Card of the Week: December 27th

Oh boy, its been a while since I've made a post. I don't have any particular excuse aside from Fallout 4 being so enthralling, and Christmas being a family time and all that nonsense. Anyway, in the spirit  of the holidays and as a pseudo-apology for skipping a week or two, I'm going to double down in this article and do 2 cards. Incidentally, they combo out with each other and they're 2 cards I've been waiting for since the game came out. First up:

Absolute King, Gluttony Dogma

[Stride]-Stride Step-[Choose one or more cards with the sum of their grades being 3 or greater from your hand, and discard them]Stride this card on your (VC) from face down.

[AUTO](VC/RC):Engorge[AUTO](VC) Generation Break 2:[Choose a face down card named "Absolute King, Gluttony Dogma" from your G zone, and turn it face up] When this unit becomes engorged, if you retired three or more units during this turn due to the effect of this unit's engorge ability, you may pay the cost. If you do, until end of turn, this unit gets [Power]+10000, and "[AUTO](VC)[1/Turn]:At the end of the battle that this unit attacked, if you retired five or more units during this turn due to the effect of this unit's engorge ability, [Stand] this unit, and this unit gets drive-1 until end of turn.".

First up is Tachikaze's finisher unit from the Technical Booster. Oh boy is this thing a can of worms. First off, he has their new keyword "Engorge," which is a state a unit may become by retiring 1 or more other Rear Guards. As with most keywords, its just a way for Bushi to shorten the redundant card text most Tachikaze had telling you to Retire X, and if you do, do something. Plus, it just sounds baller. I personally liked the "Raging Devourer" translation, but "Engorge" sounds a little less try-hard and is a little smoother to say.

Getting into the meat of his skill, we have a 2-stage effect, which triggers depending on the number of cards you ate in order to become Engorged. If you ate 3, you flip a copy of him in order to give him 10,000 Power, making him a 36,000 Power beatstick with Triple Drive, and the ability to trigger any on-retire skills. If you eat 5 Rear Guards however (i.e. your entire field), he will restand with 1 less drive check. That's a whopping 5 drive checks in total, without even touching your hand. To top it all off, he is entirely counterblast free, meaning you're free to spend your resources on anything else in the deck to help mitigate his cost, or just make different plays entirely. This guy is incredibly flexible and can turn the crappiest of fields or hands into a 36,000 Power, 5-Drive Checking monstrosity. I can't think of a single other restander in the game that actually increases your hand size. Granted, its at the cost of your entire field, but that's why we have this guy:

Emperor Dragon, Gaiaemperor

[AUTO](VC/RC):Engorge (When this unit attacks, you may retire one or more of your other rear-guards. If you do, it is engorged until end of turn)
[CONT](VC) Generation Break 2:If this unit is engorged, this unit gets [Power]+5000/[Critical]+1.
[AUTO](VC):[Counter Blast (1)] During your turn, when your G unit Stride, you may pay the cost. If you do, choose up to two cards from your hand, call them to separate (RC), choose up to two of your rear-guards, and until end of turn, they get "[AUTO]:During your turn, when this unit is put into the drop zone from (RC), call this card to (RC).".

The on-stride unit (Or Breakstride, Stride Bearer, whatever terminology you prefer) for Tachikaze who, like much of the rest of the clan, was named by Bushiroad's Redundancy Department of Redundancy. Setting the repetitive name aside, his skill is actually a god-send for the clan. His Generation Break 2 is a standard "Gain 5,000 and a Critical for a cost/condition" that most of the old stride bearers had, and it would have been nice to get something creative and maybe defensive, but beggars can't be choosers I suppose. His on-stride skill more than makes up for the lackluster GB2, though.

For counterblast 1, he can take any 2 units on your field and allow them to revive themselves whenever they get retired. This completely removes the need for units like Iguranogorg or Skyptero, who were imperative to have on the field for the deck to do anything. What's more, he can now take any unit with an on-retire skill (Like Beamptero or Slashptero) and let you trigger them, then bring them back to be triggered again. What's more, he has the same clause as Altmile that allows him to call units THEN distribute the skill, so early control or inability to call an early field can't even stop this guy. 

Now, for the climax of the article, imagine putting these two cards together. Remember how Dogma's retire 5 cost was pretty hefty? Well, Gaia essentially turns it into Retire 3 and stand a column. How potent is that!? If you have a full field, with standard powerlines, your final turn attack pattern will look like: 16,000 -> 16,000 -> 36,000 -> 36,000 -> 16,000 + Triggers. Not to mention any skills that would have been triggered by Dogma's engorgement. Having already playtested this deck, I can tell you on good authority that this combo is utterly stupid. What's more, if you take the starter into account, you can easily have 3 units on the field after Dogma's second attack, meaning you can get a third Vanguard attack by using Dark Rex. Tachikaze have gone from sleeper Tier 1.5 deck to flat-out Tier 1 in a matter of 3 cards, and there's only more to come! Bushi has definitely made Tachikaze a "technical" clan with this booster, and I couldn't be happier.

Card of the Week: December 5th

Hello loyal readers! Despite the onset of finals week and the ever-growing pressure to devote my time to studying, I have broken through and delivered yet another week of Card of the Week. So without too much of a sob story, I present to you:

Wings of Annihilation, Blade Wing Tibold

[Stride] (Released when both players' vanguards are grade 3 or greater!)-Stride Step-[Choose one or more cards with the sum of their grades being 3 or greater from your hand, and discard them]Stride this card on your (VC) from face down.
[AUTO]:When this unit is placed on (VC), If you have a heart card with "Blade Wing" in its card name, return all the cards from your drop zone to your deck, and shuffle your deck. Then, if the number of cards in your soul is fifteen or more, until end of turn, this unit gets "[CONT](VC):All of your rear-guards in the front row gets [Power]+10000.", and if not, Soul Charge (5).

Oh boy is this guy really something. I know we got a lot of Monthly Bushiroad spoilers earlier today, but honestly I'm much more excited about this guy than any of those cards. Not only does he support an all-time favorite clan of mine (Dark Irregulars), he also breaths new light into Blade Wing Reijy, and old and decrepit card from Set 7 that didn't even see play when he was released. With the onset of FC2015 Winter, however, he has become his own deck type. Aside from Tibold, Dark Irregulars also got Blade Wing Sullivan who, having been one of the very first Fighter's Collection reveals, was drastically underwhelming. Tibold, however, fixed all of his issues.

First off, he is a deck refresher. Genesis originally got a card like this in the form of Dreaming Dragon and it was a god-send to the clan. Not only did it remedy the issue of the clan decking out from all of its soul charging, it also added a layer of skill by making it so your choices of soul blasting actually mattered, since they were going to end up back in the deck. Tibold adds all of this to Dark Irregulars, but more consistently, as a stride is much more available than a 4-of in your deck.

The rest of his skill follows the Dark Irregular motif of "X soul yields this effect, Y soul yields this effect." If you have 15 soul (the clan's go-to threshold), then your front row Rear Guards get 10,000 Power. This is incredible with stand triggers (which he can put back into the deck), and is essentially a free Conquest Dragon... that can be used 4 times.


If you don't have 15 soul, which is very likely, then you simply Soul Charge 5. Yes. five. Haven't hit the threshold yet? Ok, here's a third of it. Sadly he doesn't combo with Doreen, since these soul charges happen during the Stride Phase rather than the Main Phase, but he doesn't need to. This skill not only turbo's through your soul to hit the 15 threshold (for both himself and Gilles de Rais), but he also combo's with Blade Wing Sullivan. If Sullivan is your Vanguard and you have 15 soul or more, all of your guards gain 10,000 shield. This means a single trigger will 1-pass an unboosted Stride. How incredible is that? The downside is you have to Soul Blast 2 after he's attacked while this skill is active, which usually means 1 or 2 turns (at most) of its use before you deck out. But with Tibold, you can continuously refresh your deck and soul to turn it into a grind game. And if you soul blast your triggers for Sullivan? They just go right back into the deck with Tibold. Just look at his art; He's already laughing at your opponent for even trying to oppose him.

Tibold is great at all stages of the game. And, since he isn't GB-anything restricted, he can be your first stride. You can use him to spike your soul count in a pinch (as opposed to Kisskill Lira, who has to hit and can be blocked), to pump up your Rear Guards, or to prevent deck out late-game. One of the biggest issues Dark Irregulars had with their newest support is that they only had 1 or 2 turns of sitting at 15 soul before they decked out, meaning they only had 1 (2 turns if you're lucky) of being able to use Gilles de Rais. If an opponent wasn't at 3 damage (4 for the insta-kill), Gilles wasn't actually pressuring them too much. Especially if you soul charged a lot of your triggers and knew you weren't going to hit them. There was nothing worse than staring down a 2-damage opponent knowing you only had 1 turn left in you. However, Tibold remedies that by letting you drag the mid-game out as long as you need to before going in for the kill. He is the perfect disciple to the unholy Lord Gilles.

Card of the Week: November 27th

First off, Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I know it happened yesterday, but between family and school work, I didn't have the time or energy to put up a special article (Yes, I had work over break >.>). But anyway, here's this week's Card of the Week:

Destruction Tyrant, Hellrex Maxima

[Stride]-Stride Step-[Choose one or more cards with the sum of their grades being 3 or greater from your hand, and discard them]Stride this card on your (VC) from face down.
[ACT](VC)[1/Turn]:[Choose one of your rear-guards, and retire it] If you have a heart card with "Rex" in its card name, search your deck for up to one card with "Rex" in its card name, bind it face up, and shuffle your deck. If you bind a card, choose up to three units in your front row, and they get [Power]+4000 until end of turn.

If there was any doubt that this would be the card of the day, you don't know me well enough. With Tachikaze being my main clan, and this week revealing our 2 Fighter's Collection cards, I knew what today's article was going to look like. And honestly, when Squall Rex got revealed I was nearly heartbroken. After seeing the Nightmist and Infinite Zero Dragon support, I was super pumped for Spinodriver support, since the theme looked like this set would focus on Break Rides and Season 3 stuff. When I saw it was going to be "Rex" support, and the non-stride unit was a crappy G3, I was devastated. I still held out hope that the stride would redeem it, and boy was I shocked. Hellrex is a monstrosity.

Being restricted to a "Rex" heart, this guy is primarily going to work with Dark Rex, Deathrex, and Squall Rex. There are other "Rex" G3 units (Battlerex and Gigarex), but they're utter garbage. For a mere retire 1 cost, he'll bind 1 Rex from your deck and give your front row 4,000 Power. Binding from deck is incredibly powerful, since its an on-demand setup for Dark Rex or Squall Rex. The front row boost might not seem like much at first glance, since 4,000 to a 16,000 column is only 20,000, which doesn't break any numbers. However, it will allow an unboosted attacked to hit a Vanguard, and that isn't taking into account binding Dark Rex or Squall Rex from your hand, who are each another 3,000 boost. Since the lineup for Generic Tachikaze is really vanilla and lackluster (until we get our G-support in the Tactical Booster), you're going to be using a lot of the 10,000 and 8,000 vanillas. Sonic Noa (the 8,000) behind any Grade 2 makes 17,000, which actually breaks numbers with the boost. 10,000 Vanilla's with 7,000 boosters also break the 21,000 mark with this boost. What's even better is that one of the Grade 2 vanilla's, Megarex, is a "Rex" you can bind for this guy's effect, if you run out of your G3s for some reason. Something that may also be overlooked is that a 4,000 boost to himself means he won't suffer from being 25,000 Power if you stride him over Death or Dark Rex.

This guy's ability to be the first stride is astounding. It makes up for the crappy mid game the "Rex" deck has, and the power boost allows you to shove your opponent to high damage early. Then, with the ability to grab Dark Rex from the deck, he sets up for his own finishing turn. I wasn't expecting much from this guy, but he definitely delivered, and he's only going to get better when the Tactical Booster drops.

Card of the Week: November 20th

Helldeity Seal Dragon, Crossorigin

[Stride]-Stride Step-[Choose one or more cards with the sum of their grades being 3 or greater from your hand, and discard them]Stride this card on your (VC) from face down.
[ACT](VC)[1/Turn]:[Counter Blast (1) & Choose a face down card from your G zone, and turn it face up] If you have a heart card with "Seal Dragon" in its card name, for each face up card named "Helldeity Seal Dragon, Crossorigin" in your G zone choose up to one of your opponent's rear-guards, and retire it. Your opponent reveals four cards from the top of his or her deck, and chooses a grade 2 card from among them for each unit put into the drop zone with this effect. Your opponent calls the chosen cards to separate open (RC), and shuffles his or her deck. If your opponent has two or more grade 2 rear-guards, this unit gets [Critical]+1 until end of turn.

Today's Card of the Week is the Stride unit from Fighter's Collection 2015 Winter, supporting the "Seal Dragon" deck. First off, I just want to state that I hate the name translation. The original translation, "Clothorigin," sounded a lot less try-hard, and kept with the Seal Dragon theme of being named after different types of fabrics. But aside from that, the skill isn't half bad.

Cost-wise, CB1 and a persona flip isn't hefty. Seal Dragons are a little on the CB-heavy side of things, but that could possibly change when their 2nd Fighter's Collection unit gets revealed, or maybe their playstyle will change up with the addition of this bad boy. Its also interesting to note that he doesn't necessarily require you to flip a copy of himself for his cost, but the rest of the skill essentially does.

For each copy of himself face-up in the G-zone, you retire 1 of the opponent's units. So, if he's your first stride, it would be in your best interest to flip a copy of himself, otherwise the skill just won't go off. You can end up using this guy twice, and flip a copy of himself both times for a total of 1 then 3 retires (4 in all), or use him 3 times and flip something else over the 2nd and 3rd time you stride him. That would give you 1 retire, 2 retires, then 3 retires for a total of 6 over the course of 3 turns. Generally, unless you're playing against a really grindy deck, you won't be striding that much, and it certainly won't be into this guy.

The kicker is that, after retiring these units, your opponent reveals the top 4 cards of their deck and calls Grade 2's to replace their now-empty field. The interesting thing about this skill is that, unlike the other Seal Dragon cards, his call is mandatory, so the opponent can't screw you over by not calling new Grade 2's.

But wait, "How would that screw you over?" you ask? Well, Seal Dragons have a few cards that work off of the number of Grade 2's on the opponent's side of the field. The 3rd part of this guy's skill is one such effect. Just like Georgette, if the number of Grade 2's the opponent has is 2 or more, he'll get a critical. That's scary. First off, extra criticals on first strides are incredible. If you went second, and thus were able to stride first, then you're attacking the opponent with a 2-crit monstrosity they more than likely won't be able to guard. Pushing them to 5 damage from your Vanguard attack alone is a very high possibility here. And if they do somehow manage to guard you? They've either wasted a Perfect Guard (and dropped a key combo piece or something else useful to pay its cost), or they've used up just about all the guard in their hand. Either way its a win-win for you, since you've forced a lot of cards out early, and that just gives them a really weak mid and late game.

Other skills that scale off of the opponent's Grade 2-count are Georgette or Inferno Blockade (in case you can't stride the following turn), Tarapaulin Dracokid, and Gaiserge. So Crossorigin screwing with their field scaling (I hear they like having G2 Vanguard boosters) on top of loading up the skills for the other units, makes him one Well-Rounded Randy.

Card of the Week: November 15th

Destruction Tyrant, Twin Tempest

[Stride]-Stride Step-[Choose one or more cards with the sum of their grades being 3 or greater from your hand, and discard them]Stride this card on your (VC) from face down.
[AUTO](VC) Generation Break 2:[Counter Blast (2) & Soul Blast (2) & Choose three of your rear-guards, and retire them] At the end of the battle that this unit attacked a vanguard, you may pay the cost. If you do, retire all of each player's rear-guards.

Since Tachikaze is my main squeeze, this week's Card of the Week is going to be focusing in on the first stride we've seen from the upcoming Tactical Booster: RECKLESS RAMPAGE. Supposedly this card is a Generation Rare (One of three in the set), and for a GR, I can't say I'm disappointed in it. So, without further ado, lets dive into its skill.

For a fairly hefty cost, this guy is a field nuke. 2 Counterblasts, 2 Soul Blasts, and 3 retires to kill anything left on the field. Under prime conditions, your opponent will have a full field and you will have 3 units on your side (since anything else would just be an unnecessary minus to yourself). Looking at the cost, the 3 retires of your own will account for 3 of the 5 units you're retiring on your opponent's field. The remaining 2 units should be covered by the SB2/CB2 cost, but honestly that's over-pricing it. In the current game, 1 CB = 1 card, and 1 CB ~ 1.5 Soul Blasts. So, this guy has what is essentially an unnecessary Soul Blast 2 cost on him, making him over-costed for what was already a fairly mediocre skill. On top of that, anything that counterblasts in a Tachikaze deck is immediately a giant red flag, since most/all of your CBs should be going to your Rear Guards in order to keep recycling them. Not to mention he has the GB2 restriction, which should in theory make up for some of the cost he would otherwise have.

That being said, we haven't seen any of the new G-support, which could very well make this guy work wonders. If we get ways to recycle Rear Guards without using counterblasts or soul blasts, this guy could easily become usable. But until then, this guy is nothing more than a 1-of in your G-zone just for the rare situations where he may be usable, and because I'm tired of looking at only Archraider and Pearly Titan.

Card of the Week: November 9th

And the countdown begins! G Booster 5: Moonlit Dragonfang drops November 13th in Japan, and we're on the final few days before its release. The majority of the set has been spoiled, but we have yet to see the skill for Dragon Masquerade Tamer, Harry, as well as a few RRs. Not to mention the majority of the commons are still unaccounted for. The RRR lineup for the set has been largely disappointing, and there's quite a large disparity in usefulness among them, so the last hope of this set is for some amazing Rs and Cs (which, honestly, is very plausible). But for Today's Card of the Week, I'll be honing in on last night's big reveal, the last RRR:

Death Star-Vader, Chaos Universe 

[Stride]-Stride Step-[Choose one or more cards with the sum of their grades being 3 or greater from your hand, and discard them]Stride this card on your (VC) from face down.
[ACT](VC)[1/Turn]:[Counter Blast (1) & Choose a face down card named "Death Star-vader, Chaos Universe" from your G zone, and turn it face up] If you have a heart card with "Chaos" in its card name, choose up to one of your opponent's (RC) without a card, your opponent chooses a card from his or her hand, and puts it into that (RC) face down as a locked card. If the number of face up cards in your G zone is two or more, choose one of your opponent's rear-guards, and lock it.

The stride meant to revive "Chaos Breaker Dragon" that people have been on the edge of their seats waiting on since it was announced. Chaos Breaker was a plague back when it was first released, and very few people wanted to see it revitalized and have to experience that PTSD. However, Bushi did a very good job designing this monster.

Chaos Universe is one of those 2-stage strides, one that is usable as your initial stride, but has more benefits when used as your 2nd or more. His first-tier ability, which also requires a "Chaos" heart, is also his most intriguing one. You pick any unoccupied rear guard circle and force your opponent to lock a card there. What's most interesting about this is that, unlike similar cards like Cold Death Dragon or Omega Loop, the card doesn't not come from the top of their deck, but from their hand. While this may not seem like much, there are implications that make it one of Link Joker's best abilities thus far:


First of all, this is directly forcing cards out of the opponent's hand, and puts them in an awkward position. If they have a crappy hand, this will force them to call triggers or perfect guards. Or it may make them call attackers or boosters with on-call effects that they wanted to save for later. If they put down a good chunk of their hand early and rushed you, then they probably won't have many units in their hand that they want on the field once you're able to use this ability. It can really put a damper on their strategy.

But the biggest asset this skill has is that its a premature lock. The greatest weakness control abilities (retire, stun, lock, etc) have is that they can't do anything until after a unit has been called. You want to retire/lock a Tidal Assault? Ok, but Aqua Force has to call it first, meaning you've already been rushed or they've already triggered their 4th attack skills for a turn. You can't lock or retire it until its already done its damage and they don't care about it anymore. Or, as is more commonly the case, the opponent will just wait and not field anything until they want to make their huge push turn (i.e. a Lambros or Victoplasma turn), and since control decks don't have many ways of generating their own advantage, they'll likely take a huge hit from that.

However, Chaos Universe allows you to prevent those turns/plays from happening. Locking an Aqua Force player's front row before their Lambros turn means they can't leave their field open, free from your control, until they're ready to win. They won't be able to Lambros you the next turn since their front row is locked, and since you've forced a unit there, you'll be able to lock it the next turn and keep them in check. Chaos Universe adds the much-needed speed to lock that its been lacking to keep up with the meta.


The second part of the skill isn't much to write home about, at least from a design standpoint. It just gives you more bang for your buck. Locking a card from the opponent's hand is cool and all, but Counterblast 1 and a persona flip is a bit costly for that. 2 locks for that, however, is muy bueno. This card essentially does the same thing as Big Crunch: CB1 and Persona Flip at GB2 to lock 2 cards. The difference is that Big Crunch locks 1 column for 2 turns, while Chaos Universe locks down 2 columns (assuming you use your 2 locks on the front rows) for 1 turn. It should also be noted that Chaos Universe's first skill requires the opponent to have at least 1 open rear guard circle, so its pointless against a full field.

All-in-all, this was a really well-designed card. It expanded current game mechanics without breaking them, fixed a large weakness in the deck is was made to support, and isn't over powered or under costed for what it does. Star Vaders still suffer from not having a viable finisher unit, but grind decks aren't entirely extinct yet, so it'll be interesting to see how this card affects the meta.

Too Many Clans, Not Enough Clansmen

The fact that there's too many clans in the game is nothing new. As of now, there are 25 clans in the game, 26 if you count Cray Elementals (which I won't). On top of all the original clans introduced in the sets coinciding with season 1 of the anime (Sets 1-5), we received 4 new clans in Season 2 (Gold Paladin, Narukami, Angel Feather, and Aqua Force), 2 new clans in Season 3 (Genesis and Link Joker), and 2 new clans in Season 5 (Touken Ranbu and Gear Chronicle). So the sake of doing so (and to make this article longer), I'll provide a list of all the current clans:

• Royal Paladin
• Gold Paladin
• Shadow Paladin
• Angel Feather
• Genesis
• Oracle Think Tank

• Kagero
• Narukami
• Murakumo
• Nubatama
• Tachikaze

• Dark Irregulars
• Pale Moon
• Spike Brothers
• Gear Chronicle

• Granblue
• Bermuda Triangle
• Aqua Force

• Neo Nectar
• Great Nature
• Megacolony

• Nova Grappler
• Dimension Police
• Link Joker

• Touken Ranbu

As of now, the game has received a total of 22 Booster Sets, 21 Trial Decks, and 17 Extra/Clan Booster Sets. With 5 Seasons of support, that boils down to about 4 Booster Sets, 5 Trial Decks, and 3 Extra Boosters per season. That means each season, there are 12 outlets to give support to the 25 clans in the game. Since Extra Boosters (Which have basically been replaced by Clan Boosters) generally only support 1 clan, its up to the Trial Decks and Main Boosters to support 22 clans, divided amongst 9 possible forms of distribution. It doesn't help that Trial Decks are rarely stand alone, and requiring actual set space in order to flesh out the support for their clans. I do this on a season-by-season basis because, if a clan doesn't receive support each season, it essentially becomes unplayable until the next cycle, given the game's format of "New Mechanic each season".

Now that we've seen the amount of support each season isn't enough to sustain a game full of 25 clans, each vying for space in those sets, how should Bushi go about fixing this? One solution would be to simply release more sets each season, but all that would really do is increase the amount of time between the periods where any singular clan would receive support. Plus, if the support a clan/deck gets for that set is fairly lackluster (as Bushi has a tendency to do to anything not played by a Main Character), they're doomed until the next cycle, which could be a year or more.

The more obvious (and healthy) solution would be to start eliminating clans from the game. Less clans to support means Bushi can put more man power into giving clans quality support, which would make the game much more interesting to play. Additionally, since each clan needs a way to distinguish itself from the others, Bushi become hard-pressed to find new mechanics or strategies to base clans on the more they add to the game. With fewer overall decks to have to support, they would have a lot more leniency in the kind of support each clan got each set.

Take Kagero and Narukami for example. How are they different? They're both heavily rooted in the retire mechanic. Recently, Narukami have started to gear themselves more towards binding cards (but that itself starts treading into Nubatama territory), and the only real difference between them and Kagero are that most of Narukami's cards are retire and beatdown, whereas Kagero are more retire and restand (if you're playing an "Overlord" deck). In all honesty, these two clans could be combined into a single one and the game would be no worse for the wear (Narukami only ever came to be because Bushi wanted to stop supporting Kagero, anyway). For the purpose of this article, I'll call this combined clan "Control". Gear Chronicle could be included in this as well, as their "Go to the bottom of the deck" mechanic is just an upgraded form of retire, and the rest of their clan is nothing but Silent Tom wannabe's and other forms of guard restriction, which is just cancerous to have en masse.

The same could be said for all 3 of the Paladin clans. Like Narukami, Gold Paladins only came into being because Bushiroad wanted to stop supporting Royal Paladins for a while. Recently, they've tried to distinguish Shadow and Royal paladins by forcing Shadows to almost exclusively superior call Grade 1 units, and Royals exclusively focus on Grade 2. Golds are stuck in the middle with their "Top X" mechanic, and really are just a less supported, more restricted version of these other two clans. Given the fact that Royals have 2-3 decks that operate on calling and having multiple/certain Grade 1 units, shifting them to focus to G2 was a really confusing move on Bushi's part. It would do the game a lot of good to combine them all into 1 single "Paladin" clan that just focused on superior calling, and had different deck variants that focused on different grades or different means of doing so. Shadow Paladin's theme of having bosses that feed on their own units also treads into Tachikaze's territory, so leaving the self-hunting to the Dinosaurs would give them a better sense of identity too. For the sake of whittling down the number of clans in the game even further, Neo Nectar can be put into this new clan as well, since they also focus on superior calling, but in a much more restricted manner.

There's also the age-old Nubatama and Murakumo issue. The general census is that Murakumo were originally going to be Nubatama, but Bushi decided hand control would be too powerful (And in the early stages of the game, it kind of was), but never really sat down and fleshed out Murakumo. They focus on clones, but that really just makes them a crappier version of Neo Nectar. Given the fact that, thematically, they're the exact same think as Nubatama, Bushi would be wise to just scrap Murakumo altogether and give some of their tricks to Nubatama and make a "Ninja" clan.

When Link Joker came out, everyone was ranting and raving about how the Lock mechanic was just a better version of Megacolony's stun. Which it was. Megacolony has since moved on to Vanguard stunning and cheaper stuns, to give themselves a little more identity, but VG stunning is a far too unhealthy mechanic to keep expanding upon. It would be a lot healthier to combine these two into one "Douchebag" clan.

Dark Irregulars, Genesis, and Pale Moon all share the same idea of manipulating the soul. DI focus on hoarding soul and hitting certain thresholds to activate skills, Genesis focus on amassing a large soul so they can soul blast it all for costs, and Pale Moon take the quality over quantity approach, and focus on manipulating the soul in order to toolbox from it. These different mechanics are unique enough in their own rights, but for the sake of trimming down on the clans in the game, they could all be combined into one "Soul" clan.

Nova Grapplers and Aqua Force are similar enough as well. Nova's focus more on restanding units, whereas Aqua's focus on having multiple units that are all capable of poking the opponent down, but the core of their decks are "Lets get more attacks than usual and beat the opponent down," and for that reason I feel as though they could be combined into a "Rush" clan, focused on firing off as many attacks as possible, rather than a hard advantage engine. Spike Brothers could be put in here as well, since they operate on a similar idea. Gear Chronicle and their new "Time Leap" keyword could be included in this too, but I already put them in the "Control" clan. Gears really just don't know what they want to do with themselves, which is really just a testimony of how saturated the clans are in this game.

Tachikaze and Great Nature could be combined into a "Suicide" clan, which focuses on eating your own units as costs. The two clans have a fairly different playstyle, but at the end of the day, what they aim to do is essentially the same.

Lastly, Touken Ranbu can die. They were (at least for now) just a 1 time thing that only served to make players wait longer for actual support, and didn't actually add anything to the game.

So, the new clan list, after all these changes, would be as follows:

• Paladin
• Oracle Think Tank
• Angel Feather
• Control
• Ninja
• Suicide
• Soul
• Granblue
• Bermuda Triangle
• Douchebag
• Rush
• Dimension Police

That's only 12 clans, less than half of what is currently in the game. There aren't any mechanics that have been left out of abandoned, and there would be little to no bleeding over of one clan into another clan's mechanic or focus. With 12 different means of support each season, there is more than enough space to make sure everything gets substantial, quality support each block. Clan Boosters would go to the more popular clans, likely Paladin, Control, and 1 other clan that is in the popular rotation (We'll say Rush). The remaining 9 clans would be distributed amongst 5 Trial Decks and 4 Booster Sets. That's 2 clans per Booster Set, which is way more than enough. Under these conditions, a season could/would look something like this:

January:

• Trial Deck 1: Handy Helpers, to support Oracle Think Tank
• Trial Deck 2: Now You See Me, to support Ninja

March:

• Booster Set 1: Awakening of the Divine Judgment of the Dragon Lord Elemental Wizard Gods. Supports Oracle Think Tank, Ninja, Suicide, Dimension Police, and Rush.

May:

• Clan Booster 1: Supa Hot Fiah. Supports Control.

July:

• Clan Booster 2: More Fanservice. Supports Bermuda Triangle.

September:

• Booster Set 2: Inevitable Heat Death of the Universe. Supports Angel Feather, Soul, Granblue, and Douchebag.

November:

• Clan Booster 3: Bushi's Money Ho Ho Ho's. Supports Paladin.

That's all 12 clans, in set releases staggered 2 months apart, so power creep is slowed down (compared to the once a month set release we have currently), and this system honestly leaves room for more clans. Or they could scrap their current release format altogether and release 6-10 cards per clan in each set, which guarantees that everyone will be able to get something out of every new set, while allowing Bushi to build up a certain deck idea over the course of a year. As sets are now, decks are pretty much self-contained within their sets. The entirety of the G-era Angel Feather deck was released in set 4. Sure, the deck would welcome more support, but its not like there's some big hole in their deck's strategy that needs another set to patch. The current format Bushi seems to be taking for G-era support is something like this:

Clan's initial set of support includes:

• On-stride Grade 3 boss unit
• On-hit/Initial stride
• Persona Flipping Finisher Stride
• Amber Clone
• Unflipping Perfect Guard
• Obligatory GB1 RG units.

A Clan that gets a second set of support receives the following:

• Stride version of their G3 on-stride boss
• A critical trigger for their G3 on-stride boss
• A Grade 2 Benizel clone
• A Grade 1 Pir clone

If Bushi kept a formula like this, where they released an on-stride boss and stride units for every clan in the year's first booster, then released a better RG kit for each clan in the following booster, and finally released upgraded versions of the boss units in a 3rd booster, they would have a pretty good formula going. A 4th or even 5th booster could be dedicated to "Legacy" support, which would serve the same purpose as something like Fighter's Collection to give older, mascott cards support (like their own stride forms) to make them viable in the current format.