AMA Preview: Origins TCG's collector systems arrive on 2 December, the full set in February

Update, 7 November: the full recap is out.

This is a preview. Koin Games held its Early Access roadmap AMA on the official Discord on the evening of 6 November, for about two hours, with founder and CEO Tim Jooste and Studio Head Mawr. Below are the biggest points; the full recap, with the gameplay news and the questions and answers, is now out.

The calendar

• Tuesday 10 November: an update against disconnects and cheating. No balance changes: "we couldn't fit any" into it.
• Tuesday 17 November: a balance patch, with a change to Sherwood Forest expected.
• 2 December: the current ladder season ends and the big update arrives, with the collector systems and new locations. It is earlier than the "week of 7 December" given in October.
• February: the full set, with all the Kickstarter rewards. Mawr put it at about 218 cards ("don't hold me to this"), plus Big Bob.

From now on Koin works in six-week batches: a ladder season lasts six weeks, with a boss at the start and another at the halfway point, like Dr. Frank. Balance patches come about every other week. After December there is one season to mid-January and one from mid-January to February.

2 December: the collector systems

Kickstarter backers receive their Collector Pass on 2 December; after that it goes on sale on Steam at a higher price. With the pass comes a weekly drop, as in Counter-Strike: you choose one of three collector items.

The Prestige Pass earns Prestige Points, to spend in the Prestige shop on packs and capsules, like the Death and Goldilocks ones, which you can open or keep sealed and trade. You can also roll on a pool of 48 Prestige cards in four tiers, from the most common: monochromatic, black and white, cyberpunk and artist proof. Artist proofs are never in packs. Prestige cards rotate: when a pool ends, those cards are gone.

Until 2 December you can still earn the demo rewards, which become tradable after that date. During Early Access you do not need the Collector Pass to compete on the leaderboard. Koin may later put the Grandmaster leaderboard behind the $15 lifetime access, as a deterrent against bots, but not during Early Access.

Packs and rarities

Packs have ten levels of rarity and alternate arts are found only there, never in the Prestige system: about 70 in the first set. The rarest card is the Storybook, 1 in every 1,200 packs. The Alpha packs can only be had through the Kickstarter. A trade-up system for bulk cards, like the one in Counter-Strike, comes in the new year.

Tournaments

Early Access will have monthly tournaments in Conquest format, with about 400 seats each and promo cards as prizes. The top finishers qualify for the Myths and Legends Open, at the end of Early Access. Details of the November tournament come next week.

Local game shops

Over 100 shops around the world have come forward in the last two weeks. The programme has two sides: hosting in-person tournaments, with exclusive promos, and offering pre-orders of the sets. Booster boxes and cases will never be sold in the game: they are pre-order only.

Mobile, draft and the rest

Work on mobile is starting now and draft mode runs in parallel, on different developers. Neither has a date. The playtest server reopens in December for backers with a high rank, with all the cards. Elo already runs behind the scenes in matchmaking; a +10/-15 system on the Grandmaster leaderboard is being discussed but not decided. The pity bot is gone from Grandmaster.

The numbers

Tim Jooste gave figures for the Crimson Cup week: about 2,100 applications from close to 1,800 unique players, 610 concurrent players at the peak, 317 streams and 5,500 viewers at the peak. Three of the top four were Italian. Since Early Access opened, the game has had between about 7,000 and 9,800 players a day.