Introducing: Ruin
Bill Stark
Today we’re introducing a brand new keyword ability coming soon to the UniVersus TCG. Get ready to meet Ruin X.
What is Ruin X?
Here is the official rules text for Ruin:
Ruin X is an instruction that means your rival must sacrifice X facedown foundations, or as many as possible if they have fewer face down foundations than the value of X.
What does Ruin X DO?
When designing a new ability there are two primary goals Game Design teams consider:
How can this ability reflect the world it will appear in?
How can this ability accomplish game play goals?
Thematically the goal behind Ruin is to allow us to show the destructive power of massive monsters or beings who wreak havoc in the worlds they inhabit. Tearing down walls, kicking through houses, ravaging villages, towns, and cities; all of these characteristics would be excellent fits for cards that would appear with the Ruin mechanic.
From a gameplay perspective Ruin allows us to contribute to two key goals:
Giving players the ability to “declutter” complicated board states
Providing motivation to end games
A Ruin player can ensure their rival’s Stage presence stays within a certain size, something veteran players can use to gain an advantage tactically and which new players benefit from as the board state becomes less complex to manage. This is a challenge we’ve sought ways to address since Worlds 2015, including other keyword abilities like “Deadlock.”
In addition to shrinking the field of play, Ruin means a rival needs to work towards ending the game or risk losing. As turns start to go by where their board shrinks to Ruin, they’ll have fewer options to use to win. This helps progress games towards an end state, preventing them from taking too long to finish, another challenge we’ve seen with some archetypes and at events.
Ruin is a variable ability, so the “X” allows us to increase and decrease the power level of a card that has Ruin. The base level is Ruin 1, but the sky's the limit for just how big Ruin can get.
What is Sacrifice?
Eagle-eyed readers will have caught a subtle introduction of a new game rules term via Ruin: “sacrifice.” Here’s the rules breakdown for sacrifice:
An effect that instructs a player to sacrifice a card means that player must choose and destroy a card in their stage that matches the instruction.
The goal of “sacrifice” is to differentiate the frequency we have to rely on the term “destroy” to mean different things. One way to think about the difference:
“Sacrifice” is when something goes to the discard from the stage because its owner selected it
“Destroy” is when something goes to the discard from the stage because it was targeted by a card or ability
Sacrifice is a small word adjustment we can make to help the game make a little more sense for new and veteran players alike.
Where You Can Find Ruin
Ruin will be coming to UniVersus soon as we visit worlds where its inclusion helps reflect the destructive powers of beings from that world!