James Sanderson: Andrew “The Prodigy” Taylor, our first national champion! OverPower is essentially a brand new TCG, and we are slowly kind of redefining what a pro player looks like in our space. What, based on your time in the game, do you feel is the definition of a pro player in Overpower right now?
Andrew Taylor: That’s a tough one, honestly. I think there’s a pretty big vacuum right now where a large group of people could be. To me, a pro is somebody who plays regularly against a wide array of opponents. They study the metagame, tournament footage, they talk strategy with other people, and they’re willing to adjust both how they play the game and how they build decks. I think that the cool thing about, as you said, it is new. There is kind of a changing of the guard happening that I have noticed where we see people who used to dominate and now they’re not showing those same results. Whereas we also see new people show up and crush their competitors. And then there’s a small amount in between who have played previously, who have shown the adaptability to adjust to the new modern game.
James Sanderson: You mentioned that interfacing with the community is part of that, and sharing your knowledge and taking in knowledge from other pro players lends to the adaptability you’re talking about.
Andrew Taylor: Oh, yeah. Definitely. I mean, I’ve seen some people who kind of hoard knowledge like a dragon and then they have maybe one or two cool tricks that they bring out of nowhere that, oh wow, they surprise people, but everyone else has 12 different tricks that they’ve been sharing amongst each other so they know what to look out for. It’s definitely helped improve my game. I have friends who say they’re 50/50 players and I disagree. I think they’re better than that. But I learn stuff from them all the time. As long as you’re constantly evolving and the wheels are turning and you’re trying stuff that’s not just, well, “I build my decks this way, I have this many power cards and this many specials per character and this many any heroes”. If that’s your mentality, that’s great. But the guy who’s willing to adapt and change based on what cards are out in the pool is going to dust you.
James Sanderson: I think at this point it’s pretty safe to say that whatever the definition of a pro player is in OverPower, you are one. You have results in legacy before this new modern format, and now you’ve consistently been at the top tables in recent tournaments. You’ve put up great results and you are our first national champion. What does it mean to you that you’re one of the earliest pros in the game?
Andrew Taylor: A great deal. I feel respected by the community, and anything strategy related that I say tends to carry a good amount of weight and that’s pretty cool. It’s very special to me. It’s still pretty surreal that the game I played casually as a little kid with my dad, completely wrong, with subpar characters, you know, using Cable on my front line is now one of my favorite hobbies and something I’m pretty good at and very invested in.
James Sanderson: And it’s invested in you, too, right? I mean, you went from playing this for fun at the kitchen table with your dad to playing at the highest levels and you’ve taken home, you know, five figures worth of prize winnings. That’s not what it’s about for you, obviously. But it is cool to see you rewarded for all the time and energy that you put in it.
Andrew Taylor: Yeah, I totally hope that that inspires other people, too. That somebody new can come in and just if you put time and effort and energy into it, you can get something out of it. You can compete with the 30-year veterans who have been playing it since the 90s.
James Sanderson: So let’s talk a little bit about last season, Season Zero. Could you talk about your earliest takes on the metagame? Your first takes, how you felt going into the first Regional in Seattle, your hometown?
Andrew Taylor: I didn’t know what to expect at all. From the legacy shift of the one or two Modern tournies I’d seen, I knew that defense was lacking in the new stuff. So, I leaned into speed strategies. My first favorite deck was Count of Monte Cristo and Sherlock Holmes, because it was card advantage and it was speed and I was just trying to put pressure, make my opponent concede or get KOs and then get card advantage that way or card advantage with Count. And right before our regional, I was playing against Shawn Hopkins, one of our local guys, and I just kept getting destroyed by Wicked Witch. Same thing with Joe Peters. They just kept wrecking me with Wicked Witch. And so I made a pivot a couple days before the tournament. I was like, “What? These shift cards are just bonkers. They can just win a hand. So I’m going to try and fit both of them even though their grids don’t synergize that well.” And then I splashed Mina Harker in with some negates to kind of give me some get out of jail free cards. And if I could just keep the front line alive, then I could kind of ride the card advantage to victory. The deck was pretty amazing. Actually, even though I got third, I did have the best win rate at that tourney because I was undefeated going into the playoffs.
James Sanderson: What happened in the Top 8?
Andrew Taylor: It did have one weakness and that was a monster venture deck, played by the best pilot in the world. Rest in peace, Phil Miller.
James Sanderson: And that game was my introduction to this competitive sport, it was so formative to how I think of competitive play in OverPower. Everyone was such a good sport. That game was wild – you were playing against Phil, who eventually won the whole tournament, and he was making crazy bids. Was that big one for four or five?
Andrew Taylor: Five, in hand two. And I won hand one. I decided to chicken out because I didn’t want to trade. I KO’d his Deja Thoris. He could have taken my Mina and I was like, I’m going to chicken out and then I’ll just draw into my shift stuff. And it was unreal. He’s looking at the board. He’s looking across and he had initiative and I had placed a bunch of cards like I was going to run away. I had like three cards placed to Mina and she was one hit from death and he liked his hand and he just kind of looked at me and I was like, “Oh, I got chills.” And then he goes, “I bid five.” And I was like, “Oh no, oh no, please draw Harness the Wind or Transformation Trickery.” And I drew three cards and did not draw either.
James Sanderson: Oh man.
Andrew Taylor: Like, well, that’s it. Good game. It was awesome.
James Sanderson: Being an early adopter of Wicked Witch, seeing the raw power, I think you were one of the first to kind of play her competitively. You saw that shift deck which has clearly taken over the meta, even up to now. Could you speak to the power level that she still exhibits? Can you talk a little bit about what you think the future looks like for her as a character?
Andrew Taylor: She’s everywhere and rightly so. She’s the cheapest eight rank character tied with Sherlock. She has the best defensive card in the game and she brings venture and a strong control tool in her discard a placed card. I think that she will continue to plague the meta until she rotates out. I think if she was 20 threat she would definitely still see play. She might even still see play at Leonidas’ threat at 21. She is a monster. Or if she was 19 points and seven energy instead of an eight I think she would still see a lot of play, but she can just be used as a flex character. She fits in so many decks. She can be your anchor like in my Nationals deck. We’re gonna see a lot of her. I think in the future, the fact that everybody gets access to Damian Darkblood to remove a remainder of battle or remainder of game card, I think that will temper her a little bit, but you’ve still got to have it at the right time. We’re still going to see her everywhere.
James Sanderson: Do you think that she’ll end up in a deck filled with the new Skybound characters, with those high energy heroes? Or do you think that she’s going to kind of stick around in her hometown of World Legends?
Andrew Taylor: I think a little of both. I think we’ll see her and Joan, and Atom Eve is a pretty natural pairing where they have double eight energy and Atom Eve can change the icons on Joan’s stuff to make it even nastier. And then I think we’ll see her with new characters too. I mean, you could put Witch with Immortal, the Mauler Twins, or Walkers and then shift hits to the guys that are, you know, they resurrect or are pretty much unkillable. You get a lot of value there, too. So, I think we’ll see her everywhere still.
James Sanderson: We talked a little bit about the fact that you won the National Championship, but I want to know how it felt to win and how have you felt since?
Andrew Taylor: It was pretty surreal. I took an early loss to Marcel Lojet, but my strategy is always to shake it off in the moment and think, “Don’t worry, there’s going to be analytics later.” I know that I dwell on my losses a lot and I’ll go over them over and over and over again. I still think about that game with Phil. It pops in my brain at least once every few days. But for now, we’re just having fun and it’s off to the next game. So, after Regional 4 in Philly, which was my worst ever tourney performance – I mean, there’s a reason nobody talks about my Philly deck, because it got obliterated – I put a ton of effort into testing the same deck and throughout Nationals I just kept winning. Some of them where I handily defeated my opponents and some of them were by the skin of my teeth, but that was kind of how the deck was designed. If it went long, I had redundant power pack plans. And usually, you know, the betting was very conservative on both sides because of Hades, because it’s in almost every deck. And so I have Spartan training ground and EFL. So if we go late, then I’m going to take it nine times out of ten. The event taught me a lot. 70% skill will only take you so far when matchups and variance account for the other 30%. But having me and Thomas Kiene and Joe Peters all enter the top eight, all from Seattle, that definitely felt great. We had a couple other buddies from home with us, but the field was just brutal. The Top 8 couldn’t be full of Seattle-ites completely. But seeing guys from our local play group succeed really brings me joy well beyond my own success. There were tons of decks and creativity there, you know. Shout out to Charlie Hanford with his Zeus Control deck that showed us all we’ve been playing Zeus wrong this entire time. But at the end of the day, my deck just had too much speed to keep up with and it was pretty well-rounded. Decent bench venture and premium defensive cards from all my front liners – it was very strong. Plus, you know, variance on my side.
James Sanderson: We’re moving back into your hometown for Regional 3 at the start of September. How are you feeling getting back home base?
Andrew Taylor: Oh, I feel great. Like you said, I’m already very comfortable at the table and having homefield advantage is pretty huge. So, I think it’s great. I’ve been cracking the whip with all of the local guys, getting them to show up. As soon as cards were listed and public information, we were printing out proxies and theory crafting decks and going head-to-head and battling. So, I actually have three of our local guys who have either never been to a tourney or never top 8’d. And I’ve kind of taken all three of them under my wing and I would love to see one of them top 8 because there’s definitely something special there. There’s a hunger, there’s a drive. One of them’s brand new, but he’s really good at chess. So, I really want to see them succeed. But I definitely feel good. I think I’ve identified the shift that’s going to come in the upcoming meta. I have two decks: one for the Regional and one for the Modern event the day after. I’m going to have a surprise at the Regional. I’m going to have a character that nobody is expecting. And I think it’s going to catch people off guard in a good way for me.
James Sanderson: I do expect there to be a really diverse metagame. I’m excited to see what you bring to the table! It’s also really cool to hear how much of your success you feel is found in other people. You obviously have pride in your hometown and the people that you play with. I think it’s worth mentioning that, you know, a lot of what you’re excited about is how the people around you are doing. And I think maybe that’s also part of what being a pro player is, right? Is just trying to lift people up with you.
I feel like you saw early on how a lot of Season Zero was going to shake out. Looking forward at the Skybound release, and now that you’ve had a chance to see most, if not all of the cards, what are your first impressions on Modern going forward? What sticks out to you?
Andrew Taylor: I love the advanced defensive shell that the GDA Any Characters bring. I think that unlocks a lot of characters, and you don’t have so many auto-includes. You don’t have to take Joan or Leonidas or any of these characters because they bring stuff on top of a defensive card. You can get away with trying other strategies. Also, we’re going to see less Grim Reapers and Hades. And I’m not really that concerned with Grim Reaper, but I know it will make a lot of people happy; that’s going to be less impactful, but Hades being gone is huge because without the double threat of a mission reset, games become a lot more volatile. In the testing that I’ve done, most games are over in five hands.
James Sanderson: Whoa.
Andrew Taylor: And I think that’s really fun because you’re kind of waiting for your moment and then you try to strike. And you can definitely still play conservatively, but I don’t think it’s necessary. In ERB, you had to have a late game strategy because of how long everything went and you kind of needed that or you were almost handicapped at the end. Now you don’t have to do that. Like we talked about before, everybody gains a Damian Darkblood, which is really nice to counter these “remainder of” cards. And not just Witch and Joan, but we also have, you know, a lot of other characters, Atom Eve, and other characters coming that have very powerful “remainder of” effects. So, I think that’s going to be really clutch to kind of give everybody an option so they don’t just have to play negate characters in order to have some kind of answer for that.
I honestly think we’re going to see a healthy rock, paper, scissors where we’re going to have teamwork decks that, you know, highlight Sheriff of Nottingham and Rick Grimes and, you know, sometimes you can even modify a God King Lore or Battlebeast deck to be a teamwork deck because those guys have access to seven unique teamworks without duplication because of their stats. But there’s a lot of different cool fun teamwork ideas and I think those will beat the Negate decks. You know, Mikey Rhodess, we’re going to see him everywhere because he’s Merlin with venture. He’s a monster. And the Negate decks are going to do great against the Atom Eve, Joan, and Witch stuff. They’re going to do great against characters like Doc Seismic and Governor who are bringing nines and Zeus if we see him. The negate decks are going to do a great job controlling those crazy powerful specials and then I think the crazy powerful specials are going to do well against the teamwork decks.
So, we kind of have a nice little cycle that I foresee happening and there will be ways to kind of dabble and get a little bit of all three and I think some of the good players are going to try and do that. But you can’t have everything. The creative players are going to do awesome stuff with Atom Eve. I think there’s going to be turtle decks where you can make an unkillable Omni Man – a defensive shell to make your Omni Man or even your Battle Beast just unkillable and you’re going to ride it out to the end and they’re going to fell your guys one by one. I think there’s going to be decks where you can just put so much venture in and you have better grid synergy now that there’s so many character options. So, these venture decks, I think they’ll be able to win games being down one or even two characters. They could still pull the game off with a two on four.
And then I think speed will still be relevant. Omni Man and Battle Beast and Machine Head are going to do a great job countering the speed as well as shifting into Immortal and Mauler Twins and stuff like that. But the speed decks still put pressure on those characters and you’re still going to be able to go “BAM”, throw four or five attacks and put your opponent on their heels and then they have to run away. But the cool thing about this game is you can’t have everything. You can’t have multiple eight rankers, negates, big venture, speed, and tricks, right? Like you have to sacrifice a couple of those because everything is for the most part very balanced.
James Sanderson: Not that you have anything to prove this year, but how are you feeling about defending your title? Which other pros are you most concerned about trying for the belt?
Andrew Taylor: I definitely can’t wait, but the pressure is on. You know, after last season, I think that people expect me to perform at a high level. I will certainly try my best. My number one goal is to always have fun. As far as people to take the belt from me, the two players that I am most nerve-wracked against are going to surprise everyone, and that is Joe Peters and Thomas Kiene, because I don’t know how I beat them at nationals. They just play and see the game on another level. I think that the “iron sharpens iron” saying is a real thing. And I think a lot of my success is due to the fact that I get so many reps in against those guys. I’m also nervous about facing Jessica Simms and Noor El-Barrad. I haven’t played either of them with stakes, and watching their games back they constantly pull off moves that their opponent didn’t see coming or I wouldn’t even think to do. So, I think my margin for error against those four is zero.
And I need variance on my side at the same time. And there are a lot of other players who I feel I’m pretty much a coin flip against, but you know, I can do things to make myself feel like I have a 60/40 chance. You know, all the stuff that I preach: like stay up on watching games – tourney games, casual games, pop into Discord all the time and see what people are doing, get lots of reps in with and against a wide variety of decks, stay up to date on rule and card interactions, and sharpen your card knowledge, too. Like, study the cards. Go to Joe Peter’s website, everyone, and study those new cards because if you know, you can rattle your opponent if you know what the cards in their deck do better than they do.
James Sanderson: You mentioned the amount of time that you spend reviewing old games, watching game play, learning from the other best players in the game. You’ve put a lot of effort into editing and adding commentary over a lot of those same games filmed this past season. You bring a level of excitement and deep knowledge to your commentary. Is it a hobby, a way to get closer to the game, or is it something you could see yourself doing in a more elevated capacity at some point?
Andrew Taylor: I just love all things Overpower. I’m just trying to do my part to blow the game up. The community is amazing. The founders are great. Everyone at LRG, the game is unique and it’s unlike anything else on the planet. I’ve always really enjoyed chess, poker, and TCGs, and this is literally all three rolled up into one incredible game. So I do really enjoy doing commentary on matches and raising other peoples’ game to the next level. So, I could see myself being an official commentator, but I would have to be some sort of subcontractor. That way, it does not kick me out of the tourney circuit. You know what I mean?
James Sanderson: So, what’s next for Andrew Taylor as a player and as a content creator?
Andrew Taylor: I mean, the future’s wide open. I guess we’ll see what happens. I really just want to keep playing and continue doing well for a long time. Someday I really want to be the Pacific Northwest Jedi master of the game. I want to see all of our guys top 8ing events, having a blast doing it. There’s really nothing quite like introducing someone to the game and then a few months later they pull off a play or a combo that I never even considered and then winning with it. That brings me so much joy. And you know, playing with my dad and my buddies is the reason I literally started doing this. So, no matter how big it gets, I never want to lose that. I think that’s really important. I really hope that this game blows up and it becomes mainstream. If that day comes, I do have insane delusions of being captain of the Pacific Northwest OverPower team and leading hundreds, if not thousands of players and helping them all sharpen their game and succeed. And yeah, I’m going to just keep, in the meantime, making OverPower videos as long as I enjoy doing it. If I’m helping one person, then it’s definitely worth it for me.
I have something also in the works, but my business associates have requested I keep it kind of on the DL. So, I hope to have an announcement soon, but for now, all I can say is I’m very excited about it. So, stay tuned!
James Sanderson: Man, that is exciting. Even if it is a little enigmatic, I’m very excited to hear more. Man, what a beginning to your career. What a beginning to this part of the competitive nature of this game. I can’t wait to see where you go, where your team goes, where our community goes and you are really at the heart of it. So, thank you for your continued enthusiasm and love of the game.
We’ll see you in a couple weeks in Seattle. I’ll be there to watch you guys hold court. It’s going to be fun!
Andrew Taylor: I can’t wait. Thank you so much.