2024 NA Nationals Recap!

NA Nationals has come and gone, and with it came a wide variety of characters and symbols that we have not seen make a similar appearance in the last two Nationals events. Some fan-favorite players and characters made a strong showing in Dallas, and today I’m going to talk about some of those characters and decks missing from the past two Nats. Innovation and adaptation was the trend for this event, as everyone learned from what they saw in the OCE and EU Nationals and built upon it even further.

Travis Tangeman’s Chaos Krista Lenz

He’s done it again! Travis has taken down another event this competitive season, and although this time he isn’t the only player registering this character, he was a successful innovator with it. Although we have seen quite a few Kristas on stream at recent events, we have not seen one do as well as this one.

Travis has been working on this deck for a while with his teammates, and they were so confident in this character and deck that multiple members of his team piloted a deck similar to his–even players like Justin Martin took the character to a top cut in this event. The bread-and-butter of the deck is using new tools such as Don’t Do This and Long-Range Support to quickly generate Wall counters onto Krista to draw upwards to six, seven, or even eight cards with Wall Maria’s Might to further generate even more Wall counters stacking selective Attacks on top of your deck to draw and play while stacking bad checks for your opponent. While doing all of this, the key defense of the deck is to loop Run Away! in combination with Struggling With Studies to only have to worry about the base damage of your opponent’s Attacks and denying them Momentum.

I’m very excited to see what new and exciting deck Travis might be bringing to Worlds as well, and we will have to see if he can pull off the "hat trick" of UniVersus by winning a Regional, National, and World Championship all in one competitive season (RNW?).

Cory Nelson’s Water Recovery Girl

I’ll be perfectly honest: I thought this deck was going to win the whole event. Cory gave us such a strong showing of what his Recovery Girl deck could do on stream versus an Edgeshot, and the level of defensive wall he could achieve in a short amount of time; it was no surprise to me when he was in the finals versus Travis. There were even quite a few other Recovery Girls in the top end of standings after the last round, but only Cory Nelson was able to convert it to a top cut appearance and run at the finals as well.

The deck’s play pattern is relatively simple, but very high impact: the character is allowed to build in strong defensive cards like …So Manly and Last-Second Rescue as it builds a board of inevitable damage reduction with the combination of Recuperation Time alongside Brief Respite and Best Buddies. That damage reduction package doubles up as damage pump on your own attacks as well (that will be Throws), and usually gains more health to be a durable deck.

Seeing as how this character rotates very soon, I don’t know how much more of her we'll see in the competitive scene, but maybe players can still enjoy her in MHA Spotlight. However, I am interested to see what different wall-style defensive decks people attempt to run at competitive tournaments.

Ryan Levine’s Order Hawks

I don’t think I was going to get away with writing this without mentioning Ryan’s Hawks deck. We have seen Ryan play this character and style of deck countless times over the past year, and every time he plays it, he seems to have some sort of top-cut finish. If you have the chance to go and watch the VOD from the event, I strongly recommend checking out how Ryan uses all the pieces he's put into this deck to be defensive, while also being a combo-style offensive machine.

The main combo of the deck is using the combo Enhance of Focused Attack combined with Double Jumbo Fists in the Card Pool, then using Hawks’ Feathers from hand to give this a bunch of speed, then using the combo to put it to 20-30 damage (dang!). It can also do stat-swapping shenanigans to get to higher numbers or mismatched speed and damage depending on the situation, but it requires a bit of experience with the deck to really unlock all of those plays. All I can say is, watching Ryan play this deck compared to trying to replicate it yourself is a very different experience, because you can tell how many times Ryan has put his hands on these specific cards.

That being said, Focused Attack rotates soon, and I can’t wait to see what Hawks decks will look like in the future, or what deck Ryan will be playing in the future to get the same kind of play style.

Clinton Thomas‘s Void Edgeshot

This deck was a fun one to watch on stream, because it's a character that I think many of us have forgotten about: Edgeshot can still put on some crazy aggression, while also having just enough defense to survive some Attack strings in this format. We were lucky enough to watch Clinton pilot this deck in Swiss rounds as well as in Top 8, and both times it was fun to watch the amount of aggressive power a character like this can do while playing a unique deck package.

Edgeshot is one of the Jet Burn Lurker characters that benefits from the "when cards are reviewed" package. There are meaningful choices in what symbol you play because you only share certain cards with other characters, but most people gravitate towards the symbol that is shared with Mt. Lady .II to gain access to Titan Cliff and Canyon Cannon. Alongside the symmetrical stats that Edgeshot provides, this deck’s attacks can be very fast and hit very hard to take down almost any character in the format, since we are an aggressive 7-Hander.

This is one of those characters that we have to keep looking back at as he continues to gain more and more cards in the game, and a lot of his own packaged cards are all included in the set he came from. He will always have a strong core of a deck, but can always unlock new and exciting pieces.

Joshua Adkins’s Death Mirko .II

This character was nowhere near my bingo card for the event, but I did enjoy watching it play on stream. We got to see Joshua play this deck twice on stream and every time, it was an exciting and explosive game where he was always keeping his rival on the back foot. Mirko .II is actually a perfect candidate for playing the Death style casino package because of how much Card Pool clearing she has access to, just as long as her Attacks continue to hit. She shares the same symbol combination as Bertolt Hoover, Living Weapon as well so she can play the same kind of Attack and Foundation lineup. She is locked into specific keywords though, so that’s probably her only downside.

Combined Firepower is the name of the game when it comes to this deck, and it’s pretty easy to get them live in your discard pile with a Foundation-destroying cost ability on Mirko .II. Any copies of I’m With You, Loss of Consciousness, or Unabashed Manner that you build in the beginning of the game you can destroy at Enhance speed to get access to your Firepowers and then put crazy damage on cards like Luna Tijeras.

This was one of the few decks that we got to see on stream that had such explosiveness at the cost of Joshua’s stage, but it did pay off in the end. Making a Top 8 finish, I would not be surprised to see other decks like this continue to have success whether you play characters like Mirko .II  or even Erwin Smith, 13th Commander of the Survey Corps.

Robert T‘s Good Genkai

Last but not least, this deck was another fun one we got to watch during the 7th round of Swiss on stream. Robert brought us a character that I don’t think I've seen since her original set was released. Genkai showed us that in this format, a character that can output high damage Throws while maintaining cards in hand or guaranteed checks is enough to take down even juggernauts of the format like Mimic.

Using a lot of her own cards, Genkai is a very simple character that can give +X or -X damage where X is the block modifier of a card you discard as cost for its Enhance. We saw this ability to be the main offensive push of the deck as it has a lot of +3 and +4 block modifiers already included, because those cards are typically stronger anyway. When you are also putting this damage on Throws like Plaintive Cry and Invincible Clasp, the deck feels almost like an inevitability that also has its own built-in card generation.

I also had the pleasure of talking to Robert after the event, and heard about his last two rounds of the event and how he almost made a top cut appearance. Regardless though, Robert reinvigorated my appreciation for Genkai again, and love for simplistic gameplans like this one and how they can be successful.

The Road to the World Championship

We made it! Nationals season has concluded, and with it we got to see a wide variety of players, decks, and characters. I was blown away by UniVersus players as a whole this Nationals season by their innovation, as well as their high level of play across the globe. That being said, I cannot wait to see what will happen at the World Championship this February, when you put 64 players of the highest caliber in the same room, all playing for the prestigious title of World Champion. We'll see you then!