Undercards- it's an online Undertale themed collectible (not trading) card game. I've built a few unique decks that I want to put some thoughts down on before I forget about them. To help follow along, you can look up what certain cards not used in decks on the wiki. I'll start with...
Justice Science
Before I can really dig into why this deck worked to get me into Master in Season 21, I need to explain a little bit about how Undercards is played. Each player has a deck of 25 cards and 30 HP to start the match, alongside 2 artifacts (or one legendary artifact, such as Science). Conventional wisdom is that Science is a bad artifact and that Patience or Determination souls (basically, the classes) are the best way to play it. I set out to prove that wrong- after all, Justice seemed to have the strongest set of board removal options, and the goal of a Science deck is to hoard gold and Gaster Blasters to win by direct damage. What could go wrong?
Well, the initial draft of the deck maxed out all Justice spells, and brought Sans, Undyne, Mettaton NEO and 2 Gasters and called it a deck. I think I also had 3 Clam Girls, but I don't remember much of the original version other than that it was very spell reliant. I was consistently spending as much gold, if not more than my opponent to keep the board clear and would eventually die before getting lethal damage.
Oh, Gaster Blasters deal 5 damage to a player or 8 to a monster as a 7 cost spell. The Science artifact places 5 in your starting deck and makes them deal 1 additional damage, bringing that up to 6 to a player or 9 to a monster. Having Gaster on the board bumps that up to 8 to players, which Science boosts to 9. Recall that players start with 30 HP, and also note that the Justice passive deals 1 damage to a random enemy monster and 1 damage to the enemy player if they have more HP than you. This has a lot of value, even against the Health artifact (+5 starting health), or Kindness/Determination souls (heal 2 HP per turn, has an extra life worth 15 HP).
Spells alone didn't work, I needed board presence- monsters that could take down a monster when played and potentially another one later, or at least would divert resources away from my vulnerable health. That's where Fuku Fire came in, substituting for triple of spells. Clam Girl lowering the cost of spells made the final victory require less hoarding, and so on. I started with 3, but then I was drawing too many and replaced a Clam Girl with a Shootout. This all happened over the course of many games, identifying weaknesses and bad matchups and trying to address them. After a few losses to damage over time effects and rush decks, I brought in a Scarf Mouse and Coffee Man for silence and silence+taunt, respectively. And ultimately, this deck worked.
The play strategy is simple- allow a little bit of early damage while trying to find a tempo to play Multi Shot for the full game advantage. This negates the Kindness passive, which is huge in that matchup. The Justice passive also deals the damage dealt to me back over time while I stall. Using spells and effects to wipe the board turn after turn with as few gold as possible (Mettaton NEO worked very well for this after a buffed board) while I held onto blasters and stalled. In hindsight, it wasn't the most interesting deck, but it was the first one I came up with on my own that actually won me games.
As for cards that didn't make the cut? Papyrus Statue, a 1/5 that costs 6 with the effect that all damage to enemies is increased by 1. This was a huge advantage if I could find time to play it AND keep it on the board... which never happened. It's too vulnerable to silence, or Muffet's Pet (kill a random enemy monster with attack of 2 or less) or any number of other cards. It was holding the deck back.
In Season 21, this deck had about a 60% winrate. At the start of Season 22, with the shift in the meta, it was winning about 40% of games, and so I retired the deck. Next time: My Season 22 Integrity attempts and where they went wrong.
