Ghost Galaxy is hard at work delivering on the KeyForge 2025 Organize Play plan, with Store Championships nearing their conclusion and the Vault Tour 2025 scheduled to kick off on April 25 in Rochester, New York (hosted by Millennium Games). Before Vault Tour 2025 begins, there are several key changes that we’ve been wanting to make to the Tournament Rules & Guidelines (TRG) document that governs these events.

Official KeyForge tournaments are regulated by our Tournament Rules & Guidelines (TRG). This framework applies to Store Championships, Vault Tours, National Championships, and the World Championships.

The TRG serves multiple purposes: it details the various roles within a KeyForge event, establishes a code of conduct that all participants are required to follow, specifies the materials that players must utilize during tournaments, offers guidelines for judges, and defines official tournament structure and formats.

Today’s update includes:

Several concepts and definitions that were not present in the document have been added, including the definitions of: Tournament Structure, Registration, and the KeyForge Master Vault.

Clarification on the use of printed translations of reference materials was added. Guidance on the use of electronic devices for accessing official references was also added.

Tournament structure has been removed from the rules for each tournament format to is own new section. This contains the rules for qualification rounds, and new guidance for play-in rounds and top cut sizes.

Tournament Legality has a new Deck Ascension section, which will remove some competitive decks from high-level tournaments. This is a large change that has some additional context below.

One change cannot be introduced without providing additional context and insight into the decision: Deck Ascension.

Players have expressed to us a desire to limit decks in our Premier-level events due to concerns that certain decks dominate the metagame. There have also been concerns that multiple players qualifying for the World Championship with a single deck contradicts KeyForge’s core principle of deck uniqueness and, further, that testing teams have an unfair advantage by sharing decks easily. We agree, and we’ve set out to solve these concerns.

KeyForge decks are fixed entities, making metagame adjustments more complex than just banning cards, which is something traditional card games are able to do with ease. In KeyForge, card bans could create bad experiences for players opening new products or devalue decks they already own.

To address the concerns of the community but also protect the value of their decks, the next best option is a season-limited rotation plan. This is the idea of temporarily prohibiting decks that have achieved great success in high-level play. This is what we call Deck Ascension.

Deck Ascension can be succinctly described as: any deck utilized in an Archon or Alliance tournament that enables a player to qualify for the World Championship will be marked as Ascended for that season, along with any deck that achieves 1st place, regardless of whether the player qualified in a prior tournament. Comprehensive rules are included in the TRG update, but the highlights are as follows:

• Decks that place 1st at a Vault Tour or National Championship in the Archon or Alliance format will Ascend
• Decks that qualify a player for the World Championship at a Vault Tour or National Championship will Ascend, regardless of placement
  • Every Vault Tour or National Championship tournament in 2025 will qualify the 1st and 2nd player, so often this means the 2nd place deck will Ascend
  • Qualifications that “pass down” count, so it’s possible a 3rd through 8th place deck Ascends – Invite passing stops at 8th place
• Ascended decks cannot be used at a Vault Tour or National Championship tournament for the remainder of 2025, in both Archon and Alliance formats
• Ascended decks can be used at the 2025 World Championship or 2025 Open tournaments at KeyForge Celebration 2025
• A list of Ascended decks will appear on a brand new page, the Hall of the Ascended
• A special Deck Accolade will be assigned to Ascended decks to make distinguishing them in the Master Vault easier

It should be mentioned that Sealed is not included on purpose – We view opening a great Sealed deck for use in a later Archon or Alliance tournament as part of the essential magic of KeyForge. Also, these decks already can’t be used in another Sealed tournament because of the very nature of how Sealed works.

Many of the changes introduced to the TRG are in preparation for Ghost Galaxy’s flagship KeyForge tournament series, the Vault Tour. Please join us at these wonderful celebrations of the world’s most unique card game, starting April 25, 2025.

Additional information, ticketing links, hotel booking links, and details on our venue partners can be found on our Vault Tour 2025 information page. Just click the button below, and we’ll see you on Tour!