Welcome back to our UCG articles, readers! Have you gotten a chance to try out the Ultraman: Rising deck since our last piece on it? Or maybe you’re exploring BP02 Vortex of Crimson and Azure more! The latter is what we’re delving into today — specifically, a pair of brothers that fight together, both in their shared series, and in this deck! It’s time to go through Ultraman Rosso and Ultraman Blu — AKA R/B!
Part 1 — How Does It Play?
R/B is a deck that offers a very different gameplay experience from any other deck in the game right now, revolving around the manipulation of Round 2 or lower Scene cards in areas other than on the field! Whether it’s discarding them to activate their effects in a sort of “spellcasting” manner, or exiling ones in your discard for boosts, the brothers have a very different relationship with Scenes than other decks that make use of them.
In addition, a solid chunk of the R/B cardbase is meant to play well with one another — literally. Several Rosso and Blu cards gain boosts when parked adjacent to one another. Combine that with an exceptionally high number of search cards, and these brothers are prepared to make their mark on the meta!
Part 2 — Level 1s
The benefit of two Ultras is twice the number of card advantage Level 1s, and that’s just what R/B offers! Both the Rare L1 Rosso (BP02-015) and Rare L1 Blu (BP02-027) check the top three cards of your deck, and add an Ultra Hero among them to your hand while discarding the rest. Something you’ll learn quickly is that R/B has maybe the most extensive search options of any deck in the game, so in some ways these effects are less necessary than in other decks — but that’s absolutely no reason not to use them!
In addition to four copies of each of those, we have access to an interesting pair of Level 1s with mirrored effects. Uncommon L1 Rosso (BP02-016) and Uncommon L1 Blu (BP02-028) are already stronger than other Level 1s at 5000 BP for a Single (with a 9000 BP Double, a situation that may unexpectedly come up more than you think), but when either is next to their counterpart, or any card with the opposite name, they gain an extra 1000 BP. In early turns, where players are trying to set up advantage rather than push for game, these L1s can get you the coveted Lead Player position to keep your opponent off Scenes.
Part 3 — Level 2s
Next, we go into the Level 2s, and what we said about R/B having high search power kicks up another gear. The deck uses two RRs for different kinds of searches, an L2 Rosso (BP02-019) that is the familiar “Check top five cards of your deck for a scene, discard the rest” effect — one that is crucial in this deck — and an L2 Blu (BP02-031) with a more elaborate search effect of checking your top 5 and taking any Rosso or Blu card, at the additional cost of discarding a card from your hand afterwards. BP02-031 especially is the reason there’s a bit of heat taken off your card advantage L1s, being a more elaborate search for a cost — and that means that, with 11 cards out of 50 being character searchers, a whopping 20% of your deck is searchers, a number that goes up to 32% when you add four copies of BP02-019. With card filtering like this, you almost have to be careful that you don’t burn through your deck too fast.
After those cards, we have a dependable crop of Level 2s with less explosive effects — familiar ones, in fact. Rosso and Blu switch crystals for these cards, BP02-020 and BP02-032, a pair of Uncommons with a Double effect much like the Uncommon Level 1s. If Rosso has a Blu on either side of him, he gets a flat 1000 BP boost, with the opposite being true for Blu. For BP02-020, that means a boost to 12k for Rosso, while BP02-032 ends with Blu at 11k. That’s enough to beat most comparable Double 2s!
Part 4 — Level 3s
Rosso and Blu’s power is really concentrated into their top-end, which makes their searches critically important. Once either of the RRRs for the deck are on field, the entire game changes for you, not just their respective battles.
Ultraman Rosso Flame (BP02-023) is the more interesting of the two, and one of our favorite cards in the entire game — Once per turn if it’s a Double or Triple, as an activated effect, you can discard any Round 2 or lower Scene from your hand to immediately activate its on-play effect. We’re going to focus on the Scenes made specifically for R/B in this article, but Rosso works for any Scene with an on-play effect that’s Round 2 or lower, so we’re constantly experimenting with other pairings — stay tuned, we might have more on that sooner than you think!
Ultraman Blu Aqua (BP02-035) on the other hand, is designed to turn Rosso’s “creative” effects into tangible power. Twice per turn as a Double or Triple, you can exile (that is, to remove from the game entirely) a Scene from your discard, to give any Rosso or Blu on the field +1000 BP until the end of the turn. As long as you have the scenes in trash to use as fuel, that’s a floating 2k that can be split across any character you have on board! At 16000 for a Triple, Blu is technically the weakest RRR printed in a main set, but with his effects, he can match even the strongest Triple Heroes in the game!
To be clear, the RRRs are really what you want to go into whenever possible, even if you can only put them at a Double. They’re less important as fighters, and more as toolbox pieces, setting up the rest of your game and putting your other effects online. In our playtesting for this article, putting out BP02-023 as a Double on turn 1 was not only a valid effect, it tended to be the ideal play. Even if our opponent would eventually place a Triple there to ensure they took that battle, what it would do for future battles was much more impactful.
At the same time, that’s only 8 cards, and you need a bit more than that for consistency’s sake. Thankfully, Rosso and Blu each have a power vanilla Level 3 they can use to fill up stacks. Identically statted, but with Speed and Power as their types respectively, the Level 3 Rosso (BP02-025) and Level 3 Blu (BP02-036) have 13000 BP as a Double, and 17000 as a Triple, meaning that from a pure stats POV, they’re more than up to take on any opposition — Especially when bolstered by the RRRs!
Part 5 — The Scenes
This is going to be the longest part, because R/B, unlike most decks in the Ultraman Card Game, does not have a single scene or two that they can rely on to run in their deck consistently.
No, R/B has four. Thanks to Rosso’s ability to ditch scenes from hand to just activate their effects immediately, regardless of whether you’re lead player or not, R/B’s attitude around scenes — and the number that they actually run — are very different. We’re going to go through each of the Scenes here, and even recommend ratios for you to try!
Firstly, let’s go with the “marquee” scene, the first to receive the beautiful ExP treatment — What We Have To Protect (BP02-101). Funnily enough, this is the one scene we generally don’t want to discard with Rosso, and we’ll explain why through its effect. When this scene enters play, it checks your field to resolve effects. If you have a Rosso out, then you can discard one card to draw another. Then, if you have a Blu, you can give any Rosso or Blu 1000 BP for the turn.
So, this is the most elaborate of the R/B scenes, having multiple effects and requiring both brothers to be on the field. However, like we said, this is not really one that is worth discarding. When you discard a scene with Rosso’s effect, you do not get the extra draw that placing a scene would give you. Therefore, the actual cost to draw a card off What We Have to Protect if you pitch it is to discard two cards — the scene itself, and an extra card from hand. If you set it, however, you get a draw, replacing it, then a discard and another draw, putting you at parity. We still quite like this scene because it does so much, immediately, and so in our builds we run it at 2-3.
Next, let’s talk about Farewell Icarus (BP02-103). This is a very straightforward scene, that reads as follows: When this scene enters play, you may give the battle opponent of one of your Blu or Rosso a BP grade decrease by 1 for this turn.
This is the ur-scene for Rosso. Regardless of what grade you are, your opponent will always fall behind if you decrease their BP Grade. When you would set it at the start of your turn, you can’t target a character that will be played later that turn, but when discarded for Rosso’s effect, it works at any time. There is no build of the deck — or any deck that features Rosso — that should run any less than max copies.
In The Name of Ultraman (BP02-102) is the inverse of Farewell Icarus; When it enters play, you may give one of your Rosso or Blu a BP grade increase of 1 for the turn. This scene looks like a perfect mirror of Farewell Icarus, but the fact is, if you already have a Triple grade on board, this won’t make it any stronger. It’s almost always better to lower your opponent’s BP grade than raise your own. However, there are exceptions — If you have a Level 1 paired against a Single Level 3, you can and will win by discarding this with Rosso. For moments like that, this is at least worth running at least 2 copies.
Finally, we have From Today We Are Ultraman (BP02-104), which reads as… odd. It’s another searcher, in a deck full of searchers. When it comes into play, if you have Blu, you may reveal the top three cards of your deck to fetch a Rosso, discarding the remainder.
Now, searching is always good, but this card is… poorly positioned. Firstly, it can’t search both brothers, only Rosso. It also requires you to have a Blu on field. If you only have Rosso, the one that can discard it to activate its effects, it just… doesn’t work. Theoretically, that would mean this card is better suited to be set than discarded, but it does less than What We Have To Protect. In a world where the deck already has an immense number of searchers, is it really necessary? If so, we wouldn’t recommend more than one copy in your deck.
Now that we’ve gone through all your options, let’s talk about general ratios. This is a deck that wants to run plenty of Scenes, but if you run too many, you run the risk of them stuffing up your hand. Remember, if you can’t play a character at the start of a turn, you just lose immediately — and if you have 4 Scenes and nothing else in your hand, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. After a few weeks of testing, we’ve settled on 10 as being the magic number — 20% of your deck, with your chosen mix of Scenes up to you.
Part 6 — Sample Decklist
Because scenes take up such a large chunk of your deck space, there’s not going to be any Kaiju we recommend you run in a R/B list, so with that, let’s put what we have together!
Level 1 — 12 Cards
BP02-015 Ultraman Rosso Flame (R) x4
BP02-016 Ultraman Rosso Flame (U) x2
BP02-027 Ultraman Blu Aqua (R) x4
BP02-028 Ultraman Blu Aqua (U) x2
Level 2 — 16 Cards
BP02-019 Ultraman Rosso (RR) x4
BP02-020 Ultraman Rosso R/B Slugger Rosso (U) x4
BP02-031 Ultraman Blu (RR) x4
BP02-032 Ultraman Blu R/B Slugger Blu (U) x4
Level 3 — 12 Cards
BP02-023 Ultraman Rosso Flame (RRR) x4
BP02-025 Ultraman Rosso R/B Slugger Rosso (C) x2
BP02-035 Ultraman Blu Aqua (RRR) x4
BP02-036 Ultraman Blu Flame (C) x2
Scenes — 10 Cards
BP02-101 What We Have To Protect (U) x3
BP02-102 In The Name of Ultraman (C)x3
BP02-103 Farewell Icarus (U) x4
For this list, we’re using our editor-in-chief EJ’s list — He swears by it, loving the interplay between the two brothers and, in his words, “spellcasting” with the scenes. We’re inclined to agree — the deck isn’t just fun, it’s a genuinely unique experience, and something we’re inclined to keep playing around with as much as possible as the game moves forward. It can take a bit of concentration to pay attention to positioning your brothers next to one another, and saving your scenes for the right moments, but that’s part of the fun, right?
That’s all for this week’s strategy article. To check out all the cards we mentioned and even more, go to the Official Ultraman Card Game website. Next week, we’re going to get into one of the strongest decks in the entire game — one that’s so difficult to play, it’s almost like you’re really navigating the complicated rivalry between the Earth and the sea!
