At Gen Con, ICv2 spoke with Level 99 Games President Brad Talton about the company’s upcoming games, including their next big box game Millennium Blades and the new dueling card game Exceed, as well as upcoming organized play plans for BattleCON.

Millennium Blades is a “CCG simulation card game” board game about a fictional Millennium Blades collectible card game which is a worldwide sensation that has been in print for 1000 years.  Players take the role of CCG players on pre-release night, armed with only their starter deck. They then must open new packs, form collections, and sell their junk cards on the aftermarket to buy the hot new cards, all in preparation for competing at the Millennium Blades World championships.

The game is for 2-5 players, and plays in 2 hours.  MSRP will be approximately $60 -$70.00. Trade release is planned for January. The game was recently funded by a Kickstarter campaign which raised nearly $250,000 from over 2,600 backers.

Talton said an expansion for the game is planned for late spring .

In Q4, Level 99 will launch a new dueling card game called Exceed which uses licensed properties from various anime, video games and board games.  The game uses key resolution mechanics from L99’s BattleCON  game, but remixed  in a new way. Players can choose a 30-card deck representing a single fighter, or mix together two decks to form a Tag Team, then use their fighter or team to do battle.

Structured much like a living card game, the company plans to release a new Duelist Deck each month featuring four different fighters, and four of those Duelist Decks will comprise a season.  Each season will feature a new license and a different world of characters. The first season features fighters from Red Horizon, a property first introduced by Jasco Games’ Universal Fighting System CCG.  L99 has been working with Jasco recently on game design (see “Jasco Games Acquires 'Dragon Ball Z,' 'Cowboy Bebop'”).

“That’s going to Kickstarted very soon from us and should be out by the end of the year,” Talton said.

There are new releases on the way for the card-based strategy board game BattleCON, including the introduction of organized play with the release of BattleCON 4 this month.  “We are ramping up organized play with the Kickstarter copies,” Talton said. “We are sending out about 50 tournament kits to key players. We also have a preferred stores program where we print unique promos for your store which you can give out to anybody who comes out to play at and organized play event at your store.“

“Our organized play is mostly run by the players, and so all you have to do is provide an event space and have product for people to buy after they get the game.  We have a continuous line of expansions coming out. About one every two months, either a new expansion or a base game so there’s always something for people to buy after a tournament ends. So there’s always a good chance that people coming in, because the organizer will provide product for players, that the players themselves will want to pick up a game after the event. “ Stores may contact JR at Level 99 games directly if they are interested in joining the preferred store program.

In September, BattleCON: Fate will release. “We also will be having a new BattleCON game coming out around February or March,” Talton said.

At the end of August, the company will also release the two-player hacking card game RESISTOR_.  Players take the role of one of two supercomputers in charge of launching thermonuclear warheads (RED and BLU9000). With their launch codes activated, the two computers race to hack each other to shut down their rival so they can launch their weapons unimpeded.  MSRP is $20.00.

“After that we should have a small Love Letter-sized game called Dragon Punch that is a handheld game you can use without a table, so it’s good for playing in line,” Talton said.  The quick and portable 2-player, 10 minute card game was inspired by Street Fighter.  MSRP was not announced.