Ashes Rise of the Phoenixborn Pastebin

Ashes Pastebin

1.0 Introduction
	1.1 How to Play (Beginner's Guide)
	 1.11: Official Rules
	 1.12 Deck Construction
	 1.13 Playing the Game
	  1.13.1 Combat
	 1.14 Where to Start
2.0 Product guide
	2.1: What to Buy?
	 2.11: Best Expansions to Get First
	 2.12: Best Expansions After The Deluxes
	 2.13: New and Old Product, and the Upgrade Kit
	 2.14: Team Covenant Subscription
	 2.15: Secondary Market
3.0 Where to Play
	3.1 Local Scenes
	3.2 Online


1.0 Introduction:
Ashes Reborn (formerly Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn) is a Collectible Card Game published by Plaid Hat. Much like FFG's living card games, it uses a distribution model with no random packs. Instead, cards are sold as ready to play pre-constructed decks with full playsets of the included cards, which can then be dismantled to play constructed, draft or other formats as desired. The game was originally published from 2015 to 2019 under the Rise of the Phoenixborn heading, eventually being cancelled after its publisher was gobbled up by Asmodee. However, in 2020 the reconstituted (and once again independent) Plaid Hat reacquired the rights to it and decided to relaunch the game as Ashes Reborn.

Similar to magic, the game revolves around duels with each player controlling one of the Phoenixborn - demigod-like magic users who arose randomly in populations across the world. While they once fought together as brothers-in-arms against the apocalyptic forces of the Chimera, now after an age of peace they roam the world and seek to consume each others' life energy in a quest for ultimate power. So kinda like a cross between planeswalkers and Highlander. And, as in magic, you win by reducing the opposing Phoenixborn's life total to zero. To do so you recruit allies, summon magical creatures, and cast spells. All pretty familiar territory, but what it lacks in conceptual originality it more than makes up for with excellent gameplay.

Ashes uses a number of unique mechanics that set it apart from other games of its type. The most immediately apparent is that decks use a dice pool instead of resource cards as their source of mana to pay for spells. There are seven dice types, each corresponding to a magic color, and choosing the ten dice you will play with a deck is a critical part of deck construction. Second, players do not draw their opening hands randomly, but instead choose a hand of 5 unique cards (no duplicates) to start the game after seeing their opponent's phoenixborn and dice pool. This mechanic means there is no mulligan rule or sideboard. The decks are fixed at 30 cards, in addition to the phoenixborn card and a side-deck of conjurations that can be brought in to play by other cards' effects. The game is structured as a few long rounds broken in to many short single-action turns. The hand and dice are refreshed only at the end of the round, which happens when both players pass in succession (usually after exhausting all their resources).

More info is below in the rules section.


1.1 How to Play (Beginner's Guide):

1.11 Official Rules:
https://media.plaidhatgames.com/filer_public/23/15/23151a90-9295-4a82-87d0-970df6dc5f04/ashes_reborn_rulebook_final.pdf
https://media.plaidhatgames.com/filer_public/e5/74/e5747b71-cb09-4bc4-9724-42ca544a3221/ashes_faq_v1.pdf

1.12 Deck Construction:
While players will usually learn with the core sets' precon decks and continuing to use those is an option, most players will want to jump in to constructed play eventually. A deck is constructed by first selecting a Phoenixborn to helm it. Each PB has three stats: a Life total, which is exactly what it sounds like, a Battlefield which limits how many units (Allies and Conjurations) they can have in play at once, and a Spellboard which limits the number of unique permanent Ready Spells they can have up at a time. The PB's also each have an ability on their cards, and give access to a unique card that can be included in only their decks.

Once the PB is selected, a 30-card deck is chosen from the regular (white back) cards. Only three copies of any given card may be included, but beyond that it's up to you. The main restriction is being able to pay for them, which is based on the dice you select. You then construct a separate conjuration deck (the black backed cards) from all the conjurations that can be summoned by the cards in your regular deck. Conjurations have a conjuration limit on the bottom left that determines how many copies to put in. Finally, you choose ten dice in any combination from the seven dice colors: Nature, Ceremonial, Illusion, Charm, Divine, Sympathy and Time. While it is possible to do colors in any combination including all seven, you generally don't want to spread your magic too thin during the game, so most constructed decks limit themselves to two, three, or sometimes four colors.

There are three main kinds of cards you will include in a deck. The permanent Ready Spells (including most summon spells), the one-shot Action, Reaction and Alteration spells, and Allies which are one of the two types of units. Ready Spells are frequently included as single copies with the intention of starting them and drawing on their power all game. This includes the repeatable summon spells which will allow you to pull in conjured units round after round. Allies behave more like the familiar MtG units, in that they are played straight from your hand and go to the discard pile once destroyed. Action and Reaction spells are one-shot effects that go to your discard pile once used. Alterations are the game's enchantments, which are placed on another card (normally a unit) and discarded when that unit is destroyed.

1.13 Playing the Game:
Both players begin by laying out their Phoenixborn and dice, then selecting a First Five starting hand. The decks are then shuffled and dice pools are rolled. The player who rolls the most basics (worst roll) can choose the first player. Ties are rerolled. The first round then proceeds through alternating turns. On your turn, you may take a Main Action and optionally a Side Action. Main Actions include playing most cards, attacking, and passing, while side actions are usually small buff effects and supplementary actions. Over the course of the round you will use cards from your hand and spend dice to pay for them. Note that you neither draw or roll new dice, nor unexhaust cards in play, until the end of the round. so the players will go tit-for-tat trying to get the upper hand and slowly exhausting their resources. You have the option to nova a lot of the time, but if you do you leave your opponent to play out the rest of the round uncontested which rarely goes well. The requirement to play units as a main action but also use a main action to attack also means your opponent will usually get a chance to respond with a unit of his own before you can swing.

The dice have 3 types of faces - 1 Power face, 3 Class faces and 2 Basic faces. Lower level costs can be paid for with higher dice of the same color, and basic costs can be paid with any die and any color. Dice on their power face can also be spent with a side action to get a unique color-specific power effect without needing a card to do so. For instance, a nature power die can be spent to ping a unit, while a ceremonial power die can be spent to retrieve a dead ally from your discard pile and put it in your hand.
A bad roll isn't the end of the world, because a special side action called Meditate is always available to players. When you meditate, you can discard any number of cards from your hand, spellboard or off the top of your deck to fix that many dice. You don't need to reroll them, just turn them to the face you want. This is powerful, but note that the small 30 card decks do run out in this game, and once you're decked you start taking damage when you would otherwise draw. So you're trading staying power in the long term for getting the dice faces you need now.

1.13.1 Combat:
You can attack as a main action, and there are two kinds of attacks. Attack A Phoenixborn is the familiar magic-style attack with as many things as you like, and your opponent picks blockers. You also have the option to attack a single enemy unit with a single unit of your own, which can be useful to clear blockers and set up beneficial attacks later. Unexhausted units you attack (or which block) can fight back though, and any unit that fights gets exhausted for the round unless it has an ability that would prevent that like Alert. And once per round your phoenixborn can guard for a unit that is targeted, taking the hit itself but saving the unit. Figuring out how and when to attack to maintain battlefield advantage and get favorable trades while pushing some damage to the PB is one of the main skills of the game.

1.14 Where to Start:
If you are completely new to the game and want to learn you can just get the core set which has dice, tokens and six decks. That can keep two players or a small group busy for a while, and some people never leave the "boardgame experience" of just playing the core set. Another option is to explore online play through ashteki or felttable (see the links below).


2.0: Product Guide:

2.1: What to buy?:
The first purchase is going to be the core set for everybody. It comes with dice for the original four dice colors and six preconstructed decks. Each is a two-color deck, so you get every possible combination of the four colors represented. After that, most expansions are single decks. However, be aware that certain 'deluxe' expansions house each of the three other dice colors, so you'll want to get those before grabbing other decks that rely on those colors. For instance, before getting the King of Titans deck (which uses Nature/Divine), you want to pick up the Law of Lions deluxe pack that has the mono-divine deck and the divine dice.

2.11: Best Expansions to Get First:
The first wave expansions were all mono-color decks adding support to each of the original four dice types and are a good spot to go after the core box. Especially the Brennen (ceremonial) and Rin (nature) decks have a lot of staple cards for their colors.

2.12: Best Expansions After The Deluxes:
Once you have expanded dice types of Divine, Sympathy and Time, some of the other decks become an option. Some notable ones include King of Titans (nature/divine) which has some of the game's strongest conjurations, Masters of Gravity (divine/sympathy) and the new Artist of Dreams (time/illusion). There aren't really any bad decks though; they all have things that see regular constructed play. Most veteran players eventually get complete collections.

2.13: New and Old Product, and the Upgrade Kit:
In the jump from Ashes ROTP to Ashes Reborn, a lot of cards got errata'd or rebalanced to address issues in the original game. You can tell the products apart by the old decks being in white boxes, while the reborn decks are in dark-colored red and black boxes. To address returning players, they also printed an Upgrade Kit that has full playsets of every card that was changed. If you have all new Reborn product then you don't need the upgrade kit for any reason. But if you have the old white-box stuff then you need to get it.

2.14 Team Covenant Subscription:
When PH was looking at resurrecting ashes but wasn't sure if there would be interest, they decided to test the waters for a relaunch with a crowdfunding model. This still exists as a partnership "subscription service" with Team Covenant. Basically they've said as long as there are at least 1000 subscribers they will keep printing new content for Ashes (there are about 3k as of this writing). People who are signed up are billed and shipped new releases when they come out. Those same products then show up in retail a couple months later. There's not really any benefit to the subscription service other than getting things early and supporting the development, but due to the low cost (for a CCG, anyway) of $30 once every few months a lot of players do it. Nothing wrong with just buying things at retail though.

2.15 Secondary Market:
There isn't one, like most LCGs. Since you know what's in every pack and everything is sold as full playsets, you generally just buy the deck in question if you're looking for something specific.


3.0 Where to play:

3.1 Local Scenes:
There is no blanket guide for a local scene. Most large cities seem to have small local scenes of anywhere from a handful to a couple dozen players. The usual social media suspects (discord, FB, reddit, etc) are a first stop if you're trying to track down local players but YMMV.

3.2 Online:
Ashes was historically played on TTS and webcam, but that's largely been supplanted by the excellent fan-made Ashteki web app. Ashteki is a fork of the netrunner jinteki code base and is set up in a similar way. It has the ability to import decks straight from the Ashes.live deck / card database site as well. You don't need any purchase to play on there, so it's a great way to check out the game if you're interested but haven't taken the plunge yet.
Most online matchmaking and tournament organization is run through the discord, so whether you choose to use that for chat or not (not) you will likely find it necessary if you want to get a lot of pickup games or do competitive play.

Links:
https://ashes.live/  to browse cards and build decks
https://ashteki.com/play   to play online against other humans
https://www.felttable.com/ashes   to play against an AI
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheShuffleBus   some game videos with commentary if you want to see how it plays