Ascension: Rise of Vigil

Rise of Vigil is a 2013 entry in the Ascension deck-building series, and it works both as a standalone game for two to four and as an expansion that stretches any other Ascension set to six players. You buy cards from a shared row, tuck them into your discard pile, and shuffle them into your deck for later. Monsters show up in the same row, and beating them earns points and perks, like trashing your weaker cards or banishing something from the row that a rival would love. The new twist here is treasure cards, all of them Energy Shards. A fast, fantasy-flavored deck builder that plays in about half an hour, with no board and no setup beyond shuffling.