I've been playing since the inception of this game, so I feel like my historical intellect can be put to use

Universal Fighting System first started in February 2006 with the Penny Arcade battle box. Two months later, UFS launched with two neighbor property sets; Soul Caliber 3 and Street Fighter. People who read the Street Fighter comic books could read advertisements within those comics advertising Universal Fighting System. Many people took interest in UFS for many reasons. The main reason was that their favorite fighting games, Soul Caliber and Street Fighter, were in a card game format. Street Fighter was already in the Epic Battles card game, but that failed due to the incredible marketing plan of being a Blockbuster-exclusive card game.

Many also took a liking in UFS because of it's unique gameplay. Many agreed that progressive difficulty was genius. Others liked the idea of control checking, keeping every turn fresh and not unlimited like some other card games. Players could apply as scouts and could sign their hobby store up to recieve free prize support from Sabertooth Games. The game started to grow rapidly.

As players got more and more familiar with the game, many believed it became stale. The Void symbol dominated the entire format. The infamous Void Trio as it was dubbed, were three very powerful foundations that all had the Void symbol. The Void Trio was Ring Veteran , Lost Memories , and Yoga Mastery . Many players were pushed away by this trio of foundations. Many believed that most games came down to whoever got the Void Trio out first. A majority of people complained about Yoga Mastery, a card which shut down half of the game's mechanics. Despite the countless threads about it on the Sabertooth Forums, the card was never banned or errata'd. Also, an action called Power Up was free momentum generation for Void, which allowed easy recursion with Unorthodox Style . Power Up easily was considered the most valuable UFS card, fetching a price of up to $60 a copy. If Void ever cycled or mulligan'd useful cards, they would just use Mystic to fetch them back. To push attacks through, they would use Charisma as a hand control method.

At this time, the two top characters were Promo Zasalamel and Rare Cassandra . While Cassie denied her opponent foundations, Promo Zasalamel's ability basically read "F: Search your deck for any card and play it." On top of it all, both these characters had the Void symbol. Promo Zasalamel fronted an infinite loop combo utilizing Strong Punch and Devotion . Cassie was the queen of UFS with her negation ability, which could also negate blocks. Her main kill was Power Up into Ryu's Tatsumaki . These were the two most broken characters at the time.

Starter Ken was also a major threat in the format. Combined with Signature Style fueled by Power Up, Ken could rapidly draw through his entire deck, drop a Maelstrom Divide , pitch their hand with Charisma, then pitch his hand with the powerful for an instant OTK. Instant action was taken on Ken. They could not ban him because he was a Starter Deck character, so they errata'd his draw ability to once per turn. Starter Ken still remained a strong force, but was not as broken as he once was.

UFS Nationals 2006 came around. With Cassie as the queen of UFS, denying her opponents everything, Wess Victory piloted her to the top, winning his Wess Victory championship card. Even with Cassie showing her dominating performance, no action was taken against Cassie.

Set 2 dropped, Street Fighter: World Warriors and Soul Caliber 3: A Tale of Swords and Souls. These sets gave more symbols more support, however Void still remained on top. These sets opened up more playstyles. With a poor-man's Power Up available as a common, Hop was an easy way to generate momentum. However, this card was abused greatly. UFS' very first consistent First-Turn-Kill deck appeared utilizing Rare Sagat , Hop , and Ryu's Tatsumaki . Characters such as Zasalamel and Cassandra who shared a symbol or two with Hop also played it to get around certain tech cards such as Overwhelming Strength .

Worlds 2007 came along. This was the true proving ground. A little under 50 people showed up for the World Championships. For UFS only being around for 6 months, 48 people was spectacular. Top 8 was:

Tycho
Cassie
Dhalsim
Taki
Astaroth
Zasalamel
Vega
Tira

Surprisingly, Maelstrom Ken did not make top 8. I remember the Astaroth deck was piloted by Brian Garber (unifiedshoe) utilizing Bo Rush as a kill

Top 4 dropped to:
Tycho (Fred Erhart)
Cassie (Wess Victory)
Dhalsim (Rhodium Boy)
Tira (Matt Kohls)

Finals were
Tira vs Dhalsim

Matt Kohls defeated RhodiumBoy with his favorite card, False Contrition . Soon, Matt Kohls was immortalized in cardboard.

Top 4 Gen Con Decks:

First Place – Matt Kohls: (mattkohls)

Tira (Promo)

Foundations: 30
Megalomania: 4
Glimpse of Fate: 4
Apathy: 3
Float Like a Butterfly: 3
Beginners Luck: 4
Unknown Force: 4
Yoga Mastery: 4
Lost Memories: 4

Attacks: 19
Nergal’s Poison Sting: 4
Buffalo Head butt: 4
Drop Kick: 2
Dash Uppercut: 1
Poseidon Crest: 2
Roundhouse Kick: 4
Helm Divider: 2

Characters: 6
Nightmare: 2
Ivy: 2
Blanka: 1
Tira: 1

Actions: 7
Power of the Edge: 3
You will not escape: 4

Side board:
Hop: 3
False Contrition: 2
Straight throw: 3

Second Place – Brian Brockney (RhodiumBoy)

Dhalsim (UR)

Attacks: 6
Roundhouse Kick: 3
Drill Kick: 2
Tiamat’s Rampage: 1

Assets: 5
Overwhelming Str: 3
Yoga Necklace: 2

Actions: 14
Power Up: 3
Yoga teleport: 3
Block: 4
Power of the Edge: 2
Back flip: 2

Foundations: 34
Lost Memories: 4
Unorthodox Style: 4
Charisma: 4
Yoga Mastery: 4
Shotokan training: 4
Ancient Insight: 4
Ring Veteran: 4
Mystic: 3
Calculating: 2
Calm Mind: 1

Side board:
Yoga Fire: 1
Yoga Jab: 2
Diminishing Returns: 2
Overwhelming Str: 1
Calm Mind: 2

Fred Ehrhart (Protoaddict)

Tycho

Actions: 12
You will not escape: 4
Yoga teleport: 4
Back Flip: 4

Assets: 4
Overwhelming Str: 4

Attacks: 15
Roundhouse Kick: 4
Offering to Kishar: 4
Inazuma Kakato Wari: 3
Shadow Banishment: 4

Foundations: 28
Lost Memories: 4
Calculating: 4
Ring Vet: 4
Someone in your Corner: 4
Shotokan training: 4
Wandering Master: 4
World Warriors: 2
Mystic: 2

Wess Victory (Flawless_Victory)

Cassandra (2 dot)

Actions: 18
Hop: 3
Power Up: 3
You will not Escape: 4
Block: 4
Back Flip: 4

Attacks: 5
Ryu’s Tatsumaki: 2
Roundhouse Kick: 3

Foundations: 33
Unorthodox Style: 4
Mystic: 3
Lost Memories: 4
Ring Vet: 4
Yoga Mastery: 4
Wandering Master: 3
Shotokan Training: 3
Str. of Purpose: 4
Devotion: 4

Assets: 4
Overwhelming Str: 4

And that's all folks. We'll end todays lesson with the conclusion of Worlds 2006. Stay tuned for next history class, where we'll learn about the push of the aggro playstyle, Matt Kohls' balls, and the top 8 UK Nats 2007 decklists!!!

Umm, I guess the links aren't working correctly.

Use this to view cards if you need to:

www.twoheadeddragon.com/ufs/index.html

Thanks for doing this, man! It's great to review the history of this game, and read about the past champions' decks. Matt Kohls and Tira...classic! Can't wait for part 2...Fireball Kohls, front and center...!

(Can't help but give my 2 cents on the history of UFS, seeing as I'm also a veteran too. Also helps to see what was happening at this time in my area over the other side of the sea.)

Ahh, the first two UFS sets. I started out with UFS shortly after the first SF and SCIII sets were released, seeing the starter decks on display at a comic book store (in which I was buying Street Fighter figures at the time). The starters they had were of Ryu, Ken, Dhalsim, Chun-Li, Nightmare, Astaroth, Taki and Voldo. Out of curiosity, I bought 2 starters from each license, being Ryu, Ken, Nightmare and Astaroth. Shortly after reading the rules and got to grips with the game I bought boosters weekly, noticing how cool it was to get a foil in every pack.

I went over to my local games store with these cards, wondering if they sold them there too. Not did they do so, but there was a playerbase slowly building out of the people who worked at the shop and the regular customers. With their help and trades, I got my hands on a copy of *Sagat*, my favorite character in Street Fighter, and my favorite character artwork in UFS. However, the first deck I built was a **Sagat** deck off Earth, since I preferred his simple abilities and the fact he had more health than his rarer counterpart.

The **Sagat** deck, looking on it now, was a mess. The deck was just over 100 cards (abusing the lack of maximum deck space), and consisted all of my cards that had the Earth symbol. However, due to the various combinations (such as Eye Patch with ...You are a Beginner!) and the amount of throws in the deck, it held it's own against the other players. The best decks we had at the time were Cassie and *Dhalsim*, since we didnt have access to the promos at the time and therefore no-one got to play Zasalamel.

When Set 2 arrived, there was a sudden jump in the number of available characters. One that took to my liking was *Blanka*, since his fire cards had amazing synergy combined with a heavy deal of damage pump. Cards that were seeing a lot of play from Set 2 (besides Hop) were Float like a Butterfly, which increased the speed of a lot of decks, and Ancient Insights, a very valuable tool for Void's discard abilities. It was at this time when our player group started to attend tournaments in Reading, and we saw our first experiences of tournament play.

Our resident Cassie player stormed the tournaments, whereas I would get an even score of wins and losses when I tried out a *Chun-Li* deck that abused her action Sankaku Tobi with Leaping Commando Kick to discard all cards on the opponent's turn, then repeatedly play Reverse Waterfall on my following turn. The second tournament, I made a change for the worst and ended up not winning any matches.

*Once Shaneth adds the next part, I'll give my two cents again. Set 3 is where things get fun for me, and also includes the UK Nationals!*

Nice write up. Kinda makes me want to continue the story, but I'm not going to steal your thunder since it was your idea. Also, Son Gopaul: alternate Dan? This forum needs pictures, because that sounds amazing!

Just for laughs:

Matt's Worlds-winning Tira deck ran 19 attacks and four copies of You Will Not Escape.

The attacks included FOUR Roundhouse Kick and one Dash Uppercut.

So out of a 62 card deck, there were 23 cards that checked less than 4, FIVE of which checked 2's.

My, how the game has changed... then again, Tira was goddamn broken.

I remember even after the release of set 3 (and the obvious Improvised Weapon Attack card), Kohls never included it in Tira.

But yes, that Tira was busted as all hell. "If this attack deals damage" equated to "every time".

Ah memories. I beat khols in swiss too, give him his only loss. Tycho is strong.

My fondest memory of this tourney however was getting screamed at by people for not running yoga mastery. I mean literally people were walking away in disgust when I told them I didn't run it. Plus I didn't run powerup/unorthodox, because i literally didnt own any so I ran the kick that recured shadow banishments and I never regretted it.

I got in to the game BEFORE the sets released. I was interested in the game Epic Battles and was researching it to see how terrible it was. I found this game's chun li demo deck at the LGS and laughed at it. "Look at all of those numbers and symbols! HAHAHAH Epic battles how terrible you are!" and then I realized... oh wait... this is an entirely different game...

Penny Arcade was of interest to me so I kept reading. Then I bought the PA battlepack... then I got more demo decks and began to teach people. I met with Alex Bartos and someone else I believe at the GT one day when they were doing their roaming demo events. He handed me new player teaching mats, a starter box of each and many many demo decks. And promos.

I ran a release event, which I brought some of my own people from another card game, two store regulars, and a few other random people. Some newer guy to the scene won that. I began hanging out with that guy a bit playing the game. He was most interested in Ken, drawing cards and pumping Close Throw with that foundation you can ditch a card to damage pump an attack equal to the damage of your pitched card (memory is failing me! lol).

He was convinced it was ta uber. And then he was convinced that the game's promo policy would destroy the game: without a month long gap between a promos release and its legality it would cause issues in power amongst local player bases. He also didn't like that Dan wasn't in the game. He abruptly left the game and I haven't been able to get a hold of him since. I think he ran off to play L5R some more...

I managed to find a few more local players, people were wrecking face with Tycho and Ken. Promo Vega was much covetted. I helped out STG at Origins, was invited by Alex Bartos to apply for the job that Justin Wilkenson got, but I did not, as I was expressing a modesty that I should have supressed. I also turned down an invite to go out to eat with the company before they left town, but I chose to do laundry instead... that's what happens when you have a long term live in significant other.

Some more players from the past came to play the game. Set 2 releases. Things get crazy. The competition then was around Kilik damage reduction / stall, Dhalsim hand nuke, Ken draw madness, and Taki UR Shadowbanishment. Two players quit the game because of Taki UR, and things like Yoga Mastery. Another quit because Zengeif couldn't deck people out effectively enough. And yet still, we continued fighting! Easily 8-16 people a week. Game on!

Well writtten post shane. fun read and in depth.

Protoaddict said:

That's kinda funny. I never even realized that you didn't run Yoga.

I also remember that this "protoaddict" fellow was ranked #1 in the world for A LOOOOOOOOOOONG time. I think you were ranked 1st because even tho Kohls won, you were swiss champ and lost to overall champ in top 4.

I also remember RhodiumBoy on the STG forums saying something like this:

"I came in 2nd; lost to Tira in finals. I honestly have never seen that You Will Not Escape card before. I would have been running a playset if I knew about it. I'm such a noob."

It was rather funny. After those top 4 decklists were posted, YWNE started acting as a major game changer in most all metas.

vermillian said:

I remember having a tri symbol starter Ken (only one Good card in there, a foundation). I would go: here's a Physically Fit, some void things... next turn, here's a Les Rapier Des Sorel (God I loved that card), draw, end turn... next turn I played three attacks, the third being a Balrog punch (which had Evil), then using Physically Fit discarding a Demented Moon or Earth Divide and blowing up Les Rapier to make it unblockable.

That was my very first deck idea EVER!

I remember reading about UFS cards back in the day, and just going "Hah. Why are they trying to revive Epic Battles?" when I originally saw stuff about it on the Penny Arcade website. Well, low and behold a few years later, when Extreme Rivals came out, my friend gave me a bunch of cards and said, "Here. I don't want them."

Just seeing the cards in the collection he had, like Ring Veteran and Yoga Mastery, and how I was soon pulling cards like Chain Throw and Kunai. Man, all of this sounds awesome.

Shane - your top 8 is a bit off. 8 handsize Vega was there instead of Sagat.

Guitalex - I ran IWA in all of my post set 3 Tira builds, including for the CCC 2007, Nats 2007, and Team Nats and Team Worlds 2007.

Protoaddict said:

Actually I also lost to Zasalamel during swiss. I was 4-2 in swiss.

And I believe you went undefeated during swiss, but I was only the person you beat 1-0. Also, thank god for all those power of the edges during our top 4 match

guitalex2008 said:

Quoted for awesomeness and nostalgia!

mattkohls said:

Yeah, I remember you said you went 4-2, and barely made it into top 8.

Your match with Fred went the full 90 minutes and you came out on top.

mattkohls said:

Ooh yes, *fixed*

I got into the game because my local comic shop owner gave me the chunli/taki demo decks before set 1 came out since he knew I was big into ccg's. I turned my VS team onto it and we spent a week or so playing before finding out that Josh Morris and Seth Morrigan of STG would be driving out to a local store as part of the release of set 1. Being full of ourselves we decided to show up and try to smash them.

Meeting Josh and Seth was probably the most significant thing that happened to me during that time of my life and shaped the next 2 years or so. We did end up beating on their decks pretty hard (using starters vs. their full on decks including promo PA, Power Ups, etc). They ran a sealed and allowed us to use the promo characters as our starters. I chose Zasalamel and won. They game me a set of staff cards and a Mantle of the Champion, then gave my team about 20 copies of each of the promo characters. This was the first time I met Nathan Eiskant who would eventually join Mack Rice and in winning the first team nationals. We hung out with the STG guys for a while and then took off. Josh and Seth (as some of you will remember) were completely awesome guys and really inspired me to stick with the game.

With set 1 released I began testing for Nationals. Unfortunately, the rest of my VS team gave up of the game and I lost touch with Nathan. I ended up not playing for the last 2 months before Nationals. At nationals I met back up with Josh and talked to him for about 3 hours about the game and the incredible amount of problems/potential within it. He admitted that a lot of mistakes were made in the early days but that things were being addressed (sound familiar?) and if I stayed with it it would be worth it.

I listened and convinced one of my friends who hadn't played before to play in Nats the next day. I spent all night teaching him the game and building decks. The next day I played Maelstrom Ken and my friend (Taylor Parnell) played Air Promo Tira, who at the time could ready whenever you played a block (ex: if you play a foundation with a block on it, you could ready her). I was (i think) 4-0 when I played against Wess Victory's Void Cassie deck and took a loss. The next round I played the mirror match except that my opponent was also playing Replenishment which I didn't realize until we'd already spent too much time in game one. So, I was out in 9th place. My buddy playing Tira top 8'd which seemed hilarious at the time as he had approx. 3 hours of experience, but actually destroyed the credibility of the game back home where everyone referred to UFS as the game with the worst players in history (ignoring the fact that my friend had recently got 3rd at a Magic Grand Prix and is an exceptional card player).

Post Nats I again found myself unable to convince anyone to play UFS. I became very (too) active on the sabertooth forums. I focused on VS for a while and until Gencon rolled around didn't do much with UFS except think about it.

I went to Gencon expecting to play nothing but VS. My team had cracked the format for the Pro Circuit and all fourteen of us were qualified. After months of testing VS for 5-12 hours a day I was kind of burnt out and instead of being excited to play in the PC I really wanted to play in Worlds. STG ran a constructed tournament on Thursday. Top prize was an uncut sheet of penny arcade.

I didn't really care about that (though now I would love to have it) but I did want to play so I built a deck literally ten minutes before the start. I put together Void Started Astaroth. I wanted to play void control but also run (what I thought was) the insane Size Matters + Mystic combo.Astaroth is super fat and his ability is amazing with multiple so my kill settled on Bo Rush and Spinning Lariat. Basically, after setting up for a long time with the void control pieces I would play 2-3 foundations in the cardpool and play a multiple which I would then enhance with Astaroths ability to pump the damage to 8+ per attack. very effective. I ended up losing in the finals to promo Zasalamel because I couldn't stop him from emptying my hand before throwing tiamats ftw. This was a great match to play and lose though because it made me realize the awesome power of Enigmatic Manuevers which wrecked people the rest of the weekend.

Friday was the VS Pro Circuit so I wasn't planning any UFS that day. After round 1 I went over to the STG room where Josh told me there were going to be $1 drafts. I played round 2, won, then scooped and went to play UFS. The lure of $1 drafts and having fun rather than playing 8 more grueling hours of VS was too tempting. This was a great draft because I met and got to play against Bo, the most famous UFS'er from Sweden. He was a great guy and fun to play against. As it turns out, everyone in my VS team made day 2 of the PC.

Saturday I retooled the Astaroth deck and took it to Worlds. STG announced PSP's for top 8 and everyone seemed very excited. We got about 65 if I remember correctly. I had a great time playing everyone. I especially remember my match against Jeremy Ray. I played You Will Not Escape for the first four turns, ending each of his with one foundation in play, which I then used Roundhouse Kick to remove (again, all 4 times). It doesn't get any better than that. I remember apologizing a lot. The last round of Worlds I got paired against Wess Victory playing Void Cassie again. he beat me in record time. My deck needed foundations in play to win and it wasn't possible to land any against him. I wasn't too upset since I knew I would make top 8. Unfortunately, I got paired against Wess again in the first round of top 8. Boo. After everything was settled I finished Worlds in 6th and made quite an impression by taking Astaroth so far. Plus, I got a PSP. Woot. That night I got treated to Buca D'beppo's since 2 of my teamates made the Pro Circuit top 8 (one of whom would go on to win the next day [collectively, the team ended up winning about $60,000 that tournament, double woot]).

more to follow in the thread for lesson #2...

Unifiedshoe said:

Looking forward to it. Good to hear your story from Nats and Worlds.