Debrief: Origin Story by Stonemaier Games

We unpack how Origin Story fuses classic trick-taking with character-building powers, letting you charge abilities with stamina and choose between hero or villain scoring for sharp, thematic pivots. We weigh the balance of chaos and control across player counts, praise the production, and flag who will love this design.

• core must-follow trick-taking with love as trump
• story cards that grant powers and reshape hands
• stamina as a pre-round budget to charge abilities
• hero or villain identity dial that changes scoring
• round three event and round five final form
• table feel at 3 vs 4–5 players and pacing
• two-player sidekicks variant that adds depth
• production quality, theme integration, and value
• who this fits best and when it shines

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Superpowered Intros
• 1:12 What Origin Story Is
• 2:00 Trick-Taking Core Explained
• 2:35 Story Cards And Stamina System
• 4:20 Hero Or Villain Scoring Choice
• 5:33 Midgame Event And Final Forms
• 7:25 How Story Powers Change Play
• 9:15 Complexity, Player Counts, And Flow
• 11:32 Production, Theme, And Table Presence
• 12:24 Two-Player Sidekicks Variant
• 13:45 Who This Game Is For
• 15:05 Value, Replayability, And Verdict
• 18:10 Wrap-Up And Sign-Off

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Yes. Welcome to the Operation Game Night Podcast. Back in better than ever. And there's three of us here. And by three, I mean my co-hosts are here in the studio with me. He was bitten by a radioactive spider. And now he's got spider powers. It's Clayton Gable. How are you doing, Clay?

SPEAKER_00: 0:33

Hey Travis. I am doing great. I'm excited to talk hero stuff today. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01: 0:40

My other co-host here in studio with me. He just spilled radioactive material all over his computer and he got shocked, and now he's got electrical powers. He's Jared Erickson. Jared, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_02: 0:55

Uh absolutely buzzing. Buzzing to be on OGN with you guys. I feel like I'm like a guest appearance at this point, which is sad to say. But I'm committed to the boys of OGN.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08

The people understand. The people understand. They forgive you. You're doing big things. And you're out there saving the world, just like our superheroes, in today's feature topic, which is Origin Story by Stonemaier Games. Clayton, tell us about Origin Story, will ya?

SPEAKER_00: 1:25

I would love to, Travis. So Origin Story just came out. Just got my pre-order copy in the mail a couple weeks ago. This one's designed by Jamie Stegmeier and Pete Wissinger, and it is a trick taker. So you know we love trick takers here at Operation Game Night. We love Stonemer games generally, so this piqued the interest of the collective and especially my interest. So Origin Story at its core is a very standard trick-taking game. So you have four suits, you have brains, you have brawn, you've got speed, and then the trump suit, which is love naturally. And you play standard trick-taking rounds, you know, a must-follow trick taker. Somebody leads with brains, everybody has to follow with a brains card if they have it. If not, they can play off suit or trump. And that's, you know, the core trick-taking engine that fuels this thing. The game's played over five rounds, and at the end of the five rounds, the person with the most points wins. But what's really cool about this game is the theme. It's got, as Travis subtly hinted to throughout his intros, we have a superhero theme on this. And the way that's incorporated is through this tableau building engine. So as you play origin story, each round you're going to be developing your origin story. So at the beginning of the round, you'll get dealt these three story cards, and they give you different special abilities. So you might get a super suit that lets you, every time you leave with a power card, you get plus one to that power card value. Or if you win a trick with a brains card, you get to score a point just right then and there. And so in round one, you have one story card. And then in round two, you get another story card. So you keep building this tableau, which sounds overwhelming at first, but they incorporated this neat feature where you have these stamina tokens. And so each story card has a certain amount of stamina required to activate that story card. So at the beginning of the round, you might have, you know, your four story cards and you have five stamina. And then you have to determine how you want to allocate your stamina to your different story cards. So if you have a hand of cards that has a ton of brains, you might want to put your stamina on your story card that has a you know synergistic effect for your brain cards. Um, some other things that go on in this game as you go through it. I'll just break down the round. The story cards are the main thing, but there's some other cool stuff that happens. So again, you get your story cards, you get your stamina, and then you charge your story cards. And then this is really neat. So in a lot of trick-taking games, there's you know, go going nil, where you want to get no tricks and you can get points that way. So before everybody starts their round of trick taking, you have your little score dial, and one side is you want to be a hero, the other side is you want to be a villain. And so everybody secretly decides which side of their score dial they're gonna play with and then reveals. If you're being a hero, you get one point for every trick you win that round. If you're a villain, you get four points if you don't win any tricks. And it's kind of cool because you know, in in comic book and superhero lore, there are some people that, you know, flirt back and forth, depending on the the movie or the comic book, with whether they're a good guy or a bad guy. And so you kind of have that same feeling as you go through the different rounds of origin story. If you got doubt dealt a hand full of love, maybe this round you're feeling like you're gonna just collect a bunch of tricks because you got the love and you're gonna be able to trump everybody. Um in round three, there's this one-off like event that happens that just adds a unique rule for that specific specific round, and that's the only time that happens. Before the game starts, you get dealt two like final form superheroes, and those only come into effect in round five. So you can look at them in round one and kind of see what their abilities might be, but at the start of round five is when you actually have to pick one of those, and they have like a when revealed effect, so you'll just have a way to score a bunch of points. Maybe it's like mine was super interesting. I could before the round started, I could create a trick out of my own cards, and for every card over 10 in that trick, I would score like three points or something. So it's just like a neat little feature before the final round that gives you a decision to make. So I said a lot. How's that how's that sounding to you guys? A tableau building trick taking game with a superhero theme.

SPEAKER_01: 6:40

Sounds great. I'm here for it. I'm here for Stonemaier. I love comic books and I love superheroes. I have uh what is it? The uh oh, Age of Comics, which is about like the golden age of comic book creation. Uh so I'm I'm here for this one. Uh you mentioned you have the two heroes that have special abilities and special scoring criteria. Are those like hidden goals? Like you you can kind of play to one of them the whole time and then reveal it at the end, or is it just for that last round they come in?

SPEAKER_00: 7:12

They you definitely would want to consider what those abilities might be throughout the rest of the game because that can determine what type of story cards you collect throughout the game. Um, I don't know that on a first play, I would, you know, tell somebody to focus really hard on looking at them at the beginning of round one because there's enough other stuff to consider that you're like, okay, I don't really even know what this means. But I think as you play the game more, um, it could be more interesting to kind of have those objectives towards round five that you start thinking about in round one.

SPEAKER_01: 7:47

And uh the story cards themselves, you have three of them in front of you, you're kind of building out your tableau as you go along. Those story cards, do they change how you play from round to round? Are they changing your specific rules? Are they giving you special abilities?

SPEAKER_00: 8:03

Oh, big time, big time. Like that that's the whole game. Like I like I said, the the base trick taking is so simple, and it has to be because the way these story cards like interfere and interrupt that normal trick-taking flow is where the game really happens. So there's cards that you know, as soon as you put the stamina on them to charge, which you do before the round starts, it'll be like you can draw five cards and then discard five cards. So, like ways to reshape your hand. Um, yeah, and then there's the ones that happen like in the middle of the trick. I think I had one that was called like leadership. So if it was my turn to lead, if I just like gave up my ability to lead that turn that trick and told somebody else to, I could just score a point. So like there's just all types of interesting different ways to score points and you know, find those story cards that work together that um I think if you like those type type of like combo tableau buildy type games and you like trick taking, this is really gonna sing for you. I will say, for my taste, I knew I knew this, I know this about myself. I know I do not like keeping track of special abilities, and I knew this game was going to have a lot of special abilities. You know, I it just kind of like brings me out of the experience when I have to try and remember, like, oh, every time this certain card's played, I have to remember to do this thing or that thing. And I I generally prefer my especially my trick-taking games, like we've been talking about no loose ends a lot lately, and I love the simplicity of that. Like it has the one thing that you do before the round starts that's kind of unique, and then the actual trick taking just flows nicely. This, especially, I can imagine at higher player counts would get kind of you know stuttered and stammered as people are activating their different abilities, and you don't really know what that person's ability is. Sure, you can you know talk about it before the round starts, but it's gonna be a lot. I I played at three and it was fine, like it wasn't that hard to keep track of, but I mean this plays up to five, and I imagine at four and five, it would be a bit chaotic, especially in those later rounds when each person has four story cards that they could potentially charge up, and you have your four story cards that you're trying to keep track of. So as you're playing a trick, it's like I can't possibly calculate all the different ways this could go wrong if this person's ability activates and mine does. So it gets kind of chaotic in that way. Um, and again, some people are gonna like that. Some people love special abilities and that type of stuff. Not necessarily my jam, but I do like this game. I love the production of it, I love the theme, um the art. You know, you can take it or leave it, it's fine. But it's you know, the cards are really nice, the stamina tokens, your player board like literally is like a folded comic book, and like on the front you see your superhero, and then you fold it open, and that's like your tableau where you build out your cards. So it's got a really nice production, a pretty small box. And I dug that. I also played it at two. Oh, yeah, Jared, what's up?

SPEAKER_02: 11:33

Does each of your story cards have a position on the tableau? Like, so you can't get them lost at least.

SPEAKER_00: 11:40

Yeah, they do. So there's a spot for your story card from round one, your story card from round two, your story card from round three. And again, I think it might have been unplayable for me if you got to do your your story card abilities, all of them every time, but the fact that they make you only charge up like two or three of them at most before the round, it really like eases that burden a little bit, and you can kind of pick the ones that you are gravitating towards more. Um, but it's rad. Yeah, two players. I will say, not generally a big fan of you know playing games with you know bots or whatever. And this does have a sidekicks variant that you can play with two players, and I actually found it pretty fun and really easy to operate. So with two players, you each have a sidekick, and essentially you just deal out two extra hands of cards, and each of your sidekicks has two face-up cards, and so when it's your sidekick's turn to play, you pick one of those two face-up cards to play, and so it adds another layer of strategy there because you can see what the other person's sidekick might be able to follow with. And I thought it was a nice two-player mode that I wasn't necessarily expecting to enjoy.

SPEAKER_01: 13:02

That's awesome. Yeah, you find this like easier to manage than something like Marvel Champions, where you're constantly reading through the text and like trying to cross-reference cards and stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 13:12

Oh, yeah, way easier. Nice, way easier. I mean, I I like I said, I am very allergic to any type of having to remember things, so this will not be an issue for a lot of people, but I bring it up just because it's it's the one gripe I have with the game, which is the game. So I bought it knowing that like that was a feature of it, and it's either gonna be why you love it, or like me, are like it's a good game. I don't know if it's gonna be the trick taker I pull out all the time, but I like it and I like having it.

SPEAKER_01: 13:46

But yeah, that that was gonna be that was gonna be my next question. Is like, who is this made for? Like Stelmeyer doesn't often go down the trick taker lane. There's trick-taking elements in some of their other games, but like, who is this made for?

SPEAKER_00: 14:01

I think if you're if you have a group that you've played a lot of trick-taking games with and you've got the core mechanisms down pat, and maybe it's also a group that you know likes your terraforming Mars's and those type of games, then you're probably gonna have a good time with this because it gives you a little more meat to your trick-taking game, makes it yeah, it's I mean, it's 45 minutes, so it's you know, a lot of trick-taking games are you know a lighter affair, more of a filler type affair, and this could be almost like the centerpiece of a game. This could be a main event. This could be a main event, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 14:44

Nice. I like that. Uh, this is not really related to the game in general, but like what is your experience with comic book heroes, Clayton?

SPEAKER_00: 14:53

I have never met any. I oh I I like comic book heroes in theory. I've never I've read like two comic books myself. Okay, I enjoy the movies, uh watch most of them that come out, not DC so much. Definitely got enraptured Marvel Universe for sure. Um, these are not related to any of those intellectual properties, so yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 15:23

I did see uh earlier we had the picture of a bunch of different cards and the different components of the box laid out on the table. I did see that there's lots of nods to other Stonemeyer games. I saw a couple of bees maybe from Apiary, saw the the dragon from worm span, the bird from wingspan. Are there other nods throughout?

SPEAKER_00: 15:44

I would not say so. I think they had that mainly on the back of like the like I said, you get your player board, and it's like a comic book that folds open, and on the back of that comic book is like one giant Easter egg to Stonemaier Games. Okay, and I was like, Why is this here? It's like I was like, Whatever, Mary, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02: 16:04

Yeah, kind of a cool nod.

SPEAKER_00: 16:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 16:07

Jerry, what's the I got a question? Go ahead, Jerry. Yeah, this is like this gives me like it's kind of like an RPG, right? Your your characters like building over the time. I mean, it's RPG light, maybe. Do you get to name your uh your superhero or like how does I wanna I fluff me up here? I want I want to feel I want to feel this more. The origin story. I want to I want to know what the origin of your story is.

SPEAKER_00: 16:37

So they come pre-named. So when you get your initial comic book, your guy, your person has a character, and then you know, you are, yeah, like I said, the soup, the story cards are like, you know, if you want to get into the theme, like, oh my gosh, you just developed this trait of leadership, and now you are this leader, or now I've developed my supersuit, and I have this new ability because of my supersuit. And then at the very end, I think I honestly I probably should have paid more attention to that. But when you reveal that final form of your superhero in round five, I think they have a name too. So I think you start with like a I'm a normal person name, and then as you go through the five rounds, you're developing your character, your superhero, and then you reveal in round five as this mega superhero, and it's just as crazy.

SPEAKER_01: 17:30

Do you remember what the other traits are called besides the the love, the heart?

SPEAKER_00: 17:35

I think it's it's definitely real. This might not be the exact verbiage, but it's definitely speed, strength, brains, and love. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 17:46

So no telepathy, no like web slinging, none of that.

SPEAKER_00: 17:50

But that could be a story card. That's what I'm saying. This deck of story cards is is thick, and they came up with, you know, a lot of times in these trick taking games, there's you know, some similar twists and tropes that they try and throw in that you know crank on the formula a little bit, but this one has things I haven't seen before, like ideas to manipulate the trick-taking formula that I haven't seen in those story cards. I think they're creative and and cool. I just I don't love managing that many abilities.

SPEAKER_01: 18:26

But it gives you it gives you a lot of replayability with that many story cards. That's awesome. Yeah, that's that's one thing we don't talk about enough on here. We talk a lot about mechanics and the gameplay and the decisions and stuff like that, but we don't talk a lot about like what is the value of this box and what is the repail replayability. So, what if you don't mind me asking, what did this run you uh when you purchase this since it's so new?

SPEAKER_00: 18:49

I'd be I'd be guessing I want to say it's under 40. Okay, maybe somewhere between 30 and 40. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 18:58

I guess I mean for a main event game that could be the the the cornerstone of your game night, that's that seems like a pretty decent value to get some replayability.

SPEAKER_00: 19:07

Yeah, and I'm like I said, the production is is awesome. Stonemeyer Games always crushes it in that regard. So yeah, I think it's definitely worth your look if you meet the criteria I specified before. Um getting into, like I did, and I don't regret having this game, I want to play it more. I don't want that message to get lost in the translation. I'm just telling you that the main the main hook and feature of this game is generally something I don't like. Yeah, but I still like it.

SPEAKER_02: 19:39

Is this one that uh a little birdie told me you might be coming down for a baby shower? Is this one you would bring to a baby shower?

SPEAKER_00: 19:47

If you got 45 minutes and a cold okay, okay, yeah, we'll see you this week.

SPEAKER_01: 19:57

A superhero themed game night would be fun. Wear your favorite superhero in a t-shirt or wear your like little secret identity masks and bust out some origin story. That sounds fun. Yeah, hell yeah. Awesome. Did we do it? We did it. All right. This has been Origin Story by Stonemeyer Games, designed by Jamie Stegmeyer and Pete Wissinger. And this has been Operation Game Night. I have been Travis, he has been Clay, he has been Jared, and we're out.