“Focusing Round“
Ascent Santa Clara Blog
Thursday, December 5th. Ascent Santa Clara vacation is officially here! We just got the event guide a couple days before and there is so much to do! Whether you are a fan of collecting, playing competitively, like to cosplay, or just chill with side events this Ascent has it all! Even some activities I wasn’t expecting like Girls Night and Path to Puzzle! It’s nice to see Weebs make their destination Ascents as inclusive as possible. Ton of new and exciting merch in line too! Rumor is BOTH main events sold out! A feat that hasn’t happened since their first Ascent in Houston last year. Crazy to see how big this game has gotten in such a short time. Next year in April marks two years since the game officially released passed Kickstarter.
Most of Thursday going there and Monday coming back was spent travelling. But on the way in I got to enjoy some company with Lineage Break Cam and Lineage Break Yorko! Sadly, I have extra travel plans living a state away from them so I couldn’t fly back together. After touchdown in Santa Clara we dropped off our luggage and went out with a couple of friends to eat. Got back to the hotel and got some rest.
Friday, December 6th. After settling in from a long day of travelling we woke up at 11am. Hung out than went to In-N-Out for the obligatory trip for us eastern U.S. tourists. Got back to the hotel and walked over to the venue. Set up was amazing. It really showed how much effort Weebs has put into their events. A giant christmas tree, tons of tables for players, a stage for the feature match, and a stage for the commentators too!
At around 6pm we decided to get some food and saw Iguanas Burritos as an option. Ordered a burrito. It had your typical guac, cheese, meat of choice, fries, and I added some beans. It was delicious. I’ve been to the west coast a bunch times in my life and I am never disappointed in the food here.
After food we were ready for the trademark event of the day, Trade Night. It’s so cool to see the company host a day specifically for their players to collect last minute cards for Ascents two main events. The room was packed. Got to see some friends I haven’t seen since the last Ascent I went to and made some new ones. Got back at around midnight. Tomorrows road call is 6am to make sure to get to the Ascent store early and finalize the deck I plan on playing tomorrow, Water Nico with a splash of level 1 Tristan.
Saturday, December 7th. Woke up super early for the ascent store. I was second in line. This ascent they introduced deck boxes for some legendary characters instead of champions. Slightly smaller formfactor. And to everyones surprise there were shirts! Wasn’t expecting to spend so much on merch. Dropped everything off in the hotel room and got ready for the tournament!
Top dogs this tournament were Water Ari (Self Mill) and of course Silvie. Was not my best showing in a tournament going 1-3 and dropping before lunch. I still had fun and played some good games. Played the mirror and lost both games due to some slight miscalculations. It was a good sign to drop and enjoy the rest of my day without frustration. Went out to lunch with some friends, came back and got ready to go to the amusement park.
Our hotel was right across the way from California’s Great America. I haven’t been here since I was a kid but was had the itch to go since I knew where this Ascent was. I love roller coasters so any chance I can go to a park while traveling I’ll try and take it. I was so excited it was open for Winterfest, the benefits of always nice weather, New England will never know. As I walk up to the gate I notice a line. The line ended up being what felt like a half mile wrapping around the parking lot. Thankfully it flew by and was inside within 10 minutes.
I spent about four hours here as I wanted to make it back for some dinner with the boys. Got to go on two rides. Unfortunate, but one, Railblazer, was at the top of my “must try list” and the other, Gold Striker, easily made it’s way to my top 20 coasters ever so I think it was still worth it. Before I left I grabbed some apple pull-a-part bread and some hot chocolate in a Winterfest mug.
Got back right at the final round of the night. Just in time to watch Lineage Break Trent fight for his day 2 in a win and in on the feature match! He didn’t get it, but it was an insane match to watch as the Wind Ari player hit a starcalling card on ever glimpse! After day 1, a couple of us went out to get some pizza. The place we went to had a 20″ pizza! After that we went back to the hotel. supplied my friend with my Tristan lineage for a silver submission. and went to bed.
Sunday, December 8th. Since I dropped out of the main event, I got to sleep in a little. My flight takes off at 6am, so I wasn’t really expecting much sleep and the extra rest in the morning helped a lot. I didn’t get a path of silver ticket, so I wasn’t pressured for meeting any deadline.
Walked around a little looking at silver submissions and checked in on my friends in the scrubbed out event. Time flew by as it was time for Top 8 of the main event. Webway Cam and I have sat in the front row for the closing ceremony every Ascent we’ve been to together so I had to keep up the tradition and claim some seats while he was commentating.
Water Ari took down the event beating Fire Silvie with the infamous T2 kill game 1. And grinded the game out for a Strategem of Myriad Ice kill game 2. Congratulations to Main Deck Mitch for winning the Path of Steel! Also congrats to Mark from Solar Games on winning Path of Silver! With the awards ceremony done all that’s left is the final event, the closing ceremony!
Closing Ceremony
With each Ascent Blog I want to go in-depth with the Closing Ceremonies. It’s such a novel concept, where Weebs, the developers, go over aspects of the game like future events, banlists, proxias vault cards, and their current direction of the game. Think of the MTG articles that come out every set but in person and way more personable. They’ve done one at every Ascent I’ve been to, and it’s easily been the activity I look forward to the most every time I go to one.
Ascent Santa Claras closing ceremony was somewhat a little special. Instead of having an online Holiday Stream they had last year, they incorporated it into the last activity of the Ascent. It started with a panel of most of the developers talking about the latest set Mortal Ambition. I’ll leave a link below for the stream if you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it.
After the panel came the keynote. Started off with a bang showcasing the new double deck-box for Guo Jia debuting at Ascent Utrect! Ascent Melbourne is going to be the Abyssal Heaven world premiere! Ascent Worlds 2024 was the world premiere of Mercurial Heart and they had an event where you bought recollection decks to hope to unlock the full set! Hoping to see this make a return! We got a date for Ascent Seattle, March 15th-16th. Unless I make a trip to Melbourne, Seattle will be the next Ascent I go to. We also got to see the new Top 8 Prize Spirit for Seattle, Kaze! Ascent Worlds 2025 is at the end of June. Set 7 just happens to come out in July so I’m hoping for another World Premiere event like 2024. Nationals locations were announced as well as the “Gauntlet” a new last chance qualifier for the World Championship! There were also some exciting teases like an Eastern U.S Ascent as well as an Ascent in Japan in Ascent Akihabara!
As for product releases we didn’t get much for news. Mercurial Heart is getting an Alter release in May. It will release with new versions of the Silvie and Tristan decks called recollection lite. Presumably cheaper product but without the 1st Ed packs. These are great tournament level decks so having a cheap version that can be played immediately is great! Set 7 and Set 8 were shown in the 2025 schedule but no dates outside of July and December respectively. Lastly for product is a holiday gift set featuring Kongming! Inside you’ll receive a keychain, Revitalizing Cleans promo cards, a playmat, a deck box, the size that was featured at this Ascent, and more! It goes up for preorder on Christmas!
We got 6 new cards spoiled from the 20 card alter expansion to Alchemical Revolution! You can find them on our main page! my favorite card revealed with Focusing Round.
Last bit of news came in the form of merch! As of this article we’ve gotten sleeves, shirts, deck boxes, card sleeves, binders, and even figurines. But Weebs continues to answer calls for new exciting ways to take our money. Anyone attending Nationals next year will get a backpack! And that’s not all! Coming soon is a collaboration with M.Rage!
As you can tell there was a lot of information revealed. Below is the link to the stream, as well as some links to new spoilers and the 2025 calendar!
Grand Archive Holiday Stream 2024
Newest Spoilers
2025 Calendar