Warning: the article contains spoilers for set 4 of Keyforge, Mass Mutation.
It’s been an exciting week for Keyforge with the announcement of set 4, Mass Mutation. I am sure I am not alone in my excitement for the new Enhance keyword and the two-card gigantic creatures. But at the very end of the announcement article, there was also this enticing little gem:
“If you thought the Four Horsemen were impressive, wait until you see the Seven Sins!”
This raises a lot more questions than it answers, and leaves a lot of room for speculation. If, like the Four Horsemen, there were a group of seven cards that always appear together in the same house (presumably Dis), that does not leave a lot of variation for the remaining five cards in that house. (Although we have seen this already, as Plague Rats can show up in Shadows with up to seven copies in a deck.)
But there is another possibility: since there are seven houses in Mass Mutation (Dis, Logos, Sanctum, Saurian Republic, Star Alliance, Shadows, Untamed), it could be that each house has one corresponding sin, similar to leaders in Worlds Collide or shards in Age of Ascension. So, assuming that designers are following the traditional list of Seven Deadly Sins (Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, Pride), which house corresponds to which sin?
Let’s see if we can work it out using what we know about the houses, and other cards in the game, particularly the seven Bane variants in Dis. (While the Bane cards reference traits, and not houses, I think it is fairly obvious which Bane corresponds to which house.)
Let’s start with the obvious ones:
Greed: Shadows
It’s no question that the house of thieves and stealing should correspond to the sin of desire for money and things. Thieves’ Bane depicts a pile of gold, and the Shadows shard is the Shard of Greed. Done and done.
Pride: Saurian Republic
Brad Andres has spoken at length on various podcasts that one of the core design ideas for the Saurian Republic was the idea of hubris, or excessive pride, so it is obvious that these two should go together. Dinosaur’s Bane depicts an elegant mirror, the symbol of vanity and pride.
Okay, now we have to take some logical leaps:
Sloth – Dis
So, there isn’t really a lazy house (how could there be, in a fast-paced action game like Keyforge?) But if we look at the card Demon’s Bane, the item which “lures” demons into a trap is a chess-like board game. We see another game depicted on the Dis action A Fair Game. It’s not clear to me what these games mean to the demons of Dis, but if they are a distraction from their normal demon activities, perhaps sloth is the proper correspondence.
Of course, Sloth could also correspond to Untamed, the only house to feature an actual sloth.
Gluttony – Untamed
Again, I return to the Bane cards. The card Beast’s Bane depicts a juicy piece of meat on the bone, large enough to satisfy any glutton. While there are beasts in every house except Sanctum, the house with the most beasts by far is Untamed. So the connection goes Untamed to beasts, beasts to juicy meat (via the Beast’s Bane card), juicy meat to gluttony.
Wrath – Sanctum
If Brobnar or Mars were in Mass Mutation, either of those houses would be my pick for wrath over Sanctum. And in the absence of the Saurians, I would probably put Sanctum with pride, since “few are judged worthy to enter” their cities. But, with the story hint that Sanctum are angry about the discovery and use of the dark aember (even though they found it first) and the newly revealed card Bull-wark with the Assault trait, which implies aggression, I feel comfortable putting Sanctum with wrath.
So, the leftovers:
Envy – Logos
Now we have to start making things up. Perhaps the scientists of Logos are envious of all the other houses on the Crucible. They are not as big as the Brobnar, as shiny as the Sanctum, or as deadly as the Dis. This is why they pour all their effort into learning, desperate to be the smartest so that maybe, one day, someone will pay attention to them. The flavor text on the Logos shard, Shard of Knowledge, is “Forged from desire,” that is, the desire… to be like others? Maybe?
Lust – Star Alliance
You can see it in their eyes. Every member of the Star Alliance, having traveled through space for so long, is absolutely dripping with lust, desperate for the touch of… yeah, I got nothing. But seven houses with seven sins means something gets left over.
It’s hard to think of any card in the game, much less an entire house, that one could associate with the idea of lust. Even Succubus, a card named after a spirit of seduction, is about as sexy as a porcupine. In my mind, it is a positive aspect of Keyforge that the art is designed to be as welcoming to as many kinds of players as possible, and this includes avoiding the sexy depiction of female bodies common in other game art. But it makes me curious, assuming the designers are following the traditional list of the seven deadly sins, how they will include lust in a game that is for the most part bright, colorful, friendly, and sexless.
So, what do you think? Do you have a different way you would arrange the seven sins with the seven houses? Or do you have a different theory altogether for what the Seven Sins will be? Comment below or wherever you found this article.