While the MetaManiacs crew is new to the world of UFS (soon to be UniVersus), we are no strangers to draft formats in games. As we approached the Yu Yu Hakusho Pre-release, there was a small amount of trepidation on my part as, bluntly, many games try to support draft formats but aren’t really set up to do so in a satisfying way.

With no real idea of how well the format will play, I went in to my first pack with just a vague idea of which Characters I was interested in, and my first pack’s rare didn’t set me down any particularly strong path (I don’t even recall what it was). Instead, I opted for Life Force Thread, an attack which threatened a lot of consistent damage, and from there I pieced together a deck whose playstyle was all out aggro in Rando‘s symbols. My theory was that other players may be messing around with trying to get particular synergies to work in a more limited format, and I just wanted to punch their face in as fast as possible. Rando’s ability to steal the opponent’s attacks from the discard was the biggest draw for me – not only for getting to snag powerful abilities of cards I didn’t draft, but for simply ensuring that I’ve always got that ONE extra attack in hand – and this proved absolutely vital to keeping my pressure up.

I got lucky and opened up a True Identity in one of the packs, which was an MVP every time I had it out, and ended up filling in a number of slots with a lot of Kurama’s reversal attacks and The Yoko Spirit, which gave me a way to push through an attack early on to get my momentum going to turn on Rando’s potent Enhance ability. These also gave me the option of pushing additional damage on the opponent’s turn for a great tempo swing, which I was able to take advantage of a couple of times throughout the rounds.

In the end, the deck turned out pretty solidly, though I’m sure a veteran could have crafted something much meaner. But it worked for the playstyle I needed for my level of experience, and I’m not disappointed at all with the performance. Let’s jump into that!