Origins TCG roadmap AMA, the full recap: Prestige, pack odds, tournaments and new mechanics

Koin Games held the "Super Secret Early Access Roadmap AMA" on the official Discord on 6 November, for about two hours. On stage were founder and CEO Tim Jooste, Studio Head Mike "Mawr" Marr, co-founder and Chief Product Officer Kevin, and Alex for the tournaments. This is the full recap; for the short version, there is our AMA Preview. Prices and odds are the ones given live, several of them with an "I believe".

Where the game stands

Tim opened with the numbers. Origins has been in development for close to five years and the demo came out about three months ago, with a community of just over a hundred people. Before Next Fest it was at about 20,000 downloads. Next Fest itself went less well than hoped: according to Tim, AI tools brought almost 4,000 extra games to the October edition.

The tournament week was what changed things: about 2,100 applications from close to 1,800 unique players, a peak of 610 concurrent players on the Saturday, 317 streams, a peak of 5,500 viewers and about 1,000 on average that Saturday. Three of the top four were Italian and the fourth came from Cyprus. Early Access now runs between about 7,000 and 9,800 players a day.

On the Kickstarter, close to $1 million, Tim said the team turned down a licensing and publishing deal with a large company a month ago, to stay on the free-to-compete and ownership path. Koin now has more than 40 people.

The six-week rhythm

• Tuesday 10 November: an update on disconnects and cheating, with no balance changes.
• Tuesday 17 November: a balance patch.
• 2 December: the ladder season ends and the first big update arrives, with the collector systems, new locations and titles.
• February: the full Myths and Legends set, about 218 cards, with all the Kickstarter rewards.

A ladder season lasts six weeks, with a boss at the start and one at the third week, as Dr. Frank was. Each boss brings a new deck, with around ten new cards. After December there is a season to mid-January and one from mid-January to February. Balance updates come about every other week, with hotfixes when needed. Mawr split the work into a gameplay team on cards and locations, a feature team on the big systems, and a steady flow of quality of life in between.

Also in the works are mobile, which Mawr said is starting now, and draft mode, in parallel because it uses different developers. Neither has a date. The playtest server reopens in December for backers with a high rank, with all the cards. Slabs and game boards you can own are being built in the background.

Collector Pass, Prestige and capsules

The Collector Pass is a one-time account upgrade, for life. Backers of any Kickstarter tier receive it on 2 December; after that it goes on sale on Steam, at $15 or $20 according to Tim. There is one per account and it is not tradable. You do not need it to use the marketplace, to enter tournaments or, during Early Access, to compete on the leaderboard.

With the pass, each week you reach a minimum of XP you open a chest and pick one of three things, as in Counter-Strike: a roll on the 48 Prestige cards, a capsule, or a third item such as an emote.

The Prestige Pass, which Koin may rename because two passes are confusing (perhaps "Prestige Point Card"), is a consumable: about $5 each, up to five at a time, so about $25 a week at most. You fill it by playing, and it gives Prestige Points to spend in the Prestige shop: extra rolls, capsules, emotes and loose packs. One pass gives 20 points; five give 100. Tim stressed that this may change.

Prestige cards use the base art with special treatments, in four tiers:

1. Monochromatic, about twenty cards
2. Black and white, about twelve
3. Cyberpunk, three to five
4. Artist proof, one or two

Those treatments are never in packs. The first pool has an Early Access badge and leaves before February, for good. A cyberpunk card like Van Helsing would be about a 1% roll, in Tim's estimate. Pools rotate every few months, and so do capsules: first Death, with the Death avatar, and Goldilocks. You can open a capsule or keep it sealed and sell it on the Steam marketplace. A trade-up system comes in the new year: enough tier 1 cards give a tier 2 roll, and enough tier 2 cards a tier 3 roll.

Mawr also showed an early build in the Unity editor, with placeholder art, and honor crests, similar to Counter-Strike's service medals, which take a long time to earn.

Packs, boxes and cases

A pack has five cards: three enhanced base cards and two hits at the back. Base cards in packs keep the free art, but with a black frame, a frame break, 3D parallax, a larger nameplate and a character about 30% bigger. They come graded and tradable. Graded cases can be swapped. The Alpha edition exists only on the Kickstarter; the standard edition, without the Alpha tag, reaches shops in February.

Alternate arts come only from packs: about 70 in the first set. Storybooks stay hidden until they are opened in February. At retail a pack costs $4, a booster box of 24 packs $96 and a case of six boxes, 144 packs, $576.

Boxes and cases will never be sold in the game. They are pre-order items, through shops and directly from Koin, in a three-week window before each set. That window sets the print run: Koin doubles it, and of the remaining loose packs about 45% go into the game, to buy with Prestige Points, while the rest is for giveaways and creators. Whatever is left in the game at the end of the season is burned. Koin also promises in-game population data for cards, sealed packs and cases.

Tournaments

There will be one tournament a month during Early Access, starting in November, in Conquest format with about 400 seats. The prizes are promo cards that will not come back, and placing qualifies you automatically for the Myths and Legends Open at the end of Early Access, which Alex described as a Crimson Cup 2.0. Details of the first one come next week.

After Early Access, the plan follows physical games: weeklies, monthlies, quarterlies and Worlds, with an open event in the same week. Major events will have best-of prizing, with rewards tied to the deck you play, to encourage variety. A dedicated AMA on tournaments will come closer to launch.

Kevin explained that the game has two location pools, one for the ladder and one for competitions. The competition list will be published in advance, without the game-warping locations. Tournament co-streaming is on the way too.

Local game shops

Over 100 shops have responded in the last two weeks, which Tim had hoped to reach only by launch. Shops can host tournaments, where you check in with a QR code from your phone once mobile is ready, play a bracket and win promos you cannot get in the game. They can also sell pre-orders of boxes and cases, keeping a portion of the revenue, and a shop can do only that. Each shop chooses how often to run events. Tim named Duke City Games in New Mexico, with seven locations, and a Grand Rapids store with 1,200 seats. A "Tell Your LGS About Origins Day" is planned.

New mechanics

Kevin previewed what is coming in the next few months:

• Food: a token on a space that gives +2/+2 to the character that touches it. Later it grows into items you can place from your hand. Winnie the Pooh starts with a food on the board and doubles every buff he receives.
• Face-down cards: Wizard of Oz starts with Behind the Curtain in your hand, which turns a character face down. Damage spells cannot target it, and it flips back after all the reveals, triggering its reveal effect again.
• Cards that did not start in your deck: a new theme, with Geppetto. Those cards cost 2 less to play.
• First Reveal (set 2): a card that reveals first, whoever has the turn order. It is meant as counterplay to spells like Obliterate.
• Shielded barriers: coming later, and leaked by accident.

Sherwood Forest, tokens and sticky stats

Merry Men from Sherwood Forest are clogging graveyard decks. The location pool is less than half of what it will be and few locations are common, so Sherwood shows up about once every three matches; launch will have over 50 common locations. The next balance update will probably make it rare for now. Tokens keep going to the graveyard: Koin prefers not to teach a separate token rule.

On sticky buffs, stat changes stay on a card through the graveyard, hand or deck, because archetypes use them. Abilities like shield and double strike are cleared. If stats become a problem in Dr. Frank decks, Koin would fix single cards rather than the rule.

Quality of life

These arrive with the next big build:

• Battle Energy: a rebuilt combat phase. Spaces in a location resolve together, so it is much faster, with extra effects.
• Drag and drop in the deck builder.
• Match history shows your opponent's Legendary.
• Type new in the collection search to see your new cards.
• Undo moves next to the Ready button.
• Battle log: turn by turn, with played and destroyed cards. The destroyed tab works as a temporary graveyard viewer until the real one, the biggest item on Kevin's list.

Ranked, bots and cheating

Elo already runs behind the scenes in matchmaking. A +10/-15 system on the Grandmaster leaderboard is being discussed but not decided, and no big change is expected in December. The pity bot is gone from Grandmaster, and the new bot beats the old one about 70% of the time. In the future the Grandmaster leaderboard may require the $15 lifetime access, against bots, but not during Early Access. Koin is against rank camping and says a fix is in the works; it uses shadow bans on cheaters. Titles arrive on 2 December, achievements later. A spectate mode exists in a developer version, and API and log access is planned behind the graveyard viewer: "a when, not an if".

Creators and community

An AMA for creators comes next week, on Origins Drops, Koin's version of Twitch Drops, with official Twitch Drops later. Details are in the Creator Discord. Tim counted 173 people who have made videos or streams about the game. The current referral programme, where both players unlock a Myths and Legends pack, ends in a few weeks and then changes.

What we don't know yet

• The exact date and rules of the November tournament.
• The final price of the Collector Pass and the final name of the Prestige Pass.
• Dates for mobile, draft and the graveyard viewer.
• Which change Sherwood Forest gets on 17 November: "probably" rare, for now.