Epic Card Game is a hand management, combat game.
Title: Epic Card Game
Year Published: 2015
Designer: Robert Dougherty, Darwin Kastle
Publisher: White Wizard Games
Players: 2-4
Game Time: ~20 Mins
Set-up Time: >1 Mins
Ages: 13+
Theme: Fantasy
Mechanic: Hand Management, Combat
How to win: Defeat your Opponent(s).
Game Description
In Epic, you take on the role of an elder god, in conflict with other elder gods. The cards in your deck are your champions, who fight for you, and events, which represent your will imposed on the mortal realm.
Epic Card Game Set-Up
Set-up varies depending on which game mode you play. For this review, I’m playing as if the players have a random set of 30 cards from all of those available. (Which works pretty well) It’s also a 1 vs 1 game and you start with 30 life.
Epic Card Game Game Play
Cards
Before we begin, let’s look at the two types of cards…
Events – Can be played on any turn. You can only play cards on other players’ turns when you’re attacked if you’ve blocked or your opponent declares the end of their turn.
Champions – You can only play these on your turn. They have their Attack strength on the left and Defence on the right in the middle of the card.
In the top Right is the cost which is either 1 or 0. You have 1 gold per turn and can play as many 0 costs cards as you like and you can spend your available Gold to play a card costing 1. The top left is the alignment of the card which can have effects depending on your other cards.
Phase Order
You play a game over 4 steps…
Step 1 – Gold. Both players lose all their Gold and gain 1 Gold. This is to ensure there are no loopholes where players are carrying Gold overturn to turn.
Step 2 – (Skipped on the start player first turn) Draw a Card, Prepare your Champions (Untap) and Trigger any ‘at start of turn’ Abilities.
Step 3– Play Cards and Attack. You can do this in any order. You can attack with any Champions, play an Event, Attack again etc it’s up to you.
Battle Phase
The Battle Phase is broken down into several simple steps…
A – Declare Attackers – Only prepared Champions may attack and those deployed (Played this turn) can’t attack this turn. Attackers are rotated 90 degrees to show they have attacked this turn.
B – Attacker plays Powers and Events and then must Pass
C – The Defender plays Powers and Events then passes. If they did, go back to step B to give the attacker a chance to react.
D – Choose Blockers – Only prepared Champions may block and are rotated 180 degrees to show they have blocked this turn.
If any single attacker is blocked, the whole attack is blocked.
E – Attacker has the chance to play more Powers and Events and then Pass
F – Defender plays Powers and Events then passes. If they did, go back to step E, again, to let the attacker respond.
Damage Phase
Champions deal damage to each other simultaneously. Broken Champions (who have taken more damage than their Defence value) are put in the discard pile.
Unblocked Champions deal damage to the player. Then any abilities on Broken or unblocked Champions resolve followed by any ‘End of Combat’ abilities.
The attacker resumes Step 3 of their turn and may attack again
End of Turn
If your opponent plays a card when you announce the end of your turn, go back to Step 3
If not, activate any “end of turn” abilities and the activate player discards down to 7 cards.
All damage is removed from Champions and flipped Champions are prepared.
Then, the next player goes back to Step 1 for a new round.
Game End
If a player has 0 life or can’t draw from their deck, they lose. Usually, you need to be the last player standing.
Epic Card Game Round-Up
This is a very simple card game really and if you’ve played Magic the Gathering already the rules will be VERY familiar. It’s like playing Magic but starting on Turn 4 where you already have enough mana to play those big stompy creatures and powerful spells from your hand.
The Gold system works well. You can play one REALLY good card and as many pretty good cards as you like. This restriction, while seemingly small, is massive! You, generally, can’t kill your opponent’s creatures AND play a really good one yourself.
There are only 15 keywords to remember for abilities… There is also a bit of in-game terminology to remember such as Prepare and Break but it’s easy once you get the hang of it.
The game swings and can be very one-sided. Then again, so can most PvP card games so it doesn’t worry me too much. The art is amazing, the limited card pool is wide enough to be varied and small enough to be budget-friendly.
A deck is set, no randomised packs, it costs about £10 and 3 of them give you everything you’ll ever need. This will allow you to play several different formats with up to 8 players and have enough cards to play a proper Constructed tournament.
Having the ‘Grab 30 cards and start playing’ way to start the game makes this an excellent filler for 2-8 players, but has enough that you can do other formats for larger Tournament play successfully.
Epic Card Game Rating
A very simple version of a CCG game without the expensive CCG element.
I give it 6/10
Epic Card Game First Impressions November 2015
A game based on Magic the Gathering designed by former Magic Pro Tour players.
So yeah, it’s similar to Magic.
For the Non-Magic Player
You play Champions onto the board and attack your opponent in an attempt to bring their life total from 30 to 0. You also have Event cards that affect the players and other Champions.
Each player has 1 Gold each turn and can play one card that requires a Gold per turn plus any number of 0-cost cards.
The rules are simple and easy to learn and the gameplay is very quick once you know what you’re doing. I would suggest printing out a cheat sheet of the keywords to use as a reference as there are about 12 and not all of them are straightforward.
There is also a little bit of terminology to remember but not too much.
For the Magic the Gathering Player
Here are the main differences…
- You have a deck of 30 cards, 30 life and a starting hand of 5
- There is no Mana system. Each player has 1 Gold each turn.
- There is no stack. You can respond only to declaring attackers, declaring blockers and declaring End of Turn.
- You have multiple attack steps. After each attack, you can attack again with a different Champion if you wish
- If you attack with multiple Champions simultaneously they attack as one and can all be blocked by a single Champion.
- Champions can only block once per turn so if it does and survives it’s rotated 180 degrees to show it has blocked. It can still be activated for abilities.
- If your opponent responds to you declaring your End Step, you go back to your Main Phase, and may even Attack again.
Epic Card Game Summary
While I got destroyed playing this and ran out of cards fairly quickly, I could see how good this game was.
While it doesn’t have that slow build-up and tactical play of Magic, its limited and seemingly balanced card pool is going to make for exciting games.
Also, every card available (120 I think) is available for about £10, as much as one rare Magic card 🙂
A good game, one I’m looking forward to playing plenty more in the future.
Jesta ThaRogue