Welcome back, Ultraman Card Game players! Now that we’ve gone through both starter decks, it’s time to focus our attention on the first booster pack, BP01 Guardians of the Earth, and the five new Ultra Heroes introduced there! We’ll go through each new deck archetype in turn in the next several weeks, and we’re starting with savagery, as we delve into the hero that protected Earth from the mysterious V99, Ultraman Blazar!
Part 1 — What Does The Deck DO?
Well, it wins, in theory.
In all seriousness, the Blazar deck has two specialties that set it apart from every other deck in the game — that being subtracting BP from your opponent’s characters, and manipulating the top several cards in your deck, usually at the same time. Reducing the opponent’s power makes sense, but why mess with your desktop? Well, we assure you, readers, there is a very good reason, and if you learn how to use Blazar’s skills well, you will win games against any opponent.
With that said, let’s get into the individual cards in the deck, and see how they come together to drive a Spiral Burrade through your opponent’s chances at victory!
Part 2 — Level 1s
As with our previous deck articles, we’re going to start with our archetypal card advantage Level 1, that being the Blazar pictured above (BP01-037). You may notice that the effect of this Blazar is of the same kind as the Ultraman Zero (BP01-055) and Ultraman Z (BP01-073) we discussed last week, drawing you two cards before having you place one card in your hand on the bottom of your deck. This is the second of the two kinds of effects on the Rare Level 1s, and Blazar actually makes use of it exceedingly well, due to the desktop manipulation effects mentioned earlier. Drawing two becomes much better when you know exactly what you’re going to be drawing, after all!
Beyond that, you have access to a reasonable suite of simpler Level 1s in BP01-038 and BP01-039. The former has a BP grade increase effect when battling against an Armed-type opponent, which is a neat trick, but BP01 is a vanilla card. (In TCGs, “vanilla” is the term used for cards without any effects.) That’s OK, though — you always want to be leveling your Blazars whenever you get a chance, as often as possible. Triple triumphs in Blazar — though you want to be careful not to end up with an empty hand!
Unless…? Nah, we’ll get to that at the end.
Part 3 — Level 2s
The most important Level 2 in your deck is the RR Blazar (BP01-040), which gives you your first taste of Blazar’s BP-reduction abilities. Locked to the Double level, Blazar on-play reduces his opponent’s BP by 2000, a not-insignificant number on just about any given turn. If played on the latest lane, where the average opponent is only able to make it to a Double themselves, only one Ultra Hero will be able to do better than tie, that being the RR Level 3 Ultraman Geed (BP01-070), and a lone Kaiju in Spheresaurus (BP01-094). Anything other than those two? You’re at least trying.
The two remaining in-archetype Level 2s for Blazar, like the Level 1s, do less, with BP01-042 being another vanilla. That’s fine, though, because when we get to the decklist segment, Blazar will be joining forces with another Ultra Hero, ensuring that we have plenty of useful effects to play around with on the tabletop.
Part 4 — Level 3s
Haha, now we really get to the fun stuff! As one of the five RRRs available in BP01, Blazar’s “signature” top-end showcases everything the deck wants to do in a single card, having one of the most incredible on-plays in the game. When you drop this card (BP01-043) as the top card of a Triple stack, you get to reveal the top 3 cards of your deck, put them back in any order, and then reduce your opponent’s BP by a whopping 3000! At 17000 power, there is actually nothing that wins a fight after a 3k reduction. Zero cards. Even BP01-007 Ultraman Tiga’s tremendous 18000 BP at Triple ends up a comparatively scrawny 15k, and that’s not going to do it for your opponent.
You have access to another solid Level 3 in the deck, in the Uncommon Blazar Suppressive Sprite (BP01-044). It’s not the biggest Level 3, even at Triple, but the ability to filter draw is quite good, snatching up an extra card at the cost of putting another card in your hand back on the top or bottom of your deck. Some would consider this a downside, but…
Part 5 — The Scene
OK, enough beating around the bush — Remember two weeks ago, when we said that there was one scene we considered to be as good, if not better, than Legend of the Stone?
This is it.
If you were able to get ahold of one of the demo decks from various events in the last year, you already had this card, but for everyone else, let’s break down The Man Who Created SKaRD (BP01-105).
This is a Round 2 scene, meaning you can put it into play if you are the Lead Player when at least two battle areas have been opened. Its effect is activated manually, meaning the window to use it occurs after all on-play effects have resolved — this will matter a lot when we get to what the effect you’re activating actually is.
Once per turn, if you control a Blazar — any level Blazar, anywhere on the field — you may reveal the top 5 cards of your deck, and pick out any single Ultra Hero card you find that can be put on top of any of your stacks, and just… Level it up, for the turn, discarding the rest.
Any Ultra Hero. It doesn’t have to be Blazar, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve already leveled up the stack that’s getting a new top-end that turn. Just slap it on top of whoever you’ve got, as long as you can! The level-up granted by the scene only lasts for the turn, and the card you played goes to your discard, but you get to trigger any on-play effects of the new cards.
Let’s use an example. It’s turn 3, and you, the lead player, have The Man Who Created SKaRD out. The card you’re setting for turn is your BP01-037 Blazar, which will draw you cards, but lose almost any battle. You level up to your two different Level 3 Blazars in Battle Areas 1 and 2, making sure you’ll win those fights, but can’t clinch the third… Until your reveal phase, when you draw 2, stack the top of your deck with your Level 3s, and reveal the Level 2 BP01-040, letting you level up your weak Blazar into a sure-thing winner, and take the game!
The utility for The Man Who Created SKaRD is almost endless, and makes it worth considering Blazar as a secondary Ultra Hero for any deck for it alone. This week, however, we’re going to be using him as the Primary for our sample decklist. Who do we want to mix him with, though?
Part 6 — Allied Heroes
While constructing this article, we actually had a bit of a conflict — with so many Ultra Heroes, some of the best choices were actually heroes we hadn’t even discussed yet! Do we break our schedule and talk about the other Heroes?
Thankfully, the choice we made this time was one we’d already talked about, that being Ultraman Gaia!
…Honestly, expect us to be jamming Gaia into more than a few lists as this series continues. The reason why, as we mentioned in our first article, is that BP01-049, the card we confidently called out as one of the best cards in the game, is really good for any deck that uses primarily on-play effects. Blazar, in particular, lacks any Activate-speed effects save for The Man Who Created SKaRD, making him perfect to loop with this Gaia. Stack your deck, reduce Blazar’s opponent by 3000, and then bounce him back to your hand to use again next turn? And you even get a nifty extra 1k boost to any card on the field to go with it!
And of course, if you have a second Level 3 Blazar in your top five cards, you can activate the scene and play another copy on the same stack. And then when your next turn comes, you can play the copy you bounced again, and trigger its effects again…
Part 7 — Sample Decklist
As stated, this week will end with a Blazar/Gaia list!
Level 1 — 14 Cards
BP01-037 Ultraman Blazar (R) x4
BP01-038 Ultraman Blazar (U) x3
BP01-046 Ultraman Gaia V1 (R) x4
BP01-048 Ultraman Gaia V1 (C) x3
Level 2 — 17 Cards
BP01-040 Ultraman Blazar (RR) x4
BP01-041 Ultraman Blazar (U) x3
BP01-042 Ultraman Blazar (C) x3
BP01-049 Ultraman Gaia (RR) x4
BP01-051 Ultraman Gaia (U) x3
Level 3 — 12 Cards
BP01-043 Ultraman Blazar Spiral Burrade (RRR) x4
BP01-044 Ultraman Blazar Suppressive Sprite (U) x4
BP01-053 Ultraman Gaia V2 (U) x4
Kaiju — 3 Cards
BP01-094 Spheresaurus (R) x3
Scenes — 4 Cards
BP01-105 The Man Who Created SKaRD x4
As we discussed in the previous part, the goal for this deck is to get out The Man Who Created SKaRD, set up the incredible RRR Blazar, and loop it to score win after win. Simple!
Do you think you have a better version of the Blazar deck? Show us on our twitter! And if you want to learn more about the ins and outs of the card game, make sure to check out the official Ultraman Card Game website! Make sure to come back next week, when we’ll be rising on Our Wings, like a phoenix…
