UVS August 2024 Rules Update

Good afternoon, UniVersus fighters!

Today, I’m going to walk you through all of the new rules updates and mechanics that will coincide and go into effect with the release of our next booster set!

Attuned

Attuned symbols allow a card to be played in a deck that maintains a different Primary symbol. I’ve chosen to play a big, aggressive character with Death and Fire symbols, and I want to focus on a lot of older multi-symbol cards that all share Fire. That’s awesome, just like normal. However, with attuned, I can now include attacks with the death attuned symbol to bolster my repertoire and increase the strength of my deck. With the creation of the attuned mechanic, we have codified the term “Primary Symbol” when referring to the symbol that all cards without attuned must share. This includes cards in the sideboard as well.

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.

Sacrifice is a new term we’ve incorporated into the lexicon of the game. There has historically been a learning curve for players when confronted with card effects reading too similarly or without the proper context. This is a case of “if you know you know”. Often a newer player will look at an effect telling them to destroy a card, and come to the logical conclusion that it allowed them to interact with a rival’s stage. While this has been clarified in the rules for quite some time, it seemed reasonable to take action to help lessen this particular pain point. All cards that are sacrificed are considered destroyed, but it is quite clear that you cannot sacrifice your rival’s cards.

Backups

Backups are a new card type, the first new card type since the game was originally created. Here is a look at the entry for backups in the rules reference:

Backup

Backups are one of the six card types.

You play backups into the card pool as a form during the Combat Phase, and they get built into the stage during the end phase (just like foundations).

Unlike foundations, you can’t commit backups to pass checks. If a card counts or refers to your backups, it means the backups in your stage.

Backups have 1 unique property—stamina.

- Stamina is the number over the green heart icon.

(see: Stamina)

When playing an attack, the attacking player may choose to attack a backup in the rival’s stage rather than the rival character. When their backup is being attacked, the defending player cannot try to play a block during the block step.

At first glance, backups seem to work very similar to assets, playing and building as normal, and having the restriction of not being able to improve checks made from your deck. However, they have one unique feature new to the game. A backup provides a second (or third, etc) card in your stage with a pool of life points. This is presented in the form of stamina, the equivalent of health for backups.

On a backup, the number over the green heart icon is their stamina.

When a backup enters the stage, it enters with maximum stamina.

A backup can lose stamina due to costs or effects, or by taking damage. (see: Damage)

- Losing stamina for any reason other than a successful attack does not count as taking damage.

When a backup has 0 or less stamina, destroy it.

Like health, stamina is a maximum.

- If a backup would gain stamina beyond the maximum, it gains up to the maximum instead.

- If a backup would gain stamina but it is already at the maximum, it fails to gain stamina at all.

A backup can never have stamina above its maximum. If a backup’s maximum stamina is reduced below its current stamina, its current stamina is also reduced to the new maximum.

For clarity, stamina is not a number of counters on a backup card. It is similar to a health pool that characters have. It’s important to note that backups cannot have more than their maximum stamina. The only way to interact with stamina is through card abilities or damage dealt from attacks.

Backups can be attacked, and if your rival has a backup in their stage, you must choose to attack the player, or which specific backup they have in play. Similar to an action where you choose the effect of the action card before making the check to play it, you must declare what card you are attacking before making the check to play the attack.

Attacks against backups will have a slightly altered the attack sequence. You can still use effects to alter the speed and damage of the attack, as the attack sequence still occurs. However, when attacking a backup, ending the Enhance Step will move immediately to the Damage Step. This means no responses that refer to the Block Step will have an opportunity to trigger.

There have been a few questions about backups since they were revealed that I’m happy to provide answers to.

Do attacks that deal damage to a backup go to momentum? The attack dealt damage, and we have not changed the rules for that. So yes, attacking a backup will offer a player the same opportunity to add the attack to momentum as attacking a player.

Does attacking a backup trigger “on damage” and/or “if not blocked” abilities? Yes, the attacks will have still dealt damage. However, we are also announcing a change to the attack sequence. When attacking a backup, you will skip the Block Step and proceed immediately to the Damage Step, and the attack will not receive a block status. This means no “when blocked/not blocked” effects will fire.

If a backup being attacked leaves the stage during the attack sequence, what happens? Similar to a player being attacked and the attack itself leaves play, the attack sequence is aborted. The active player will return to their Combat Phase and play will continue.

If a face down backup is unflipped what happens? The backup will refresh, and will have full stamina.

Deflect

Deflect is changing very slightly. Due to the new rules surrounding backups and the Block Step, we are changing the response window of Deflect to “before the Damage Step”.

Deflect grants “Response [Hand] Add this card to the card pool: Before the damage step of a rival attack, that attack gets -X damage. X equals the rating of the Deflect keyword granting this ability. Only 1 Deflect ability can be played per attack.”

Blitz

Blitz is our new timing ability type, much like enhance, form, and response. Blitz abilities are noted on cards in pink text.

Blitzes occur during the Enhance Step, before enhances. This means that they will occur after the window for “after an/this attack is played” responses has closed. Blitzes will all happen during the window of “during this attack” for any abilities looking for game events happening during an attack. Additionally, if you skip the Enhance Step for any reason, you will not be able to play your blitz abilities.

Double-Sided Cards

We are introducing double-sided cards in the form of both characters, and attacks that become a different card type. To handle double-sided cards, we are introducing the term “transform” and for the case of these transforming attacks, we have a new keyword ability: “Shift”!

Shift is a continuous keyword ability (like Flash and Throw) that grants an attack the text:

“As this card clears from your card pool during your End Phase, if you played it, you may build it transformed (opposite side up).”

This allows some interesting and useful ability to gain extra value from attacks. Note that it only works during your own End Phase, so it will not transform if you block with it. You also cannot add a Shift card into your card pool and still build it, as you must play the card to activate Shift. Transformed cards change which side is the face. This should not be confused with flipped cards. Flipped cards are face down, meaning that they are blank. Here is the relevant rules text governing the action of transforming a card:

To transform a card is to change it to its opposite side. Cards that transform have a default state of the front side being the face of the card.

If a transformed card leaves its current zone of play, changes facing, or changes publicity, it will return to the front side unless instructed otherwise by game text.

When a transformed card is flipped face down or moves to a different zone of play (think a sacrificed or otherwise destroyed transformed backup), you should immediately remove the card from your sleeve and return it to the original starting side.

Double-sided cards will have photo-negative symbols and set symbol, as well as not having a difficulty or check value on the rear of the card. They begin in your deck with the face of the card being the side with normal symbols, difficulty, and check values. Cards that search a game zone for a specific type of card will only search for the original default side’s card type, not the transformed card type (example: an effect that looks for backups in your discard pile will not look for backups on the opposite side of a Shift attack).

Ruin

Ruin is another new term describing a game action. Much like transform, seal, freeze, mill, etc. it prescribes the following game effect:

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. X equals the rating of the ruin instruction.

Infinity Characters

Featured in the next release is something we have not done in quite some time. A character with the Infinity symbol icon. Characters with Infinity must select a Primary Symbol at deck construction. This is the only symbol they will have access to in the standard constructed format. For all limited formats, infinity characters have access to any card in your pack.

New Format — Modified Draft

Included in this rules update primer is new on a new draft format! Modified Draft is an alternate draft format designed to make the new world of attuned symbol cards easier to experience. In a normal draft, you get to play any card that shares a symbol with your character. But that still limits you to a small portion of the set being available. Even less, if your character only has 2 symbols!

For Modified Draft, you can play any card in the set. Just choose the card that looks most interesting or useful to your character or strategy. That’s correct, you can draft a deck unlike anything before. Try out some strategies you can’t in any other format!

Commit

We’re always looking to make reading our cards easier. With the next booster set release, we’re trying out the use of the below icon in our card text to symbolize the term “Commit” when referring to committing the card itself as a cost for an ability. If the cost requires you to commit something else, that will still be written out. An effect causing a player to commit a card will also be written out.

That’s all the big changes to the rules. It is a large number of updates, and there’s a few more simple tweaks to the rules text to adjust for all these new additions to gameplay. We hope that this helps summarize all the new things being brought to the game, as well as give a little more insight into how specific things work. The updated rules reference will be posted before release, so keep your eyes out for it! Thanks for your time, and I hope you have a lot of fun UniVersus battles!

Tim Friedlieb, Rules Manager