Welcome back, Ultraman Card Game players! Today is the big event — the official release of BP01 Guardians of the Earth! We know so many of you are still in the process of getting your starter decks, and we’re hopeful that both they, and BP01, make it into your hands soon. In the meantime, we’re continuing our strategy articles that began last week with our upgrade guide for SD01 Heroes of Hyper Space, with a focus today on SD02 The Bonds of Zero!
Part 1 — Identifying Your Heroes
As we did with SD01, let’s take a look at your options for Ultra Hero characters to play right out of the box. The Bonds of Zero consists of the trio of Ultraman Zero, Ultraman Geed, and Ultraman Z. While the bonds these heroes have are great, the cards aren’t nearly so dependent on one another, each card containing a self-directed power-up condition that allows each to be much stronger against the right foes.
For this list, we’ll be focusing on Ultraman Zero and his student, Ultraman Z. Once again, at this early stage in the game, we like recommend focusing on two Ultra Heroes, to make hands more consistent and make it easy for you to level up.
Part 2 — Your Big Winners!
The centerpieces of the Zero and Z elements of the deck are the Level 3 Zero (SD02-002) and the Level 3 Z (SD02-001). Compared to the bosses of Heroes of Hyper Space, these two trade utility for raw power, able to put out Triple-tier power even at the Double level under the right circumstances. This style of going for effective Doubles against specific foes is a recurring theme in the archetypes of both Ultra Heroes, and their playstyle often involves waiting for your opponent to max out their column before leveling up into a hero suited to countering its type.
Just about every character with this effect — to improve their BP grade in the presence of the right type of foe — asks to be facing the Armed type.
This is actually a great time to talk about types. In the top right corner of every character card, be it Ultra Hero or Kaiju, there is a word there to represent their type. For Ultra Heroes, there are four possible types — Basic, and finally, Armed. These types are, in a vacuum, purely elements of a card with no specific effects. However, as we’ve seen earlier, battling a foe of the right type can make you much stronger — or, for some cards, weaker.
Back to our type chart — the common type almost every Ultra Hero you play in The Bonds of Zero is “strong” against the Armed Type, with the Level 3s having a secondary type they excel against.
To help make sure that your Zero and Z Ultra Hero cards (and Geed, but we’ll get to him another time) are always fighting at top form, you can make use of the His Majesty’s Medal scene (SD02-014). This scene lets you, once per turn, make the type of whatever one of your Zero, Geed, or Z Hero cards faces into the Armed type, guaranteeing that their BP grade boost will improve. More interestingly, however, His Majesty’s Medal can be used on the very first turn of the game, as a “Round 0” scene. If you win the initial Lead Player status, you’ve got a chance to hold that lead — perhaps indefinitely!
Part 3 — Level 1s
Compared to last week’s deck, this deck wants a slightly lower number of Level 1s, including the very-useful Rare ones from BP01. In fact, the only Level 1s we want to use here are Z (BP01-073) and Zero (BP01-055), and none else! Drawing two and bottomdecking one is still a great trick, but this deck wants you to grab and hold the momentum of victory, and the primary use of the Level 1s here will be to get you to Triple. Expect to run 4 of the Level 1 Z and 2-3 of the Level 1 Zero.
Part 3 — Level 2s
The Level 2 cards are where we start to get into the meat of your deck- the majority of the cards you want to be playing will be Level 2s, even compared to other decks. On average, you will be attempting to either play your 2s as Singles, or Level them up to Doubles with a Level 3 — because so many cards improve their BP grade in certain conditions, you can get away with more, smaller stacks through multiple turns!
At this point, we start to see the value of Z as a support engine with cards like this Ultraman Z (BP01-076), a value package designed to help you find scenes and perhaps even use them in nonstandard ways. Z also has the benefit of higher-than-normal stats on its 2s, like the Z Lance Arrow version of Z (BP01-078), which trades an effect for a stronger-than-average Single BP Grade of 8000.
The Zero we saw earlier (BP01-058) is a similar sort of asset to the His Majesty’s Medal we saw before, but has the incredible effect of making every opponent the Power or Speed type for the turn. If you’re using cards like this Uncommon-rarity Zero (BP01-059), or the SD02-001 Z from before, this means that EVERYONE gets their BP Grade increases at the same time!
Part 4 — Level 3s
Zero’s primary Level 3 from BP01 is his Zero Sluggers form (BP-061), which behaves very similar to the BP01-002 Level 3, but with a bonus against Power Type rather than Basic, and 17000 at the top end. Complicated doesn’t mean useful, and the fact that this Level 3 can be played confidently even as a Single makes it an easy include.
Now Z, on the other hand… Z gives us an exceptionally powerful support 3 in the form of his M78 Style Shining Tornado Slash card (BP01-079). This card is the reason we suggest running more of the Level 1 Z than its Zero equivalent. The moment it is leveled up, you can discard a scene in your hand, to draw cards equal to its BP Grade. This means that, on a properly set-up board, you can draw three cards in a single turn, all-but-guaranteeing that when the next turn comes, you’ll be able to outvalue your opponent, either through leveling up multiple Ultra Heroes, or simply being able to keep playing heroes after they run low from overcommitting. An incredible 4-of.
Part 5 — Scenes
If you’re playing this deck, you still are running four copies of His Majesty’s Medal — It’s just the best combination of cost vs. utility. Beyond that, though, there are two scenes you want to be using. Mega Monster Battle Ultra Galaxy Legend The Movie (What a name!) has less specific utility, but is a Level 1 scene — Scenes can only be played if they’re equal or higher to the current Scene — Unless you can clear your opponent’s scene entirely, His Majesty’s Medal may become a dead card, necessitating Mega Monster Battle as a replacement in the mid-to-late game.
The other option is tied more to the incredible Level 3 Z we talked about earlier — Chant My Name! only does one thing, and it does it when it’s played, and that’s grab back two scenes that aren’t named Chant My Name! back from your discard — meaning you can discard them again to draw more when you go into that Z again!
Part 6 — Kaiju
In our scene section, we talked about getting rid of your opponent’s scenes — that’s not an easy thing to do, and not usually within the skillset of an Ultra Hero. For Kaiju, however, there are two solid options to do just that. Darklops Zero (BP01-097) clears any opponent’s scene with round 2 or less right to the discard the moment it’s played — not only freeing you up to play your own scene should the robotic duplicate prevail, but resetting the situation to let you play His Majesty’s Medal all over again!
Golza (BP01-091) has a similar effect, but clears a scene of round 3 or higher, meaning that between the two of them, you can take out any scene in the game, which can kneecap strategies like the Tiga/Gaia deck from last week! In addition, Dinozole (BP01-093) and Spheresaurus (BP01-094) operate on similar principles to the rest of your deck — but remember, as Kaiju, they don’t gain boons from effects that are meant to help Ultra Heroes.
Part 7 — Let’s Put It All Together!
Now that we’ve gone through all the neat things you can do with the deck, here’s a sample decklist for you to try!
Level 1 — 7 Cards
BP01-073 Ultraman Z Alpha Edge (R) x4
BP01-055 Ultraman Zero (R) x3
Level 2 — 18 Cards
SD02-005 Ultraman Zero Emerium Slash (U) x4
SD02-011 Ultraman Z Z Lance Arrow (U) x4
BP02-058 Ultraman Zero (RR) x2
BP02-059 Ultraman Zero (U) x2
BP02-060 Ultraman Zero (C) x2
BP02-076 Ultraman Z (RR) x4
Level 3 — 16 Cards
SD02-001 Ultraman Z (RRR) x4
SD02-002 Ultraman Zero (RRR) x4
BP01-061 Ultraman Zero Zero Sluggers (RR) x4
BP01-079 Ultraman Z M78 Style Shining Tornado Slash x4
Kaiju — 3 Cards
BP01-091 Golza (R) x1
BP01-097 Darklops Zero (R) x2
Scenes — 6 Cards
SD02-014 His Majesty’s Medal (C) x4
BP01-107 Mega Monster Battle Ultra Galaxy Legend The Movie (C) x1
BP01-109 Chant My Name! (C) x1
For all of you Ultra Leaguers out there who wish you could have learned more about how to play the Geed cards you got in SD02, don’t worry! Geed got plenty of support in BP01, and there will be an article in the near-future breaking down how he plays (Spoilers: It’s a bit different from the two in this deck) and how to make a great deck featuring everything the character can do.
Well, that’s about it for the structures — for now, that is. In the meantime, Booster Pack 01, Guardians of the Earth, is out on shelves for you now! Go pick up your packs, your boxes, whatever you can get your hands on, and start building! If you’re having some hard time finding a spot that sells it, we’ll be putting out a list of stores in the United States that currently carry the Ultraman Card Game in the near-future, so pay close attention! To find out more about the game, visit the official Ultraman Card Game website!
We’ll see you next week, when we tackle the first of the decks debuting in BP01 — A deck that wins games with the incredible force… of a Blazar.
