Images courtesy of UVS Games

Attack on Titan: Apocalypse is fast approaching with its official release on May 16th, 2025. That means preview season is in full swing and speculation runs rampant! What will the future UniVersus meta look like? What deck should I play? Which characters are the best from Attack on Titan: Apocalypse?

These are all questions that will be answered in this very article. 

Floch Forster, Yeagerist Leader

Floch Forster, Yeagerist Leader makes their debut in UniVersus and is looking to make a big impact. The top enhance to ramp out backups is gonna provide a lot of speed and damage bonuses you probably wouldn’t expect from a first glance. Even if you’re only building a backup about half the time, just paying the cost to mill two cards is gonna pay dividends thanks to the fire symbol. 

Yeagerist Follower is the new one-difficulty backup that Floch players will be looking to hit. Clearing bad checks off the top of your deck is a pretty powerful ability and you’ll usually get multiple chances to find a good check in the mid to late game. The speed reduction isn’t what I would call elite, but it will help fill in the gaps protecting you from attacks when you aren’t using Floch’s enhance commit to reduce an attack to zero damage. 

As far as winning the game goes, the first enhance element of Floch’s bottom ability does restrict options a little bit, but luckily blitz abilities are still on the table. Defeating the Colossus Titan is one of the biggest stat sticks available. It often begins the enhance step with eleven speed and ten damage, making it a prime target to double down on. 

If paying health isn’t your thing you can always send them to the moon with Beast Titan Attacks! For a slight bump in difficulty you can access the throw keyword by sacrificing a backup, something this character should have plenty of. Just make sure you have an extra backup since Floch requires three in the stage during the enhance step to double the damage!

Pieck Finger, Panzer Unit Cartman 

The cart titan is back, and this time we get to transform from Pieck Finger, Panzer Unit Cartman. Pieck starts out with a powerful ramp ability. Just getting the top card of your deck built into play ready is real nice. It helps offset the cost of committing your character immediately, and will be necessary to help fuel the two tenacious abilities. 

On the front side Pieck can transform by sacrificing a foundation and turning the damage up or down. As Cart Titan, Finale on the transformed side you can sacrifice a foundation to turn the speed up or down and potentially transform back. Both of the transform abilities are optional, giving Pieck players a ton of flexibility in what stats they need at a given time. When going full force you’ll be getting crazy bonuses to every attack. 

Anti-Titan Artillery is an asset you can search your deck to build every time you transform into Cart Titan, Finale. The bonus damage effects are gonna help you chew through the extra health of a lot of the Titan characters, but the response is a true threat. Every attack that deals damage has the opportunity to snipe the rival’s best asset or foundation, turning a bad situation into a dire one. 

Because Anti-Titan Artillery is unique, you’ll have to destroy a copy every time you build a second one; this is where Weapons Within shines. Shuffling Anti-Titan Artillerys back in your deck will make sure that you never run out of gas, even in the late game. The blitz ability to pump its damage isn’t too shabby either when you’ve got ready foundations you were thinking about sacrificing to Pieck anyways. 

Don’t forget to pack plenty of replacement foundations! Pieck will be sacrificing foundations at an all time high so cards like Enormous Axe and Reinforcements will be essential when paying all of these costs. 

Armin Arlert, Power of the Colossus

The Colossus Titan is back at it again, but this time with Armin at the helm. With an incredibly powerful static ability to build any card in your hand as a face down foundation, Armin Arlert, Power of the Colossus will have no issues getting to eight foundations in order to transform. While two difficulty for a blank resource isn’t exactly appealing, having guaranteed builds on turn one isn’t something a lot of decks have. 

The real fun begins once you’ve transformed into Colossus Titan, Finale. Plus five is a lot of damage and rivals will think twice before they over extend into a character where finding lethal damage is so trivial. The enhance to peek at the top card of the deck and draw bad checks is an insane amount of value. Getting extra chances to find the right block zone or clutch actions shouldn’t be underestimated either. 

Order decks will find more opportunities to use You’re Finished’s ability to draw cards now. On earlier turns you’re going to be building attacks face down to help accelerate your builds and transform. Once transformed you can sacrifice a face down attack when you play another copy of it, setting up the top enhance. In a post 2024 world, drawing a card from a zero difficulty foundation is incredibly good!

Haughty is looking really good for the fire builds of Armin Arlert, Power of the Colossus. Ten damage is a very low bar when your character is providing half of it. While Armin does have guaranteed build turns, he doesn’t have much access to foundation ramp to offset his sacrifice costs. This means that every extra resource he can generate will matter in the final turns of the game. 

The obvious weak point to cover for Colossus Titan, Finale is gonna be the speed stat. Luckily, there’s a keyword ability that can help us out. Rapid Speed Slash boasts an impressive EX:3 on a four difficulty attack. It also gives you an extra momentum for EX as long as you have one to begin with. The other option is to draw a card which is better than I can say for most four difficulty attacks. 

Patchwork Baby can solve any stat deficiency your attack lineup has. Lots of order symbol decks have leaned on Patchwork Baby to close out games, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Colossus Titan, Finale hop aboard the Baby train as well. Without access to chaos-attuned cards the momentum will be coming from some weird places, but cards like Strategic Meeting seem like a natural fit when Armin’s cards have been looking at the top card of the deck in multiple sets. 

Annie Leonhart, Awakened

Annie Leonhart, Awakened is probably the spiciest character from Attack on Titan: Apocalypse. Seven hand size, the ability to commit a backup as a foundation and the ability to turn those backs into momentum is a lot going on. After you get enough momentum from sacrificing a backup you transform into Female Titan, Finale and get access to some really nice stat pumps. 

Keeping at least two backups around will net you two additional speed on every attack and spending a momentum will give you a juicy plus three damage as well. You’ll also get plus two to your next check which helps out a lot since you’ll be building and sacrificing backups instead of foundations some of the time. In a pinch the defensive ability to reduce damage and boost your next check to play a block can be frustrating to overcome. Don’t forget the check bonus can stack over multiple attacks, leading to a huge bonus to block late in a rival attack string, 

Annie might struggle to close out games that go long because she can only commit one backup per control check and she might not have enough momentum to spread out across all of her attacks. Decompose can fix all your stat pumping woes in deadlock for the low cost of discarding a single backup for three speed and damage. It won’t do much before the deadlock stage in the game, but more and more characters are giving minus three speed or minus three damage or sometimes both, and this is looking like a solid solution. 

Emerging Threats has been waiting for its time to shine and we’re reaching critical mass for backup value. The form ability allowing you to build a backup you just played is already a solid acceleration from a one difficulty card and for Annie Leonhart, Awakened this is akin to ramping a foundation. Emerging Threats will also allow you to play around Breaker effects and cards that force you to play non-attack cards when you’re trying to put together an attack string. 

In the upcoming format there is going to be a lot of decks focused around the backup card type. Having attacks that benefit from you and the rival both running back ups is gonna feel pretty good. Harness Undeath is asking for even more of what Annie Leonhart, Awakened is trying to do by both sacrificing a backup and spending a momentum for the Echo keyword but if you do the payoffs can be massive. Harness Undeath can drain the rival’s health based on the backups in both discard piles and is still good enough to use if you are the only one with backups in your deck. Very few decks can survive a double tap from Harness Undeath. 

Stealing the Attack Titan is looking to be a crazy value engine for decks with a lot of Titan backups. Decks wanting to use Female Titan, Finale’s check bonus to play high difficulty Shift attacks will love this the most, but even sending it as a poke before replacing all the backups you build during the turn is a huge power play. It will take a full commitment to running just about as many Titan backups as you can but something tells me this won’t be an issue in the meta to come. 

Card Previews for Attack on Titan: Apocalypse

The entire set hasn’t been revealed yet, so there could be some changes to a list of the best decks. At the time of writing however, these characters are all so good on their own and often cover their own weaknesses so well, I would be shocked not to see each of them making a deep run in future Regional Championships.

If I had to pick a favorite from this list, it’s probably Floch Forster, Yeagerist Leader. Holding a damage negation effect over my rival’s head every enhance step seems like a great way to throw off my rival’s game plan or even force them to target the backups instead of my character.