My Hero Academia: Final Battle Challenger Series: Dev Diary .II – First Look

Welcome back, fighters!

I’m Tim Frie, UniVersus Rules Manager and resident My Hero Academia fanboy. Today, I’d like to share some more insight into this pair of Challenger Series decks and show off a few new cards while we’re at it.

Let’s start with the Villains deck. Last time, we saw the characters One For All and Tomura Shigaraki. The big theme shared by these two was once again the idea of being tricky by playing cards from unusual zones and making use of accumulated resources for quick gain. Our first two cards today fit that gameplan as solid role fillers.

Adaptive Stabbing and Appendage Onslaught both have on-curve stats, but get even better if you play them using one of the villains’ abilities. Stabbing gaining Throw ensures some damage while Onslaught’s increased Stun rating helps lower the rival’s defenses for an aggressive attack turn.

Next let’s talk about Combination Salvo. While it doesn’t interact with the characters in quite such a direct way, it will often meet the requirements for its blitz with characters that remove cards so often. One For All can play it from his own momentum and use the powerful, resulting in a second attack from momentum in his hand, able to be played that turn.

The first foundation I want to share with you today is a solid addition to any deck on its symbols, but especially so for EVIL decks as it will help add some needed draw power. Though, your rival does have some ability to prevent it. Shigaraki’s Optimal Form would of course do a little more than add another card to hand. Here we see that when his body is taxed, it can still be of some use, decreasing rival attack speeds, provided the card is already committed. Playing multiple of this card won’t have such a drawback as First Form foundations often do.

Our final EVIL foundation today before we move on to the good guys is Stealing Quirks. What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is ALSO mine. This card allows you to make use of your rival’s momentum to pay for your own keyword abilities. Who says villains don’t understand sharing? At least when it comes to others sharing with them.

Okay, okay…let’s move on to the Heroes of this release, Armored All Might and Izuku Midoriya, Deku. In this armored form, All Might used the technology he has access to to try and recreate the abilities of his student’s quirks. In that way, many of his cards possess the ‘Vestige’ keyword introduced with the last iteration of Midoriya and continued on with Deku’s new cards. The vestiges may be different in scope, but they are both donning the abilities of others in order to succeed.

The first attack I’d like to show you is ‘Cellophane Sugarman Shoot Style Smash’. This 4 difficulty kick has a slew of relevant keywords and if your rival has already connected with an attack, you’re likely to get a speed boost to push this kick through.

Let’s change it up and take a look at Gear Shift. This spam foundation provides a good defensive trick, and can help make that much needed speed adjustment. It also has the Vestige keyword to work with both characters’ packages, and can be used to turn on the ability for Evoking the Wielders. Evoking requires some specific setup, but the amount of on demand speed and damage provided by this card is quite a doozy! It counts for itself, so you only need to get 2 other vestige foundation into play.

The last card I want to share today captures a pretty amazing scene. Incoming Smash Kick portays the moment that Deku arrives at the floating UA high from having been portaled away by the villains. At the very last moment, he returns to take over the fight against Shigaraki. This is exhibited by the ability to help play it very late into an attack string, gaining a check bonus at the cost of a card from your hand. With foundation or character stat pumps, this can become a pretty dangerous tool when you are nearly out of resources.

That’s all the reveals I have to show you today, but I hope this insight into the cards, some of why they work the way they do, and the thematics behind them have been to your liking. We still have a few weeks of cards that are to be revealed in our weekly newsletter (don’t forget to sign up at the bottom of this page!!!) and at the end of the month, I’ll return with another article to go over the remaining cards and show you some more of my favorites!

Which cards are you most excited to play as your next form when the My Hero Academia: Final Battle Challenger Series, slingshots into your local game store on June 12? You can find links to all of our social channels here and let us know.