My Growth Through UFS

By Church

I've recently noticed that I have evolved a lot with this game since I started playing it. From learning how to properly build a deck to which cards should be burned, and which should always have 4 slots open for it in any deck that can run it's symbols.

Unlike nearly everyone in my playgroup, I haven't been in this game since the beginning, but joined in May 07 when Extreme Rivals and Blades of Fury were released. At that point I didn't really care for Soul Calibur 3 (2 was my personal Favourite) and as a fan of Street Fighter, ninjas and Ken, I decided it would be best the collect just Extreme Rivals, and get in on the action of Shinobi Tradition which everyone seemed to love. Through these actions I learned that commons are not as common as you'd think, (I had a grand total of 2 shinobi traditions after buying a total of a box and a half, as well as 8 of the later banned ibuki character card) and it's also not too smart to ignore a set, as I still dont have a single Whereabouts Unknown, which is another card which seemed to staple itself to every deck that wanted momentum.

Ironically, this problem was almost retroactively solved recently as a player which I brought into the game around June 08 seems to have a somewhat maxi fettish and bought up a total of over total 2 boxes of Blades of Fury through individual boosters, and he didn't even have a job! He has been almost inspirational to me in the way of if you're looking to make a deck, just go for it.

This problem was actually solved again for me again about two weeks ago when two of my friends and I decided to share our collections, because we each buy 1, if any, of each box per set, so we never have some of the most essential cards. The rarest thing I've acquired to date was a Revitalize that I snatched from a pack during the draft sessions that were held at the beginning of the Path of the Master tournament for new players.

Once I had gotten 'Through the Defences' used against me three times on a feline spike for +4 damage each, (neither of these cards I own a single copy of... That just gets annoying after the 23rd time.) I kinda realized that maybe the hard to find and well sought cards are that way for a reason.


Since my early days of being massacred by combos such as these, I've tried to come up with decks that don't use the ultra-est of rare cards to pummel your opponent in unison, but going for the opposite approach. I've been able to come up with a few decks that were able to pull off some amazing things, such as my ::Raphael:: which managed to get Rising Conquering Crunch up to 64 speed and 128 damage, also if it dealt damage I would heal however much it did. A more recent example would be a combo I found for one of my current decks to force my opponent to mill over a hundred cards, now that's just powerful. (I'll show the combo at the end of the wall of text here) Unfortunately, things like these require insanely obscure setups and are almost impossible to pull off before your opponent drawing into your death and showing you what turn 2 decks are supposed to be like. I'm still trying to find a safe ground in my decks between defense and offense for when I should go all-out. See, I'm too cautious (or paranoid if you will) of a person to just attack once or twice here or there, I need to know I'm secure by either playing a deck that discards my opponent's hand, or a deck that can attack more times in a turn that my opponent has hand size. I've recently been working around this with two things: an all throw and reversal deck I recently made with a friend for him to use, and my Ken deck, which has both discard AND the capability to attack 10 or more times in a turn, which is what I really needed in a deck.

Because of my relative newness to the game, and my aforementioned weakness to be scared of attacking, I haven't won many tournaments, though I do have a fair share of patches and a few tournament wins that I'm proud of to this day. Probably the one that was the funniest was me winning a free for all game that had 9 people (the common theme for multi games in my area is to kill me off first, I still don't understand the reasoning behind this, I've never been a threat.) and I managed to win this as .Dan. who recurred revitalize and spammed it, the game managed to hit the time limit (of 4.5 hours, thanks to me) with me as the only person with full health, because no one bothered to attack their medic. I also once managed to win a tournament with a defensive style Santa deck, but that's enough pride for now.

As of late I've been making my decks a little more calculated, (Sixteen attacks, eight-four checks, 30ish foundations, things like this help as a deck's base.) and more to the point of what they need to do. (basically no filler just because it's a good card, though most staples dont apply to this rule, as everyone can use momentum and 6 check foundations are never bad.) My most recent deck is of Remy, and it went blow for blow and tied against the person who usually builds the scariest of decks between anyone I play against. (He used the above example of rape against me.) I know I said that's enough pride, but I hope that people who are new to this game could read this, or an example like this and use it to give them hope (and maybe a graph on how to build strong decks) for the future and a fighting chance against all of the shiny decks out there. (Shiny in reference to the amount of promos and super-rare cards within their decks.)

I end this with a good luck to all of the newer players like I was, and may you always check sixes.



If you're interested in the combo I found last night to mill over a hundred, it goes as follows: In a chaos deck, acquire momentum, usually through the use of a certain lord of the makai card, and perhaps a few other sources, as well as a couple control check hax on your side, just as Soichi Jinmu, and Sting like a Bee. Then proceed with the following two cards (The first to be used as an action.)







If you have let's say... 15 momentum, (it's common with chaos) you discard it all for the 2nd action before making the check, and use 4 soichi's to add an additional 8, and if you had perhaps used 4 sting like a bees this turn, you would get a + 42 to your check, if you check a 6... your opponent mills 96.

Unfortunately, I only have a single copy of Blinding Speed, and two of Countless days of Killing so I won't be pulling this off too often.