Memory is absolutely the beating heart of this game, and how you interact with the gauge is part of what makes your archetype an archetype. I think the actual main thing that a deck needs to be competitive is a way to threaten swing(s) without any digimon on board via rush, Hybrids, quickly going up the stack and unsuspending, etc, but memory is the facilitator. I'm a strong proponent of "if your deck has an actual win condition you can win at least some games of Digimon". You just have to consider the pace of the game overall and generally how you can make the gauge work for you.
Aces, the new movie options, and effects like Mirage/Levia/Dragon Mode feel like the right direction: cards that interact with specific play types and force you to actually play around what they can do because they'll punish you if you play normally. In that respect, just like you said, a powerful Bagra deck would fit in nicely as a good push against all this memory cheating. Things like BigUkko effect in a more consistent deck would also go a long way in preventing tamer heavy playstyles. I think there's still a lot of room to make floodgate style decks that differ from just being a really strong deck that can run floodgates too (see: Nume) since most decks have an easy enough way to deal with floodgates (Mirage and Beelze level 3 inheritables immediately come to mind). We want decks that are unique and create meaningful interactions without becoming wholly game deciding in their one or two features. Having too many bouncing negates and preventions can be a slippery slope that becomes wholly unfun though, just look at the state of Yugioh where you have to balance all of the hand traps with all of the card protections interacting with the ban list to try and salvage an interesting format.
I feel like the movie options punishing you if you attempt to interact with their board is pretty bad, the omnimon option specifically since they lose nothing and get to completely clear you. I don't think punishing someone for activating removal is a good idea, especially when it just turns into you getting your boss on their turn and also clearing their board, and they dont even attack to meet the ace conditions either.
I agree that the direction is really cool, but not really the execution. The movie options punish the opponent if they try to DELETE by and effect. This rules out: Bouncing to hand, DP- since a digimon is deleted by a rulecheck and not an effect AND shuffling in deck/security, which are, arguably, the types of removal all the best decks are using. Unless they balance what kinds of removal types they are punishing, the game will SLOWLY invalidate red and purple removals (which is basically what is going on in the JP meta right now).
Brother, i LOVE these kinda videos, i'm all about the discourse and arguing about topics nicely, it's the shit i love, so many props for putting this together while sick. Rest up, get better soon, and i REALLY hope to see more of these in the near future!
On topic tho* i forgot to mention, yeah, i wholeheartedly agree skipping and/or cheating out memory when going up the chain and/or consistently being able to pump out multiple bodies for really cheap and/or very large bodies for cheaper than usual is usually the problem, as when that correlates with being able to cycle thru your resources and/or memory gauge as a result ends up in a WAY too oppressive cycle that's very hard to break in the current state of things once they get going.
Midrange is a deck that tries to win before a more normal style deck can get their big plays online. It's a deck that depends on efficiency and speed and above all TEMPO. It's a rushy style but not a true rush deck. If they let the opponent get their big stuff off they lose. They try to win in the mid game, and tend to play some disruption and interact with the opponent's board state. Rush is about winning in the first few turns before the opponent can respond much at all. It tries to play solitaire with a hard time limit. It's much more reckless and if too good very unhealthy for a game overall. It's very focused on speed. Numemon is closer to midrange than rush. Its power lies in the fact that it floats, and the occasional memory steal ain't shabby.
Was about to comment the same thing. I feel like red hybrid is more rush than numemon. Feels like you can predict turns because often they ignore your entire board state.
issue is, a lot of these so called "mid range" decks, have combinations of cards they can open that just make it an all out aggro deck. Nume opens Ukko + gere and pitches platinum? You best bet thats an aggro deck. Nume is not interacting with the opp its going to win in the next two turns. Problem is, this now aggro deck doesnt have the faults of a normal aggro deck. It cheats memory more so than any other deck. It has multiple cards that float. Worse off, they float into 2 stage higher digimon .Furthermore they have access to Venus, an insanely strong control card as well as ruin mode which is game warping.
Skipping levels is strong, but the memory gain / cheat is the real problem. It allows you to do much more than your opponent and the advantages compound to make it exponential.
Hope you feel better soon man! I still run the starter deck Guilmon in my gallantmon list to good effect. It at least has a solid inherit and also my list is just about turboing into gallantmon to hopefully win with crimson mode as fast as possible through any means possible.
Thanks big dawg! Recently I’ve been using the starter deck growlmon and it’s actually been pretty nice! The +1 memory is suuuuuch a boon! I always have such a difficult time trying to balance out rushing to crimson mode and also building up enough trash. I think I need more practice 😅
@@East_ML This is the list I've had the most success with. Still set for EN meta so idk how exactly the new cards could help it. I can say with certainty you replace both crimsons with crimson Ace from bt17. Biggest downside is lack of options to remove protected mons. 2 Guilmon BT12-007 2 Growlmon BT12-010 2 Gallantmon BT12-018 3 Takato Matsuki BT12-089 3 Gallantmon BT13-111 4 Gigimon EX2-001 4 Guilmon EX2-008 4 Takato Matsuki EX2-056 2 Gallantmon Crimson Mode EX2-073 4 WarGrowlmon EX3-062 3 Guilmon EX4-006 4 BlackGrowlmon EX4-008 3 BlackWarGrowlmon EX4-010 4 Offense Training P-103 4 From Master to Disciple ST12-15 3 Guilmon ST7-03 3 Growlmon ST7-05
I do agree that most best decks I have seen did the memory refund really well or simply being too cost efficient (sometimes both). I do feel the game has a few exceptions which is bound to happen due to the game aging but I also feel Vandai has nipped their biggest concerns pretty early while hurting themselves in sales so I feel that if the community gives good feedback they will listen to an extent I feel the best decks also have this thing of cheating their win conditions more consistently is also something that is a problem where its less about playing around your skill and luck and more about something guaranteed to happen where you now playing against a timer, Apocalymon and Anubismon make me think of this The game still does feel like it has some variety so I feel its still in a good state but if they fail to have good communication it could head in a direction where everything just feels generic
I made a video talking about this very subject and have another planned, as this problem is not going away and is only getting worse. The best decks essentially can do so much and get away with so much without needing to do that much.
When I think 'good card' or 'good deck' what always comes to mind is decks that have a strategy that the opponent doesn't need to participate in to see full effect and/or there are minimal or no counters to the effect. For instance, blue hybrid/blue flare's freeze. Beelzemon's trashing and sec melting. And right now we're dealing with Mirage stealing momentum in the mid game while punishing the opponent trying to find resources for a response.
Correct, the best decks cheat the most, it's common in all card games, particularly in yugioh, the game I come from. It wasn't that long when Beelzemon was at full power, and that deck was incredibly unfair. You cheated so much memory while your wincondition was basically fed to you on a silver spoon thanks to ex2 impmon. If you want to combat the amount of cheating the best decks do, imo you'd have to print support for other decks that can punish said cheating, like you said, something triggers when your opponent skips a level, or evolves without paying the cost. Or you can do it the lazy way and just ban the main offenders for the cheating. Floodgates are not the solution, and never will be, you will simply make the player base hate the game. I know that all too well :P
I’m a big fan of the games current direction, with aces and interactive option tools. Energy cheat doesn’t really bother me unless it is too absurd. As long as you and your opponent are playing an interactive game where it feels like the decisions you make matter, I can generally enjoy the game. When OTK strategies where there isn’t much agency in what happens in the game are prevalent, that’s when I’m typically upset/frustrated with the game. I only have a glimpse of bt17 as my scene is barely getting into bt16 (started early testing) and I’m enjoying it so far.
I realized sometime in bt12 that decks are not good unless they are unfair. Some decks just have unfair cards like Marcus, Ruin mode, Nume X, Hades Force, HPD, etc. And some decks just have unfair mechanics like Red hybrid (not having a lot of tamer interaction), Leviamon (blowing up the whole board on either players turn and gaining memory for it), grace nova (going from a rookie to a mega or lv7 in one turn so long as they have a rookie in raising and a tamer on field.) The best decks are usually the ones that combine unfair cards with unfair mechanics like Numemon having nume x and flooding the board with monzaemon x, anubismon flooding the board with merva or controlling the board with levia or death x, apocalymon being able to skip the evo process and just drop a level 7 that mills your opponent to death. If it’s unfair it’s good.
Unlike the downsides of Pokémon’s lvl X, V, Ex cards etc., I agree the downsides of Ace Digimon are very well balanced. Pokémon is a game about removing your opponents creatures by battle to win, while Digimon is a game about attacking your opponents health total to win. Because the entire goal of Pokémon is eliminating creatures, and I believe there is no outright creature removal effects in the game, it is difficult for a player to access the downsides of an opponents Pokémon V, EX, etc. However in Digimon, removal is plentiful. Overflow is a lot easier for an opponent to proc in Digimon than it is for a Pokémon player to access the extra prize card on the special Pokémon cards. While Ace digimon are balanced, I think the cheating memory and levels in digimon is a lot harder to balance around. You could create options that create downsides for your opponent as they play into the delay effects, however this means that in some matchups players will be forced to run a dead card in their decks which isn’t a total issue because we draw so much in this game but it’s still not fun. If side decking was a thing in digimon I could see that as an option for the future. I think the weirdest thing about digimon is that, aside from the initial memory cost adding additional costs to effects is kinda weird because the player doesn’t have that many different types of resources. We have discard, popping your own creatures, and self burn as costs but I feel like those are mostly in purple and yellow. We even have effects locked to start of main phase on rookies, like Patamon, as a pseudo cost that force you to hide in raising or pray your opponent doesn’t have removal if you hard slam. I think the way the game is designed just makes it hard to add additional costs to powerful effects without making the downside too huge or out of flavor for the color/archetype.
THIS! Digimon is getting so much faster and leaving behind so many decks because they just can't keep up. This is why Ukkomon BT16 is going to be a deck staple for so many.
I personally like the last idea, a deck, or even just specific cards that gain advantage when your opponent takes certain actions that normally would gain them advantage, kind of like mirage that gains memory when your opponent draws cards, something fair that also makes your opponent really have to change the way they play sometimes Also, I’ve thought for a while that the game could use more level 6 flood gate type digimon like venusmon that would keep your opponent from taking certain actions
Magic taught me mana efficiency is THE most important part of the resource game. Anything that does anything for free or for cheap is broken. One of the most well known ways of playing is Turn 1: play a swamp. Use swamp for 1 black mana, play dark ritual, get 3 black mana out of it. Use one for the foolish burial equivalent, then use the other two for animate dead to put that creature onto the battlefield. It would let you put out stupidly powerful creatures like Griselbrand immediately. In Digimon, it would make sense that the less memory it takes to win, the better the deck will be. The more cards that discount how much memory you spend, make cards completely free, OR refund memory for taking actions will be how powercreep progresses going forward.
Hey! Thanks for the kind wishes! It was great meeting curly at evo Japan! I wish I could have hung out more! He told me a lot about the local scene down there!
It's just the natural progression of card games, sadly, especially for those without rotation. There's no way to sell _new_ vanillas without making them have a just straight up better stat line, it _has_ to be cheaper or bigger, otherwise why would someone run the new one over the old one? Eventually we would get rookies the size of early set megas because there's no other way to get people to buy into new vanillas Don't get me wrong, I liked that part of the game too, but it could never be sustainable in the long run.
It will be difficult to reign in high power decks without also causing fallout for low power decks. Printing archetypes that punish level skipping specifically could work, but tbh I'd prefer a more comprehensive approach. Rock paper scissors metas are all well and good, but there needs to be a widespread solution or else nothing will fundamentally change. All that will happen is that anti-meta archetypes will become viable, leaving all the decks that are currently gatekept in the exact same place.
More opponent turn effects and maybe level 4 Aces. The game has become more focused on how fast your deck can build a stack and just GO! Security control was a necessary evil to check those go fast OTK style decks, but it seems like they dont want to support stall game strategies. Aces gave a very nice back and fourth for interaction but aside from battles and triggered effects those duel turn interactions are kinda missed, and depending on the deck you can sometimes skip aces altogether. Alot of the top decks can usually recover and build a fast stack in a turn given proper resource management, those are most ideas I can think of.
Yeah, memory cheating is a bit too much in some decks. Older decks already played cards for free, but usually you have to wait until LV6 like Jesmon or LordKnightmon in order to get your big payoff. The only "free" stuff was usually a tamer when evolving into Lv4 and only if don't have one already. Nowadays we have entire evolution lines where every inherited grands memory, plays a body etc.. We have tamers that spit out rookies every round. Half of Beelzemon Decklists read "gain 1 mem when milled". Ukkomon alone doubles our breeding phase(which was exclusive to BT1Mimi before and again required a Lv5 at least). And you still wipe your opponents board while doing your combo. Or render it useless by suspending or freezing. I feel like, you NEED full immunity like MagnaX or win on the spot like Fenrir. Otherwise you can say good bye to your Lv6 the following turn. I can certainly say, every time I have a Belphemon without protection on board, I won't keep it in 4 out of 5 times.
I've learned that I don't really know what makes a deck strong competitively. Copying other decklists gives me more success than trying to build my own with inexpensive cards
I would really like a Bagra Army 2.0 in BT19, i think that if done right it could be a really cool control style Purple deck (and the game hasn't a lot of those). But i don't really like level 6 "floodgates" like Venusmon, MirageGaogamon or even Hydramon, they are pretty hard to remove from the board and have some really nasty effects that protects them even further
@@StellaEFZ i do expect it to get some revamp to make space for ZeedMilleniummon and others. Likely new DarkKnightmon and Nene. Also potentially other non DarkKnightmon Twilight lv3 or 4.
You know memory is important when 8-12 of your slots are dedicated to consistency with boosts, trainings, and Ukkos. Leaving little room for other more flavorful/removal options.
I believe that the first skip was the x antibody option that let you raise a lvl5 and attack with a lv6 even if at 1 memory It basically made every non xanti deck irrelevant since you could choke the lvl5, evos that cost 4 were extremely dificult to play if you didnt win memory on evo. Now it feels that in order to catch up to that you need to have a line that gains memory as it climbs up so you can keep playing from the start of a stack, memory is becoming more of a counting game than a resource and it unfortunately streamlines deck building. Ace cards really helped this concept but they wont truly shine until their biggest predator(and best card) is gone, zudomon ace
One play style that wasn’t really talked about was control. Being able to delete things on your opps board to cripple their advantage or like Leoman take away their card draw, but I think this depends on the format you’re in
I think it’s a blend of most of styles. Like ukkomon is in multiple top decks and it gives a lot of advantage. Being sticky or un interact-able also helps the top decks. Blue hybrid gets to play tamers and rookie rush and skip levels. Numemon gets to rookie rush, gain memory back when they get deleted and skip levels. Yellow vaccine gets to skip levels, and make a big stack that is hard to remove that can block.
I 100% agree. Decks are becoming too free. And it’s happening extremely fast to the game. Aces are doing more and more, for free. Lots of decks are cheating out cards when a year ago that would be unheard of on a Digimon. Patamon is a good example of a card that should be at 1. Raise out, digi for free, GAIN a memory AND recover the digivolve back? Like what kind of card is that? Where is the cost? You print a a Chuumon like that and you know it’d be costly as hell. We need more frequent restriction lists honestly.
I don't know man, Miragegaogamon is basically a floodgate that punishes you for doing an essential action, drawing. Not only that, but the fact that you can almost always go from lvl 5 to 6 for like 1 memory is just too much, specially combined with the burst mode which will again "refund" you memory, that you can easily convert into another attack. Then you have leviamon, which doesn't like you playing digimon by effects, but it can also force you to play them just to fulfill their conditions to bring leviamon or leviamon x to the board. I don't really like that design of lvl 6 digimons that can gain their advantages just for playing their game, while punishing yours.
You want Digi-Burst back? Personally, I don’t think it’s an issue (yet) and that’s because it’s a bunch of decks. Your meta breakdowns always show a variety of decks topping. If more decks can “skip” I don’t think it’s a bad thing. If only one deck or two decks can skip and no other decks can and that trend holds true for sets, it’s a problem.
creating new counters to certain moves can help but it’d take too long and it may not even be enough. i think the game needs to utilize a lot more banned pairs and limiting/banning more cards. i don’t want to see the game get too yugioh one way or the other but i think some things can be hit across the board for the sake of balance
I've been saying for a while but speed is the king in this game. You need to be threatening damage as fast as possible and as efficiently as possible. Whether you're cheating out cards or you're gaining a lot of memory or just recurring cards for value, you have to turn around and have some kind of value engine
Memory efficiency is the most important factor in the game. Just take a look at the banned list and you'll see they don't let crazy Memory efficient cards go through.
Bt12 patamon says hello They constantly let memory cheats through, the only time they don't is when it's so blatant that the playerbase rages, that's literally the only time
@@enigmaticheart666 Only when you can do nothing to stop it. Patamon is crazy but honestly I just played against 2 Numemon decks and comparatively patamon is shit. Ukkomon needs to go before I even want to look at complaining about anything else
there's too many ways of extending your turn. you can choke someone to 1 with no memory setter and they still gain a bunch of memory. People were forced to play memory setters before, now they just play tamers that gain a flat amount each turn or have ukko engines to put them above 3 even when choked at 1.
They have been actively speeding up the game ignoring its base resources and making things as un-interactive as possible. Purple and yellow having access to zones that other colors don't have clearly gave them an unfair advantage on a fundamental level. The fact that we can gain memory from evolution is already broken because cards should have a cost and we are getting to a point where a rookie can lead to having a mega on board and not pass turn off 1 memory is something I was hoping we would never see yet here we are. Cards having a cost is a balancing tool that they like to think is a suggestion more than the rule. I think a lot of cards should get hit to bring the game back to a more acceptable speed. I am finding less enjoyment out of the game with its current pacing problem and how much the best decks "cheat" and the future sets leave me more frustrated than excited which as a fan of the IP makes me sad.
Good decks? Free digievolutions, free removal as you are evolving, free tamers Bad decks? Playing Analogman for 4 cost, building a 9 card stack for a BlackWargreymon, needing to play 3 to 4 Sistermons, needing to play 3+ Rinas, needing to stack the Vemmons, etc.
I don’t think those things are issues. What makes a competitive deck enjoyable to play is the kickback reward you get for completing combos. Skipping levels & niche digivolution requirements being available in so many colors now keeps us from single stack formats where every deck just comes out of raising and goes up the line. BT9 was the greatest set release of all time but, many did not like the format because it was all single stack. I do agree responsive delay options like Rostrum/Biting Crush would be good but, for just digivolving or performing certain actions. Like example for a 3 cost yellow one: “Main: look at your security choose 1 card and reveal it, shuffle the rest of your security stack & place the chosen card on top of your security stack after. Then place this card in your battle area. Delay - when your opponent digivolves into a Digimon card in the battle area, you can trash this card to give that Digimon -2000 dp and security-1.”
So, my worry with Digimon, and it is coming to fruition, is the ignoring of the Memory Gauge. Playing Tamers for free. Reduced Digivolution Costs. Playing Digimon for reduced costs. Refunding costs. Memory Gain. Etc... And as the game progresses, Digimon decks will progressively gain more and more access to these tools. And... I originally came to play this game because of the Memory Gauge. It was an incredibly fair game mechanic that originally ensured that both players would be able to play the game. However, it sure seems like we're heading towards Yu-Gi-Oh!, a game that didn't have resource pool management. We have gotten to the point where Memory Setting Tamers are at one and at most two copies in decks, because decks can just play from one memory. It is a problem that the game is progressing in ignoring the most important mechanic in the game.
I think a lot of us came to the game because of the memory gauge as a fantastic resource mechanic, but the longer I play the more I appreciate the use of other things in addition to the memory gauge as resources. I think as the game develops we’ll see the balance of the memory gauge plus other things, depending on the style of deck. Arguably some decks are already there (think beelzemon).
I’ve been saying Digimon is going to run into the yugioh problem for ages. The games still youngish and the power creeps been big in some sets, which will happen in any tcg. But the memory gauge means nothing now. Choking was a big part to limit plays and it doesn’t matter anymore 1 memory is all you need. Everything removes Digimon. Sometimes I feel like I play with myself against decks because you can’t punish them. I miss the fun in the game which is why even my super competitive friends like to play lower power decks in casuals more then testing best decks. Tho don’t get my wrong they will at events and locals for a big event. I’ve lost the fun in the game but that’s just me. I still want the game to succeed the IP is close to my heart, but casually with friends is how I’ll do it from now on.
Memory is absolutely the beating heart of this game, and how you interact with the gauge is part of what makes your archetype an archetype. I think the actual main thing that a deck needs to be competitive is a way to threaten swing(s) without any digimon on board via rush, Hybrids, quickly going up the stack and unsuspending, etc, but memory is the facilitator. I'm a strong proponent of "if your deck has an actual win condition you can win at least some games of Digimon". You just have to consider the pace of the game overall and generally how you can make the gauge work for you.
Aces, the new movie options, and effects like Mirage/Levia/Dragon Mode feel like the right direction: cards that interact with specific play types and force you to actually play around what they can do because they'll punish you if you play normally. In that respect, just like you said, a powerful Bagra deck would fit in nicely as a good push against all this memory cheating. Things like BigUkko effect in a more consistent deck would also go a long way in preventing tamer heavy playstyles.
I think there's still a lot of room to make floodgate style decks that differ from just being a really strong deck that can run floodgates too (see: Nume) since most decks have an easy enough way to deal with floodgates (Mirage and Beelze level 3 inheritables immediately come to mind). We want decks that are unique and create meaningful interactions without becoming wholly game deciding in their one or two features. Having too many bouncing negates and preventions can be a slippery slope that becomes wholly unfun though, just look at the state of Yugioh where you have to balance all of the hand traps with all of the card protections interacting with the ban list to try and salvage an interesting format.
I feel like the movie options punishing you if you attempt to interact with their board is pretty bad, the omnimon option specifically since they lose nothing and get to completely clear you. I don't think punishing someone for activating removal is a good idea, especially when it just turns into you getting your boss on their turn and also clearing their board, and they dont even attack to meet the ace conditions either.
I agree that the direction is really cool, but not really the execution. The movie options punish the opponent if they try to DELETE by and effect. This rules out: Bouncing to hand, DP- since a digimon is deleted by a rulecheck and not an effect AND shuffling in deck/security, which are, arguably, the types of removal all the best decks are using. Unless they balance what kinds of removal types they are punishing, the game will SLOWLY invalidate red and purple removals (which is basically what is going on in the JP meta right now).
Brother, i LOVE these kinda videos, i'm all about the discourse and arguing about topics nicely, it's the shit i love, so many props for putting this together while sick. Rest up, get better soon, and i REALLY hope to see more of these in the near future!
On topic tho* i forgot to mention, yeah, i wholeheartedly agree skipping and/or cheating out memory when going up the chain and/or consistently being able to pump out multiple bodies for really cheap and/or very large bodies for cheaper than usual is usually the problem, as when that correlates with being able to cycle thru your resources and/or memory gauge as a result ends up in a WAY too oppressive cycle that's very hard to break in the current state of things once they get going.
Midrange is a deck that tries to win before a more normal style deck can get their big plays online. It's a deck that depends on efficiency and speed and above all TEMPO. It's a rushy style but not a true rush deck. If they let the opponent get their big stuff off they lose. They try to win in the mid game, and tend to play some disruption and interact with the opponent's board state.
Rush is about winning in the first few turns before the opponent can respond much at all. It tries to play solitaire with a hard time limit. It's much more reckless and if too good very unhealthy for a game overall. It's very focused on speed.
Numemon is closer to midrange than rush. Its power lies in the fact that it floats, and the occasional memory steal ain't shabby.
Was about to comment the same thing. I feel like red hybrid is more rush than numemon. Feels like you can predict turns because often they ignore your entire board state.
issue is, a lot of these so called "mid range" decks, have combinations of cards they can open that just make it an all out aggro deck. Nume opens Ukko + gere and pitches platinum? You best bet thats an aggro deck. Nume is not interacting with the opp its going to win in the next two turns. Problem is, this now aggro deck doesnt have the faults of a normal aggro deck. It cheats memory more so than any other deck. It has multiple cards that float. Worse off, they float into 2 stage higher digimon .Furthermore they have access to Venus, an insanely strong control card as well as ruin mode which is game warping.
Skipping levels is strong, but the memory gain / cheat is the real problem. It allows you to do much more than your opponent and the advantages compound to make it exponential.
Short term video discussion (food for thought) is healthy and i like it. Do more of them
Hope you feel better soon man!
I still run the starter deck Guilmon in my gallantmon list to good effect. It at least has a solid inherit and also my list is just about turboing into gallantmon to hopefully win with crimson mode as fast as possible through any means possible.
Thanks big dawg! Recently I’ve been using the starter deck growlmon and it’s actually been pretty nice! The +1 memory is suuuuuch a boon! I always have such a difficult time trying to balance out rushing to crimson mode and also building up enough trash. I think I need more practice 😅
@@East_ML This is the list I've had the most success with. Still set for EN meta so idk how exactly the new cards could help it. I can say with certainty you replace both crimsons with crimson Ace from bt17. Biggest downside is lack of options to remove protected mons.
2 Guilmon BT12-007
2 Growlmon BT12-010
2 Gallantmon BT12-018
3 Takato Matsuki BT12-089
3 Gallantmon BT13-111
4 Gigimon EX2-001
4 Guilmon EX2-008
4 Takato Matsuki EX2-056
2 Gallantmon Crimson Mode EX2-073
4 WarGrowlmon EX3-062
3 Guilmon EX4-006
4 BlackGrowlmon EX4-008
3 BlackWarGrowlmon EX4-010
4 Offense Training P-103
4 From Master to Disciple ST12-15
3 Guilmon ST7-03
3 Growlmon ST7-05
Loving the content! Just found your channel through a short of yours!
I do agree that most best decks I have seen did the memory refund really well or simply being too cost efficient (sometimes both). I do feel the game has a few exceptions which is bound to happen due to the game aging but I also feel Vandai has nipped their biggest concerns pretty early while hurting themselves in sales so I feel that if the community gives good feedback they will listen to an extent
I feel the best decks also have this thing of cheating their win conditions more consistently is also something that is a problem where its less about playing around your skill and luck and more about something guaranteed to happen where you now playing against a timer, Apocalymon and Anubismon make me think of this
The game still does feel like it has some variety so I feel its still in a good state but if they fail to have good communication it could head in a direction where everything just feels generic
I really feel that timer part. Loads of decks can get something out look at you and say "remove it or die".
Shortcutting Memory use definitely feels like it gives the leg up on many decks
I made a video talking about this very subject and have another planned, as this problem is not going away and is only getting worse.
The best decks essentially can do so much and get away with so much without needing to do that much.
When I think 'good card' or 'good deck' what always comes to mind is decks that have a strategy that the opponent doesn't need to participate in to see full effect and/or there are minimal or no counters to the effect.
For instance, blue hybrid/blue flare's freeze. Beelzemon's trashing and sec melting. And right now we're dealing with Mirage stealing momentum in the mid game while punishing the opponent trying to find resources for a response.
Correct, the best decks cheat the most, it's common in all card games, particularly in yugioh, the game I come from. It wasn't that long when Beelzemon was at full power, and that deck was incredibly unfair. You cheated so much memory while your wincondition was basically fed to you on a silver spoon thanks to ex2 impmon.
If you want to combat the amount of cheating the best decks do, imo you'd have to print support for other decks that can punish said cheating, like you said, something triggers when your opponent skips a level, or evolves without paying the cost. Or you can do it the lazy way and just ban the main offenders for the cheating.
Floodgates are not the solution, and never will be, you will simply make the player base hate the game. I know that all too well :P
I agree, floodgates are kind of a bandaid solution
I’m a big fan of the games current direction, with aces and interactive option tools. Energy cheat doesn’t really bother me unless it is too absurd. As long as you and your opponent are playing an interactive game where it feels like the decisions you make matter, I can generally enjoy the game.
When OTK strategies where there isn’t much agency in what happens in the game are prevalent, that’s when I’m typically upset/frustrated with the game. I only have a glimpse of bt17 as my scene is barely getting into bt16 (started early testing) and I’m enjoying it so far.
I realized sometime in bt12 that decks are not good unless they are unfair. Some decks just have unfair cards like Marcus, Ruin mode, Nume X, Hades Force, HPD, etc. And some decks just have unfair mechanics like Red hybrid (not having a lot of tamer interaction), Leviamon (blowing up the whole board on either players turn and gaining memory for it), grace nova (going from a rookie to a mega or lv7 in one turn so long as they have a rookie in raising and a tamer on field.) The best decks are usually the ones that combine unfair cards with unfair mechanics like Numemon having nume x and flooding the board with monzaemon x, anubismon flooding the board with merva or controlling the board with levia or death x, apocalymon being able to skip the evo process and just drop a level 7 that mills your opponent to death. If it’s unfair it’s good.
I mean yeah that's the point
@@StellaEFZ And then they get banned before we get to use them.
@@johnnystephens259 No...? Unless you mean Shoutmon X4 and Apocalymon
@@StellaEFZ shoutmon x4, sunrise buster, hidden potential discovered, gabumon x antibody, garurumon x antibody, and apocalymon.
@@johnnystephens259 HPD didn't have that treatment though, as for the other cards, yeah, we had them for about a week
Unlike the downsides of Pokémon’s lvl X, V, Ex cards etc., I agree the downsides of Ace Digimon are very well balanced. Pokémon is a game about removing your opponents creatures by battle to win, while Digimon is a game about attacking your opponents health total to win. Because the entire goal of Pokémon is eliminating creatures, and I believe there is no outright creature removal effects in the game, it is difficult for a player to access the downsides of an opponents Pokémon V, EX, etc. However in Digimon, removal is plentiful. Overflow is a lot easier for an opponent to proc in Digimon than it is for a Pokémon player to access the extra prize card on the special Pokémon cards.
While Ace digimon are balanced, I think the cheating memory and levels in digimon is a lot harder to balance around. You could create options that create downsides for your opponent as they play into the delay effects, however this means that in some matchups players will be forced to run a dead card in their decks which isn’t a total issue because we draw so much in this game but it’s still not fun. If side decking was a thing in digimon I could see that as an option for the future.
I think the weirdest thing about digimon is that, aside from the initial memory cost adding additional costs to effects is kinda weird because the player doesn’t have that many different types of resources. We have discard, popping your own creatures, and self burn as costs but I feel like those are mostly in purple and yellow. We even have effects locked to start of main phase on rookies, like Patamon, as a pseudo cost that force you to hide in raising or pray your opponent doesn’t have removal if you hard slam.
I think the way the game is designed just makes it hard to add additional costs to powerful effects without making the downside too huge or out of flavor for the color/archetype.
THIS! Digimon is getting so much faster and leaving behind so many decks because they just can't keep up.
This is why Ukkomon BT16 is going to be a deck staple for so many.
I personally like the last idea, a deck, or even just specific cards that gain advantage when your opponent takes certain actions that normally would gain them advantage, kind of like mirage that gains memory when your opponent draws cards, something fair that also makes your opponent really have to change the way they play sometimes
Also, I’ve thought for a while that the game could use more level 6 flood gate type digimon like venusmon that would keep your opponent from taking certain actions
>mirage
>fair
Lmfao
The best Digimon decks play like Yu-Gi-Oh decks. If shits free. If shit let's advantage at no cost. Best deck. That's the facts 🤷
Magic taught me mana efficiency is THE most important part of the resource game. Anything that does anything for free or for cheap is broken. One of the most well known ways of playing is
Turn 1: play a swamp. Use swamp for 1 black mana, play dark ritual, get 3 black mana out of it. Use one for the foolish burial equivalent, then use the other two for animate dead to put that creature onto the battlefield. It would let you put out stupidly powerful creatures like Griselbrand immediately.
In Digimon, it would make sense that the less memory it takes to win, the better the deck will be. The more cards that discount how much memory you spend, make cards completely free, OR refund memory for taking actions will be how powercreep progresses going forward.
Tbh I just want Yellow to be nuked at this point. It really feels overtuned compared to other colors
Hey east. I hope you get better. My friend Kyle from South Africa took a picture with you at the convention in Japan.
Hey! Thanks for the kind wishes! It was great meeting curly at evo Japan! I wish I could have hung out more! He told me a lot about the local scene down there!
@@East_ML glad to hear!😁 Wish I could come myself, but I had exams coming up.
I miss vanilla cards being a real thing (no abilities, but cheap to play and/or high DP).
It's just the natural progression of card games, sadly, especially for those without rotation. There's no way to sell _new_ vanillas without making them have a just straight up better stat line, it _has_ to be cheaper or bigger, otherwise why would someone run the new one over the old one? Eventually we would get rookies the size of early set megas because there's no other way to get people to buy into new vanillas
Don't get me wrong, I liked that part of the game too, but it could never be sustainable in the long run.
It will be difficult to reign in high power decks without also causing fallout for low power decks. Printing archetypes that punish level skipping specifically could work, but tbh I'd prefer a more comprehensive approach. Rock paper scissors metas are all well and good, but there needs to be a widespread solution or else nothing will fundamentally change. All that will happen is that anti-meta archetypes will become viable, leaving all the decks that are currently gatekept in the exact same place.
More opponent turn effects and maybe level 4 Aces. The game has become more focused on how fast your deck can build a stack and just GO! Security control was a necessary evil to check those go fast OTK style decks, but it seems like they dont want to support stall game strategies. Aces gave a very nice back and fourth for interaction but aside from battles and triggered effects those duel turn interactions are kinda missed, and depending on the deck you can sometimes skip aces altogether. Alot of the top decks can usually recover and build a fast stack in a turn given proper resource management, those are most ideas I can think of.
Yeah, memory cheating is a bit too much in some decks.
Older decks already played cards for free, but usually you have to wait until LV6 like Jesmon or LordKnightmon in order to get your big payoff. The only "free" stuff was usually a tamer when evolving into Lv4 and only if don't have one already.
Nowadays we have entire evolution lines where every inherited grands memory, plays a body etc.. We have tamers that spit out rookies every round. Half of Beelzemon Decklists read "gain 1 mem when milled". Ukkomon alone doubles our breeding phase(which was exclusive to BT1Mimi before and again required a Lv5 at least).
And you still wipe your opponents board while doing your combo. Or render it useless by suspending or freezing. I feel like, you NEED full immunity like MagnaX or win on the spot like Fenrir. Otherwise you can say good bye to your Lv6 the following turn.
I can certainly say, every time I have a Belphemon without protection on board, I won't keep it in 4 out of 5 times.
I've learned that I don't really know what makes a deck strong competitively. Copying other decklists gives me more success than trying to build my own with inexpensive cards
Love you bro. Thanks for the effort.
Thanks for the good vibes chief! Just doing what I can, when I can.
I would really like a Bagra Army 2.0 in BT19, i think that if done right it could be a really cool control style Purple deck (and the game hasn't a lot of those). But i don't really like level 6 "floodgates" like Venusmon, MirageGaogamon or even Hydramon, they are pretty hard to remove from the board and have some really nasty effects that protects them even further
Bagra would be good mem control deck.
I wonder how they remodel Twilight.
@@Vansjoo7966 Twilight is fine as is, if anything it needs protection against bouncing and dp reduction
@@StellaEFZ i do expect it to get some revamp to make space for ZeedMilleniummon and others.
Likely new DarkKnightmon and Nene. Also potentially other non DarkKnightmon Twilight lv3 or 4.
I just got in the game. Aka bought bt16 and just waiting for the digimon night at my locals to learn but I like the idea of midrange rush
You know memory is important when 8-12 of your slots are dedicated to consistency with boosts, trainings, and Ukkos. Leaving little room for other more flavorful/removal options.
I believe that the first skip was the x antibody option that let you raise a lvl5 and attack with a lv6 even if at 1 memory
It basically made every non xanti deck irrelevant since you could choke the lvl5, evos that cost 4 were extremely dificult to play if you didnt win memory on evo.
Now it feels that in order to catch up to that you need to have a line that gains memory as it climbs up so you can keep playing from the start of a stack, memory is becoming more of a counting game than a resource and it unfortunately streamlines deck building. Ace cards really helped this concept but they wont truly shine until their biggest predator(and best card) is gone, zudomon ace
One play style that wasn’t really talked about was control. Being able to delete things on your opps board to cripple their advantage or like Leoman take away their card draw, but I think this depends on the format you’re in
I think it’s a blend of most of styles. Like ukkomon is in multiple top decks and it gives a lot of advantage.
Being sticky or un interact-able also helps the top decks.
Blue hybrid gets to play tamers and rookie rush and skip levels.
Numemon gets to rookie rush, gain memory back when they get deleted and skip levels.
Yellow vaccine gets to skip levels, and make a big stack that is hard to remove that can block.
4 basic ways to play *. You forgot the play where they just recover and stack options. >.
Oh yeah, I did forget about pain style 😂
I 100% agree.
Decks are becoming too free. And it’s happening extremely fast to the game. Aces are doing more and more, for free. Lots of decks are cheating out cards when a year ago that would be unheard of on a Digimon.
Patamon is a good example of a card that should be at 1. Raise out, digi for free, GAIN a memory AND recover the digivolve back? Like what kind of card is that? Where is the cost? You print a a Chuumon like that and you know it’d be costly as hell.
We need more frequent restriction lists honestly.
I don't know man, Miragegaogamon is basically a floodgate that punishes you for doing an essential action, drawing. Not only that, but the fact that you can almost always go from lvl 5 to 6 for like 1 memory is just too much, specially combined with the burst mode which will again "refund" you memory, that you can easily convert into another attack.
Then you have leviamon, which doesn't like you playing digimon by effects, but it can also force you to play them just to fulfill their conditions to bring leviamon or leviamon x to the board.
I don't really like that design of lvl 6 digimons that can gain their advantages just for playing their game, while punishing yours.
Mirage is the n1 memory cheater though
Be part blue or yellow
If you ask me, the "cheating" started already in BT9 with x-antibody cards.
You want Digi-Burst back?
Personally, I don’t think it’s an issue (yet) and that’s because it’s a bunch of decks. Your meta breakdowns always show a variety of decks topping.
If more decks can “skip” I don’t think it’s a bad thing. If only one deck or two decks can skip and no other decks can and that trend holds true for sets, it’s a problem.
I think the level skipping is fine but the refunding in terms of memory is getting out of hand in my opinion.
creating new counters to certain moves can help but it’d take too long and it may not even be enough. i think the game needs to utilize a lot more banned pairs and limiting/banning more cards. i don’t want to see the game get too yugioh one way or the other but i think some things can be hit across the board for the sake of balance
I don't think that decks that can kill you really fast should have memory gain or ways to come back, just to balance them.
I've been saying for a while but speed is the king in this game. You need to be threatening damage as fast as possible and as efficiently as possible. Whether you're cheating out cards or you're gaining a lot of memory or just recurring cards for value, you have to turn around and have some kind of value engine
Memory efficiency is the most important factor in the game. Just take a look at the banned list and you'll see they don't let crazy Memory efficient cards go through.
Bt12 patamon says hello
They constantly let memory cheats through, the only time they don't is when it's so blatant that the playerbase rages, that's literally the only time
@@enigmaticheart666 Only when you can do nothing to stop it. Patamon is crazy but honestly I just played against 2 Numemon decks and comparatively patamon is shit.
Ukkomon needs to go before I even want to look at complaining about anything else
Yellow has been power crept so hard it ruined the game. Same trajectory as the One Piece TCG.
there's too many ways of extending your turn. you can choke someone to 1 with no memory setter and they still gain a bunch of memory. People were forced to play memory setters before, now they just play tamers that gain a flat amount each turn or have ukko engines to put them above 3 even when choked at 1.
They have been actively speeding up the game ignoring its base resources and making things as un-interactive as possible. Purple and yellow having access to zones that other colors don't have clearly gave them an unfair advantage on a fundamental level. The fact that we can gain memory from evolution is already broken because cards should have a cost and we are getting to a point where a rookie can lead to having a mega on board and not pass turn off 1 memory is something I was hoping we would never see yet here we are. Cards having a cost is a balancing tool that they like to think is a suggestion more than the rule. I think a lot of cards should get hit to bring the game back to a more acceptable speed.
I am finding less enjoyment out of the game with its current pacing problem and how much the best decks "cheat" and the future sets leave me more frustrated than excited which as a fan of the IP makes me sad.
Good decks? Free digievolutions, free removal as you are evolving, free tamers
Bad decks? Playing Analogman for 4 cost, building a 9 card stack for a BlackWargreymon, needing to play 3 to 4 Sistermons, needing to play 3+ Rinas, needing to stack the Vemmons, etc.
I was like why is my mans nose so red. Oh
My sinuses taking a beating on the daily last week 🤣
I don’t think those things are issues.
What makes a competitive deck enjoyable to play is the kickback reward you get for completing combos.
Skipping levels & niche digivolution requirements being available in so many colors now keeps us from single stack formats where every deck just comes out of raising and goes up the line. BT9 was the greatest set release of all time but, many did not like the format because it was all single stack.
I do agree responsive delay options like Rostrum/Biting Crush would be good but, for just digivolving or performing certain actions.
Like example for a 3 cost yellow one: “Main: look at your security choose 1 card and reveal it, shuffle the rest of your security stack & place the chosen card on top of your security stack after. Then place this card in your battle area. Delay - when your opponent digivolves into a Digimon card in the battle area, you can trash this card to give that Digimon -2000 dp and security-1.”
The security stacking for some the info like yellow could be a little scary but something with this theme is something I could get behind
The fucking Santa nose
Feel better man
So, my worry with Digimon, and it is coming to fruition, is the ignoring of the Memory Gauge. Playing Tamers for free. Reduced Digivolution Costs. Playing Digimon for reduced costs. Refunding costs. Memory Gain. Etc... And as the game progresses, Digimon decks will progressively gain more and more access to these tools. And... I originally came to play this game because of the Memory Gauge. It was an incredibly fair game mechanic that originally ensured that both players would be able to play the game. However, it sure seems like we're heading towards Yu-Gi-Oh!, a game that didn't have resource pool management. We have gotten to the point where Memory Setting Tamers are at one and at most two copies in decks, because decks can just play from one memory. It is a problem that the game is progressing in ignoring the most important mechanic in the game.
I think a lot of us came to the game because of the memory gauge as a fantastic resource mechanic, but the longer I play the more I appreciate the use of other things in addition to the memory gauge as resources. I think as the game develops we’ll see the balance of the memory gauge plus other things, depending on the style of deck. Arguably some decks are already there (think beelzemon).
"all the best decks do this"
Be yellow lmfao, that's it that's what they do
1/10 men is colorblind. I’m doing this video for them lol
I’ve been saying Digimon is going to run into the yugioh problem for ages. The games still youngish and the power creeps been big in some sets, which will happen in any tcg. But the memory gauge means nothing now. Choking was a big part to limit plays and it doesn’t matter anymore 1 memory is all you need. Everything removes Digimon. Sometimes I feel like I play with myself against decks because you can’t punish them. I miss the fun in the game which is why even my super competitive friends like to play lower power decks in casuals more then testing best decks. Tho don’t get my wrong they will at events and locals for a big event. I’ve lost the fun in the game but that’s just me. I still want the game to succeed the IP is close to my heart, but casually with friends is how I’ll do it from now on.
"The best all do this" is it, win the game? XD
You are the best digimon content creator
Thanks for the kind words king 👑. Just trying to give back to the community whatever I can.