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One of the difficult parts of playing a TCG is the inevitable on-off of it all. Rarely does anyone stick with their TCG for its entire life, from introduction to end. People get tired of it, people take breaks, people get fed up with the meta. I know the feeling of losing touch for a month or more, coming back and suddenly the entire scene has shifted, what was dominating once is now virtually unknown and what's topping now is some deck you've never even heard of.
This thread is your cheat sheet. I'm going to do my best to keep the OP updated with the current state of Cardfight's competitive scene, what's happening, what happened before and if we're lucky enough to know, why. (There may be an FAQ eventually there is an FAQ below the OP now) Since there's two formats for the game currently, both will be listed, although a merger of the available sets to each is expected eventually, which means that the English game will probably be identical to how the Japanese was a month or three before the Japanese format last changed. Important dates pertaining to things like set releases, Bushi's announcements regarding the game etc. will also be listed. This is not going to be as in-depth as Cardfight Pro is; this is your SparkNotes for Cardfight, not the actual textbook. When discussing and debating, keep in mind that whatever deck is topping now is most likely not going to be around in three to six months and the things that we complain about are usually transitive issues.
What is Happening Right Now
In the Japanese Format
Overview: Japan has two national tournaments a year, basically categorized into Summer and Winter because everyone remembers when the Olympics happen.The actual reason is that in 2011, before we had fancy titles like "Fighter's Road," "Fighter's Climax" et cetera the tournaments were initially being distinguished as Summer and Winter in official materials. In-between those are various side events and team tournaments (separate from the national team tournaments) that we can use to gauge how particular decks are doing between tournaments, while the nationals are the Big Deal. So far we've had four national events and NC2013 Summer is going to start up in May.
NC2011 Summer - RoyPala Soul Saver Dragon topped the seniors division unanimously (really unanimously, there were less than five non-RoyPala decks in the entire tournament season) while the juniors were a little more diverse but still had Soul Saver with Alfred Early tech topping. Barcgal was restricted after this and no deck has ever become as widely used as this one was (that includes itself, see below.)
NC2011 Winter ("Grand Prix") - RoyPala Soul Saver Dragon with Galahad support topped the seniors division, juniors was won by Goku-Overlord. Goku seems to just have hit the meta late, compared to EN format where we knew from the beginning what was up. The reason Tsuku didn't make it despite being Galahad-but-better was the lack of BT05 support from Inaba and Euryale, and because Soul Saver was still the most consistent RoyPala blitzkrieg available.
NC2012 Summer ("Fighter's Road 2012") - RoyPala Alfred in the seniors division, CoCo in the juniors. This is a Big Deal because it shook up the idea that Dragonic Overlord The End would take the national championship--which was taken for granted as a landslide victory at the time. Soul Saver Dragon didn't top because The End's 13k makes her outdated now, Goku didn't top because The End has been universally adapted as the best Kagerou deck and as a counter to Majesty Lord Blaster, Alfred topped because he can form a consistent 18k vanguard and rearguard with Palamedes and Wingal Brave plus his CB3. CoCo beat The End by being able to match his defensive power and form a 23k vanguard line plus Glace can go for 18k with Dark Cat, who is free. Actually a really diverse format despite the huge influx of The End decks.
* There is a controversy that the Bermuda player in this tournament cheated and that caused the results to be rigged, but no concrete evidence was leveled against him for cheating in the tournament, it came from cheating in shop tournaments, which are still official tournaments that Bushiroad has some responsibility for, hence he's now serving a two-year penalty. The argument is also invalid for the juniors division, which is currently just as brutal as the seniors.
NC2012 Winter ("Fighter's Climax 2012") - Majesty Lord Blaster and Dragonic Overlord The End finally stopped dragging their feet and topped in the seniors and juniors, respectively. This tournament was not without its surprises, as there were less of both of these decks than in FR2012, the format was still hugely diverse and the third and fourth place decks for the championship title were Azure Dragon/Asura Kaiser and Goddess of the Full Moon, Tsukuyomi. Full Moon had a newer variant emerge in the seniors' division this year, carried over from the team tournaments of the preceding year. The main innovation behind its dominance was using Tsuku as the only grade 3 in the deck, which had been around since the Big Site event right before the beginning of FR2012, but didn't see use outside of team fights. So the sentiment that Tsukuyomi could have taken the championship all along if she were participating in the singles instead of triple fights proved to be basically true. This is believed to be the last time in Cardfight history that The End and Tsuku by herself will be serious competitive decks for Japan; following their victories the current restricted list was instituted.
New Years' Trio Festival 2013 - Followup event to Vanguard Team Festival 2012, this is a standard type of event where teams of three fight simultaneous Cardfight matches in a tournament setting. Basically this is the opening number to the new tournament season, starting up in January 2013. The Festival was held on two days, Osaka and Tokyo, each divided into blocks A-K and A-F with no two blocks ever meeting. This means that there's no one definitive winning team, but in general team composition is Platina Ezel, Dragonic Kaiser Vermillion "THE BLOOD" and one of the three Oracle Think Tank decks remaining (CoCo/Battle Sister/Goddess of the Sun.) Alarmingly, Majesty Lord Blaster is still alive, with a new variant that has only four grade 3s--one Majesty Lord Blaster and three Soul Saver Dragons. Wingal Brave makes the search for MLB possible, while the extra grade 2 space means Blaster Blade, Blaster Dark and Blade Spirit can be run at maximum to get that skill off every match. Another take on it runs one Exculpate and two Soul Saver with MLB. There was also a Murakumo deck that uses this strategy, with Magatsu Storm as the only grade 3 and the ride chain to support it. Phantom Blaster Overlord is still heavily played.
Planet Cray Total War (惑星クレイ総力戦) - The big upcoming tournament that has everyone's attention. Bushihasn't planned is being tight-lipped on details, but it's allegedly going to be a national tournament where the restricted list is completely disregarded. So you can bring Barcgal, The End, Majesty Lord, Silvest--Bushiroad went back to playing the game as it was intended to be played. Mainly people want to see if Barcgal still lives up to his old days, but with the Soul Saver deck greatly wounded, Majesty Lord Blaster is probably the favorite for first place. This has basically revived the competitive scene of two years ago, so we now have to evaluate how the Royal Paladins behave having never lost Barcgal in the first place. Looking from the outside in, it appears that Bushiroad is testing the waters to see if they can get away with ditching the restricted list.
Incidentally, it is entirely uncertain how Liberator will match up to Exculpate Barcgal.
NC2013 Summer ("Fighter's Road 2013") - Begins in May, believed to be another Seniors/Juniors divided tournament with team tournaments as a secondary. The main attraction right now is seeing how Liberator Gold Paladin matches up in the BT11-on format, and evaluating the performance of the Eraser and Jewel Knight subgroups in a professional environment. Break ride in general has the whole world captivated, but of the break rides Liberators Gancelot/Alfred and Bad-End Dragger/Dudley Emperor have the most attention. This will also be the first national event where the BT09 crossrides will turn up, Glory Maelstrom etc.
The Blockade crossride will also be in this format but we don't know much about it.
Competitive Summary: The end of The End. Not only did Alfred-Palamedes and CoCo both kick his teeth in in Winter, but with The End now restricted to the point of being unable to persona blast or use Conroe, and Alfred and Tsukuyomi similarly bound down, the pro scene as we know has been forcibly dissolved. The Majesty deck is not dead because running 1 Wingal Brave with 1 Majesty Lord Blaster is still consistent, and it has Exculpate to fall back on as well as a plethora of assist cards like Alfred Early and Pendragon.
GoPala is not the beast that it is over here, having only two entries in the FC2012 seniors division with none of them placing first, and the presence of crossrides in the scene gives Duke a harder time since if he doesn't pull a trigger his second attack can't hit, or if he doesn't boost for the first attack then his first attack can't hit. With one half of what he's doing in the turn effectively shut down, he's very hard pressed to do much at all.
Dates to Watch Out For
March 2013
Timeframe for the Total War. Reevaluation of Barcgal and the restricted decks.
May 2013
Start month for NC2013. First proper national to have BT09-BT11 in play, examination of the Liberators et al.
In the English Format
Overview: So far the NA, EU, and Asia nationals have been done in connection to the world championship. We've no word on whether this will be a "once a year," "twice a year," dealor if we're even gonna do it again after this we have a North American national championship and worldwide team tournament going now. There have been various side attractions, but mostly Bushi's stuck to WCS2012 and because of that it's the largest tournament in cardfight history (based on turnout estimates there are around 2000-2500 participants in NA alone, though tournament listings only record the top two.)
As of February 2013, North America is receiving its second national tournament, but it's unknown if this will be eventually connected to a larger international one.
WCS2012 NA - It's complicated, but Spectral Duke Dragon was the MVP deck. There are a couple reasons for this; first is that Duke is a self-standing vanguard, at the time with only Overlord in competition for that place. Second is that Gold Paladins in general dominated the early English tournaments through Garmore. The Garmore equation is one parts hype and another parts context. The first part came from him being run by the German champion, who considered it the strongest deck. People latched onto the clan as "broken" immediately, resulting in an influx of netdeckers who won their regional events, which then led other people to netdeck them in a near-endless cycle. The other part is that GoPala was designed to strike for 26k at limit break, as a counter to The End so that they could actually stand up to the old clans and compete in Japan--but there's one little problem with that, that being that the English format did not have crossrides until February 22nd. So a counter deck was artificially introduced to an environment that didn't have the deck it was countering present. Definitely consider the hype before the counter aspect though, because the 26k column is their lone redeeming strength; up until set 7, RoyPala was the better deck in every build.
(Keep in mind that Tsukuyomi did not lose to GoPala in this format. She decked out. There's a difference; Tsuku could win if she didn't keep drawing herself into oblivion.)
Up until GoPala stole the format, the primary thinking was that Narukami, Grand Prix-era Soul Saver, Tsukuyomi and Goku/Lawkeeper would be the big contenders. It turns out that Dragonic Kaiser Vermillion just didn't live up to the hype, while Hamtaro GoPala went above and beyond it. Unfortunately, Narukami has turned out as the "A for effort" clan this season, making what amounts to cameo appearances instead of being the allegedly-broken monster that everyone called it.
The widespread netdecking of Gold Paladin made converting to Spectral Duke really easy, but Duke genuinely has something going for him other than hype. The self-standing factor all but destroyed perfect defense tactics (to this day I am always surprised that people ask me if his attack has to hit) by creating a mini-The End that was 11k and had a Nightmare Painter copy. Neither Garmore nor Duke was as prolific as 2011 SSD (which should clue you in to how this deck is going to fare long-term) and a Granblue deck actually won Los Angeles, highlighting just how much the hype is propelling GoPala. (Naturally, the netdeckers accused the LA winner of cheating.)
Projections for the future? BT05 will hurt Gold Paladin immensely, though Duke will get hit harder than Garmore/Ezel/Pellinore. While some have claimed that the EN format will turn into an imitation of the JP one, what people aren't factoring in is that we've received BT07 five months before BT05, while Japan got it six months after. Because of the close releases of BT07 and the TDs in January, we'll have had five months to build CoCo. All of the counter decks are already set up here by the time The End debuts; it's entirely possible that we're up for a crossride slaughterfest from CoCo and Garmore. The decks expected to flounder the hardest are Narukami and close to everything from BT04, while Alfred will probably make a comeback like he did in JP format.
WCS2012 EU - Close to the same to NA but harder to gauge due to only having three regional events. On the bright side, Luquier showed up here and made it all the way to the national tournament. This event is the smallest one, fielding only a single fighter to the world championship. Gold Paladin is dominant here as well, with Garmore/Ezel hybrid coming out as the championship deck.
WCS2012 Asia - The top spots were heavily divided between Tsukuyomi, Garmore, Goku, CoCo and Beast Deity. GoPala still saw a lot of play but it lacks the same level of bandwagoning--the general trend seems to be that the less English is spoken in an area, the less use Gold Paladin gets. Now finished, the final three decks are two Spectral Duke Dragon and Tsukuyomi, with Duke being dominant like in North America.
World Championship Finals - Spectral Duke Dragon took first place, used by Brandon Smith, who hadn't modified the deck once since he began competing in Canada (this is also the same deck that won Chicago, which his friend was using; the two of them co-developed it.) Garmore-Pellinore came in second, Garmore-Ezel in third and Dragonic Kaiser Vermillion-Thunder Break filled fourth place.
NC2013 ("Stand Up Challenge Cup") - The first isolated national championship that North America has had, though we don't know if it's supposed to connect to anything bigger later on. The format is a three stage tournament, much bigger than the previous national, beginning at the shop level. Fighters qualify for regionals at their shop, then at one of the 25 regionals place high enough to go on to the finals. It begins in March, so the format will allow for BT05 from the onset, then get EB01 and TD07 as things progress. Majesty Lord Blaster, Dragonic Overlord The End, pure Alfred, FR2012-style Tsukuyomi, CoCo, and Dragonic Kaiser Vermillion are predicted to be the heavy hitters of the format, but we've seen how well trying to forecast these tournaments actually goes. BT08 enters the scene after regionals but before the finals, opening up the possibility of Aqua Force, Tachikaze and Dimension Police suddenly becoming massive figures in the tournament with no forewarning.
Competitive Summary: Mainstream Gold Paladin was pretty good but was also mostly short-lived hype and is probably going to be remembered as a three/four month fad. Spectral Duke Dragon dominated for a real reason, being consistent 11k plus his limit break. EB02 unfortunately didn't come out early enough to play a big role, and the best guess that Smith's Spectral Duke would take the title proved correct.
BT05 will massively change the format, launching it headlong into FR2012/FC2012 territory but with limit break potentially subverting the Blaster/The End dominance. Although, we are getting Exculpate in March, so don't count your chickens just yet.
Dates to Watch Out For
8-31 March 2013
Start and end dates for NC2013's shop level tournaments.
29 March 2013
Release of EB01 and Exculpate the Blaster.
12-18 April 2013
NC2013 regional qualifiers. This year they are invitation-only and there are twenty-five. I am not looking forward to covering this.
19 April 2013
TD07 released, debut of Aqua Force.
3 May 2013
BT08 released, Maelstrom and the core Aqua Force cards are introduced.
1 June 2013
Last minute qualifier for NC2013. Similar to Pokemon TCG's grinders.
2 June 2013
NC2013 finals.
28 June 2013
BT09 released, Glory Maelstrom and other ultimate breaks enter the fray.
26 July 2013
EB06 released in English, Pacifica's crossride updates the clan.
This thread is your cheat sheet. I'm going to do my best to keep the OP updated with the current state of Cardfight's competitive scene, what's happening, what happened before and if we're lucky enough to know, why. (
What is Happening Right Now
In the Japanese Format
Overview: Japan has two national tournaments a year, basically categorized into Summer and Winter because everyone remembers when the Olympics happen.The actual reason is that in 2011, before we had fancy titles like "Fighter's Road," "Fighter's Climax" et cetera the tournaments were initially being distinguished as Summer and Winter in official materials. In-between those are various side events and team tournaments (separate from the national team tournaments) that we can use to gauge how particular decks are doing between tournaments, while the nationals are the Big Deal. So far we've had four national events and NC2013 Summer is going to start up in May.
NC2011 Summer - RoyPala Soul Saver Dragon topped the seniors division unanimously (really unanimously, there were less than five non-RoyPala decks in the entire tournament season) while the juniors were a little more diverse but still had Soul Saver with Alfred Early tech topping. Barcgal was restricted after this and no deck has ever become as widely used as this one was (that includes itself, see below.)
NC2011 Winter ("Grand Prix") - RoyPala Soul Saver Dragon with Galahad support topped the seniors division, juniors was won by Goku-Overlord. Goku seems to just have hit the meta late, compared to EN format where we knew from the beginning what was up. The reason Tsuku didn't make it despite being Galahad-but-better was the lack of BT05 support from Inaba and Euryale, and because Soul Saver was still the most consistent RoyPala blitzkrieg available.
NC2012 Summer ("Fighter's Road 2012") - RoyPala Alfred in the seniors division, CoCo in the juniors. This is a Big Deal because it shook up the idea that Dragonic Overlord The End would take the national championship--which was taken for granted as a landslide victory at the time. Soul Saver Dragon didn't top because The End's 13k makes her outdated now, Goku didn't top because The End has been universally adapted as the best Kagerou deck and as a counter to Majesty Lord Blaster, Alfred topped because he can form a consistent 18k vanguard and rearguard with Palamedes and Wingal Brave plus his CB3. CoCo beat The End by being able to match his defensive power and form a 23k vanguard line plus Glace can go for 18k with Dark Cat, who is free. Actually a really diverse format despite the huge influx of The End decks.
* There is a controversy that the Bermuda player in this tournament cheated and that caused the results to be rigged, but no concrete evidence was leveled against him for cheating in the tournament, it came from cheating in shop tournaments, which are still official tournaments that Bushiroad has some responsibility for, hence he's now serving a two-year penalty. The argument is also invalid for the juniors division, which is currently just as brutal as the seniors.
NC2012 Winter ("Fighter's Climax 2012") - Majesty Lord Blaster and Dragonic Overlord The End finally stopped dragging their feet and topped in the seniors and juniors, respectively. This tournament was not without its surprises, as there were less of both of these decks than in FR2012, the format was still hugely diverse and the third and fourth place decks for the championship title were Azure Dragon/Asura Kaiser and Goddess of the Full Moon, Tsukuyomi. Full Moon had a newer variant emerge in the seniors' division this year, carried over from the team tournaments of the preceding year. The main innovation behind its dominance was using Tsuku as the only grade 3 in the deck, which had been around since the Big Site event right before the beginning of FR2012, but didn't see use outside of team fights. So the sentiment that Tsukuyomi could have taken the championship all along if she were participating in the singles instead of triple fights proved to be basically true. This is believed to be the last time in Cardfight history that The End and Tsuku by herself will be serious competitive decks for Japan; following their victories the current restricted list was instituted.
New Years' Trio Festival 2013 - Followup event to Vanguard Team Festival 2012, this is a standard type of event where teams of three fight simultaneous Cardfight matches in a tournament setting. Basically this is the opening number to the new tournament season, starting up in January 2013. The Festival was held on two days, Osaka and Tokyo, each divided into blocks A-K and A-F with no two blocks ever meeting. This means that there's no one definitive winning team, but in general team composition is Platina Ezel, Dragonic Kaiser Vermillion "THE BLOOD" and one of the three Oracle Think Tank decks remaining (CoCo/Battle Sister/Goddess of the Sun.) Alarmingly, Majesty Lord Blaster is still alive, with a new variant that has only four grade 3s--one Majesty Lord Blaster and three Soul Saver Dragons. Wingal Brave makes the search for MLB possible, while the extra grade 2 space means Blaster Blade, Blaster Dark and Blade Spirit can be run at maximum to get that skill off every match. Another take on it runs one Exculpate and two Soul Saver with MLB. There was also a Murakumo deck that uses this strategy, with Magatsu Storm as the only grade 3 and the ride chain to support it. Phantom Blaster Overlord is still heavily played.
Planet Cray Total War (惑星クレイ総力戦) - The big upcoming tournament that has everyone's attention. Bushi
Incidentally, it is entirely uncertain how Liberator will match up to Exculpate Barcgal.
NC2013 Summer ("Fighter's Road 2013") - Begins in May, believed to be another Seniors/Juniors divided tournament with team tournaments as a secondary. The main attraction right now is seeing how Liberator Gold Paladin matches up in the BT11-on format, and evaluating the performance of the Eraser and Jewel Knight subgroups in a professional environment. Break ride in general has the whole world captivated, but of the break rides Liberators Gancelot/Alfred and Bad-End Dragger/Dudley Emperor have the most attention. This will also be the first national event where the BT09 crossrides will turn up, Glory Maelstrom etc.
The Blockade crossride will also be in this format but we don't know much about it.
Competitive Summary: The end of The End. Not only did Alfred-Palamedes and CoCo both kick his teeth in in Winter, but with The End now restricted to the point of being unable to persona blast or use Conroe, and Alfred and Tsukuyomi similarly bound down, the pro scene as we know has been forcibly dissolved. The Majesty deck is not dead because running 1 Wingal Brave with 1 Majesty Lord Blaster is still consistent, and it has Exculpate to fall back on as well as a plethora of assist cards like Alfred Early and Pendragon.
GoPala is not the beast that it is over here, having only two entries in the FC2012 seniors division with none of them placing first, and the presence of crossrides in the scene gives Duke a harder time since if he doesn't pull a trigger his second attack can't hit, or if he doesn't boost for the first attack then his first attack can't hit. With one half of what he's doing in the turn effectively shut down, he's very hard pressed to do much at all.
Dates to Watch Out For
March 2013
Timeframe for the Total War. Reevaluation of Barcgal and the restricted decks.
May 2013
Start month for NC2013. First proper national to have BT09-BT11 in play, examination of the Liberators et al.
In the English Format
Overview: So far the NA, EU, and Asia nationals have been done in connection to the world championship. We've no word on whether this will be a "once a year," "twice a year," deal
As of February 2013, North America is receiving its second national tournament, but it's unknown if this will be eventually connected to a larger international one.
WCS2012 NA - It's complicated, but Spectral Duke Dragon was the MVP deck. There are a couple reasons for this; first is that Duke is a self-standing vanguard, at the time with only Overlord in competition for that place. Second is that Gold Paladins in general dominated the early English tournaments through Garmore. The Garmore equation is one parts hype and another parts context. The first part came from him being run by the German champion, who considered it the strongest deck. People latched onto the clan as "broken" immediately, resulting in an influx of netdeckers who won their regional events, which then led other people to netdeck them in a near-endless cycle. The other part is that GoPala was designed to strike for 26k at limit break, as a counter to The End so that they could actually stand up to the old clans and compete in Japan--but there's one little problem with that, that being that the English format did not have crossrides until February 22nd. So a counter deck was artificially introduced to an environment that didn't have the deck it was countering present. Definitely consider the hype before the counter aspect though, because the 26k column is their lone redeeming strength; up until set 7, RoyPala was the better deck in every build.
(Keep in mind that Tsukuyomi did not lose to GoPala in this format. She decked out. There's a difference; Tsuku could win if she didn't keep drawing herself into oblivion.)
Up until GoPala stole the format, the primary thinking was that Narukami, Grand Prix-era Soul Saver, Tsukuyomi and Goku/Lawkeeper would be the big contenders. It turns out that Dragonic Kaiser Vermillion just didn't live up to the hype, while Hamtaro GoPala went above and beyond it. Unfortunately, Narukami has turned out as the "A for effort" clan this season, making what amounts to cameo appearances instead of being the allegedly-broken monster that everyone called it.
The widespread netdecking of Gold Paladin made converting to Spectral Duke really easy, but Duke genuinely has something going for him other than hype. The self-standing factor all but destroyed perfect defense tactics (to this day I am always surprised that people ask me if his attack has to hit) by creating a mini-The End that was 11k and had a Nightmare Painter copy. Neither Garmore nor Duke was as prolific as 2011 SSD (which should clue you in to how this deck is going to fare long-term) and a Granblue deck actually won Los Angeles, highlighting just how much the hype is propelling GoPala. (Naturally, the netdeckers accused the LA winner of cheating.)
Projections for the future? BT05 will hurt Gold Paladin immensely, though Duke will get hit harder than Garmore/Ezel/Pellinore. While some have claimed that the EN format will turn into an imitation of the JP one, what people aren't factoring in is that we've received BT07 five months before BT05, while Japan got it six months after. Because of the close releases of BT07 and the TDs in January, we'll have had five months to build CoCo. All of the counter decks are already set up here by the time The End debuts; it's entirely possible that we're up for a crossride slaughterfest from CoCo and Garmore. The decks expected to flounder the hardest are Narukami and close to everything from BT04, while Alfred will probably make a comeback like he did in JP format.
WCS2012 EU - Close to the same to NA but harder to gauge due to only having three regional events. On the bright side, Luquier showed up here and made it all the way to the national tournament. This event is the smallest one, fielding only a single fighter to the world championship. Gold Paladin is dominant here as well, with Garmore/Ezel hybrid coming out as the championship deck.
WCS2012 Asia - The top spots were heavily divided between Tsukuyomi, Garmore, Goku, CoCo and Beast Deity. GoPala still saw a lot of play but it lacks the same level of bandwagoning--the general trend seems to be that the less English is spoken in an area, the less use Gold Paladin gets. Now finished, the final three decks are two Spectral Duke Dragon and Tsukuyomi, with Duke being dominant like in North America.
World Championship Finals - Spectral Duke Dragon took first place, used by Brandon Smith, who hadn't modified the deck once since he began competing in Canada (this is also the same deck that won Chicago, which his friend was using; the two of them co-developed it.) Garmore-Pellinore came in second, Garmore-Ezel in third and Dragonic Kaiser Vermillion-Thunder Break filled fourth place.
NC2013 ("Stand Up Challenge Cup") - The first isolated national championship that North America has had, though we don't know if it's supposed to connect to anything bigger later on. The format is a three stage tournament, much bigger than the previous national, beginning at the shop level. Fighters qualify for regionals at their shop, then at one of the 25 regionals place high enough to go on to the finals. It begins in March, so the format will allow for BT05 from the onset, then get EB01 and TD07 as things progress. Majesty Lord Blaster, Dragonic Overlord The End, pure Alfred, FR2012-style Tsukuyomi, CoCo, and Dragonic Kaiser Vermillion are predicted to be the heavy hitters of the format, but we've seen how well trying to forecast these tournaments actually goes. BT08 enters the scene after regionals but before the finals, opening up the possibility of Aqua Force, Tachikaze and Dimension Police suddenly becoming massive figures in the tournament with no forewarning.
Competitive Summary: Mainstream Gold Paladin was pretty good but was also mostly short-lived hype and is probably going to be remembered as a three/four month fad. Spectral Duke Dragon dominated for a real reason, being consistent 11k plus his limit break. EB02 unfortunately didn't come out early enough to play a big role, and the best guess that Smith's Spectral Duke would take the title proved correct.
BT05 will massively change the format, launching it headlong into FR2012/FC2012 territory but with limit break potentially subverting the Blaster/The End dominance. Although, we are getting Exculpate in March, so don't count your chickens just yet.
Dates to Watch Out For
8-31 March 2013
Start and end dates for NC2013's shop level tournaments.
29 March 2013
Release of EB01 and Exculpate the Blaster.
12-18 April 2013
NC2013 regional qualifiers. This year they are invitation-only and there are twenty-five. I am not looking forward to covering this.
19 April 2013
TD07 released, debut of Aqua Force.
3 May 2013
BT08 released, Maelstrom and the core Aqua Force cards are introduced.
1 June 2013
Last minute qualifier for NC2013. Similar to Pokemon TCG's grinders.
2 June 2013
NC2013 finals.
28 June 2013
BT09 released, Glory Maelstrom and other ultimate breaks enter the fray.
26 July 2013
EB06 released in English, Pacifica's crossride updates the clan.
Last edited by Touya on Wed Mar 06, 2013 2:18 am; edited 7 times in total
