I am married to Magic: the Gathering.

Epic TCG is my mistress.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my wife. We have a very healthy relationship, and I am happy to see her every day. But sometimes our love life is a bit suboptimal.

We have tried many formats, including Standard and Extended, and even Vintage. But even then, it can get stale. This is when I turn to my mistress.

Epic is a young and beautiful game, the daughter of Rob Dougherty and Darwin Kastle, Magic Pro Tour Hall of Famers. At first glance, a Magic player would be correct in assuming that Epic is extremely similar to Type 4 Magic. Players each get to use one action per turn (some spells don’t use your action), and each spell is usually something huge and powerful (or an answer to something huge and powerful). Each card is capable of generating the “wow, that’s overpowered” response, but in a format where every card can do that, it takes a lot of skill to judge just which effects you will use in order to win.

Many Magic players I talk to express an initial disinterest in the game. When I ask them why, they are generally unable to formulate a legitimate response. I suspect that they are mainly unwilling to learn the rules and skills set for a new game while they are still enjoying playing Magic. However, Epic is surprisingly easy for Magic players to learn. Many of the keywords in Epic are comparable to keywords in Magic, and the game mechanics can be equated to various existing terms in Magic as well. (The designers were Magic players, after all.) There are some major differences in game play that differentiate the game from Magic, but these are easy enough to learn within a few play sessions.

By now you must be wondering how a game that is so simple to learn can provide any skills tests to players that have already mastered the game of Magic. In my opinion, this is where the draw of the game lies. I believe that Epic as a game is much more skill intensive than Magic. This means that a higher percentage of games will be won by the stronger player. In my experience, I have been able to trace almost every single loss to a mistake I made. This does not necessarily mean that I would have won all of those games if I had not made that mistake, but the game certainly would have been prolonged and more opportunities to win would arise. Allow me to illustrate just how this is possible.

Right off the bat, players are faced with a very important decision: the mulligan. In Magic, players are faced with only two options at a time: mulligan, don’t mulligan, if option one, repeat. Players are generally happy enough to find a decent number of lands and at least a couple spells they can cast in the first few turns. Mulligans in Epic are more similar to Video Poker. Players are allowed to mulligan each card individually by paying 1 life (mojo), putting the card on the bottom, and drawing a fresh card off the top. Players can do this once, meaning you can mulligan anything from 0-5 cards. This requires players to evaluate each card individually, based on power level and its role in the matchup. Anyone capable of a bit of math can recognize that this method involves many more decisions.

Right after the mulligan, players are faced with another wave of decisions. In Magic, turn one often involves playing a land and passing the turn. This repeats until you have enough mana to play your first spell, at which point you have your first decision to make. In Epic, players have at least five choices right from turn one. The decision tree branches much faster than in Magic, since players do not have to spend time building up resources. The very first turn can sometimes involve interactions that do much to decide the course of the game. This is not to say that turn one is always explosive, often enough games can consist of “draw, go” until one player has sufficient reason to attempt something.

At this point many Magic players like to point out that the building up resources component of the game is very integral to how it works. While I do not disagree with this statement, it is important to note that Epic was not designed this way. Obviously Type 4 Magic exists only in the realm of casual, because creating a balanced stack for Type 4 requires subjective judgment by the owner of the stack. In Epic, every card was designed and developed exclusively with these rules in mind.

Another way that this is useful is the issue of mana screw. Countless times I hear people complaining that they would have won their match if they hadn’t been mana screwed, hadn’t drawn so many extra lands, etc. I acknowledge that many Magic players build their manabases poorly, or do not mulligan hands that they should. However, even if you do everything correctly, there will still be those games where you fail to draw that one last land you need to cast any of your spells, or where you keep a perfectly good four land hand and proceed to draw zero spells the rest of the game. In Epic, these “non-games” do not exist, as you will be set up to interact with your opponent in every game, putting your fate into your own hands.

One final skill that adds to the game is the alternate win condition. In Epic, if you draw the last card in your deck, you win! This rule seems silly to Magic players at first, but again keep in mind that the game was designed with this in mind. (Also, in my experience, it seems to be less relevant in Constructed than Limited). This rule serves to add a layer to the important skill of role identification (Am I the aggro or the control?). In control mirrors, each player may be trying to race to the bottom of their deck when the clever player notices that they may be losing and sneaks in enough damage to steal the win. In aggro mirrors, a player’s life total or board position may get so out of hand that you make the conscious decision to go for the alternate win instead. Even in games where this rule does not come up, it is something that players have to keep in mind.

By this point, any “Spike” who is in the game just to win is probably chomping at the bit for their chance to battle. But what if you aren’t already the best player in the room? Does this mean that you will lose every single match to the better players? Maybe it does mean that you will lose more games to the better players at first. But I think that the more important message to take away from this is that you can beat these players by becoming better yourself. You are already on the right track just by reading articles such as this one. By reading strategy articles, accepting advice from other players, constantly practicing, and having an active motivation and passion to get better, you will improve your game in a way that will directly correlate to more wins.

All things considered, it is an exciting time to be playing Epic. The game is young, giving innovative deckbuilders a world of possibilities to work with. Formats are not solved yet, and anyone who puts in a decent amount of effort can string together some wins at a $5K and come out with some cash. Some players are lucky enough to compete for prizes such as airfare to Europe in order to compete in a $5K in Paris. To top it off, Worlds for Epic happened right before the New Year, and it was a blast!

If nothing else, I hope that I have convinced you to give the game an honest try. I am of firm belief that this is all that needs to be done on my end, because the appeal of the game itself will be enough to hook any player in. See you on the battlefield!