What is the action of “doing”? Is doing not simply a state of being, the state of partaking in action, whatever that may be. Then one must ask instead of “what the frog doin’” to “why the frog doin’”. And the purpose of the frog’s doin’ is simple. To cause endless destruction to anything in it’s path.
Ahem. Anyway back to your semi-regularly scheduled series where I break down the decks I am looking into for nationals, and today we have a forgotten menace of the format, Tsuyu Asui I!
However, real quick I will be delving into a bit of behind the scenes of the article process. The plan is to get roughly one to three articles out a week, preferably two or three. As of recently some personal things have come up, so the schedule has been slightly disrupted, and I hope you all stick around despite the lower frequency of content. I will still be publishing at least one article a week, though I would also like to be sure that what I am putting out is something I am proud of, which is difficult if I am having to rush around imaginary deadlines. As such, releases will be less frequent then I would hope, though I will be trying my best. With enough behind-the-scenes, let’s hop onto the scene with Rainy Season Hero: Froppy!
An Unnatural Extinction
Asui I has always been a terror of a character, predominantly shown by her spree of slaughtering regionals back in sets 1 and 2. This has lead to not one, not two, but three cards with her face on them being banned, such as Amphibious, the infamous Frog Lashing, and eventually Crow & Frog Takedown as well. While the Crow portion was banned due to Tokoyami’s strength, the pair of them set the pace and definition of what an early-days aggro deck was, a 7 hand size character with the potential to completely vomit out an entire hand of attacks that no board could hope to defend against.
However, since the bannings of her cards, both she and the Crow have had… much less representation than in the early days of the format. Asui specifically only cropped up towards the end of set 1 with her DLC attack Tongue Whip releasing, giving her additional ways to threaten the opponent via her long strings, and with the release of Crimson Rampage brought with it the “Railgun” Asui list that popped up as a slim 50-card glass cannon that had a single goal; finish the set in 10 minutes. Variations on the initial list went on to win several top level events, including the online provisional on 4/16/22, Carta Magica’s RLE on 4/30/22, and another provisional on 5/7/22, followed up with finals appearances at a provisional on 6/18/22 and another RLE on 7/9/22. This resulted in bans to the most egregious foundation, Amphibious, which allowed deep strings too easily, along with the even more horrifying Frog Lashing, an effective 3-difficulty move that was a 6-High-8 base in Asui, with potential to get even more ridiculous.
With the bannings of these cards Asui couldn’t maintain her stranglehold at top level events. And while this is slightly due to the bans hitting her significantly, I would argue it was more so due to the structure of the competitive season over the last year. With Amphibious and Frog Lashing being banned on 8/19/22, the only events left in the set 2 format were the Carta Magica RLE on 8/20/22, and event that garnered an incredible attendance of 34 players. Following that two weekends afterward was the Pasadena RLE on 9/3/22, getting 133 attendants, and finally the last online RLE on 10/8/22 which had 342 attendants. With the short timeframe between the bannings and the upcoming in-person events, many players dropped Asui as she had taken a significant power hit and players didn’t have time to optimize her lists. The online RLE had the issue of being for a “dead format”, as the release of Heroes Clash was on the horizon, and everyone had their sights set on the upcoming Nationals format with the new cards.
From there, players had a measly two weeks to decipher a new meta, and their attention was more so on the ways to modernize previously successful decks, and with Asui’s meteoric drop in play as well as the urge to bring something seen as “more stable”. She saw minimal play, though both Keenan Meadows and Daniel Hughes piloted water variations to the top 32 of last years’ NA nationals, while Cory Aguilard and Brandon Jones took similar versions to the top 32 of the online nationals the following week. Fast forward several months to January, and the HLC is upon us, and Asui was nowhere to be found. And with the HLC came the pre-prerelease of set 4, meaning the next competitive events would feature another new format. From the time of Asui’s cards getting banned in August 2022 through effectively April 2023 (the OCE RLE this year was hosted on March 31st), there were exactly four major events that occurred, three if you discount the HLC due to the limited participation of it, of which two of those were directly after the banning of two of Asui’s most important cards, while the last one was overshadowed by the focus on the upcoming format.
Simply, there weren’t hardly any chances for her to try and make an impact on, and it feels like the community forgot about her existence. She went from a near-omnipresent O-meta level threat to… Nothing. She has had no top cut appearances this year, and has overall faded from the collective consciousness of the community. Yes, she is still an incredibly terrifying character that can obliterate players, but she has seen next to zero play for the last 14 months. Most of that is due to the horrid-at-best tournament schedule we had, leaving us with minimal chances for players to play her. I will note my bias towards the North American competitive events, as it is the biggest and primary region, though I don’t want to discount other regions. Due to their smaller size however, the meta experiences much more volatility than larger events that NA is known for where things generally balance out in terms of representation.
Moving into the second year of competitive play for MHA, she has seen no representation in the slightest, while previous top set 1 meta contenders such as Eraserhead, Momo, Jiro, and Nomu continued being dominant, with 5 hand size threats such as Fourth Kind, Recovery Girl, and Ochaco II saw significant success. Moving into Undaunted Raid, Asui has fallen even more behind with the dominance of Mirio and Overhaul, while Eraserhead I has seen a resurgence in play as well. At this point, she is hardly on the radar of decks players are expecting going into the nationals season, despite still being one of the most powerful characters in the game.
What The Frog Doin’?
Mirio has everyone up in arms for drawing a bajillion cards a turn while clearing progressive with Capture Evil-Doers to string out with a ton of attacks each turn, that is the same thing Asui has done throughout her lifetime in this game. Her tradeoff is being vastly more consistent, but that is balanced by needing more attacks to close out games due to her pumping speed and not damage. She also generally plays much less threatening poke turns due to this, in addition to needing to save enough attacks for her spirit bomb style turns.
Other strong decks in the format such as Eraserhead can block her consistently, while Overhaul can manage a block on the final move due to ignoring progressive on a block, ignoring progressive from other blocks and card pool clog from cards like Tongue Whip. She also folds to Jiro entirely, due to her either chaining Flash attacks or launching several ridiculously large moves. Mirio can punch her to death incredibly easily due to Asui’s low health total if he manages to land even a few moves. Thankfully she is favored into Nomu due to her long strings and ability to consistently block, though her matchups into the rest of the field are sketchy.
The biggest boon for this deck is the consistency of its general gameplan, being a 7 hand size character means you often will have game in any matchup just due to the hand size advantage. She also has incredible potential for blow out hands that few decks can survive, which is her biggest offensive strength. She also got some new attacks from Undaunted Raid, with Life getting more consistency and unique threats in Nejire Wave, Spiral Blasts, Single Spiral, and Repeated 100% Smash, while Water got lots of kill power with Surging Crystal Darts, Vast Hybrid Chimera Kraken, and Meteor Fatfrotskies.
Asui’s power and unpopularity drove me to experimenting with her under both Life and Water, and while I won’t do in-depth reviews of the lists, I will do brief overviews.
Life was the initial symbol I settled on, with a Meteor Shower package combined with Amphibious Ambush lead to some wild pop off turns when you have momentum, with Navel Laser Beam and Nejire Wave being additional strong momentum outlets, with the former being a great defensive piece with Breaker: 2 and the ability to become very large.Repeated 100% Smash is a solid move at any point during the string while also rereadying effects like Passing The Torch, Experimenting On Quirks, and Ryukyu Agency Trainees. As for the foundation base, “Loving Father” is one of the best new tricks Asui got in Undaunted Raid allowing her to turn doubles of a move into triples, making hands with multiple Tongue Whip even more dangerous. Wild Wild Pussycats also allows us to find more foundations to further builds and given that the deck is a pile, it lets us have a greater selection of what pieces we can find and build. I went with a midrange variation and though an aggro version certainly exists and is viable, I wanted the stability of being able to play defense.
Water is another pile, with the only new attack being Surging Crystal Darts as a huge move, while Broken Psyche also finds a home as a potent defensive option. Human Garbage is also here as a situational single reready while also bolstering the high block count. Otherwise the list is fairly standard, with the notable includes being Dropping In From Above as another damage pump and string enabler, and Travel By Tape being able to clear the card pool while matching block zones, which is relevant for Mirio and full blocking with Navel Laser Beam.
On Character Falloff
What happened to Asui isn’t a single case of a character falling off, with Ochaco I being another prime example. Partially I believe this to be new-toy syndrome, with new characters garnering attention and playrate. Another thing is a perceived lack of success, given both of these characters haven’t topped in a while leading players to reduce exploration with them and register them less.
Other characters have fallen off due to the release of lateral characters that edge them out, with 6 hand size punch-focused characters having to contend with new similar characters each set, with All Might III in My Hero Academia, Deku II in Crimson Rampage, Toru II in Heroes Clash, Deku III in League of Villains, and Mirio in Undaunted Raid. All of these characters have seen previous success, and are all competing for the same niche. Mirio has a current stranglehold on the Good symbol punch deck, though All Might III and Deku II have seen success this season as well.
Overhaul is a big example of this, being the best choice when playing the “Earth goodstuff package” that has developed over the sets. Nomu also plays earth, though has less of a focus on the goodstuff cards and more on cards specifically good in him. Earth goodstuff as an archetype started forming around Heroes Clash, with Kirishima II being the flagship character for it. Ojiro II eventually adopted it during his reign, and when he was nerfed players shifted back to Deku II and eventually Deku III.
Other characters with historical success such as Denki I, Momo I, and Sato I have also fallen to the wayside, as they already had small player bases and have seen significantly reduced representation as such with the release of new sets despite remaining strong. Momo I has put up recent results with Kevin Broberg winning on his home turf with her, however her registration numbers have absolutely tanked despite still being a phenomenal character.
Ultimately character falloff will always happen as new good characters get released, though this game is incredibly volatile in terms of the meta. Older characters are of course still strong, though strength doesn’t equal popularity. This game highly rewards players honing in on pet characters and decks, and you can almost always find a way to play whatever character you want at a competitive level. The difference between the top and mid level decks isn’t astronomical, and dedicated players can always have a chance at doing well with their pet deck.
This ties into a further discussion of what characters I believe are underrepresented or underexplored, though that is a topic for another time. In a game with a meta as diverse and open as UVS, there will always be unique options that various characters are able to fill and have an edge over others in. With the next set on the horizon, the meta is looking to having a big shift after the nationals season, and I cannot wait to see what emerges from there!
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! And if you enjoyed the article, feel free to leave a tip at my Ko-fi.
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Another great article Pippa! I feel like this goes across a lot of games and not just card games. Some people call them nerfs when they are actually balance changes but unless its their favorite unit/model/character/card they won't spend anymore time trying to perfect it. For example, I think Ojiro 2 is still a good character, he just takes a bit more thought into the deckbuilding and lines you take to victory.