Ascension: Rise of Vigil

About this board game

Ascension: Rise of Vigil is a 2013 deck-building game for 2–4 players, with games lasting around 30 minutes. Players acquire cards from a shared pool, build their personal decks, and battle creatures to claim victory points and other valuable benefits.

Newly acquired heroes and constructs go into your discard pile, eventually being shuffled into your deck for future turns. Creatures appear in the same shared pool, giving players opportunities to earn VPs, remove less useful cards from their decks, or banish cards from the pool before another player can use them.

The set’s distinctive addition is its treasure system. Every treasure card in Rise of Vigil is an Energy Shard. When one is revealed, it is placed in an empty space in the shared pool, and cards continue to be drawn until a hero, monster, or construct covers it. Acquiring or defeating that top card also gives you the treasure beneath it.

• Play an Energy Shard to immediately draw another card from your deck.
• Use its energy to activate special powers on certain heroes, constructs, and monsters.
• Spend energy more than once during a turn, allowing multiple cards with suitable Energize costs to be powered.

Non-treasure cards can also provide energy, although they are usually worth victory points, while treasures are valuable primarily for their energy. The game ends when all available VPs have been claimed or the shared deck runs out.

Rise of Vigil works as a standalone game and can also be combined with any other Ascension game, supporting up to six players when used as an expansion.