Leader vs Dual Clans

There's a lot of shit going down over these two complications. I hope I can clear some of this up (and teach people not to rely heavily on these fan translators, whoever they are). I re-checked the original Japanese. Yet another instance of translation mistakes causing problems.

Here's the Japanese:
http://puu.sh/1uCKT

Here's MY translation:
If you do not have all units that are the same clan as this unit, this unit cannot declare an attack.

Heres what we thought it was before:
If you have any units that are not the same clan as this unit, this unit cannot declare an attack.

The huge difference here is the top (my) translation states that having the units is sufficient. Just as long as it's the same somehow. It can be any number of units on the field being treated as any number of clans each, so long as all of them share at least 1 clan name as the "Leader" unit.

The mistranslation we had before required that a "necessary" conditional be met. The sufficient conditional and necessary conditional make all the difference in the world. Necessarily, that would mean the unit can ONLY be the same and cannot be anything else in addition. As well as also having to be the same unit. This is called "sufficient and necessary" or "if and only if" in English. That was NOT used in the Japanese text and I submit that my translation is far more accurate for the logic of what was trying to be said.

Yes, all dual-clan cards will satisfy the condition of Leader to attack so long as they share at least one clan with the Leader. Blaster Spirits will allow Platinum Ezel to attack. And Bushiroad is retarded for doing this, by the way. Good job making unbalanced cards even more unbalanced!

Furthermore, let's look at a case of "necessary and sufficient" and how that works.

Phantom Blaster Overlord and his type of 11k:
If you have a non-<> vanguard or rear-guard, this unit gets Power -2000.

This is a conditional called necessary and sufficient. This means you can have any number of units. But all of the units have to either be clanless or have to be ONLY Shadow Paladins if they have any clan at all. They cannot have any clan on them that is not the same as the 11k in question. In this instance that's PBO. Meaning since Blaster Dark Spirit is treated as a Gold Paladin as well, PBO will lose Power -2000.

So to sum it up, Leader practically means nothing at all.

Just playing off semantics here. I've seen the dual clan units effect written as "can be treated" and "is treated" and finally "is also treated". Depending on the translation, wording will have a huge impact.

Come English release they could always translate it differently like they have on a handful of other cards. Might fix it.

You know I've probably head-desked less than anyone else on this forum going into BT09 since I've just never been as bothered by the presence of crossride as a mechanic.

This is the first time I've done so. Bushi had the opportunity to make sure there was absolutely nothing in BT10 could retroactively make Plezel decks any more insane than they already are, and they missed it. Bleaaarrrgh.

CyprusWHM wrote:

Just playing off semantics here. I've seen the dual clan units effect written as "can be treated" and "is treated" and finally "is also treated". Depending on the translation, wording will have a huge impact.

It's correctly written as "is also treated". It doesn't replace the printed clan. Hell, that would just be pointless. And it's not optional. It also applies EVERYWHERE. Literally everywhere. Drop, deck, trigger zone, damage zone, hand, soul, everyfuckingwhere.

ScarletWeather wrote:

You know I've probably head-desked less than anyone else on this forum going into BT09 since I've just never been as bothered by the presence of crossride as a mechanic.

This is the first time I've done so. Bushi had the opportunity to make sure there was absolutely nothing in BT10 could retroactively make Plezel decks any more insane than they already are, and they missed it. Bleaaarrrgh.

What's the point of doing that? Plezel and The End are the only to worthwhile decks from a competitive standpoint ANYWAY. At the most, they somehow find a way to make Plezel unilaterally better than The End. Oh fucking boy what a great day that will be! No matter what, the game is shot and broken. Other clans lose on average to those two more than anything. Even crossride clans do. And non-cross clans lose to any given crossride clan more than they win on average. So you see, vanguard now has built in tiers! Hooraaaaay.

Tier 1:
Platinum Ezel
Dragonic Overlord the End

Tier 2:
Dragonic Kaiser Vermillion THE BLOOD
Super Beast Deity Illuminal Dragon
Phantom Blaster Overlord
Superdimensional Robo Ultimate Daiyusha
Goddess of the Sun, Amaterasu
Majesty Lord Blaster

Tier 3:
Everything else

Enjoy~

More to the point, hybrid was an opportunity for Bushiroad to give decks without a crossride an easy reason for existing- a potentially large and powerful pool of support crossrides wouldn't have.

Also I think Vanguard has pretty much always had tiers- it's how much of a gap is between each tier that could be the problem. There's a world of difference between Vanguard OP and YGO OP even still.

I like to think of this game as a fighting game like street fighter or Virtua Fighter. Games like these tend to always have tiers as long as there is variety (MOST of the time) it all depends on how far apart the tiers of power are, some games are like Marvel VS Capcom 3 or Yu Gi Oh where the balance of power is very skewed, while others are like Virtua Fighter where while there is tiers the gap are not really that large at all.

The only tier in this game is trigger better.

Play 16 crits and say "ALL TO VANGUARD".

ScarletWeather wrote:

More to the point, hybrid was an opportunity for Bushiroad to give decks without a crossride an easy reason for existing- a potentially large and powerful pool of support crossrides wouldn't have.

Also I think Vanguard has pretty much always had tiers- it's how much of a gap is between each tier that could be the problem. There's a world of difference between Vanguard OP and YGO OP even still.

No that really just becomes a cop-out if you think about it. Any game has some tiny disparity between any faction. EVEN CHESS. Game Theory dictates that if a game is both finite and sequential (turn based), then it must have either a first mover advantage or a second mover advantage. That is a proven mathematical fact. So either White or Black has some small disparity regardless of the fact we don't know which one it is. Yet there are no tiers in chess. Fighting games even among each tier have fighters that perform slightly better or worse than each other. Yet they don't break it up into yet more tiers. The point is, you need to be able to show that a deck will win a significantly noticable amount over another deck on average in a scientifically controlled experiment. Now that can actually be done and has been done. Crossride decks, for example do in fact perform better than non-cross decks on average. So once we get those in English, we will definitely have Tiers. But even the poorly supported clans like Tachikaze, the new Megacolony and Shadow Paladins can still compete on equal levels with players of equal skill with large sample sizes to eliminate chance curves.

In short, no, Vanguard has not always had tiers. At least not English.

zawarudo wrote:

The only tier in this game is trigger better.

Play 16 crits and say "ALL TO VANGUARD".

Going to agree (partially) to this. As a general statement, the real tiers are the individual card comparisons. The very few duds get ignored, but the rest are almost all equal in some way with very little disparity. So in a way it is tiered: Tier 1 everything normal. Tier 2 all that crappy shit like Savage King and stuff.

But as Bushiroad has shown with Cosmo Lord, you can release support for a terrible card to make it better. Such as how even the original Cosmo Lord can now be played as the second G3 in a chess deck to get a ton of power and restand the units with their new skills.

Early on it felt like that to me in CFV. Balance between clans was pretty good, but in clan it's off. There's some obviously meh cards in each clan.

Felt like that when I played Warmachine. Pretty damn balanced, but man Khador had some pointless units (Kayazy Eliminators I'm looking at you).

Yeah because when I say "Vanguard is balanced" what I really mean is that each clan has at least one build that equally competes with every other clan on average. Not that every card is perfectly usable.

Welp - Confirmation
http://bushiroad.fm/post/en/1831/Blaster+Dark+Spirit+questions.html

I'd disagree. English Vanguard has tiers too, it's just that because of the release order difference our tiers were different and for the most part better balanced- in part because some of the clans which were waiting three packs or more to even get noticed by Bushiroad ended up with much-needed support faster, and because English Vanguard really hasn't ever had to suffer quite as bad as Japanese Vanguard did as far as clans waiting several sets for support and getting tossed peanuts (or nothing at all). Closest thing we have right now is Tachikaze, and we at least I believe got Sledgeankylo in the actual set instead of as a promo to give them a favorable trigger base.

That said there are still tiers between decks and clans at the moment, it's just that the gap between them is actually fairly manageable in practice and can be made up for by exploiting the fact that Vanguard has a lot of incomparables built into its design- where you lack in one area, generally you make up for it by getting something nobody else can do. Crossrides screwed up the gaps between tiers quite a bit and quite noticeably because they changed what it means to be able to mount a successful offense, I just think that in the sets intervening between BT05-BT09, the other clans have been given enough to work with that the gap is still there but it's a lot more manageable.

3XXXDDD wrote:

Welp - Confirmation
http://bushiroad.fm/post/en/1831/Blaster+Dark+Spirit+questions.html

So I was right.

ScarletWeather wrote:

I'd disagree. English Vanguard has tiers too, it's just that because of the release order difference our tiers were different and for the most part better balanced- in part because some of the clans which were waiting three packs or more to even get noticed by Bushiroad ended up with much-needed support faster, and because English Vanguard really hasn't ever had to suffer quite as bad as Japanese Vanguard did as far as clans waiting several sets for support and getting tossed peanuts (or nothing at all). Closest thing we have right now is Tachikaze, and we at least I believe got Sledgeankylo in the actual set instead of as a promo to give them a favorable trigger base.

That said there are still tiers between decks and clans at the moment, it's just that the gap between them is actually fairly manageable in practice and can be made up for by exploiting the fact that Vanguard has a lot of incomparables built into its design- where you lack in one area, generally you make up for it by getting something nobody else can do. Crossrides screwed up the gaps between tiers quite a bit and quite noticeably because they changed what it means to be able to mount a successful offense, I just think that in the sets intervening between BT05-BT09, the other clans have been given enough to work with that the gap is still there but it's a lot more manageable.

Of course you would disagree. Sigh. All I'm talking about balance-wise is English. I do not care what the Japanese players had to endure. The lack of support for a clan does not mean the clan would lose more games on average than it wins against any given deck. You have to understand there is a big distinction here. In the correct hands, Tachikaze do just fine. Namely mine.

Alice wrote:

Of course you would disagree. Sigh. All I'm talking about balance-wise is English. I do not care what the Japanese players had to endure. The lack of support for a clan does not mean the clan would lose more games on average than it wins against any given deck. You have to understand there is a big distinction here. In the correct hands, Tachikaze do just fine. Namely mine.

I intentionally play sub-par or "fun" builds of decks quite often, because I like to experience how they work (or don't) and playing with "bad" cards can sometimes give me some insight into both why they're bad and how to make them better. In the right circumstances I can pilot a "bad" deck to beat a good one- even a really good one. That doesn't really say anything about the tier of my deck though, it says something about my tier as a player as compared to my opponent if I'm consistently winning.

I don't think you're quite getting my meaning here, either. I brought up Japan not because I was trying to show it as a sob story, but as a point of comparison- Vanguard has had tiers since its inception, it's just that in the english format we've kind of been spoiled in a way because our decks got support at a better rate than theirs. The tier gap has consistently been smaller between the two metas for English- but that doesn't mean we don't have first-tier or second-tier clans, it just means the gap between one and two is fairly easy to jump right now. I just kind of object to this painting a picture of Vanguard as some kind of oasis of balance which was ruined only by crossrides, because while they are a major blip on the radar we have always had tier gaps, will continue to have tier gaps without them, and eventually we'll all have to figure out how we want to deal with that.

There is not gap, Scarlet, god dammit. Unless you want to accept the notion that I'm absolutely better than every opponent I've ever fought with Megacolony, Tachikaze, and Neo Nectar. And very very good against any opponent I've fought with Shadow Paladins and BT04 Dimension Police. Because I have insanely consistent win records with those. Some 100%, some 80s% and some 70s%. To me, that seems only possible if one of a few things are happening (because I know the sample size is large enough):
-My opponents have absolutely pisspoor skills and need to commit seppuku for dishonor famiry; but the deck is shit and way below the "tier" of my opponent's
-My opponents have medium skills and I'm only slightly better; but the decks are about even enough.
-Our skills are exactly even and these commonly-thought to be shit decks are actually OP and Tier 1.

Since I don't think we'll agree on possibility number 3, and possibility number 1 is both untrue and rude to my skilled opponents, I'm going to stick with number 2. The decks are even and slight skill was the defining factor.

Eh, I'll hand you that one since I have no clue who you were playing and we haven't actually fought each other yet, so I have no idea where your actual level of gameplay ability is as a general rule and no way to gauge it firsthand. There's also comparison purposes- did you ever flip who was playing which deck in the trials to see if other people would hit similar results? And what's your win ratio for "accepted" clans with a wide support base- comparable, better, same?

I'd also like to point out that I've consistently said the tier gap in english Vanguard is small, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I've never argued that it was at all insurmountable, in fact I'd argue the gap is easier to manage than the one in any other iteration of the meta. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and I don't think it's something worth ignoring either.

The issue that I'm taking here is not that there are tiny gaps between decks. We agree on that issue already. What I'm disagreeing with is a classification of relevancy. I don't find it relevant to talk about tiers in a game where decks almost go 50/50 even with slight gaps. It's not meaningful in any real or tangible way. Just like my example of Tier 1 fighters in a Fighting Game. There are yet more gaps between those fighters but they don't make a new Tier for each fighter. That's my point. The gaps are too small for it to be relevant.

Also BACK ON TOPIC, turns out that the word being used was also mistranslated. The keyword is "Lord" not Leader.

Alice wrote:

Also BACK ON TOPIC, turns out that the word being used was also mistranslated. The keyword is "Lord" not Leader.

Makes sense, I guess. It looks like it's going to be the new generic 11k "nerf"... which, derp, would actually encourage dual-clanning under the correct translation, since unlike units like Mandalalord, which get -2k for having a different clan around at all- PBO and The End too for that matter- newer ones won't-

Oh.

Oh.

Oooooooh. -_-

Uh, Scarlet, is that a good Oooooooh, or a bad Oooooooh? Cause I'd like to hear someone else's logic, BEFORE I stick my foot in my again today. Not from Alice, as she doesn't pull her punches and I don't think my ego can handle anymore today. *Cue me being beat up like a nerd with lunch money, but with LOGIC. Help me.*

Lockon Stratos wrote:

Uh, Scarlet, is that a good Oooooooh, or a bad Oooooooh? Cause I'd like to hear someone else's logic, BEFORE I stick my foot in my again today. Not from Alice, as she doesn't pull her punches and I don't think my ego can handle anymore today. *Cue me being beat up like a nerd with lunch money, but with LOGIC. Help me.*

Sorta both.

On the one hand, this all makes sense to me now. This is a retroactive further nerf on the crossrides from before BT09- the new crossrides, for the most part, aren't as powerful as The End. I've checked. So in order to make the newer cards more playable, Bushi's presenting the playerbase who's going to use them with a dilemma- stick with The End and be limited to a specific card pool, or play one of the newer decks since it's guaranteed that crossrides (and units) with Lord in general won't have a problem with dual-clan units?

On the other hand, this kinda feels like a rich-get-richer move, if that makes sense. All the new crossrides are playable right out of the gate as far as a competitive standpoint goes, so they really didn't need the extra help of the possibility of future support. In fact, if you ignore the crossride mechanic attached, some of the new crossrides are really interesting units, and one of them even has a skill which is completely unique as far as territory the game has explored (Amaterasu). So I'm not sure I approve of Bushiroad basically going "okay, everyone, just to let you know we're going to make it a LOT HARDER for us to close the tier gap down again if something goes catastrophically wrong". Playing the meta right now, the crossride-saturated one STILL has bigger gaps than English Vanguard, but the crossride decks were settling more into a tier 1/tier 1+ niche, and tier 0 was being forced out of the game, which for me is pretty much status quo for Vanguard. I just don't want BT10 to turn out to be as poorly-conceived as BT05's timing was.

Uhh. The leader keyword is right.　　盟主　(めいしゅ） is translated as leader, not lord.

zawarudo wrote:

Uhh. The leader keyword is right.　　盟主　(めいしゅ） is translated as leader, not lord.

Except it isn't. 盟 means covenant/alliance/oath etc and 主 means Lord in this context (Bushiroad confirmed). So this is the type of Sworn-in Lord. Remember, Japanese is contextual. It's understandable the translators got this wrong, but I can see why it's wrong too. Meishu, or probably in this case Myoushu, has a lot of different connotations. Leader, Expert, Lord, skilled Master, etc. And in this instance, it's referring to Myoushu from feudalism. They were landlords. So this is a more literal translation meaning Lord. The reason this can be easily missed is because of the rare Go'on reading of 盟 as Myou versus the common Mei.

Also Scarlet is right. It's totally a rich-get-richer problem. Just like the 12k Grade 2s that only work well in Crossride decks. Those are ALREADY stupidly overpowered cards. And they're the ones that get the best support. Meanwhile, Meishu (whatever it is) will allow people to use dual clans effortlessly and never cause problems. That's not a drawback. This is just getting so bad.