Commander's Logs

Attention, UniVersus!

Commander Levi from the Organized Play team reporting in! Unless you’ve been living under a non-UniVersus rock for the last couple of weeks, you’ll know that I took a little trip! I spent the better part of July living and traveling out of a van, going all across Texas to visit several different game stores in order to bring the UniVersus demo experience to their doorstep!

As any true card gamer knows, everything starts at the local game stores. TCGs live, breathe, and die in the trenches of the LGS. They’re where you play, socialize, and most importantly, learn card games. That means, when it comes to the mission of growing the UniVersus player base, this was going to be my battlefield. Now that I’m part of the Organized Play team here over at UVS Games, a big part of that transition is so that I can focus some serious efforts on new player onboarding and activations. With Attack on Titan’s product family generating such a welcoming and new player friendly atmosphere, we had to start the work towards paving the road for that experience. With that in mind, it was time to entertain one of the craziest thoughts that has been sitting in the back of my mind for a while now.

Traveling demo campaigns aren’t anything completely revolutionary. Many different gaming companies do this sort of thing, especially for card games. Most of these are really hardcore, full scale operations though. So I asked the question, how can we achieve similar results on a scale that fits us?

Enter the Scout Expedition. Two straight weeks of me cruising around my home state in a converted van and bringing the magic of UniVersus into twelve fitting game stores. A couple months of prep work, phone calls to game stores, and watching countless hours of Vanlife YouTube had me prepared for this great journey.

However, I knew I couldn’t do this alone. I needed trusted allies I could count on to lay the groundwork for my visits and assist me during them. So, I revived a classic UniVersus initiative. It was time for the return of the Scout Program. Oldheads will be more than familiar with this concept, but for anyone who isn’t, the Scout Program was a plan that identified standout individuals of different UniVersus communities to support and enable as ambassadors for the game. For the Scout Expedition, I wanted to find folks just like that for similar reasons. I selected someone in each city to accompany me on my journey and help me demo the game at each store. With my lineup of new soldiers selected, it was time to start this journey beyond the walls. (Note, there’s currently “application” or anything of that nature for a Scout Program, as it’s currently only tied to the Scout Expedition. BUT! If I’m making my way into your city anytime soon, keep your eyes peeled once I start seeking help.)

Broken down into three phases and cities, (San Antonio, Austin, and Houston), we began the trek in the classic streets of Texas old with San Antonio. This city has proved itself time and time again as one of the best places to play UniVersus in the South, and I knew it would be a great land to cultivate new seeds of UniVersus. With the van gassed up, I set out for a six day romp across this great city to see what kind of new recruits we could find. 

San Antonio proved to be a wonderful community rich with passionate players who all came out in droves to support the demo activations at stores both new and old to UniVersus. We saw several occasions of someone demoing at one store, then coming to the next 2 or 3 stores we were at to play and deck build even more. I found myself staying until the wee hours of the night with these folks most days, staying loaded up on field rations with my soldiers in order to see through the end of locals of other games so their players could also come demo UniVersus! Even with most of these demo nights going so late, the San Antonio folks still found time to take me out to arcades and karaoke alike for some true degen hours before I said my farewells…

After several nights of demos and debauchery, it was time to leave San Antonio behind, and to actually return home! The city I live in (the city of angels) was up next, it was time to head to Austin for a couple days and spread UniVersus on my home turf! Austin is unique in that, even though it’s one of the most TCG pilled cities in the country, UniVersus has never had a strong presence there. So my Scouts and I swung by a pair of stores there to see what kind of action we could stir up in anticipation of Attack on Titan.

Even though it was only a small phase of the campaign, we dug up some UniVersus passion out of the folks here, several of which came back around to the game due to the exciting release of Godzilla Challenger Series! We revived old flames, met some lovely store cats, and laid the groundwork for a (fingers crossed!) great UniVersus scene to blossom as Attack on Titan’s release drew nearer.

As phase three approached, I took a singular day off to catch up on chores and travel out to my final city. I camped out at a laundromat to get a fresh wardrobe and learned a lot about changing all the different tanks involved in vans like these. An emergency shower and some fresh linens later, the final phase was upon us. I gassed up, got myself some beaver chips, and headed out to the metropolis that was Houston.

As always, Houston absolutely blew me away. The UniVersus scene of Houston is where I first learned how to play this amazing game a few years ago. Without them, we wouldn’t have the Levi we do today! So it’s no secret that I have a soft spot for these guys. The Houston community is a friendly, welcoming, and downright hilarious bunch of folks to jam games and get rowdy with. We saw retro video game stores, giant esports venue stores set up in a mall, and a game store with a secret second half hidden away filled with an entire praying mantis nursery! The surprises, fun, and demos were nonstop! Houston contained the store with the most demos, wracking up 23 new signups with 40 people showing up for the event in total!

It was the perfect end to this trip. An absolute festival of a time signed and sealed this Scout Expedition off with a very, very successful Bang. These were two of the best weeks of my life, and the entire time was magical in so many different ways. Living in the van brought a whole new perspective on life, and as a hardcore minimalist, I adored it. Cooking out in parking lots, showering at gyms, all of it was so lovely and so quaint in indescribable ways. On top of that, I got to spend every single day meeting new and old friendly card gamer faces, all while being a traveling ambassador for the game I love with all my heart. After tallying up the scores of all 12 game stores, my Scouts and I performed 114 new player demos and signups. It’s safe to say I came back from this trip with renewed vigor and passion for what I do, a lot of excitement to think about doing it even more, and a colossal amount of reports to write (including this one!).

But not for long! After cleaning out and returning the van, I got right to packing back up to get on a plane to Gencon the very next day! Never a dull moment in the life of UniVersus! But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I write this as I wait for my plane to take me over to Indy so I can do it all over again across the best four days in gaming.

That’s all for now, soldiers! While I don’t have any further details to share about more potential future demo/new player activations, know that I’m hard at work continuing the fight to put UniVersus into the hands of every card gamer out there. Don’t be shy though, sound off on our socials and let us know what area, city, and game stores need a visit from Commander Levi and his brave scouts!

Until then, keep giving your hearts and I’ll see all of you at Gencon for tons of gaming!