Designing UniVersus: A Guide to Formats

Formats provide frameworks for enjoying UniVersus. They dictate what size your deck needs to be, what cards you can include in that deck, and even the manner in which you build your deck. Let’s look at our most popular formats, as well as some guidelines on who those formats are designed to appeal to.

Standard

If there was one format you could define as the default format for UniVersus it would be this one. In fact, that’s how it got its name: “Standard,” or the “standard format for playing UniVersus.” This format highlights the most recent releases to the world of UniVersus: all mechanically unique cards printed in the current year and past two years are legal for play, except where prohibited by banning. (You can read our Banned and Errata’ed list here.)

This format is a great fit for players of all experience levels, creating puzzles and challenges that players may need some support and guidance on with deckbuilding.

Minimum Deck Size: 1 Starting character card, 60 card deck, and an optional 10 card sideboard.

View the full list of Standard-legal sets and card legality here.

Spotlight Constructed

Does your playgroup love a particular world that has joined UniVersus? Spotlight Constructed is the format for you! Here only the cards from a particular intellectual property (IP) are allowed, no matter when they were printed. That could mean as little as a single set of eligibility, to more than a half dozen in the case of a world like My Hero Academia. Cards reprinted in other worlds are legal for play in Spotlight Constructed so long as they appeared in that world in at least one printed form, including as promos.

This format is perfect for players new to the game who want to move into Constructed deckbuilding and play, or who joined the game from being big fans of a particular IP. The smaller pool of cards to build from makes playing and deckbuilding less intimidating compared to formats with bigger card pools while still creating interesting deckbuilding challenges to solve.

Minimum Deck Size: 1 Starting character card, 60 card deck, and an optional 10 card sideboard.

Retro

Our oldest format is “Retro,” home to all UVS Games printed cards that have ever been a part of UniVersus. Beloved by our veteran players who’ve been around since the beginning, Retro features the craziest, most powerful interactions. It has a steep learning curve and a massive card pool, so it’s best suited to players with a lot of experience.

Minimum Deck Size: 1 Starting character card, 60 card deck, and an optional 10 card sideboard

View the full list of Retro Card Legality here.

Sealed Deck

You don’t need to have a UniVersus collection to enjoy the Sealed format. It’s ideal for helping new players learn the game, which is why we make it the format of choice for our Prerelease events. Each player receives six booster packs, then gets to build their deck from that pool of cards. 

Minimum Deck Size: 1 Starting Character card, 40 card deck, with all other cards from your packs counting as one’s “sideboard.”

Additional rules: “symbol restrictions” are removed for Sealed deck play; a player can play any cards from their packs with any character from the cards they opened regardless of whether symbols match or not. When a player “cycles” their deck, they remove 5 cards instead of the usual 10.

Booster Draft

For your most experienced players looking for the deepest challenge offered in the game we provide Booster Draft. In this format players each receive six booster packs. They sit in a circle, each open their first booster pack, place their character card in front of them, then “draft” one card from the pack to keep for their deck. They pass the pack to the left and repeat the process until all cards in each player’s booster are gone. You repeat the process with each pack, rotating passing directions each time (right first, then left, then right, and so on). The challenge of assessing each booster pack, considering what your tablemates are drafting, building your own deck, and playing the games makes this a great fit for the most experienced players.

Minimum deck size: 1 Starting Character card, 40 card deck, with all other cards from your draft picks counting as one’s “sideboard.”

Additional rules: you’re free to run symbol restrictions in one of two ways for Booster Draft: the same as Sealed, where there are none and which is referred to as “Modified Draft,” or traditional draft restriction wherein one symbol on each card must match the player’s character. Like Sealed Deck, when a player “cycles” their deck they only remove 5 cards.