The Pride of Ultraman (Overview)

♪The mark on his chest is a meteor♫

♫He beats down his foes proudly with his jet♪

♪From the Land of Light, he fights for us♫

♫Here he comes, our hero~♪

Hero World is like that old children's show that you watched when you were young (if you were Asian enough). I'm not talking about stuff like Disney Channel or Spongebob or Sesame Street or My Little Pony or Ni Hao Kai Lan. I'm not even talking about stuff like Power Rangers, although that's getting closer. No, the real superhero of the youth of children around the world has to be Ultraman.

He's freaking scary.

But back to the analogy. Hero World is full of really weird and kinda crazy effects, with half of them not making any sense and the other half being ridiculously good (or bad). Just like those things you didn't understand as a kid, jumping into Hero World is an adventure in itself. From the strange men in skintight costumes to super badass robots to spells with simply the best names ever, Hero World is just a ball of nostalgia. They focus on the Ride/Transform mechanic that allows you to truly be a hero yourself. Justice time!

Fight alongside your Superheroes, or board a Brave Machine and let evil tremble. Or even join the dark side and share your cookies with the Darkheroes.

All these flavors, and you
chose to be...a salt!

A little bit more on Hero World. Their base stats are 1000 above Dragon but 1000 below Danger, giving them a pretty decent advantage with even just a vanilla game. Since Ride/Transform usually takes 1000 away from base stats, they end up just being like Dragon World vanilla monsters that you can equip as weapons (how broken is that). The biggest benefit is definitely the defense that they offer when rode/transformed. You can protect yourself from a lot of weeb rush tactics and forces your opponent to give up certain pressure column attacks (practically negates 3-crit Size 1 monsters). If you're lucky enough to ramp up to a really big guy, you can stop all but the most lethal of attacks.

Ride/Transform is a really broken mechanic. I'll talk about it extensively sometime in the future but it basically gives a monster card the ability to be treated as a weapon for whatever the Ride/Transform cost is. Since you can Ride/Transform from hand, you basically can run 8 monsters with Ride/Transform and not have to run any weapons whatsoever. That's already a huge upside. Item cards will never be dead in your hand, ever.

Get in the tank

Given that they're monster cards, they will have monster-type attributes associated with them. But when Ride/Transform kicks in, they get treated as Items with those said attributes, allowing you to target them with trait-specific spells but not monster-targetted spells. So you can give your weapon Counterattack using a spell that targets Superhero or Brave Machine and Counterattack will activate, destroying whatever poor soul tried to attack you, since the weapon can't be destroyed by an attack so Counterattack will go off.

With flexibility and just better payoffs in general, Ride/Transform is practically a +1 in every case, more often a +2 or even +3 because your "weapons" also have defensive stats that matter. It's really not that fair, to be honest. From a math perspective, Hero World is indeed broken.

Guess that means my
name is Thunder

Shared between the two archetypes are vanillas of various shapes and sizes. A 5000/2/2000, a 4000/1/6000, a 6000/2/1000, some really good stats on a 3-crit Size 1, even a really good gauge ramp card in Lightning Chaser. If you're ever wondering if you need some filler space in a deck, don't worry about dropping some vanillas in because they're good.

As far as spells go, the names are definitely the best part. There, I See It! I've Seen Through Your Moves! It's About Time I Got Serious! Wait, Why is there a banana peel here? Reckless Bravery...... sike, I'm Still Alive! Haha, Justice Will Prevail!...Or So the Dream I had Went. You can practically write a story with them. As far as effects go, we get a smattering of good stuff that people need. Dragonic Thunder, draw engine, no-center negate, Dungeon Trap, even a spell negate. Good stuff that allows your vanilla game to shine pretty well.

CHAAAGIN MAH
LAZAAR

The only real spell worth talking about is Hyper Energy. This card is insane. To this day I continue to hate on Dragonic Charge clones because the resource conversion is seriously not worth it. Clear Serenity is better, but 3 gauge for 1 card is still not that amazing. But 4 gauge? Holy crap. That's way too good to pass up. Hyper Energy gives Hero World the ability to spam some really heavy gauge requirements to do the most ridiculous things. All those super expensive equips aren't really that big of a deal, and Hyper Energy lets you try and reach for them big plays that makes the game all that more fun. You should run anywhere between 2 to 4 per deck, all depending on how heavy your gauge consumption is and what you're pumping for.

They also get Adventure Continent, Gunvellz that can be splashed into any Superhero or Brave Machine deck. 8000/2/8000 with Double Attack for 2 gauge is about as ideal as stats for a Size 3 can be. You can put it in practically any deck as a good stall play with threat behind it.

Cue ED Theme

Fighting For the Sake of Others. Grimoire clone. Kinda stupid in a deck that had clinch hand issues.

While I Have No Business with the Likes of You! was built more for Darkheroes, you still have access to the 4 gauge total clear in any archetype. Since Hyper Energy gives you 4 gauge, you can essentially treat this combo as 2 cards for board wipe.

For Such an Attack To--- is a negate for single attacks of 4000 or less power. It's very situational, but there are good uses for it (especially against aggro) but it doesn't fit with decks that run higher than 4000 defense Ride/Transform. It's best in Darkheroes, probably.

Die! Again! Again! Again!

The last truly interesting card to go over is Dead or Alive! This Impact is pretty weird. When you're at 3 life or less, you can cast it for free and RPS. Loser takes 3 damage, so you're at a 50% of losing right there. Then, if the game hasn't ended, you can pay 2 gauge to RPS again. As long as you keep winning, you can keep paying 2 gauge to RPS again, effectively increasing the number of times you can whack your opponent for 3 damage. Of course, the moment you lose is the moment you die. I think this deck has some merit alongside the Brave Machine revive spell, although Brave Machines have a better Impact anyways. The comebacks with this card are real, but very risky. The bonus is that you don't need any requirements to cast this Impact save your own life, so it's very splashable and playable.

- updated to H-BT02, CP01, H-EB02, H-TD02, PP01 -

All images used obtained from the official Bushiroad website and used here solely for reference purposes. Future Card Buddyfight!, logos, and respective content belong to Bushiroad. Large images belong to the Buddyfight! Wikia.