Ascendant, a trading card game by Washington-based company iQ Pictures, made an impression at PAX West 2026 as part of a growing wave of challengers to Magic: The Gathering's dominance in the TCG market. The game, which celebrated its second anniversary, combines familiar card game mechanics with a distinctive dice-based combat system reminiscent of tabletop RPGs, offering an interesting alternative to established competitors.

The game's mechanics centre on a unique resource system where a card's cost dictates how many copies are required to play it. Players start with 70 life and draw one card each turn with no hand limit. Combat is resolved using 20-sided dice rolls, with damage equal to the difference between the attacker's and defender's rolls. Ascendant supports multiple game modes including one-on-one, two-on-two, and battle royale formats. The game emerged from the World of Kylia universe, created as a side project by designer Chase Lambert-Crittenden, which is set on an alien world inhabited by multiple species across seven nations.