Worlds Tournament Report - Grog Strongjaw

Written By Grant Emory

Welcome back to Undefeated at Locals! Looks like it’s my turn to give you my tournament report as well as my thoughts from and about Universus Worlds 2025! First and foremost, I want to give a huge thank you to both Mike and Siren for the contributions of their tournament reports to the site, you both killed it at the event and in your articles! Hopefully, we will have more reports from other team members soon either on the site or in video form on the channel.

Now on to my deck! After much deliberation between Godzilla, King of the Monsters, Donatello, and Grog Strongjaw, I decided to go forward with Grog. I absolutely love the character in both the source material and in Universus and played him in the Albuquerque Regional with decent, though not stellar results and he’s gotten some upgrades since then mostly in the form of Potemkin Buster, and this is exactly what I built my deck around. The idea is simple sling throws like Biting Dragon Grab, and Close Combat Tackle to always have Rage counters, as well as Potemkin Buster for potentially huge damage and the amazing Roman Cancel Yellow ability on our rivals biggest moves. Defensively, the goal is to always take 1 damage, utilizing all of the Damage reduction available to us on the Earth, and attuned Fire symbols and things like Dark Ward on Death to stop stuff like Heat Tackle from ruining the game plan. Now, did it work for me?

Round 1 I paired into Mike Jones and his All Nagoriyuki Throws deck. This was a SLOG of a match! He took game one after a long game of dealing 1-2 damage through all my damage reduction, into then healing the damage of my throws through Bloodsucking Universe, eventually I had exhausted all my defense, and he was able to close out game 1. After not finding either of my Dark Wards game 1 I sided in my third, as well as my 2 copies of Armor Clad Faith to remove Throw and 2 copies of Vast Strength for his most impactful moves. This helped as I swiftly took game 2 after 2 strong Potemkin Buster turns. Unfortunately game 1 had used up too much of the clock and we went to a draw on his turn game 3.

I was now 0-0-1

Round 2 I paired into a mirror match with Henry Clark and his Death Grog. Game 1 was as you would expect another long slog of a game but my deck is a little more aggressive than Henry’s and puts out a lot more damage thanks to Pot Buster so I took the game after a battle of Throws. I was up a game and there was only 20 minutes left! I sided similarly to round 1 and we were off. We had a few turns of trading small blows back and forth and then I drew into a killer hand, this is where I made a fatal misplay, by failing to check the clock, if I would have I would have seen there was now only 10 minutes left. I was at 27 health, he was at around 22, “I can end this here” I thought. I thought wrong, one of the cards in my hand was Rip Apart, it needs 2 Rage Counters to become a throw, I only had 1, well, let’s toss out a Dragon Grab, not draw with Grog and get the 2nd counter for Rip. Bad move Grant, if I would have drawn I’d now have a shiny Pot Buster in my hand, instead I checked it in all its 2 checking glory and had to commit 3 foundations, this cost me dearly as I missed the kill leaving him at 3 health and leaving myself with an almost fully committed board allowing him to quickly end me for yet another draw on the day. ALWAYS CHECK THE CLOCK

I was now 0-0-2

This is when I’d learn my good friend and teammate Steven Snyder was also 0-0-2, there is several of us at that record we couldn’t possibly pair into a team kill already right? WRONG

Round 3 was in fact against Steven and his Ryu, World Warrior deck. The same one Marvin is on, the one he and Steven have worked on and perfected for months leading up to this. Yay. Now, in all of our testing this matchup had very much been 50/50 between Steven and I, with me usually taking game 1 before he sides in his Megalomanias and Armor Clad Faiths, then it becomes a battle of who finds their answers first, usually going to a game 3, so maybe I’ve got this? Unfortunately, no I did not, in 2 games I checked 4 2s and could not find a single one of my answers, but more importantly than any of that Steven far out played me and played 2 incredible games, and we had a team kill.

I was now 0-1-2, I still had an exceedingly small chance if I won out, and it was lunch time. I had a chicken Caesar salad from the hotel mini market; it was surprisingly good.

Round 4 was against Kenneth Standridge and his Void Rodan, this is typically a very bad matchup for me unless I can kill them with throws before they find all their throw hate.I won the die roll, drew my hand and it was a 3 diff foundation, two 2 diff foundations, and two attacks, I’m not allowed to keep this running 2 checks so I mulligan, into two 1 diffs and 3 attacks. I should have scooped to game 2 right here but I decided to play it out, I did ok, getting to a decent board by turn 3 but he had already found some throw hate and he ended up taking game 1. I built better game 2, got in some good hits but Rodan jut has so many answers and I couldn’t close it out.

I was now 0-2-2, time to drop and play Retro. (Twinkle Murdoch II is the most fun I’ve ever had in retro!!!)

Now, UGN shows I played another round against yet another Void Rodan, and lost 0-2, I did not, this was yet another failing of Carde.io, I dropped WELL before the start of round 5 but the system did not reflect that. Had I known that I would have played it out just so my opponent would have gotten to play so if you read this Matt, I’m sorry!

Overall, I’m not thrilled with my performance, but I’m not upset with it either. My goals going in were:

1.      Do not lose my first 2 matches: COMPLETE

2.      Have a positive win rate: INCOMPLETE

3.      Have FUN slinging cardboard with my friends: COMPLETE X10

You can check out my deck here: https://uvsultra.online/deck.php?deck=EitGiqfnfZmbMryqPBPmhfMxeXJKfw

The event was easily the best event I’ve been to for this game in the almost 4 years I’ve been playing and attending major events. Levi and the rest of the team absolutely killed it. There was never a time that a side event was happening or about to start, if there was you could grab 3 friends and start up an on demand standard pod or a boss battle, I never had time to do either. The prizing for both participation and prize-wall tickets were great! Tickets were plentiful, I walked away with everything I wanted and extras for my friends back home. The highlight of the weekend though was absolutely the not 1 but 2 Godzilla Super Sealed events they put on, allowing us to get our hands on some Kaiju a little early and get a taste of what in my opinion is the only set I’ve ever had fun playing sealed in. For more on this event check out Siren's site here: where I’m sure she will do a much better job explaining why it’s so fun.

Well, that was my Worlds 2025 experience. Of I saw you there, gave you a Grog sticker and/or an Undefeated at Locals wristband then thank you for being a part of what made Worlds so fun! Of I didn’t see you or didn’t give you fun trinkets then come find me at the Las Vegas Regional in May and I’ll have MORE COOL STUFF!

Thanks for reading! See you next time!