More Than Just a Token Character
It’s All About Tokens!
Winds of Exchange is a forthcoming sixth KeyForge set that introduces many innovations to the game, including the Merchant Compacts of Ekwidon, a new house that we’ll explore more fully in upcoming articles. But first, we’re going to examine a main feature of the entire set with the help of some green friends from the Martian Empire.
After a long absence, Mars is returning to the game as one of the seven featured houses in Winds of Exchange. Let’s take a look at a few new Mars cards:
Wait, what’s a token creature? I’m glad you asked! Token creatures are the central theme to Winds of Exchange, and every deck from that set will include one token creature reference card. When a card effect instructs a player to make a token creature, such as on Mk.2 Generator, the player puts the top card of their deck facedown in their battle line to represent that token creature. In a similar way, a card effect such as Space Invaders can put creatures from your hand into play facedown as token creatures.
For example here are three different token creatures from the Mars house:
Each deck’s token creature is selected during the deck-generation process like this: First, the deck’s three houses are randomly chosen, then one token creature is randomly chosen from among all the available token creatures within the deck’s three houses.
Each Winds of Exchange deck that features Mars could include one of the above three cards as its token creature, but it could just as easily instead have a token creature from one of the deck’s other two houses.
Token creatures add a lot of interesting potential to a deck. First of all, they are creatures, which means most of them can do the very useful fighting and reaping necessary to secure your victory. Many token creatures also include common traits, such as “scientist,” that interact with many other card effects. Token creatures also create the possibility to have many cards in play at the same time that all share the same name; who knows what sort of shenanigans could result?!
Most card effects that refer to token creatures work no matter which token creature is included in the deck. But, there are a few exceptions. Let’s look at Blorbs!
Blorbs are a special kind of token creature that can only appear in a deck that also has the rare card Blorb Hive. If Blorb Hive appears in a deck, it forces that deck’s token creature to be Blorb. Every house in Winds of Exchange has its own rare card that forces the deck’s token creature to be something specific, but each deck can only feature one such card in its entire list.
Before you start thinking that Mars is getting a monopoly on fun in Winds of Exchange, let’s close with a peek at some token creatures from other houses.
That’s all for now, everyone. We’ll be back with more previews for Winds of Exchange soon.
