The Problem With the Restriction List

Adding onto the list for things Bushiroad does wrong.

A list of things Bushiroad does wrong...hey that can make for a good article.

Anywho, today's setback is placed on the restriction list. Often the bane and destruction of many overly competitive decktype's and their respective players, the restriction list is the two faced hero/destroyer of the competitive scene for its hampering of any reigning decktypes, but how does this apply to Vanguard?

From what I have assumed of the original list, which was more or less confirmed by how it was reported to have been edited for its later iteration, Bushiroad is basing their lists to counter any deck that's been too heavily used. For Bushiroad, they can keep a check on anything that's ruining the competitive scene. Now before I hear any comment about moneygrabbing corporate jerkfaces, I need to remind you that all businesses try to make money and no money equals no production equals no Cardfight Vanguard. So if anyone had that thought pass their mind, lose it, now. On that note though, Bushiroad can't run on steam forever, they make more merchandise with the intentions of getting people to buy more product after all. As a result, they cannot take a massive blow like a single deck being monopolized by the playerbase while the rest of the sets only get half baked sales, so they must take measurements against that. Now we all know what route Bushiroad took, even if it wasn't the smartest or safest (Why didn't they just start off with this), but now we have a restriction list to make for it, and WOW are they taking this horribly. From how the restriction list works to the very premises its constructed from, it all just leads to a recipe for disaster. The short story is that they are only using induction, which only gives you is the way something happens to be. For example, the English Metagame being flat out dominated by Dragonic Overlord the End's presence. Induction does not, however, tell you the hows or whys something is, at least not right away, and this is why the Restriction List is destined for failure.

Now, being based completely off whatever is completely dominating tournaments isn't actually a flawed approach. It specifically targets the problem as it is a problem, and if you manage to hit things correctly, then all you've done was actually take on and subdue the problem. The issue here is that this all entirely depends on you hitting things correctly. Let's look at the current standing non-Barcgal or banned agenda for the restriction list. Of every card on the list, you may not run a combination of any cards on the list that exceeds 2. You may run 2 Majesty Lord Blasters and you can run 2 Dragonic Descendants but you may not run 3 or 4 MLBs or Descendants and you may not run 1 MLB and 2 Dragonic Descendants. Etc, etc, the majority of you should already know how this works. While I actually commend this sort of system back when the game was heavily dependent on your key cards playing an active role through the majority of a fight, for example MLB requiring to set up as fast as possible to best make up for the card advantage of losing 2 intercepts, this system absolutely fails to deal with Bushiroad's biggest and most common (at least as of lately) mechanic, Limit Break.

If any of you have seen the vmundicfv youtube videos, then you should know about frequency. By turn 7*, if you run 4 copies of a card, you could expect to see 2 copies of it. At 3 copies, this becomes much closer to some 1.5 copies to be expected by the late game. Finally, at 2 copies, you should expect a flat 1 copy. Of course, probability is a little funky in this regard and etc, but let's think about this for a moment.

*The late game can generally be expected to begin by turn 5, so surviving 2 more turns isn't too much of a feat.

I create a system where you can't run more than 2 copies of any combination of cards on the restriction list. I also create a mechanic that, ultimately, can still run perfectly fine even at 2 copies. Finally, I create a card that uses this mechanic, and it becomes such a problem that I must restrict it. Can anyone tell me where it all went horribly wrong?

This is my problem with the Restriction List. Not so much what gets hit, because quite frankly, Bushiroad is at least aiming in the general direction of all the right things, but how they get hit. The current method of restriction is interesting and flexible, but it's far too lenient to really make a difference if a card becomes a problem. Bushiroad completely screwed up here and need to do something now to fix it, or else Descendant will continue to dominate the format or whatever Limit Breaker in the far future that completely screws over the metagame.