Today, Bushiroad announced two things: How the new type of G-Unit, G-Guardians work exactly, and that the G-Zone limit would be increased to 16 cards, double the size of the current G-Zone.
First lets talk about G-Guardians.
G-Guardians are a new defensive mechanic originally revealed in the Vanguard Anime that allows you to superior call a 15k shield from the G-Zone to the guardian circle if you discard a heal. After the battle the G-Guardian returns to the G-Zone face up. Clan based G-Guardians also gain 5k more shield if you can successfully resolve their ability. This slows down the game a little bit, allowing you to get more shield out of your heal trigger, as well as being able to guard Glory and Tom skills with ease.
It also sorts out an issue that Vanguard has had ever since G-Units were introduced: Second Turn Advantage. Pretty much, if your opponent strode first, they had a much higher chance of winning as they would get to their (usually) extremely powerful strides first. Clans which could rush, had strong first strides, or in the case of Royal Paladin, both, had a significant advantage over other clans.
G-Guardians have helped level the playing field.
If a G-Guardian is used on your opponent's first stride, and you have not strode first, it gives the the player who has not strode this turn a face up G-Unit after that battle, which can be capitalised next turn by G-Units which either have GB2 (Or even GB3 if they can persona) or skills that behave similarly to these conditions. The only issue is that some clans (especially Megacolony) gain little benefit from this, whilst other clans, such as Aqua Force and Royal Paladin can abuse this incredibly well.
G-Guardians also help Limit Break and Legion decks, as they can set up their huge finishers without actually having to stride.
Are there actually anything bad about G-Guardians? Only that it makes already powerful clans a bit more powerful, but it counterbalances that by buffing defences rather significantly.
Now the G-Zone size increase.
Whilst I feel that increasing the size of the G-Zone was a good idea, the size they actually increased it by I think is a little overboard. I understand why they did it: to sell G-Units, so they didn't have to power creep constantly to keep people buying sets, and giving people more flexibility so they can tech niche G-Units in their G-Zone.
This benefits clans with large, powerful and useful G-Unit rosters.
However. I think that for the long term, Bushiroad should really start doing more reprints so that the cost of the game can stay somewhat reasonable.
