What is the “State of the Game”?
Howdy OverPower players new and old! My name is James and I’m the head of Organized Play with Lazarus Rising Games – I’m so excited to be a part of this amazing community and to help lead the charge on bringing tournaments of all sizes to local game stores and kitchen tables all over the world! Going forward, every so often I want to reach out to our players to give updates, share new information, and generally check in with everyone about all things OverPower. The purpose of this particular State of the Game address is to inform you all about a few things we have coming up, as well as a look under the hood of our developing programs and some additional insight into the current metagame with stats from our first major event. We’d also like to bring you some updates on distribution information and provide some context for the decisions we’ve been making in recent months.
Season Zero’s Humble Beginnings
Season Zero so far has largely been a success by our metrics. Overpower has gone from a community project with a few die-hard players, to being fully resurrected and on retail shelves with its first major release, the Edgar Rice Burroughs: World Legends Set. We’ve had a presence at a few conventions already this year (Origins, PAX East, San Diego Comic Con, etc) and will continue to be at major conventions going forward (this year PAX West, PAX Unplugged, New York City Comic Con, etc). We’ve enjoyed and appreciated feedback on the set from the community, and we’ve just wrapped up our Skybound set for release in early 2026. Season 1 is coming, and we’re confident you’re going to be as thrilled as we are!
Regional Qualifiers
We’ve had our first Regional Qualifier Event – one of four $20,000 prize pool tournaments that qualify players for the National OverPower Championship, where $25,000 in prizes is up for grabs! This first event, which took place in Seattle, WA at the wonderful Zulu’s Board Game Café, was a blast. Thirty-six players from all over the world came to compete – from Ohio, to Toronto, CA, to Brazil (!!!), competitors came with new and exciting decks with no established meta to see which characters and strategies would come out on top. Our entire team was in attendance, and we loved seeing everyone coming together to play in our first major OP tournament! This week, we’ll head to Columbus, OH for the second Regional Qualifier at the illustrious Heroes and Games. We expect a higher turnout for this one, so bring your best, most creative, and/or most powerful deck for a chance to win big and qualify for Nationals!
Regional: Seattle Metagame
The metagame established at Regional 1 is a small sample size, but I wanted to call out character use in particular. The top 8 decks of the tournament included 4 copies of Billy the Kid, which is the most used character both in the top 8 and in the tournament in general, with 9 copies overall. Seems like old Billy found his way into all of your hearts, which is awesome! He was utilized mostly as a reserve character, with some decks only playing a few of his character specific attacks and others including a switching mechanic to play more of his explosive “One-Per-Deck”s. Leonidas and Zorro are proving to be a great team of Combat hardened veterans – Leo made his way into 3 decks in the top 8 and 9 decks overall, and Zorro also had 3 copies on the top 8 and 8 decks used him overall. As an archetype, shifting seemed to be extremely powerful, especially combined with the ability to counter an entire character’s venture in one action.
I want to dive into some other interesting numbers here: the characters with the most uses in the tournament who didn’t have a single copy in the top 8 were Ra and Hercules, with 6 copies played in 36 decks. Clearly quite a few players saw the value in these guys but they just couldn’t quite break through. Also are the characters that were not represented at all: Angry Mob: Industrial Age, Angry Mob: Middle Age, Carson of Venus, Dracula, Invisible Man, Lancelot, Sheriff of Nottingham, Time Traveler, and Van Helsing. I was particularly surprised not to see Dracula represented, but I’m hoping that we’ll see a few of these lesser used characters break through in Regional 2 this week! Important note: between results seen in Regional 1 and general feedback from our players, we’re going to be keeping a close eye on the impact of the one-per-deck Any Character “Grim Reaper. This card has resulted in some interactions that can be discouraging to see, and in the whole tournament there were only a couple of decks without the card which all performed rather poorly. These numbers are a bit concerning, but we will continue to monitor its effects for now with the new set on the horizon.
Judge and Ambassador Programs
As we are approaching Season One, we will be rolling out our Ambassador and Judge Programs in a more official capacity. I’ve had quite a few people reach out to ask about the Ambassador Program specifically, so I wanted to make sure I touched on it here. If you have passed the tests to be a Judge or Ambassador, the good news is you are in our system and certified! Judges, please seek opportunities at your local game store, and if you are looking to be involved in larger events, reach out to us! We will add anyone interested for consideration in involvement in future LRG sponsored events such as Regionals. Ambassadors, your time is coming. There are already many of you who have spent a lot of time and energy teaching people how to play and getting them signed up with a Carde.io account. We greatly appreciate your efforts, and we’re working towards implementing the rewards system. We’re spending the time to get it right, so things have been moving slower than we’d hoped. Stay tuned for more information on a short term solution to make sure you are being recognized for your hard work – that will come in a separate announcement.
Canadian Distribution
Lastly I’d like to address the Canadian elephant in the room. It’s been brought to our attention that the rollout for our Canadian game stores and players has been less than stellar. We understand your disappointment, as we’re feeling it ourselves. We had issues getting the product over the border, with no notification that it was held. We’ve hopefully remedied the situation and there should be a wave of this new set arriving in stores in the Great North shortly. We believe we’ve gotten to the root of this issue so it shouldn’t happen again, and we appreciate your patience and support as we navigate the complicated world of international shipping for the first time. We have taken each situation from Season Zero and have tried to either solidify what went right or learn from what went wrong in an effort to make the official launch of OverPower and Season One as successful as possible. We can’t do that without each and every one of you, so thank you so much for being on this journey with us and for joining, or continuing, the OverPower community.
Signing Off
I want to thank you for taking the time to read our first State of the Game! If you have any questions about what you’ve read, or in general, reach out to organizedplay@overpowercardgame.com and we’ll do our best to help out. I hope to see you all in Columbus!