Let's talk about spousal abuse in Vanguard (The uniting of two peoples)

I've decided to do a chronological look at the Japanese releases of Vanguard. Being an English player, all I ever think about is my own format (hell, this site is dedicated to it). But how different were the two metas throughout their lifetime? I'd like to take a look and maybe try to see why Japfags and Engfags often fight so much about their opinions on cards, decks, the game, and the company releasing it all. I won't be bothering to go over all the Extra Boosters and Comic Styles since I don't believe they had any major impact on the game in Japanese. Oh and I use the suffix -fag a lot but it has nothing to do with pejoratives. It just means "person of a group".

JAPANESE:
King of Knights Alfred
Royal Paladins, Kagero, Nova Grappler, and Oracle Think tank were the only playable clans. Royals had a slightly above par rate for consistent winning, but for the most part, the rest were pretty well used.

Onslaught of Dragon Souls
Royal Paladins immediately became Tier 1 with Soul Saver Dragon. That combo was fucking broken back in the day. (Point 1: Now we know why Japanese player freak out about Barcgal being "broken". It made them Tier 1 versus every single other clan).
Kagero fought vigorously to keep up but failed with Blazing Flare and the rest of the gang.
Oracle Think Tank got the one useful Silent Tom. That wasn't enough to pull it out of Tier 2 with Kagero.
Nova Grapplers immediately fell into the shadows, never to be seen again. The rest of the clans just took up a huddled mass of fail along with Novas.

Demonic Lord Invasion
Bushiroadhad the smart idea to restrict Barcgal, preventing specifically the Soul Saver Dragon combo. At the time, they actually announced it was just because Royals were too popular so they wanted to "encourage" people to play other clans. I'm starting to call bullshit on that. I think they realized the soul saver dragon combo would cause massive profit loss when all anyone would want in Set 3 would be Palamedes and they'd ignore Galahad and all the other support released.
Royal Paladins got bumped down a notch but since they were Tier 1, they basically just stayed that way.
Kagero got autobumped up to Tier 1 since RP was more balanced against them.
Oracle Think Tank got bumped to Tier 1 because of their amazing support in this set. A deck that still gets competitive use to this day and practically unchanged since release.
Every other clan (and new ones) stayed the same and nothing could wriggle out of Tier 3.

Eclipse of Illusionary Shadows
Absolutely nothing happened in this set. Shadows, Megacolony, and Dimension Police couldn't hold their own on release. Kagero was already Tier 1 and it didn't get enough good toys to bump it. Same for RP. Blaukruger fell completely flat for Novas, I think unjustly. They didn't end up being Tier 1 but people had been so used to NG being bad that I think they didn't even give it a try.
Still T1: Kagero, Royals, Oracles

Awakening of Twin Blades
Aaaaaaand shit hits the fan...
Thus starts the game's downward spiral into stagnation. Kagero, Royal Paladins, and Shadow Paladins receive the broken advantage-machines known as crossrides.
The two new clans released barely piss in the pond. Every other clan is sitting there with no support. Spikes, Granblue, Pale Moon, Dark Irregulars, Murakumo, Neo Nectar, Tachikaze, Dimension Police, Megacolony, everything else was completely unsupported. Nova Grappler was the most supported Tier 3 clan and they barely came close to approaching Oracles.
Tier 1: KG, RP, SP
Tier 2: OTT
Tier 3: Everything else

Breaker of Limits
Something interesting happened in this set. People got ways for Vanguards to reliably hit 3 stages against Crossrides. This meant if you didn't play the Tier 1 decks, you no longer had to rely on stacking triggers in Oracles to squeeze out a win or two. Unfortunately, the only clan that got enough well-rounded support to make this viable was Gold Paladins. Narukami were unilaterally outclassed and Granblue was off everyone's rader basically forever. And we all know Angel Feathers were released with absolutely ass support. But interestingly, Gold Paladins made it into Tier 2 due to being well-rounded enough to compete.
T1: KG, RP, SP
T2: OTT, GP

Rampage of the Beast King
Bushiroad reaaaaally pushed Great Nature in this set. But they tried to push an anti-crossride clan in a format where crossrides killed themselves better than other clans ever could. The PR stunt failed miserably and no one liked it. They remain today one of the least played clans of all time. All this set did was make Tier 3 clans able to take each other down more fairly and cement Golds as Tier 2 with their support. Angels were more cohesive but they now worked like crossrides-lite. No change in tiers.

Blue Storm Armada
Aqua Force gets released. Everyone plays it. Everyone realized it dies horribly to crossrides because its very mechanic is exactly countered by them. Everyone stops playing Aqua Force. Bam, that quick. This set did do one thing very interestingly though. It introduced another crossride which put Dimension Police on the map. Very specifically, it put them into goddamn Tier 1. Zeal build ended up in Tier 2 where it sits with its friends OTT and GP. Tachikaze et al ended up just being added to the list of "more betterer" Tier 3s.
Tier 1: Kagero, Shadows, Royals, Dimension
Tier 2: Oracles, Golds, Zeal

Clash of Knights and Dragons
Uhhh ohhh! CROSSRIDEFEST. Here's where things get interesting. Bushiroad goes all-in on crossridemania and releases a fuckload of them. Crossrides automatically go in Tier 1 so here's how it will look:
Tier 1: Kagero, Royals, Shadows, Oracles, Dimension, Aqua, Novas, Narukami, Golds
Tier 2: Zeal, Angel Feather (possibly), Tachikaze (possibly)
Tier 3: everything else
Notice how the Tier 2 possibles I've listed are things that specifically hit over 21k (or reverse it in Zeal). In English this would make exactly no difference, but in Japanese it becomes a thing now. But now Tier 1 is huge and very diverse. 9/20 clans is just under half. And if AF and TK do end up holding their own in T2, then 11/20 clans (OVER HALF) will become competitively viable. It's still ruining the game, but I can easily see why Japanese players would welcome crossrides and not see them as bad at all.

Let's look into the mind of a lifelong Japanese format player: Their entire career has been swamped with tiers. Royals have been Tier 1 in all of them. Kagero have been Tier 1 in all but one set. Set 5 changed the game to only have 3 clans as Tier 1 (which was no change for two of them). For four sets, their metagame has been stagnant to the SAME THREE DECKS with a few Tier 2s and weirdos who got bored and decided to take their T3 decks up to competition. No wonder they welcome more additions to the Tier 1 team. I'm not saying it's the best solution, I'm saying I understand now. A better solution would have just been fixing the problematic cards that caused the problem. Ban The End, MLB, and PBO and you instantly have a diverse format even in Japan. Restrict Daiyusha to 2 copies and bam. Insta-English. It's no wonder there's so much fighting. You see the Japfags saying "Crossrides are fine and BT09 will be good because it balances out other clans". Understanding where they're coming from, that kind of outlook makes sense. Bushiroad has treated Japfags like a red-headed stepchild the whole time. Bushiroad treated Engfags like their little princess and gave us everything we wanted.

ENGLISH:
Descent of the King of Knights + Onslaught of Dragon Souls
Same as before. Top 4 are RP, KG, NG, OTT with some emphasis on RP. Then we get set 2 and technically RP become broken Tier 1 but no one notices...somehow. I guess because it was so new and we didn't have the time to pay attention. There were almost no English discussion forums back then too. VMundi was actually one of the first and we came into play right around here (April, 1 month after Set 2). So I was sitting there looking at JP's Set 5 going "This is some horse shit, and I will never play that broken meta".

Breaker of Limits + Cavalry of Black Steel
Holy shitballs what a huge jump. So Royals, Kagero, Novas, Oracles, and Golds were undeniably completely fair and playable. We actually didn't have the Barcgal restriction yet but it really didn't matter. Soul Saver Dragon was far from broken here since the 4 new supports that were released did about equally well. And with this release we get to look at how the non-standard clans made it. Angels did sort of okay. You could still win about equally with them, they just weren't as fun or easy to play because of their low support. Narukami were the same deal except they're basically identical to Kagero. Instead of playing a Goku main with Overlord backup, they just played Vermillion main. Not really a big switch mechanically so they made it into the top decks. Granblue was super well-off. The new support and third critical trigger made them super consistent and deadly. Spike Brothers got an expansion around this time which made them much more consistent and explosive, putting them into the competition too. They were competitive before, just not consistent enough to run. Golds got another build but not actually a boost. Kagero then gets Lawkeeper for just another viable build.

Demonic Lord Invasion
Here is where Royals got both gimped and re-boosted. Well, more like castrated. Soul Saver was the only thing keeping them competitive in this format. However, thankfully the gimp came with a good enough boost that they stayed competitive. Galahad and Palamedes made for a new deck skeleton while Alfred went the wayside. Oracles got their Japanese Tier 2 deck, but it wasn't enough to overcome the other clans differently. You have to realize, what made clans crappy in Japan was that they couldn't compete with Royals and eventually crossrides. The two new decks released, DI and PM, ended up being a tiny bit flat but still able to win decently. Even Tachikaze was actually able to hold its own in independent testing, though it wasn't popular enough for this to be realized by everyone.

Rampage of the Beast King + Banquet of Divas
This release was massively effective in English. While Great Nature still didn't take off in popularity, it was able to completely hold its own against everything else. Golds became more option-based and got new equally viable builds that didn't set them apart. Irregulars and Pale Moon got new builds and more consistency to their old builds which made them just as competitive as everything else. The pattern here thus far is that nothing is unilaterally able to win against anything else. Sometimes you have bad matchups with Royals, Oracles, or whatever, but there are just as many decks that can own your face.

Eclipse of Illusionary Shadows
It hasn't happened yet, but I have some easy predictions. Blaukruger becomes just as viable as everything else automatically because his support is decent. Megacolony and Shadows, with some skill and creativity, will both be able to compete normally. Sadly, Dimension Police will be the first clan that's unilaterally outclassed in English. Blau and Duke just do everything he does only better and more consistent with better support.

Awakening of Twin Blades
Aaaand the game is broken. Now we're back to exactly where we were at the same time in Japan. Tier 1 will be Kagero, Royals and Shadows. Tier 2 will be Oracles and Golds. Everything else will just die off into obscurity and all the shit Bushiroad worked to fix will be undone. This is why English players are freaking out over crossrides and quitting the game left and right. Some of us held out hope that Bushi would do right by us...until BT09 was announced. Then English players started quitting in droves. It's hard as hell getting anyone new into Vanguard because they don't want to buy cards for their favorite clan only to have it be stomped on later.
And so here is where everyone in Eng splits: Crossfags and Anticrossfags. Crossfags are the ones that are so used to the game being balanced (and some are just bad players) that they immediately assume Bushiroad is infallible and there musn't be anything wrong with it. Remember, coming from an Engfag's perspective, they've only ever known balance for the most part. No deck in our meta can unilaterally outclass all other decks. If they're ignorant of how crossrides really work, it's actually logical to make this assertion given Bushiroad's history and no other factors.
The Anticrossfags are absolutely livid. Brand new players with no experience can tell these things are nutty and stupid. Vets of Eng are madpissed that all the time they spent on the game is going down the drain when it becomes "who crosses first" and "which crossride has the most broken skill" instead of a diverse playing ground of many clans and style. Before, nearly every build was viable, not just every clan.
Oh and Murakumo will suck like Dimension Police and Neo Nectar will do fine by current standards (like as if CR don't get released) but will suck terribly in CR format.

Blue Storm Armada et al
Aqua Force would've done great in the current meta but will fail massively in CR. Remember: After BT05, we're identical to the Japanese meta in that our tiers are exactly the same. The boost to NN, TK, et al would've been highly beneficial. However, they're going to fail terribly because CR. Zeal and Daiyusha will still do well. Because it's the same as Japanese now.

Clash of Knights and Dragons
And this is why English players are quitting. They're not used to being spouslly abused by Bushiroad for their entire game career. They see 9/20 clans getting crossrides as "9 clans that are now boring to play and 11 clans that are usless to play". Because crossrides (or an anti-cross deck) have to be vanilla in the meat just to gain enough power to hit properly. The more crossrides that get included at this point, the more, in English format, the game stagnates into boring vanilla "who can crossride first" nonsense and just invalidating the entire card library before it for no reason. They feel betrayed and confused.



Howabout instead of fighting, we all try to understand where the other party is coming from? Jap players grew up in an abusive relationship, so they're just happy to get one day of slappings instead of brutal beatings. English players grew up being daddy's girls so they're mad that all their toys are getting taken away and replaced with fewer, lesser quality toys. Both people have every reason to feel the way they do in their respective formats.

But we need to stop arguing the facts. The facts are: crossrides are broken. That's been shown over and over again from many different angles. Both people will understandably react to them in a different way for their own meta. But I'm not going to say that Japan can't have their revenge in their meta. Nor will I sit idle by and let English become corrupted and ruined by crossrides. Instead what needs to happen is a uniting of the people but a dividing of the metas. English needs to go off and have crossrides banned or erratad to keep the balance. Japanese needs MORE crossrides for every clan to make their game more "balanced". If Japan ever gets tired of "one build per clan", they can just ban the crossrides any time. By dividing, we will be united.

Probably the first post anyone joining this community should read. Explains, without opinionated bias, what happened/is happening in Japan against what happened/is happening here.

I didn't realize what drastic effects the releases had on each community, I thought it was all about product placement.

CyprusWHM wrote:

Probably the first post anyone joining this community should read. Explains, without opinionated bias, what happened/is happening in Japan against what happened/is happening here.

I didn't realize what drastic effects the releases had on each community, I thought it was all about product placement.

You know what? I honestly didn't realize it for a long time either. I thought the releases were all about trying to catch up English and promoting hype. Since everything fell into place balance-wise, I never questioned whether or not Pre-BT05 Jap was balanced. It's kind of the "you don't notice something until there's a problem" phenomenon.

I'm one of the ''I'll quit vanguard when set 09 is out'' but probably I'll reconsider that since where I play (a little community with barely 15 members) won't play any crossrides. But I'll have to forget playing in big tournaments since my poor Megacolony have almost anything to do against Crossrides.

I'm still hoping for Bushiroad doing something, but everyday that hope decreases a little.

I'm English format and one of those people who derives great pleasure in using special weapons to slaughter the hapless masses, but I hate the thought of any weapon that's Infinity +1 (I will never be seen taking Ji Endo to tounaments, I'll take Iluminal Dragon once we get it).

I am also very disappointed by the way Crossrides are portrayed by the dudes showing them. You noticed that in the anime recently, any non-crossride user fighting a crossride user only lost on the turn the crossride appeared, suggesting that they aren't really that bad and are 'decisive finishers'?

Personally, I'm having to deal with new idiots saying new idiotic things, saying that Ji Endo isn't broken since he's too dependant on one specific card* and how Phantom Blaster Overlord is the shit.

*It's bullshit, as I've tried to say to these people.

Kirosnefakman wrote:

I'm one of the ''I'll quit vanguard when set 09 is out'' but probably I'll reconsider that since where I play (a little community with barely 15 members) won't play any crossrides. But I'll have to forget playing in big tournaments since my poor Megacolony have almost anything to do against Crossrides.

I'm still hoping for Bushiroad doing something, but everyday that hope decreases a little.

Actually it's easy to find matches that don't have crossrides. Maybe during the beginning month or so it'll be hard because HYPE HYPE HYPE, but your locals should have people who don't play them because of principles or can't afford it or they don't like it. You just won't be able to compete in tournaments. Meh. If the tournaments were free, you might as well compete just for the enjoyment of it. It's not really "competition" but more of a gauntlet of games.

In casual play, I'll be absolutely refusing to fight anyone who uses crossride decks. They're not fun and destroy the strategy in the game.

@Lich: Yeah the anime is really not helping matters at all. I think they're doing this on purpose. Big beefy special omg card is the ender! Yeah, whatever. In before they use THE BLOOD to end the game which makes no sense because his ability is entirely defensive (like how they do with Vermillion already).

Some of the people refusing to admit they're broken have indeed resorted to outlandish claims such as these. The perspective may have something to do with being mollycoddled by a balanced game for too long or they may just be really really bad.

Vermillion can sorta be used to end a game, if your opponent was somehow stupid enough to get into a situation where they need the 10k shield from intercepting in order to survive.

It'll very sad seeing everybody using Crossrides. Luckily the only guy in our local group that only searches power is dumb enough to buy 2 boxes of BT06 searching for Vermillion instead of buying the Vermillion directly. And the best he got from the boxes was a perfect guard and 2 Desert Gunners (and he doesn't use them ._.).

I once had an idea to balance the crossrides a little. Bushiroad should release the G4 and increase the deck limits to 55 cards. Personally I like it better how it is but I like that way better than Crossrides > All.

Nice read for sure.

I don't have to worry much on crossrides around here. Most of the people playing just have simple budget decks or stop caring months ago. Though there are the few with daddy's money to throw around at cards so might see them occasionally.

I mostly play with a few close friends, and we already swore off crossrides in favor of diversity and fun.

Let's start getting this back on topic. Instead of yet another CROSSRIDE GENERAL, howabout we talk about the metas and the overall point of that post which was trying to understand players from different bases.

I haven't seen a single person comment about my proposal that they should be completely split so everyone can stop bickering.

Ill never be in the big tourny crap so ill still play as long as i got a few people to play with that wont hop on the cross rides dick.

oh and i think they should just make 2 formats or whatever easy fix

HugeMcLargeTall wrote:

Ill never be in the big tourny crap so ill still play as long as i got a few people to play with that wont hop on the cross rides dick.

oh and i think they should just make 2 formats or whatever easy fix

As long as they actually support the "Traditional" format unlike Konami, I'd be okay with that. As a last last resort.

Alice wrote:

Let's start getting this back on topic. Instead of yet another CROSSRIDE GENERAL, howabout we talk about the metas and the overall point of that post which was trying to understand players from different bases.

I haven't seen a single person comment about my proposal that they should be completely split so everyone can stop bickering.

If you mean to have English disregard the Japanese meta, haven't we kind of done that already? Some effects function differently over here compared to Japan and Bushi is cool with it.

I'm fine breaking away from caring about the Japanese meta, not like world events are worth a damn.

I'd love to see the time in which Crossrides are considered banned. However, since I don't see that happening in the near future I'm just going to try to see if I can manage to outplay them without stooping to their level. A little practice and I might be able to beat them. I've beaten them once or twice already I think, and I'm pretty sure that I'll be able to do it again.

Klaus wrote:

If you mean to have English disregard the Japanese meta, haven't we kind of done that already? Some effects function differently over here compared to Japan and Bushi is cool with it.

I'm fine breaking away from caring about the Japanese meta, not like world events are worth a damn.

I mean they should be officially divided. And until such time as this, both playerbases should acknowledge the fact and treat it as such. They're currently not treated in this way. Look at the comments from both sides. English players want to "catch up" to the Japanese library and Japanese players want the formats to "be united" for whatever reason (though I suspect it's so they can switch to English since they're not actually in an Asian country). This is causing huge rifts in the community since they both disagree on how it should be handled since Japanese brings tiers and English doesn't really have them. I'm saying: Let Japanese keep tiers, let English be void of tiers and let's acknowledge that they're unique and different rather than screaming for homogenization.

Omnigeek wrote:

I'd love to see the time in which Crossrides are
considered banned. However, since I don't see that happening in the
near future I'm just going to try to see if I can manage to outplay them
without stooping to their level. A little practice and I might be able
to beat them. I've beaten them once or twice already I think, and I'm
pretty sure that I'll be able to do it again.

Either your skill was far and above that of your opponent's or your sample size is small enough that chance temporarily favored you. Those decks will win on average against anything that isn't them. That's the very definition of tier 1.

Somewhere at around set 7, OTT and RP should join Kagero at tier 1 after everyone realised that RP was still great with more crit, and both builds of OTT was pretty good with 12 crit.

RP was already Tier 1 in Japan by that time. And 12 Oracles never made it because 12 crits didn't make up for the lack of a crossride.

Alice wrote:

RP was already Tier 1 in Japan by that time. And 12 Oracles never made it because 12 crits didn't make up for the lack of a crossride.

I'd disagree there. We've got OTT topping with weird stuff in Japan and virtually every build I've seen of it is 12-critical, precisely because critical triggers at a high concentration are the best way to deal with war of attrition decks like crossrides. It's Tier 2+ at least, possibly lower-end Tier 1.

And as much as I'm bugged that everything before apparently vanished into the abyss, I'll take this time to post with what I was planning as a follow-up. I both really appreciate this since it does give a very concise explanation of the two different formats, but think that in the end the idea is flawed. I don't think JP format needs to get more crossrides than it already has, and I don't think Eng needs them completely removed. I'm not opposed to splitting the metagames though because, well, I think it could be done.

What I'd prefer is that crossrides at their base concept (units above 11k) get included selectively in EN- releases, and be reserved solely for clans/decks which can't naturally plus. That gives people an alternate strategy to the only other two really dominant, consistent ones- which are, essentially, "plus" and "plus harder". English format can already deal with crossrides when they're properly balanced, or Shamshiel would be a much bigger presence than it already is.

Hey Alice, what would you say to the idea of making Crossrides similar to Shamshiel? Realize this isn't really the right place, but as Scarlet brought up, I rather like the "idea" of Crossrides, as in better defense under the right conditions, but as we've already seen, simply requiring a specific G3 in the soul isn't really a serious condition, but what if the conditions were a little more balancing, like Shamshiel, as I brought up earlier, but tailored for each clan. Now, I'm just spitballing ideas here, but lets take Great Daiyusha as a model. Let's change his Crossride skill to something such as if Super Dimensional Robo, Daiyusha is in the soul, any increases in power due to skills applied to this card have "Until the end phase of your opponents turn." It DOES give him the superior defense AND showcases Dimensional Police's main strategy, BUT it does NOT auto win wars of attrition, as it IS limited. But wait, how would you apply this thought process to something like DOTE? If we went with the whole "playing to the clan's strengths" then that probably would make DOTE defense a nonissue if we gave him something similar to Dual Axe's skill, but how about we shore up their weaknesses? Such as "If your opponents has 5 or more rearguards, this unit gains +2000." It's basically an "Oh crap" boost, for those times when the game just won't go your way.

Are there any flaws here? Cause I honestly think this would work. I know, I said the same thing about the whole "make them G4" thing, but this is another angle, and I rather like it.

ScarletWeather wrote:

Alice wrote:

RP was already Tier 1 in Japan by that time. And 12 Oracles never made it because 12 crits didn't make up for the lack of a crossride.

I'd disagree there. We've got OTT topping with weird stuff in Japan and virtually every build I've seen of it is 12-critical, precisely because critical triggers at a high concentration are the best way to deal with war of attrition decks like crossrides. It's Tier 2 at least, possibly lower-end Tier 1.

Wait, what does Tier2 mean? I'll acknowledge anything you want about Oracles so long as Post-set5 Oracles are classified in Tier 2, not Tier 1. They're "Extremely good", they're "ridiculously rapetastical", they're "extremely reliable", they're "better than most Tier 2s". But it's far-fetched to put them in with Majesty, The End, and Overlord as of Set 7 (which is what zawarudo mentioned). You don't seem that insistent that it's Tier 1 so it might not even be a point you care to argue, but just in case; if you want to provide some evidence that satisfies burden of proof for that claim, I'm all ears.

Quote :

And as much as I'm bugged that everything before apparently vanished into the abyss, I'll take this time to post with what I was planning as a follow-up. I both really appreciate this since it does give a very concise explanation of the two different formats, but think that in the end the idea is flawed. I don't think JP format needs to get more crossrides than it already has, and I don't think Eng needs them completely removed. I'm not opposed to splitting the metagames though because, well, I think it could be done.

What I'd prefer is that crossrides at their base concept (units above 11k) get included selectively in EN- releases, and be reserved solely for clans/decks which can't naturally plus. That gives people an alternate strategy to the only other two really dominant, consistent ones- which are, essentially, "plus" and "plus harder". English format can already deal with crossrides when they're properly balanced, or Shamshiel would be a much bigger presence than it already is.

This would normally be a really good idea but it does have one flaw. You now can't add any more support to those CR'd clans because if they get it, we're back to square one of the problem where they're overpowered. Like for instance, if they gave Set 4 Dimension Police just Ultimate Daiyusha (no other supporting cards), then DP would be "on the map" so to speak. But the moment Set 8 comes out with support for it, then it's automatically Tier 1 :\. That's why I kept saying I sympathize with Shadows players who want PBO because Shadows are so undersupported (I <3 Shadows) but I recognize that it's just a temporary fix. What they really need are legitimate expansions.

It really all comes down to either all or nothing. I'd rather it be more like if you want to play English you get to choose between this completely different numerical format where different units are viable (thus no CRs) and if you want to play Japanese you get to pick a clan, run its crossride and see if you can do better than other decked CRs. I'm actually perfectly happy with this as a solution. It both invalidates the library causing a card "reset" for those that want it but also doesn't since another format exists where that reset hasn't been done and everything is still usable.

@Lockon, yep as I've said before, properly costing them is what you should do. Shamsiel costs 1 damage per turn to become Majesty Lord (without the Critical). Majesty is just conditional (which is practically conditionless). Agravain costs 5 CB and 8 SB to become Ultimate Daiyusha (15k defense and 13k defense are both insane, so the extra buff isn't super important here). Ultimate is just conditional, which in his deck isn't really a condition. Stern Blaukruger costs net -1 and the extra check chance. The End doesn't. It just doesn't. It's 1 all the way around and gets four total checks.

Conditionality means inevitability (that's why Limit Break 5 doesn't make something balanced). Costing means you have to do a true cost-benefit analysis. Decks for both types of cards will be based around the card, but the conditional one will be easier and costless. So that makes it unbalanced as it stands. Costing these high defense cards could work.

Alice wrote:

ScarletWeather wrote:

Alice wrote:

RP was already Tier 1 in Japan by that time. And 12 Oracles never made it because 12 crits didn't make up for the lack of a crossride.

I'd disagree there. We've got OTT topping with weird stuff in Japan and virtually every build I've seen of it is 12-critical, precisely because critical triggers at a high concentration are the best way to deal with war of attrition decks like crossrides. It's Tier 2 at least, possibly lower-end Tier 1.

Wait, what does Tier2 mean? I'll acknowledge anything you want about Oracles so long as Post-set5 Oracles are classified in Tier 2, not Tier 1. They're "Extremely good", they're "ridiculously rapetastical", they're "extremely reliable", they're "better than most Tier 2s". But it's far-fetched to put them in with Majesty, The End, and Overlord as of Set 7 (which is what zawarudo mentioned). You don't seem that insistent that it's Tier 1 so it might not even be a point you care to argue, but just in case; if you want to provide some evidence that satisfies burden of proof for that claim, I'm all ears.

At the moment, I'm mostly using tiers in terms of what's actually winning at official events in Japan- my own personal tier rankings are a little different and colored by my own biases, so I try not to use them.

here's a recent tournament winner and runner-up for a district fight in Japan (seniors). Notice the weirdass Tsukuyomi build. Notice the Alfred build.


In fact, let's just look through. Here's event winners and runners-up for every listed event on Bushi's japanese site. Lots of The End, some Paladin (Gold and Royal), some Think Tank. This is all pre-BT09 but the one thing we aren't getting right now is Shadow Paladins, Dimension Police, or even Neo Nectar/Zeal (Sephirot's Limit Break allows for stage three against basically anything). And the Gold builds we're getting are actually very similar in many ways to the Gold builds we're seeing in English format, including a Spectral Duke deck which, aside from some key differences, is very close in composition to the one which topped Toronto (which, incidentally, I'm not even fond of).

I'm not talking out my ass here, I'm talking based on what I've seen personally and what events are showing up with. Until BT09, our crossride problem is The End and our alternate "crossride" is Majesty. We're not seeing anything significant from PBO, and we aren't seeing anything significant from Daiyuusha. This is in part because The End is both cheaper and stronger than either of those two decks, but it's also in part because they are less efficient to a degree at fighting against the big-boy crossrides who are dominating. I'm classing OTT, Gold, and Royals as tier 2+/low tier 1 because they are the clans which consistently show up that aren't using crossride decks themselves. They are, for better or worse, the ones best equipped right now to deal with the monster decks of the format and they do it well enough that they're still a thing even though The End exists.

Quote :

This would normally be a really good idea but it does have one flaw. You now can't add any more support to those CR'd clans because if they get it, we're back to square one of the problem where they're overpowered. Like for instance, if they gave Set 4 Dimension Police just Ultimate Daiyusha (no other supporting cards), then DP would be "on the map" so to speak. But the moment Set 8 comes out with support for it, then it's automatically Tier 1 :\. That's why I kept saying I sympathize with Shadows players who want PBO because Shadows are so undersupported (I <3 Shadows) but I recognize that it's just a temporary fix. What they really need are legitimate expansions.

It really all comes down to either all or nothing. I'd rather it be more like if you want to play English you get to choose between this completely different numerical format where different units are viable (thus no CRs) and if you want to play Japanese you get to pick a clan, run its crossride and see if you can do better than other decked CRs. I'm actually perfectly happy with this as a solution. It both invalidates the library causing a card "reset" for those that want it but also doesn't since another format exists where that reset hasn't been done and everything is still usable.

Not sure what you're getting at with "its support". It's hard to say whether Great Daiyuusha becomes "broken" with supporting cards because Great Daiyuusha is literally unplayable until you print the Dimension Robos which aren't Great Daiyuusha. It's even harder to break afterward because the deck is, effectively, very locked.

Great Daiyuusha, going by a 14-11-8 ratio of grades being what you'd want in the deck:

Grade 1- Four slots are taken by Dailander, and four more go to Daimariner. In theory this leaves six slots, but four of those are going to be Platinum Ace, the perfect guard. So that leaves two off-theme Grade 1. If you want to hit stage 3 with DaiDragon against anything ever, those two will be Karenroid Daisy. You can attempt running Commander Laurel, but he's less efficient at low copies. You can also try Speedstar or Glory Maker, the former to work with normal Daiyuusha or the latter to work with trying to get Great Daiyuusha to swing for 25k (which isn't really something you want that's of paramount importance, but in a crossride Meta you'll want either this or Karenroid to get proper numbers). There's not much room for new support, unless you print new DImension Robo units.

Grade 2-

Again, four slots go to DaiDragon, and four are going to end up with Dailady. This leaves you three slots. Your choices are a little better- Cosmo Beak, Twin Order, Operator Girl Mika for your soul plussing unit, Cosmic Rid- ahahahahaha no.

Grade 3-

Goes without saying this is locked too.

There are about five slots in the deck you can change cards out in with proper support. And that's not enough to radically restructure it. If new units for Dimension Police are printed that can take the place of the Dimension Robo units, yeah, it'll get more flexible and depending on the skills they might break. But we don't know if that's going to happen. We don't know if that's ever going to need to happen.

In fact it's entirely BECAUSE support is so specifically tailored to the two crossrides (PBO and Great Daiyuusha) that they're so much less efficient. They do not work with what their clan already offers. They do not have free range of units. And this is what crossrides should do. The reason The End is so ridiculous is that aside from being Overlord locked (Oh no, I have to play two REALLY STRONG Grade 3), it's completely modular and can run a full range of support from one of the best-supported clans in the entire game. It can do a terrific amount of minmaxing because it's not locked to this tiny pool of units who work well with it. Phantom Blaster Overlord forces you to run itself, a sub-par Grade 3, and has a pretty small range of units at the lower grades to make it work. Nemain might have been able to kick it up a notch if it weren't so well-balanced by its 3k power. Macha might, but even she's pretty outclassed, and you're not putting cards into play fast enough. They're probably not going to get much stronger, no matter how the clan around them evolves.

And that's how it should be, is what I'm saying. Once you get a particular deck for a crossride, that should be the only deck it gets. That should be, like, it. It shouldn't be flexible enough to do anything else. You shouldn't be able to play it as anything else. It should be done. After that you get good choices within the framework of the other clans- run the crossride, or run the faster decks or the decks with more available options? It's something which in all probability might have worked in Japan. If not for effing The End.

Sorry I'm so long-winded with this, it's partly a reaction, if anything, to something I picked up following and playing English format- namely, in the absence of crossrides, the game is phenomenally faster and there's a lot less you can do to put a check on decks that gain a lot of cards early or midway into the game, and then pound face until the end. I don't want that to be the only thing Vanguard's competitive can offer, and in the absence of too much else, crossrides are one of the existing solutions available.

There's a huge and obvious flaw with the data you posted. It's just a result. We don't know about the input that gave us that result. You can't derive any information about the strength of the decks from looking at which ones place. I've already seen that list and know the recent winners. For example, 7 of the 28 decks that recently placed around Japan were The End. If there were only 7 The End decks out of 200 entrants, that's a 100% win rate that guarantees a top spot. Alfred won 6 places. If there were 140 Alfreds in 200 entrants (70% of all decks) then only 6 of them winning out of 28 places means that Alfred probably isn't very good. So we actually have no information about the strength of the decks given only the placement results. The problem here is you only have one variable in a bi-variable experiment. (And hell, there are actually three other variables that I won't even go into the complexity of: Player skill, Tournament structure, and sample size for chance). Let me give you a logic example of why this is the case if you don't yet understand:

If it has rained, then your lawn will be wet.
We know that if we look out and see it raining, the lawn will be wet later. However, we don't know just from looking at a wet lawn if it has rained. Other things can cause wetness like sprinkler systems, garden hoses, draining an above-ground pool, kids playing with water balloons, or snow melting. So just observing that the lawn is wet in this example is not enough evidence to conclude that it has rained beforehand. This is an inductive-type fallacy; specifically affirming the consequent. This example is similar to our missing tournament data. We don't know what came before those posted results. If you can get that evidence and we can analyze it (despite there being many more missing variables) to observe that in the last several tournaments, Oracles have competed equally well with crossride decks, then it would be sufficient to tentatively call them Tier 1. Until such evidence arises, the burden of proof has not been met and the statement is not assumed to be true. And until such time, the way to derive Tiers must therefore be based on the pure mathematics behind each deck, which I've given conclusive evidence for numerous times favors units with costless defense above 11000 aka Crossrides.

As for your second part, no Ultimate Daiyusha isn't "unplayable" without the others. You don't need the critical increase. You only need the soul to get a crossride. That's the whole point. You keep focusing on trivial stuff like their skills. That's not the main problem. It's the 13k defense which Dimension Police BT04 would've had access to because they had Super Daiyusha.

The other problem I now have is that you meant to say that you think support should die for a deck once it gets a crossride. See, this is a big problem because regardless of what you call "support", Crossrides are splashable. Conditionless 11ks for one. Only requiring a card in the soul for two. Done. Now it has access to every other card in the clan. So if you buff the other cards in the clan ever, then the CR deck gets the biggest gain by default. The idea is flawed because it isn't scalable. Unless you think Shadows and Dimension Police should never get support again (and I think you'd make a lot of enemies saying that).

Please don't apologize for being long winded all the time. Instead, stop being long winded all the time. The only thing unsupported clans need are GOOD and BALANCED support. Not crossrides. That's the game design equivalent of scotch tape.

fuck, i just bought some royal pal shit today. If i saw this post earlier, i would've gotten the golds! :C

Alice wrote:

There's a huge and obvious flaw with the data you posted. It's just a result. We don't know about the input that gave us that result. You can't derive any information about the strength of the decks from looking at which ones place. I've already seen that list and know the recent winners. For example, 7 of the 28 decks that recently placed around Japan were The End. If there were only 7 The End decks out of 200 entrants, that's a 100% win rate that guarantees a top spot. Alfred won 6 places. If there were 140 Alfreds in 200 entrants (70% of all decks) then only 6 of them winning out of 28 places means that Alfred probably isn't very good. So we actually have no information about the strength of the decks given only the placement results. The problem here is you only have one variable in a bi-variable experiment. (And hell, there are actually three other variables that I won't even go into the complexity of: Player skill, Tournament structure, and sample size for chance). Let me give you a logic example of why this is the case if you don't yet understand:

If it has rained, then your lawn will be wet.
We know that if we look out and see it raining, the lawn will be wet later. However, we don't know just from looking at a wet lawn if it has rained. Other things can cause wetness like sprinkler systems, garden hoses, draining an above-ground pool, kids playing with water balloons, or snow melting. So just observing that the lawn is wet in this example is not enough evidence to conclude that it has rained beforehand. This is an inductive-type fallacy; specifically affirming the consequent. This example is similar to our missing tournament data. We don't know what came before those posted results. If you can get that evidence and we can analyze it (despite there being many more missing variables) to observe that in the last several tournaments, Oracles have competed equally well with crossride decks, then it would be sufficient to tentatively call them Tier 1. Until such evidence arises, the burden of proof has not been met and the statement is not assumed to be true. And until such time, the way to derive Tiers must therefore be based on the pure mathematics behind each deck, which I've given conclusive evidence for numerous times favors units with costless defense above 11000 aka Crossrides.

Okay, we're officially discussing two different things.

I'm discussing the trends of an actual metagame over time.

You are discussing a theoretical metagame which, all other factors removed, should emerge if what you're saying is correct.

Whether or not you can explain every result as a fluke- and barring additional data, we don't know if you can- this is what happened. This is the data I have to extrapolate things from in my actual meta I am actually part of. And until I find actual practical results proving otherwise, that is what I'm going to work with when communicating things. The meta is what exists, not what should or might exist, and that's how I approach and analyze it. Oracles, whether by accident or not, are Tier 1 and have been Tier 1/Tier 2+ very solidly. Crossrides have lost at events to other competing decks. And regardless of which way you slice it?

Shadow Paladin. And Dimension Police. ARE NOWHERE. They have never topped a single event. Ever. Even once. Even when Phantom Overlord was released. The only even they did have it top in was a team event, it's never occurred in singles. Never. The decks did not get big. They are not getting big.

EDIT: And come to think of it, I actually did link you to the listings of every tournament, I just picked the OTT one since it was an example of an event where nothing crossride-related topped. Still a lot of The End, still a lot of Majesty, but in all the results it's Golds/OTT/Alfred who top the rest of the time. They're our other tier 1 decks, or at least tier 2+. Not the existing other crossrides.

Alice wrote:

As for your second part, no Ultimate Daiyusha isn't "unplayable" without the others. You don't need the critical increase. You only need the soul to get a crossride. That's the whole point. You keep focusing on trivial stuff like their skills. That's not the main problem. It's the 13k defense which Dimension Police BT04 would've had access to because they had Super Daiyusha.

And you are not giving enough focus to skills and unit synergy, which are what decks are built on.

Alice wrote:

The other problem I now have is that you meant to say that you think support should die for a deck once it gets a crossride. See, this is a big problem because regardless of what you call "support", Crossrides are splashable. Conditionless 11ks for one. Only requiring a card in the soul for two. Done. Now it has access to every other card in the clan. So if you buff the other cards in the clan ever, then the CR deck gets the biggest gain by default. The idea is flawed because it isn't scalable. Unless you think Shadows and Dimension Police should never get support again (and I think you'd make a lot of enemies saying that).

This is incorrect. A crossride is, by and large, impossible to splash because you are required to run two units (the lower grade, the crossride). Once you do that, it is immediately a build of the crossride- not a build of something else within the same clan. Your Vanguard circle is limited to the abilities the crossride brings to it, which means what is left is combinations of rear guards which are splashable.

And quite honestly, with Great Daiyuusha? Even going with what you just said and including the entire Dimension Police cardpool? The optimal build for Great Daiyuusha is the one where it actually has a skill beyond 13k, not the one where you try to ride a 13k vanilla unit and sit on it all game and expect that, on its own, to win. You can't really do that. Crossrides still need to be able to create pressure, and in a Vanguard-circle-centric clan like Dimension Police you are really limited in your ways of doing that.

I'm also not calling for Dimension Police or Shadow Paladin to never get any more support- just support which doesn't directly buff the crossride deck by handing it tools it can incorporate into its limited frame of design. Generic, splashable Grade 2-or-lower skills usually aren't a problem as far as buffing crossrides goes. Neither are nice skills which benefit only certain strategies within the clan, or- more important- the one thing crossrides can't include.

Crossrides can never include new Grade 3s beyond their base. It's very easy to give clans new and viable strategies by focusing them at higher grades, or on things which war of attrition decks won't necessarily like or be able to efficiently use.

Quote :

Please don't apologize for being long winded all the time. Instead, stop being long winded all the time. The only thing unsupported clans need are GOOD and BALANCED support. Not crossrides. That's the game design equivalent of scotch tape.

I'm not saying they need crossrides either. Don't get me wrong, that's a bit broad. What I'm saying is that, based on my experience of the game, crossrides can exist. They don't need to. In theory there's a lot that doesn't "need" to be part of Vanguard. But treating them as a taboo, period, is really unfairly stifling and harshly limits the territory the game can explore moreso than the very factors which keep Vanguard balanced already do. And as someone who wants to theoretically see this game run as long as certain other competitive TCGs have, I want to defend things that can give it longevity from a design standpoint.

If Crossrides are never introduced into the english format, I'd want to see equivalent units and support being given to the clans as they enter- which in turn would lead to either things designed for english format flowing back to Japan and potentially negatively affecting our meta, or the metas eventually ending up as two completely different games. Neither of which I particularly care for in the long run, because I started this game playing JP Vanguard, it's where most of my play experience is, and unfortunately it's a product I can't actually purchase. I'd like the option to support Bushiroad by buying the product I actually got sold on to begin with, even if it's warts-and-all.

Your data is incomplete and your extrapolations are a fallacy. No one should share your opinions based on the reasoning that you use because it's fallacious.

That's all there is to it. You can keep writing needlessly long replies, but that's what it comes down to.