Happy UD01 day, Ultraman Card Game players! All of us celebrate the holidays differently, but for us at UC, 12/19 will be our day to celebrate our beloved Blazar and Tiga with the release of their new deck! This deck has everything: a rock-solid 50-card deck, 10 EXTRA cards to customize it to your liking, a full set of counter cards to help track game states (a wish from players that has been fulfilled!) and even a special counter that can be one of six great designs! There’s no question that you should be running to your local store to grab this deck — but which cards are the real showstoppers?
#5— The Recovery 1s
We’re starting this list with a pair of doozies, both of which open up some big new opportunities for deckbuilding. A new standardized effect premiering in UD01, both of these Level 1 Ultra Heroes can return a card that shares their character name to the top of the deck from the discard pile, provided they have a scene set. It’s not the flashiest effect there is, but considering the only other notable “recover from your discard” effect in the game is the Transcendent L2 Mebius from BP01, it’s not an effect many decks have access to now.
Of the two, Blazar uses the effect better, since you can return a card to the top of your deck to immediately mill it again off The Man Who Created SKaRD, but even if you’re not making use of that scene, guaranteeing what your next draw is has quite an appeal as well!
#4— Gavadon!
One of the most beloved returning Kaiju in the original run of Ultraman Blazar was the Two-Dimensional Kaiju, Gavadon, and fittingly, it had to show up the next time the card game featured the series. This Gavadon, UD01-009, is a perfectly useful Level 5 Kaiju, offering a sporting effect — Your opponent is allowed to draw one card, and if they do, you draw two! You’re leaving the resolution in your opponent’s hands, so they can’t complain if you win the game off those two cards, right? Of course, that’s not all this card enables… or at least, it won’t be soon.
Coming as the box topper for BP06, Argent Allies and Bestial Blades is a Level 6 Gavadon, with a much more dangerous, potentially game-winning effect. With a DOUBLE BP of 15k, this Gavadon checks the number of cards in both players’ hands — if either has three or less, some very strong effects trigger. If your opponent doesn’t take the deal and draw the card, they may not have enough left in hand to avoid the danger of this doodle come next turn…
#3— Return of the King
It feels weird promoting a reprint as one of the best cards in the set, but I can’t lie; Over a year since its release, BP01-007 Ultraman Tiga is still one of the best cards in the game by a mile. Complete with snazzy new art, this card is doing the exact same thing it’s always done — swapping lanes, usually to take the new one from the opponent — and it’s still working. In UD01, Tiga’s super important to making sure you can steal lead and set up your ever-important scenes.
The other thing that Tiga has here, that’s really important but underdiscussed, is just the stats on him. 7000/13000/18000 is an unheard of set of BP scores, and outpowers not only every Blazar in the deck as a TRIPLE, but as a DOUBLE too. Blazar doesn’t have too many repeatable effects, and when push comes to shove and you’re on Lane 5, raw stats are always good to have.
#2- Planet of Music
It is very difficult to get me to call a scene better than The Man Who Created SKaRD. It was the first scene most players saw through the initial run of demo decks, and I consider it one of the “Golden Pair,” the two scenes that are strong enough as to be the reason you run their respective deck (the other one, in case you were wondering, is Champion of the Fierce Fight.) So to compare any scene to SKaRD tends to be a death sentence in my ratings.
So imagine my surprise when this thing popped up a few weeks ago and blew me away with its potential utility! Planet of Music is a sleeper hit card — much like its namesake episode — and offers a new angle for playing Blazar. Triggering as soon as it enters play, Planet of Music lets you take any Level 3 Ultra Hero in your discard and slap it on top of a matching DOUBLE 2, at the cost of exiling that top card when the turn ends.
The use cases are staggering — including outside of UD01! Try mixing in Orb Spacium Zeperion or Trigger Multi Type to trigger their powerful effects outside of normal activation windows. The applications will keep surprising you!
Honorable Mention— Left or Right?
Before we get into the most impactful card in UD01, I wanted to spotlight UD01-003. It wasn’t quite enough of a showstopper to make it onto our top 5, but the card is good, and it’s good at a really interesting point of the game. Functionally similar to BP01-031 Ultraman Decker, down to matching the stats, this Tiga has a narrower version of its RRR counterpart, letting you swap its place with an Ultra Hero adjacent to it on either side.
This isn’t as extreme a lane swap as BP01-007 Tiga, but it doesn’t need to be — it’s still well-timed enough to potentially steal lead for you by swapping places with the previous lane. There are other combos that will show the true potential of this card, but we won’t be able to talk about them until Argent Allies and Bestial Blades drops next month!
And #1— Blazar!
Man, in a deck full of scary cards, this one takes the cake. Reusable BP Grade decreasing for any Blazar’s battle opponent? No wonder the card is depicting him throwing the Spiral Burrade — he’s punching holes clean through the other player’s board!
The cost for this effect, of course, may seem steep — rip the top or bottom card off of one of your other TRIPLE Ultra Heroes — but this is a Blazar deck. Between The Man Who Created SKaRD and Planet of Music, you weren’t keeping that top card either way, and this Blazar can actually keep you from losing resources with Planet of Music by discarding the top card before it can be exiled with the scene’s end-of-turn condition!
Where this card gets really scary, however, is in BP06.
You know Earth Garon as Blazar’s occasionally-beleaguered mechanical companion in the show, but he’s quite a bit more useful in UCG than he was against Brood Gebalga or Mogusion. Earthy here debuts the mechanic Charge, which takes the top card of your deck and places it under an Earth Garon or Blazar facedown and sideways as a bottom card that doesn’t count towards BP Grade.
That means that one of your TRIPLE Blazars can fit a Charged card underneath it, and remove that to activate UD01-008 BP Grade Decrease effect without risking the actual stack. If you thought Blazar was rough to go up against before, imagine how dangerous he is with his partner at SKaRD backing him up!
There are plenty of amazing cards in UD01 beyond the 6 we showcased, but to learn everything about this amazing deck, you’ll have to pick up a copy or two yourself. Ultra Deck 01: Ultraman Tiga & Ultraman Blazar is available now on store shelves wherever the Ultraman Card Game is sold, and BP06 Argent Allies and Bestial Blades drops 1/23. For more Ultraman Card Game news and strategy articles, stay close to Ultraman Connection!
