Is the Game Headed Down the Wrong Bushiroad?

Its no surprise that power creep is an becoming an issue in this game, and while it isn't anywhere near the level of Yu-gi-oh yet, the game has certainly strayed from the original appeal of "Every deck is balanced!" However, what's the cause of this? What happened to the fun game where any deck you liked had a chance at a tournament? How can it possibly be salvaged?

First of all, I'd like to put down all the doom and gloom views of the game. While the early stages of power creep are definitely there, they are by no means dominant. Sure, things like Chaos Breaker Dragon and Dragonic Descendant exist, but playing against them with a deck like Tachikaze or Angel Feather is nothing like playing against Blackwings or Inzektors with Ninjas or Sasuke Samurais in Yu-gi-oh.

Now, as it currently stands, there are 15 Core Sets in the game (disregarding Extra Boosters), and 23 clans. The support distribution is as follows:

• Nova Grapplers: 9 Sets
• Kagero: 8 Sets
• Royal Paladin: 8 Sets
• Gold Paladin: 7 Sets
• Narukami: 7 Sets
• Aqua Force: 6 Sets
• Oracle Think Tank: 6 Sets
• Pale Moon: 6 Sets
• Great Nature: 5 Sets
• Shadow Paladin: 5 Sets
• Angel Feather: 5 Sets
• Dimension Police: 5 Sets
• Tachikaze: 5 Sets
• Dark Irregulars: 5 Sets
• Megacolony: 4 Sets
• Granblue: 4 Sets
• Spike Brothers: 3 Sets
• Genesis: 3 Sets
• Link Joker: 3 Sets
• Murakumo: 3 Sets
• Neo Nectar: 3 Sets
• Nubatama: 2 Sets

The support gap among the clans is astounding. Nova Grapplers and Nubatama, both clans introduced in Set 1, sit at the top and bottom of the list, respectively.

On average, Bushiroad will provide 7 clans with support per set. They also average 5 sets per anime season. Doing the math, that should mean there are 35 slots each season for support. With only 23 clans in the game (and only 22 of them receiving core set support), that should mean each clan should be featured each season, right? And with 13 slots to spare. Yet, that clearly isn't the case. Spike Brothers didn't get a single core set of support in Season 2, and only one set in Season 3, and the same happened with Nubatama. Neo Nectar and Murakumo got 1 set of support each season, whereas a clan like Nova Grapplers averaged to about 3 sets each season.

Many players attribute this to Bushiroad's apparent need to saturate the card pools of "popular" clans, i,.e. "Main Character" clans. The whole point of the anime (aside from ruining the actual card game) is to showchase the cards through duels between characters. Of course the fan-favorite characters (such as Aichi and Leon) will get more screen time, and the characters with a lot of screen time will eventually become fan favorites. Due to the symbiotic relationship between the show and the game, more screen time = more support in corresponding sets. Characters like Aichi, who are in just about every episode throughout the entire season, will end up with support for their clans in just about every set, whereas characters like Kenji Mitsusada and Ninja Master Neo, who only appear for a few episodes each season, will be left with only 1, maybe 2, sets of support each season. As more seasons air, the gap between the support these clans receive will only continue to widen.

A lot of players also site set sales as reasons for Bushiroad's decisions to include certain clans in sets. The most notorious example would be Set 7, which had rather dismal sales, the popular opinion being that Bushiroad attributed these sales to the fact that few of the included clans were popular and that no one wanted to play them (after all, why support something no one wants to play?). This, however, would be an incorrect assumption on Bushiroad's part. While Set 7 included some big-name cards like White Hare in the Moon's Shadow, Pellinore and Little Witch, Lulu, it also included a lot of flops, like the "Lox" ride chain, Blade wing Reijy, and just about anything RR that was Pale Moon. The problem wasn't that players didn't like the supported clans, it was that they didn't like the support for the clans.

The biggest example of this would be the "boss" unit for Dark Irregulars introduced in the set: Dark Lord of the Abyss. Notorious for doing the exact same thing as the existing boss, Demon World Marquis Amon, just with a higher base power and a much higher cost, Dark Lord was essentially a waste of a card slot that could have gone to a much better unit that Dark Irregulars could have made much more use out of.

Let's fast forward to a more recent set: Set 14. Some of the biggest outrages in the set were the inclusion of minimal support for Murakumo and Neo Nectar, who each received 11 cards. Removing clone units and triggers, these clans ended up with only about 5 truly "new" cards, whereas Gold Paladins, Kagero, and Genesis, all clans that had received support in just about every set of the season, all received more support than the two underdog clans of Murakumo and Neo Nectar. However, not only did these already over-supported clans receive more support, they also received better support. Despite this being the first set that Quintet Guards were introduced, Bushiroad neglected to provide one to Neo Nectar, but instead gave them another Perfect Guard, despite the clear idea that the game was moving towards these new types of Sentinels. While Narukami and Kagero were also left without Quintet Walls, those two clans were also confirmed for support in the following set, an essential guarantee that they would receive the new Sentinels then, where Neo Nectar likely wouldn't receive further support until late into the next season, creating a support lag that would hamper Neo Nectar's performance for months to come.

The shocking thing is, however, that there is a clear way to both include the "popular" clans in each set for sales AND properly support every clan. As I noted earlier, with 35 slots of support open each season and 22 clans to fill them, there should be no problem providing equal support. Take a look at Set 15, the last booster set for the third season, and what clans it supports: Kagero, Link Joker, Gold Paladin, Shadow Paladin, Megacolony, and Pale Moon. These are 5 over-supported clans and two under-supported ones. The last time Megacolony saw core set support was Set 4, and while Pale Moon has already received support this season, it is still notorious for being a Tier 2 clan. However, Link Joker have already received 3 other sets of support this season, alongside Aqua Force and Gold Paladins, with Kagero not far behind. Shadow Paladins, while possessing a low number of supporting sets, is currently a consistent Tier 1 meta deck in the form of Revengers, which are dominating the format. There is no need to provide further support to a deck such as this.

Rather than taking up space to make the best deck of the season even better, wouldn't it make sense to provide support to a different clan, and release cards that would make that clan a meta deck and provide the game with more decks of equal power, giving players more options to play competitively?

First, I'm going to list which clans I feel are the "oversupported" clans. This is a list made by personal opinion, as well as in agreement with numerous people I've conversed with and polled. Any reader may have a different idea of these clans, but for the purpose of this article, these are the oversupported ones: Gold Paladin, Narukami, Aqua Force, Link Joker, and Kagero. That's 5 clans, and coincidentally, this season had 6 sets of support (Sets 10-15). Instead of loading them all into each set, and then trying to cram 1 or 2 other clans in with them wouldn't it make sense to spread them out? Instead of one set giving support to Link Joker, Narukami, Gold Paladin, and Aqua Force all at once, why not let 2-3 sets do it? Here is a list of each set for Season 3, and the clans supported in them:

Set 10: Narukami, Gold Paladin, Royal Paladin, Nova Grappler, Genesis, and Spike Brothers

Set 11: Narukami, Aqua Force, Tachikaze, Kagero, Genesis, and Angel Feather

Set 12: Narukami, Gold Paladin, Link Joker, Shadow Paladins, Pale Moon, and Dark Irregulars

Set 13: Link Joker, Aqua Force, Angel Feather, Nova Grappler, Dimension Police, Granblue, Nubatama, and Great Nature

Set 14: Narukami, Gold Paladin, Royal Paladin, Kagero, Genesis, Neo Nectar, and Murakumo

Set 15: Gold Paladin, Link Joker, Shadow Paladin, Kagero, Aqua Force, Megacolony, and Pale Moon

That's a total of 39 slots of support. That's almost enough to support every clan in the game TWICE this season. Now let's look at the distribution of support for each clan:

• Narukami: 4 Sets
• Gold Paladin: 4 Sets
• Link Joker: 3 Sets
• Genesis: 3 Sets
• Kagero: 3 Sets
• Aqua Force: 3 Sets
• Royal Paladins: 2 Sets
• Pale Moon: 2 Sets
• Angel Feather: 2 Sets
• Shadow Paladins: 2 Sets
• Nova Grapplers: 2 Sets
• Every other clan: 1 Set
• Oracle Think Tank: 0 Sets

Shocking how the clans I listed as "oversupported" are the ones sitting at the top of this list. In a season where, if support were properly distributed, almost every clan could be featured in 2 sets each, there are 6 clans that are hogging support slots for the rest. This is, again, going back to the idea that Bushiroad must include a "popular" clan in every set in order for it to sell. However, the way by which they do this could be streamlined by a thousand fold.

It is a common practice for main character clans to dominate the final set of the season, in order to provide the cast with new, more powerful cards in order to defeat the main villain(s) of the season. Knowing that, the rest of the season's release schedule could easily be worked around that fact. If Aichi is going to get a big power up at the end of the season, say with a crossride, then what reason is there to give him a power up in the middle of the season as well? Rather, Gold Paladins could be included in the first or second set of the season, to introduce a new deck or boss for Aichi, and not be seen again until the final set, where that new deck/boss gets a powerful upgrade. In between, we could see support for Leon's Aqua Force and/or Kai's Narukami. With this principle, I've compiled an alternate set schedule for Season 3:

Set 10: Gold Paladin, Tachikaze, Genesis, Nova Grapplers, Great Nature, Granblue, and Spike Brothers

Set 11: Narukami, Neo Nectar, Dark Irregulars, Dimension Police, Link Joker, and Murakumo

Set 12: Aqua Force, Pale Moon, Angel Feather, Shadow Paladins, Nubatama, and Megacolony

Set 13: Narukami, Kagero, Oracle Think Tank, Royal Paladins, Genesis, and Tachikaze

Set 14: Aqua Force, Granblue, Dark Irregulars, Murakumo, Shadow Paladins, and Neo Nectar

Set 15: Gold Paladins, Link Joker, Dimension Police, Pale Moon, Great Nature, and Royal Paladins

This schedule would provide every clan with at least 1 set of support, without providing any single clan with more than 2 sets of support, and without providing back to back sets with support for a clan. And this is only with 6 clans per set rather than 7. Increasing 1 clan of support in each set would allow even more clans to get 2 instances of support in the season. However, the less number of clans per set, the more cards each clan will get, and the more deck types could spawn from each set of support, or more support for old deck types could be included.

The clans that get 2 sets of support each season could be rotated. For instance, Tachikaze received 2 sets of support in my retrained schedule, whereas Angel Feathers only got 1 set. In the next season, Tachikaze could receive only 1 set and Angel Feather could receive 2. In either case, both clans would receive ample support to put them on-par with the rest of the decks in the season.

The existence of Extra Boosters and Trial Decks could further this theme. About 7 or so clans didn't receive 2 sets of support. In Season 3, there were 4 Extra Boosters and 6 Trial Decks released. At a similar rate, that means that each season every clan could get 2 instances of support in some combination of Extra Boosters, Core Sets, or Trail Decks. A clan that gets 2 Sets of support one season, such as Tachikaze in my alternate Season 3, could receive 1 Set and 1 Trial Deck the next, or even a Trial Deck and a complementary Extra Booster.

This does, of course, come down to Bushiroad's R&D department. No matter how many instances of support a clan receives, there is 0 guarantee that the cards they get will be any good. However, with a more structured release schedule such as the one I created, the chances of this happening are greatly lowered. In Season 3, Granblue only received 1 Set of support, and they got the bare minimum number of cards Bushiroad could give them, very few of which were of decent quality. If each clan were to receive 2 sets of support each season, Bushiroad could easily provide more support to the mediocre Granblue deck in a following set or Extra Booster, so Granblue players wouldn't be stuck with the one new boss in the set for months, if not years, to come.