Origins 2015 - Day 4 & 5 - Portal Games, Epic Card Game

0:00 it's Sunday night Origins is over what I decided to do was take some of the videos I shot from the past two days and combine them together for the video for days four and five but before I get to those I thought maybe I would share some of the highlights over the past couple days Saturday night I got to go out and eat uh with the secret gabal and Rodney they invited me to to go out to one of their favorite places the habachi grill Japanese steakhouse and that was a lot of fun hanging out with those guys those guys are a total trip after that um I got to try uh Nations the dice game I got to play about three or four rounds but it was enough that I decided I'm going to go buy it that's actually one of the games that I I purchased while at Origins I really like that dice rolling mechanic and I need to play it a couple times but don't tell my wife this but I actually just after that first play may like it a little bit more than roll for the Galaxy after that was the dice tower live show where they do a live recording from or orins and then uh post it later on on their podcast and on their YouTube channel and that was a lot of fun uh several of us got to get up there and talk about some of our favorite games from Origins and how we were enjoying the convention but I think the highlight of the night was when they played it did like a game show type thing uh where they did um it wasn't password it was match match word anyway one of those old like 70s game shows they were trying to emulate that was a lot of fun they had a panel of people up there they would ask a question and uh one of the people from

1:32 the audience will come up and and give the answer and hope match one of the people's answers that was on the panel for prize it was a lot of fun uh they had a lot of people show up I think they were only expecting like 150 or so but they ended up getting like 260 people so uh keep an eye out for that that'll be one of their upcoming podcast episodes and I believe it will also be on YouTube now for the videos you're getting ready to see these were some of the ones I was very excited to do I got to uh try out some of portals new games and try out the new epic card game from White Wizards game the same people that gave us Star Realms so let's see what they had to say so finally after talking about it a lot on our show I was able to sit with Chevy D from who is the US Representative of Portal Games to try out rattle battle grab the loop so if you haven't heard anything about it Chevy why don't you give us a little bit of an overview of this game what it's about rattle battle grab the loot is a pirate dice battling game where you have a fleet of ships which are represented by your dice we combat enemy vessels which could be merchants or navy ships and we try to sync them for points which are going to be coins and loot and once you get your loot we can go to the port and we can upgrade our ship we can hire new Sailors we can buy new parts for our ship such as cannons and sails or we can buy upgrades which make our ship look really cool and pH yeah and uh so it has

3:02 these two unique phases where you literally grab a bunch of dice you rattle them you throw them in there and based on uh relationships and where they are uh spatially wise Inside the Box determines who what ship can attack what if you roll cannons you can actually kindy of sink them you have mechanisms where you have sails on your ship where you can actually physically move your dice closer to the merchant ships that you're trying to attack so there's a little bit of strategy that when you go to the port you might want to upgrade and buy more cannons buy more CS to be able to move more often to be able to grab more loot that loot generates victory points and guess what at the end of the game the person with the most victory points wins the game so I've also got Rodney from watch it play and Keith Collins and so guys what was your first impressions of the game R well I think my favorite part has got to be the ship building here cuz you start out with a little compact little ship for the sale and and no cannons right and then and a little bit of storage as time goes on you some us took cannons some of you did take cannons I I said okay I won't take cannons I the peaceful Canadian said I'm just going to take sales and I'm going to be able to hold a lot of stuff and have a party I'm not firing on any out work out and now I've got my cannons I'm ready I'm ready to go to battle now but my ship is growing like you know I got special effects I got this fashionable prois it's like it's really cool it's it's visually it's very appealing to S of grow your thing in front of you right yep Keith what' you think I I really like it I like the uh build your little physical sh you get your stuff out there I like chucking a big handful of dice all in the box and

4:35 the way that the dice turn into almost like a little very simple Miniatures game right on the board it's real cool and then the unique upgrades unique crew members that just now it's no longer a symmetrical game you know I I can regenerate sales you can go buy stuff cheap really quickly I will say that uh this is a dice game so there is luck involved and uh Chevy just showed me paragraph to the end of the rule book saying this is a dice game and there is luck it's meant for fun it's it's a kind of different game from Portal Games where it's not a heavy strategy game so it's more of a a just a fun kind of luck based game where you just kind of get there together and have a lot of fun and I I think they've achieved that so yes I was getting a little frustrated with the dice rolls but he showed me the paragraph and like well you're kind of meant to get frustrated cuz that's the type of game it is but there's another part of being a pirate that's right that's true but there's another game that they also showed here and rodne came up to me last he said have you played this two-player game that they're coming out with called tides of Time now shevy want you to tell us a little bit about this game tides of Time is a two-player drafting card game where you're building an empire through Three Ages as it rises and collapses on the tid of time uh you're going to get five card hands you're going to draft one card at a time back and forth and then each card has a suit and is scoring goal so say having for each card of a suit you get three points so you're going to try and draft those suits at the end of the draft you're going to choose one of those cards to keep for the rest of the

6:05 game one to remove from the game and then we're going to do it again you're going to do that three times and the player with the most points wins yes and so Rodney was telling me last night he said you need to go try this game so we sat down today and Keith and I never played before we picked it up in just a matter of a couple minutes and played a quick game maybe 8 10 minutes for our first game and it's one of those games that you feel like there's not a lot of strategy to it until you get like deeper into the second and third hand and then you realize oh I see the engine that my opponent's trying to build so I want to deny him this card sometimes that your own detriment because you might would rather have another card and then you can get a little bit of AP because you're thinking well if I give him this he'll get this many points but if I keep this I'll get this many points so it is a great little two-player thinky game choices right you're sitting there going and and it as it goes on you get more and more information a few more Carrs enter but you've seen a lot now you kind of know what your opponent can do and how do I keep him from doing that and still do what I want to do all within a very short little game it was very cerebral you're really thinking I found myself really think I got crushed my first game you guys are a really close game but you can see the more you would play the more it would reward re beated understandings of the cards and what they do and with only 18 cards you would eventually be able to memorize the cards and know what cards are left in the deck for the future that's very important the game really kicks in the gear once both players know the deck really well well because now we're playing against each other and not just against the cards now I know I'm going to try and stop you from getting this in the future right

7:37 and you're going to try and stop me and so the what you were talking about counterd drafting is really important in this game right so uh when would these games be available Chev both of these will be available at jcon 2015 and then in retail shortly thereafter and then in addition another uh he's also brought a preview look at the atlantans which is the expansion for Imperial settlers which will also be out at J con also too retail shortly after and Retail shortly after so there you go three uh very different types of games coming out from Port gencon one more of a I don't know if it's an amerit trash but it's just more of a fun rolling your dice game with a little bit of a Euro mechanic in it and luck based game a two-player pretty decent strategy game and an expansion to an already really well done European game going to be interesting genon for you guys yes I will bring lots bring lots yeah I don't want to walk up on Friday to an empty portal okay if you're going to J con just in case make portal one of your first boots you visit Thursday all right thanks so much for showing us thanks you guys for playing and go ahead and say it Rodney and thanks for watching one of the games I've been really looking forward to trying out here was the new game from White wizard white wizard games white wizard games is uh epic and the reason why is because I've been a big fan well both Tony and I have big big fans of the star rounds we were into that game day one we love playing it uh both Tony and I are big into we we grew

9:07 up playing ccgs even though we didn't do a lot of magic that's kind of how we got into it but you know what the problem with ccgs is it breaks the bank oh yeah yeah and and and basically ccgs are constantly asking you to spend more and more money uh on it like you know $50 for an individual card or or um buying a new box of uh new box of cards every couple months where they're like $120 a box or yeah the the expenditures can be crazy right and in fact may I should introduce this is Rob Dy who is the designer of the new game epic which is now currently on Kickstarter so you want want to want to go check this out so the idea with epic is is to create a ccgs type game without the ccgs type problems of booster packs um everybody like former magic players and stuff who aren't into anymore still like to play a game where they can build decks put things together as opposed to a deck building game where you're building it during the game some of us still like to build decks uh and come in and play before that so you've come up with this game system to where you have what four different factions yeah so there are there's four different uh factions there's uh um yellow which is good uh red which is evil um blue which is sage and green which is wild so there's four colors in the game and um it comes in a little box like Star realm so $15 get a box with 128 cards in it um and this game gives you um even more replayability and options and Star

10:39 Realms does which is crazy CU stms has a lot but in this you'll be able to play all your favorite trading card game formats with this little collection of cards you can play sealed deck you can do booster drafts you can play with pre-constructed decks um all with this little set you'll get 120 playing cards in every single playing card is different so you have 120 unique cards with different artwork different game mechanics you also get eight uh uh double-sided tokens so we've got demon tokens human tokens zombie tokens and uh and wolf tokens so um basically some of the cards in the game will instruct you to put tokens into play so you can use the tokens that come with the game for that if you're run out you can use scraps of paper whatever but uh but having those tokens is very uh really neat you can also um play multiplayer out of the one box you can get up to four players out of that one box um and you can play um either um uh multiple individual games or you can do uh uh four player games we have uh all the various multiplayer formats from Star Realms also work in this so you can play hunter or Raid or uh free-for-all or Hydra um there or Emperor all those formats work in uh in Epic as well um you can buy a second deck if you want to be able to do an eight-man game eight-man draft or maybe a three Onre draft or game of Emperor um you can you can have enough cards with two decks to

12:10 do that or if you buy a third deck you can uh um either play The Limited formats with extra cards left over so you can have an eight-man draft and you can draft more than 30 cards you can build down to a 30 card deck or you can play constructed in the constructed format you're allowed three copies of any one card in your deck so if you buy three sets you own everything you own three copies of everything so you own a complete play set so you can build any deck in the game at home and then come in and play against a friend who did the same thing so it gives you all the different awesome formats of a trading card game without the expenditure of a you so basically 15 or 30 or 45 depending on whether you want to get one or two or three sets um and uh it opens up all those all those formats for you and the play is is fantastic because the system that we developed for the play you get uh you get to play car a card on your turn on your opponent's turn and every card in the game you can play starting from turn one so you're playing big awesome things starting from the first turn of the game there's no there's no building up of resources there's no inability to play your cards because you don't have enough resources yet or you didn't draw any resources that that's not it not possible in this game every game you'll be playing big things your opponent will be playing big things and there'll be constant decisions throughout the course of the game so what's the minimum a deck size when you construct a deck if you for uh for draft and sealed it's 30 cards uh for uh for constructed when you're

13:42 building a deck at home it's 60 cards so the constructed rules are 60 cards um a maximum of three of any one card and for every zero cost card so some cards cost a gold to play that little symbol right there and other cards are free they have the little zero there for every zero cost card of a color you need to have two cards that cost a gold coin of that color Okay interesting yeah so and here I just got to play a full game uh with Rob he destroyed me of course he should I mean come on he made the game but what he said about the the lack of the ramping up thing is totally true you know in some ccgs and imagine being a good example your first couple turns like here's a one1 here's a 2-1 and then it ramps up from there like like the first or second turn here comes this huge flying thing out of his hand with like an attack of nine or 10 right right in the very first turn it's like whoa you're just not expecting these big battles to happen early on but then look I happen to have something in my hand this big beast that I could go throw down to defend against it so you're immediately into the game you're getting the big boys out in the battlefield early yeah it starts right away because a lot of times in in other ccgs first the beginning of the game is slow you're trying to get your engine kind of churning you can get your deck going immediately right after that first draw and get your and get your big guys out there for the type of deck that you built to use for your game yeah and another advantage of this system that we have is that um a you you can't draw cards at the wrong time in the game so

15:14 like when you're when you have a curve uh and you built into your game and you have early game and late game um you have that means you have early game cards and late game cards and if you your opening hand has a bunch of late game cards you really don't get to play the game you get run over before you get to start playing or if you're in the late game and oh the game's been awesome you going back and forth and then oh I drew an early game card it's it's meaningless here um you can have this sort of let down at the end of the game in Epic all the cards are big all the cards are powerful so you're going to be able to play Big Stuff in the beginning of the game but in the late game when you're drawing cards you're drawing powerful cards that are going to matter in the late game so it it it creates this this wonderful scenario where what you're deciding to do is what matters in the game not did I draw the stuff that I can play right and was talking about you get one gold per turn so nothing costs more than one gold just at your turn you have one gold to spend and you can spend it and play it but what's cool is is on your opponent's turn if they attack well you get a gold and if they attack you can use it to play a card or use it at the end of their turn to play another card gold doesn't carry over so it's very straightforward you get one goal your cards cost zero or one and you go from there so it's easier to teach it's easier to get into but it's still I saw a lot of the strategies that could be used in in building decks and how the different factions work together one uh gets uh one of the decks like helps increase your help another one is a bunch of these big uh wild beasts that that once they get together they're they're more powerful they work together in a pack and then you have your evil

16:45 demons that can come out and uh necromancy where you can pull stuff back from the uh the dead and sacrifice some of your Heth to give something out on the table so they all play totally different there's a lot of strategy right there the kickstarters going on right now yeah kickstar is going right now and you have two options on the kickstarter you can uh you can come in at the $15 level and get the full game um or if you want you can play at a $20 level and at the $20 level you get a whole bunch of extras you get um you get the uh the year one promo card there's 12 different promo cards will be given out to stores uh over the course of the year to for them to give away as event prizes you'll get all those early uh if you come in at the $20 level um also there's a bunch of stretch goals which have been reached um so you'll be getting uh extra tokens and extra playing cards and uh there's these uh their Demi got cards which give you uh different options with pre-constructed decks uh all kinds of stuff's been unlocked and the stretch goals and so if you come in at the $20 level you get the game and all those extra things so fantastic and when will the game be released uh the uh um our schedule is September for uh for Kickstarter backers and then the fall uh for you know for everybody else so we'll we'll see how uh um we're uh we try and get the stuff out early to the kickstarter backers we'll see um how fast we can get it but September is no problem and one last question because uh you may be going after that uh the old ccg crowd do you have any plans for like any organized play events and stores yeah so uh we have um uh we have store kits that are

18:16 that stores will be able to order uh and uh they can so they can run tournaments there'll be things like playmats and promo cards that the stores get to uh will be will have to give out uh at uh at events so we have those um so uh that that sore level organized play is going to be part of the game right from the very beginning yep all right so if this sounds interesting to you then you need to go check out their Kickstarter I was a huge Star Realms fan as soon as the kickstarter went live I went and pledged it this is right at my alley and if this sounds good to you you should go back at too thanks Rob so much for your time thank you guys I think overall Origins was a wonderful success I had a great time I think the numbers were a little bit higher than they were last year there seemed to be a lot of energy a lot of Buzz it's it's just a really great con it's in a great location and like I showed you there's there's some great food to be had and there's a lot of options for gaming and it's a big open wide convention center but it's not as crazy as gencon such that you you can't find somebody to play a game with or there hustle and bustle you you we was talking today like at uh you could stop in the aisle and actually talk to people at Gen Con you can't do that because you just get swept away from the ongoing traffic or whatnot so if you ever have any interest in going to Origins I highly recommend it I think it's it's a really good con and hopefully it's going to get better over time too next year it's going to be in the middle of June uh this year was early June which I think knocked out some people from being L to come because if you have children in school they not may not be out of school yet um the worst thing about

19:48 every convention though is is having to say goodbye to all the friends the friends that you are reconnecting with or new ones that you're making and and it's it's always tough and and a little bit emotional it's like oh we're going to see each other again or whatnot so before I go I just wanted to say that thank you so much for all those that have watched the videos and have enjoyed the videos thank you for those that sat down with me and and did some interviews with me and for the last little clip well this is kind of what it's like at the end of a big con all right so it's the it's the end of Origins they're Turing everything down we're saying bye to everybody we got to go scks sor