“I often like picking a deck and trying to win with it - rather than picking a deck with the best chance of winning.” -- Richard Garfield
KAGI League
The KAGI League is an online KeyForge League focusing on the Adaptive format. The tournament will be organized in a round-robin format using pods of 6-8 players who will have a designated time span to play an archon adaptive best-of-three match against each player in their pod (this is known as the “pod phase”). At the end of the pod phase, the top players from each pod will face off in a single elimination playoff bracket. KAGI is in its 12th season, and is currently administered by Murph and quickdraw3457!
The acronym stands for KeyForge as Garfield Intended. Yes, that is overstating the facts, but it makes a nice acronym and an easy to remember name.
Does “as Garfield intended” mean I can play Restringuntus or Bait and Switch without its errata?
No. All official errata and relevant rulings apply. (Thanks to Dave C for the original question.)
You will need to take the following steps:
1) Own at least one KeyForge deck from a tournament legal set* that is scanned into the Master Vault.
2) Create an account on The Crucible Online (TCO).
3) Join the KAGI Discord Server
4) Complete this KAGI Registration Form.
Tournament legal sets are all expansions deemed legal by Ghost Galaxy in the official TRG for organized play events. This can change during the middle of a KAGI season, so please be sure to check the TRG if you are unsure.
Legal sets are as follows:
Updated for KAGI 13.0:
Call of the Archons
Age of Ascension
Worlds Collide
Mass Mutation
Dark Tidings
Winds of Exchange
Grim Reminders
Vault Masters 2023
Vault Master 2024
Aember Skies
Tokens of Change
More Mutation
Discovery
Vault Master 2025
Prophetic Visions
Unchained and Menagerie decks are not legal for KAGI, and neither are alliances of any kind.
Yes. My goal is to have pods based on geography where possible, so the challenge of finding games across time zones can be mitigated. Of course, the ability to do this will be limited by who signs up and where they live.
The deadline to sign up for season 13.0 will be May 25, 2025 at 23:59 [New York Time], and the league will start on June 2, 2025 at 00:00 [New York Time]!
The season will end around 8 weeks after the start date (subject to change). After the regular season wraps up we will have a week break, then the Top Cut will start on the Sunday following the league end, which will run for as many weeks as we need single elimination rounds, with an appropriate break to account for any holidays.
The tournament organizer (TO) will create the pods for the season, and then will post a link to the spreadsheet that lists all the pods for the tournament. You will then be assigned a role in the KAGI Discord Server by one of the admins, and this will grant you access to send messages in the channel designated for your pod. You will then be responsible for contacting your opponents and organizing games with them by the end date set by the TO. For each assigned pod there will be a corresponding channel in the KAGI Server that can be used to organize matches between the players in your pod and interact with each other as you see fit. Voice channels are provided if both parties wish to chat during matches. All games are to be played and reported by the given end date and time for each season.
Dropped players and their impact on the standings is a difficult problem to solve. For this reason, we ask all players to play at least 2 games by the midpoint of the season. Players who do not complete at least 2 games by the middle of the season, and do not contact the TO to explain any extenuating circumstances or communicate this absence to other players in their pod, may be dropped from the tournament.
In the event that a drop is necessary, the following policy will be enforced:
At the end of the season, depending on the number of players and pods, the TO will post a single-elimination playoff bracket from the top performers in the various pods. Top Cut Qualifiers will be given permissions to chat in a specific channel that is dedicated to the KAGI top cuts for scheduling, content, and administrative purposes.
I very much hope so. The goal of the league is to let people play decks of various types and experience Archon Adaptive. Highly skilled players and players of little to no experience are welcome. As TO, my intention is that the spirit of the league be supportive to players at all skill levels. One of the core principles of Archon Adaptive, in my humble opinion, is that it allows for player skill and familiarity with their deck to really shine through, rather than the deck’s strength. Hence the Richard Garfield quote present at the beginning of the document and the name of the league itself.
No. Part of the point of this event is to explore the archon adaptive variant and promote its use in KeyForge. You may switch decks between matches if you like, but you must play the same deck within a match.
One of the core concepts of KeyForge is that it is a game where your deck is unique to you, so please only play decks that you own. DoK ownership images are not currently required on decks that are played as it has not been an issue, I would like it to remain this way.
In this KeyForge format, you bring a single deck to play up to three games of KeyForge against a single opponent. In the first game, each player uses their own deck under the normal rules of KeyForge (i.e. an Archon game). In the second game, you swap decks and play a game (i.e. a Reversal game).
If a single player wins each of the first two games, the match is over and that player wins. If a single deck wins both of the first two games (i.e. the match score is 1-1), then the players secretly select which of the two decks they would like to bid chains for, to play in game 3. If both players select the same deck, they bid varying increasing chain amounts back and forth until one player passes, the player who passes plays the unchained, unselected deck. The bidding is started at zero chains by the owner of the selected deck. The winner of that game is the winner of the match.
A timer does not need to be used in your KAGI matches, however if a player requests the use of a timer, a timer must be used. A request for a timer, or lack thereof, can be changed between games as well if a player requests it – we all have lives and players’ time should be respected. If a timer is used, it should be for the standard 45 minutes. If no timer has been set for a given game (barring accidental occurrences), that decision must be respected by both players as it was tacitly agreed upon. If a player runs out of time between games within a match and must leave early, we request that players are understanding and allow for rescheduling the remaining games to be played as intended. However, if a new time cannot be found, then a forfeit will have to be issued to the player who was not able to complete the full match at the originally scheduled time.
The pods for the pod phase of KAGI are constructed to spread out the players into as evenly sized pods as possible, and construct a bracket to accommodate promoting the top 2 from each pod to advance to the top cut. You can check out how the breakdown works for a player pool of up to 84 players here.
The goal of the KAGI Top Cut is to crown the seasonal champion. This is done through a single elimination adaptive best of 3 bracket, which is populated by the top players from each pod. The two players which finish with the best record in their pod in the pod phase move on to the Top Cut. Top cut seeds are determined by regular season standing. Winners of each group get a 1 seed, runner up gets a 2 seed. Then, 1 seeds are randomly paired up against 2 seeds. Players from the same pod must be placed on opposite sides of the bracket. For top cuts of any amount that does not result in a clean bracket (such as 6, 10, 12, etc), byes will be given first to 1 seeds, then to as many 2 seeds as possible. For the purposes of determining byes only, if the amount of byes to be awarded is not equal to the number of 1 or 2 seeds, then the players receiving the byes shall be determined randomly. Record in pod play will not factor into which players receive the remaining byes.
2-0 match wins in the pod phase are the primary tiebreaker, head-to-head is the secondary tiebreaker. For ties of 3 or more players that cannot be resolved by the above method, remove results against the bottom player in the pod standings and recalculate tiebreakers from the top. Continue until a player emerges from the tiebreaker as the top player, then restart tiebreakers from the top among remaining players. If the players are all still tied after the above, flip a coin to determine the winner and restart the tiebreakers from the top among remaining players.
You can read more about archon adaptive in this article from FFG.
After much deliberation and a community poll, it was decided to implement a small modification to the Adaptive format that we’re running starting in Season 12.0. The change being made is with respect to who goes first in each of the games. The new rules for turn player in a match are as follows:
“Whichever deck goes first in game 1, goes first in every game within the match.”
Example:
KAGI 11.0 Specific Format Modification:
Beginning in season 11.0, the limit on the number of chains you can accrue during bidding has been removed. Therefore, bids may extend above 24. The intention here is to allow every matchup to have an equilibrium in theory. With a max in place, it is theoretically possible that 24 chains still results in a deck being heavily favored, and allows specific strategies to exploit the primary goal of archon adaptive - to create a balanced match regardless of deck strength.
Use this Google Form. The winner of the match is to report the result. The TO will update the pod spreadsheet to show wins and losses.
The Tournament Organizer is @Murph117 on Discord. Contact him there.
Credit must be given to FightingWalloon for starting and running KAGI from its inception up until KAGI 5.0, they did a great job, and I (Murph) am humble to continue the league as long as I can! The League wouldn’t be here without them. Starting from KAGI 11.0 and onwards quickdraw3457 joined the admin team.