Update
Reprint Policy Update
Tim Frie, UVS Games Rules Manager
Good day, UniVersus fighters!
We’ve been seeing a lot of discussion going on expressing concerns over the confusion of reprinted cards. Today, I’d like to clear up that confusion and make our policy for reprinted cards explicitly clear.
With the exception of character cards (I’ll come back to these later), card names are unique across all properties and franchises.
Part of the confusion we’ve been hearing stems from the ‘Mechanically Exact Policy’ in the current Card Errata and Legality document. We will be eliminating that section and replacing it with a description of Most Recent Printing rules and stipulations. When cards have the same name as cards from a previous UniVersus product where the symbols, difficulty, and check are all the same and the game text is identical or nearly identical, they can be considered the same card. Changes in terminology like ‘vitality’ to ‘health’ or ‘add this card to your staging area’ to “build it” should NOT be considered different functionality. If a card that has been reprinted has an error, we will call that out in our errata posts around the time of the set launch. But for the most part, you can assume the text on the newest printing of a card to be the correct, active text for all versions of that card.
What does this boil down to?
If you have older versions of cards we’ve reprinted, you are welcome to use those older versions in decks when legal for the format you are playing.
This does not come without some acknowledgement of the elephant in the room, however. Currently, there are 2 cards that are currently legal in both UniVersus Standard and MHA Spotlight with the same name as entirely different cards from the past. When 2 cards with the same name have obviously different identities, players should mark them with the set identifier when filling out decklists. We’ll set an example below with Basic Training. In the event that you could include both of these cards in the same deck, you would write them down as listed here:
Basic Training MHA03
Basic Training DS02
Sometimes characters from different worlds in UniVersus will have the same official name. For example, Goro from Mortal Kombat and Goro Daimon (also called Goro in UniVersus) from the King of Fighters. In the instance that two characters would be named the same, and we either have not or cannot give them different identities, those characters will be unique to the world that they come from. Of course, characters follow their own rules for uniqueness in general that’s covered by our rules concerning identities and titles. This means that you can rest easy that Goro and Goro (Daimon) are distinctly different characters and that distinction is supported by the rules.
Goro KoF03
Goro KoF04
In the instance that a card has a character restriction for an ability, and the character in question has multiple personages across licenses (such as the above example of Goro and Goro), the character gate is specifically looking for the character within the same franchise as the card with the limiting ability. Goro from King of Fighters cannot use the Goro Enhance on the attack Punch Walk, for example. The card would certainly be legal in the deck, but that enhance would not be playable.
We hope this has been helpful in clearing up the confusion about reprints and legality of playing older printings of reprinted cards.
Want to share your voice? Join in on the conversations happening at our: