Universal Fighting System

Gameplay

Players begin a game of UFS with a character card in play. This is the character they have chosen to fight as. A player's character determines their hand size, starting vitality, and grants unique abilities which a deck is typically built to make use of. The primary objective of the game is to reduce the opponent's vitality to 0.

Unlike most CCGs, a game of UFS does not involve monsters or other creatures. Damage is dealt by playing attack cards, which the opponent will have an opportunity to try to block with a card from their hand. An attack has different properties such as speed (how hard it is to block), the damage it will deal, and a zone that the opponent's block must match to stop all of the damage. Attacks also have various abilities on them, and may be enhanced by abilities on other cards.

A second major departure from other CCGs is that the costing system in UFS is not static. In order to play a card in UFS, players must pass what is called a "control check". This entails discarding the top card of one's deck, and comparing its control value (in the lower right) to the difficulty of the card he or she is trying to play. If the control is greater than or equal to the difficulty needed, the card is played at no cost. Otherwise, the player must "commit" (turn sideways) a number of foundation cards (the second major card type) equal to the difference, or else the card fails to be played and is discarded.

During a turn, each card attempted gets +1 difficulty for each card before it, and the turn player may continue trying to play cards until one of them fails (failing a card ends the turn). So, the cost of a card can vary from zero to several resources, depending on when it is played during a turn and the value of the control check.

Players draw cards up to their character's hand size at the start of each turn, so the typical turn of UFS involves around 3 to 5 cards played by the turn player, plus some number of blocks by the opponent if attacks were played.

Between the sheer number of cards played, (nearly all of which have an ability or two) the risk-reward decisions inherent in the control check system, and the unknown nature of what blocks or attacks the opponent might have, UFS is higher in complexity than most other CCGs, and the skill-luck balance leans more strongly towards skill.

Deck Construction

A UFS deck consists of a minimum of 60 cards (including the character), and no more than four copies of a given card may be in a deck. Due to the large number of cards drawn during a typical game, it is common for decks to exceed the 60 card minimum in order to increase the variety of cards available.

Deckbuilding in UFS is restricted by the resource symbol system. Each card typically has 3 symbols on it representing various elements or concepts. When playing cards during a turn, there must be a symbol that is on every card played, and also on the player's character. Therefore, it is normal when deckbuilding to choose a symbol on the character, and include in the deck only cards that have that symbol.

Card Types

There are five different card types in UFS, indicated by the color of their border and other traits:

Card sets and products

Each license has an abbreviation used in the set number to indicate which universe the set is from. These abbreviations are:

Under Sabertooth Games and early on under Fantasy Flight Games, sets were released very rapidly, and were poorly balanced. Release frequency was slowed by FFG in 2009. In the beginning of its time under Jasco Games, UFS releases were slow due to printing issues and the building up of a new company, but they have recently returned to releasing a set every 3 to 5 months.

Card rarity and distribution

Each card has rarity information printed along the bottom to indicate how common it is. The rarity was previously denoted by the number of small dots appearing at the bottom of the card, according to the following legend. More recently, the dots have been replaced by the relevant letter.

Starter decks under Jasco Games are fixed, with around half the deck being "starter exclusive" cards that do not appear in booster packs.

In each 10-card booster pack, there are 6 commons and 3 uncommons, with the remaining card being either rare or ultra-rare. Roughly 1 out of every 4 packs contains an ultra-rare.

All rares and ultra-rares were foiled, up until Tekken 6 when this practice was stopped. Foiled cards returned with the release of The King of Fighters XIII, all ultra-rare cards (but not rares) have been foiled since.

Set rotation

As with most CCGs, UFS rotates sets out of its standard format to keep it fresh and to avoid requiring new players to have to get much older cards. Typically, a UFS set will be legal in Standard for about 3 years. Sets are currently rotated in groups, but Jasco has indicated that they will eventually rotate one major set at a time.

The current sets legal in Standard are:

Organized Play

UFS holds National Championships for the USA and UK each year, and in some years one in Canada. There is also a UFS World Championship held every year at Gencon.

Aside from those events, there is a second tier of major events called PTCs (standing for Pro Tour Circuit). Despite the name, these events (as well as National and World Championships) do not require qualification – anybody with a legal deck can enter.

PTCs are held sporadically throughout the year in various locations, typically local hobby shops that have some of the larger UFS playerbases. The prize for a PTC is a plane voucher to be used to travel to a National or World Championships, and a first round bye to be used at one such event.

Aside from Standard, formats such as Teams Standard (3 versus 3), Extended (cards from 2008, and later 2009 on) and Legacy (all sets) have been supported to varying degrees at the National and World Championship level.

Legacy was supported from 2010 through early 2014, but has been dropped due to time constraints and the extreme barrier to entry. Extended (allowing cards from 2008 on) was supported at the World Championships in 2010 and 2011, but was dropped due to being an incredibly negative play experience. It is expected to return, allowing cards from 2009 on, at some point in 2015.

Starting with King of Fighters XIII, sets of UFS have been structured to allow for drafting to be a feasible format. Players draft using 6 packs, and build 40 card decks. After the draft, they may select any character card from the set to use as their starting character. The only special gameplay rules are that mulligans are shuffled into the deck, and only 3 cards are removed from the game upon cycling.

The Coolest Prize in Gaming

As the prize for its National and World Championships, UFS offers what they call The Coolest Prize in Gaming. The winner gets to be turned into a tournament legal promotional character card, which they have a hand in helping design.

Team champions receive asset cards, while Legacy and Extended winners receive foundation and actions cards respectively. The latter two formats have not always been supported. The following tables list the winners of the various Standard and Teams events: