BCS 2023 Season Analysis

Firstly 23 Regionals this year hosted Vanguard tournaments; the same number as last year. New locations on the schedule were Costa Rica (I really appreciate seeing a Central American event), Vienna, and Sydney. However we did not see 2022’s events in Italy, Perth, and Taiwan repeated. This season has brought a massive uptick in the number of players turning out for BCS events. 2022 had 3281 players and we almost broke the 10000 player barrier across this season. BCS Duluth managed 500 players on day 1, the biggest number seen ever at a post-Covid regional. All of this brings great hope for the game since we trebled the player count across events and had our first non-NA American regional in some time.

D continues its strong showing from this year’s BSF Season by taking up a large proportion of each venue and even having the majority of players at some of the more populated regionals. This is even more impressive when you consider the fact that it’s competing against the total of two formats. D has also experienced amount of growth this year of any format, which allows me to very confidently describe 2023 as the Year of Standard when talking about player preferences.

When looking at V and P, we notice that P is a more popular choice than V as an alternative format on day 1, and also keeps more players inside the Vanguard ecosystem by getting them to come back for day 2. V has been performing better this season than during BSF as many top players are playing it instead of D for a more consistent worlds invite yet still has less players than the natural popularity of premium. This data shuts down the two-year-long debate over which format is more popular.

However, I want to bring attention to one problem that I see in the tournament structure for Vanguard: the three-format split. Because of D’s popularity, any secondary format that falls on day 1 necessarily receives a low turnout. I think the regionals system for the game would definitely be improved if we remove V, improve D, and have it on day 1 with P day 2 at every regional.

Standard Format

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If I had to use 1 word to describe the D BCS format that we had, it would certainly be ‘diverse’. Throughout the course of the season, we had seven decks that could be described as ‘BDIF’ (Gandeeva, Wilista, Chronojet, Minerva, Greedon, Orfist, and Zorga). Some of these decks prefer going first, some second, some have high consistency, some have high payoff, meaning there are competitive decks for many different personal preferences.

The format however is very sacky and I would like to see fixes for this probably instituted before BSF. D saw the lowest percentage of players requalifying for it and has the lowest percentage of known players playing in the event as a result of the sacky nature.

Looking ahead to worlds, this is what I predict to be the format. The decks that are able to consistently perform going both and second are the strongest this format, and decks with powerful rushes and decks that can grade 2 bully find themselves in high tiers:

One funny thing I found is that this is the first competitive season where Brandt Gate has not been the most topping nation (this happened in BSF22, BCS22, and BSF23). While the format has quite a few problems going on currently the fact that statistically less eldobreath’s are being flipped can only be a positive and I hope that this is a trend that remains through into 2024.

Finally, D does not need a banlist due to the rate at which the format powercreeps. As an example of this, Greedon, an unknown and unsolved deck, topped at almost the same rate as Gandeeva, the most represented deck, during the Pre-Banlist DBT11 format.

Thus, I feel that any attempt at going ‘Orfist topped the most recently, it’s the best deck, we should hit it’ is pointless, since the deck has already been powercreeped out by Vivace, Fullblast, and Ignis and will continue to be powercreeped out by the Luard and Shiranui decksets once they release (they are not legal for worlds). Instead I feel that the best course of action for D is to use that powercreep as a force for good. Bushi should release more defensive decks into the format, slow down the pace of the game, add strong punishes for rushing, and increase the amount of shield that each deck has access to through their non-trigger units. They should ban OTs though please.

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V-Premium has surprisingly shifted a lot during this BCS season due to the high powerlevel of our monthly promo releases. The best way to understand the format is to break it into eras. At the start of the season Thavas was the best deck because it had the strongest ride fixer promo and was consistent. Then in October, Nightrose’s ridefixer promo, which was stronger, released and the list I used to top in BCS France and UK was the best deck. In November, Ange’s ridefixer promo released and, while it was not as strong as Nightrose’s, it was good enough to give the deck 2nd/3rd best deck status. December brought with it the strongest ridefixer (Gurguit’s), once again shaking up the format and creating a new best deck as we head into worlds. This is the tierlist that our V-Premium testing group has been working off of as we prepare for February:

The format is also fairly balanced at the moment. Gurguit is a strong deck but nowhere near tier 0 and the top 4 decks have fairly even matchups into each other. Decks like Vanquisher and Luard are also very close to those top 4 in powerlevel. The decks that I would like to see addressed most from a powerlevel perspective are the decks that can sack opponents out on turn 3 and otherwise are mid. Probably more pressing hits though are ones to shake up the format. Aside from the SM tier 0 format, decks from 2020 have been the strongest decks for the last 3 years and it makes V format very unappealing to outside observers. My controversial proposal of banning all VRs (or at least all that were released from V-EB11 onwards) would be a good way to breathe new life into the format and let clan collection decks shine. Otherwise, I do not think Bushiroad should keep V-Premium alive.

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Premium format this season has been very weird. We started off with Narukami being the most topping deck (even though it was only the fourth best deck and had unfavourable matchups into Chaos, French Katrina, and Nightrose). After Erads was hit on the banlist however, Megacolony lost its greatest natural predator, and, combined with its strong matchup spread into French Katrina and Granblue, became the most represented deck and will most likely remain it heading into Worlds.

Premium this season has been defined by matchups. Every deck in the format has one matchup that it cannot bear to see in events. Eradicators has Chaos, Granblue and French Katrina have Gredora, Gredora has Eradicators etc. This has allowed the format to naturally develop as people counterpick what was strongly represented the previous week (Toronto’s 3 Megacolony shifted to 5 Eradicators in Rosemont’s top 8) and has created an insane level of diversity for both decks and Archetypes.

Currently this is my prediction for what are the best picks for Worlds:

The main issue when building for this format is that the two best decks in a vacuum, Granblue and French Katrina, lose insanely hard to Megacolony, which in turn loses to every single deck in ‘Good Picks’ apart from Katrina. Funnily enough, all of those decks then lose to Granblue and Katrina again. I expect unexpected decks to be popular at worlds as supposed ‘answers to the format’. On the other hand, it is very likely that someone becomes World Champion just because they dodged their bad matchups all day.

Excluding the obvious banning of OTs (let’s make it happen), I think the format is for the most part fine. The perceived problem of Narukami was dealt with quickly in the season and Bushiroad banned Myrtoa, killing the loops that made Premium very unfun for casual and competitive players alike (read if you want to learn more). There is one complaint I have in this current format though, and it is the Gredora Stride.

This card is a stronger Stunverse and warps the entire format around it, even when it’s a bad deck. While putting this card to zero is preferred, putting it to one does enough to break Premium from it’s current situation of being a matchup roulette, which makes the format much less random for competitive players and teams.

This BCS season has shown incredible growth for the game but has also had quite a bit of randomness in its results. D has been decided by triggers, V by dice, and P by matchups. However, the formats all have degrees of skill expression and many established players have managed to qualify and requalify for the World Championships. I’d like to congratulate everyone that managed this difficult feat and thank everyone who judged or played at a BCS regional. Your help to grow the game will not go unnoticed.

Ban OTs as well though