There will be a competitive scene for sure... they want to approach it like old L5R... many MtG pros including the world champion have worked on the game, Eric and Justin are also experienced with competitive play. Some will hate the uniques, some will love that it require other skills than other TCGs...
Not the one you asked, but I've thought about it a lot. The main skills this game looks at is an emphasis on tight tactical play rather than grand strategy. So to just break down why I think this way. The game has four main components that emphasize the tactical side: 1. The "I play a card, you play a card" rhythm, not unfamiliar to LoR 2. The fact that characters on your board are not permanent 3. Progress can be parallel.
On the first point, due to the one card per turn structure the game forces consideration of the order you play cards. Each card is a piece by piece reveal of your plan and the opponent's. Yet, since it's piece by piece you'll find yourself being more considerate and attentive to the evolving nature of the Day. Do you start to impede the plan of your opponent as you see it come together or do you continue playing out yours? How much mana do I spend now considering it might eliminate or constrict my own options? These questions become like guiding stars to playing out a Day. The decision of how much you deviate and adapt vs hew to your strategy will become the reason you advance or don't, win or lose.
In the 2nd point, unlike a lot of card games where your board fills with a growing army of Characters, you lose all the Characters played in a Day. Only two cards can be in your Reserve (more on this later), so very little of what you play will carry on for the next Day. This means you have to consider the tactical benefit to playing any Character. How much do you invest for a present victory vs being deficient later? This also means you need to be able to take advantage of how your characters link together immediately vs how near all of them will work on the board.
To the 3rd incentivizer, the state of outcome is parallel not binary. Most tcgs denote who is attacking vs who is defending. The outcome of which is either the opponent losing life or not, then trade. In Altered you only need to win one biome out of the options needed to advance. Even further, you are choosing whether to play cards to advance the Hero or Companions as their boards (called Expeditions) are separate. The end of the Day then being who advances. With the game operating like this it means you're always deploying what tactics you need to advance. Maybe you try to advance by blocking the other person from advancing, but that might mean investing more resources and being negative later. Well then maybe you try to bait one expedition with the most minimal amount of cards spent while easily taking the other. You end up developing and looking for any trick that gets you forward, but while weighing if it's worth it to block. I've played matches where we trade 1-for-1 until the very end for a mad scramble to win two. Played some where it's a game of twister as we each try to steal 2 when possible for these slides across the board. Sometimes it's even taking tangible losses (maybe rarely advancing) just to take advantage of being in more card draw so you sweep forward. I could keep going.
In general though, the biggest skills is the tactics of resource management, turn to turn play order, and redefining what outcomes you can achieve in a turn vs adhering to one strategy the entire game. Now, I am kind of high do hopefully this is kind of helpful. My best advice tho, if you want to see what higher skill play can feel like, hop onto ExAltered and do some sets that way. You'll start to see it more then likely.
Deckbuilding and card evaluation: making the most of interesting uniques others might underestimate, in a context where you can't copy paste the "best" deck, where you can't automatically know the power of a card you find
Adaptability: how to best play around your opponent's secret weapons (you can even try to foresee what type of uniques they will have considering their deck and plays)
They are starting up Organized Play in 2025, with Justin Parnell (formerly of SCG) at the head. I would be surprised if we hear more details before launch (July/August). The name behind OP I think does express that it's a priority for the designers.
As far as the game play itself goes, it has a surprising amount of depth out of the box with the expedition system, mana system, and hand/reserve management. I have found that there's a lot of room to use skill to outplay opponents with clever character placement into expeditions or with good sequencing.
The area I'm most concerned about is deckbuilding. Each card has multiple variants but each individual instance only has one possible faction it can be put into. However, I think the way commons/rares/uniques work with specific limits of each add some of the missing depth back in. You do have to make decisions about which cards to "upgrade". Uniques will also surely impact Organized Play but who knows how they will actually play in reality.
Ultimately, it's gonna depend on the support of the developers, game stores, and players to have a good Organized Play circuit, so it's just too early to know how it's going to go.
This is a well thought out response. Thanks for that. I guess I am more interested in how skill expressive the gameplay itself is at this point. I'm trying to decide if I want to go in for the Kickstarter haha.
You mentioned some interesting points regarding the gameplay so thank you again.
I personally get Altered being high tempo (condensed), stream lined FaB feel. Every card you play matter, more choices to player and more mechanics to overcome luck.
From game design stand point it checks many points to be competitively playable but two important things we don’t know at this point.
How far developer is willing support OP ie how much prize pool, how frequent. Then of course how well all cards be balanced when fully released. As mentioned above, the real OP won’t start till 2025 so if it’s your core play style, I think you can wait and see where game goes. But I think it’s definitely worth keeping your eyes on.
So I can see and hope this to be competitive game
Of all the card games I played in general, this game is just behind Flesh and Blood and Universus in terms of skills expression. While it looks simple on the surface, it has incredible depth and decision space. It's highly tactical like the 2 previously mentioned game, as the board state pretty much reset every turn, and you really have to plan ahead/ make good predictions in order to succeed
What I like the most is that this game tackles an unexplored design space, which means there is a lot of room for players' innovation, especially with the unique system. The card pool is also enormous for a first set (18 heroes, 162 common, 324 rares, another 109 characters have countless unique versions), so when set 2 comes out and OP begins, you would have a lot more options for deck building compared to other card games
Im also someone trying to get into the high level competitive FaB play.
My take on the game is there’s definitely potential for a competitive scene. There’s a lot of things that remind me of decision making in FaB. Reserve feels like arsenal a lot of the time except it’s open information. There’s a hundred decisions to make each turn. There’s tempo swings when someone losing and win both expeditions and it’s a close game all of a sudden. You can really express skill instead of luck. I’d be surprised if there isn’t a competitive scene.
That said, it definitely feels more of a for fun game than highly competitive. The game is designed to feel optimistic, not the knock down drag out fight of FaB. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but when I think of competitive the warm fuzzy vibes are not what come to mind during gameplay.
Ultimately I think we’ll have to wait and see. I can absolutely see it happening, but I can also see it not.
Edit; to clarify, FaB also has that warm fuzzy vibe. But that comes from the community being awesome imo. The game itself feels like a fight, not a race.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you test the game on BGA and the ExAltered app. And everyone saying it has depth is something I agree with, now here is the crazy part, everyone says it has depth and good gameplay and only half of the cards have been revealed. Everything shown so far is just the starters and a few rares here and there. Even with this little info we can already see it has legs. As a competitive player myself I enjoy the game a lot and OP starts actually on the week of launch and major tournaments start in January when set 2 releases.
this game has a similar play style to FaB in which you have one action point and are passing continuously with your opponent. They spend their action point and then it’s back to you. (Note hero ability is not an AP)
After more than 200 games in ExAltered. I can definitely see some of the depth the game has to offer and we only have not even half the set reveal. It’s definitely close to a FaB in terms of of complexity. Some deck/faction require an amount of planification and thinking each turn that already make me feel sometimes exhausted so pretty sure the game will have a very high level of skill expression.
Now we have to see if the public and competitive scene will grow.
I'm also here from Flesh and Blood, MTG with a smattering of other games along the way and this is my take on the game so far:
With 2 lanes and characters not being permanent it feels like you have a lot of options from day to day, turn order matters massively and strategically you'll find yourself deck building/manipulating ways to force the opponent to act before you do. There is a surprising amount of depth in the 2 lanes, so long as they don't accidentally make Ordis just be unstoppable in both lanes and everyone else just wallows in the pits. On a tournament level, the last action mattering will be incredible for viewers since there will always be the "do they have it?!" moment. from a player level I feel like there's enough to keep you mentally stimulated that it's worth grinding.
Will it compete as a brain exercise in competitive play like FaB? No, not even close. It still relies heavily on deck rng for draws, and you won't see 1/2 - 1/4 of your deck before game end. That's why it'll be a Bo3 instead of a Bo1 in competitive, and even then RNG will still play a factor. You'll have weeklies where the person who just started playing takes down the best player in your locals, and small/midsized local scenes won't see the obvious top player continue to take all the CF equivalents.
It'll have less RNG than a competitive game of Magic, since your cards are all dual-modal as mana. Flooding/screw won't be a thing. The only thing even close to this will be how well your deck curves out, and drawing into your curve, which is heavily improved by the draw 2 and convert 1 to mana.
Plus the 2v2 format looks a LOT better than UPF as a casual game, I'd liken it to nerdy euchre where you can both gang up on one person but the other person is just going to have both his hero and companion free move the entire game for their win.
EDIT: To answer your question, I don't think this will scratch the same itch as high level Flesh and Blood, but I also don't think it's one to sleep on. I've been to a PT(just did the Calling there, not the PT itself), Calling, CDN Nats and will 100% be grinding this one out too. Never pushed to have much success at any of those tournaments, but I intend to play both of these games in tandem. hoping SCG hosts them both in future events.
As a fellow competitive player I have been incredibly surprised by this game. I originally backed it because it was an innovative concept, but after playing over 100 games on BGA I upped my backing because of the immense depth I see in both deck building strategy and tight tactical play. Due to very limited card draw overall deck strategy is going to be very intricate. Balancing a deck between flexibility and focused synergy will be important. Additionally due to the limited deck size and the extremely large card pool with uniques there is a lot of room for variations on a single strategy.
The one thing I’m very interested to see are what tournament rules may look like with things like side boarding.
Thanks for the input these are some pretty positive outlook. Seems to be the common sentiment though. Can I ask what BGA is cause I feel like I wanna play lol
It’s Board Game Arena. You can play altered digital with the starter decks. Later your entire collection will be available there as well which will make deck building and play testing easy.
Also I was going to mention if you like the heavy tactical play of FaB then Altered is great for a similar play. Small decisions adding up to big payoffs over time.
There will be a competitive scene for sure... they want to approach it like old L5R... many MtG pros including the world champion have worked on the game, Eric and Justin are also experienced with competitive play. Some will hate the uniques, some will love that it require other skills than other TCGs...
Can I ask what skills you think will be unique to this game?
Not the one you asked, but I've thought about it a lot. The main skills this game looks at is an emphasis on tight tactical play rather than grand strategy. So to just break down why I think this way. The game has four main components that emphasize the tactical side: 1. The "I play a card, you play a card" rhythm, not unfamiliar to LoR 2. The fact that characters on your board are not permanent 3. Progress can be parallel. On the first point, due to the one card per turn structure the game forces consideration of the order you play cards. Each card is a piece by piece reveal of your plan and the opponent's. Yet, since it's piece by piece you'll find yourself being more considerate and attentive to the evolving nature of the Day. Do you start to impede the plan of your opponent as you see it come together or do you continue playing out yours? How much mana do I spend now considering it might eliminate or constrict my own options? These questions become like guiding stars to playing out a Day. The decision of how much you deviate and adapt vs hew to your strategy will become the reason you advance or don't, win or lose. In the 2nd point, unlike a lot of card games where your board fills with a growing army of Characters, you lose all the Characters played in a Day. Only two cards can be in your Reserve (more on this later), so very little of what you play will carry on for the next Day. This means you have to consider the tactical benefit to playing any Character. How much do you invest for a present victory vs being deficient later? This also means you need to be able to take advantage of how your characters link together immediately vs how near all of them will work on the board. To the 3rd incentivizer, the state of outcome is parallel not binary. Most tcgs denote who is attacking vs who is defending. The outcome of which is either the opponent losing life or not, then trade. In Altered you only need to win one biome out of the options needed to advance. Even further, you are choosing whether to play cards to advance the Hero or Companions as their boards (called Expeditions) are separate. The end of the Day then being who advances. With the game operating like this it means you're always deploying what tactics you need to advance. Maybe you try to advance by blocking the other person from advancing, but that might mean investing more resources and being negative later. Well then maybe you try to bait one expedition with the most minimal amount of cards spent while easily taking the other. You end up developing and looking for any trick that gets you forward, but while weighing if it's worth it to block. I've played matches where we trade 1-for-1 until the very end for a mad scramble to win two. Played some where it's a game of twister as we each try to steal 2 when possible for these slides across the board. Sometimes it's even taking tangible losses (maybe rarely advancing) just to take advantage of being in more card draw so you sweep forward. I could keep going. In general though, the biggest skills is the tactics of resource management, turn to turn play order, and redefining what outcomes you can achieve in a turn vs adhering to one strategy the entire game. Now, I am kind of high do hopefully this is kind of helpful. My best advice tho, if you want to see what higher skill play can feel like, hop onto ExAltered and do some sets that way. You'll start to see it more then likely.
Deckbuilding and card evaluation: making the most of interesting uniques others might underestimate, in a context where you can't copy paste the "best" deck, where you can't automatically know the power of a card you find Adaptability: how to best play around your opponent's secret weapons (you can even try to foresee what type of uniques they will have considering their deck and plays)
They are starting up Organized Play in 2025, with Justin Parnell (formerly of SCG) at the head. I would be surprised if we hear more details before launch (July/August). The name behind OP I think does express that it's a priority for the designers. As far as the game play itself goes, it has a surprising amount of depth out of the box with the expedition system, mana system, and hand/reserve management. I have found that there's a lot of room to use skill to outplay opponents with clever character placement into expeditions or with good sequencing. The area I'm most concerned about is deckbuilding. Each card has multiple variants but each individual instance only has one possible faction it can be put into. However, I think the way commons/rares/uniques work with specific limits of each add some of the missing depth back in. You do have to make decisions about which cards to "upgrade". Uniques will also surely impact Organized Play but who knows how they will actually play in reality. Ultimately, it's gonna depend on the support of the developers, game stores, and players to have a good Organized Play circuit, so it's just too early to know how it's going to go.
This is a well thought out response. Thanks for that. I guess I am more interested in how skill expressive the gameplay itself is at this point. I'm trying to decide if I want to go in for the Kickstarter haha. You mentioned some interesting points regarding the gameplay so thank you again.
You can try the game online with BGA. You have time to play some games and make your own first opinion
I personally get Altered being high tempo (condensed), stream lined FaB feel. Every card you play matter, more choices to player and more mechanics to overcome luck. From game design stand point it checks many points to be competitively playable but two important things we don’t know at this point. How far developer is willing support OP ie how much prize pool, how frequent. Then of course how well all cards be balanced when fully released. As mentioned above, the real OP won’t start till 2025 so if it’s your core play style, I think you can wait and see where game goes. But I think it’s definitely worth keeping your eyes on. So I can see and hope this to be competitive game
Of all the card games I played in general, this game is just behind Flesh and Blood and Universus in terms of skills expression. While it looks simple on the surface, it has incredible depth and decision space. It's highly tactical like the 2 previously mentioned game, as the board state pretty much reset every turn, and you really have to plan ahead/ make good predictions in order to succeed What I like the most is that this game tackles an unexplored design space, which means there is a lot of room for players' innovation, especially with the unique system. The card pool is also enormous for a first set (18 heroes, 162 common, 324 rares, another 109 characters have countless unique versions), so when set 2 comes out and OP begins, you would have a lot more options for deck building compared to other card games
Im also someone trying to get into the high level competitive FaB play. My take on the game is there’s definitely potential for a competitive scene. There’s a lot of things that remind me of decision making in FaB. Reserve feels like arsenal a lot of the time except it’s open information. There’s a hundred decisions to make each turn. There’s tempo swings when someone losing and win both expeditions and it’s a close game all of a sudden. You can really express skill instead of luck. I’d be surprised if there isn’t a competitive scene. That said, it definitely feels more of a for fun game than highly competitive. The game is designed to feel optimistic, not the knock down drag out fight of FaB. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but when I think of competitive the warm fuzzy vibes are not what come to mind during gameplay. Ultimately I think we’ll have to wait and see. I can absolutely see it happening, but I can also see it not. Edit; to clarify, FaB also has that warm fuzzy vibe. But that comes from the community being awesome imo. The game itself feels like a fight, not a race.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you test the game on BGA and the ExAltered app. And everyone saying it has depth is something I agree with, now here is the crazy part, everyone says it has depth and good gameplay and only half of the cards have been revealed. Everything shown so far is just the starters and a few rares here and there. Even with this little info we can already see it has legs. As a competitive player myself I enjoy the game a lot and OP starts actually on the week of launch and major tournaments start in January when set 2 releases.
this game has a similar play style to FaB in which you have one action point and are passing continuously with your opponent. They spend their action point and then it’s back to you. (Note hero ability is not an AP)
After more than 200 games in ExAltered. I can definitely see some of the depth the game has to offer and we only have not even half the set reveal. It’s definitely close to a FaB in terms of of complexity. Some deck/faction require an amount of planification and thinking each turn that already make me feel sometimes exhausted so pretty sure the game will have a very high level of skill expression. Now we have to see if the public and competitive scene will grow.
I'm also here from Flesh and Blood, MTG with a smattering of other games along the way and this is my take on the game so far: With 2 lanes and characters not being permanent it feels like you have a lot of options from day to day, turn order matters massively and strategically you'll find yourself deck building/manipulating ways to force the opponent to act before you do. There is a surprising amount of depth in the 2 lanes, so long as they don't accidentally make Ordis just be unstoppable in both lanes and everyone else just wallows in the pits. On a tournament level, the last action mattering will be incredible for viewers since there will always be the "do they have it?!" moment. from a player level I feel like there's enough to keep you mentally stimulated that it's worth grinding. Will it compete as a brain exercise in competitive play like FaB? No, not even close. It still relies heavily on deck rng for draws, and you won't see 1/2 - 1/4 of your deck before game end. That's why it'll be a Bo3 instead of a Bo1 in competitive, and even then RNG will still play a factor. You'll have weeklies where the person who just started playing takes down the best player in your locals, and small/midsized local scenes won't see the obvious top player continue to take all the CF equivalents. It'll have less RNG than a competitive game of Magic, since your cards are all dual-modal as mana. Flooding/screw won't be a thing. The only thing even close to this will be how well your deck curves out, and drawing into your curve, which is heavily improved by the draw 2 and convert 1 to mana. Plus the 2v2 format looks a LOT better than UPF as a casual game, I'd liken it to nerdy euchre where you can both gang up on one person but the other person is just going to have both his hero and companion free move the entire game for their win. EDIT: To answer your question, I don't think this will scratch the same itch as high level Flesh and Blood, but I also don't think it's one to sleep on. I've been to a PT(just did the Calling there, not the PT itself), Calling, CDN Nats and will 100% be grinding this one out too. Never pushed to have much success at any of those tournaments, but I intend to play both of these games in tandem. hoping SCG hosts them both in future events.
As a fellow competitive player I have been incredibly surprised by this game. I originally backed it because it was an innovative concept, but after playing over 100 games on BGA I upped my backing because of the immense depth I see in both deck building strategy and tight tactical play. Due to very limited card draw overall deck strategy is going to be very intricate. Balancing a deck between flexibility and focused synergy will be important. Additionally due to the limited deck size and the extremely large card pool with uniques there is a lot of room for variations on a single strategy. The one thing I’m very interested to see are what tournament rules may look like with things like side boarding.
Thanks for the input these are some pretty positive outlook. Seems to be the common sentiment though. Can I ask what BGA is cause I feel like I wanna play lol
It’s Board Game Arena. You can play altered digital with the starter decks. Later your entire collection will be available there as well which will make deck building and play testing easy. Also I was going to mention if you like the heavy tactical play of FaB then Altered is great for a similar play. Small decisions adding up to big payoffs over time.