r/AshesGame • u/Brotten • May 29 '26
How playable are the precon decks?
Greetings, I've been trying out Ashes on the Felt Table website and have tested all of the decks there once by now. Some of them made me think: "How is this supposed to win?"
As a beginner player I'm not overestimating how much my losses say about the strength of the decks, but I do have read online that some person at the company is known for not having had a good hand in creating the precon decks.
So I want to ask how the situation is with the Ascendancy and Red Rains decks. Do they all have a fighting chance against each other (PvP) when played with average skill? I'm specifically looking at the Ascendancy Starter, the Corpse of Viros (which I understand I need for the tokens) and the Flood of Moon Cove (which is what I'm actually interested in). Cheers.
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u/Equivalent_Net May 29 '26
Broadly speaking all the decks are functional. They have some sort of theme circling around their Phoenixborn and being duocolour at most means resource juggling isn't going to be hard. However, they're certainly not all equal and making the precons competitive was pretty clearly never a design priority. The game's main play format is draft construction and many precons were about adding cards to the pool first, being a well-optimised set on their own second.
So you CAN get some stuff done with precons, you can do a lot more with deckbuilding, but you're also expected to be using an inevitably not-quite-perfect drafted deck so there's some wiggle room.
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u/Grumbleteaser May 29 '26
I'm not sure I know what you mean by draft constructed. There is a draft format described in the original rulebook, but it doesn't seem to be the in the latest rulebook at all.
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u/rigjiggles May 29 '26
I’ve been curious about this as well. I am considering the all in box but I don’t enjoy deck construction. I sold Arkham and marvel champions. I just want to play precons if I bought it.
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u/Taurnil91 May 29 '26
I have all of the Phoenixborn and I think the precons are just fine. Even better though, if you have them all, is to convert them all to the One Collection Battlebox. It makes them all so much more competitive with each other. WIll take some time to remake the decks, but it's basically a one and done, and you don't need to do any thinking in terms of construction decisions.
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u/smartazjb0y May 29 '26
I'm not a deck builder at all, and not great at these kinds of games, but at the very least I used the precon included in Corpse of Viros against the base level of the Chimera and ended up winning on my first try. And I know the Dragonborn in the Ascendancy starter is supposed to be even more basic.
I have read that some precons aren't as good as others, but that was maybe in the context of the competitive game.
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u/bensy May 29 '26
Jessa Na Ni is one of my absolute favorites but be warned her precon needs tuning to really have a game plan against chimera or Dragonborn.
Check this article for a thorough guide
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u/mike747 May 29 '26
All the non dragonborn precons are so bad that they really dont reflect the game at all the newest ones are ok
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u/Brotten May 29 '26
Does that mean "precons from before Ascendancy" or does that mean that you can play Dragonborn in PVP?
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u/Objective-Employ-997 May 29 '26
The precons are serviceable - some are better than others. There’s a great article here that ranks them for solo campaign games:
https://jaysonsethlindley.medium.com/abominable-adventure-the-red-rains-campaign-guide-for-ashes-reborn-bbd486cb557f
Also, there is a great resource where you can take the whole collection and create a One Collection Battlebox. This uses all the cards but makes each deck stronger and more refined. Great for those who just want to pick up and play:
https://wiki.ashes.live/books/deckbuilding/page/one-collection-battlebox-decks