Riku, KFC and what is happening in Archon

Greeting everyone,

For a long time, I used to write my Keyforge blogs (not many of them) on my store’s website. Now that the store has closed, it feels like the right moment to move on and build a personal blog for myself. Maybe in the future I’ll write about things other than Keyforge too — who knows.

So… here I am.

I’ve been thinking about writing this post for a long time. I want to talk about the current state of the game, and also everything that led to my second year of KFC. With the release of PV, I think the competitive environment is in a really bad place. I want to go into detail about that. But part of me felt that I should wait until after KFC to write this — because I hoped I would achieve something there, and that my words would carry more weight.

That didn’t happen.And that’s part of the story I want to tell.

Let’s begin.

VARGHAST

I want to start with the story of someone many of you already know: Varghast.

He’s a prolific U.S. player with a long list of trophies. He won World Sealed last year and Archon Open this year. Seeing him win Archon Open convinced me that he might be the best player in the world right now. I’ve always believed that consistency defines a player’s quality — and Varghast consistently performs at the top in almost every event he enters.

We’ve known each other for a while, from the NKFL days, and now we’re both in Reapout. We talk about the game from time to time — maybe not a lot, but enough to share stories.

He didn’t participate in any Vault Tour this year except for Vegas. He reached top 4 there, but it wasn’t enough to earn a Worlds invitation. His only remaining chance was the LCQ. He opened a double Cosmic Recompense pod, but it wasn’t enough. Honestly, I doubt anyone had a real chance — this year they gave out so many invitations that I don’t think a meaningful spot was even left.

So he played the Open instead. He had multiple options, including playing Alliance, but in the end, Archon is his calling. He had already loaned me his best Archon deck, Blud, the Geologist of Bonnetong. He still had a few others, including a Vietnamese deck I brought along called: "Một Tá", Ẩn Sĩ Chú Ý Ý Tưởng (let call it Dozen).

He struggled to decide. He’s a perfectionist. If you know him, you’ll recognize the constant worrying over every possible decision. That’s actually one of the traits that makes him so good — he’s always in the zone, always considering every option

Because I understand him well, I talked him into playing Dozen. It has all the tools needed for any situation, which suits his personality perfectly. Tons of disruption too, fitting his style. It lacks C and can be vulnerable between big turns, but if anyone can pilot it well, it’s him.

It didn't start well for him. He lost the first round — to the original owner of Blud, of all people. He was crushed. I know the feeling: losing the first round is mentally devastating. We’re similar there: we both want to win early so we can stabilize mentally.

But another trait he has is that he never gives up. I think this comes from his sports background — discipline, resilience, mental endurance.

And then he went on to win everything from that point forward, becoming the new Open Champion. The first player to unite the three colored trophies.

Open isn’t GG’s favorite child — zero matches were streamed, and everything was played out of sight, so I didn’t get to watch his games. But knowing him, I’m sure he played better and better each round.

And that is his story at KFC.

Seeing that made me realize there is still a wall between him and me. I’m still lacking discipline. And that may be the biggest difference between us.

ARCHON WORLD EVENT

And now, here is my story.

Last year, my wife Bamboo and I went to KFC because we wanted to make Keyforge part of our marriage memories. What happened there was a fairy tale. Bamboo won World Archon, and I won Open Archon.

So despite our financial struggles this year, we felt we should return. Everyone made last year’s trip unforgettable, and we wanted to be part of it again.

Of course, I had to prepare. I was confident in my decks… until PV arrived.

This isn’t the first time my collection has been invalidated. During the FFG era, my collection was considered one of the best. Then GR came and turned everything I had into garbage. I endured that. I continued investing and built a new strong collection (even though Bamboo’s Nghị was still destroying everything I ever owned).

And then PV came — and again, everything I owned became competitive useless.

I’ll talk about PV more later. But I spent a huge amount of time looking for a world-level deck. I opened around 150 PV decks, none of which were top tier. I tried everything we had at Vietnam local, then moved on to decks friends around the world owned. It was exhausting in a way I never want to experience again.

I had a deck from China that I bought, but it got stuck in customs — and PV wasn’t clonable at the time. In the end, I had to borrow decks. Varghast offered Blud. Stormstrong also offered Plutotend, the “Culprit” of Ambition.

Both were similar in terms of disruption; Plutotend had less disruption but more tempo. Blud had more tools overall.

I chose Blud.

But you already know I went 2–2. So whether that decision was right will haunt me for years.

My first match was against Harmed. We became close friends after last year’s KFC, and neither of us wanted to face each other in the first round. He played “Pastor Ass,” a deck that terrorized the world in the previous era. Like other GR decks, it’s vulnerable to PV. I knew the matchup was in my favor, but Harmed is strong and Ass is scary. Still, I played carefully and won. It was a brutal game for him — I think he could only voluntarily choose his house twice.

My second match was against Contecaly, playing Noor le Viking du Lac — a famous PV deck that loops Untamed with Untamed-enhanced Miasma. Basically Nghị, but better. Combo decks are weak to Blud. I’d played him before KFC on TCO (with Plutotend at the time) and won every time. No miracle happened for him.

And then came my downfall.

Round three, I faced the French player Jelapenos, with L’Architecte Verdoyant de la Somnolence. He said he was lucky, but I don’t think so. Yes, on turn two he played five Dis creatures… but on the turn before, I had Traumatic Echo and could have prevented him from playing creatures. I didn’t.

That’s not luck — that’s my mistake.

I got cocky after two wins. I should’ve studied his decklist more carefully. His deck was creature-heavy. Blud doesn’t have much C and relies heavily on board control so it can setup Star Aligns, Otherwise, you’re gambling on Ask Again Later — and I hate that prophecy. He guessed right several times, kept his board, gained tempo, and won. He played better, and he deserved the win.

Round four, I faced the Swedish Candika, piloting the highest SAS deck in the world: Grouseribius, the Bucolic Labs Zoomaster. Everything that could go wrong went wrong — and I also made a terrible mistake playing a higher-power creature into a deck with two Trenk Creeds.

And that was it. Out.

I went back and reflected on everything, especially after seeing how Varghast did in Open. I lacked discipline. I didn’t practice Blud enough. Practicing PV tires me out fast, and my usual solo-practice method doesn’t work well for PV mirrors.

I also relaxed too much after my 2–0 start. For Ass and DuLac Viking, I know those decks so well I don’t even need to check their lists. But for the next two, I should have studied more.

Another issue: I barely played competitive events this year. My last competitive match was eight months ago, at the first round of Final Refrain. Everyone else at Worlds had at least one major recent event. My only potential one was Vietnam Vault Tour — which I had to organize.

So one thing led to another. I ended Worlds at 2–2. I have only myself to blame. There is a clear path for improvement, but…

Do I want to?

Because…

THE CURRENT STATE OF ARCHON

And so we arrive here.

I think GR was terrible. It introduced a power creep that flushed out everything before it, abusing archive and key cheat — mechanics Keyforge doesn’t have enough tools to interact with. It created a boring solitaire style. One of the best things about Keyforge is solving the puzzle your opponent gives you each turn. GR removed that.

I’m not sure if GG realized how unbalanced it was. But in the next set, they added many tools to counter archive. AS was a solid answer, and then we had ToC. For a brief moment, the game felt healthier.

Not for long.

PV arrived — and if you think GR was bad, PV is worse.

To be clear, I like PV. I like its concept. But even so, it’s a bad set. It introduced another tier of power creep, even worse than GR. It made the game uninteractive again — with the strongest cards ever printed and an extremely easy trap mechanic. The prophecy pool is huge, but the power differences between prophecies are ridiculous. The ceiling is beyond anything we’ve seen.

Last year, GR dominated around 80% of the competitive scene, and people were sick of it.

This year, PV was about 95%. It’s even more tiring.

And having the biggest event of the year run two PV sealed days back-to-back? The whole weekend became a giant PV festival.

I honestly don’t know how they can fix this. And their track record doesn’t inspire confidence.

I tried Draconic Measures at KFC and realized how warped my perspective has become. I’m so used to prophecy that every deck feels “efficient.” Without that filter, DM feels slow and many cards feel unimpactful. Maybe DM is balanced, but then it’s unplayable into PV — just like all other sets. If they power-creep again, that won’t win against PV either because PV’s natural mechanics are inherently non-interactive.

From what I’ve seen in DM, PV will still dominate next year.

So this becomes an almost unsolvable problem.

If you want to be competitive, should you invest in PV?

I don’t think it’s a good idea.

If GG fixes PV, then your investment becomes useless.

If GG doesn’t fix it, the competitive scene dies.

Even if they could find a middle ground, who knows what happens? Your decks today may be invalidated tomorrow — just like all the treasure decks we used to love.

It’s bizarre. The game advertises unique decks, treasures you’ll keep forever. But anyone with more than 100 decks knows that most of them sit in boxes and only a handful matter. And now even the good ones only last a few months before becoming unplayable.

It doesn't help that the two main GG formats are straight power-deck contests. People keep telling me that Alliance is healthier. They’ve been saying that since the GR era. It’s funny — building decks to “balance the game” is proof of how real the power creep is. And yet at Worlds, everything in Alliance was still PV.

Some people say GG’s approach is good for new players — that everyone has equal chances to open a strong deck. That’s a lie. If everyone has equal chances, the people who spend more will still come out ahead. Look at Vault Tour and Worlds results — the only new players with notable achievements were:

1. Bamboo, with her undefeated world champ deck (and she went 0–2 this year).

2. Thytiom.

Meanwhile, many competitive veterans have left, lowering the overall skill level. And new sets train you to ignore skills that were essential in older sets. Outside of the few top players, the level of skill you can see in events are lower than what we had before.

My rant is long, but you get the point.

And as painful as it is to admit:

If you want to be competitive, this is not a good time. It’s bad to invest, and it’s not fun to play.

For casual players, it’s different. You can always shape the experience into something fun. That’s why I hear people enjoying community events much more than official ones.

We have a great community. Many of us will continue to play, and some will even continue to invest. We’ve gone through so much, and even though we’re loud and often unreasonable, we keep moving forward. Only bad design can defeat us.

You’ll still see many of us at events, but not for Keyforge. We’re there for each other — for the friendships built over years. We’ll still play casual games, but not because of the new sets. And that’s sad.

I’ve never felt this exhausted by Keyforge before. You’ve probably noticed I don’t play much recently, except for the bare minimum in leagues I already signed up for. A lot of players from my era are gone now.

But enough depressing stuff.I will still play. I still hope for a brighter future. I will still stream and organize. I have great friends here, and this community has become a big part of my life.

So see you on the Crucible.