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My short description of Epic — a forthcoming design from Star Realms creators Robert Dougherty, Darwin Kastle and White Wizard Games — is all of the broken cards from MTG with almost none of the mana restrictions.
Let's break that description down a bit: Cards in Epic — at least the base game of Epic, which I've played seven times now on a prototype review copy that I can't post images of since WWG is still unveiling cards one by one on its Kickstarter project — consist solely of champions (i.e., creatures) and events (spells). Cards come in four factions (colors), with each faction having a central characteristic: yellow is good, blue sage, green wild, and red evil.
Each card has a casting cost of either zero or one, and at the start of each turn, each player receives one coin that can be spent that turn. That's it! The elaborate mana system from Magic, something that makes that game what it is, that allows players to scale up from small effects to large, has been pancaked to a far simpler two-level system: On your turn, cast all of the 0-cost cards that you want along with a single 1-cost card; on your opponent's turn, cast all of the allowable 0-cost cards that you want along with a single allowable 1-cost card, but only at three specific points during that opponent's turn.
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Nearly everything in Epic can be viewed in terms of Magic, and if you've played Magic, then you're already most of the way toward understanding and playing this game. At the start of a turn, each player receives a single coin to spend or lose. The active player can play cards, attack, or use the powers of cards in play in whatever order they want. The player can attack multiple times during their turn, attacking with single champions each time, with multiple champions individually, with multiple champions grouped together (thereby possibly taking down a large blocker should the opponent block), etc. You can attack, play a card, attack again, use a power, attack still again, and so on. (Like Magic, champions can't attack or tap the turn they are played.) Everything is more free form than Magic with the main limitation being that single coin that you can spend each turn.
On defense, you can play cards only (1) after the active player has declared attackers then (optionally) played cards, (2) after you've declared blockers (or not) and the active player has (optionally) played cards, and (3) at the end of the active player's turn, after which the active player can decide to play more cards or use powers or attack, if desired.
When you block, you flip the blocking champion 180º to show that it's blocked for the turn.
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Many of the champion powers and keywords in Epic have corresponding Magic terms, and you'll find yourself slipping into them easily: Airborne = Flying; Blitz = Haste, with such champions being able to attack and use powers the turn they come into play; Ambush = Flash, with such champions being playable during the active player's turn; Prepare = Untap; Tribute = a comes-into-play ability; Breakthrough = Trample; and so on.
Some champion keywords are unique to Epic, or at least common enough to require a keyword. The Forcemage Apprentice above, for example, has an Ally Ability, which is represented by the colored circle; whenever you play a 1-cost sage card, you can untap this card. Other ally abilities include dealing damage to a target or returning a card from your discard pile to your hand. Other such keywords:
-----• When you Banish something, you place it on the bottom of its owner's deck.
-----• When you Break something, you place it in that owner's discard pile.
-----• To Recall a card, you pay one coin, then move that card from the discard pile to your hand.
-----• Loyalty is a comes-into-play ability like Tribute, but it works only if you reveal the indicated number of cards from your hand of the same faction as the card you just played.
-----• To Recycle, you banish two cards from your discard pile, then draw a card.
Wait a minute — doesn't recycling sound like total upside? Replenish my deck and draw a card? Well, things are a tiny bit different in Epic in that you have two possible victory conditions. To win, you can either (1) reduce your opponent from thirty to zero health or (2) try to draw a card from an empty deck. Yes, in Epic you win the game if you run out your deck; you're rewarded for efficiently playing all of your stuff and keeping it dead instead of recycling it.
Another key difference in Epic from Magic is that you can't immediately react to anything that the other player does. You have no instants, no counterspells to stop a person from doing something. If you aim a "Flame Strike" at a champion that has eight or less defense, then it's broken; if you aim it at my face, then I've been flame struck. You can't tap a champion in response to use it before it dies; it just dies.
The Epic base game comes with 120 cards, with thirty different cards in each faction. I don't have the complete rules, but what I've gathered from talking with Dougherty and those demoing the game at the 2015 Origins Game Fair is that you can play with those cards in multiple ways. You can pit all the cards of one faction against another, with those factions supposedly being balanced. You can each take thirty random cards, then shuffle and play, which is what I've been doing. You can draft cards in some manner not yet specified, although I imagine that you can concoct whatever method you like given that you can also just deal each player thirty cards at random!
If you want to compete with constructed decks, then you can have up to three copies of a card in that deck, which means three copies of the game covers you in all circumstances (including their Epic cube format, whatever that might be), although you certainly don't need three copies in order to play.
As I mentioned above, I've played seven times, and the games have been all over the place in terms of speed and back-and-forth interaction, with one victory by decking when I was paying more attention with trying to push through damage instead of getting cards into my opponent's deck. Sometimes that dragon gets in for a few hits, and sometimes it's removed from play before it can even bat its wings. Epic feels like old-school Magic from back when I had no idea what I was doing and shuffled all of my cards — yes, even my Black Lotus — together into a giant 120-card deck and was surprised by whatever came off the top. Part of that, of course, is that I didn't look through the Epic cards before playing; I just shuffled, dealt thirty cards to each of us, then started. You look at what you draw and think, "Can this card really do that?!" — then your opponent drops an 18/18 trampling wurm into play, and you realize that you're holding the perfect solution in hand...
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