About Japan's restriction list, and my thoughts.

For those of you who haven't heard yet, probably because you live on Mars, there are 2 changes to Japan's restriction list, and a new rule to Clan-Fight which will begin from the 22nd January:

Flash Ripple,Odysseus may only be run at 2 copies or less.

Commander Laurel is now unrestricted.

Clan-Fight rule: if you have a card named "Jewel Knight, Swordmy" in your deck, all grade 3 cards in your deck must have "Jewel Knight" in it's card name.

Flash Ripple, Odysseus

To be honest, as soon as this card was announced, I knew this card was destined to completely warp the metagame. If any card in Vanguard was going to be restricted in the near future, it was going to be this card.

I'm not surprised that it did happen. Instead I'm curious about how the Ripple deck functions with only 2 Odysseus. All the restricted Odysseus means is we cannot be as reliant on the ride chain as we once were, Alecs is now the mandatory starter of the deck and Sea Turtle Soldier is no longer even remotely viable in normal Ripple. (By that I mean the 4 Miltiadis 4-3 Genovious version of the deck)

Because of this, I think that Tidal Assault will replace Turtle Soldier in most people's Ripple decks, but with Tidal Assault now on the watchlist, I think some people might try to use Ianis or Twin-Strike out of fear.

I also think that Ripple Rush will start to be used much more often, to try and use Turtle Soldier more effectively. I'm not sure how good the deck will play with only 2 Odysseus, mainly because the deck is more reliant on having Odysseus as early as possible then normal Ripple IMO, but only time will tell.

Commander Laurel

Commander Laurel is a card that shouldn't be allowed at 4 anymore. It shouldn't be allowed to even be played in my opinion. Not because the Japanese metagame is now extremely unhealthy because of Laurel, but because Dimension Police's development will be stunted because of Laurel. It's like Cat Butler in this regard, but unlike Cat Butler, who only affects Legion decks, Commander Laurel affects all of Dimension Police.

It's a crutch that D-Police has been using for far too long. It needs to learn how to stand on two legs. Allowing D-police to use this card is only facilitating the problem.

Jewel Knight, Swordmy

This is the definition of a slap on the wrist. No ban, and a very small restriction, that only effects two decks. The deck they were targeting, Sanctuary Guard is barely effected by this at all. I can literally only think of one match-up that the removal of swordmy drastically affects, and that match-up was Ripple!

I guess I should elaborate more.

There's a card printed in Vanguard and Deletor, Sage of Salvation, Benon, who is almost as good as Swordmy.

His main problems are that the column he creates are only 14k, and his lack of flexibility.

Benon can only call a rearguard into the same column as him, That just means that you have to be a bit more careful with your rearguard placement, but in certain situations Swordmy's flexibility can be much more useful.

The 14k column are only detrimental in Sanctuary Guard if the opponent has a 10k or higher base vanguard. In other words, a 10k vanilla grade 2's or a grade 3

If your opponent is at grade 3, you can stride into Regalie, who completely nullifies the low power columns, and creates similar if not slightly weaker columns.

In exchange for these pretty minor problem, Benon can call Mirron/Richard, soulblast a single card and draw a card.

At the same time, they've kept Jewel-Knights, a sub-clan with the best early game ever (tied with Ripple) exactly the same, Bushiroad completely removed Swordmy it from the watch-list, and then they printed Evangeline, a slightly weaker Regalie/

All they've done is shift the problem from Regalie to Jewel Knights in a cash-grab, and I can't really look at it any other way.

Or am I overreacting?