Update
Ban and Errata Update 12/05/23
UVS Games
Today we are announcing changes to the Ban List.
Ban List:
The following cards are banned in both Standard and MHA Spotlight formats:
Back Alley Haymaker
Capture Evil-Doers
Back Alley Haymaker
First, let’s address Back Alley Haymaker. That is going to require a little zooming out. Typically when measuring card usage, foundations dominate the top few slots. This makes sense, foundations normally comprise 60 to 70% of most decks. Since the release of Undaunted Raid, one card has bucked that trend in a BIG way. Back Alley Haymaker has gradually moved into the most played card in competitive UVS in a big way, passing even the foundations it usually comes partnered with. We’ve been monitoring its climb up usage and win rates for a while now, but the National Championship Series proved to be the breaking point. Back Alley passed the next closest card (It Can’t Be Fixed) by over 140 copies played across the 3 national events, and it beat the next closest attack (Rejuvenating Smash) with nearly twice as many copies. We have never seen card usage rates like this for an attack card and it's clear the card is warping deck building at higher levels of play in particular. In addition to high usage, the card is having big success to go along with it. At all 3 national events, Back Alley Haymaker appeared in 50% or more of the top cut qualifying decks, as well as putting up strong numbers in the decks outside of top cuts. Back Alley has spiked up in usage rate in a way we have never seen before, all while sporting an incredible record of success.
Capture Evil-Doers
Capture Evil-Doers is a bit more complicated topic. The community conversation around the card has been running for a while, and while we were never fond of the NPE it created, especially against characters who put a premium on momentum, its usage (compared to other actions) and win rates never reached abnormal numbers. It mostly found a home in the Good Punch decks that were competitive, but not dominant. It also wasn’t fully pushing out the decks you’d expect it to, like Tamaki Amajiki. Then at the 3 Nationals events we saw a big uptick in usage. Many decks that in the past that were only siding the card, had shifted it to their main decks, and decks that were running it mainboard before now had even more copies. It also started to find broader adoption outside of the Good decks, ending up finding homes in Fire decks in particular. At Nationals, Capture tripled the next closest action (Barrier Shield) in usage and raised some alarms. We also knew with the release of Jet Burn, the card was about to find a few more homes. The Elephant, or Dragon to be more apt, in the room is Pro Hero Ryukyu. Ryukyu’s synergy with Capture Evil-Doers is incredible, just about always being able to pay the bill on the card pool clear ability. This leads to some very consistent kill turns in earlier turn windows that we are trying to reduce the number of games ending in. The impact in local level of play is particularly pronounced, as Ryukyu is deliberately a straight forward character meant to be welcoming to various levels of play experience. We know this strategy has some counterplay, especially at higher levels of play, but the play experience it creates when you don’t find those counters goes against our current goals for the game. Between the existing NPE the card creates for momentum driven characters, the large spike in play usage, and the gameplay loops the card is creating at various levels of play with the release of set 6, we’ve decided that it's time to ban Capture Evil-Doers.
With these changes, we will continue monitoring the post Jet Burn metagame for outliers. These cards have jumped off the page but we are watching very closely the early results coming in from all levels of play and the conversations about the game happening on our official social platforms.
Errata List:
Next, we are announcing some new additions to the Errata list, which has been updated alongside this article. The below list is receiving an errata.
Kyoka Jiro .II
Jiro’s Bass
“I am a Hero, Too!“
"I Won’t Back Down!”
Tasty Riff
Dance Routine
Soulful Rendition
Twirling Needle
With this update, “gain # Applause counters” will be replaced with “add # Applause counters to your character” on the listed cards. In order to move toward a more consistent wording with other cards that deal with counters on cards, the above cards associated with Kyoka Jiro .II in Jet Burn are being reworded. These cards were designed to state “gain # Applause counters”, when previous cards specifically instructed a location for counters to be placed.
With Twirling Needle, The static text on the card is being errata’d to read “You may play enhance abilities during this attack as though this card is the first attack you have played this turn.”
This months final errata is an attempt to avoid messing with the rules interactions and implications created by the card text on Twirling Needle. The previous wording ended up a little ambiguous about the intended interactions and left a lot of room open for interpretation on how other cards interacted with its status as “your first attack this turn”. The new wording now allows for intended bonuses and effects to be used during the attack, providing the original gameplay advantages to using the attack.
As always, for the full list of our UniVersus Legality & Errata Guide and up to date rules documentation, click here.
If you’d like to share your thoughts, join in on the conversations happening in our:
If you want more information or insight into the game go to https://www.uvsgames.com/ for official news, articles and next month's Ban and Errata update.