Origins TCG (Origins Trading Card Game) matches play out across three board lanes called locations, with each lane applying unique passive or triggered rules. Because these conditions reshape combat math, cost efficiency, and card abilities, understanding lane mechanics is central to competitive deck building and match pacing.
How Locations Work and When They Reveal
Every match features three active locations selected from a rotating pool. In Demo 2.0, the pool consists of 44 locations, expanding to over 100 locations in the planned full release from developer Koin Games.
Locations appear on an incremental schedule across the opening phases of the game:
- Round 1: The first location is visible on the board immediately when the match begins.
- Round 2: The second location reveals its identity and rule.
- Round 3: The third location reveals.
- Round 4 onward: All three locations remain open and fully active for the duration of the match.
Committing cards aggressively on the initial turn carries structural risk. Because two of the three board lanes remain unrevealed on round one, committing high-value units before discovering neighboring modifiers can misalign your board setup.
Starting in the 0.7 patch, developer Koin Games introduced a rarity framework for general play: common, rare, very rare, and ultra rare. Official drop rates for each individual location tier remain unconfirmed by the developers, though match sampling indicates high-impact modifiers appear less frequently than standard baseline environments.
Core Location Effect Types
Locations alter normal combat and board states through distinct mechanical families.
| Effect Category | Example Locations | In-Game Mechanics |
|---|---|---|
| Damage Amplification | Amplifying Amphitheatre, Burnturn Arena, Soul Artillery | Amplifying Amphitheatre doubles all damage dealt in the lane. Burnturn Arena chips characters post-combat. Soul Artillery damages barriers when units die. |
| Resource & Mana | Gold Spinning Wheel, Castle in the Clouds, Treasurer's Office, Mana Battery | Gold Spinning Wheel lowers card costs by one. Castle in the Clouds discounts cards costing seven or more. Mana Battery preserves unspent mana. |
| Summons & Copies | Cloning Lab, Reflecting Pool, Sherwood Forest, Hundred Acre Woods | Cloning Lab copies a played character into all empty allied lane slots. Reflecting Pool copies the played card to a random lane. |
| Card Draw & Discard | The Sultan's Court, Knowledge Vault, Junkyard, Nostradamus' Call | The Sultan's Court draws a card at round start and discards it before combat. Nostradamus' Call destroys both player decks at round six. |
| Keywords & Triggers | Stomping Grounds, The Colosseum, Mirror Dimension, Anti-Magic Vault | The Colosseum grants Double Attack. Mirror Dimension repeats On Reveal abilities. Anti-Magic Vault strips all text abilities. |
| Lane Destruction | The Gallows, Wall of Dumpty, The Hill | The Gallows destroys the opposing card across from an entering unit. Wall of Dumpty consumes the first card played there. |
The Seven Officially Banned Tournament Locations
Certain location abilities introduce extreme variance or swing lane control from a single trigger. For official competitive events—such as the Steam Next Fest Crimson Cup—the development team disabled seven specific locations.
These locations do not appear in private room battles or sanctioned tournament matches, though they remain active in general ranked and casual queues:
- Amplifying Amphitheatre: Doubles all damage dealt in the lane.
- The Colosseum: Grants characters in this lane Double Attack.
- Cloning Lab: Playing a character fills all remaining friendly slots in that lane with copies of that card.
- Reflecting Pool: Playing a character copies it to another random location.
- Giant's Beacon: Draws your highest-cost card and permanently sets its cost to one mana until played or removed.
- Junkyard: Forces both players to discard a random card.
- Nostradamus' Call: Destroys both players' decks entirely at the start of round six.
In standard queue environments, cards like Ellen Trechend (an eight-cost 3/3 with Trample gaining +3/+3 per enemy card present) combined with Mulan can exploit Cloning Lab or Amplifying Amphitheatre to break barriers in a single attack. In sanctioned private scrims, removing these seven locations forces competitors to rely on linear trades and board tempo.
Strategic Adaptation for Board Lanes
Navigating dynamic board conditions requires structural deck adjustments rather than relying solely on card synergy:
- Avoid Over-Specializing on Triggers: Building exclusively around On Reveal abilities leaves a lineup vulnerable if Anti-Magic Vault negates text boxes. Mixing raw stat bodies into your list ensures your lane is not neutralized.
- Capitalize on Cheap Board Fills: Modifiers that grant keywords like Trample or Deathtouch provide higher relative tempo when applied to low-cost units, letting low-mana investments trade up against expensive threats.
- Manage Draw Against Deck Thinning: Playing in lanes such as The Sultan's Court accelerates draw and discard. Because deck sizes are small, pairing forced-draw locations with cards like Mind Palace risks pushing your deck directly into fatal fatigue damage.
- Sequence Around Lane Destruction: Modifiers like The Gallows and Wall of Dumpty heavily punish the first player to commit units. Holding units until your opponent establishes presence preserves removal value and protects primary attackers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where can I practice matches without the banned locations?
Private room matches in both the Steam demo and the playtest build automatically implement the tournament location rules, removing all seven banned modifiers. Standard ranked and casual queue matches continue to draw from the full 44-location pool.
How do copies from Reflecting Pool choose their lane?
When a character is played onto Reflecting Pool, the resulting duplicate is placed into a random alternate lane that has open board space.
