Thought this deserved its own thread.

Fred brought up an interesting point - decks shouldn't rely on their character for their strategy.

Other people disagree - that's how decks are built!

Discuss =)

I personally think its the most important part of the deck!! Im sure theres a lot of decks out there that would be competitive no matter who they ran! I know when i go to make a deck i look at characters first and then decide on symbol and off i go. I also try to use cards a lot of people arent using! Im sure the top tier decks are probably able to be played off any char with the main symbol of the deck. Its just not my style though!!

Character is the most important part of a deck!!!

The evolution of how important the character card in UFS has indeed been an interesting one, which eventually each block falls back on the same sort of rotation imo. Allow me to explain:

In block 1 (at least until Promo Adon, and the FoPs came out) it was all Void all the time. You could front 4 HS Zangief and still stand at least SOMEWHAT of a chance against whatever else. Hell my second tournament ever I took 3rd place out of 8 with 5 handsize Void Gief mill that kept recurring Size Matters with Mystic (GOD I miss that deck). Once Adon and Nakaruru came along Death and Fire started to see a lot more play, but primarily as those characters. Promo Tira and Matt Khols introduced us to shiny twinky Evil, but again how many toons outside of those two were you playing that had the pitchfork (least till Vega ><) Still follow?

As Extreme Rivals and Soul Arena came into play decks started to become a little more carbon copy: If you saw an Air deck across from you (regardless of the toon) you knew you'd see Chain Throws, Hops, Defender of the Empire (pre ban), Overhead Throws and Strike Heads. A LOT of characters were viable off the symbol, and they all fronted more or less the same deck.

When block 2 kicked out all the tomfoolery that was sets 1 and 2, decks continued to be more carbon copy. It was all Evil all the time. Chain Throw Absurd Absurd Abusrd... Splash in Infiltrating, and generic other powerfully stated Evil attack (Suzzy Q if it was Ibuki) and there was the deck. When Cutting Edge (or as I like to call it, the set that almost killed UFS) came out the game continued down the All (pardon the pun) Evil all the time theme. You saw an Evil deck, even if it was 5 Handsize Akuma you know you'd be seeing Chain Throw, Abusrd, Infiltrating, BRT, Addes, Red Lotus. EVERY Evil deck ran those cards (well those that could afford them anyways). As such, a blind chimp playing the Universal Fighter could pilot a successfull Evil deck.

As the block matured and some jank got the boot, (Addes, Swipe, Rank, Ibuki) decks started to gravitate more towards character abilities, with decks piloted by toons such as Alex, Sakura, and Yeung Sung, seeing great success based on the strength of their characters. Alex especially, in what I think was his fifteen minutes of fame (see Promo Nakaruru before Absurd came out for another example) did extremely well off of All, with fire support attacks/actions.

Block 3 came around and once again, punted out jank. As the block matured (and eventually to this point) the shift continued towards characters. Decks piloted by Chun Li, Jon Herr, J. Talbain, and Donovan won because they leaned heavily on their abilites. Yes some of the decks were somewhat c ookie cutter, but some theories and practices used in said decks weren't possible without the use of their character abilities.

Would a crazy All/Good/Water tri symbol deck be possible in anything other than a J. Talbain deck? What about running 18-20 3CCs or lower in a deck? Not possible unless you had the ability to put those pesky 3's on the bottom of your deck instead of checking them. Playing Injury Assets without fear of retaliation? Just clear em from yer card pool with Donovan. Completely ignore the rules of standard play? Duh Chunners is your girl.

Another point to show is that characters were being printed with far too powerfull or undercosted abilities up until the latest set. Honestly, how did Chun Li get passed play testing? Being able to Spike on your opponent's turn after he plays two foundations? All for the cost of commiting your toon? Really? Where do I sign up for a playtesting job? Cause seriously they don't actually do anything... Another rant for another day sorry lol. Anyways, my point is that with overpowered abilites, folks started to lean onto their character like a crutch.

Set 12 is a fine example of balanced characters. Yes folks such as Rashotep can arguably been seen as too powerful, but he only has ONE ability, it commits him, AND he hasn't the greatest stats. If he had been printed in block 2 (after Higher Caliber was banned), he would've been discarded because of bad stats, and only one ability. Now, he seems to be in the forefront of a new wave of playable yet balanced characters. I only hope this trend continues and we don't get overpowered jank like Jon Herr, Chunners, and Talbain anymore.

Cheers,

Brad

I have a lot to say in response to that, but I'll leave that to someone else, saying only this:

Rashotep in the same format as Higher Calibur would have been AMAZING. Respond with your own, ready him, blank their Syndicate/HC? HEEEEEEELL yeah, dood.

That, and that Herr, Alex, and Sakura don't rely on their character's abilities, but rather, the abilities enhance the capabilities of the deck. You don't build around them at all (Visions of Destiny doesn't count and you know it). They just make the decks better, making it an even more well-oiled machine than before.

MegaGeese said:

Wrong. Herr is THE most reliant character if I ever saw one. Allow me to explain:

Evil has no draw power that we really care about. It has no Aquakinesis, no Bigger They Are, no Son of a Tychoon...Hell, it doesn't even have Dancing Battle Kabuki. Now, John Herr as he has been made popular is by Evil, k? k. Two obvious reasons: the character. Both times. I mean, sure, he's the only character besides *Karin* with All/Evil, but who even runs Yoga Adept? (they should, btw)

John Herr is an amazing character for two distinct reasons. He can not only peer into the future with his R, but with his E, Visions of Destiny all of a sudden becomes that much more important? Why? BECAUSE HOLY CRAP HERR IS THE ONLY DRAW SUPPORT EVIL HAS!

Seriously, that is Herr's biggest perk. Or rather, if Herr had no abilities, just symbols, who'd give a ****? He'd be no Hanzo, no Chun Li, no Alex...he'd be garbage.

It's so desperately hard to Tag Along John Herr for a few reasons:

1) Evil is the best symbol and I stand by that. Even without abilities, the Evil resource symbol has access to so many amazing cards that, unfortunately, character abilities only kinda matter.
2) He has two amazing abilities. While I think his draw ability is best, his R can still allow him to peer.
3) He has two abilities period lol.

Anyways, here's my piece on how important a character's abilities are (and while this may read similar to B-Rad, I had my ideas first! >:|)

Overwhelming Strength

If memory serves, Overwhelming Strength was the first card ever made that committed your opponent's character during their turn. Not just that, but it committed them PERMANENTLY until the opponent got a momentum. It was a pretty ludacrous card, but it wasn't broken, and as such, it saw staple play in any Earth/Order/Void deck.

**Nakoruru**

Nakoruru is debatably THE most broken character in the history of UFS, for her free "I commit your stuff" ability that make today's Zi Mei, Yoshitora and Lilith look like garbage, and her R Commit which was almost always to commit the character. That last bit is pretty important

*Yoshitora*

Sure, he had access to the amazing Nadeshiko, and an even more amazing **Yoshitora** stacker, but John Herr proved to us that you need neither to make Yoshitora amazing. His E Commit would literally make him an auto-win against this game's most popular characters.

So, why did I mention these three cards? Because all of them saw reasonable amounts of play, and all for the exact same reason: they could commit an opponent's character. Sure, some of them had other reasons (Nakoruru has a boatload of em), but when it came to it, tapping the opponent's character, the backbone of the deck, made the three amazing candidates to run in any deck.

As both a fan creator and ambiguously gay Yoshitora fanboy, allow me to break down how both characters and decks work.

Almost 95% of the time the deck starts with the character. Why? Because they're the most important part. While I was looking to build **Lilith**, who has the ability to commit my opponent's cards, I came across *Zi Mei*, who has 2 symbols in common, 2 abilities, and a better commit. As such, I came to replace Lilith with Zi Mei (unless I was building Good Lilith, which I wasn't).

See MegaGeese (and fellow readers), the confusion I'm sensing is not "how important is the character", but rather, "how good is the symbol"? Like I'd said with my John Herr example, Evil is just a good symbol, so much so that it almost makes his character look useless by comparison. Honestly, you could replace Herr with any other Evil character. Sure, his deck was fine-tuned uniquely for his character (most notably because of Visions of Destiny), but again, Evil's such a stable symbol that any Hanzo or Zi Mei could've used it and done similarly.

This is why I said 95% of the time. With the exception of such characters like *Gen*, *Gill*, **Rikuo**, characters who have amazing stats coupled with amazing symbols (except Rikuo, who is just garbage), the rest of this game DOES care about their abilities.

What is Chun-Li without her R? Donovan without the constant advantage (clearage + draw), Ibuki without control bumps, Hanzo without Kick.

Again, in a lot of cases, your deck is fine-tuned against situations of all kind. For example, could a properly-built Air Chun-Li win plenty of games if she were committed or Rashotep'd? Sure. Sure she could. Because her deck was built to be fine.

However, if you pit legacy Death **Nakoruru** against legacy ***Donovan*** (any symbol really), you'll soon see just how important your character is. During either player's turn, you're constantly waiting to say, "I use my character's amazing abilities!" But with such cards as **Nakoruru** and Overwhelming Strength in play, you won't be able to.

Remember Emptiness Ken? Yeah, good luck drawing a billion cards while tapped the entire game dude.

As a card creator, my rule of creation is as such: the character must have THE most powerful abilities of any of their support. It's called support for a reason: it shouldn't be the necessity or reason (which is why EFF Chain Throw). *Yun-Seong* was played in droves during Worlds 07 for a reason, and it wasn't his Air symbol...

So, to summarize the above, it's basically as such: almost every deck runs off the character's abilities. When I had the undefeated **Mai** Bitter Rivals deck, it was because her Stun: 2 that the deck was so broken. Every attack got Stun: 2 (including those in hand), meaning Bitter Rivals would snipe their attacks each and every attack. Without her Stun: 2, my entire theme is ruined, and I'm stuck with just blah Evil deck. If I built a **Rashotep** deck, the whole point would be to abuse his enhance. If I get No Memories'd or Tag Along, again, the whole point is mooted.

Try not to let that confuse you. At this point, almost every symbol is great enough to stand on it's own. However, the character is the very centerpiece and reason for building a deck. If every turn started off with you getting Tag Along'd (as in, it's a rule where you get Tag Along'd and your opponent did not) so that your character had no abilities, you'd have to rely on the bare force of whatever your deck packs, and in almost every deck, that would make all the difference.

I like this topic =3 so I will add my two cents. To me the character card is what a deck should be based around. I can understand in the past how you could look at your opponents wind deck and know exactly what to expect from them and I didnt like that. You have to ask yourself the question as to what your really playing a symbol or a character. When I sit down to build a deck i first choose a character and then build the deck to compliment their abilities. Imo this is how it should be rather then choosing a symbol that wins and grabbing a character with said symbol. The recent sets are a huge step forward for this game. Both shadowar and SoulCaliber IV each had excellent characters with excellent support all of which are playable.

Solstice said:

Except Cervantes.

MarcoPulleaux said:

My good freind let the makai free and somebody else who's anme escapes me on these forums would like to have a word with you =)

Funny thing, me and failed were just talking about this yesterday. I seem to have stoped caring about the actual character and began caring more about the stats/symbol spread/abilities. When I first started this game it was mainly cause astaroth was in it and I loves that guy (even though his character is not as strong as it used to be). Thats really how I build my decks now too, I look for cool combos or cool/fun abilities on characters and other cards and try to make decks out of them. Often the character I start with does not end up being the best character for the deck. For example, my gill deck was originally a sogetsu deck that became a juni deck that eventually ended up being the best of the three.

I feel like this thread put words in my mouth a bit, so lemme say my piece:

A deck that can win without it character > A deck that cannot win without its character

A deck that relys soley on its character as its win condition is vulnerable, because it is putting all its eggs into one basket because there is a lot of hate out there specifically for characters (its really just one card but it works wonders).

I used Herr for this example and heres why, all Herr does is allow you to fix your probabilities. He stacks the deck and filters his hand for cards so he can draw and play his win condition. Herr dosent have any damage pump or anything to push an attack through, his win come entirley from his deck. If you take away his characters abilities from that equation, he can still win the game with solid draws and checks and his 7 HS. Look at it this way, if a person running Herr draws a perfect hand in the game and makes his checks without needing him to make them, then the character actually didnt do anything except be 7HS, in the same sitiation a character with an applicable ability and 7 HS in that instance may have actually done better.

Compare that to someone like seoung Mina, where most decks that run her are pretty much baninking on being able to use her card lifting ability. She is going to have a substantially harder time winning without her abilities if rashotep blanks her.

I do feel like this has not always been the case (pre tag along), but at the same time i also feel that symbols/handsize/character based support is sometimes more important than pure printed abilities. Ivy is getting played less for what her character does and more for what switching weapons styles and prominent noblewoman do, and thoes 2 cannot be tag alonged.

Protoaddict said:

The deck ran something like 18 or so bad checks in a 60 something card deck. What I've bolded is the exact reason the Herr character card is arguable one of the biggest crutch characters in the meta today. You take that deck and run it with Akuma, Zi Mei, Astaroth, or a plethora of other good Evil characters and I'm telling you right now, it won't do anywhere near as well as if it was piloted by Herr, just cause Visions of Destiny can be controlled to no end, and the only card draw you have is BRT, so even if your Visions stay uncontrolled, good luck seeing te s tuff you peek at with them.

Oh and Geese, sorry bout the kinda convoluted post, it was 4 am lol

How important?

It depends what reason you are playing said character?

About to leave for work, so no time for real reply. I agree with Fred, though (le gasp).

B-Rad said:

B-Rad said:

So the Herr you have listed here is one that is dependent on his character because he is running bad ratios due to his ability to manipulate. That being said because of that very reason that same deck would be worse off than another version of herr that didnt build a risky checking deck if they lost the character ability.

Also i would hardly define his as one of the biggest "Clutch" characters in the game, as hes not widespread yet and hes only been available a month. Yes he does well at events, but so do other characters. I would NOT call him clutch, good maybe, clutch no.

Keep in mind my example just illustrated what happens if both players have perfect luck. The better your deck is contstructed not to fail checks in the first place and the slimmer the deck is so you get the cards you need when you need them, the less efficent Herrs character actually becomes. And while Jon is forced to run Visions of Destiny because of its synergy, someone else who dosent have an ability that combos with it can run something like Aquakinesis (just a for instance, i know they dont share symbols), which has better control, lower difficutly, and will still increase your odds of drawing the attack you need if your deck is at its minimum card spread.

Protoaddict said:

OK but this is all redundant. *Gill* winning tournies was no coincidence, and neither was **Rikuo** getting 24th at Worlds.

No deck, and I'll repeat that, NO DECK NEEDS their character to win. There's always the slight possibility the opponent will mill out (as was the case with my no-attack 5Zangief5 that managed to win even though I didn't run Contemplation).

Decks are built around their character. Period. Even in Gill's case, you picked Gill because he's the only 8 handsize Death/Good/Order character. That was still your reason for the deck: his hawt handsize.

It's not that a deck cannot win without their character; it's that victory either becomes slightly more difficult to win, or exponentially more difficult.

A Gill who cannot use his F doesn't give a ****, because he likely wasn't going to use the F either way. He just likes the handsize.

But for almost every other character, they rely HEAVILY on their charater's abilities, for without them, winning becomes so much harder, and when I say it becomes so much harder, I mean it's because they usually LOSE.

Protoaddict said:

Use a better example then.

MarcoPulleaux said:

I've won with hanzo kick in circumstances where I didnt have my character ability to win with. This is what i would like to refer as a "Backup Plan"

Protoaddict said:

I had one. It failed. But you'd say "BUT YOU WERE RUNNING A CRAP CARD!"

a character is important not so much because of what they do but because of the fact that they always do it.

no other card in you deck sees play every single game.

this is why you character is important.

If you play a combo deck, you make sure half of your combo is on your character so you only have to draw one card.

If you play a deck with lots of difficulties above five, you play a character who can make sure you get a good amount of foundations, be it by discard and draw, improving their checks or turning other cards into them or whatever.

If you play a deck with wildly varying control checks, of course you play someone who can set up good ones.

Your character is the only card you should rely on as it's the only one you can garuntee getting.

sure, it's a card to build around if you're a comboist like me but it doesn't have to be that way. the other way round works fine too.

just never imagine you're playing universal fighter, the abilities do matter.

MarcoPulleaux said:

Yes, no deck literally requires the abilities on its character to win, because your opponent can always just scoop and - hey! that's a W! - but in a realistic, tournament situation there is definitely a distinction to be made between a deck like Donovan which is likely to be built heavily around utilizing his two strong abilities, and a deck fronting Jon Herr that only uses his abilities to play with probability.

@OP's question: Depends. 8)

It depends on the power of the character's abilities, and the situations it applies to. IDEALLY, because of Tag Along <there's some other tech too, I think>, you want to rely as little as possible on your character's Tagable abilities, and if you must it's best to have a tertiary reliance on them -- you don't want to let them Tag you and shut down your kill turn. Buuuut, it's certainly better to have one very powerful ability (Fio comes to my mind) and a few answers to Tag Along, even if they won't always work, than to have some janky static text that's immune to Tag Along but really doesn't aid the deck very much.

If your abliity does nothing until you're halfway through your kill turn {something like Shredding Vibrato Donovan) then it's clearly very important, but at the same time extremely vulnerable to Tagging and therefore disadvantageous. Jon Herr's peek ability is basically at the opposite end of the spectrum - it's still important, but getting Tagged only puts a little bit more risk into his plays, and it comes into play with virtually every play of them game.

Wafflecopter said:

It really depends on the situation at hand. Tagging a bad Herr hand after mulligan may as well screw his entire turn.

the character will always be the most imp part of the deck, but not the only part. take for instance mine and ben's promo ukyo deck back in the day. yes it needed him to win on turn 2. but on 3,4 etc it cold win without him just b/c of how strong evil was.

i think the character is always the most imp thing in the deck b/c it starts out in play immediately. fronting good characters is one of the first steps to winning imo, b/c why would you want to handicap yourself? also with dual and tri decks becoming increasingly poular, symbol spred is huge now like tanner said. look at frogase, gill, etc. those guys are monsters tri symbol.

I think what Scott says is true, however I also think the point was less the full on structure of any one given character and more so if your deck sould win with out said characters ability.

Obviously you build your deck around the character. But some decks use the character to accentuate how the deck plays and futher its strategies, while some builds lean on the characters abilities completley as the core strategy of the deck.

> Jon herrs character deck is going to win based on playing the attacks in his deck. If he dosent have his character ability he can still win, its just harder.

> Some Felicia decks require her form to generate momentum for multiples, without the form the near impossible to win.

See the difference?

Protoaddict said:

That's the whole point of the thread =/

A long time ago, I told Vik, "You ought to have a tournament where people can only use The Universal Fighter"

Not only does that show the true strength of a symbol independently, but it shows you how much better your deck would be with a character.