With the reveal season of the next set of UVS in full swing, it is time for the content machine to get rolling! While I would love to dive into every single card revealed I unfortunately don’t have the time to, so I will only be covering the revealed characters for now, and as always I will be rating characters based on their Power, Playrate, and Sauce. Additionally, I have already written articles spotlighting both Elder Toguro and Hiei, so check out those respective articles for my thoughts on those characters! With that, let’s jump right into the Dark Tournament!
The Participants of the Dark Tournament
Of course you cannot have a tournament without a cast of participants, so I will be reviewing them first! I will be going alphabetically, so we are starting off with the big guy himself, Bui!
Power: 6/10
Playrate: 2/10
Sauce: 3/10
Moving onto the first character of the set numerically and alphabetically, we have the big guy himself Bui. As a thick 5-hander with 36-health he will be a chore to topple throughout the course of a game, with a top enhance that bolsters his stage presence while his bottom enhance is a form to self-commit and give your next attack +X speed and damage where X is the number of face downs in your stage. He is a fairly boring character as a health sponge that slams big stats on a move once-per-turn meaning he will sometimes get there, but I see his gameplan often being not meaningful enough and too one-dimensional to see competitive play.
Don’t let that fool you however as this guy can put scary amounts of stats on things, with him often putting +4/+4 minimum on attacks as early as turn 3, not including any flip effects attached to attacks and foundations. The biggest issue for this character is that he completely countered by any form of reset, due to only putting huge stats on a single move. This guy will easily be able to two-shot most characters reliably, but he is entirely reliant on making his single big move connect, meaning that he is incredibly telegraphed in his gameplan.
The biggest thing this guy can do is slam a morbillion stats on a move and follow it up with a Welcome to Space Land to guarantee it hits, which is likely the only competitive way to play this character. I could easily envision decks with a minimal attack count and 4x Welcome to Space Land to stall until you have enough foundations to kill the opponent with no interaction over the course of two turns, though this could also be supplemented with a Throw package to whittle down the rival throughout the course of the game.
I don’t expect this character to have enough going for him in constructed, though he will certainly be a terror in sealed play. His one-dimensional gameplay loop and lack of interesting options will relegate towards the lower end of characters, though this will satisfy the Timmy players who just enjoy slamming stats. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did well occasionally on the local level, but anything past that is unlikely to be favorable to him.
Power: 4/10
Playrate: 3/10
Sauce: 3/10
Moving onto the second 5-hander of the set, Chu has a respectable 32 health, with an enhance to commit and flip a rival foundation of your non-throw hits, as well as a response to draw up to 5 cards at the start of your rival’s turn. This makes Chu an incredibly “fake” 5-hander as he can draw up for each foundation committed over the course of a turn cycle, letting him potentially have access to up to 10 cards over the course of any turn cycle. While this is normally a gigantic boon, the distribution and reliability of when he has access to cards is what really hurts him. Other characters cannot reach the same maximum potential as him, but they often have more consistent ways to activate the card advantage as well as getting it at more opportune times.
Take for example, any of the plethora of 6-handers that are functionally 8-handers, with Vash, Wolfwood, Hawks, Nighteye, and All Might VII to name just a few. All of these characters have either frontloaded card advantage or card advantage that is enabled throughout their turn. This lets these characters consider all their options for the entire turn cycle, whether it be building out extensively or holding back a set of specific cards for blocking. Chu on the other hand has backloaded card advantage, meaning that he is confined to a 5-hander on his turns limiting the number of effective resources he has access too. Following up on this, let’s say that Chu can spend his entire hand and draw 5 cards going into the rival’s turn. The number of times you need 5 cards on the rival’s turn is incredibly infrequent, meaning that some of the cards drawn will be leftover going into your turn, potentially hampering your ability to see more cards for your following turn giving him a weird sculpting pattern.
This is not mentioning that his card advantage is highly conditional, meaning that the rival can easily play around it and stifle your attempts at activating your response through conservative play. This puts the onus of aggression on the Chu player, and as a 5-hander that doesn’t give stats, is a steeply uphill battle. The rival may opt to simply build out, taking a slow approach to slowly suffocate Chu out of the game, to which he has limited answers too. Further looking at his card advantage, Chu has a similar issue as Deku IV where he has to rely on drawing the correct blocks for defense, meaning that while he will often have cards to block with, he cannot guarantee they will be the correct zone or something he can reasonably pass, especially given his limited build potential of being a 5-hander.
As a comparison, Locklock is the most Chu-adjacent character as a 6-hander with incredibly analogous abilities, allowing you to commit and freeze instead of commit and flip if your attack hits, both of which have up and downsides, and Locklock’s bonus card advantage is triggered after the ready step, limiting the number of ways to boost the effectiveness of him. This often means that Locklock is only an 8-hander, assuming he is able to connect two attacks during his offense turn. Locklock’s primary failing is that while he can be oppressive if he gets a foothold in the game, maneuvering the game towards that state is the challenge of the character. As another note, Locklock starts off as a 6-hander, already giving more in-built flexibility in gameplan and approach to the game, compared to Chu’s limiting 5-hand size.
This is all to say that I don’t expect Chu be very good due to the restrictions the character has, with analogous characters in Deku IV and Locklock have failed to see major competitive relevance while both having significant advantages over Chu, with the forming giving stats and the latter being up a hand size. Unfortunately card advantage isn’t enough in the current game and while Chu has the highest potential, he doesn’t have enough else going for him. The best place I could imagine would be a slower deck with the goal of building out and always having blocks while slowly flipping the rival’s most important pieces with his enhance, however he will need to find stats through his attack and foundation lineup, reducing the amount of room for defense or utility effects.
Power: 8/10
Playrate: 5/10
Sauce: 5/10
Moving onto the mentor of our protagonist, Genkai is a fairly basic 6-hand size 27-health with two enhances, the top one lets you reveal the top card of your deck if an attack hits with the bonus of picking it up if it is an attack. Her second enhance lets her discard a card to give an attack +X or –X damage based on the block modifier of the card, providing a source of damage pump and reduction. Genkai is a perfectly serviceable character that runs parallel to Deku II, where she trades consistency for flexibility, where she can give and take stats while also applying them to any type of attack, broadening her potential offensive options. Like Deku II however she is a 6-hander that needs to find reliable card advantage, double-y so due to her occasionally wanting to reduce the damage of the rival’s moves as well as boosting her own, so she is incredibly dependent on the amount of draw available within the format.
The most notable interaction Genkai has available is with Any Means Necessary, with a massive +5-block making it the highest value option to pitch with your enhance while also cantripping and replacing itself, making her incredibly drawn towards the Good symbol to make use of this synergy. She also works wonderfully with her rare attack, Genkai’s Spirit Gun, with it allowing you to stack an attack if it is not blocked, which then means it will deal damage to trigger Genkai’s top enhance to the reveal and draw that card, making her spirit gun one of the key pieces in formulating an offensive gameplan for her.
As mentioned she will need incredible sources of draw to make the most of her character, and with Passing the Torch rotating she will need to work a little bit harder to enable her bottom enhance. She also presents an interesting dichotomy in deckbuilding, as she can forego much speed reduction in lieu of options centered more around damage reduction, letting her run cards with horrid block mods while maintaining a form of defense. I expect the best option will be a mix of this and traditional defense, with you blocking a move or few when possible and using damage reduction to supplement your defense when you cannot pass any blocks. An unintended side-effect of this is that she can play a little more recklessly than other characters, and if she commits out she can fall back on using her on-face damage reduction to weather the rival’s offensive storm.
Overall Genkai will likely reside solidly in the middle-of-the-pack in a similar niche as Deku II as a character that plays recklessly with her resources for fairly decent payoff. I cannot foresee her taking down an event unfortunately due to needing her gameplan to go flawlessly to enable effects that exist on other characters that are similar but less costly, though I would not be surprised to see a dedicated player make a miracle run and end up top-cutting. This character may end up being underrated within the community, though she can certainly blow other decks out of the water if things go perfectly for her, though that is a large ask.
Power: 9/10
Playrate: 7/10
Sauce: 6/10
Up next is one of the most powerful characters revealed so far, Jin features a very basic stat spread of 6-hand size and 27-health, as well as two fantastic response abilities. The first is a response when an attack is played to mill a card and give it +2 or –2 speed, increased to +3 or –3 if you milled an attack, which combines perfectly with his second response to commit to cancel the ability of an attack that is below printed speed. Both of these combine to form a character reminiscent of both Eraserhead I and II, with as speed modification “aura” and an on-demand cancel making him a potentially frustrating character to go up against.
Jin has the unique ability to apply speed as a response to an attack being played, making him a perfect user of Flash attacks. One of the downsides of Flash attacks is that you often can’t put stats onto them, making them even more reliant on their base stats, and Jin provides a way to break this convention. As a lover of Flash attacks this is my first direction I am going to explore with this character! Under Void he gets access to a plethora of potent potential powerhouses, with Gently Theft and Shrapnel Cloud Release bringing huge damage numbers, while Tornado Fist, Chainsaw Nomu, and Rebound Side Kick keep your rival on their toes in terms of defensive interaction.
Jin can also give simple bonus effectiveness to moves generally, and with no gates on his face is likely to become one of the new “goodstuff” characters on his symbols as he does a bit of everything with better offense, better defense, and a sometimes game-winningly powerful cancel ability. As a quick note, having ways to give speed will be key in combatting this character, not only to offset his natural speed reduction but to also reduce the potential applications of his cancel as it requires the speed of the attack to be below printed. This will make offensive speed resets incredibly valuable, with The New #1 being one of the best options to reset the speed of an attack both offensively and defensively.
All-in-all I expect Jin to be one of the top contenders of the future format given his combination of awesome speed control and powerful cancel ability. I could see him struggling in a similar way to Eraserhead I in that he needs to find an attack lineup that lets him actually close out games, though he will be a very tough wall to break through while he is on the defensive, putting pressure on the rival to make advances in the game state. I would not be surprised if he finds ample success within the future format, and I cannot foresee this character being poor, though I am unsure how popular he will end up being.
Power: 7/10
Playrate: 4/10
Sauce: 6/10
Moving onto Karasu, he is a 7-hand size 20-health character with a static that forces players with above 6 foundations to destroy one every time he lands a hit, followed by an enhance to give the current attack damage equal to the number of foundations destroyed this turn, notably by either player. Karasu is a very interesting character, with the most powerful foundation destruction ability on a character so far along with a very high potential damage bonus makes him a very strange character to approach. I would also like to point out that neither of his abilities specify that it has to be a non-throw attack, giving this character incredible synergies with that keyword, though that gameplan may be too slow for the pressure he wants to output, as well as him being a 7-hander without true defense on face, though his static ability gives him pseudo-defense by limiting the rival’s board to prevent extended aggression.
With Karasu relying on connecting moves to facilitate his gameplan this character is very feast-or-famine, as if the rival can play excellent defense his face is effectively blank, so the primary goal of deckbuilding will be to focus on applying stressful enough offensive pressure to the rival to prevent them from blocking everything. Additional counterplay also exists in the rival building right to 6 or just above 6, limiting the output of Karasu’s static which by extension limits his damage potential. This allows the rival ample counterplay for this powerful foundation destruction effect, compared to a character such as Kirishima III who is always applicable due to triggering on either players’ complete block compared to your attack dealing damage, giving him a lower output at more consistency.
I also wanted to discuss that Karasu is an aggressive-slanted character that isn’t effective for the first several turns of the game, making him seem like an aggro character when he is more suited towards long games where players can build enough fuel for his static and enhance to scale up and do their thing. This makes him notably weak against aggro, not only as a 20-health character but one who lacks defense on face, leading him to end up being blown out by aggressive decks. This means that incidentally he will prefer a much more defensive foundation-base to extend his longevity to get to a point in the game where his face has relevant text.
This also brings up the point of his face being somewhat contradictory. He wants to get to a point in the game where he can trigger his static to stack up damage with his enhance giving him great game-ending power if he is able to find the turn but lacks the ways to facilitate this, making him rely entirely on his deck to help him. This is further amplified by him needing the rival to have resources to destroy, which implies that they have ample resources to mount a defense to keep you off of your gameplan.
With all of this negativity I did want to clarify, there will absolutely be games where he entirely oppresses the rival while being incredibly potent into 5-hand size characters as they will lack the resources to consistently defend against your gameplan. There will also be games where the rival will be unable to consistently defend, making their options overall limited in how they respond both defensively but also offensively. This character will punish poor defense like no other, though will struggle against rival’s making a conscious effort to deny Karasu his gameplan.
Overall I am excited for this character and the niche he joins as a character who can aggressively deny the rival foundations, though he has enough counterplay and issues to not be overbearing. His best niche will likely be a sideboard character into 5-hander matchups, or in a more aggro-centric ist with significant disruption with cards like Barrier Shield, Fiery Confrontation, and League Handler to restrict the rival as much as possible to aggressively choke them out of the game. He will end up falling in the middle of the pack in terms of viability, which is entirely fine, though I wouldn’t be surprised if a few dedicated players made consistently deep runs within events.
Power: 8/10
Playrate: 6/10
Sauce: 5/10
Moving onto one of the main characters, Kurama makes a return in this set as a 7-hander with an improved 20-health since his last incarnation. He also sports a 3-difficulty, which is relevant for his first ability to respond to cancel and discard a rival attack or action on-play at the cost of removing a character from your stage, with his other enhance clogging your rival’s card pool by 1 with each of his attacks. This allows Kurama to have access to Present Mic II’s once-per-game up to 3 times disregarding any additional synergies with recurring characters, giving him incredible denial potential, while also adding “+1 speed” to every attack, additively with how many attacks you’ve played this turn.
Kurama certainly reads like crazy, which he is one of the more solid characters of the set, though zooming out shows a tamer character under further examination. His response is not only gated to once-per-turn-cycle, but requires finding a “3-of” 3-difficulty “foundation” that cannot be used to pass checks, and as anyone who has played a stacking character this is a much larger “if” than it seems. His support does assist him in consistently finding them, as well as several cards from Twice’s kit from League of Villains, making them near auto-includes in his lists to assist with the consistency of his top ability.
Following up with this, Kurama otherwise has no defense on face meaning that the games you are unable to find additional copies of his face you will need to rely on a defensive gameplan facilitated by the rest of your deck. While every character without defense on face has this issue, this is something to keep in mind specifically as people will tend to lower their defensive options because of his powerful response making up for “no defense on face” while not realizing the inconsistency of it. This will further be amplified with the number of support cards that may be included that will also deduct spots from his deck that could be used for defensive options.
Past that, his enhance also reads crazier than it is, though that is mostly due to the negative perception that card pool clogging has within this game. It is just a bonus of +1 speed for each attack you’ve played this turn in a roundabout way, though the way it is accomplished “feels bad” due to the mechanic inhibiting your rival opposed to buffing your gameplan, even though the functional effects are the same. Bonus stats in any form are always appreciated, and with Kurama giving bonus “speed” he will be able to reliably poke and prod the rival, allowing him to have more frequent access to momentum to fuel any effects that require it, such as the Echo cost on his ultra rare.
Taking everything into account, Kurama is one of the most solid characters of the set so far that will see play due to him being popular, though I believe he will end up in “the pack” of solid characters. I would expect him to find success due to his sheer popularity combined with a face that is able to deny the rival from killing him, making approaching offense more difficult while against him. If he manages to find all copies of his face he will be able to deny the rival enough to make taking him down a pain, though it also puts incredible pressure on the pilot to time the cancel at the correct moment giving him a bit of powerful skill expression.
Power: 6/10
Playrate: 2/10
Sauce: 5/10
Moving onto one of the more unique characters of the set, Kuro Momotaro is a 6-hand size 27-health character whose gimmick relies on using his “Armors” to facilitate his gameplan, which is shown by adding one to his momentum face up before the game begins. This factors into his gameplan as each of his “Armor” options provides a different bonus while in the momentum, with Armor of the Ape providing damage reduction, while Pheonix and Wolf provide bonus speed and damage respectively. Momotaro also give any attacks that match a name with your face up momentum a bonus +1 speed and +2 damage, making the initial selection of Armor not only determine a playstyle, but also incentivizes seeing additional copies of that card to power them up, with Pheonix becoming a 4-difficulty 7-high-6, while Wolf becomes a 6-mid-8.
Momotaro also features a once-per-turn enhance to reduce an attacks’ damage by 5 if it is the second copy of it played in a turn. This is mostly a “ribbon” ability as a nice bonus that isn’t always relevant, though this character notably is excellent against Echo gameplans due to this. It also can force the rival into awkward attack lines if they draw multiples of an attack, though for the most part this ability will not often be relevant.
I am mixed on Momotaro. Starting the game with a momentum that gives a bonus effect is really cool, giving him different gameplans based on the matchup in theory, though in practice it will likely be as simple as “Ape against aggro” and “Pheonix otherwise”, with Ape giving a small amount of bonus durability while Pheonix helps with generic bonus stats to your moves, as well as opening up Armor of the Pheonix as a premier early-game poke. Wolf could see use as a general damage amplifier, though it will often be worse than starting with Pheonix.
This however leads to the issue with the character. While the initial Armor is free, the others will need to connect, which then only buffs following moves. He is also effectively locked into his own kit as well as Amajiki’s kit as well due to it sharing a similar gimmick due to wanting to enable his bottom enhance. This leaves him with a severe consistency issue on top of having limited options, as he requires you to find multiple copies of attacks throughout the course of the game, where the first must hit to apply a bonus to the following ones. This can be remedied with cards such as Diving Pheonix Crush, Manifest, and Forced Quirk Activation being varying degrees of reliability, while Kinetic Air Cannon lets you hot swap a momentum with another in your discard. Outside of these options however, Momotaro will have to rely on hitting the opponent the old-fashioned way in order to gather his bonuses.
I really want to like this guy, but I am afraid he doesn’t quite do enough. There are some funny things you can do such as using Manifest or Diving Pheonix Crush to put an Echo attack into your momentum face up to get double value on Echo moves, but that is likely to niche and inconsistent. Momotaro may have a niche as a character who looks to stack as many Armor of the Ape as possible to wall up, but that is likely to slow and niche. I will certainly be trying this guy, though I wouldn’t expect him to see much play or any results.
Power: 6/10
Playrate: 3/10
Sauce: 5/10
Moving onto another of the main characters, Kuwabara returns as a 5-hand size, 33-health character with a whopping three abilities. The first is a response that lets you build specific foundations when your non-throw attack hits, being a reverse impression of Recovery Girl. This ability however is infinitely worse, given that you need to connect moves as a 5-hander without any speed or pseudo speed, as well as being limited to options sharing two symbols with Kuwabara, greatly limiting the potential of this ability. After a cursory glance at the available options, none of them are crazy enough to make a massive difference within the game, making this a “win-more” ability on a character that is difficult to get to a point where he can take advantage of winning.
Kuwabara’s two enhances both play well together, with the first one allowing you to commit a foundation for –1 damage, as many times as you want during an attack, while the second gives all of your moves +3 damage if you’re at 15 or less health. The use of these is very straightforward, with you reducing the power of your rival's aggression and manipulating your health to go sicko mode if your rival is unable to finish you off. Unfortunately, the top enhance is too costly to provide meaningful consistent damage reduction, while the bottom is a conditional steroid that doesn’t help him solve the issues of hitting the rival.
As an example, Nomu also has comparable abilities, with him committing foundations to reduce the damage of attacks while also providing a huge steroid. Nomu can frequently get more than –2 damage when committing for his response, which is worse against a large quantity of middling-damage moves, however in that scenario Kuwabara has a similar issue of only being able to commit a few foundations due to his natural resource deficit of being a 5-hander. Past that, Nomu has the special upside of “requiring” 6 moves to kill him, something Kuwabara doesn’t have the privilege of having. Moving onto the damage pump, Nomu’s is always online and usually +4 at a minimum, while Kuwabara’s is both gated by a health requirement and is only +3.
Now, Kuwabara does get a bonus ability over Nomu that lets him accelerate his stage, however this is conditional behind him landing moves as a 5-hander without any ways on face to assist with this plan. Nomu often had the issue of losing if players played defensively, and Kuwabara has that same issue but amplified significantly as he cannot even threaten to two-to-three-shot the rival unless he has already taken a beating. Now take into account the context that Nomu is a character that has seen fringe success but has never been more than a “solid aggro option”, and Kuwabara cannot hope to compare.
Looking at Kuwabara’s optimal circumstances though, you want to reliably hit the rival to generate advantage through building out his stage, accruing a wealth of foundations to minimize the rival’s offenses to maneuver your health to where you can of off with an offensive turn where all your moves get +3 damage. Unfortunately, in reality it is more often your rival will stifle your aggression, leaving you as a 5-hander with a mediocre defensive ability. Now granted, Kuwabara can play an effective version of defense where he blocks a single move and then dedicates the rest of is stage to reducing your rival’s follow up, but that ends up committing around 5 foundations to “cancel” an attack, ignoring any higher base damage or damage bonuses.
Kuwabara does have a single niche however, which is to build as aggressively as possible to accumulate a mountain of foundations to have an insane amount of damage reduction to negate all of the rival's aggressive attempts. I don't know how reliably he will be able to engineer this gamestate, however it does make him a king of the late game if he is able to reach a critical mass of foundations.
With all of this in mind, Kuwabara is on the lower end of characters in the set competitively, though I would not be surprised if he was fun to play in the rare games that you go off in. He has incredible synergy with Quick to Act, being a foundation he can fetch with his response that also leans into his “desperation” gameplan. He may end up being a character that can bully newer players, which is in-theme for him, but I would not expect any competitive results from this guy unless a build is found that can dive straight to 20 foundations incredibly quickly.
Power: 710
Playrate: 4/10
Sauce: 7/10
Moving onto the character who beat Kuwabara, Rinku is here as a 7-hand size 20-health character featuring two abilities, one of which is very similar to a previously discussed character. His enhance gives his attack bonus speed equal to how many times you’ve used it this turn, just like Kurama, while his response nabs him a free momentum at the end phase if you’ve used an effect to commit a rival foundation during your turn. Rinku also notably shares exact symbols with Denki I, who is rotating, and has a similar-ish gameplan as well in terms of being a 7-hander that is stun and momentum focused.
I already discussed the power of his enhance when talking about Kurama’s enhance, and it is a good ability that allows this character to have ramping speed throughout an offensive turn, giving him great game-ending potential on your final attack string. His more interesting ability is his response, as it is a very easy to trigger while providing him with constant momentum access. This allows him to regularly form gameplans that are momentum intensive, giving him excellent synergy with Echo attacks, with one of the big ones being Double Trouble as both an enabler for his response and a powerful momentum outlet with its Echo ability.
Following up on this, Rinku is likely to become one of the best users of the Echo keyword within the upcoming format, not only with his consistent access to momentum but each Echo attack stacks his response for a surprising amount of speed early on into a string with the Echoed attack giving two activations of his enhance. This lets Rinku shove +3 speed on his second attack card, and it only ramps up from there.
Rinku can also simply enable powerful momentum effects as well to form the basis of his gameplan using any variety of effects, such as Blueflame Torment for bonus disruption, Gently Theft to rip hands apart, or as simple fuel for high EX and Powerful ratings from cards like Ultimate Combination. This gives Rinku surprising flexibility in how he wishes to approach deckbuilding and how he wants to apply pressure using his reliable momentum access.
While he will be fun and has some nice options, he doesn’t quite hit the power level of the other contenders in the format. As with most he will fall in the middle of the pack, though being a 7-hander without real defense on face will be his biggest detriment in an aggressive meta. I wouldn’t be surprised for Rinku to occasionally make deep runs in an event, though I would expect most players to pass him by for other more stable options.
Power: 7/10
Playrate: 3/10
Sauce: 9/10
Moving onto another 7-hander, Shishiwakamaru is here with a solid 21-health and two simple abilities that have incredible applications. He features an enhance that lets him, once per turn, shove a card from hand into his momentum, while also featuring a form to commit and remove a momentum to say your next card you play passes. Both of these show that this character is trying to do some form of shenanigans, whether it be setting up powerful momentum effects or from slamming moves that shouldn’t normally pass, this character has incredible potential if he can assemble the right deck.
While I haven’t been mentioning characters supporting cards much when evaluating their face, I did want to mention that this character’s best option likely comes from his support with the card Chorus of a Thousand Skulls, a massive 7-difficulty 2-check. By itself it is a 4-low-8, though it also features Echo and the enhance that allows you to remove a weapon card from your card pool to pay for the Echo cost. Follow this up with a response tied specifically to Shishiwakamaru that allows your second or greater copies to get +2 to the check to play it, this card may become the definitive card for this character and his primary gameplan. The simple line of playing a weapon attack, using your enhance to get a momentum, then followed by Chorus that auto-passes with the help of your form means that you represent your first attack, and then two 4-low-8's where the first is free and the second is often free as well puts an intense amount of pressure on the rival. This may end up being his best gameplan due to the sheer amount of damage it allows him to vomit out at such little cost.
Of course this isn’t the only gameplan Shishiwakamaru has access to, with another direction being just playing normal Echo attack lines with his access to fast momentum, letting you always have momentum to Echo your attacks making them a central part of his approach to offense. As with any other characters that generate momentum you can use any of a variety of momentum outlets to augment your gameplan, of which I covered many above when discussing Rinku, so I won’t reiterate this too much.
Shishiwakamaru is plain though that undersells the number of cool things he can do through his fast momentum access, and personally I am beyond excited to brew with him. I don’t think he is one of the best characters of the set, though I wouldn’t be surprised if someone makes a deep run with him as his primary gimmick will be able to blow out unprepared players. Overall though I wouldn’t expect many competitive results, though he will be one of the most fun characters of the set.
Power: 8/10
Playrate: 5/10
Sauce: 8/10
Onto a character that finally doesn’t deal with momentum, Suzuki the clown of a thousand faces is here as a 6-hand size character with an average 27-health and three abilities. The first enhance lets you discard a card to draw a card, letting him filter every single attack, while his second enhance lets you commit to attempt to block the attack with the top of your discard, while his final ability lets him ready whenever he takes damage. All of Suzuki’s abilities work wonderfully together, as you can discard a card with the top enhance, then try to block with it, and if it is a half block you can ready to do it all over again. Notably his filter enhance is not tenacious, so you will be unable to filter if you have committed your face to block.
While he doesn’t look like it, Suzuki is a toolbox character given his incredible ability to dig for cards while gaining bonus card advantage through blocking from his discard, allowing him to always find the pieces he needs for his game plan. This lets him construct a gameplan with incredible consistency while giving him ultimate flexibility in how he approaches turns, whether it be digging for more attacks or pitching them to find more foundations. Suzuki also makes perfect use of more situational cards as he can always filter them out to find something more useful, giving him a unique niche as a character suited to a wide variety of tricks.
Suzuki’s main issue is his lack of stats, as all the card advantage and selection in the world won’t by itself help him defend or aggress, making him incredibly reliant on constructing his deck in ways that can remedy this issue. This conflicts with his toolbox potential, though he will likely end up as one of the “generic” characters on his symbols as an option to have a consistency boosting face for the most powerful cards on symbol. He can also go all-in on combo lines and specific card interactions due to his consistency, though I cannot predict what variations might form around this.
Overall he is one of the better characters of the set with his amount of filtering and card selection, though as mentioned his biggest hurdle will be trying to compete with the plethora of characters that simply give stats as their gameplan. He may also suffer from “Mineta syndrome” as an interesting and good character that sees little play due to his appearance, though that shouldn’t hinder him from being one of the better characters of the set. I could see him top cutting every once in a while, though I wouldn’t consider him a competitive mainstay despite his potential, though I am hoping to be proven wrong.
Power: 5/10
Playrate: 2/10
Sauce: 3/10
Moving onto the ice ninja himself, Toya is another 7-hander and this time with 20-health and two enhances, the first forcing your rival to commit a foundation if you block an attack while the second is a once-per-turn that gives an attack +X or –X speed equal to the number of committed rival foundations. These abilities immediately propel Toya towards the higher echelons of backswing characters that look to punish the rival for aggressing through limiting their resources not only on their turn but to follow up on your turn with the once-per-turn being an incredible way to push attacks through.
His biggest issue? He requires the rival to aggress to do much of anything, as his top enhance doesn’t exist if your rival doesn’t attack, while his bottom enhance has greatly reduced effectiveness if your rival doesn’t commit any foundations during their turn, if for example they build out. Which represents another issue with this character in that the foundation committal becomes less relevant once the rival has ample resources, so he is simply countered by just building out. As another caveat, Toya has to actually play defense to get the bonus of his enhance, further limiting it by how potent the rival’s offense is once they do choose to aggress.
I mentioned Mineta syndrome above for characters that see less play due to their actual character instead of the effects of the card, while this character has a whole different issue relating to Mineta, as he is a somewhat lateral version of Mineta I, and as such echos many of the issues with Mineta. Mineta required the rival to interact on either players’ turn which cut his effectiveness against experienced players, while Toya only gets his bonus if the rival aggressively interacts with him while also being unable to scale effectively into the late game.
It isn’t all doom and gloom however, as Toya will likely be a solid option into aggressive decks as he can limit their early potential while getting in solid pokes after committing the rival’s board from their aggressive turn. This limits early blowouts, especially when combined with other forms of disruption such as Breaker, breaker-like effects, or other committal effects. A perfect example would be pairing Toya with powerful blocking actions such as Showdown to commit a whopping 3 foundations with a single block!
Unfortunately despite this Toya is one of the worst characters of the set, he isn’t horrible but the issues he has are severe enough to limit him from seeing much high-level play and success as good players will be able to identify and counterplay his gameplan. He could see success locally but I wouldn’t imagine him being able to compete with the rest of the field, especially as a 7-hander means he will be blown up and punished with minor misplays without enough reward to justify him over other options.
Power: 9/10
Playrate: 7/10
Sauce: 5/10
Onto the big bad of the Dark Tournament, Younger Toguro is a 6-hander with an absolutely massive 32-health, making him an absolute unit and one of the most generically resilient characters in the game, which would already give him a niche as the most “durable” 6-hander, not including his abilities. His first is a response to build your attack face down after resolution, while also giving your rival a facedown foundation as well, while his second ability is an enhance to give your attack bonus damage equal to half the number of your built foundations, letting him scale up to a massive +5 damage if you don’t go into deadlock.
One of the wildest parts of Younger Toguro is that he can force the rival into deadlock, and while the Dark Tournament lacks any actual deadlock, he has access to 5 sets worth of deadlock with the MHA sets, giving him a plethora of options to abuse. Coupled with the fact that his support can also give your opponent additional resources to rush the rival into deadlock, this character looks to be a menace as a character who fills the rival’s board with useless face down foundations while threatening an obscene amount of pressure through all the deadlock effects he shoves into his list. This effectively requires every deck to run some form of foundation destruction, which while a suggestion previously, is now a requirement as you don’t want to be forced into deadlock and then blown out because of it.
Not only does Mr. Toguro junior have this pressure that hasn’t existed in the modern iteration of the game, but it is tied to an ability that is reminiscent of a currently banned card in Coordinated Effort, though this one is stronger as it is on resolution generally and not only if the attack is blocked. This gives him an incredible acceleration ability as he is not only able to clear his card pool but also plus a resource as well to insulate his plays further. He does get access to Copy: Harden under the All symbol to recur the built attack as well which will become one of the core pieces of that symbol for him, though he lacks other ways outside of gimmicks such as trying to enable Maximum Overhaul or using Reconstructed Wrecker on Evil, while no options exist under Death.
Lastly, he also features an incredibly potent damage pump that will at minimum be +2 damage to all of his moves (assuming you build 4 or more foundations on turn 1), scaling up to a Nomu-like +5 damage on everything, even more if he delves into deadlock. This flows perfectly with his response to fill your stage while pumping all your moves, giving him incredible damage output to pressure the rival. This also works well with the response as it allows him to string out easier during his offensive turns which indirectly enables more usage of his enhance to sling as many high-powered moves as possible. Combined with his gigantic 32-health, Younger Toguro will be a behemoth similar to Nomu in how difficult he is to take down while also having an absolutely ridiculous damage output.
I would expect Younger Toguro to be one of the most successful characters of the Dark Tournament, as he has one of the best acceleration abilities in the game combined with a monstrous damage output, not even including the pressure he puts the rival under by forcing them to manage their foundation count. I expect him to be one of the most successful characters of the set, and I highly recommend being familiar with the matchup going into the new metagame! He requires counterplay that hasn’t been stressed in the game previously, so he will be able to take advantage of players lacking matchup experience.
Power: 8/10
Playrate: 6/10
Sauce: 3/10
Onto the main protagonist himself, Yusuke is a formidable 7-hand size character with a massive 22 health is a great start to this character, along with two solid abilities. The first lets him commit and pitch a card to play a “Spirit” card from his discard as his next card, while the second gives his attack with two matching symbols +1 speed and damage, while also being Tenacious to work with his top enhance. With these in mind, I have to give Yusuke an incredibly low Sauce score due to being both tribal-incentivized as well as somewhat symbol-locked in terms of how he wants to approach attack lineups. While you can opt to run the best two or three “Spirit” cards, the rest of his attack lineup will be constricted to try and match with his bottom enhance for maximum value and thus limit the number of options you could potentially run.
Don’t let this fool you into thinking Yusuke is bad, rather on the contrary he is a fantastic character. His high base stats give him more resilience than other 7-handers, while being able to turn any card into a selection of cards from your discard is fantastic utility. At a baseline you will likely be committing Yusuke to pitch a foundation to grab an attack which gives him incredible offensive consistency to always have a follow up move. Another potential use however is that it simply specifies that he can play a “Spirit” card as his next card this turn, which also means he can use it to fix a block on the rival’s turn, giving him defensive versatility as well. As a bonus note a card from Genkai’s kit, Absorbed Spirit Energy Strike, is a perfect example of a card Yusuke would want to grab on defense due to the powerful on-block response.
As for Yusuke’s bottom enhance, there isn’t much to say. It is a minor stat bump to what is assumed to be your entire attack lineup, giving a slight bit of bonus effectiveness. This effect is mostly a bonus effect as Yusuke’s real draw is his stat spread and top enhance, I did want to discuss this ability a little bit more in-depth. While this ability will be nice to apply to your entire lineup, it has less of a deckbuilding impact than you may expect. Due to the relatively minor stat increase, I expect the best Yusuke decks to not take full advantage of this, with a small smattering of non-effective attacks included as bonus tech options or as generic “goodstuff” inclusions, though this may change based on how much support there ends up being for Yusuke to enable this enhance while maintaining good enough card quality.
Yusuke is likely going to see a relatively decent playrate given he is the protagonist of the series and has the power to back that title up, though I am unsure where he will settle into the meta long-term. He has solid “Spirit” options available with a variety of great effects, including an Echo attack, momentum hate, a tutor, and a Breaker: 2 block for when he uses his commit effect on defense. He will likely be a good option, though I don’t believe he will end up as a “great” one.
Power: 8/10
Playrate: 4/10
Sauce: 4/10
While not part of the main set, Byakko will be returning to standard as a reprint of his initial incarnation. He is a 5-hander with the largest health in the game as a colossal 38-health, making him the most naturally durable character within the format, making him near-guaranteed to survive the early stages of the game and be a beast to take down even in extended games. He also sports three solid if simple enhances, with him being able to stack his deck once-per-turn once the game has gone long enough, the ability to mill 3 cards to give your attack bonus damage equal to the highest difficulty foundation in play, and a final one to have the rival flip 1 foundation on each of his attacks.
For some context, historically Byakko was a solid-if-memey character back in the before-times prior to MHA, though he had access to his full kit, of which we are unsure which if any parts will be reprinted. I would expect him to continue this legacy into the modern era of the game, given his generic strength and humongous health pool. He doesn’t do anything fancy, with the most exciting thing being stacking a good check once per turn, or “tutoring” a card from his discard if he has any source of draw power. This allows him surprising flexibility and at worst is a great consistency boost, especially when combined with 6-checks.
While his damage enhance will usually only give +3 damage, he does get access to Dangerous Hybrid under Earth to bump it up to a gigantic +5 damage, putting him on par with the Nomu, the gold standard for 5-handers. As a bonus note with this ability, be sure to use it on your rival’s attacks to fill up your discard to enable your once-per-turn as fast as possible! This also has some synergy with cards that trigger when they enter the discard with the prime example being Lust for Battle, providing some bonus disruption and speed which can also be rigged with your once per turn to provide a “Breaker” style effect while on defense if you have any in your discard.
While not the flashiest ability, Byakko’s last enhance ties together this character as he is able to slowly neutralize the rival’s board over the course of a game, of which he has no problems extending with his massive health pool. Being able to apply pressure on your rival constantly having to build to ensure their board does anything is another style of gameplan that we haven’t had to deal with much in the past formats, with the best examples being Ojiro I and Bakugo II, both characters which ended up being unpopular and thus not exerting their gameplan onto many players. As a note with this ability, Chivalrous Competitor is still a highly valued card but does not protect from Byakko, while Saving Bakugo does counteract Byakko but has found itself being cut more often than not, though it could always show up if he becomes a meta contender.
Byakko's positioned to become one of the powerhouse 5-handers going into the next format, and I would expect him to be just outside the top contenders. He has enough upside that I also wouldn’t be surprised to see him with an alright playrate as well, and just as with Nomu he will likely sneak a player into top cut in some events without being overwhelming.
Review, Recap, and Reactions
With all of the characters revealed and my thoughts of all of them above, I wanted to just recap everything given the length of the article. And what better way to do this than with a tier list!
Of course this is just my opinion and outlook, and by no means should be taken as a word of law. Don’t let this sway you away from a character if I rated them low, for example I am beyond excited for Shishiwakamaru and I am going to mess around with Momotaro even though I rated them “poorly”. In this game the difference between the best and worst characters is not insurmountable, and as I always reiterate, games are to be played for fun, so if a character you think is fun is “bad”, don’t let that stop you from playing them!
Plenty of the characters of this set look solid and I am excited to experiment with them! Not only the characters, but tons of awesome cards have been revealed and I cannot wait to begin brewing. One of the cards that has caught my eye is Zeru’s Flames, and aside from that the incredible amount of Echo support will also be something I will be experimenting with, specifically Trace Eyes within Mei! Several MHA characters get insane amounts of support this set, so expect deck profiles in the coming weeks as I begin testing!
Overall I am beyond excited for this set, with the design direction of this set only being matched by MHA set 1, but even then, I feel like this set is ushering in a new era of design and I cannot wait to see what else UVS games has cooked up with future releases!
Do you have any articles you’d like to see? Any topics you wish were discussed more? Any questions, comments, or feedback on this article? Well let me know down below, or shoot me a message on discord! And if you enjoyed the article, feel free to follow me on twitter or leave a tip at my Ko-fi.
Be sure to preorder any UVS related needs at UnFunStuff to stock up on any TCG supplies or cards, such as Yu Yu Hakusho: The Dark Tournament, releasing February 23rd!
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