Most Top8Magic readers have heard of Rob Dougherty and Darwin Kastle. In their Magic-playing heyday, Rob and Darwin were known as members/leaders of the Your Move Games team (along with Chad Ellis and Dave Humphreys). Over time YMG evolved into a game design company and recently they have launched the much-hyped TCG known simply as Epic.

We have been playing a bit of Epic around the office these past few weeks, and we decided it would be appropriate to put a review of the game up on the site for those of you who are unfamiliar with the game.

At its core Epic plays pretty much like Type 4 Magic — infinite mana, one spell per turn. Each player gets 1 “action” to spend per turn. Some cards cost an action to play, some do not. In addition to the binary costing, each card has a “speed,” which tells you when you can play it. Cards can be “fast” (played like Instants), “paced” (can be played in either the first or second main phase of your turn), or “build” (can only be played in your second main phase).

There are a few other rules differences between Epic and Magic, but for the most part they play the same. The big difference, however is the power level of the cards you get to play. For example, there is an Ancestral Recall in this game and I have cut this card from most of my designed (constructed) decks.

The power level of the average Epic card is incredibly high relative to cards from Magic: the Gathering. Since you spend no time developing resources, you can play your big effects right away. It is not out of the question for your opponent to drop an 11/11 Breakthrough (trample) creature on turn 1 in this game.

Playing Epic using sealed product is a lot of fun – typically 3-pack sealed. Open your 45 cards, cut 15 of them, shuffle and play. One of the things players tend to gripe about in sealed deck is not being able to play all of their good cards because of the difficulty of building a good mana base, or keeping their deck on a nice curve. That issue doesn’t really come up in Epic and instead you just get to cut your 15 bad/situational cards and battle bombs v bombs. Opening a good mix of Events (spells) and Champions (creatures) isn’t an issue either because each pack is divided evenly between the two card types.

Given the casual feel of limited play, designed deck is very Spike-y. There are quite a few instantaneous (Split Second) stops (counterspells) and removal cards in the set. Since you can play any cards you want, virtually every deck ends up playing some number of these. We have been testing the game a bit via MWS and control on control matchups can be incredibly frustrating and complicated. Aggressive decks are a bit more fun to play, some of which can reliably kill by turn 2 or 3. Getting those nut draws is pretty nice, but they are also vulnerable to getting blown out by many of the staple control cards.

Epic is a nice diversion from Magic. Coming from Magic, the game is really easy to learn. However, the lack resource development leads to a very different gameplay experience. A lot of traditional Magic theory applies, but there are places where strategy differs greatly, which makes Epic feel like less of a straight Magic clone than it might appear at first glance. I am excited to see where the game goes in the future, and am even tempted to try my luck in a couple of the big Epic tournaments that are going to be in the New York area later this year. If you know anyone who plays, or if your local hobby store carries the game, I would definitely recommend getting a group of friends together and trying the game out with a friendly sealed deck. If you like it, be sure to check out the official site, epictcg.com, to see if there are any events coming to you area in the future.

~WillPoP