I Played Every TMNT Character - Recap
Welcome back to Undefeated at Locals! I have officially Played Every TMNT Character in UniVersus!!! In this week’s article I am going to give a quick recap of my thoughts on each character and maybe a few ideas on what I think the design team could have done to make some of these characters better or just more fun. This is NOT going to be a ranking or tier list as that to me is just overdone and not very appealing content. The order is based alphabetically the same way they are listed on UVS Ultra with the starter deck character at the bottom. With that, let’s get into it!
April O'Neil, High School Reporter: Very fun mill mechanic that rewards you based on the check value of the card milled by your rival. I really enjoyed this character, but she is held back by being locked to Ally attacks for her static ability to be useful at all. If she had been given the Good symbol she would have had access to Tasty Riff and Double Trouble and been way better off in my opinion. Good would have also given her access to a bigger selection of Ally attacks in her own set with cards like Pizza Party and United in Battle.
Bebop, Burly Brawler: This was the first character I played in the set, and I stand by what I said then, this guy is insanely fun. With that said, now that I have played all of them, I do feel that this guy is just “What if we combined Leatherhead and Rocksteady”. It even has one of each of their symbols. As for what I think could have made him “better”? I don’t really know beyond I just wish he had been given his own unique ability instead of being worse at clogging the opponents cardpool than Leatherhead and better at getting to the amount he wants in his cardpool than Rocksteady.
Bishop, Robotics Engineer: This character is still one of my favorites I played in this entire series. Being able to build a checked asset on both turns, and giving uncapped speed to your moves based on cards in stage is such a fun mechanic. Also, Mechazoids are so cool! She does suffer from the same thing I mentioned above in she feels very similar to Donatello in the same set, again even sharing a symbol. This speaks more to the fact that we have too many characters inside each set than a design flaw with the specific characters though.
Donatello, The Smart One: Donnie does so many things I love. He’s a 7 hander, gives uncapped damage on face, and has a defensive ability on face as well. He is one of the characters in the set that I do not think I would change at all. I love both the Equipment Heist version I played for the article and the Mechazoid version I played afterwards and will definitely continue to modify my build as we get new assets and more Void defense in new sets.
Leatherhead, Eager Expat: I loved playing Leatherhead. Punishing my opponent for building wide, giving huge damage at the end of a string, and having a good chunk of health to chew through are all big positives. The main negatives of this character for me still remain how much they struggle into decks slinging 10+ damage moves for every move, that becomes extremely hard to contend with when your biggest defense is “face tanking” moves. With that said I wouldn’t want a character with these abilities, that also has crazy defensive abilities on face or on symbol to exist within the game but it does limit Leatherhead.
Leonardo, The Leader: This character is still the biggest let down in the set for me. He seems so cool, self-mill with a once per turn selective draw ability, response to self-mill for 1 damage, this combo could be so strong. However, like April he suffers from not having, in my opinion, the correct symbols for his abilities. The symbols chosen for him have very few cards with self-mill effects outside of the few in his own kit and the few in the Cowboy Bebop and Trigun challenger decks. However, if he had Fire or Order he would have way more access to solid self-mill with cards from Endeavor III’s, or any of the Eren Yeager’s kits.
Mega Mutant: Mega Mutant is, at least to me, the most boring character in the set. He has one somewhat impactful ability and an OK amount of health. The only thing that makes him somewhat interesting is the ability to play a handful of ally foundations and then follow up with an attack for big numbers. If I were designing the character I would have given him a second ability having to do with some of the cool backups in the set since most of them started out as his “siblings” in the iteration of the franchise he is from. This could have been a static allowing him to play them off symbol or even an ability to fetch one of the ones on symbol from discard once per turn.
Metalhead, Protector of Mutants: This guy is interesting. 37 health is a ton to chew through, increasing keyword ratings is extremely versatile and fun. He is a 5 hander which in my opinion should always come with the reward of a much stronger ability than Metalhead has. His biggest issue is his ability to make your opponent discard a card and flipping a foundation being your turn only, if this was a “{once per turn} after AN attack deals damage” ability he would be way stronger but not so incredibly strong that he couldn’t be dealt with. This could even come with a drop in health, to say, 34 to even him out a little.
Michelangelo, The Wild Card: I LOVE Mikey so much. The fact that he isn’t keyword locked to a single keyword is great. He gets to play the Pizza Party deck and not be entirely punished for it, and he’s probably the best Fa Jin Flury character outside of Deku himself. His defense is a little lacking. Adding a readied foundation to hand for each player is good but not great so you have to be prepared to block a lot against any aggressive decks. H e is my favorite turtle though and Pizza Party is my favorite card in the set so I will keep playing him regardless of how often I lose.
Raphael, The Muscle: Raph is one of my favorite characters in the whole set. He is so fun to play. Discarding your whole hand for value is an incredibly fun mechanic that either rewards you or ends the game in your opponent’s favor and it’s a blast to see which it will be. He is one of the few characters in this set that I feel was given the perfect symbols. Good is themed well with his brothers and Fire has all kinds of discard shenanigans! I hope we see more people attempt Raphael competitively once rotation hits.
Rocksteady, Easily Angered: This guy is in contrast to Raph, one of my least favorite characters in the set. He just isn’t very fun. His damage pump is huge but punishing which in and of itself is perfectly fine, but his other ability rarely goes off and if it does you are rewarded with flipping a single rival foundation at the cost of playing out your entire hand to do so leaving you extremely susceptible to their crack back. Rocksteady could have been great if they leaned into the flip mechanic more or even made his “kit” cards more worth running in him. He didn’t need to be as strong or oppressive as Byakko but with both of them in standard, and Byakko having the same two symbols, plus access to a 3rd, why would I ever pick Rocksteady over him?
Splinter, Caring Father: The radical rat is just ok. Changing speed and damage of one attack to the printed values of an attack in his cardpool on either turn is a very cool idea but isn’t the most impactful. You can make something huge with one of the big titan attacks…. oh wait… most aren’t on symbol. The coolest thing I found was playing High Three to make the next 6/6, playing the next, then finally playing a third and using Splinter’s ability to make it another 6/6 which is a lot of work for 18 damage. His biggest point of pain is having the All and Water symbols which have not gotten a ton of support in the last year or more and what they have gotten just isn’t very good for him specifically (or good in general in a lot of cases).
Superfly, Malicious Mutant: Superfly is the character that I probably had the most fun playing in the entire set. – Speed or + Damage based on how badly you and your rival check is fun, but where this guy really shines is taking minimal damage to cheat Scheme cards into your cardpool that get to stick around through your own turn. The payoff for this is so cool and makes for some insane turns. I really hope we get more Schemes to play around with in future sets.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: This character was such a cool idea. 40 health, and a bonus to running bad checks that’s balanced by only working on your turn is so fun, they have no abilities which also keeps them from breaking into “broken” territory. The only thing I wish they had is the Good symbol so that they can play the Pizza Party deck and have access to ALL of the cards their individual counterparts have.
Wingnut, Mechanical Genius: Another character I feel is just kind of ok. Wingnuts abilities are just kind of there and don’t feel very impactful inside of most games even on a casual local’s basis. The once per turn make something a high for + or – speed would be cool if she had access to something like Rising Uppercut. Her response would be more impactful if there were good Tech cards that played into her gameplan but there isn’t, leaving the option to seal something in your rivals stage the only real “choice” there. Really there are just so many other Void characters that are so much better than Wingnut and that’s a real shame.
Retro Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Ummm…. These guys are just awful. UVS Games did a great job of giving me a reason to want to buy a couple copies of the Starter Deck product for this set unlike the Heroes of Exandria and Attack on Titan versions of the product, but this character is not one of them. The cards exclusive to the Starter are cool, some like the Splinter Backup are even good. The retro art treatment on cards in the set is amazing. This character should not have been printed. I get wanting an “easier to learn” entry level product, that’s low cost, I don’t get giving that entry level customer an unplayable character. One ability, even this particular ability is fine, but why did they have to be a 6 hander with 22 health? Couldn’t they have made them a 7 hander with 22 health, or a 6 hander with 30 health? It wouldn’t have made them crazy but would have made them at least not feel quite as awful to go join a locals for the first time with a precon to learn and see what the game is about. I really hope they either make these $15 starters slightly better or just admit that the $30 Challenger decks are the ACTUAL starter decks and abandon these entirely going forward.
TLDR: I love this set and am so glad to have one of my favorite universes in my favorite card game. A ton of the characters are extremely fun; a few are even pretty good. I do wish we could get a little more of a standard power level across each set in a year so it doesn’t feel like a certain IP is far and away more impactful on the overall meta than another one, but this set has some very good cards that will hopefully see more play as the game evolves. Thank you all so much for joining me on this adventure! All of the decks I played will be linked in the UVS Ultra folder below if you would like to check any of them out.
