Officially quitting Cardfight Vanguard!

Hello guys. Its been quite a long while since I last posted, and I have decided to cease all posting on this blog. This blog was created to function as an avenue for my thoughts on Cardfight Vanguard!, and with my official quitting of the game (until further notice), this blog has ceased to serve its' intended purpose. This is not to say I will not come back to this blog, its' just that  recently I have been very busy with weekdays being burnt in military training and with the short weekend breaks that I get, I don't have time to even touch the game. I recently looked at the new BT15:Infinite Rebirth cards, and I am glad that Megacolony after all these months, are finally getting their desired support. However, what I find particularly off-putting is the fact that the main characters' clans get so many cards (I ranted about this in an earlier post a few months prior). This is obviously just to push the anime plot further and attempt to remedy the screwed up metagame which was dominated by Link Joker.

That aside, after playing the game are almost a year plus, I realized that the game has little to no strategy required, since most set plays that a deck is constructed upon relies on a boring rise and repeat function whereby you more or less do the same thing regardless of the opponent, with only minor changes to your overall strategy of the clan that you are playing. I think the main problem is that like all cardgames, your cards get outdated FAST and attempts to bring back old units by adding crossrides or Reverse versions arguably fails to refresh the game. One major weakness which limits this game is the problem of sticking to the anime. Which means that Aichi and whatever clan he is using tends to be the one which has the most support and cards in all boosters, and support for clans like Megacolony are long overdue. Another neglected clan would be Nubatama and Murakumo, which play minor roles in the anime, hence the lack of attention to it given in card sets. Well, at the end of the day, Bushiroad is only here to make money from us. I sense that the game will lose traction especially in other countries outside of Japan, much like Duel Masters. This can be attributed largely to the lack of competitive support by Bushiroad in areas like Europe and America, with majority of the competitive scene based in Japan. Also, I think Bushiroad is trying to expand too quickly, which can be seen by their aggressive marketing of their products like Futurecard Buddyfight rather than focusing on creating a more balanced scene.


On a side note, I recently began to pick up Dota 2 again, after not touching it for over 6 months. Apart from the fact that pubbing is an unstable concoction where you may get crappy teammates or awesome ones, so far I have been enjoying my self thoroughly late into the night, as I type this post I have just finished a Dota 2 game 10 minutes prior. With that short post, I think this will be the last you will hear from me for a long time, maybe until I can find something to post and when I have the time again. But for now, thanks for reading and until next time,

EndBlade

Posting hiatus + Some updates on Cardfight Vanguard!!! And my thoughts

Hello everyone. Trust you guys are doing well, preparing for Christmas (if you celebrate it) because it is less than 20 days away! Some news about posting though, as you all already know I am about to enter the military and as such for this month of December I will not be posting anything, when things begin to settle down in January I may return to this blog and start posting again. Although it might be longe or shorter than what I stated here, which i about a month.

Also, with the reveal of recent Bt14 cards like those from Gold Paladin with the anti-Lock mechanic ot berings a huge change to the metagame. Not because Lock becomes less useful, to some extent it loses its edge and decks which focus onass locking may not dominate the top spots of tournaments as frequently. But I see a change in the meta to another more powerful alternative and it might just skew such that people may not play Link Joker, since in the first place Link Joker suffers under the Limit Break Syndrome. Well what does that mean you may ask? Simply put, it means that without Limit Break or >=4 damage you are effectively useless. Because most Lock skills are Limit Break centric, and with the exception of the breakride there is no easy way to hit high power levels like 26k or even 21k without Locking. And besides, Lock comes at a cost, with people being able to counter Lock with Vanguards that get insane power and/or can restand at virtually no cost (except for in some cases), and with the unlocking skill which I think was just given so that the anime can progress with Aichi becoming victorous at the end. I think that card games tied too closely to the anime may suffer from ingame imbalances, more so in Vanguard which is clan-based, which reinforces the power gap between the main clans and the clans with less screen time. Which I think is a pity because it just does not do justice to a game which has so much potential to shine if it is balanced properly.

Now it just suffers from the catching up of less-used, less popular clans where they get their power boosts very late or their skills are underwhelming compared to the main characters clans. Take for example Neo Nectar's reverse unit. It simply has a recycled version of Lequier 'R', with some slight differences. And more importantly, Bushiroad just seems to just churn these units out to 'get it over with' especially for certain clans ahem* Nubatama ahem* and taking a reactionary approach when it comes to the meta, like a 'lets try this idea and see how it impacts the metagame, then we'll work to fix it' attitude which arguably serves to subject the game to volatility and power gaps.

Well with that food for thought, this is for the last time this month where I say until next time,

EndBlade