by James Sanderson, July 2026
Welcome, everyone, to Season One of OverPower Organized Play! As we gear up for the release of the Skybound set and prepare to work characters from Invincible and the Walking Dead into our decks, I’d like to talk about everything that we have going on at LRG. I’m also going to break down the metagame at the first Regional in Columbus, OH at Heroes and Games. I have a lot to say in this edition of the State of the Game, so I’m going to jump right in!
REGIONAL #1 – COLUMBUS, OH
It finally happened people: someone played Invisible Man in a deck (thanks Doug Simms). Jokes aside, despite a fairly established metagame in ERB World Legends, a lot of really interesting decks found their way into the tournament. We had a lot of firsts, like the aforementioned Invisible Man deck, a 9th place finish for Time Traveler, and a lot of new player names in the top 8! While Pierre “Traveling Goof” Cieniewicz already displayed a solid breakdown (excellent job my friend!), I’m going to do my usual breakdown here and get a tiny bit more in depth.
There were 53 players at the event, and with the final numbers in we had 26 Wicked Witch decks. This is not super surprising, considering how well she performed in Season Zero, but what DID surprise me was that 5 of the top 8 decks played a copy. It’s no secret that Witch is a powerful character, with an affordable cost, 8 energy, and some really powerful specials. She is continuing to be a menace in Modern, but I’m excited to see how she plays with and against the upcoming Skybound characters. Other characters of note were Dr. Watson (17 decks) and Jane Porter (15 decks) who mostly played support roles, and Morgan Le Fay (15 decks) and Joan of Arc (14 decks) who play huge roles in the “Girls’ Night” decks made popular by the likes of pro players Jessica Simms, who went undefeated in Swiss at Nationals, and Andrew Taylor, the Season Zero National Champion.
Now for some of the less fortunate characters from the event: Sherlock Holmes (10 decks) and Carson of Venus (7 decks) were the most played characters without a top 8 appearance. Angry Mob: Industrial Age is now the only character never to be played in a competitive OverPower event, but was joined in Columbus by Lancelot, Poseidon, Tars Tarkas, and, quite surprisingly, Sheriff of Nottingham. The Sheriff was a part of Andrew Taylor’s National winning deck, so I expected to see at least a few copies but I guess he stayed in Seattle for this one.
Justin Sadaie, who was able to take down the mighty Noor El-Barrad in the finals, played Wicked Witch, Morgan Le Fay, and Angry Mob: Industrial Age in the front with Cthulhu in reserve. Noor’s deck played Sun Wukong, Zorro, and Dejah Thoris out front with Jane Porter supporting. Both decks took advantage of the powerful shift mechanic, as well as a homebase in The Round Table. I’d like to call out Charlie Hanford’s 3rd place deck here as well, playing Ra, Zeus, and Korak in the front line with Jane Porter in reserve. What an awesome and unique lineup this high up in the competition, which is an awesome reminder that no matter how established the meta game seems to be in OverPower, there are always a few surprises!
UPCOMING EVENTS
After a long delay at the printer, the Skybound set is finally arriving. On August 28th, players will be able to start including these cards in their modern decks, and I truly can’t wait to see what the OverPower community can do with what I believe are some of the most interesting and powerful cards the game has ever seen. There will be several opportunities to get your hands on and play with these cards early, however. This week at San Diego Comic Con, LRG is working with Cascade Games to bring Skybound demos and sealed league games to the Con. You will need a badge to play, but if you’re going to SDCC stop by the Marriott as Joe Gagnepain and I will be on site helping to run the events!
If you can’t make it to California, don’t worry because in partnership with the NAOL, Howard Bertrand and I will be running Skybound drafts at Mecha Games, site of the second Regional and Peacebridge Memorial NAOL event, in St. Catherine, Toronto, Canada! The drafts will happen on July 31st, with the Regional taking place Saturday August 1st and the Peacebridge Memorial on August 2nd. Entries to these prerelease drafts are selling fast, so make sure you register! – https://topdeck.gg/convention/niagara-overpower-weekend-1
RETAILERS, AMBASSADORS, JUDGES
Back when I first started with LRG, I helped to develop the Organized Play program. As many of you know, we signed up with a company called Carde.io and were excited to announce our Ambassador and Judge programs. We quickly found that our programs were incompatible with that system, and over the last year we were seeking a way to bring these to the community, fully realized. We hosted tests to qualify for these programs on our own website, hoping that we could integrate with the software. Let’s just say it didn’t work out. Finally, within the last few months, we found topdeck.gg – they are an excellent fit for OverPower, and I’m excited to say that the programs we announced nearly 2 years ago are now open!
If you’re a retailer and you haven’t yet, you’ll need to apply on topdeck.gg to join our Organized Play Network. This will allow you to run events through our Hub for free, and also to request tournament support in the form of prize packs. You’ll also have direct access to our OP team, and we’ll be able to help you troubleshoot any issues you may have.
If you are someone who loves OverPower and want to bring new people into the game and get rewarded by doing it, I recommend creating a topdeck account and applying to be an Ambassador! Ambassadors will help new players enter the game, and assist new stores in joining our network. For this hard work, these Ambassadors will receive a referral code, and will gain access to holding Learn to Play and Demo events at the casual level within our topdeck Hub. For each new player set up and each event run, Ambassadors will receive points that they’ll be able to spend in our webstore to purchase cool and exclusive prizes such as apparel, play mats, sleeves, and eventually, even promos!
If you’re rules-minded and want to be involved in Organized Play at the competitive level in a different way, you should apply to be a judge! There is a comprehensive test on our topdeck Hub that will challenge your knowledge of the game. Currently, there is one level of judge, but as the game continues to grow there will be more challenging tests that will allow you to level up and even be able to judge Regionals and Nationals!
For all of this and more, please visit battle.overpower.game – if you have questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to me at james@lrg.games.
WRAPPING UP!
Thanks for joining me for this State of the Game. With things heating up, expect to hear from me a lot more about the changes and additions to our Organized Play Network, but for now I just want to say thank you for reading, and for being a part of the OverPower community. I’m ecstatic to see what’s next for the game, and to see everyone enjoying, firsthand, the cards we’ve been working so hard on. See you soon!