Crossrides:

Yes, crossrides. Some like The End are infamous, and considered broken, whilst others such as Great Daiyusha are comsidered ok.Known for having the universal ability of gaining 2000 power when a certain card is in the soul, bringing them up to a magical 13k.

Now one thing that intrests me, is why are they seen in such unfavourable ways. I've seen people who just said they shouldn't exist, and that they killed the game. After a lot of testing, I fail to see quite how.

So, what is everyone's thoughts on the idea of Crossrides?

To answer your question, the 13k power is the main reason why some consider them broken. The thing is, the primary argument against them isn't against crossrides as a whole, it's against Dragonic Overlord The End. The End is a base 11k in a clan that already had Dragonic Overlord, he has a consistent 10k-power booster than can also be applied to Overlord, and it can activate a quadruple twin drive for a counterblast 2 and discard 1 on-hit--for comparison, Spectral Duke Dragon can drive check four cards for limit break 4 counterblast 5 and it requires the retiring of six rearguards with one very-easily blocked rearguard attack in-between, which is tactical suicide in most games. In order to stop The End with Flame of Promise, you have to spend either a perfect defense or minimum 25k shield to account for triggers, sometimes on a rearguard while Duke can only stand after attacking a vanguard. Added to this equation is Burning Horn Dragon, who is outside the base 8k easy-snipe range that Tom and the 11k attackers like Flute fall into, but is able to push for 20k with Bahr.

The anti-crossride sentiment as a whole stems from the fact that crossrides change the game by turning 11k into the new 10k and 13k into the new 11k, invalidating any rearguards that aren't going to strike for at least 18k by shrugging them off with grade 2s, and any strategies designed to hit for 21k by turning them into the new 15/16k.

Inside of his own little magical crossride world where The End is facing other The End decks along with Phantom Blaster Overlord? This is of course, all fair and balanced. You're playing the exact same game as before, but with all of the numbers scaled up by 1000 or 2000 points. 15k becomes 16k, 16k becomes 18k, 10k becomes 11k and 11k becomes 13k. Defensively, nothing is different for these two, as well as Great Daiyusha and the coming BT09 cards.

But for the entire rest of the game, which has developed based around 10k and 11k units, all of their strategies are invalidated by the new power. Soul Saver Dragon? Garbage. To a crossride, your lines striking for 21k are exactly the same as 18k attacks, or to put this relatively speaking, 16k vs 11k. That's why SSD has all but vanished from Japan's competitive scene. Alfred is stabler, Alfred can reach 18k every turn, Alfred can call rearguards that form 18k lines. SSD burns out quickly, Alfred has perseverance. And that's an example of a clan that's adapted to the new format--Tsukuyomi the super-draw deck, can't match The End's defensive power, so she's been replaced as the bunker deck. OraThin had to have an entire new play style developed to defeat The End. Notice how CoCo goes for 13k with no soul? With Milk that's 23k, just right to hit crossrides. Amaterasu of course, can hit for similar numbers, but 16k Tom and Gemini have been forcibly outdated by crossride since The End and PBO can shrug Tom off with a 5k grade 1 or grade 2, basically making Tom's completely pointless if his attack isn't on a rearguard. (Hence the CEO crossride, which is probably going to introduce support to take advantage of Amaterasu's 14k)

People call crossrides broken because they aren't innovative skills, but genuine power creep. It's the same game as before but with +2k more power, and that kills a lot of old cards. Would limit break exist if crossrides didn't make so many clans need it? See how 26k is the new standard for vanguards? That's because the designers were coming up with a type of line that could hit both for the old numbers (16k, 21k) and the new numbers (23k) and the need for an overlap is why those lines usually go for 26k instead of 23k. Garmore, Kiriel, Apt, Navalgazer, Maelstrom--their big strengths in a post-crossride format are hitting for all three numbers simultaneously.

This is all of course, the Devil's Advocate argument. The counterargument is that the game was designed with 13k in mind, or if it wasn't, has adapted to it. Crossride has allowed 9k, 10k and 11k units to get more powerful skills that they couldn't get in a format where they weren't being designed to fight 13k units, old cards like Alfred and CoCo are becoming more useful than when they were first released and the presence of a 13k game is helping the 10k game to evolve. Matches slow down by a turn in typical crossride matches--yes they "speed up" for Shadow Paladin, but in the first place they aren't speeding up so much as staying at the same speed while the rest of the game sets back a turn, and second that's a good thing because ShadowPala has serious issues even among its contemporaries (Dark Metal Dragon was considered their best grade 3 until Blaster Overlord and his support hit the scene.) So while ShadowPala can get away with using Nightmare Painter to have a T3 crossride, Kagerou has the threat of missing it without that type of soulcharge support, and The End's stuck at T4 even when he gets the original Overlord off. Additionally, do note that no crossride deck has ever won a national championship, only smaller tournaments like the Fest event and the team tournaments (there is one argument that the FR2012 results were nearly rigged by Kanamaru, but all the evidence leveled against him came from before the tournament, so there's nothing substantiating that he cheated, and he couldn't touch the juniors division--where crossride also failed--so the point still stands.) The crossride proliferation is on nowhere near the same level as 2011 SSD proliferation, it's promoted people to come up with new strategies in an effort to "slay the dragon," and it's also kept Majesty Lord Blaster at bay.

To elaborate on that last point, there's a whole lot worse behind the face of the crossride problem. The story right now seems to be that Japan jumped on The End as a counter to Majesty Lord Blaster potentially sweeping the format, basically meaning that if The End goes away, MLB is going to take his place. Lord Blaster hasn't been felt that prominently by the rest of the game, but consider that he has the same continuous effect scaled back by 1000 power, he's the easiest permanent critical in the entire game and he can do all the setup he needs with Wingal Brave, Gancelot and Starcall Trumpeter. Having three specific searchers for the deck is crazy, and one argument for crossride is that it's the last thing standing between Majesty and the rest of the competitive scene by providing an incentive to not run the deck, and something that can actually stand against it in the event that people do use Majesty.

I think that's a good general summary of the debate. I'm personally for them existing, but I'm not up for using them myself. Blaster Overlord's the only one I would consider touching since he gives ShadowPala a serious chance versus things like the new Murakumo, and I'm not a fan of his skill being CB3.

Basically, everything that Touya said, and also this.

The main "concern" a lot of the community actually has is the fact that Bushiroad is trying to "even the playing field" by handing out crossrides to everyone, yet many of them are nowhere near as daunting as Ji Enddo or Majesty (known as Baseball by many players) because they "didn't want to make the same mistake again." Nevertheless, the power creep discussion is well-justified, since many decks that were considered viable pre-BT08 shifted dramatically when the set dropped. BT09's set to make the playing field even more daunting for a lot of old decks, since crossrides are now a part of clans such as Oracle Think Tank and Nova Grappler, which are willing to enjoy the fluctuation of control they now have against their old adversaries (although, if you ask anyone who's tested Illuminal, you'll note the same trend that happened with Great Daiyusha: hyping into an overall blandness).

I'm more particularly concerned with the way power creep is affecting game balance. I mean, sure, BT05 took game balance and threw it out the window, but at the same time, they could've just stopped there. 13k could've stopped being a thing and the sets following BT05 could've just had means of killing off the crossrides, thus solving the problem. Which happened for Koko.dek. But Bushiroad decided to keep running with the idea. Now we've got a projected...what is it, nine to ten crossrides now? The demands on columns have increased dramatically in the OCG, with that shift scarily close to occurring in about half a year internationally.

So what does that mean in terms of tournament play, like we're currently experiencing through the dominance of the closest thing to Ji Enddo, Spectral Duke Dragon? What it really means is that many people who play the game for its diversity blended with balance will be appalled as the top 8 becomes what it was in Japan for the longest time: mostly, if not all on some occasions, crossrides. Which essentially means this game will become M:TG, where topping tends to go to the one with the deepest pockets.

Now, don't get me wrong; what Touya said about the improved 10k Limit Breakers is also correct, and I'd like to extend it to many of the new ride chains coming from post-BT05, minus Duke's, which I continually assert presents little to no actual value beyond a "sackable" call. The amount of aggression potential the decks offer ends up providing a huge opportunity to anyone who plays a clan that doesn't have a crossride: the ability to hit for tons of damage, even without the "greatest" setup. My personal favorites are Dark Rex from Tachikaze and Sephirot from Neo Nectars in terms of "oh man, this could wreck pretty hard if given a chance." Of course, Dark Rex requires a setup. Same with Sephirot, on top of the fact that you actually want the ride chain to succeed. Meanwhile, the crossrides just want the card underneath them to be relevant to their text, and that's it.

So, yeah, that's my tidbit on crossrides. I'm not exactly saying I dislike them, because I do think they are, in themselves, their own decks, entirely separate from the rest of their respective clans, but I'm also not saying I like the fact that they're putting a lot of constraints on what's considered "good" in the game.

Since, if you ask anyone around here, a large amount of Vanguard amounts to actual skill rather than just luck of the draw or dropping lots of money.