I am Watercolor Man – An Origin Story Review

Origin stories are the worst. This is coming from a cretin who ingests superhero content via cinema as opposed to paper. I don’t want to see Thomas and Martha Wayne murdered by a low life, again. We’ve had 10 Spider-Mans in the past couple decades; I’ve already rode that ride. I would much rather watch terminus than genesis. Show me something new, dammit.

Huh. Yeah, I’ve never seen a tableau builder team up with a trick-taker.

Jamey Stegmaier and Pete Wissinger’s Origin Story is a new trick-taker with the mercurial setting of crafting the ascent of a supe. It’s a beautiful game with wonderfully rendered comic book-style player mats, scads of beautiful cards, and a suit that is unique. I’m not sure that I’m crazy about the ethereal watercolor approach of Clémentine Campardou (Wyrmpan), but I do appreciate the unusual aesthetic. It establishes an identity as soon as you lay eyes on the box and is not at all the typical graphic novel. In some ways this is a bold game, and the artwork reflects this attitude.

You wouldn’t know that immediately, as it starts off sort of boring. The underlying card play is bog-standard trick-taking. There are four suits, each containing cards numbered 1-13. One of the suits serves as trump. Someone leads, everyone else plays a card in the same suit if able, high card wins. If someone threw off suit and played trump, then the highest played trump card wins instead. No special powers or twists on these cards. None of this is very adventurous.

All the whizbang is crammed into the rest of the game. The tableau building portion.

This is where things begin to veer off into strange. Each round, players draw three cards from a large deck of powers. Thematically, they represent traits, powers, equipment, and accomplishments of your hero. From these three cards you select one to place on your player mat. The rest are discarded.

These powers string together across multiple rounds to build a tableau of abilities, but also to form a loose narrative of your character’s rise. The mat houses these cards in little comic panels that establish a temporal sequence. This neat touch provides the strongest connection of setting to gameplay, and it does a strong job of selling the concept.

These superpowers are pretty radical. They do things like increase or lower the value of your played cards. Some allow you to draw additional cards. One has you reveal your entire hand to the table and play with open information, but you receive a big reward if you win. A time travel effect can cancel the trick and unwind it to start again. Maybe you can take an opponent’s played card into your hand once per round. A couple bestow extra points if you win zero tricks. There are tons of these things and the varying combination of abilities and degree of synergy you can accomplish can be wild.

As a trick-taker, this is a bonkers game. There are some guardrails as power usage is restricted. Each player receives a limited number of stamina tokens to charge their abilities each hand. This means every single trick doesn’t have three or four effects triggering, although some actually do. Sometimes it gets bananas.

This is the identity of Origin Story. It’s a loose and chaotic trick-taker, one which is more amusing than strict. Those favoring serious titles in this genre will find this rebellious and unsatisfying. Trick-taking has really evolved in recent years as its popularity has exploded in the wake of The Crew’s success. The bulk of new titles seek to mature this style of game by marrying it to sophisticated new twists or springboard off modern design concepts. Origin Story cuts its own path of lighter mischief that emphasizes amusement over intricacy.

One factor which slightly belies this merriment is the pacing, particularly with a less experienced group. It can be slow at higher player counts when you’re working through the sequence of several effects. And it’s a long game for its ilk, often clocking in close to an hour with a full table. But goll-y, I can’t recall a card game this empowering. It’s a genuine uplifting experience that enacts a bit of magic. There’s a sense of capableness, of prowess, as you’re able to twist the resolution of a trick and manipulate the results for your personal gain. I can almost feel my arm stretching out and crushing an I-beam through mental will. Or heaving a boulder off the ground and using it to smash a foe into dust. This happens because the game sets up a very straightforward and traditional activity and then allows you to batter it and melt it and electrify it. You are breaking the game. There’s an inherent pleasure in that.

The escalation over the five rounds is also an important element here. As your powers expand with some Lehmann-esque tableau building, there is a natural ascension of supremacy. If you’re able to finagle the right combination of powers and work some coordination, you can unleash a frenzy. At it’s best, this game is moments of expected wrestling with hand management punctuated by explosive outbursts of havoc.

There is a neat, maybe unexpected quality to this. Most will view Origin Story as a trick-taker supported by tableau building. It’s more interesting to look at it the other way around. The combo-building process of tableau games is executed across a somewhat narrow bandwidth. The majority of these games utilize engine building to gain points or resources which are turned into points. That’s the game, wrapped up entirely in the synchronized construction of efficient card laying. But in Origin Story, the tableau is an engine which plays out through the dramatic resolution of trick-taking.

This is a much more exciting way to yield the fruits of your labor, as there is tension in managing your hand and the associated risk-taking of this format. Taking a gamble by tossing out your lone trump suit as the second card is hairy when two players are following you. BANG! Knowing when to execute your powers and seize the momentum is delicate. ZAP! Running into an unexpected wall by losing a key trick and then watching the rest of your hand crumble is a punch to the gut. BOOM! There are laughs and groans in this card play that are elusive in the typical multiplayer solitaire tableau builder. The energy serves the game well.

Beyond the frivolous nature, there is one trait which is less stable. The idea with all of these powers is manipulation. This allows you to turn tricks in your favor, ones you may have otherwise not been able to win. In this sense, the powers often serve as mitigation to poor luck. The variance found in the random nature of hands is a feature of trick-takers which can sometimes be vexing. Origin Story’s superpowers theoretically assuage this concern by shifting some the makeup away from chance and more towards strategy.

Plans don’t always work out.

Certain players may receive powers that more closely synergize. Some will also just be dealt much better hands. Play this game once or twice and you will run into a hand with no trump cards and a mix of low or medium values. When your powers don’t lift you out of this hole, it can feel as though the strengths of the design aren’t pulling their weight. It’s almost more insulting when your tableau is soft and lady luck is spitting in your face, as the promise of Origin Story is to flood your veins with current and have you explode. When everything fizzles, it makes you feel like a chump.

One way the designers attempt to dress this scrape is through an interesting hero and villain dynamic. After receiving a hand of cards each round, players simultaneously flip their scoring dial to either its hero or villain side. This is broadly similar to many trick-takers which have players predicting their future performance. If you go hero, you will earn one victory point for each trick you win. If you go villain, then you earn a static four points if you win zero tricks.

It’s a neat flourish. Got a lousy hand? Go baddie. Some hero powers also support either the villain or hero stance and can lead to more strategic long-term gameplay. There’s also a nice thematic tie-in here, echoing the penchant for Marvel characters to flip between babyface or heel depending on the comic run. I also enjoy the subtle feature that heroes can spoil a villain’s plans by purposely tossing in a low card and throwing a trick. Allow a villain to win just one time and they receive no points. It’s harsh as can be. This, along with the collection of hero powers, doesn’t entirely absolve the variance in hands, but it can provide some leverage to find your way.

There are also some intriguing dynamics that emerge depending on how the group sways. Every once in a while, three out of four players will go villain, allowing the lone hero to gobble up nearly every trick. The opposite can of course be true, creating heightened competition on the just side. This fosters an emergent and unpredictable scoring composition that adds texture and significance to an otherwise mundane point system. The moment of reveal as players come out of the shadow and throw in with either the losers or lawmen can be a highlight of the round.

The final detail I want to opine on is the event card. Card, as in single. There is a large deck of them, but each play sees only a lone event drawn at the top of the third round. This event then only affects that round, none of the other four.

As you’d suspect, this is even more wild and unruly nonsense. There are cards that award heroes or villains if the opposing side fails. One reduces the number of tricks played that round from eight to seven. Another has the dealer facing off against everyone in a kind of one-versus-all affair. These are awesome and thoughtful changeups to the game. They fit flawlessly with the overall higgledy-piggledy attitude. I, however, don’t appreciate their brief half-life. Sometimes the effect doesn’t have a meaningful impact on play, perhaps due to random circumstances or how participants strategy works out. In these cases, especially, I wish the event would endure and have a longer tail. These events have the potential to define the session. They add a tremendous wrinkle that almost serves as a meta-plot device in the overarching origin story occurring. I want them to get more of a spotlight, to affect play more substantially. I want everything to bend just a little more, to be pushed to its breaking point. There almost seems to be a timidness, as if there was a worry the session could go off the rails or certain strategies completely dusted. Bring. it. on. Fly closer to the sun. Lean into the game’s identity.

I think this is a very specific design. I don’t believe it will appeal to those who consume a large number of trick-takers. As I highlighted earlier, it feels a little counterculture to the growth in sophistication of these games. But maybe it will find life among the anarchists. Those of us who enjoy the genre but don’t root around in it. Those who haven’t heard of David Parlett and who don’t pursue every Taiki Shinzawa design. I am perfectly content spilling some beer and blasting some tunes over Cat in a Box, The Crew, and now, Origin Story.

 

A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review.

If you enjoy what I’m doing and want to support my work, please consider dropping off a tip at my Ko-Fi or supporting me on Patreon. No revenue is collected from this site, and I refuse to serve advertisements.