Thoughts on UFS

Universal Fighting System pits several popular fighting-game genre properties against each other in a one-on-one showdown. These are my notes based on my newbie experiences with my Taki (Soul Calibur 3) and Terry Bogard (King of Fighters 2006) against Ken Masters (Street Fighter 2) and Cassandra, Siegfried , and Cassandra (SC3).

The game is a throwback to Magic: The Gathering. Players must attempt to play cards to the table from their hand using a combination of "committing" cards previously set down and using a random-number "control" from the draw deck. Each character has a set "vitality" and when drained through repeated attack, loses the match.

General reactions:
Sabretooth Games really need to republish a comprehensive rules sheet. Although all cards issued for the game are compatible with each other, each new revision has a tendency to generate a new vague question that might be obvious to experienced players, but simply are not addressed directly. But on the other hand, a starter deck is 100% legally playable. The boxes inlcude 60 cards: the character cards, a selection of themed cards for that character, and the rest are random cards from the corresponding set. The trick is to learn how that character works...

Playing Taki:
Taki is a character with many attacks. Many of the Taki-themed cards (depicting her special moves and abilities) are more often Attack cards than Foundation cards. And since a majority of Attacks feature a Control-check of 2, the odds of drawing a Control-check of only 2 increase. And the likelihood of drawing a string of successful Control-check for making attack combos decreases. Her upside is that she's got several features that involve healing herself. It's really a matter of being able to use those abilities every chance you get.

Playing Terry Bogard:
Terry appears to be a more traditional character. I've noticed that he's favours the Reversal mechanic heavily. Many of his cards are designed to be played during the opponent's turn as counter-attacks. This worked out well particularly in a fight against someone like Ken who has very few blocks.

Remarks about my opponents:
Ken (or perhaps the SF2 property in general) appears to simulate the button-mashing technique. Ken-themed cards have a tendency to have lots of cheaply-played Attacks. And those Attack cards usually don't feature a block ability. Ken also favours drawing lots of cards to increase his hand-size. While this does allow a wider choice of cards to play during a turn, it also means the draw deck is cycled faster (and the deck will shrink on each cycle according to the rules).

I have no comments to make about the other SC3 character decks I've played against as they've always been embarrassing incidents where I was wiped out while using my unbalanced Taki deck. But overall, it's a decently playable game provided you make up a few rules when the included rules sheet is unclear. I just need to find more players to play with.