Ascension Tactics: Inferno | Solo Playthrough

0:00 Hello everyone and welcome to Meet Me at the Table. This is Colin and today we are going to do a solo playthrough of Ascension Tactics Inferno. This just came out in 2025. I never played the Ascension Tactics version of the game. I did see Mike's playthrough on OneTop and I thought it was pretty cool. So, I decided to pick up the Inferno version. This is a standalone game. You can play it solo, cooperatively, or competitively. For the solo and cooperative version, there are four scenarios that creates a bit of a mini campaign, and we're going to do the first one just so you can see if this is something you'd like to pick up. I do want to call out there's only four scenarios for solo and co-op, but there's tons of champions that you can choose from, so there's lots of replayability there. But from a scenario perspective, I do wish there was more than just four. Without further ado, let's jump into a bit of story and then we'll do our setup and start our playthrough. Just make sure to turn on those cling on subtitles in case I make any errors and miss them in editing.

0:59 They will pop up as you're watching. All right, let's start our story. The once glorious realm of Day was plunged into darkness after its ruler, Samuel, was betrayed by other gods. His lust for vengeance and subsequent descent into madness caused his realm to become corrupted. What was once a paradise filled with blue skies and green fields was now replaced with dirt, blood, ash, and fire. Every creature in Defoul was transformed by Samuel's allconsuming hatred, giving birth to the first monsters. Samuel amassed a horde of beasts, demons, and devils with the intention of destroying the god's most prized possession, the realm of vigil. For generations, his armies attacked the mortal realm, but they were always pushed back by its mighty champions. The heroes eventually took the fight to Dayal, defeating Samuel in his own realm. After his demise, the remaining warlords of Dayal engaged in a brutal battle for control. It was during this conflict that a powerful devil named Kyus emerged victorious, rising to power. Under the iron grip of Kyus, the people of Dayfall lived in constant fear of his ruthless regime. With dissenters mercilessly crushed, in desperation, they cried out to vigil, hoping for a savior to aid them in their struggle.

2:16 You and your fellow champions heeded their call, rising up to join the fight and topple Kyus from his throne of tyranny. You will have the help of the Myrridic creatures of Dayfall, who seek to bring down the mighty devil and restore freedom to the realm. You step through the swirling portal. Mighty champions of Virgil following behind you. You appear in a land where the air is thick with the stench of decay and the ground is slick with an oily layer of filth. The rat king lurks in the shadows. His presence heralded by the eerie squeaking and screaming of his monstrous rat minions. The rats are unlike any you've ever seen before. Large as house cats with eyes that follow you closely, glaring at you with unnatural intelligence. You can hear them nashing their teeth as if communicating amongst themselves. And the sound makes your skin crawl. You ready your weapons and take a deep breath, knowing that this will be a fight for survival. We're playing the first of the four missions, the rat king. Our victory conditions, we need to earn 40 victory points before the rat king and team score 40 victory points.

3:20 If we can do that, we'll then move on to the next scenario. Normally when you play this game, you can command giant rats or doofiended rats with some of your power. We're not going to be able to do that this time. We may be able to control them, but they're always going to be under the influence of the rat king. And so, we can never have one that's our own. They will always be the rat kings. We might be able to move them based on some cards, but we cannot recruit those giant rats and use them. Also, just so you know, unlike in the competitive game, if ever your player champion is defeated, that champion will not be exhausted. So, you can still deploy them the next turn. We also at the beginning of each scenario get to embark on a quest. So, let's do that quick. New to the Inferno Ascension Tactics are quests. What we're going to do is draw the top two quest cards. We get to choose one and we'll place it into our deck, placing the other at the bottom of this deck. These quests will give us a specific goal. For example, if we can defeat a champion, then we can actually attach this to one of our champions and it's permanently attached.

4:25 It will be there for the rest of the game. And in the campaign, we get to keep at least one of our quests that are attached. So, we definitely have an incentive to do this. So, this one, if we defeat a champion, we can have one of our champions have the ability that when they slay an enemy, we also gain three money. That's kind of nice. This one is move a champion five or more hex's and then going forward whatever champion we'd like to attach this to will get plus one movement. Eh, I kind of actually like this mechano one. Being able to gain extra money seems awesome. So, I will place this into my starting deck. The heart of Ascension Tactics is still deck building. There's going to be a fun element of us placing miniatures out on the board, trying to take control of shrines, but overall, this game still is a deck builder. So, you're going to start with 10 cards in your deck. Eight of them give you a rune, and then two of them generate for you power. Power is how you're going to activate your champions. Now that I gained that quest, I'll place this into my deck. When we draw this, or I should say play it, we then get to draw another card. So, it'll replace itself. And then if we can complete this quest while it's active, then we gain the benefit. So I'm going to shuffle these 11 cards together and draw five. And what we drew was a whole lot of apprentices. So we have five runes we can use for this turn. Prior to me setting up this game, I did draft four heroes. How I did this is I just placed six heroes out and then drafted

5:55 one at a time and then replaced them with new ones. So I have Abstract Fox. I have uke tribe warp priest. I have the lore masteraster and the soul snare hunter. Each of these cards have different stats and abilities. You'll see how they work. I do also have the miniatures expansion. So you're going to see we have miniatures on the board. It looks so cool. I am trying to decide if I want to paint them or not because I'm just not sure how much longevity this game has. But I will say no matter what, this game is a lot of fun. And if you would play this competitively as well, you'd get a lot more out of this game, I think, than potentially I would. This tells us their attack value. This is their shield value. So, if they take damage equal to that or higher, they're defeated. This tells us how much power we need to activate those heroes. So, this lore master is really cool. It has an amazing ability, but I need to spend four power to activate it. We do have a gateway. Each uh regular player character has a gateway. The AI does not need that. This gives us two free power every round. So, we'll have at least two power for our first turn. That means only these two are going to be able to be commanded. Whenever one of these champions are commanded, they can move up to three spaces and attack. And they can do that in either order. As with any deck builder, we have to have a set of cards that we can potentially purchase.

7:12 This is the center cards. There is a ginormous stack. Look at this stack of cards. So, I've shuffled all those up and revealed six. Just know I have removed all of the champions that are fallen from both this deck and from the heroes that I can choose because those potentially are enemies that we're fighting. But that doesn't mean you can still get fallen heroes. We can still have fallen heroes, fallen constructs. We just can't have any fallen champions. Similar to us, the AI is going to control four different champions. And this scenario calls out which ones they are. We have the sorted asp. We have the Corrosive Widow, the Ravenous Gorf, and then the Rat King. This is the big guy. Each of these cards are dualsided, and you actually have four versions of these cards. So, when you play, make sure you use the correct one based upon your player count. Since I'm playing solo, I use the black border, so they're slightly easier uh than the other card sets. You'll notice each villain champion has an objective token on their card. That is going to denote which objective token they're going to try and go towards. and control if they cannot defeat one of our hero champions. So, if they can't do that, they're going to go towards those specific ones, and you'll see them on the board. The rat king will be controlling giant rats and potentially doofiended rats. We have the cards to denote those enemies as well.

8:34 We have the board all set up and ready to go. When we decide to deploy our heroes, they're going to come from this blue portal. When the AI deploys their champions, they're going to come from this yellow portal. You can see these are the four hero shrines. Each one has a different objective token. If you're playing competitively, you wouldn't have those objective tokens because these are only used for the AI to determine where they're going to go. We have tainted land here in these locations. There's only three of them. If ever we or the AI moves onto them, you immediately take five damage. And of course, we do have a lot of forest in this specific scenario. forest, it costs two movement to move into that space. And then if you move to another space, it costs two more movement, but if you move out of it, it only costs one. We have 11 treasures on the board. These treasures we can use as one-time effects. The fun part for the AI. Normally, they ignore them, but in this scenario, the giant rats are controlled by the rat king. He's going to be placing out one giant rat on his first turn and then it's going to be running around trying to collect these different treasures and then using them to buff up that rat king. There are two ways we can score victory points and one way the AI can score victory points for both of us. If we control any of these hero shrines, we get two points at the end of our turn. And how you control it is you have more of your champions than the opponent's champions either on or adjacent to the portal. We also gain victory points whenever we defeat one of

10:05 their champions. They don't get victory points for that, but they will still try and destroy us because of course that will prevent us from controlling this area. The final part of setup is to shuffle the scheme deck. This is how the AI is going to activate. When you play on normal difficulty for the solo player, you don't discard any cards. We're going to make it slightly harder because I think that's kind of fun. So, we're going to discard the top two cards. That's important because there are some abilities on cards that say eight here. That means if there's eight cards in the discard pile, you have to do this additional effect. It might be eight, 12, whatever it is. I like to use a die to denote how many cards are in the discard pile so it's easier for me to see. During the AI's turn, they're going to draw two cards, one at a time, use them, then they'll score their points, and then we can, of course, update the amount of cards in their discard pile. All right, it is time for us to start our turn. During our turn, we can play all the cards that are in our hand. Well, for us, that's easy.

11:03 It's five apprentices. So, we have five runes or five money that we can use. We also have two power and we can command and buy and do all that stuff at any time during our turn. I'm thinking of buying to start with. So, I'm going to spend all five for this warp mage. Now, it's a fallen hero. That's fine. But, it will allow us when we draw and use this to draw two cards. You can banish a card from your hand to gain two additional power. That seems awesome. We can get rid of the basic cards and it gives us more power. So, I'm going to place this card into my discard pile and then we will replenish it. That's the wrong deck. It's this deck over here with a chamber monk. After purchasing that card, I'd like you to see my uke tribe warp priest. It has the ability when you acquire a card with a cost of five or more, gain a treasure. So, I'm going to draw one random treasure from this teeny tiny treasure bag. And we have Okay, this treasure will give for one turn.

12:02 Someone can get plus one movement and will gain a devour soul token. This token would then give plus one attack and plus one defense. And that doesn't go away unless there's something that states it will destroy the devour soul token. That's important because you're going to see our champions are going to get killed a lot and then we will reput them out. If they have constructs, those constructs get discarded, but these will stay. So, I think I'm going to hold on to that treasure for now. You can use a treasure at any time, even in an opponent's turn. But that one doesn't seem to make sense to use during an opponent's turn. Instead, what I think I'm going to do is activate my soul snare hunter. It has the sle ability to explore. Slay means when it destroys another champion. We'd get to explore, draw two cards from the exploration or the quest deck, keep one and put the other at the bottom of the deck. And then when you complete a quest, we can place a devour soul token on here to give him plus one attack and plus one defense. He has a total command cost of two. So we can now have him move up to three spaces and do an attack. If you ask me, his mini looks pretty freaking fantastic. I love how these look with three movement. I think I'm going to have him go one to an end here. He cannot get into the forest because it costs two movement to move onto there.

13:19 There are treasure tokens here. If we end our turn at those locations, we can pick them up. Especially helpful to do that before those blasted rats. This will now end our turn because we've used our power, we've used our runes, so we discard our cards and draw back up to five. Also, if we controlled any of the hero shrines, we'd gain two points per hero shrine that we'd control. We don't control any. So, we've got two militia and three apprentice. That means we'll have four power next turn and three money. It's now the AI's turn. We're going to flip the top card. And we have armory theft. Equip a construct from the center row to the yellow villain. That is kind of brutal. I'm going to give him this one. This one isn't great. It's just going to give him plus two attack. And then it's going to command the yellow villain. If there were 16 cards in the discard pile, this would go off, but there aren't. The yellow villain is the sorted asp. The sorted asp has an ability that once there's eight cards in the discard pile, it'll have plus one movement, so it'll actually move four instead of three. It also has a sle effect. It will be commanded a second time. Something I want to call out, we can only command each of our champions once per turn. That does not happen for the AI. they can command them multiple times a turn. So, here we have the sorted ASP. It looks really cool. We're going to place this out and then determine where it's going to go. Before doing that, we need to remember the scenario that we're playing. We have to spawn a giant rat and then command it.

14:48 These giant rats are only trying to go for treasures and only trying to get them for the rat king. So, this one can move one, two, three. It's going to grab this one. And now the rat king will have range attack. Range is always at range three unless notated otherwise. So once that rat king comes out, it's not going to be fun. Then we'll place out the sorted asp. The sorted asp can move three total spaces. And that certainly won't be enough to get close enough to our soul snare hunter and attack it. So instead, it's just trying to go towards this uh specific objective token. 1 2 3. It is two away, so it will not gain victory points at the end of its turn for now. The second card for our AI player is overrun. It's going to command yellow and then command green and it would surge. If there were eight in the discard pile, there's now going to be a four. Surge for this specific scenario is all about the rat king. I'll show you that once it matters. The green villain is the crow of widow. It states, "After the Widow is commanded, place a web token on the player champion with the highest defense within range." Well, right now that's range one. Remove the web token when the champion is defeated or an allied champion ends a move on or adjacent to the hex. Webbed champions cannot move. This thing can attack for seven, has six defense. If we defeat it, we gain two victory points. Here we have the crazy scary looking spider. Baron would love to see this in his painting area. We'll command the sorted ASP

16:19 first. One, two, three. It can move to here, but it's still not adjacent to our soul snare hunter, and it does not have range attack. So, instead, it's going to move one, two, three. And now, I should have actually said 1, two, three. Now, it's going to control this spot. They're going to earn two victory points at the end of the game. This spider will move one, two, three, trying to get closer to the green one right here. At the end of the AI's turn, the sorted ass was controlling one of the shrines, so that gained the AI two points. Right now, it's two to nothing. These clear ones are worth two. The red ones are worth five. That will end the AI's turn. It's now back to us. We currently only have three power. So, what I'm thinking of doing is grabbing this Aselos hatchling.

17:05 Now, it has an ambush effect that immediately happens when we gain this card. It says you may destroy a construct. So, we're going to destroy the construct that the AI just recently snagged. And we'll place this into our discard pile. We'll replenish it with Samuel's trickster. Placing that here. And this sorted aspect, ancient compass. We're going to remove it from the game. We have a total of four power. Two from the militia and two from our blue gateway. The first thing I'm going to do is use this treasure. So, our soul snare can get one additional movement. Not to mention, we'll give them a devour soul. And now they're a plus one plus one. So they attack for seven and they have four for their defense. We are going to activate our soul snare and our abstract foxhong.

17:53 Unfortunately, that means I'm giving up one power, but I think it's worth it. This abstract foxhong has the ability that ally champions adjacent to him get plus three to their attack and to their defense, but only costs one to move them, and they're really easy to kill. This sworded asp only has six health. And I want to call out in this game damage does not roll over from turn to turn. So in one turn, you have to take out these enemies. But if you have one turn and you attack multiple times, you can add that damage up to take out an enemy. So if I attacked for four and four, that's eight damage. I could take anything out with eight health or less. Our soul snare hunter has a total of four movement. Now for just this round, 1 2 3 four. we can get adjacent to both of those shrines and we can attack for 6 plus one which is his seven. Takes this guy out and it generates for us two beautiful victory points. So it's tied two to two. Then we have abstract foxong. He's going to show up here and we're going to have him just move two.

18:53 He's slowly trying to get closer. Grab some of these treasures for us. Now we'll end our turn and we're adjacent to two of these hero shrines. So, I believe we get two points for each one. That's four. So, I'm going to take a five and remove one. I'm now winning six to two for now. Uh, we'll discard our cards and draw up. We know our quest is at the bottom of the deck. And then we'll shuffle and draw four more. We have two apprentices, our wart mage, and our Aselus hatchling. At the start of the AI's turn, this giant rat four because they have plus one movement. They're going to grab this for the rat king. Now, he has two additional defense. So, he has a nine defense. He has range attack. Good thing he hasn't activated yet. We'll flip our first card for the AI. And we have Meccana Corruption.

19:41 Banish the center row and deal two damage to each player champion for each mana and fallen banish card. This way, this unfortunately is going to kill both of our champions on the board because we have a mechana. We have another mechana and a fallen that's six damage. Our snow soul snare only has four health and our abstract foxong only has three. And then it will discard all of these. The only good thing about that card is they did not command any of their units. We'll flip over their next card and they have a mind fee. Each player discards a card at random. So I'm going to shuffle up my cards and I'm going to have to discard this one. Okay, it's just a basic apprentice. Not terrible. We're going to command green. That's easy enough. This corrosive widow to three is going to come here and just at the end of their turn generate two more victory points.

20:30 So it's six to four. We're still winning for now. That will end the AI's turn. It's back to us. We can start with our quest in hand. When you play that, you can immediately draw another card. And we have a militia. Oh, that's a bummer. I was hoping for some more buying power because I only have one buying power. Everything else here. Oh, you know what? I'm going to do this. I've got a great idea. I'm going to draw two cards. So, I'm going to draw two more. And that's going to give me two more of these. And I'm going to banish a card from my hand. Without a doubt, we're going to banish one of these apprentice cards. Why not? So, I'm going to get rid of that. And that gives me two power. I then have my militia card here for three power. I have another militia card for four. And our blue gateway for six. I have six power. Oh, wait. I'm not done. I also have this one that's plus three power.

21:22 So that's nine power. If I had played or I could play any other lifebound cards this time, I'd also gain this ability. So your champions have plus three for its total attack, but I don't have any of those. And I have one money, which is totally useless. So we're not going to be buying anything this round. I also think I'm going to get close enough to take out a champion. We'll be able to command our lore masteraster for four, our tribe warp breeze for three, that's seven, and our soul snare for two, that's nine. Our lore master will be the one we start with. When you command the lore master, reveal a treasure from the treasure bag and place it on the lore master's champion card. Lore master gains this treasure effect permanently. So, we have this one. Nice. So, essentially, we have a plus one, plus one, and plus one movement. So, our movement now is four for the lore master. Look at this amazing mini.

22:15 It looks so cool. I think this would be awesome painted. The lore master has four movement. Let's do one, two, and then three, four. We're going to collect this treasure. Oh, nice. So, we can hold on to that one for future use. Unfortunately, we don't have range attack. One, two, three. Cuz if we did, we could actually attack that spider, but we can't. Then, we are going to bring out our soul snare. He can only move three, so let's have him do one, two, three. Starting to go for that treasure. And then finally, our uke tribe war priest. Look at how teeny tiny he is. He's super cute. He also can only move two. One, two. But he has the ability when he ends his move, you may gain a treasure on a hex adjacent to it. So, we're going to grab this treasure.

23:01 Ooh, this is plus one. And this lets us do a counter strike when we're attacked. That will end our activation. We don't gain any victory points because we're not controlling any of the shrines and we didn't take out any enemies. But I now have three heroes back out onto the board. I only have five cards left in hand. My quest has been discarded. So if I do defeat a champion this next turn, I don't gain that benefit unless it's out. You know what we drew this time? Five apprentice cards. Seriously, the AI will start their turn by activating their rat. 1 2 3 4. Remember, they have plus one movement. And now that giant rat king or the rat king itself will have plus five attack. It'll now attack for 12 damage, has nine shield, and it has range. There are six cards in the discard pile. This likely will mean these cards extra bonus effects won't happen, but starting next turn, some of them will. We're going to start with Ravage. Ooh, this is the rat king. Is going to get plus five and plus two movement this turn. And we're going to command him. This isn't good. Here we have the rat king. I feel like he could be in the Nutcracker. A rat king has a movement of five. 1 2 3 four five. Can even get to here and take out because he has range one of my heroes. So, he's certainly going to do that. 1 2 3 4 5.

24:20 Now, he take five damage for moving there, but he has more than five health unless I could deal him extra damage on this specific turn. He's totally fine. He's also going to control both of these. He's going to be scoring six points right now. I love it. He will then attack. One, two, one, two, three. So, he will definitely take out Uke Tribe War Priest. I only have five defense. He's off the board. The second card for the AI is the Heartless Slaughter. This will now be the eighth card. So, going forward, those eight effects are going to happen. That means the sorted asp can now move four instead of three. Villains get sle gain plus one. Good thing they got that. Now, we're going to command green. The green villain champion is this spider. Now, you would think, well, it's standing on a specific objective token, it's not going to move, but that's not true. If it can get to and defeat one of our heroes, it's going to prioritize that over standing on the objectives. Some people don't love that, but I understand why because they are so powerful. So, what he's going to do is have this one move one, two. He's going to web our lower master. So, our lower master can't move. is not going to matter much because he's going to attack for seven damage. However, we have a trick up our sleeves. We can discard this treasure which will give us plus one defense. So, we're not destroyed. And now we have counterattack. The spider attacks for seven. We have six plus one here, which is seven total defense. Normally, we'd be defeated, but adding this in to get

25:51 another one of these devour souls gives us eight defense. So, we can soak that attack. We're not dead yet. However, he might attack us again on his second turn. Except for that for just this turn, we have that counter strike. We can then attack for 6 78 total damage. The corrosive widow only has six defense. So that means this widow is toast and that gives us two more victory points. We are at 5, six, seven, eight victory points to their four. This does mean though it was important that the lore master was webbed because now the lore masteraster cannot move until another hero ends their movement adjacent to them. We'll now score points for the AI and they're going to tie us up because they're controlling both of those. That's four more and they already had four. So that's eight. So it's tied eight to eight. We'll now move back to our turn and we only have two power this turn. So, I am going to bring out my abstract foxong and just have him move to here. Uh, that means he's ended adjacent to our lore master and our lore master can get rid of this webbed. Thank goodness. Now, we can spend our five bucks. With our five runes, we could get this void messmer. It would give us three more power and give a champion plus five attack. That is quite good.

27:10 But I could get this wind tyrant and we could command a minion for free on our turn and we could shove that giant rat far away from treasures which also seems awesome. And we could buy something else and it gives us more money. This one the extra power though is great. You know what? Let's do this one this time. So we're going to grab the void messmer. We'll place that into our discard pile. That was all five of our money. And we'll replenish with the arbiter cirlet. Sadly, we're still not controlling any of the shrines, so we'll just draw back up to five. We did get our warp mage and our void messmer. We have our quest again and two apprentices. For the AI's turn, the rat will activate first. 1 2 3 4. It's one away from another treasure. Our first scheme card is terrible. The heartless slaughter. So, villains get sle gain plus one uh victory point this turn. We're going to command the moon and then we'd have to discard all treasures that have attack, which we don't have any. And then that spider's coming out. Again, you haven't seen the Ravenous Scorf yet. How the Ravenous Scorf works, it starts with one of these devour soul tokens. Every time it kills one of our champions, it'll gain another one. But every time we kill it, we'll be able to discard one. First, the Gorf will show up. It's trying to move towards here. One, two, three. And then the spider. One, two, three. towards this. Our next card is the enlightened corruption. We have to banish the center row, deal two damage to each player champion for each enlightened and fallen

28:40 card that's banished this way. Dang, I had a plan. And then, of course, that gorf is going to be activated. Unfortunately, all of our heroes are going to take 2, four, six, eight total damage. Is that enough to take out my lore master? My lore master has six plus one is seven plus one more is eight. Yeah, I hate to do this, but I'm going to use this. I'm going to use this to give them nine just so that they don't die. But the other other ones are going to be off the board. We've then refreshed the center row. Lucky for us, this ravenous gorf one, two, three cannot get adjacent to our lore master. So, it's just going to move here, but they already controlled that spot. So, at the end of their turn, they're going to score four more victory points. They're at 10 11 12 to our five, six, seven, eight. This is awesome. We'll start off our turn by playing our quest and we can replace that in our hand.

29:35 Okay, we have just an apprentice. I think I'm going to I've got three. No, I'm going to burn it because I'm certainly going to play the warp mage. Draw two cards. So, we'll grab two more. Nice. And then we can burn one card in our hand for two power. Why don't we burn this basic militia? Let's burn the basic militia. That gives us two power. We'll then use our void messmer for three additional power. I'm going to give our lore master plus five attack and plus one move. And then I still have four total uh buying power. With four buying power, I think I'm going to grab this soul stealer staff. Uh this is a construct. Hopefully I can draw that soon and it will be awesome. and we will replace with this Ogo Corer. And then I have one money left. Let's get this clockwork helm as well because it says when you play this gain two money and it's just another construct which can help us. And we'll replenish that with an Aslas the Impaler. We have a total of seven power. So let's command our lore master first. That means we get to grab one of these treasure tokens. And oh my gosh, the lore master now attacks for 11.

30:52 That is awesome. Actually, it's 11, 12, 13, and has plus one movement. This is insane. Our lower master also has plus two movement and plus five attack from that void memer. We can move to three. Uh, so we're right here and we certainly can kill this rat king. Even though his defense is 7 + 2, which is nine, we can take him out, no problem. That will gain us five victory points. And we're going to get two more because we're going to control that. And we can remove one of his treasures. I'm going to remove his range attack. That range attack is terrible. Makes him easier to attack us. So, I'm going to remove the range attack for now. For the other three command, we're just going to bring in our tribe warp priest right here. have him move one, two, and pick up this treasure from the adjacent. Oh, we can give range to our lore masteraster at some point. That would be so cool. I'm also realizing I completed this quest. I just defeated a champion. So, let's put this on our lore master. Our lore masteraster now has the ability when they slay, they can uh gain three money for us. Our soul snare hunter will also gain one devour soul token because we just completed a quest.

32:08 That was an awesome turn. And let's discard and draw. We have three apprentices, an Asus hatchling, and a militia. I do think I forgot to gain my two victory points for controlling that one location, that one shrine. So, I'm at 5 10 11 12 13 14 15 to 10 11 12 total victory points. Uh, we're almost halfway. We need to get to 40. When we start with the AI's activation, they're just going to grab this. Oh, the rat king's now going to have 7 8 9 10 11. You need 11 damage to take him out. The first card for the AI is Seize the Wind. The villain villain champions get plus one movement for this turn, and we need to command the rat king. This does not happen. We only have 10 cards in the discard pile, not 16. He would love to come and attack our lore master, but he can't. He can only move four. One, two, three, four. So, he is one away. We are now tied one to one on this shrine. So, he won't gain points for that one, but neither will we. The AI's next card will be Fires of War. Villain champions get plus five attack this turn. We need to command both the moon and the sun. The Ravenous Gorf here can attack for six plus one because of the devoured soul.

33:25 So, that's seven attack. We have for our lore master defense 6 7 8 9. So, it's not going to go to him. It's going to come over here. one, two, three, and destroy our hero yet again, our warp priest. But that's okay. That means they've well, they're still going to control this one, but they've moved him away. Whenever he defeats a champion, though, he gains another soul token. So now he'll attack for eight, and his defense is six. The sorted asp will go next. It can move four total spaces. One, two, three, and it will take the damage because it'll go down to one health. It takes five damage when you walk on here, but that's okay. He's still alive. And that way they control all Well, not that one. We're tied on this one, but they control both of those. So, at the end of their turn, they will gain four more points. I'll give them a five. Take away one. They are at 16 total points. For our next turn, we have command of 3 + 1, which is four plus two more here. That is six.

34:28 You know what I'm thinking of doing? Activating our lore master. I have three money, but I want to hold on to that because if the taskmaster can kill somebody, he will gain three more and we'll have six money to play with. First thing we get to do is draw another treasure for our lore master. This lore masteraster is insane. Plus four defense. This guy is amazing. I'm also going to use my range treasure so that we can attack range. I'm gonna start my activation with a range attack. Our attack is 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14. The defense of the rat king is uh 7 8 9 10 11. That is most certainly enough to take out the rat king because we do have line of sight. Something I haven't talked about and I'm wondering if I missed it because I've been so excited.

35:18 Uh the uh the trees themselves do block line of sight. You can see into them, but you can't see through them. So you can see into a tile, but then if I was a tile farther, this would block line of sight. Well, we can see him through this tile. This does not block line of sight. So that will take him out. We'll remove the plus five treasure. That will give us five more victory points. We are at 20. We're halfway. We can still move. And I'm going to take a chance. I'm going to move one, two. Now that means I take five damage. That won't kill me. But that will then give us two more victory points for each of those cuz we control both of them. So I'm going to grab that right now. 1 2 3 four. We have four more victory points because of that. With our six money, we're going to buy this Esselos the Impaler. When you buy this, you may deal five damage to a champion on or adjacent to a forest.

36:10 This will gain us five power. And if we can get a lifebound allegiance, all of our champions will have plus five attack. That seems amazing. And then we'll replace that with the Druids of the Stone Circle. This is going to be crazy. We're going to deal five damage to this Ravenous Gorf. Now, it has a total of six health, so that doesn't take it out, but that damage stays for the entire round. We have two more power left. Let's bring our Soul Snare Hunter right in here with the two power. He can move one, two, and then attack into the forest. And that will take out this Ravenous Gorf, giving us three more victory points. So, I'm going to take these two away and give us a five. So, we are at 10 25 67 27 victory points.

36:59 And he's going to have to discard one of those devour soul tokens. This will mean he only has one remaining. Okay, that was a phenomenal turn. We've already done our victory points. Let's discard. And we have to shuffle and draw. We drew our void messmer, a clockwork helm, two apprentices, and Aselos the Impaler. Unfortunately, no other lifebound card, so we won't get that extra benefit. To start the next turn, this rat will continue to gather treasures. This is plus three defense for that rat king. The rat king is trying to protect itself. The first card we have is the shattered hope. Each player banishes the top card of their deck. Well, for us, that's just an apprentice. That's not a problem. I might want to get rid of that. We have to command yellow and then each player banishes a random card from their hand. No way. Okay, so I'm going to shuffle this. Um, don't be my six cost one that I just got. Oh, it's another apprentice. I'm okay with that.

37:54 But we do have to command red. So, we're going to command both yellow and red. The assorted asp and the rat king, if they combined their attacks, could actually take out our lore master even with the plus four defense. I cannot believe it. But he only has three movement this time. 1 2 3 or 1 two and he can't he can't get over to the lore master. So because of that the sorted mask is just going to ASP is just going to try and get to here. Let's say he was here and he would activate again and there's no heroes for him to take out. He just would immediately gain two victory points and then he'd gain two victory points at the end of their turn. So I do like how they do that to give a little bit more strength to the AI. Uh, the rat king is just going to move one, two, three. But that's as far as he can go. He cannot I don't He doesn't have additional movement anywhere. So that's all he's going to do. We'll draw our second card. I need to find a new die because we're at 13. The last time I played this, the game was quite faster than this. So this is this is an awesome fight. Okay, villains get sle gain one point this turn. Command yellow. So that means they're just going to auto gain two points because well, we'll have to see. He might be able to get to the soul snare and he could take out the soul snare. So, let's see. Players, discard all shield treasures. Jokes on you. I don't have any. Remember, the treasures that are on the lore master are permanent, so they can't be discarded.

39:13 And we do need to command green. That is going to be the spider. The sorted asp will go first and he has plus one movement. 1 2 3 4. He can then kill our soul snare hunter cuz his defense is three plus two is five and he attacks for six. So, he's off the board and that gives them one victory point. So they're at 5 10 15 16 17 total points. And remember, he gets to activate a second time because he just took out an enemy. So now I have to determine can they take out the lore master between the spider and the sorted asp. And I have confirmed they certainly can. So then the sorted asp will go one, two, three, four, dealing six damage. And then the spider here will stay right where it's at doing the other damage. And our lore master is off the board. Our lore master was our strongest hero. Uh we can still put him back on, but that is a blow because we're going to have to start him all the way over here and try and get him all the way over. That also will give them another victory point because they slayed another champion. Not to mention, they control here. So that's two more.

40:23 So 5 10 15. They are now at 20. So we're not too far ahead. We're at 22 to their 20. And I'm sorry, it is 27 to 20. So we are still seven above, but they now have a lot more control in the area where the shrines are. For our turn this time, we'll start with the void Mesmer and Esilos. Void Mesmer will give us three power, and we're going to give our Soul Snare Hunter uh the additional movement and plus five attack. So he has a movement of four for this turn. Asus, we just have the five power, so that's five, six, seven, eight. plus our gateway. That's 10. Then we're going to play this clockwork helm. We're going to place that onto our lore master. And that will generate for us two more money for this specific turn. But I'm really just looking at trying to keep that lore master alive just for two turns. If we can do that, I think we can win. And then we have one more money. We have three money right now. We'll start by using four out of our 10 power to activate our lore master. And that means we get another treasure token. I'm telling you now, this bag is tiny trying to pull stuff out. Okay, we've got a plus two move token. And you know what that means? Our lower master has a movement of six. Look at this. We can go 1 2 3 4 5 six. Yeah, let's do that.

41:42 We're going to get ourselves all the way over to here. We then can attack. We're going to take out this sorted asp. No problem. He only had six defense. That will give us two victory points. So, we're at 25 6 7 8 9. We're at 29. We need 11 more points. I'm going to score four more here. Then I'm going to have my soul snare hunter show up. He has a movement of four. He's going to move 1 2 3 four right next to that giant rat. We're going to kill that giant rat. That gives us one victory point. So that puts us to 30 victory points. 10 more to go. We'll then have our other two heroes pop out as well because we have 10 power. So uke will go to here and abstract foxhong will go 1 2 3. Just trying to see where it would be most beneficial. We now have six money to spend. And at the end of the round, we will gain four more victory points. We're at 34. We just need 40. With our six money, I think I'm going to buy this flanking Escara. And it has an ambush. We can gain a treasure. Plus, we're gaining a card that costs five or more. So we can gain a second treasure. Oh, that's plus seven attack. And this is an additional plus two movement. These are one-time uses versus the ones on the lore master, which are permanent. I'll place this in our discard pile along with our four cards we played. I will refresh right here. And then we will draw five cards.

43:05 We have our warp mage, two apprentices, a soulstealer staff, and another hatchling. At the start of the AI's turn, a rat needs to appear because there aren't any on the board. And then it's going to activate. One, two, three, four. It's one away from another treasure. There are 14 cards now in the discard pile. So, we're going to flip this one. We have command green and then our first surge. And then deploy a doofiend rat on or adjacent to the red hex as well. We'll start by commanding green. That's this spider. Now, it only attacks for seven. My lore master has a defense of 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13. a total of 13 defense. So, it can't attack him or take him out, but it's going to move one, two, and one to move here. It is going to web up our lore master. So, our lore master can't move. And that will end the command activation for the spider. For the rat king, now we have just the surge. Place a giant rat on each unoccupied honor shrine. Then, command all rats. So, it's going to include that rat over there. The rats being quite annoying are actually not terrible for us because they are going to run away from these honor shrines. We can activate them in any order we'd like. Let's see. 1 2 3 4 5 6. What's going to go around? So 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 or 1 2 3 4 5 6. So we'll do this one first.

44:30 It's going to move four. 1 2 3 4. Then this one is going to move 1 2 3 4. Then this one is going to move 1 2 3 4. collect this for the rat king. Oh, that's going to give him a Well, he has a counterattack now. Oh, that's brutal. Uh, and then this rat's going to go 1 2 3 4. Now, once these two treasures are picked up, they are going to start running over here and trying to control a shrine. So annoying, but it could be worse. Next though, we do have to place out a doofiended rat, and it's going to be placed onto this honor shrine right here. And now, actually, no, it's still a tied one to one there and one to one there. So, they won't score any points there yet. The second card they have is Seize the Wind. The villain champions get plus one move, Command Yellow, Command Green, and Command Red. Oh, wait. We're not at 16. We're at 15. Oh, so it's not this. It's just going to be Commanding Yellow. And that's it. But now we're going to have 16 cards in the discard pile. And I think that's going to mean no matter what, all of the boost effects are going to be active. The sorted asp will have a movement of five.

45:36 1 2 3 four five. He is going to control this honor shrine. So that's two points for them. They're only at 22. I think we might be able to win it here. I have 34. I just need six points. We'll start off our turn with this warp mage. We will draw two cards and then we can burn one to gain two power. I'm going to get rid of this other basic militia. So that gives us two power. We then have three more there. That's five. And then we have two more from this. That's a total of seven. We're then going to place this soul stealer staff onto our soul snare hunter because that sounds cool. And now he has the ability that whenever he slays, he can gain up a devour soul token on him. So he's just going to get stronger and stronger. And he is a 9 10 11 attack with six defense. Finally, we just have three money with seven power.

46:30 Let's start by activating our soul snare hunter. We're going to give ourselves plus two movement here as well. So he can move a total of 3 plus two which is five. All we needed is four movement. We can move one 2 3 four. Get right up close and personal on that corrosive widow. We're also adjacent to the lower master at the end of our move. So we dew webb them. Then we can attack for that 6 7 8 9 10 11. That's enough to take out this widow and that gives us two more victory points. We'll use our lore master next who gets another one of these treasures. Oh, just plus three defense. That lore masteraster is insane. Don't even need to move him. Just going to attack this rat. That's a doofiend rat with only four defense. Now, it does attack back for four against the lore master. We have more than enough defense, so we're fine. That will put us up to 37 victory points. And then at the end of our turn, we control both of these shrines. That knocks us up to 40 points. And I believe we just won the game. Now, what happens is we can start scenario two and we can permanently keep this mechana quest on our lore masteraster, which I'm certainly going to do. Well, there you have it. That was a quick play of Ascension Tactics Inferno. I do think it's a lot of fun. I'm still uncertain if I'm going to keep this for solo and co-op only. If I felt like my kids would play this also competitively, it's a no-brainer because you've got lots of different scenarios between the two different modes. I just don't see us a ton playing it in this household

48:02 competitively. So, I'm not sure there's enough here solo and co-op. Maybe if some more scenarios will come out with the community, then I will keep this one for sure because I do find the play really fun here. I haven't tried co-op. I wonder what it's like. So, when you play co-op, you all share your turn and you activate simultaneously. Enemies will have higher values of defense and attack. And each player has less champions, which means you might not want as many power cards. You might want cards that give you more money to buy more constructs to boost up your champions versus here I just wanted lots of power because I wanted to activate that lore master. There's one other cool mechanic that I did not show you and that's transformations. You can have certain champions actually transform to other ones if certain conditions are met. And that is also cool. So you can power them up during a scenario.

48:52 Hopefully this helps you determine if you're interested in this game. I want to give a huge shout out to our patrons and subscribers. It's because of you that Baron and I do what we do on this channel. And if you're excited to see what Baron and I have coming next, then I need you to meet me at the table. Goodbye, everyone. Your master went to set me up against your enemies.