Preparing for the UniVersus World Championship
With only two weeks left before the UniVersus (UVS) 2024 World Championship, a new ban and errata update has been posted early. UVS Games is giving players as much time as possible to prepare under these new changes. Full explanations behind their decisions will be published in their monthly bans and errata update, on the first Tuesday of every month.
Five cards find themselves with errata text this time. I’ll give my thoughts on why they were changed and how the meta will look going forward.
Bertolt Hoover, Living Weapon
New Text:
Enhance: Draw 2 cards and discard 2 cards. If the discarded cards are the same type, this attack gets +2 damage.
Response: At the start of the End Phase, transform Bertolt Hoover, Living Weapon. Each player chooses 3 foundations in their stage and sacrifices the rest. Only playable if a player has 11 or more foundations.
Bertolt Hoover, Living Weapon no longer has the option of reducing damage with his enhance. Damage reduction combined with the ability to filter for the correct block zones made this character incredibly durable on his front side, gatekeeping a huge part of the meta game. He now also transforms when a player has 11 or more foundations instead of 9 which used to be an even stronger deterrent to late game strategies.
It was only a matter of time before this character got nerfed in some way or another. While not as dominant as a lot of people assumed when he was first previewed, he still managed to take down a National Championship in a metagame heavily warped around fighting him. His transformed side, Bertolt, Colossus Titan Advancing, remains unchanged, so a successful once-per-game will still result in almost certain victory.
Mimic
New Text:
Response Commit: After you check an asset, add 1 attack with a check value of 3 from your discard pile to your hand.
This nerf for Mimic goes pretty deep. Not only is his card advantage cut in half, but his bottom response isn’t tenacious. This is gonna severely reduce the aggressive potential of Mimic decks and prevent massive swings of luck halfway through attack turns. Since the most unique thing about Mimic is the continuous ability which still functions while committed, I don’t think this completely removes the character from the metagame, but he certainly will become a niche pick.
If it weren’t for the above Bertolt errata, I could see Mimic still being a good choice to fight back against the board wipes in the game; he still has his own one-sided board wipe in Colossal Detonation, which players will be less prepared for now. Mimic abandons his role as a hyper-consistent aggro deck, but I think he’s still a prime choice for asset lovers and sculpting specific combos.
Recovery Girl
New Text:
Response: After you take damage, build 1 foundation from your discard pile committed.
Changing the response so that it builds the foundation committed instead of ready is a tried and true design. Johnny Cage from the Retro format has the same response as the errata version of Recovery Girl and hasn’t had an unhealthy impact on a format yet. A critical mass of defensive tools was reached with the release of Attack on Titan: Origins of Power, allowing her to create un-winnable game states at an alarming rate.
With the ability to recycle cards like Desperate Struggle, Recuperation Time, and Last-Second Rescue it was nearly impossible to kill a Recovery Girl after turn two. The response window staying open so she can build Last-Second Rescue and then immediately use it to effectively blank a rival attack’s damage was devastating in later turns. Coming from the discard pile during the damage step made it very rare the rival could interact with the foundation built. Eventually you were fighting her momentum before you could fight her health bar.
This errata is a welcome change for many players. The format should open up a lot more without Recovery Girl in it.
Disarming Glance
New Text:
Response Flip: After an attack is played, players cannot play abilities that add cards to their hand during this attack.
This one is both a bit of a functional errata and a power level errata. The old version of the ability allowed players to abort an attack before it can resolve. That meant the end point for Disarming Glance’s instruction would never happen, locking players out of any sort of hand fixing for the entire turn! Usually this was accomplished with cards like Cape of No Return, Dimensional Sphere, or Genkai’s Guidance, but there were plenty of options.
It would appear that this was an unintended combo, unfortunately. The new version of this ability is very clear that you are only prohibited from adding cards to your hand for the current attack. Regardless of how control players feel about this change, this should clear up a lot of confusion surrounding these interactions.
Nott’s Flask
New Text:
Unique keyword added.
This is a very simple one; Unique being added means that you can only have one Nott’s Flask in play. This is a powerhouse for a one-difficulty card. Getting multiple copies of this card out meant a lot of zero-damage attacks were gonna resolve. On top of that it was one of the best self-mill generators in the format. Still a great card, just more in line with other low-cost assets now.
Best Decks in UniVersus After the Banlist and Errata
There is now a fresh format for the World Championships on February 14th through the 16th. Some characters were being held down before, but now might be their chance to shine. These three characters are my pick for biggest winners after these errata go into effect.
Gentle Criminal
This character is backed by some of the strongest attuned symbols in Order and Chaos. His unique responses give him flexibility with flash attacks or all of the check bonuses on the Chaos symbol. Order decks can use one of my favorite combos in the game right now with America’s #1 Hero creating an unblockable Armored Titan Rush.
King Ghidorah
If Godzilla’s lackluster performance at Nationals and the nerf to Bertolt keep board wipes away from the format, then I don’t see why King Ghidorah doesn’t slink his way back into a top spot. These decks are always host to powerful abilities normally regulated by being at low health, that King Ghidorah can use all game. True 100% Unleashed protects him from most one shot combo decks. Replacing the banned Risky Encounter has proven a little tricky but between Tri-Gravity Beam and Combined Firepower just about any attack can be the win condition.
Izuku Midoriya, On the Move // Izuku Midoriya, Quirks Unleashed
This deck was already very popular, but it struggled a lot into the board wipe once-per-game abilities at the top of the tiers. With incredibly good scaling on the transformed side the offense is nothing to worry about. Surviving that long might be difficult, but with access to the Good and Life symbols it will have the best Stun hate possible. Fierce Wings doubling up to hate on Stun and Ruin abilities while also fetching the low difficulty life saving cards like Referee Juri and Evade and Copy is a big reason to pick this character.
2024 UniVersus World Championship Metagame
There’s no knowing for sure what will be the best deck as we head into the World Championship. The last two years saw back-to-back surprises in Midnight .I and Endeavor .III winning the grand prize. Both above average characters but a departure from the rest of the format. The roster doubles to 64 players this year and the field feels as wide open as ever. I can’t wait to see how things are gonna shift and which player will be crowned champion!
New to UniVersus? Head over to our complete beginner’s guide to UniVersus and you’ll be qualified for the next World Championship in no time!
