Undersupported: Megacolony

First I talked about Granblue, now I want to talk about megacolony, While they do not have a lot of support at the moment but they look to get a big increase with their breakride and machinig support in the future including lots of abilities preventing your opponents vanguard from standing they might not actually be that undersupported anymore but The reason they have been this way for so long is not because they are not a main clan but their Paralyzing mechanic is hard to define in "Vanguard currency" a weird way of saying your resources. In vanguard the baseline is usually set at CB2 for a +1 or -1 as seen by cards like Berserk Dragon and his kin. But where does Paralyzing come in?

Paralyzing is a weird mechanic. Its not quite a retire and its not quite a lock. Its kinda sitting in between the two. Earlier megacolony cards use CB2 to paralyze one unit. Similar to a Berserk Dragon, I think this was because Bushiroad was under the assumption that the opposing player would just retire that unit to replace it with an attacker thus acting as a retire. But instead most people would just let the unit sit there until it was able to stand. This might actually be the origin of the Lock mechanic in seeing how Megacolonies Paralyze initially worked differently than intended. But basically it is stuck inbetween the two giving the opponent the ability to choose what to do. In General giving your opponent a choice is a bad thing because they will always choose whats best for them but you might be able to trick them.

The weird place where Paralyze sits between Locking and Retiring is an issue because it becomes hard to place a cost on it. In general I think retiring is more expensive than locking but if you have an ability that is mostly a lock but could be a retire then do you cost it accordingly as a Lock but if it ends up being a retire than its ridiculously good. I think this is the dilemna that Bushiroad faced for megacolony. We see in the new support an emphasis on being able to paralyze a large amount of units at once making it even cheaper than Lock in some cases. I think this is the right direction because even when paralyze acts as a Lock it is still pretty bad since one still has the unit available to use abilities such as retiring to Raging Form Dragon. Now that Bushiroad has given Megacolony more of a clear direction of cheaply Paralyzing lots of units and even paralyzing the vanguard we will see more and better support for the clan. Obviously we won't see the same support levels as the main clans but I think the level of the support will see an increase.

So all you megacolony players don't fear, Bushiroad finally figured you out and they have lots of goodies in store I'm sure.

Undersupported: Granblue

So I've been trying to keep up with spoilers for Set 17: Blazing Perdition or whatever its called. and the comments seem to be riddle with Granblue player uuuugh-ing and sighing and expressing discontent at the lack of support that Granblue is seeing.

(Disclaimer: I do understand that the main characters clans getting more support due to popularity is a thing but I made this series to show that there are other reasons why they aren't getting the same support other clans are. You may disagree with me and I might be wrong but this is my opinion on the matter)

These complaints made me want to start this article series about why under-supported clans are under-supported for reasons other than that they are not used by the main characters. So we begin with Granblue, mainly because this is the reason for me wanting to start this series.

Why does Granblue not get a lot of support. Its actually really simple.

Graveyard Mechanics.

Thats it. Granblue's main gimmick is letting you bring back certain cards from the graveyard or in the case of Cocytus and his reverse form which can let you bring back anything. I think a lot of people underestimate how powerful this ability can actually be. This misunderstanding is why several Granblue players are upset at the lack of support. For graveyard mechanics there is a very fine line before balanced becomes broken to all hell. (for those of you that don't understand broken its a slang term meaning overpowered or something along those lines.)

For those of you that don't believe me just remember how when cocytus "R" came out along with the GB breakride. It jumped the deck into competing with the other top tier decks almost immediately even with the relatively weak support overall. Bushiroad has to be very careful with Granblue otherwise it will roll out of control bring out the banhammer. Its probably more fun to not have a tool than to have an obscenely powerful one that gets taken away. Most people would be even angrier that they banned a card from an already under-supported clan.

All in all the reason that Granblue doesn't get a ton of support is because it has to be balanced precariously. Being able to revive cards from your drop zone is incredibly powerful and so Bushiroad needs to take a lot of time to balance it so that its not either super super good are mega bad. So rather than complain about not getting support realize how powerful the mechanic you have already is and understand that Bushiroad is trying to make cool things happen with out making Granblue destroy the metagame.

Well thats my spiel on the under-supported Granblue. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope all you Pirates out there understand how amazing your clan's ability actually is and that not being a main character clan isn't the only reason you're not getting support.

~Bambi