Just looking over the forums, and i am sure this has come up before but not recently, and theres been alot of talk of cards and tournaments but not enough of the players themselves.

So what i am suggesting is that we post here our UFS stories, starting from how and why we started, what decks wev built, tournament attended and rankings in said tournaments etc.

I thought not only would this be a great way to get to know each other better, it could also show any new players were we started from. (and in my oppinion, be fun)

So il start:

Hi, My name is Paul and i work in Lingards Games in Colchester (the local base of UFS.)

The game took off in colchester almost immidiately when the first sets came in, i remember the first few 6 packs ever opend at the store that i saw contained a god pack which we were all surprised to see and later found it was meant to happen lol.
I didnt start straight away but Veiwtiful_Joe (also an employee at the time) took it up and slowly pulled me in too. (didnt help i could see all these people at our tables playing it all the time every day )
I gave in eventualy and bout a Taki Starter deck, as i was only a saturday worker at the time i couldnt buy many packs and therefore wasnt able to play very competitively but i enjoyed myself nonetheless no matter how many time i got my butt kicked.
The first decks i tried to build was fire mistarugi and water setsuca but these both failed miserably !
the SC03 came out and i got a lizardman deck and played that for a bit, with a better degree of succes (by succes i dont mean win i mean chance of winning hehe)
this lasted till SC04 when i realy started to get inot the game, i liked the look of :Maxi: and therefore built him and actualy manged to to it well.
:Maxi: was my first ever deck that stood out and won a few times which i was realy happy with, in colchester i became commonly known (by SonGopaul anyways) as MOM (Master of Maxi) and had a great time.
Around this time me and Crazy Elf merged collections and started to help each other with decks and together we built me a promo Lizardman which rocked my world just a little bit and gave me the few more wins i needed to realy get into the game, after this i bought more packs during a sets release and generaly collected more.
Much muuch later i got bored of lizardman and got left stranded without a deck i realy wanted to build, thats when :Sophitia: caught my eye, she had already been built in out area off life but i saw some potential in order, the first build i did was a order mill that didnt realy work and during playtesting i realised that her ability was better used to push attacks through than to make them discard and draw alot, so in went Arnoured defence and the rest of the deck maily changed.
much tweaking and editing later i ahd one of the better decks in the area and for a time it was the one to beat (but not for too long at all i might add, we had Yun seong and K' running around hehe) this did the finaly push and i was in the game, stuck for good.
much later the UFS UK Nationals 2008 came round just before the Block 2 cycle, as this was jot only my first major tourny, but my first tourny ever i was a bit understandably nervouse, long story short i had a great time it 1 loss 2 ties and 3 wins (one win against Scott mence, which im happy about, sorry if that sounds like im bragging) and in total cam 39th out of over 120 people yay! thank you to sophitia for that one.
That night the cycle happend and i built on the spot with the cards i had to hand :Yun: with Deceptive look, this was just literaly put together when i was thrown into a 5 man brawl just for fun, :Yun: went on to take out 3 of the players in a row only to be smaked in the face by the last player as i had overextended myself to kill the other player. Yun went on to be my signature character which i soon changed to .Yun. to combat regection and the fact he was eternaly better.
Many decks and styles later UK Team Nationals 2008 Came around at Gen Con, this i was realy looking forward too, i was in one of the three colchester teams (Me, Veitiful_joe and Nemesis) i was playing a block 2 version of my Sophitia and another long story short we cam second. Thats my biggest tourny placing ever and its a big one , needless to say i was realy happy and if we had to lose to any team the one we lost too was the best (il leave that to be revealed in their story, coz i dont want to steal all the good bits from it hehe)
I kept with sophitia for a while with other decks on the side coming and goin through the patch tournaments, iv only won the good so far with feline felicia.
Apart from that my most significant decks recently have been .:::Taki:::. and :Sogetsu: who i love to peices.

So.... a bit long winded but "This is my Story", and now its your turn and just coz this quote has been running through my head for ages, il use it again!:

"This is your story"

Theo

back in the good old days (cue music) our mr steve was just a humble (but cool) store manager down in sunny (very wet and cold) nailsworth, he came down to the group of guys that were playing yugioh and proclaimed that he had a cool game to show us.

UFS- we looked at him in a wierd way and though stuff it why not, he managed to pursade 2 of us (me and sam smithers) to accually come along to the set 1 pre-realease that he was going to run, he also managed to drag another worker (mr krut) along on the sunny (wet) saturday morning.

We were each given a choice of starters to use, steve chose dalhsim (oh how he would hate that character later), krut took the then broken ken, sam nightmare and i took ryu.

The tournament was much fun with steve winning (ask about steve rules go on i dare u next time u see steve ask) krut can last (after the tournement we showed him what he should of done) and so it was down to me and sam the last match to see who got the prize of wait for it

the full set 1 street fighter (steve was the scout so couldn't win)

it ened up with sam hitting me for death and me playing finesse (oh yes baby) and then killing him next turn

so there u have it i now reguarly go to swindon and to steves aldershot tournaments for fun and have been to swenden twice to play (winning the first time)

all in all more of the same fun woooo

A few years ago I was the manager of a store called Psisoft, it was based in the picturesque Cotswold village of Nailsworth, and the shop kicked ass for the lord. At that time I was fresh out a ten year run with Games Workshop and looking for a new challenge, at the time it was also the closest I was going to get to running my own store. I played several CCGs at the time, MtG, Warlord, WarCry, Dark Millemium, and ran tournamets for them all plus more. There came a time when my two main games, WarCry and Dark Millemiumn were dieing, and I was sorely vexxed and miffed with the whole situation. Then I got a call from the god like being that is Kev Beadle, he told me about this new card game Sabertooth were doing. He exlained to me all about how it worked, how it was based on beat em up characters, and I was totally unimpressed. Ever the dedicated sole Kev left the sanctuary of his armoured bunker at Games Workshop H.Q. and headed down to darkest Gloucestershire. He sat there and patiently taught me UFS and from those few short demo games I was hooked! I took UFS to the masses, well, the customers anyway, and as Mark has already said recruited him and Sam, others soon followed. UFS grew in the store to the point where we could regularly got 24 player turn outs, to this day I think we still hold the record for displays sold on day of release, 53 displays in one very frenzied morning.

From those humble beginnings I have gone to take part in tournaments around the country, nationals, cardboard combat, property nationals, etc, and failed misserably at every single one. Don't get me wrong, I have loved every minute of every tournament, sitting on table one for two rounds with a discard Cassie deck was hilarious at the fist Soul Caliber Nats. From there I have gone on to run national level events and with Kev leaving the post have unofficially become the friendly face of UFS in the UK, although everyone knows that Kev is still the man. This year I will be running multiple national events, not least being the UK nationals, but I'm looking forward to the PotM finals and UFS Goes Mad In Hampshire Weekend before that.

UFS has changed loads since I started, the way the game plays, the way decks are built, the extra properties, the companies behind it, but one thing that hasn't changed is the players, I have played many different CCGs and this is the best crowd going. I still can't win a tournament to save my life ( I average one a year ), but I still love playing this game and Block 3 looks like ramping it up again.

Nobody is to ask about Steve rulings, ever.

I started playing UFS when a friend who used to work with me up at Lingards Games (who still plays UFS occasionally, we've started dragging him back kicking and screaming after Block 2 turned him off) told me about a game that had Street Fighter involved in it. I thought this sounded cool, but CCG's were never really my thing so I wasn't particularly interested. Although once I had heard Soul Calibur was involved (BIG SC fan at the time) I couldn't resist it. I remember being adamant that I wanted to buy the Nightmare starter deck, but someone else had gotten there before me, so I didn't want it anymore and ended up going with Ken instead. How pleased I was at doing that! I ran Ken for the entirety of the first set up until A Tale Of Soul And Swords and World Warriors came out. Once I had heard that Vega would be in the set, I was jumping for joy, but again, someone beat me to it, and I curse them for it to this day! So instead I started buyign A Tale Of Swords and Souls instead and came across a petit female with a thing for green and hula hoops. Played Tira for a long while even before realising how brilliant her promo was ( I actually thought she was a bit naff when I first saw her, how silly of me...)

I'd never ever been to a CCG tournament before and was taken up to one in Reading just to have a go, and I thought I would be different and play Ivy for it using Close To The Edge and Calamity Symphony (bet noone else played them ) just to prove that Ivy wasn't awful. Of course she was terrible, but that isn't the point! I still managed to come 3rd out of 12 people with her and was very impressed with myself. That was it. I enjoyed playing in tournaments so much that I had to play in more. At that point we had about 20 - 25 players who were regulars and the whole thing was great. I then went to the 2007 UK UFS Nationals playing Kilik (god I wish I had the experience I have now then... perhaps I would have picked someone who made more sense...) and came middle of the road somewhere, but was content.

I think the time where I realised I was actually quite good at the game was around the time of the first Soul Calibur National tournament. I had been playing Promo Nightmare (I WILL get my hands on SCIV Nightmare before anyone else because of this!) and had been intensively practising against Jonathan (Crazy Elf) and his R Yun Seong deck for at least a month, which is one of the longest lengths of time I've spent with a single deck! Going to the tournament, I was a bit nervous because I hadn't done very well the last time, and felt out of my depth, especially when seeing a good 50 or 60 people up there. However, Nightmare and Soul Edge came thorugh for me and I ended up coming second! Never ever thought I'd do that well, and that tournament spawned my confidence within my own play ability.

As the game grew, so did the amount I played it. I genuinely think that UFS did take a dive around Set 8 (I had also just played in the 2008 UK Nationals and not done very well AT ALL with Donovan.) and it showed in the number of regular UFS players we had, which couldn't have been higher than 8 or 9 at the time. A lot of us still stuck with it, though, and it seems to have paid off. UK Team Nationals 2008 was another highlight of my UFS play, after Team Killer Instinct, which conisisted of myself, Theo and Nemesis (See Paul, I can spell your display name! ) beat the previous years champions and gracefully lost in the finals to the wonderful people at Patriot Games' representation. That, to be fair, is probably the best set of UFS games I have ever had, and I still claim that my game with one Mr. Richard Bassindale is one of, if not THE most enjoyable game of UFS I've ever had.

Since then, myself and others, mostly Ricky 'Son Gopaul', Dan 'Nemesis' and Kyle 'Zangetsu' have found ourselves travelling a lot to Aldershot, Cambridge, Loughborough and Swindon to play with other people. Another interesting turn is that UFS actually proved to be the catalyst for my current relationship with my boyfriend Alex 'squall14'. I remember the first time we truly spoke was at the Life Patch tournament, and if it weren't for that, we probably wouldn't be together now! It's sad, but true, UFS brought us together! Alex now seems to have one of the nastier decks in our, much larger (around 16 players) meta with his cow of a Chun-Li deck. I've been making extra effort to recruit as many new players as possible, and it does seem to be working, I've made a Facebook page for UK UFS, I've built demonstration decks for people, and people are starting to flock to the game again. In all, UFS continues to play very well in my eyes, and the only way is up!

Well i got into UFS when i had a shop i got some of the old Chun li and taki demo decks before the game was out in the UK then my best friend JJ turned up with the Penny Arcade decks and we mixed the cards togerher and beat the snot out of each other. The game was great even thought it did take me teh better part of 2day to understand blocking useing the first rule books lol.

Random Fact: JJs first touranment he played in was at Block sheep games useing Zangief Mill lol

Me and JJ gave up most other card games and played UFS our first BIg Touranment was in Coventry which JJ won beating Scout Mence's Tycho in the Final with Cassie. I got Knocked out of the top 8 by Dirvety playing Dhalsim.

Next we went to America to play which was amazing it was the first AOP in the World JJ came 9th after IDing with me and because in my last game which i had to win i need to roll 5,3,3 and i rolled 4,4,2 rolling the only 2 left in my deck (i only played 2 2's) which cos me the game and me and JJ a top 8 spot.

After that was Reading me and JJ made top 4 i got beat by Mark (the sexy ginger legend himself) I had 3 back flips he had 4 throws stupid lien and JJ lost in the final because he forgot what lost memories did.

Me and JJ travelled as much as we could during the FOP season which was amazing because the UFS players are the best card players around and i made soem really could friends and overal we did really well and posted some really good reacords but the biggest shock was before the 07 UK Nationals where both mine and JJ characters got bnanned so we had one week to do serval months play testing but Team FF was born we didn't do that well but we had an Amazing time.

Me and JJ ended up going to so many touranment. JJ was trying to find a new characterto settle into which became Tycho and we just wanted to see everyone.i ended up playing anything and everything. but during that year i won SC nationals which i went undeafed with my lovely lady Tira i was so happy to win something big with her and Team FF which has me and JJ in the team went on to win Team Nationals. which was amazing because i was in the middle of closeing Pigeon Games due to ill health and got to make my shop into a card or my fav game.Not bad as we were only up there to say by to kevin and Kevin even has a piece of my shop as we gave him the wall of Sublime contemplation (i wounder if he still has it)

Best UFS quote Ever is from Dave who came second at the 07 nationals "Game 3 was like a wet dream"

the UK nationals build up this year was so cool i won the pre nationals event at Aldershot which was a big deal to me because my Dad used to work there and i had not been back there since my dad died and it was being held at the Gaming shop where i started gaming i placed in the top 8 at nationals using pimp cody and JJ went on to win as well as the French and Swedish Nationals after this UFS kinda slowed down for me due to my illness and JJ being at uni but i still keep playing to keep the numbers up in are local shop and i will hopefully be traveling to some regional's this year to see some of the great people i have met in the last few years and also to see Sagatman's manly good looks.

Just remember if you see a FF glued to a deck box you know you are in trouble because we are the best team ever and UFS is amazing the people are even better but what ever you do dont get a traveling buddy like JJ lol the only tine i have beat him in a Touranment was when i was playing as some else in the Helston FOP final and i was was the poor sap who played tested for hours against void cassie, Every control build of Tycho and Tri symbol AThena

Thanks

Daniel

P.S roll on the Void patch Dhalsim FTW

Paul, you are a legend for building this thread. Hearing about player backgrounds is good reading for new players, as they learn about the players themselves rather than the decks.

Anyways, here's the long story of Son Gopaul, the Fake Super Saiyan...

... Only kidding. My real name is Ricky Gopaul, and I have been playing UFS since May 2006,

I first found of the game when I was collecting Street Fighter figures from a comic book store. There were UFS starters for Street Fighter and Soul Calibur III set 1, and since I am a Street Fighter addict, and was playing SCIII at the time, picked up the Ryu, Ken, Nightmare and Astaroth decks. Now I wasn't much of a CCG player, but I did like to collect the cards and learn the basics of the game (Other games included Raw Deal and Dragon Ball Z). So that evening, I went through the rules and tried out the game, and actually found it rather fun! I later bought some boosters and found out there was a foil in every pack, which was new to me! The first rare I pulled I think was Ken's Hadoken, which I thought was cool since I had a Ken starter.

A week or two later I headed down to Lingard Games, where I used to play causal games of Raw Deal with my school friends. I found there were a lot of UFS players there, including the staff themselves! "This game must be pretty popular!" I thought to myself. I got a trade through for a *Sagat*, as he was my favorite Street Fighter character, and immediately put my Earth cards together to make an over 100 card **Sagat** deck which somehow worked! After the (somewhat) success of my Sagat deck, the other players got to know me as a friend, and we still are today. This was a blessing or me, as having to change college after the first year kinda lost me my friends I had there. To this day I thank UFS for giving me the opportunity to make new friends again. *wipes away tear* Okay, that's the serious part over and done with!

My fellow players invited me over to the Colchester Games Club, which would later be the place for UFS tournaments in Colchester. Held every Friday night (which perfectly fit around my work schedule at the time), we held causal games and occasionally a mini-tournament. Through constant games and purchasing boosters, I got my Sagat deck rounded down to about 70 cards, and smoothed it out into a solid Earth aggro throw deck. I also changed to the deck to *Sagat*, and abused his R ability to burn opponents to their doom.

Set 2 arrived, with even more Street Fighter characters to keep me happy! I also started tagging along to tournaments in Reading, the first of which I did well with an Air *Chun-Li* deck with Leaping Commando kick abuse. I loved the look and style of Balrog and M. Bison, and soon built *M.Bison* off Evil. With a little better knowledge than before with Sagat, I got the deck perfected after the first draft. The idea was that I would play Psycho Power Punch, use both the free Enhances, then use Dirty Pool (which I got in the "supposedly" broken Penny Arcade set) to make it unblockable. Due to Psycho Power Punch's abilities, the opponent could only play low blocks for the rest of the turn, and I would create havoc by following up with high attacks like Dash Uppercut and Earth Divide. Sadly the deck proved too slow and weak to face the many Void decks I encountered at 2007's UK Nationals, and placed one above last place with only the one win.

The first SNK set was interesting for me. I had not played the SNK games, but I had seen Mai, Iori, Kyo and Terry in Capcom Vs SNK 2. It was their introduction to UFS that got me playing the King of Fighters games and later Samurai Shodown V. In the pre-release I got my hands on Terry, even though I was most excited about playing Mai. Through Terry I found a new deck idea with Dash Uppercut and Burning Knuckle, and Terry's E to recur them next turn. Combined with the (soon to be banned) action To The Bone, Terry made a fun loop deck off All/Chaos. As for Samurai Showdown, I took a shine to *Charlotte*, who everyone deemed as bad. I proved this wrong and actually made a rather fun theme deck for her which focused on mid attacks and her E. In matches (especially multiplayer brawls), Charlotte was really hard to take down cause she would gain so much life. My favorite SC character Siegfried had also been reprinted in a battle pack, so I built a great counter-attacking deck which once turned my opponent's 10 damage attack into a total of 20 damage back to them!

I could go on about each set and what characters I had built, but I think the idea has come across now. I am a fan of casual decks, but now and again come out with something that just clicks and is amazing. I ran my faithful *Sagat* at the 2007 UK Team Nationals, but sadly didn't do too well there either. I ran Yoshimitsu at Soul Calibur Nationals, but didn't do anything too great there. At the 2008 UK Nationals, my *Sagat* did amazingly well, but sadly not good enough to make the top 8. Come rotation I couldn't play *Sagat* no more, and built ::Sagat:: to keep me going. However, the fire deck I had was far too slow to make any impact at 2008's UK Team Nats. Downhearted, I moved onto playing **Dan**, a character I also loved from Street Fighter because he was so funny. I soon became one of Dan's Saikyo fans after showing how good Dan is by beating even Ibuki in casual games.

With Block 3 coming pretty soon, Gen Con UK 2008 proved to me that playing in the occasional tournament outside of Colchester was a really good idea to prepare for it. Thus, along with (Viewtiful_)Joe, Nemesis, Zangetsu and others we started going around the country to smaller events such as pre-releases and Patch events. Getting to play other players was a new experience and broaded our knowledge of playstyles and decks. We also promoted bringing other players to our own events!

I am currently really enjoying UFS now. In Colchester we already made the change to Block 3 a few months ago, which has brought in more players who hated Block 2 while it was around. Most recently I have built ::Adon::, my balls-out aggro deck that kinda defies the idea that this game is turning into a foundation-based game. Adon has a good record of wins so far, including coming 2nd in an Air Patch. I'm also working on re-building ::Siegfried:: after my first draft turned into a Chaos aggro beast!

My UFS journey started at my neice's 5th birthday party, I got a phone call from a friend about this cool new game called UFS which consisted of Street Fighter and Soul Calibur, at the time I was a big of Street Fighter but not a big fan of Soul Calibur. So I figured I would give it a go.

So that following weekend I headed to my local game shop were it was being sold. After seeing people playing as I walked in I watched them play a game and gradually picked up the rules as they were playing. After they finished I bought myself a Dhalsim starter deck 4 packs and luckily out of the 4 packs i pulled a Yoga Inferno which was awesome at the time being the fastest attack in the game.. From then on I met more people that were playing and from that we had a nice player base everyone was really friendly..

After a weeks I managed to get my hands on *Dhalsim* which from what I saw when I got him was amazing 8 hand and free discard, from then on I made numerous different decks with some playing 4 Yoga Inferno as the only attack in the deck, which seemed to win alot more than it lost..

Then the new Licence came out SNK/Samurai Showdon and a with that a new Street Fighter set. And from that I made 2 new decks, One being *Hanzo* using To the Bone for an OTK and then I remade Starter Dhalsim with One armed Maneuvers. Both decks had a high win record, but shortly after the sets been released, both decks were either taken apart of heavily injured due to the fact that To the Bone had been banned and One armed Maneuvers was errated to a maximum of 3 momentum instead of near 10 momentum from 1 OAM..

From then on more and more bannings were happening, Addes, Higher Caliber, Revitalize, Military Rank etc.. all of which I ran in most of my decks..

The 1st major tournament I went to was the Soul Calibur Property Nationals, I was running *Setsuka* she was the 1st Soul Calibur character I played that I enjoyed, even though I went 2-3 I still had alot of fun with her, and I also got a page of UFS as a bonus prize from Kevin Beadle, About a week after I was looking through cards trying to find a new character to run then I found her.. I found **Ibuki** I made a deck of life and took it to Colchester to play some people, and I was amazed at how fast she was.. When I got home I made another deck but this time of evil and the following weekend I took her along and I didn't lose a single game all day.. As this was happening I was told about a combo she had using Demon Eyes and Kubi Ori which turned out to be infinite if it hit, but then a fews after both Kubi Ori and Kasumi Gaki were banned..

I still had Ibuki she was stronger than ever, my 1st tournament with her was the 2008 UK Nationals, where there were 7 Ibuki decks all together including mine so I would have to play really well to do better than the other Ibuki players, And my 1st round match was against a Ibuki deck piloted buy the Street Figher Property Nationals Champion, so I had my work cut out for me.. I went onto win the match. After the Nationals had finished I was 4 wins and 2 losses, which placed me in 24th which I thought was a brilliant performance..

More to follow watch this space....

After the Nationals the unthinkable happened **Ibuki** got banned aswell, I wasn't to happy about it but I understood why, but luckily enough she was released again, I then made a deck with the new ****Ibuki**** and she infact than ever before due to her R.

The next tournament I participated in was 2008 UFS Team Nationals, where myself using Ibuki of course, Joe used Donovan and Paul used the dark horse that was Sophitia.. When all the rounds had finished we were in the top 4, our semi final opponets were the guys who had won the previous year. After an intense semi final we beat the reining champs and headed on to the final to play the best final we had ever played against the greatest bunch of guys.. Although we lost in the final we all had a great amount of respect for Matt, Ross and Baz..

After the team nats had finished the patch events began, during which I did quite well in some and really well in some.. Although I didnt win I still felt I did well..

Next major Tournament is regionals so we will see what happens...

Jonathan here one of the people who didnt start when the game first came out. I started when i first went to college and i was kind of a loaner then i found my third floor friends at college. Now this bit i am sure most of you will laugh at, i saw some of my new friends playing and saw the characters i know and love from soul calibur and street fighter which reminded me of good times playing on the sega and dream cast with my brothers, so i started with a second hand voldo deck and they taught me ( i didnt look at the rules BIG MISTAKE) WRONG. they thought that when you play a card you only need to commit a foundation and use the check of that foundation as the check lol i soon got told that was wrong when i first meet Joe in lingards. after that i got and astroth starter and then READ the rules and taught them how to play classic case of the student becomes the master. i then worked on astroth with physically fit a throw by discarding demented moon hehehe die lol. then came snk and promo lien and her big 12 damage3 attack yea with the lovely promo the king of fighters Multiple and became a nasty deck that kept winning but then after that died down came the most awesome news i had heard (since i like hwang as i had only played sc2 i got told he was his replacement) yup you guessed it YUN SEONG WOOO the deck that i didnt tear appart properly until he cycled. yun seong became one of the decks to beat for a fair while and took him to both sc nats which joe has told you we played each other alot, and uk nats which annoying for me just missed out on the top what ever by diversity BY THE SAME GUY GRRRRR. but anway block 2 came and then yun seong went down hill for a bit so not much happened and then team nats meh not much i can say really, then came my awesome girl SEONG MINA and that who i have now oh yea and as you know i merged with theo thought would mention it and remy who is soooo much fun and thats it if anyone thinks i have missed something which i prob have then just say other then that thats my story.

oh yea street fighter nats with adon i won my first 3 rounds and can say i was first at one point thyen came top 8 and had the closet game i ever hade with soki , kyle that is who won it

ok so i had some basic knowlage of card games and one day my brother comes back with this big wod of cards and says he has a new game come and biuld some decks and face me. I was very happy as i had played street fighter a lot with my brothers and soulcaliber(but could not beat mark). i biult my decks and got tought steve rules which i got told later where wrong. My first match against my brother was me using zangief and him using dalsim(i was angry dalsim was my fav character) and lost badly(just like on the games).

so one day i got to the pre release as my fist tornament and pull a god pack (which turns out i have a uncanny nature of pulling them in pre realeases.) i was happy and did well . So my brother biuklt me loads of decks to find out what type i liked. The last one was a 3 dot maxi that was terable so after that my brother said what style do you like and me being a total muppet said blocking. the next tornament i found athena she was asome. I played her at my fist National tornament which was great i did well finishing one place above my brother it was asome(he complained the whole way home. Next national i played blanker and came in around the same place.

Saddly pisoft closed and we went to aldershot for a while but then we heard a rummor that a scout was trying to start UFS some where we thought implosible SWINDON!(suprised music) yes Bevan had arrived and we have loads of fun. So as time has gone by i learnt that i hate to block and love to beat face. I cant wait for regionals.

finaly big thanks to mark for buying cards letting me use them taking me palces and most improtantly putting up with me.

Craig.

I move to this country 7 year ago... Nah.

My names Lee, I've played TCG/CCG's for over 10 years now; starting with Pokemon, then moving to Magic, Yu-gi-Oh, various other things and am now on UFS!

I started to play UFS when I began working at Lingards Games in Colchester (the Day Darkstalkers and Fight for the Future came out!!!.) Joe persauded me to start, and my first purchase was the Ryu vs Akuma battle box with a massive load of Extreme Rivals to follow - after finding out Mika was in the set I overbought untill I had everything I needed

I came 39th at the Uk nats with My promo Rose deck, which was a massive suprise to me, as I fully expected to finish last! I also earnt the reputation of a mad trader at the nats - the guys from Colchester were amazed at my "wicked cool" trade skils

The rest as they say is history, I love the game, still do and have been playing pretty solidly for a year and a half now and hope to be playing for a lot longer!

Lee

ooops! mis-typed the number there! 79th not 39th

My UK UFS story huh, I'll try to keep it short

As some of you will know, I'd been working for STG for a year or so when I flew out to Memphis to spend the week with the team and talk things through about our then CCGs WarCry and Dark Millenium. I'd spoken to the design team about a new game, a fighting game CCG, and was eager to have a look.

The initial games that I played whilst I was there were...interesting. As always, the game I played then had little to do with the actual UFS game, but the essence was still there. It would be several months until I flew back out to the US to play a much more finalised version, and help Josh Morris, my then OP partner in crime, to design and develop the OP system for UFS, that is still essentially in use now (although I'll be the first to admit that it needs a serious overhaul, something FFG are working on)

I remember coming back over and speaking to alot of retailers about the game, discussing the OP programme and how it would be sold, etc etc - lots of boring stuff that players don't ever have to bother with! There was alot of demoing to retailers and the dedicated few in their stores (I seem to remember Ross being at Patriot the day I first showed Jim the game, and I'm sure there were others there too)

Some retailers were harder to convience - some bloke by the name of Steve Graham tried to reject my teachings, but I showed him!

I spent a fantastic 2 years working with STG on UFS, and interacting with some amazing players at as many events as I could attned - running the first Nationals was a highlight for me, as it was (then) the biggest event I'd ever run.

I do still play on occasions, and I'm always around on the borads and things, but real life as always catches up, and going back to uni has taken alot of my free time - but I WILL be taking part in at least some of this years Regionals, I swear!

Kev

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.... ahem, sorry, appear to have turned into Mr Rogers there....wondered where this red sweater came from...

OK, I got into UFS after playing Magic fer a while, me and a mate started a MtG club in Cardiff, the guys in it were awesome, but every tournament we attended appeared to filled with social reprobates and people who couldn't WAIT to tell you how bad you were.

But enough flames! Me mate brought this game home one day, I sat and played a few games (I needed a bit of convincing, I was currently doing a PGCE and time was ridiculously short) But then I saw Dark Hado Ryu. Cue Twittering birds and love hearts appearing in me eyes. After that, I was hooked, bought a ton of Dark Path and kept up with the game fer about 6 months. Then the PGCE really kicked in, and with it, UFS took a back seat.

After realising teaching sucked, I followed me partner to the land of roundabouts and vanillaness, Swindon, where I thought "New place, lets get back in!" So I signed up to be a scout, and who should give me an email to say he was coming? None other than 2007 UK champ Scott Mence?! So we play, I get smash faced and have some of the best games I ever had. But it didn't end there, oh no! I followed these guys to Aldershot like a blood hound on a dead hooker's trail, and met two seedy and disreputable oiks from Cirencester (only kidding guys! ). These guys, along with The Mence took me from "Pass the tissue, I appear to have another nosebleed" To "Hmm, may have a chance here!" Anywho, I then attended me first two National Size tournaments, the first being the 2008 Team Nats, where an awesomely built deck (Cheers Mark and Craig) got pilotted like a brick until the third round (**** lack of play testing!) which was infortunately was too late to save us, and we scrubbed up in the middle of the table, but what a day, seriously the most fun I've had playing UFS ever!

Next was the SF Nats, where a well built and considered Alex deck was scrapped literally the night before, and rebuilt thanks to scraps from the Alex deck and Mr Smithers (like, the nicest guy you could meet, maybe half Canadian or summat!) and switched to Promo Guy (GO TEAM GUY!!). After a gruelling day, getting draws and I think one win, Steve announced the top 8, and I nearly messed me pants when he said "Bevan with Guy". Cue shaking hands, cheesy grin and a nervous sheen of sweat on forehead. Got drawn against last years champ and went out in record breaking time, but hell, this was like the highest I had ever reached in a national event. Ever.

So the rest is history. With some excellent competition to keep increasing my own game, and one of the best player bases every (I mean the players are some of the nicest guys you could ever meet!)

Keep gaming!

Fiddlestix

I came into UFS around about halfway between set 2 & set 3. I had just finished up a Yugioh tournament and I happened to see one of the best players in our shop bust out a card game I've never seen before, though I recognised the characters. I went over to see what was up.

"Hey, that's Nightmare from Soul Calibur."

"Uh huh, this is UFS."

"What's UFS?"

"Well it's like Soul Calibur and Street Fighter in a card game."

"............Is there Chun-Li?"

"There is Chun-Li."

Came back the next week and started buying up boosters left and right until I had me a Chunners deck. Did nothing much with the game except play locally, got pretty good. Then I heard about Nats, so a bunch of us booked a hotel on the Saturday night and went down for a weekend. 3 of us did pretty well, we got 15th, 17th and 20th respectively. I was 15th. Unfortunately this was pre-diversity. I didn't think there'd be a problem for me (I was running Promo Nagase) until about halfway through the 5th round when I saw Felix. Who ended up with the same record as me (4-1-1), though he got better tie-breakers so ended up going 13th. Both me and Jordan (17th) got diversified out (he was running Ibukers) and Jack (20th) went through with Chester.

After that I did some trades and had some casual games. Managed to trade of a bunch of Cammy stuff from The Next Level for some shiny Schmetterlings and some more Nagases! Ended up with the original Nagase I played with and a spare playset (fer stackin').

We went back to the hotel, had a McD's, then slept (I was in the bath). Went back on the Sunday to see Jack compete in the finals and take part in the pre-release. I ended up with a Haohmaru starter and ran an aggro order deck that did pretty well.

After that play at the shop dropped off pretty drastically, until it stopped going altogether. I occasionally went to Sheffield or Huddersfield for the big monthly tournaments but for the most part just traded for new cards when they became available.

Thanks to fortunate circumstances I was offered a free ride to Gencon UK so I went to Team Nats even though I didn't have a team. Had a blast watching all the different teams duke it out, also got to trade off some of my spare patches. The final was nasty (Sakura is mean!) This event convinced me that Addes Syndicate is a worthless card since the only thing I ever saw it negating was another copy of itself.

Haven't really done anything since then due to geographical restrictions, but with a possible new job in the works I might be moving down south so I'd expect my OOFS career to become much more active.

my uk ufs story began right at the very beginning of the game, played the demo decks at patriot games in sheffield and fell for the game immeadiately, picked up the astaroth starter and never looked back. i miss that deck, the good old days when you could get away with a turn like blazing cadenza-blazing cadenza-demented moon-discard demented moon to boost the next check-demented moon-same again then finish with an earth divide, aw good days. stuck with that kind of smash aggro deck for a long time through various incarnations like rolling storm talim,1 check akuma and the "who cares about foundations" decks like like promo cammy and cassandra.

I never got many chances to play in tournaments due to working in retail (god **** working weekends) my first major event being nationals in 2008, i went playing 1 check akuma and got my ass handed to me all day long, was a great weekend and an eye opening experience on new deck ideas, i had originally planned to play my 101 card tri-line victor mill deck and looking back on it i probably should have, that deck was obscene!

which leads us to team nationals at gencon, 4 days of endless ufs against some of the greatest gamers i have ever had the pleasure to compete with. was planning on running a quite dirty order promo yun seong deck for teams, daily routine and self sacrifice first turn really can screw any deck over, as fun as the deck was my team mates decided i needed something with a bit more bite to work at high level play, and along came justin with the werewolf terrorist himself, he'd planned to give it to random phil to play until he asked the question "where's all the damage reduction?" so the wolf came my way and the rest is history. the team event itself was an amazing experience, i got to see plenty of new ideas and play against fresh opponents, the final against viewtiful joe being the best game of ufs i've ever had bar none, i really didnt think i'd be able to beat that donovan deck after seeing the kind of beatings it had been handing out all day, and to be fair it took lupine spikes back to back, the second needing a 6 off deck as i only had 4 ready cards left! truly an epic game and i cant wait for a rematch.

so now we look forward to another year of card game carnage, am aiming to hit at least a few of the regional tournaments to help me up my game this year as i know joe and co will be gunning for our team championship come team nationals. all in all i have ufs to thank for keeping me into gaimg and introducing me to such great people, thank you one an all.

well i've been a street fighter nut for years and have built up a collection of almost anything that has streetfighter on it from comics to gashapon and well as you can guess trading cards

i saw a set of the common and uncommon cards from the first set on ebay and bought them not knowing much about them at first i just thought they were the epic battle cards but realised when i looked at them that they weren't

what kinda sucked was i was thinking i was getting all the cards then i looked at the card numbers and realised **** i need rare cards and theres a lot of them not realising that they put a rare one in each pack i should have figured that from my days of playing magic the gathering

well at this point i was in wales and the number of shops that sell stuff like this is limited pretty much the trading post (or cardiff gaming centre as its now called) and well thats it as it costs to much to travel to swansea (hell its a fiver just for cardiff from where i am) so never really bought much from the shops just on line so got a few more of the base sets sf04 and sf05

and then i ended up moving to england for work hemel hempstead well that sucked most of the cash soon disappeared paying for a flat near to london (not to mention getting drunk in london....really not a wise move for the poor) but i still managed to collect i started ordering up booster boxes off the next rather than just getting incomplete sets and well ended up buying as much as i could which even saw players tracking me down on facebook that kinda freaked me out as my page said nothing about ufs on there :s

and well yes that leads me up to now where i've built up a collection of about 1600 different cards and some 3000 duplicates and still not played a single game of ufs

but i have to say i'm tempted to start now but being back in wales again i'm limited to where i can play i'm guessing the trading post but i'm not sure if they still carry ufs stuff let alone even host any games and then if they do i'm gonna have to build a deck lol

My UFS story aint that epic XD.

I first found out about UFS when i was at a Yugioh Pharos tour event last year, and lets just say i got really bored and really annoyed at the attitude of the so called "pro" players.

Basically 3 rounds into the tournament and i dropped and went wandering back to a shop that sold cards and had a rant and a rave with the owner of the store, when i noticed there was some darkstalkers cards on the counter, bought a few packs and was confused as all hell straight away XD.

After pharos had ended i went home put them on my shelf and left them for about half a year.

Later that year i was down at a sneak peak for the newest yugioh set, when i found yet MORE darkstalkers cards and bought all of them XD (i love felicia how could i not, got about 2 of her tho WOOT) and also to boot, i gots a demo of the game and what an incredibly easy game to play and it was soooooooooooooooo much fun (yea you probibaly guessed i using a felicia demo deck XD), Unfortunalty i could not get the game started up here cause everyone i trying to be "Pro" at yugioh up by building same deck as everyone else so they can have fun by winning.

Unlike that lot i kept building up some fav characters decks, and finding out about new characters i never new about, also spending to much money on boxes . Luckly for me i found someone who thinks the same about yugioh and has joined forces with me to play some UFS (he still a bit upset that he never got to use Talbain before the ban XD) and we are going to our very first UFS event next week, which also happens to be a regional qualifier XD.

So while i am still relitivly new to the game i am still hoping i can continue with this game and haves loads of Awesome memorys, and make some kick ass friends, cause all TCGS should be all about the fun XD.

Sounds like a good start so far Shannux, I'd say keep pestering your YGO friends to play UFS. Use the franchises as a selling point, rather than "it's more fun than YGO (cause it is really)", I'm pretty sure SOMEBODY's played them - if not SFIV will bring in some people and the new SCIV license might bring players of that too.

Keep to the cause, good man! UFS shall rule someday!

Son Gopaul said:

lol, well at the min the meta for yugioh has improved, so ppl we be a bit focused, but i already have one of them on my side. Dont worry i keep trying, while there are bigger breasts in UFS, ppl will be curious XD.

Hurrah for big breasts! And Hadoukens!! And Shor-Ryu- KEEENNNNNNNN!!!! * cue large firey fist of awesome! *

Is there much of a YGO scene in Wiltshire? If so, where do I find said players and how do I mug them, tie them up and slap them E.Honda style til they play UFS? Answers on a postcard!

Fiddlestix said:

lol yep thats about right XD. Thats all we need from a game XD.

Also maybe a felicia on my lap XD, yep i am now the happiest i can be for the rest of my life XD.

Fiddlestix said:

There used to a huge scene in that part of the world, and I must admit that I may of accidently helped it when I ran the shop in Nailsworth...... It is also where I first met Mark and Craig, them coming to the shop to play that game. Ace of Space used to a gathering point in Swindon for Yugi types, not sure if it exists anymore though. Infact I'd ask Mark where the unwashed now gather and show them there error of their ways........

Hi people, I'll join in the mass posting

I first encountered the original UFS demo decks in Patriot Games before any sets were released. I was the UK champion for Dark Millenium (another STG game) at the time so I was following their products quite closely.

After a few games with the demo decks I developed my incomparable hatred of including 2 check cards in any deck which I have cherished and nurtured to this day (the demo decks were nearly 50% 2 checks as I remember).

I was one of the lucky few who played the game early enough in its history to be able to buy two Penny Arcade sets, my first large tournament was the Cardboard Combat at Games Workshop HQ in Nottingham. I played ultra rare base set Ryu aggro control which was just as awful as it sounds but somehow managed to make the cut before losing in spectacular fashion to an ultra rare Dhalsim from my own player group.

The first large tournament I won was a prerelease at the first Foundations of Power tournament in Reading where I played as some random blank character I can't remember . In the constructed the following day I made the top four but had to drop out to catch a train home. That was the first time I met Dan and JJ where I was several months later told I was the only person to take a game from JJ's Cassandra in about 40 games (this caused me lots of confusion as I kept being referred to as Sagatman in the interrim - I was playing Sagat at the time). I met Dan and JJ lots more after that and have a particular talent for having to play JJ in a tournament EVERY TIME I SEE HIM : / We have about the same record against each other but in my part this has been mostly due to my decks metagaming JJ's and he is a far better player than me

Shortly afterwards Sheffield's scout migrated south to Japan in the winter and never came back in the summer so I was asked to take to position of Scout. I travelled around the UK promoting the game, assisting with official demo days, etc a great deal while Sabertooth had the game but since FFG acquired it the UK no longer has direct support for the game in the same way so I have no longer been doing this. I continued to promote it on my own for some time (e.g. last Gen Con) but more recently I have stopped doing so since it is too difficult to do with no form of support, assistance or reward from FFG.

I have always focused on building my own decks rather than following the top tier archetypes in UFS as this allows me to build decks well suited to my own play style (and avoid diversity lots XD), I would like to think that this creates a more diverse field of decks and play styles at least in my local tournaments with people being encouraged to consider more options for decks and weaknesses in their own decks. In 2007 I travelled around the UK lots collecting uncut sheets which was a lot of fun but mostly due to luck, I can back this up by saying that I have never yet made the cut in a UK nationals

Right now I haven't had much presence on the forums, etc as I only have internet access at work where the forums are blocked and in the shop where I am generally running or playing in tournaments.

I had the honour of joining Richard Bassindale and Matt Hewitt in the 2008 Team Championships which we managed to win after several hard-fought games against a very skilled field of players from all over the UK. Keep looking out for the Patriot asset which we hope to have around set 12-13 and which will be travelling all around the UK!

Finally, my main reason for playing UFS has for a long time been the fantastic players I have met all over the UK. I would like to thank you all for making the game enjoyable for me and everyone else and I hope to see a lot more of you in 2009!

- Ross (for anyone reading this who doesn't know me, I'm the scout for Patriot Games, Sheffield)