It’s been just over half a year since the reboot for Cardfight!! Vanguard in which it implemented multiple formats for the game, Standard and Premium. Standard is the format that only allows for the use of the newer V-series cards. Premium on the other hand allows the use of all cards released. Since then the community has been more or less divided on which format is better and should be the focused format for tournaments outside of BCS (Bushiroad Championship) and Spring Fests. I’ll be looking at at both formats and analyze how the format contributes to the community, its positives and negatives, as well as how competitive the format is for each.

Standard is the newest format to the game and saw a lot of polarizing opinions when it was first announced with the reboot. Half of the community (myself included) praised the reboot and new format for the fact that it would bring in new players as well as balance the game. On the other side of the fence however, many players were complaining that their old cards were worthless and a decent amount quit the game. Coming from the end of the G-era of Vanguard and reboot seemed refreshing, the game had been extremely power-creeped over the past two sets with Ultimate Stride and Divine Dragon Apocrypha bringing in Zeroth dragons. However, that refreshing feeling of a balanced game wouldn’t last for long as most players came to find out that clans such as OTT and Kagero, two of the first decks released in the reboot, would remain two of the top decks to this day, while other decks would remain at the bottom tier even with new support. It was clear to everyone that Bushiroad’s favor system was not going to change with the reboot and combo that with Standard’s game-play relying more on variance than player skill deterred a lot of the more competitive players to keep playing the format and because of that the first couple of ARG (Alter Reality Games) events were solely Premium.

As far as the history of Premium so far, you can flip most of the points from the Standard paragraph and there you go but let me go into more detail. In the beginning most players were going to play Premium until their favorite clan came out for Standard which they would then switch over. Most labeled Premium as a bandage for Bushiroad to keep its player-base until all the clans would be released into the Standard format. However, after most of veteran player-base got over their honeymoon phase (again myself included) they started seeing the flaws with Standards current competitive viability. Standard only had a dozen different clans that could be played as well as a smaller available card pool which led to little creativity in deck-building. This led to the meta constantly being dominated by 2-3 decks, compared that to Premium and the grass looked a lot greener. Premium had the advantage of a huge card pool which led to a very diverse metagame. Even clans that had no support from the V-series such as Bermuda Triangle were being played and having success within the meta.

It is with a heavy heart that I would like to say that neither format is currently in great spot. While Standard is releasing more clans and we are having a bit more diversity, we are still facing the problem of the game being heavily luck dependent which creates a very boring competitive game state. Although its getting better, I feel as though the Standard format still has a long way to go before it gets back to Vanguards glory days. For all the praise I gave Premium it has slowly gotten out of hand with players figuring out more and more degenerate deck builds that seem to break the meta. Decks such and NLK loop and the various Gyze decks have taken over the metagame bringing us from the diverse meta we had at the start of the reboot. Despite all of this, I am still playing the game and supporting both formats. While we may lose some players along the way, i know that Vanguard can get back to its glory days. Just remember to keep playing, keep improving.