Hey all,
I decided to give some initial thoughts on the new format and what I think of each individual mechanic, as well as the removal of other things. Let's start with my initial tier list for set 1.
SS+++ tier
Going First
S tier
Oracle Think Tank, Kagero, Nova Grapplers with a good hand
B tier
Royal Paladin
C tier
Nova Grapplers having a mediocre hand or worse.
You may notice that I skipped a full tier between Royal Paladin and every other deck. That's because Royals have no incentive to multi-ride grade 3s, don't have a "high-roll" that proves to be devastating like Novas (restanding a 32k attacker with the potential for triggers is crazy strong), and have little end-game utility outside of Soul Saver, which can only be used once and fights for resources with Blaster Blade. Outside of Royals, I think the format is pretty well balanced. Novas have an advantage over OTT generally speaking. OTT can outlast Kagero, although Kagero can get in a win with Waterfall in ideal situations. Kagero pretty much auto-wins the Nova match-up. It's not so bad that all of the match-ups are the equivalent of playing rock, papers, scissors, but no singular deck has an insurmountable advantage that we can't see a diversity of tops, either.
My initial opinion is that the format is well-balanced in card design. But that doesn't make the format itself well-designed. Let's look into the Imaginary Gifts.
FORCE
Force gives a circle of your choice 10000 power during your turn. It's pretty close to adding a legion mate to that circle. Consequently, this is a power-level we've seen and are used to. Currently, the advantages of Force are that it makes power-requirement clans like Dimension Police achieve those requirements far more easily. It also makes multi-attacker decks that call mid-battlephase have extra advantages when this is done, which will likely be a facet we see for Royal Paladin and Gold Paladin at a later date (assuming Gold Paladin is in this reboot). I think Force has solid utility and potential. The only major abuse I can see for force clans would be sentinel restriction. Wouldn't you know it, that happened set 1 with a bonus crit and it's the best singular card in the set. I think that force is the most tame of the the imaginary gifts in power level and the one that's the hardest to abuse.
ACCEL
Accel gives you an extra front row RG circle with a bonus 10000 power on it during your turn. It's pretty nuts. Nova Grappler started with very few cards in the first set and nothing to reliably get a solid field set-up. Currently, when they get their optimal set-up, they are the strongest overall deck. But, high rolling is still high rolling. You will keep seeing Novas top here and there so long as the deck can destroy anything when it gets that setup. I think this is the strongest of the gifts because it has the most potential for abuse when joined with a clan that has access to mid-battlephase calls or a large amount of restanding. Not only do you get all of the swings associated with having the extra RG slots, but you also get that extra static power boost at all times. Getting in 7-8 attacks at ascended power levels can be quite potent, to say the least. So far, no accel clans have had a mid-battlephase call announced, so I think Bushiroad is being mindful of this. That being said, I could see Accel clans being stupid in premium, which is why I'm glad I won't be playing it.
PROTECT
Protect gives you a null guard every time you ride to grade 3. It's pretty nuts. It's currently the strongest mechanic in the current format because Bushiroad has been mindful in restricting the other two from becoming too cancerous, at least in the first set. This mechanic is strong independent of the deck being used, but OTT gets extra bonuses for riding more grade 3s with Imperial Daughter and Deer, so it's shown itself to be the strongest deck in the current format for exactly this reason. I can see protect in a control clan (like Megacolony) being strong, but I think protect in a clan like Granblue is going to really show us the limits on how much it can do as a mechanic. I think protect clans are always going to be in the upper tiers simply for the mechanic at this point, as the mechanic is independently strong and requires no additional mechanism to function properly.
I think that the Imaginary Gifts have the potential to be really unbalanced depending on what support is created, and it will make entire clans limited in design in that facet. I wanted to discuss what I'm really upset about with the new format: Going first. I wrote an article about how going first was objectively overpowered until Legion became a mechanic. Well, here we are, back with the same old problems, only we also have to deal with Imaginary Gifts benefiting the first player as well and all previous mechanics that benefited the second-turn player are now gone. I have done some playtesting with friends, and short of playing a deck that wins a match-up convincingly, the person who goes first wins at a very disproportionate amount. I did mirrors with my buddy (Novas vs. Novas) where there is even more variance in potential power-output from the decks, and the first-turn player won the first 12 games. ~_~ Unless there is a large disparity in deck strength, the deck going second has an unfavorable match-up, or the player going first plays suboptimally, going first is a daunting facet to the game that currently is the hardest thing in a fight to overcome. I hope Bushiroad addresses this in some way to make it more "fair" for people going second. Especially now that the loser decides who goes first in games 2 and 3. Every single 3 game match my buddies and I played was won by the person who won the dice roll when doing mirrors. Let that sink in.
In conclusion, I think that there's some room to work with. I see caution from Bushiroad on Accel that I think is merited. I also see caution on Royal Paladin, as that was the busted clan last time around, and this over-caution left them pretty lackluster, but these cautions can both be fixed later. I think that the individual mechanics are slightly imbalanced, Accel for potential and Protect for practical usage, leaving Force somewhat underpowered, but I think that they aren't so varied in power-level that it's damning to the game's potential for fun or future content. I do think this about going first, though. I hope Bushiroad will implement something to make going second less detrimental that doesn't lead to the stupidity of something similar to R I P P U L.
