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Every deck is built around a single character card. It sets your starting health and hand size, and — more importantly — it sets your symbols, which decide what the rest of your deck is allowed to contain.

That's why the deck builder wizard asks for a character before anything else, and why the card pool shrinks once you pick one.

Cards carry symbols. A card is legal in your deck when it shares a symbol with your character. Some cards also have attuned symbols, which count for characters that have them but not otherwise.

Some cards carry an attuned symbol instead — the same symbol with a rounded square border rather than a circle. Cards with attuned symbols only need to match your character's symbols, not the deck's primary symbol.

plainattuned

Some cards carry the "Infinity" symbol. This means that the card can go into any deck.

Infinity

In the builder, “Show character eligible cards only” filters the pool down to cards that pass this check. It's off by default so you can browse everything while you're still deciding.

Foundations build up your board and are most of your deck. Attacks are how you deal damage. Actions and assets do everything else — one-off effects and persistent tools.Arenas add a static effect that is gated by how much damage a player has dealt. They work like "Stage Breaks" in fighting games.

Difficulty is what a card costs you to play — the number you have to beat. Control is what it contributes once it's down. Building a deck is largely about having enough low-difficulty cards early to support the expensive ones later.

That's why the gallery lets you filter by difficulty and shows a live count on each value: it answers “what do I actually have at 1?” without clicking through them one at a time.

A format is a legal card pool — Standard is the current one, others go further back. You never set a format in the builder. It's derived from your cards: whatever every card in your deck is legal in. Add a card that isn't Standard-legal and Standard drops off the list.

A deck needs one character, at least 60 cards in the main deck, and a sideboard of either 0 or exactly 10. You can have up to 4 copies of most cards — some limit themselves further and some increase their limit, and the builder will tell you when one does.

Click Here: Official Universus Rules Documents
Everything above is orientation. For how the game is actually played, read the official Universus rulebook.