Ascension: Rise of Vigil is a deck-building
game in which players acquire cards from a central pool, then place
those cards in their discard pile to be shuffled into their deck for
later use; creatures also show up in that shared card pool, and players
can combat them to earn victory points (VPs) and possibly other
benefits, such as the ability to remove less useful cards from their
deck or to banish cards from the pool that others might find useful. The
game ends once all the available VPs have been claimed or the shared
deck of cards runs out.
Ascension: Rise of Vigil, part of the Ascension deck-building game series, is both a standalone game for 2-4 players and an expansion that can be combined with any other Ascension game to support up to six players.
Rise of Vigil introduces treasure cards to the game system,
with all treasure cards in this set being "Energy Shard". When a
treasure card is drawn from the shared deck, you place it in the empty
space in the shared pool, then continue to draw until you reveal a hero,
monster or construct to cover the treasure. When you acquire or defeat
that top card, you also gain the treasure, which is added to your deck
like hero and construct cards. When you play a treasure from your hand,
you immediately draw another card from your deck; more importantly, you
can use the energy on these cards to activate special powers on certain
heroes, constructs and monsters. (Non-treasure cards can also provide
energy, but they are usually worth VPs whereas treasure is worthless
aside from the energy.) Energy available on a turn can be "spent" more
than once, so if you have, say, two energy, then you can power up all
cards with an Energize cost of two or less.
