Little late on the train, but Ashes is a good IMO. I’ve had it pretty much since launch.
As someone who likes as little randomness as possible in games, I thought I would hate Ashes. A game where you draw from a deck of cards randomly, and have a random pool of mana each turn? Sounds like a game that you could play against a 2 year old kid and still lose. But when you actually play the game, the mechanics and card pool provide not only significant mitigation to the luck aspect, but also a very solid framework that really rewards understanding the flow and tempo of the game.
I’ve heard it compared to Magic + dice frequently. I don’t want to knock Magic too hard; I’m sure the deck building for the game can be pretty deep when you play it competitively, and I’ve never played it competitively enough to actually evaluate it. But I’ve never played a game of magic and felt like I was making extremely meaningful decisions. Get the mana to play the things, then play the things.
In Ashes, by contrast, I constantly feel like I’m debating if I should do things now or hold off. You have a wealth of options available to you at the start of every round; it’s about when you execute those options, and which ones you defer vs. act on. I find myself debating almost every action, which, I feel, is the mark of a well-designed game.
The biggest knock against Ashes is they won’t sell me enough of it.