UniVersus, not the usual CCG

A few days ago we had the opportunity to try it UniVersusThe CCGa card game that includes countless IPs high-sounding and which allows for a very tasty and interesting crossover between them. Let’s take a closer look at it!

18 years old and not hearing them

Just writing about this today UniVersus It seems a bit paradoxical to me, because the title was born way back in 2006, initially called Universal Fighting Systemrebranded in fact UniVersus Alone in 2021. So 18 years later we find ourselves playing this title, which however in our (and your) defence, is marketed exclusively in the USA.

Jasco Games has designed this title in such a way that theessence same as rules are not distorted fromalternating IPs which have come and gone over the years. This means that you could easily play with a coming deck from Critical Role and face a bunch of Yu Yu of the Spectres.

Precisely for this reason the initial name was Universal Fighting System, where the developers wanted to create a game on which they could rotate many wonderful IPs and make the various universes collide with each other. The challenge is certainly arduous, also because there are several CCGs out there with very high-level IPs, but which in the end are all titles in their own right. It was rumored some time ago, that also Bandai Namco wanted to combine the two card games of Dragon Ball and of one piecewhich however still seems very unlikely.

Instead in UniVersus, despite all these years having passed, the players they can approach the countless IPs that have constantly followed one another: Street Fighter, Soul Calibur III, The King Of Fighters, Samurai Shodown V, Tekken 6, Mega Man, Cowboy Bebop, the aforementioned Yu Yu Hakusho and the most recent My Hero Academia.

Just think, all these incredible universes can be battled through this card game, and we certainly think so the best note of the whole sectordespite also the gameplay we tell you in advance, it hides incredible surprises.

Obviously being a CCG, and in any case a competitive one, Jasco Games created 3 formats, so as to guarantee a good dose of replayability for all players, whether they are more casual or more competitive. The first is a sort of equivalent Standard Of Magic The Gatheringwhich uses the last exited IP, which in this case is My Hero Academia. The second is more like Legacy or Vintage always say Magic, and allows you to use all the cards ever printed in the UniVersus system without distinction. The third is Limitedcreated just like in Magic, and is probably the most fun of the formats, given the variety and deep replayability it has. It’s pretty much perfect for a new player or anyone who doesn’t want to keep the complete collection.

Simple bet or calculated risk?

When you approach any card game, also look at the latest addition, Star Wars: Unlimited (we leave you the review here), we now expect to immediately understand how to add the coveted features resources to play our cards, whether they are Earths, Mana, Energies, Tokens, Don! and so on.

Inside UniVersus this age-old concept has completely disappeared. All playing cards they have no real costbut they have one difficulty, which grows with each card played. This is certainly the biggest news that we have found in UniVersus and which honestly is also there liked it quite a bit. The developers really wanted to simulate the difficulty found in playing games, in performing increasingly stronger combinations.

Once you learn that there will be no mana or energy to search for or follow, the game will go very quickly, at a very high pace. The shifts are really very simple:

1. Start Phase
2. Combat Phase
3. End Phase.

Each player will be able to prepare two main characters, which serve not only to activate skills, but also to outline the Life Pointsthe cards that can be drawn and the symbol that can be used to complete your deck.

1. In the Start Phase the players reactivate the cards that were committed the previous turn and draw a number of cards up to the maximum described in their Leader’s card.
2. In the Combat Phase players can start playing cards from their hand. This means that you can start playing one of the three types of cards: Foundation, Attack, Character (there are two others but they are not needed for the explanation of the game). Each card has a number at the top left representing the difficulty to be performed. The test to understand whether the card has been played or not is very simple, the active player must discard the top card of the deck, check the value shown at the bottom right, if that value is equal to or higher the test has been passed. If this is not passed, the played card would be discarded and the player’s turn would end at that moment. Players can play as many cards as they want, but the important thing is not to fail the test. Which is very difficult, because for each card played, the number to reach will be the value represented by the card, +1 in addition for each card already played. And this is where the strategy takes a really twisty path.
3. In the final stage the field is cleaned, moving the cards from the card pool, towards the stage and momentum.

It’s not your usual CCG or TCG

Have you read the rules above? They are very simple right? The really funny thing is that there is a complexity behind which made us rack our brains quite a bit, and now we’ll explain why.

At each turn the cards have different difficulties, it is known that the first card played will not suffer modifiers, this will make our life very easy, but with each card played this will increase, and it will therefore be increasingly difficult to attack and bring the hit points to zero opponents.

This is where the various things come into action strengthening activities which can come from the Stage or Momentum area, two areas that are filled with the cards that we have managed to play up to that moment. In the Stage, all the Foundation cards go there, which can be used both to be committed (tapped or left) and add a + to the difficulty modifier, and to strengthen our attacks with enhances.

Inside the Momentum pools instead, all the attacks that we managed to carry out and which were not blocked will go there. Even the block is not as obvious as we are used to seeing. You should know that each attack card has three values ​​to check: speed, area and damage.

The player who will have to parry will therefore have to check if he has any cards that are of the area equal to or close to that attack. If he has cards from the same area, then the damage will be parried in full while with nearby cards he will just halve it. Furthermore, the defender will have to perform a difficulty test by adding the modifier that will be shown on the card at the top right, where both the zone and the block value will be displayed.

All these rules initially seem very complex, but once you play the first game it’s really a breeze and it’s fun, as well as hilarious to be able to intertwine the various universes and challenge your friends or other players.

The only true one neo is that it is not marketed in Italy and other European countries. It’s also strange because at least in Italy card games have always been great and it really wouldn’t be bad to be able to have this little gem in our collection too.