

Our plans for 2023 still include running 10 Vault Tours, but we have made a slight change. 2023 Vault Tours will now include five in the US and five internationally. We aren’t ready to announce locations or dates for these just yet, but are hoping to do so in the near future.

We appreciate the passion you all carry for KeyForge. We understand the wait has been long and we are doing everything we can to end the wait soon. Store OP kits are still being worked on and we will pass along information on those when available. We hope you understand and ask for your patience as we continue to bring back the greatest unique deck game the world has seen.