Sponsored.  Beware Villains, Izuku Midoriya is back in UniVersus with the upcoming My Hero Academia Dark Hero Arc Challenger Series.  Join us with a deep dive into the deck by Game Design Playtester Barrett Bryant.  Can your collection wield the vestiges of the past?

Introducing Izuku Midoriya, On The Move // Quirks Unleashed:
Izuku Midoriya is moving his way back into UniVersus with the upcoming My Hero Academia Dark Hero Arc Challenger Series releasing October 11, 2024.  I’m here today to talk a little about the ideas and concepts of the character and also some directions we decided to take him as an iconic character in his franchise.  The tension in the My Hero Academia story really starts to rise as we get introduced to Midoriya in this arc, as he has finally begun to unlock and use the quirks of the past users of One For All in his own unique style.  Combining his past experiences, knowledge of quirks and their users, and lessons learned through friends and teachers, Midoriya returns to UniVersus in full force with some exciting play patterns and new tricks to overcome any rival.

How We Got Here:
Being the protagonist of his own franchise, Midoriya was the perfect pick to bring back in his own Challenger Series and paying homage to his past versions, while also keeping things new and exciting in UniVersus.  This version of Midoriya sports 5 resource symbols instead of the average 2 - 3, but we thought this was the perfect way to represent the culmination of One For All quirks coming together and also calling back to the previous 5 versions of the character.  The first 4 symbols on him recall older versions of Midoriya in some way, while his newest symbol added to his arsenal, the Water symbol, is a way that Midoirya can make waves in 2024 and adding a new theme to his gameplay: facedown cards in the cardpool.  There are still some callbacks to older versions, such as a discard cost on his front side, since most past Midoriyas always discarded cards in some way.

The new focus for his abilities however pays a heavy attention to committing foundations for a large payoff.  We wanted this to represent the exhausting nature of Midoriya learning to master his newly acquired powers while also appealing to the idea that the combination of all these abilities are very tiring to use all at once.  Committing multiple foundations multiple times was also a perfect way to represent the stockpile-nature of Fa Jin from the Third Wielder.

Another noteworthy point about this version of Midoriya is taking off the keyword restrictions the character has typically had in the past.  We wanted this version to feel like a true evolution of the character’s development across the series and taking the gloves off on what kind of attacks he is able to affect is a great way to show that he can use all of his past attacks and styles while still using new tools.

How It All Ties Together:
With all of the different moving pieces discussed above in the character design, we needed a Challenger Series deck that still had a gameplay focus but also had enough complexity with the character to invite players to build their own constructed deck ideas with Midoriya. Here is where the Vestiges come into play.  The Vestige focused cards within the deck help create a puzzle that the player has to solve to reach the highest potential for cards like Wielding One For All and Eighth Wielder.

The payoffs for committing to that game plan needed to feel worth working towards, while also synergizing with what the character’s themes were: facedown cards in the card pools and committing foundations for costs.

So let’s talk about some of the cool combos within the deck itself.  A few cards have already been shown off for the deck, but there are more pieces within it that help it flow with the character and the Vestige sub-theme as well.  My favorite of the quirks Midoriya has access to is Fa Jin, so let’s showcase a bread and butter combo within the deck:

As Izuku Midoriya, On The Move, Fa Jin Flurry easily becomes a 3 Speed for 7 Damage attack that gets us a momentum, but with a little help from the Vestiges, we can change its zone to whatever we want it to be, get an extra +3 damage, and get another snap momentum to potentially pour into the EX: 3. 9 Speed for 10 Damage on any zone you want it to be and still end up with an extra momentum always feels pretty good.

On the more defensive approach, cards like Creative Counter help us build down Vestige cards that we block with to accelerate faster into the highest potential for our Wielding One For All.  Whereas, Seventh Wielder: Float helps bring our facedown cards in our cardpool back into our hand after using the flip abilities on our attacks to ensure we still have some blocks to play with.

The Friends We Made Along The Way:
You may have noticed that some effects on the cards shown above can almost be connected to older cards that we have made before.  This is another callback to former UniVersus cards that belonged to some of Midoriya’s classmates within the franchise and shows that Midoriya is always learning not just from his teachers but also from his teammates.  Creative Counter looks very close to Manly Passionate Guy and Third Wielder: Fa Jin looks adjacent to Heroic Lineage belonging to Eijiro Kirishima and Tenya Iida respectively.  Eighth Wielder can even look like an upgraded version of Passing the Torch as well.

In regards to other cards in standard that synergize well with the character and gameplan, if you noticed, most of the Vestige cards also have the ally keyword.  This makes Command Pigeon Flock a great addition for this deck if you’re trying to get as many Vestiges as quickly as possible.  On a more risky side, Tasty Riff helps build in more Vestiges of varying difficulties depending on how many Applause counters you have, or even help you pick up Wielding One For Alls in your discard pile.

All in all, this Challenger Series Deck was a ton of fun to work on and we can’t wait to see what crazy Midoriya decks people play and maybe even bring to competitive events!

Click on Gallery below for full-sized images.