Game Design Article: Godzilla Challenger Series Standard Format Upgrades
UVS Games Design Team
Greetings Godzilla fans! The design team wanted to share with you some of our favorite ways we have been using the cards and characters from the Godzilla Challenger Series!
Jeremy Ray
One of my absolute favorite decks coming out of the Godzilla Challenger Series is the heroic Mechagodzilla, Kiryu on the Earth symbol! Trying to leverage the absolute most out of both of his abilities. We are leaning into the high difficulty attack lineup. Smashing Stomp, History’s Greatest Monster,Press Conference and City Rampage function as our main tools for passing checks for our attacks. While Press Conference does double duty acting as an enabler for our Mesa Mallets.
Speaking of the attack lineup, we lean heavily into EX, with over half our attacks sporting an EX rating for Kiryu to fuel and push our attacks. We pack these attacks up with foundations like Monster Aggression to help us close out games and Massive Size for a huge damage pump on our speedy attacks. Lastly we back the whole lineup with 2 copies of Heat Ray, an absolutely massive threat our opponents have to always have on their mind.
The biggest engine of them all is the card advantage and filter to help with our low starting hand size and discard cost on our ability. The entire attack lineup and City Rampage is 5 diff or greater, meaning they all draw 1, but also we have some tricky “printed” 5 diffs like Massive Size and Dangerous Hybrid to even squeeze a little extra card draw out of our build turns. Lastly we get card draw support from all over the deck, Titan Cliff is the perfect fix for a bad hand, all while building in either #10 Pro Hero or Moth Monster. Smashing Stomp, Ferocious Attacker and New Training Method can help extend our hand even further in a pinch. New Training Method is worth a little extra mention, as the glue that holds together a relatively high difficulty foundation base, it helps solve the issue of higher difficulty builds and turns into extra cards as the game advances.
Check Out The Deck On UGN
William Howard
3 Heads are Better Than 1! King Ghidorah is easily the character I am most excited for coming out of the Godzilla Challenger Series. He has a very unique ability that is super thematic, and honestly just powerful. This character being basically a 6 handsize character with 30 health is a solid start. On top of that he gets to tutor up cards in his discard pile during either his own turn or his rival's turn, turning him into a deck builder’s dream. Today I would like to show you a super fun list I have been working on that wants to be a more of a toolbox sort of deck.
So obviously let’s first address the 3 headed dragon in the room. Our character has a max health of a mere 10. This means there are a number of cards that are automatically online that we get to really use at their full potential. Sword of the Darkness Flame is incredibly strong in our character. This attack always replaces itself since the draw is online, and we have a free activation of the top enhance as well because we gain 2 life afterwards. Unmatched Quickness is always live to either reduce our rivals speed or pump our own speed. Dragon of the Darkness Flame is an incredible dunk that is always active, and can kill someone from near full health if used in the correct spot. True 100% Unleashed always gets to pass when being used as a block, and Dissolving the Conflict can always return our rival’s attack to hand after they pass to play their finishing move. Leaning more into the toolbox side of the deck we have Relaxed Demeanor in our deck as a way to fish out attacks from our deck into our discard pile. This means that if we need an attack in a specific situation, between this card and our character we can make sure we always have access to those powerful moves
Barrett Bryant
Is that a bird? A plane? A Ryukyu? NO! It’s Mothra, Giant Moth Monster soaring in with the upcoming Godzilla Challenger Series! Mothra won’t be just charging towards giant lamps when they enter the world of UniVersus, but instead charging head first at your rival with this Air Charge package!
Momentum is the name of the game with a character like Mothra. This deck looks to open attack strings with cards like Engine Boost to get a quick and easy momentum after Mothra gives it +5 speed and then follow-up with attacks like Electric Moth to cycle draw cards and re-ready Mothra to be ready to give +8 speed on our Walk The Dogs! Extra support from cards like Double Jab Pummel help us play even more attacks, and Close Quarters Subdual help commit our rival’s board to make our Walk The Dogs even easier to play. Some extra momentum utility cards like Dramatic Slash, Cheerleader, and Childlike Appearance help keep us alive with lots of quick tricks that the Air symbol is known for!
Matt Smith
Supersonic Punches from out of the Void! Rodan is the classic kaiju terror of the skies and a favorite of mine growing up.
As a 7 hand size character that can manipulate speed on both ends, Rodan thrives during the earliest stages of the game in a way unlike anyone else. An interesting facet of the speed attack stat in Universus is its relationship with foundations on a fundamental level. In order for your rival to block they are going to need more foundations to deal with your extra speed. In order for them to get through with attacks they are going to need to present very high speeds, or many attacks, numbers that will push through Rodan’s resources. Both of these features put a lot of pressure on your rival’s foundations, letting Rodan run amok in the early turns. Once a few turns pass and your rival has begun to stabilize Rodan loses that advantage, but we have just the answer with Decay Awakened! Decay Awakened will clear each player’s stage, essentially starting the game back over. Back to where Rodan reigns supreme!
Void further offers Rodan a very powerful tool with Incubating coming out of Girl Power! Incubating will let you find and remove any Supersonic Flights you need to to draw a card, any Galactic Monsters you want to grab once your rival has built up and you need to push some final points of damage. Crucially, whenever you get an unlucky block on the top of your discard pile, Incubating can be used to remove that first so Rodan can find the juicy 3 blocks for removal. We’re running a lot of 0 diff foundations to ensure we can get the largest build possible in the early turns to really leverage our advantage. With a solid support base, Void further provides a powerful attack lineup we can utilize with Undaunted Raid’s punches! There isn’t much to say about these that hasn’t been said before, but getting to use them is certainly a privilege, especially combined with a new tool out of Yu Yu Hakusho in Double Fists of the Immortal Flame.
Best of all you get to imagine Rodan with boxing gloves, punching everyone with the tip of his wings. That’s the kind of role playing you can only find in Universus.
Check Out The Deck On UGN
Clint Badger
Make the most of your limited energy!
This Mechagodzilla deck is enormous, because the Bionic Menace cares more about the number of cards remaining in his deck than his own life total! Continuously pressure your opponent with huge offensive moves and force them to buckle under your mechanical might while managing your Removed pile.
Tim Friedlieb
Godzilla is the king of the monsters, so he needs to play big bad beefy attacks, right? Well, yeah. But in this deck we’re going to also call in help from our favorite 50 foot or taller woman, Mt. Lady! This is a Chaos deck list, going full in on sending big attacks while trying our best to commit as few foundations as possible.
Let’s start with the attacks! Gently Rebound is 9 damage in ol’ Zilla. It also helps ensure momentum to fuel Gigantification Swing. Swing, in turn, will help us go on a rampage! Training with Gunhead helps us make sure these check-buffed attacks get faster alongside some excellent use from some yo-yos. Smashing Stomp helps refill our hand while Butte Basher is just naturally fast. We already buff the damage, so fast attacks are great. Chimera Kraken is a great attack (and it also has a monster included in the name, so also gets extra points for theming) that helps us maintain advantage on board in early turns.
For the foundation base, some specific callouts are in order. Nice Try! and History’s Greatest Monster let us be aggressive without fear of overcommitting. Unbelievable Skill lets you string longer by building successful attacks, since we’re almost all slams in this list. Also, since we’re so heavy on 3-difficulty attacks, Look at This! finds a home, helping us get +3 speed on important attacks. It doesn’t have a lot of answers for everything, but neither does our favorite King of Monsters. Like him, this deck pretty much just smashes through everything and tries to win with brute force. I enjoy it, and I hope you do too! Feel free to post on socials how you would upgrade this deck or build it differently and why.
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