With the way card sets release support for a small handful of the 24 main clansnote at a time, the clans that are considered competitive can change as the metagame shifts. However, sometimes a deck proves to be too powerful, sometimes being even more powerful than later sets, in which case Bushiroad will update the Card Restrictions to limit the deck in some way. Bushiroad does not like making these kinds of restrictions, especially when the game was young, so when they make these restrictions, there's a very good reason for it.
Starting from February 2015, all official tournaments use Clan Fight regulations, which require decks to use cards from only one clan, with some exceptions. (Standard fights, which do not use clans, instead use Nation Fight which restricts cards by nation.) There are other fight formats available, such as G-Regulationnote or Extreme Fightnote . Since the Card Restrictions list is used for official tournaments which use Clan Fight, this page will not cover any Game Breakers that may exist in Extreme Fight formats after Clan Fight was introduced.
Furthermore, Bushiroad has rebooted the game twice, once on March 13, 2018 alongside the release of Cardfight!! Vanguard (V Series), and again on January 19, 2021 alongside Cardfight!! Vanguard overDress. As such, there are three main Fight Formats:
- Standard: Cards released for the overDress reboot can be used, as indicated with a D icon next to the card code.
- V Premium: Cards released for the V Series reboot can be used, as indicated with a V icon next to the card code. After the overDress reboot, the format is being supported bi-annually with the V Clan Collection sets.
- Premium: The legacy format, where all cards can be used. For the purposes of Clan Fight, an overDress card that does not have a Clan printed on it (mostly reserved for Encounter cards) can be used in any deck that uses a clan belonging to that nation.example
- During the transition to V Series, the G Standard fight format was temporarily available, which allowed cards up to Vanguard G's final set.
In addition to restrictions that limit copies of a specific card, Bushiroad may also "choice restrict" certain combinations of cards. If a deck has one or more copies of a card within a certain choice restriction, the other cards mentioned in that restriction cannot be placed in the same deck. These are generally used when the combinations of cards together becomes a Game Breaker, rather than any one card within that set.
Most recently, Bushiroad has decided to have some Card Restrictions apply only to the Japanese release or the overseas English release, due to the differences in tournament size resulting in different decks being better in one release than another. For example, because overseas tournaments commonly have higher attendance and thus require fighters to play in more rounds, decks that can consistently make powerful plays are more popular than decks that may have a very powerful early game-ending combo but are less consistent.
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Common Trends and Rule Changes
- Enabling additional Vanguard attacks, either by standing the Vanguard (allowing it to keep trigger effects) or replacing the Vanguard with another unit (which won't let it keep trigger effects), is an extremely powerful ability; a decent chunk of all the restricted cards are one that enable such tactics. Not only does this give you another attack, but it gives you more trigger checks as well, which means the potential for more damage. Often these attacks are powerful enough you need a perfect guard to stop it, and that won't help if you only have one at the ready and your opponent can hit you twice, either time with a chance of gaining more critical from a critical trigger. The "drawback" to these cards are typically at a high cost, mainly discarding roughly two to three cards from your hand depending on the unit, but players can usually toss out cards they will not need later.
- When Clan Fight was first implemented, Royal Paladin decks were allowed to play up to 10 Shadow Paladin units, to accommodate Majesty Lord Blaster, a card that required using the Shadow Paladin unit Blaster Dark. However, this eventually led to Loophole Abuse in 2014 with the advent of the Thing Saver "Abyss" deck, which carefully added 10 Shadow Paladin units meant to support Revenger, Phantom Blaster "Abyss"
instead of anything related to Majesty Lord Blaster, and capping it off with Seeker, Thing Saver Dragon to close out the game by utilizing the additional Soul generated by "Abyss" to allow it to attack twice that turn. It consistently topped tournaments, causing Bushiroad to change the aforementioned rule to allow Royal Paladin decks to include Blaster Dark only. - A common trend recently seems to be related to incredibly strong Stand Trigger loops. Starting from the Vanguard G Era (and arguably during the Legion Mate Era), many Stand triggers were designed to have effects, most notably to return that card back to the deck. This was done to encourage players to use Stand Triggers in their decks as many neglected to use them in favor of more Critical Triggers. With these Stand Triggers though, several decks, most notably decks that can manipulate the deck in some way, found loops to allow players to either gain near unlimited power, an extremely high number of attacks in one turn, or both.
- Starting from V-era onward though, Bushiroad had decided to take care of the issues Stand triggers have been causing on both ends... by completely phasing them out. Instead, they had retooled it into Front triggers, which upon activating will give 10,000 Power to the entire front row. For Premium players, this means that if you want to use Stand triggers, you will have to weigh the options against using it, such as the fact that they only add 5,000 Power to a unit.
- Stalling, the act of not riding to the next Grade, is something that is often frowned upon in the community. The reason many stall is to do one of two things, either prevent the opponent from being the first to Stride or Legion, or to prevent them from performing Stride or Legion at all. However, stalling too long may cause the stalled opponent to catch up or punish them with an alternative way such as Air Element, Twitterun or Air Element, Seabreeze, or to simply use a Vanguard that works without Stride. However some stalling decks are successful due to easy access to skills to quickly stand or call rear-guards, or a simply strong push early game. This is especially jarring for a G-Era deck as most of their abilities are Generation Break locked and thus unable to even play the game.
- With the new V Series announcements, grade stalling has been mostly dealt with with a new rule for Premium allowing a player to Stride if they have been on Grade 3 for a turn, regardless of the opponent's Vanguard grade. There is still some stalling to be the first to Stride, but it can be outweighed by how strong many V Series Grade 3s are, especially since they set up their Imaginary Gifts first.
- Rearguards with the ability to perform drive checks. On their own, they're nothing too game-breaking, but in conjunction with Stand Trigger loops as mentioned above, players can have increased chances of checking multiple Stand Triggers in one turn, potentially restanding and attacking with the drive-checking rear-guard over and over again with each attacking becoming stronger, and allowing players to amass large hand sizes. Because of this, a new rule was implemented, stating that any rear-guard that stands via a Stand Trigger can no longer perform drive checks for any of other attacks that turn, completing its current drive check if applicable (such as if it had Twin Drive but checked a Stand Trigger on its first check).
- In Standard, players can only Stride if they have a special Crest ability that enables it but prevents riding Grade 3 cards other than the one associated with the Crest, such as Chronojet Dragon's Crest which can only be obtained by riding Masergear Dragon. As such, any Dark States player could have cards in their G Deck as long as their Ride Deck contained Chrono Dran and Masergear Dragon. This led to two kinds of Loophole Abuse involving playing a unit other than Chronojet Dragon in their Ride Deck. Firstly, a player could pretend to be a Chronojet deck by having cards in their G Zone, but opt to ride a Grade 1 unit from hand to avoid the drawbacks of the Crest. Secondly, because tournament rankings in Japan are designed to favor less popular decks if two players' win-loss ratio is the same, it became popular build a deck whose Ride Deck contained a completely irrelevant Grade 3 Dark States unit, making the deck seem like a "less popular" deck, and opting to ride a Chronojet Dragon from their hand instead, aided by Steam Breath Dragon to make it easier to have it ready to ride. As a result, Bushiroad made an Obvious Rule Patch requiring Dark States players to also have Chronojet Dragon in their Ride Deck in order to have cards in their G Deck.
Premium Restrictions
All Clans
- Rain Elemental Zarzan quickly found a home among decks that sought to either: quickly get the deck to Generation Break 8 for degenerate multi-attack plays, like Hellhard Eight Turbo or the loop with Visible Songster, unlocking G-Units that could win games on their own at full capacity such as either form of Ichikishima, could be re-used over and over in Ripples with Odysseus now unrestricted for big lanes you could re-stand...but even without all of that it quickly dug through the deck for a cheap Soulblast of 1, and to make things worse you didn't even need to run too many 'vanilla' cards to make it work - triggers without any skills were a staple in almost everything anyway and were valid targets to call from its skill. Triggers weren't even bad boosters since Storm Elemental, Cycloned could make them into 10k+ powered units. As a result, it went on the August 1, 2020 Restricted List, but even then it proved to be extremely powerful in the right decks, and was fully banned on October 1, 2021.
- Although it was less powerful than the above Zarzan, Tempest Sphere was also a deceptively powerful card as it allowed you to flip any G Unit face-up, then look at the top 7 cards of your deck and add up to 2 cards without abilities to your hand, such as the high-shield Heal Triggers, enabling Generation Break immediately and potentially activating a G Unit's passive abilities. As such, it was also banned on October 1, 2021.
United Sanctuary/Keter Sanctuary
- Overtriggers are Purposely Overpowered trigger units that give a whopping 100 million power when you drive check them, but you can only have 1 per deck to make it harder to resolve, and it is removed from play when checked to prevent them from being used multiple times in a game. Zeroth Dragon of Zenith Peak, Ultima allows you to place any 2 cards from your deck on the top of your deck when you Stride it, and causes trigger effects to affect all your units at the same time, instead of just one unit per effect. Put the two together and you get an entire field of units with over 10 million power, which is virtually unstoppable without multiple Perfect Guards. This led to them being choice restricted on October 1, 2021.
Angel Feather
- Doctoroid Refros is a Stand Trigger that can Counter Blast 1 to send itself and two cards in your Damage Zone back into the deck (one of which can be the card you used for its Counter Blast, basically making its skill free) to put the top two cards into the Damage Zone and drawing 1 card. If the deck is small enough, chances are the card drawn is either another Refros, or a card that can get another Refros back from the Damage Zone if it had ended up there. In addition to allowing a player to recycle triggers and important cards back into the deck, several units gain power when a card is put into the damage zone, like Nurse of Broken Heart, and can take advantage of this strategy acquiring near endless power forcing the opponent to use their Perfect Guard or take the damage, not to mention it can enable a Stand Trigger loop, resulting in potential slow play abuse. As such, it was restricted to 1 on March 17, 2016.
Oracle Think Tank
- Esteemed Deity of Abundant Waters, Ichikishima is an Oracle Think Tank G-Unit released to support the clan in Premium format, with what is probably the most unfairly powerful effect in the game. For a single CB and flipping any card from the G Zone face-up, you draw a card and disables all AUTO abilities of your opponent's guardians for the rest of the turn. This means that most if not all defensive options in the game, including Sentinels and many G Guardians, become virtually unusable due to them relying on their AUTO abilities to function. On top of that, she also has an Oracle skill that grants your entire front row +2000 power for each card in your hand, and if a copy of her is face-up in the G Zone, allows you to include the face-up cards in your G-Zone towards that total hand count, meaning your columns will be hitting for absurdly large thresholds that are almost impossible to guard against without a large hand. Add that to Oracle Think Tank's emphasis on deck manipulation to increase the chances of checking triggers in their Drive checks, and their emphasis on drawing cards to make it easier to survive their opponent's attacks and thus Stride another Ichikishima on the following turn, and you these already hard to guard columns made even larger on top of possibly having extra Criticals on them. All of this led to Esteemed Ichikishima being one of the first cards to be outright banned in all of the game's history.
- Magical Calico has a very simple effect, placing itself in Soul and discarding a card to reveal 3 cards from your deck, then letting your opponent choose the card to add to your hand while the rest go to the drop zone. From the start it was possible to reveal 3 of the same card to guarantee an important combo piece, but it was kicked into overdrive when V Series retrained Goddess of the Sun, Amaterasu, who gave the Vanguard +10,000 Power and +1 Critical if she was revealed by a card effect. This meant it became an on-demand +30,000 Power/+3 Critical, which could be made harder to guard with a restriction skill like Still Water Festival Deity, Ichikishima's, especially because the new V Series Perfect Guards were Grade 0 and thus would be blocked by Ichikishima's effect. As a result, Magical Calico cannot be used as the starting Vanguard.
Gold Paladin
- The original version of Crimson Lion Cub, Kryph shows how an old card can suddenly escalate in light of new rule changes long after its release. If your Vanguard is "Knight of Superior Skills, Beaumains", you can send it and a "Knight of Elegant Skills, Gareth" to the Soul in order to superior ride "Incandescent Lion, Blond Ezel" directly from the deck. While this skill was initially seen inconsistent even during its time due to requiring two specific cards that had no skills whatsoever, this all changed in the advent of the V Series, where both Beaumains and Gareth (and Blond Ezel) were rebooted with new skills but still keep their original names (and in the case of Blond Ezel, also gives access to Imaginary Gifts). The new Beaumains, in particular, can call Gareth from your Deck for a mere discard cost, thereby automatically fulfilling this card's requirements. And all of this can be achieved regardless of what Grade your opponent is, and when factoring in the new Stride rules mentioned above, this meant that not only did the Ezel player reach Grade 3 and gain Imaginary Gifts at a much earlier pace, but they can also start Striding even if the opponent is still at Grade 2 at most - and all of this is achieved simply by having the new Beaumains (and discard fodder) in your hand. As a bonus, with a second Beaumains and a copy of Blond Ezel in hand, that same Kryph could be Soul Blasted to superior ride another Ezel for an additional Imaginary Gift. This made it that games against an Ezel player were literally decided on who wins the coin flip/die roll and if the Ezel player goes first; the game pretty much snowballs in their favor due to speed alone. As a result of this, the original Kyrph has since been banned from being used as a starting vanguard.
- The original version of Flame Wind Lion, Wonder Ezel, when placed on a rear-guard circle while your Vanguard is a standing Grade 3 with "Ezel" in its name, can superior ride another Ezel from your deck for no cost. It was mostly seen as a gimmick card at the time of release, since the skill's main utility was for crossriding and the three Ezel crossrides available at the time were seen as inefficient at best (not to mention being released during the Stride Era). Much like with Kyrph however, this got turned on its head with the introduction of V-Era Ezel cards. Wonder Ezel went from useless filler to a costless way to stack Imaginary Gifts and draw cards with the Accel II Gift, adding incredible consistency to the high-rolling Superior Ride based strategy that V-Era Ezel was famous for. Because of this, the March 1, 2020 Restricted List completely forbade the original Wonder Ezel from being used in a deck at all.
Shadow Paladin
- Freezing Witch, Bendi was meant to allow a deck with Phantom Blaster Overlord to ride to Phantom Blaster Dragon on turn 2 to set up Overlord's Crossride bonus, with the Superior Ride's consistency bolstered via Dumphood Dragon to search Blaster Dark and the powerful tutoring tool of Skull Witch, Nemain to fetch either piece. This turned out to be a problem in the Premium format, since this would allow a Shadow Paladin player who went first to unleash powerful Strides on turn 3, while their opponent was still on Grade 2. As a result, Bendi was banned on October 1, 2021.
Genesis
- When Goddess of Sound Sleep, Tahro is sent from the Soul to the drop zone, such as via Soul Blast, she returns to the deck and stands a rear-guard (if there is any). With a small enough deck and when coupled with Shackle Fetter, Gelgja and a repeatable main phase Soul Blast ability like Mythical Hellsky Beast, Fenrir, it became possible to loop the two together while greatly increasing the power of a player's rear-guards, and to top it all off, copies of Tahro in the Soul at the end could be used to allow a buffed Angelic Wiseman to attack multiple times by abusing its Soul Blast during the battle phase. This led to its initial restriction to 1 copy. It was later unrestricted because Serial Escalation and Power Creep made its restriction unnecessary, but as Genesis started gaining more and more powerful cards and a rear-guard with drive checks in Giant Deity of Distant World, Valkerion, it became necessary to ban it.
Dragon Empire
Nubatama
- Shura Stealth Dragon, Jamyocongo has a powerful effect to immediately reduce the opponent's hand to 6 (4 if a Grade 3 is in the Soul) at the end of their turn, making it much harder for them to guard the next turn's attack. This set it up for a devastating combo with Evil-eye Vidya Emperor, Shiranui "Rinne", whose effect called 2 cards out of their hand and forced those cards to attack, resulting in even more attacks to block with only 2 cards remaining in hand. This resulted in a restriction on September 1, 2019 preventing the two cards from being used in the same deck. However, Jamyocongo's effect continued to be a problem in the coming years as more Nubatama support was released, so it was banned on October 1, 2021.
Murakumo
- Ambush Demon Stealth Beast, Nue Daio is a G Unit with an effect meant to work wonders with the recently-released Samurai Chieftain, HYU-GA by Striding over the latter during the Main Phase after it had changed all units on the field to its own name, then standing all of them when it attacked. Furthermore, if it used this ability, it prevented the opponent from guarding its attack unless they called five or more cards at the same time. This led to an extremely powerful one-turn kill strategy for the Accel clan, pressuring an insane number of attacks, especially when the Vanguard attack effectively couldn't be guarded with a Perfect Guard. It was ultimately banned on October 1, 2021.
- If Stealth Dragon, Dual Weapon's attack does not hit, it can retire itself to call a copy of a Grade 1 or 3 rear-guard from the deck. The V Series Stealth Beast, Metamorfox can have its name become the same as another unit on your field. This meant that Dual Weapon was suddenly able to call another copy of itself until you run out of copies. However, Stealth Rogue of Concealment, Tanba could return a normal unit from your drop zone to the deck if any of your units' attacks didn't hit, meaning you would never run out of copies of Dual Weapon. This led to Tanba's ban on October 1, 2021 to prevent the loop and any potential additional problems it might have.
Kagero
- Dragon Knight, Nizari has the Awesome, but Impractical ability to force the opponent to give up a total of six cards between their hand and field, but for the extremely steep cost of Soul Blasting three Grade 3 units. It saw little play until it gained unconventional use thanks to Heavy Artillery of Dust Storm, Eugene, who could Soul Blast 5 to look at cards from the top of the deck up to the number of opponent's empty rear-guard circles, call any number of them and put the rest into the Soul. Alongside Eugene's support cards like Fierce Bullet of Dust Storm, Nawfal and Howitzer of Dust Storm, Dustin, it suddenly became much easier to pay for Nizari's cost, allowing it to devastate the opponent's resources much easier than before. This led to its ban on October 10, 2022.
Narukami
- Conquering Supreme Dragon, Stunverse Dragon has an incredibly powerful effect to bind 4 rearguards and 4 cards in the opponent's drop zone, and even binding cards from their hand for every 4 cards in their bind zone. To add insult to injury, it also returns to the G Zone to enable a player to use their powerful Grade 3 vanguard abilities, like Eradicator, Vowing Saber Dragon Яeverse to bind yet another card from their hand and either binding cards from the opponent's deck or powering up the field. The fact that this could be used 4 times in a game made it easy to spiral out of control, so Bushiroad's English division limited it to 1 copy on January 27, 2023 as a way of making it less abusable.
Star Gate/Brandt Gate
Dimension Police
- Commander Laurel, a card which has been with the Dimension Police since their formal debut in Booster Set 4, is being restricted on the eve of the release of the clan's first Extra Booster, Cosmic Roar. Unlike previous restrictions, this is the first card being limited to a single copy per deck. Laurel's ability to turn any Dimension Police Vanguard into a restander is a powerful ability which has been a powerful tool and crutch for the clan, which has only grown more powerful in the era of Strides and their Triple Drive ability. Given the preemptive nature of his restriction, Bushiroad must be confident that his ability would be too much when combined with clan-specific Strides and the other planned support. This is currently Japan-only.
- This was possibly in consideration based on pre-existing strategies involving the Daikaiser line of units, which can remove guard, especially Perfect Guards on top of the Criticals they gain on top of that, and Sin Buster, which stops Grade 1 or higher units to be normal called to the Guardian Circle, mainly Perfect Guards. The presence of Laurel supported what would have been a strong attack into a near guaranteed win.
- Laurel has since been unrestricted but remains under surveillance.
- Laurel has finally been set to 1 for Premium and G Formats.
Link Joker
- Many people found the Lock mechanic to be very powerful, since it could block an entire rear-guard column from attacking and making it easier for the Link Joker player to guard. Of special note were two of the Chaos G Units, Chaos Universe and Chaos Breaker Deluge, who forced a player to call locked units from their hand. Among a Chaos deck's support cards was Turmoil Star-vader, Zinc, a card that could easily refund both Counter Blast and Soul to allow for repeated uses of said Strides in addition to the new Chaos support in Clan Selection Plus. Despite all this, it was overshadowed by some of the other Game Breakers on this page, but Bushiroad preemptively banned Zinc on October 1, 2021 alongside the other Game Breakers to slow down the Chaos deck by removing its best resource tool before it filled the gap left by the other decks having been shut down.
Dark Zone/Dark States
Dark Irregulars
- Evil God Pontiff, Gastille Daimonas was an insane card from the moment it released, allowing it to copy the effects of any two Dark Irregular units from the deck, resulting in near-unlimited possibilities in what it could do, and with each new wave of Dark Irregulars (and later, Dark States) support making it even stronger, such as using Evil God Bishop, Gastille's devastating abilities to disable AUTO abilities like the above Ichishikima, give +1 critical to the front row, and reducing enemy Vanguard power to 1, with Master of Gravity, Baromagnes gaining even more critical and calling out 2 more units for additional attacks. This led to its eventual ban on October 1, 2021.
- Enigmatic Assassin calls itself from the soul for free right before any of your units' attacks, as long as there are 10 or more cards in your soul. This became a problem with the V Series release of No Life King, Death Anchor, which could ride a card from the soul with an additional Critical after attacking with 13 or more cards in your soul, by paying Counter Blast 1 and sending three rear-guards into the soul. This meant that with three Enigmatic Assassins, and a second Death Anchor in soul, the two Death Anchors could continuously ride over each other until you ran out of Counter Blast or won the game. This led to Enigmatic Assassin being limited to 1 copy per deck.
- The V series incarnation of King of Masks, Dantarian allows a player to guard with Grade 2 units in their Soul. Steam Mage, Ashur-da is a Grade 2 unit that returns to the Soul after guarding with it. This would give a player a virtually-limitless amount of guarding power in Premium, so they were choice restricted before Ashur-da's release.
Pale Moon
- Because the original Purple Trapezist and the V Series version of Jumping Jill have virtually the same effect, they were immediately given a choice restriction to prevent them from endlessly calling each other to refresh a player's entire field and enable an insane number of attacks per turn.
- Flying Peryton was added to the same choice restriction on October 1, 2021 due to its ability to call one of the former two and enable similar loops, in addition to its role in the Visible Songster loop detailed below.
- Flying Peryton
- When a unit attacks while boosted and Visible Songster is your Vanguard, it can Counter Blast 1 and put two rear-guards into your soul to call one card from your soul. By calling Flying Peryton as mentioned above, it's possible to keep using Visible Songster's skill until you run out of Counter Blast, but if you have two or more Cray Elemental G Units face-up, Peryton can call Rain Elemental, Tear as part of the loop to recoup the resources and attack until you win. This resulted in Visible Songster's ban on October 1, 2021.
- Nightmare Dolls are a very aggressive deck that aims to perform multiple attacks early using cards like Chelsea and Alice with Leslie, aided by Marissa to get combo pieces faster and Abigail to recycle Alice or even the clan's Heal Guardian. To add insult to injury, Chelsea's ability to remove an opponent's rear-guard can stop Light Elemental, Honoly's ability to prevent the multiple attacks, and if going first, its ability can be used to end the turn on a Grade 2 vanguard, denying the opponent the ability to Stride next turn. To cap everything off, if the game hasn't ended early thanks to the early rush, Masquerade Master, Harri will effectively guarantee the win by calling out all the Alices from soul for one final push. This led to Harri becoming choice restricted with Alice, turning the deck into slightly more of a Glass Cannon to make it a little more managable.
Gear Chronicle
- Interdimensional Dragon, Mystery-flare Dragon's V Series incarnation is a Grade 4 that can skip the opponent's next turn if the player's bound cards had combined grades of 19 or more, in addition to its other effects to increase its critical and drive, and powering up all its allies by 10,000 Power. At first, it was seen as Awesome, but Impractical, but eventually there were enough cards available in Premium to allow it to use its effect the first time it was ridden. To add insult to injury, since the V Series Chronojet Dragon would retire the unit that rode over it with its effect and replace it with a Grade 3, players could Soul Blast all Grade 3 units in their soul abuse a quirk in the rules when a player has no Vanguardnote to ride a second Mystery-flare Dragon from their Soul and use its effect to gain a second additional turn, effectively guaranteeing the win. This led to its ban on July 22, 2022.
- Mellow Amusements Colossus can require the opponent to guard with 2 or more cards from their for each attack for a turn if they choose to guard, an effect that would naturally become more difficult to deal with the more attacks the player could perform. The release of Highbrow Steam, Shlishma on June 24, 2022 really kicked the strategy into high gear, though, thanks to her ability to call 2 cards from the bind zone, and also could call herself from the G Zone if face-up for even more attacks. Furthermore, similar to the Nightmare Doll example above, players going first could use Steam Maiden, Engilsa to intentionally end their turn on a Grade 2 vanguard to prevent their opponent from Striding next turn. As such, it was banned in the English format on January 27, 2023.
Megallanica
Aqua Force
- Flash Ripple, Odysseus was restricted to two due to the incredible field it can create and the ability to fix the Ripple ride chain. Basically, Odysseus puts one unit into soul to allow the player to superior ride a unit of the same grade from deck as well as replacing the unit that was put into soul. This would normally be designed to, as stated above, fix the ride chain so that their skills would go off effectively. However, it can create a combo with Tidal Rescue Sea Turtle Soldier whose ability to possibly call a grade 1 or 2 from deck, building field very easily. And note that Odysseus can be used in any grade which supports the infamous Grade 2 rush game and can go as far as allowing the player to ride to Legion, put 4 cards (preferably triggers) back into the deck, fail to find the mate, use Odysseus to re-ride to another Legion and Legion from that putting even more triggers back into the deck and call the other Grade 3 unit out.
- The final nail in his coffin was probably the finals of the world championships shortly before the restriction was announced, where the second game of the final match was decided in five turns due to a rush enabled by Odysseus.
- With the new Stride rules in Premium and G Format, Odysseus was no longer restricted, as the rush it enabled was no longer as crippling for the opponent. However, years later, the V Series version of Thundering Ripple, Genovious would bring it back into the spotlight, because its ability could be used to rapidly accumulate Accel Imaginary Gifts by riding multiple copies of Genovious, resulting in a large amount of card draw and multiple attacks as soon as a player's third turn. As such, it was banned on July 22, 2022.
Granblue
- The Seven Seas Grade 1 Rush deck. The goal of the deck is to leave yourself at Grade 1, Zerg Rush your opponent and pretty much score a win by turn 3 or 4. Since the clan is Granblue, many cards that are dumped to the drop zone can be used later on in the fight, including higher grade units that are superior called and thus bypass the Grade Restriction rules. In addition, key cards to punish stalling like Seabreeze does not work because the player stays at Grade 1 (Sebreeze only works when the opponent's a Grade 2) and finally the opponent cannot Stride or Legion, basically shutting down all G-Era decks. This has led to 2 cards on the Restriction List:
- Seven Seas Apprentice, Nightrunner can mill 4 cards at the start of your turn to revive itself, fueling the deck's entire mill engine by himself, and with no other costs this makes him essentially a +1 and then some. Furthermore, it had the Forerunner ability, it could be used as starting Vanguard and called over to guarantee that it would be in the drop zone as soon as possible. Because of this, when it was restricted in January 2017, it was restricted to 1 and could not be used as the starting Vanguard.
- Thanks to the new Stride rules, Nightrunner can be the starting Vanguard again, but it remains restricted to 1.
- Seven Seas Helmsman, Nightcrow has a simple ability: retire any unit not named himself, to call it from the drop zone. Simple skill, but easy to use and more or less free to bring out, especially considering the aforementioned Nightrunner is called back easily as well allowing you to constantly maintain board. Because of this, Nightcrow was restricted to 1 in the Summer 2017 Restricted List.
- Seven Seas Apprentice, Nightrunner
Bermuda Triangle
- Luxury Wave, Elly is a G-Guardian that was released at the end of the G-era, yet proved itself to be WAY ahead of its time. First off, her skill grants her +10000 Shield for each sentinel card in your drop zone and for each copy of herself face-up in the G Zone. While on paper, this may sound like it requires dedicated set-up to use effectively, the clan has multiple G-Units that can flip anything from the G-Zone, allowing a player to flip additional copies of Elly face-up early, along with Transcend Idol, Aqua, a perfect guard that can be ran at six copies if it is the only Sentinel card in your deck. This ensures that an Elly used as a G-Guardian already gains a massive amount of shield that can guard almost any attack even after applying triggers. Furthermore, when she returns to the G Zone face-up, for a single Soul Blast she can turn herself back face-down, which the aforementioned Aqua also supports via her "cost" of putting a card in Soul as opposed to the standard discard cost, allowing you to reuse that lone copy over and over while the rest are flipped for other costs. Not helping matters is that the clan also has access to Attractive Glow, Sandy, a Grade 2 card that can be regarded as a Heal when paying the cost to call a G-Guardian, thereby giving Bermuda Triangle eight chances to access Elly throughout the game. All of this led to Elly, like Ichikishima above, to becoming one of the first banned cards in the game's history.
- Delight Genius, Ange is a card that can net tremendous advantage every turn thanks to its synergy with the clan's return-to-hand effects and searching cards from deck. Since she specifically returns cards in circles other than Vanguard Circle, it could bypass Link Joker's Lock mechanic. Furthermore, once she reaches Generation Break 2, she can call cards to the field to pay the cost of Stride, allowing her to keep even more advantage, so she can search Choucou, Lucille and call her next turn to give your units a power boost. Eventually, she was limited to 1 copy.
- Dreamer Dreamer, Kruk has an unassuming effect that returns a rear-guard to the hand and calls one in its place. However, with the advent of Imaginary Gift Force in V Series, the unit called would be powered up thanks to the new markers, and she was restricted to 1 to prevent unforseen combos with repeated attacks.
- Spirited Star, Trois has an effect to ride a Top Idol, Riviere from deck if the current Vanguard is Grade 2. This means that a Bermuda Triangle player who went first could ride the V Series version while their opponent was still Grade 1 and potentially even ride again with Riviere's own effect, and with the new Stride rules, they could Stride the turn after while their opponent was Grade 2. Even so, it took additional Bermuda Triangle support pushing it over the edge before it was banned on October 1, 2021.
- When Unbelievagirl, Potpourri's attack hits the Vanguard, it returns another unit to hand and calls a unit in its place. Colorful Pastorale, Fina has a skill to allow all skills that would activate when a unit hits to activate even when its attack doesn't hit. This means that with Imaginary Gift Force markers to power up your rearguards, 2 Potpourri and Fina could work together to infinitely attack the opponent's Vanguard until they lost, by having one Potpourri return the other to hand and call it again. As such, they have been given a choice restriction.
Zoo
Neo Nectar
- Untainted Holy Damsel, Green Katrina allows you to call Plant Tokens equal to the number of face-up units in your G Zone, and gives all Plant Tokens 10,000 Power for the turn, including tokens called by your other effects. Not only that, when she attacks she can call any number of units from your deck up to the number of Plant Tokens you have, so if you can call even more Plant Tokens with other cards, it becomes even more effective. This allows her to enable multiple incredibly powerful attacks for virtually no cost, all without needing to call units from your hand. This led to Katrina being banned on May 22, 2020.
- Cosmos Pixy, Lizbeth is a Stand Trigger whose Bloom abilitynote gives units with the same name as her the ability to return to the deck along with any normal units with a single name from the drop zone, then draw a card. That said, if the deck is small enough, a player can choose to send zero copies of the chosen normal unit back into the deck to improve chances of drawing Lizbeth again, enabling a potential Stand Trigger loop that gains near-endless power via Sacred Tree Dragon, Multivitamin Dragon aided by Maiden of Sweet Berry to search Lizbeth if she is drawn. If the deck isn't small enough, there's a more convoluted method: by using Augury Maiden, Ida to give Tenacious Maiden, Noel Lizbeth's name, Ideal Maiden, Thuria to trigger Bloom abilities further, and Flower Princess of Beautiful Winter, Inverno and the aforementioned Maiden of Sweet Berry to search additional copies of Lizbeth, it's possible to pump the copies of Noel to similarly high levels, capped off by her ability to attack from the back row resulting in six powerful attacks. In any case, she was restricted to 1 on March 17, 2016.
Megacolony
- When you ride Fabricated Dragon of Ruination, you can play a normal Order card from your drop zone without paying the cost. Standard didn't have much use for it, but in Premium this allowed it to access Orders with steep costs like Ingenious Tactics, Book of Strong-arming or Lyrical Veil. This led to the creation of a Megacolony deck known as "Ordercolony", which aimed to ride Fabricated Dragon to activate those Orders, then Stride into disruptive G Units like Guilty Empress, Darkface Gredora. This led to Fabricated Dragon's ban from all Stoicheia clans on October 1, 2021.
V Premium Restrictions
United Sanctuary
Angel Feather
- When Black Observe, Hamiel attacks, she can pay Counter Blast 3 to gain 15,000 Power, an extra Critical, and prevent the opponent from guarding with Sentinels. Paying 3 Counter Blast seems steep, but Angel Feather specializes in swapping cards out of the Damage Zone, making it easily reusable. Keeping your opponent at 1-2 damage before you reach Grade 3 doesn't help, either — with how Black Shiver, Gavrail is worded, a player at 1 damage can use the skill and go to 2 damage, and Holy Seraph, Nociel can place the third damage needed to pay her cost. This combination of cards led to Hamiel being banned on April 1, 2022.
Gold Paladin
- Bluish Flame Liberator, Percival has an extremely powerful effect to gain an Imaginary Gift: Accel and call Oath Liberator, Aglovale from the deck. This enables it to support virutally every Gold Paladin deck, but especially Sunrise Ray Knight, Gurguit because it'd enable an additional two very powerful attacks that turn. This led to Gurguit and Percival initially gaining a choice restriction, but Percival's ability to create Accel circles continued to prove to be too powerful and was limited to 1 on April 1, 2022.
- With the release of Liberator, Holy Shine Dragon, a card that would allow a player to ride a copy of Percival from the deck and allowing them to have three Accel circles on turn 3, the English format took it one step further by outright banning Percival from V Premium on October 10, 2022.
- With the release of Liberator, Holy Shine Dragon
Shadow Paladin
- Dragheart, Luard swiftly ran into issues when released, taking a nigh-unprecedented number of top spots in Standard tournaments due to synergy with cards also released in the same set. Freezing Witch, Bendi was meant to allow that deck to ride to Phantom Blaster Dragon on turn two to set up Overlord's Crossride bonus, with the Superior Ride's consistency bolstered via Dumphood Dragon to search Blaster Dark and the powerful tutoring tool of Skull Witch, Nemain to fetch either piece. Unfortunately, Luard already wanted to run Nemain due to the free advantage she granted, so it was an easy matter for Luard decks to tech in a few copies of Bendi, Dumphood, Blaster Dark and Phantom Blaster Dragon, meaning an opening hand with Nemain and another Grade 1 was a guaranteed Superior Ride. This meant that on turn 3, the Luard player could Ride to Dragheart and promptly use his skill to Superior Ride Dragdriver, Luard with two Grade 3s already in Soul, giving all of their Grade 1s innate Critical 2 a turn earlier than that skill was supposed to be active on top of the existing pressure of the Superior Ride giving Luard a Force Gift a turn early. Bushiroad's reaction speaks for itself, only a few weeks after the set's release, Dragheart, Luard and Skull Witch, Nemain were given a choice restriction preventing them from being run in the same deck.
Dragon Empire
Nubatama
- Stealth Beast, Kokushigarasu can Soul Blast 3 and discard two sentinels to return all opponent rearguards to their hand, and if at least one was returned, forces them to discard five cards. This high cost was seen as simply Difficult, but Awesome when it was released on 2018, but as Power Creep gave Nubatama more and more tools to increase the soul or generate additional Protect markers (which are treated as sentinels), it was eventually pushed over the edge and banned on October 10, 2022.
Dark Zone
Dark Irregulars
- If Variants Hardleg is called while your soul has three copies each of three different cards, it restricts your opponent to guarding with 3 or more cards if they wish to guard any of your attacks that turn, effectively preventing them from using sentinels to guard your largest attacks. While this might is difficult to do just from normal soul charging, each turn the effect of Demonic Deep Phantasm Emperor, Brufas can search your deck for 3 copies of any card in your soul, add one to your hand, and send the rest into the soul. This effectively meant that if you had Variants Hardleg (or had one in soul, at which point you could search it) and Brufas as your vanguard, your opponent had 3 turns before having to deal with an effectively unblockable turn. Bushiroad felt that even if Variants Hardleg were restricted to 1, it was strong enough that players would be incentivized to run it anyways, so it was banned from the V Premium format on May 22, 2020.
Gear Chronicle
- Mellow Amusements Colossus, similarly to Premium, became extremely powerful as the clan got more options to attack multiple times in a turn. For V Series, this came in the form of the Steam Maiden deck, which used Elul to combo into Ilul and Alul for multiple attacks, aided by Entarahna and Traveling with the Storm, Gear Cat to make sure the right cards would be in the bind zone. This led to Steam Maidens sweeping through the English format, with most tournaments having the majority of the top 8 players playing the deck, so Mellow Amusements Colossus was banned for the English format on January 27, 2023 to eliminate the deck's most potent finisher.
Megallanica
Granblue
- Violence Flanger can Soul Blast a Grade 3 to gain a measly 5,000 Power and prevent sentinels from guarding its attack, but you can then discard any number of cards from your hand to also prevent your opponent from guarding its attack with units with the same grade as any of those cards. When it was first released, it was difficult to use effectively because of how reliant on a player having one of each grade in their hand, which would all but guarantee the attack would go through. However, the release of Greed Shade, which could return cards from the drop zone to the hand, along with cards that improved Granblue's ability to call cards from the drop zone to preserve their hand size, drastically improved its consistency to the point where using it was practically a guaranteed win. This generally led to games where players could stall out the game with their defenses (such as using the aforementioned Greed Shade to reuse their sentinels) until they were ready to call Flanger from the drop zone to finish the game. This led to Flanger becoming one of the first cards banned from the V Premium format on May 22, 2020 alongside the aforementioned Variants Hardleg.
Bermuda Triangle
- Melody is a keyword that allows cards to share abilities with that keyword between them, allowing them to stack abilities to gain Power, intercept with increased Shield, or boost with increased Power. The capstone of the deck is Star on Stage, Plon, who in addition to gaining Melody abilities of every card in the Soul in addition to the ones on field, also has the ability to gain one of each Imaginary Gift type by putting a Melody rear-guard into the Soul, giving the deck additional rear-guard circles with which to place Melody units, extra draw power, and additional sentinels. This in itself is powerful, but reliant on assembling the right cards together, so Prudent Blue, Miep rounds it out by making it much easier to search units with Melody skills. This resulted in Miep being limited to 1 to reduce the deck's consistency.
- In the English format, PR❤ISM decks became a force to be reckoned with when they were released because of how consistently they could attack with multiple powerful attacks, despite only having four cards within the archetype itself. Vert, their Grade 3, can bind another PR❤ISM from the drop zone to gain a Drive, and when she attacks, she can return all allied front row rear-guards to the hand and call bound PR❤ISM units in their place, up to 2 with different names if the opponent's Vanguard was Grade 3 or greater. Aiding this strategy are Rosa's ability to give all front row PR❤ISM units 10,000 Power when placed from the bind zone, and Nectaria's ability to bind herself from hand and another card from the deck. This is then further compounded by generic Bermuda Triangle cards like Mermaid Idol, Elly offering tremendous shield value and Choco Love Heart, Liselotte enabling rush turns and increasing field presence. Bushiroad's English division initially limited the deck by introducing a choice restriction between Rosa and Elly on April 1, 2022, but with the release of the Duo units to V Premium, like Ural enabling even more draw power and more ways to bind cards from the deck and Reit as a new main Grade 3, Rosa was banned on October 10, 2022.
- Also in the English format are Highlander units, which have abilities reveal a certain number of cards from the top of the deck and gain effects if all normal units revealed have different names. Most notably, Silver Singer, Cutire can declare a card name other than her own, and reveal cards until you either reveal that unit or two normal units with the same name, and add the declared card if it was revealed. This allows for some very powerful turns if a player calls the right cards, such as Top Idol, Aqua to use the effect again, or the Pearl Sisters, Perla and Perle. Cutire can be further abused in a deck with Perfect Performance, Ange, who not only can return a Cutire to hand to use again, but also search any normal unit from the deck. This led to Cutire's ban on October 10, 2022.
Standard Restrictions
Monster Strike
- Calamity-warding "Fishery God", Ebisu can call 2 units with different names from the Monster BOX to a column when it attacks. This can be aided by Happiness-composing "Holy Imperial Princess", Anastasia who can Counter Charge when boosting and return to the Monster BOX to be reused later. This gave an Ebisu deck nearly infinite resources by utilizing multiple Anastasia as needed, so Anastasia was limited to 1 on the January 1, 2023 list.
Former Restrictions/Watch List
- Barcgal holds the distinction of being the first card on the official Banned/Restricted list, and even then, it is only banned for use as a starting Vanguard. It's not so much Barcgal itself that is "broken", but the fact that it can be used in a unstoppable chain with Flogal and Future Knight, Llew to set up a Turn 2 Blaster Blade with five cards in the Soul, a perfect set-up for Soul Saver Dragon and its Soulblast 5. This combo was so potent that it destroyed the Japanese competitive scene at the time, at least in the Senior Division.
- After so many years of being restricted, Barcgal can now start as the first Vanguard again!
- Nubatama would have been worth a complete ban... had the clan been given more than four cards. The clan's entire premise is based around forcing the opponent to discard if they have more cards than you do. The only problem is that the hand is the primary source of defense. If this clan had ever been completed, it would have been more difficult to deal with than Barcgal-powered Soul Saver Dragon.
- As of Booster Set 13: Catastrophic Outbreak, it is now possible to have a mono-clan Nubatama deck. However, they now have support that has been slightly toned down from their original strategy, going from outright discarding to binding with the potential for card loss, and currently only have one of each type of trigger.
- They do have another critical trigger, however it is only given out as a promo card and thus difficult to obtain.
- At this point in time, they are a major part of a new Technical Booster with a new set a triggers and even more ways to control the hand.
- Eradicator, Dragonic Descendant got slammed onto the Restricted list a mere three months after its release. This may have had something to do with almost every professional Japanese player switching to near-identical Eradicator/Dragonic Descendent decks upon release. The card itself is absurdly effective, having 11000 Power (making it a good defensive card), and a self-standing ability that gives you two Twin Drives (all but guaranteeing at least one Trigger) and forcing your opponent to guard both attacks.
- It's also worth noting that his self standing ability comes into play when he's guarded, AND giving him an extra critical to boot, making him deal two damage if the attack hits instead of one (and that's if the user doesn't get any other criticals during any of their drive checks). During the late game when this skill is most likely going to be going any hit from this guy will spell endgame for the opponent.
- And even with being restricted to two per deck, Eradicator decks running Descendant are STILL topping in most tournaments in Japan.
- It has finally been unrestricted.
- It's also worth noting that his self standing ability comes into play when he's guarded, AND giving him an extra critical to boot, making him deal two damage if the attack hits instead of one (and that's if the user doesn't get any other criticals during any of their drive checks). During the late game when this skill is most likely going to be going any hit from this guy will spell endgame for the opponent.
- Before Dragonic Descendant, there was the infamous Dragonic Overlord The End, which was the undisputed king of the Japanese meta for a year. Its self-standing Persona Blast allowed for two Twin Drives if the first attack hit, practically forcing the opponent to guard every single attack from The End. With a power of 13k (when crossridden) it was a powerful defensive Vanguard, and was backed up by a clan that could snipe any Rearguards who posed a threat. The End was finally stopped when it was put onto the Restricted list, and only came off in a (failed) attempt to wrest control away from Dragonic Descendant.
- With the release of Dragonic Overlord "The X"(pronounced "The Cross") in G Booster Set 1, a Legion Revival for The End, Dragonic Overlord once again continues his reign of control. While he has a few competitors, "The X" was arguably the undisputed king of the meta-game for quite some time.
- "The X"'s dominance caused Bushiroad to limit Calamity Tower Wyvern, a card used to facilitate the deck's ability to re-Legion (by using its Soul Blast 2 cost to send copies of "The X" and "The End" that had been ridden over to the drop zone, then back to the deck with Legion) and potentially draw additional copies of The End and The X (both Persona Blasters), to a maximum of two per deck. This was not seen as an effective way to hinder the deck by English players, but Japanese players typically played the card at four copies. It has since been unrestricted.
- Bushiroad has also gone on record as stating that they plan to monitor "The X" in the future to determine if future restrictions will be necessary. It has since been removed from the watch list.
- "The X"'s dominance caused Bushiroad to limit Calamity Tower Wyvern
- With the release of Dragonic Overlord "The X"
- Hot on The End's heels was Majesty Lord Blaster. Like The End, it could also force the opponent to defend every turn by having 2 Critical permanently simply by sacrificing two units, both of which could be easily searched from as early as Turn 3. Add onto the deck's capacity to retire important units with one of those pieces and you had a deck that could gain advantage ridiculously quickly. Like The End, it was soon restricted after a year, but unlike The End, it has still not yet been totally unlimited, with only two copies of it allowed in a Japanese deck.
- And now, he's back to being unlimited.
- While not as well known as The End or Majesty Lord Blaster, Goddess of the Full Moon, Tsukuyomi saw a restriction once. Her ability to basically stack the deck and draw cards was invaluable at the time. But unlike the other two, this didn't really do much to the deck as you basically played Amaterasu along with it and and another useful Grade 3. It has since left the restricted list.
- To add onto it, Silent Tom was a part of the restriction as his ability to prevent Grade 0 Guards was seen as overwhelmingly strong as all Grade 0 cards (not including Draw Triggers) were 10,000 shield as opposed to the normal 5,000 that most cards had. This meant that you had to drop more Grade 1 or 2 units down, take damage or use up a perfect guard. But as the power creep continued, it was easier to deal with Silent Tom so he was taken off the list.
- Cat Butler has been restricted to two in Japan due to its interactions with Legion vanguards such as Mega Flare.
- To be more specific, most Legion units at that point in time are a Grade 3 Vanguard with a Grade 2 attached to it. Cat Butler's effect says that when a Grade 2 Vanguard fails to hit, Cat Butler can remove itself from the field to stand the Grade 2 Vanguard again ready for another attack and, more importantly, another Drive Check. This also applies to the Grade 2 Legion Mate which, if the Grade 2 Mate stands, the Grade 3 Legion stands as well, ready for a 20k+ attack with Twin Drive ready to go. What makes this strategy effective is the amount of Cat Butlers you can use in a turn as well as the units that it can stand. In particular, Ultimate Raizer, Mega Flare can constantly threaten players with an extra critical and Phoenixraizer, Drill-Wing can stand Rear Guard units for an all out attack.
- The September restriction list has removed Cat Butler from the list.
- To be more specific, most Legion units at that point in time are a Grade 3 Vanguard with a Grade 2 attached to it. Cat Butler's effect says that when a Grade 2 Vanguard fails to hit, Cat Butler can remove itself from the field to stand the Grade 2 Vanguard again ready for another attack and, more importantly, another Drive Check. This also applies to the Grade 2 Legion Mate which, if the Grade 2 Mate stands, the Grade 3 Legion stands as well, ready for a 20k+ attack with Twin Drive ready to go. What makes this strategy effective is the amount of Cat Butlers you can use in a turn as well as the units that it can stand. In particular, Ultimate Raizer, Mega Flare can constantly threaten players with an extra critical and Phoenixraizer, Drill-Wing can stand Rear Guard units for an all out attack.
- Battle Cupid, Nociel was placed on the watch list because of her interactions with Black Shiver, Gavrail, Nurse of Broken Heart and Love Sniper, Nociel. The former two are problematic because Nociel allows you to trigger their effects during your opponent's turn, raising their Power and making it much easier to guard your opponent's attacks, while potentially swapping a card you don't need for a more defensive card from the Damage Zone, making it easy to block even a volley of high-power attacks. Her interaction with Love Sniper Nociel is even nastier, because Love Sniper's ability lets you turn the even trade into a +1 so long as you put a Nociel card into the Damage Zone, of which there were four, resulting in a total of sixteen Nociel cards in the deck. Essentially, Battle Cupid, Nociel is being watched for enabling an Angel Feather deck to perform some nasty Stone Wall antics.
- Lizard Soldier, Conroe, widely regarded as the best starting Vanguard that the Kagero clan has ever received. The ability to add any Grade 0 or 1 to the player's hand at any time proved to be ridiculously versatile, especially after the metagame evolved to favor Perfect Defence cards (which are Grade 1s). The effect was good enough to make every other starting Vanguard, even those dedicated to supporting specific archetypes, sub-optimal.
- Conroe eventually joined Barcgal as one of the only Grade 0s banned for use as a starting Vanguard. The tipping point was the rise of Dragonic Nouvelle Vague decks that would circumvent the deck's inherent Grade imbalance by using Conroe to search for Nouvelleroman Dragon, a card that would essentially turn all of your Grade 4s into Grade 3s.
- Note that Nouvelle Vague was the only legal Grade 4 card in existence at the time. The only one other was illegal due to its own effect and it can be argued that Nouvelle Vague is highly superior.
- It should also be noted that Mecha Trainer does the exact same thing as Conroe except he is used with the Spike Brothers clan. The only reason why Mecha Trainer has not seen a ban or a restriction at all is simply because the Spike Brothers clan simply does not have the wide and versatile Grade 0 or 1 pool that the Kagero clan has. In other words, Conroe is banned and Mecha Trainer is not simply because the Kagero clan is better.
- However, Mecha Trainer is under surveillance by Bushiroad and will probably be restricted by Conroe should it proves too dangerous.
- Note that Nouvelle Vague was the only legal Grade 4 card in existence at the time. The only one other
- Conroe eventually joined Barcgal as one of the only Grade 0s banned for use as a starting Vanguard. The tipping point was the rise of Dragonic Nouvelle Vague
- Sanctuary Guard has been hit in the January 2016 restriction down to 1 card due to the very popular Sanctuary Blaster decks where they still maintain a strong Grade 1 presence, but also includes the Blaster engine going straight for strong attacks.
- In the September 2017 restriction list, they lifted the restriction on Sanctuary Guard. This is primarily due to the recent Aichi Legend Deck as well as G-Set 11, both supporting the Blaster Deck, enabling the Blaster engine to be a deck by itself.
- Seeker, Thing Saver Dragon had been a dominating factor in the competitive scene since its release in Booster Set 16 rivaled by only a few decks. Like with "The X", Bushiroad has promised to monitor Thing Saver Dragon's future performance and, should it retain its hold on the meta-game, will receive restrictions.
- It has since been removed from the watch list.
- Jewel Knight, Swordmy hasn't been restricted yet but it's on Bushiroad's watchlist and for a good reason. It has the ability to call any grade 1 or lower Jewel Knight without needing a specific vanguard by counterblasting a Jewel Knight card, leading it to be played in many Royal Paladin decks such as ones focusing on the above-mentioned Thing Saver Dragon or the Sanctuary Guard cards.
- As of 12th January 2016, Swordmy cannot be used in the Clan Fight format unless all grade 3 units in the deck are Jewel Knights. Internationally, this ruling starts on February 1st of the same year.
- As of Febuary 1st, 2018, Swordmy can be used outside of the Jewel Knights sub-clan.
- From the 5th of September, 2016, Tick Tock Worker is not allowed to be your starting vanguard and restricted to one copy per deck. The reason for this is its interaction with Upstream Dragon and Steam Maiden, Melem, which exploits a quirk of Vanguard's rulings. Essentially, Upstream/Melem's ability to gain 4000 Power then return to the deck at the end of the battle can be exploited by using the ability, then at the end of the battle, Tick Tock Worker and Upstream/Melem's ability will go on the stack, with the turn player deciding which resolves first. You can resolve Tick Tock Worker first, Time Leaping the attacker to call a card one Grade higher from the deck, then resolve Upstream/Melem's skill. Because their returning to the deck is part of the effect, not a cost, Vanguard's rule of 'do as much as you can' applies and allows you to still call a card from the deck, turning the -1 from Tick Tock Worker's skill into a break even. But the thing is, Melem can call another Tick Tock Worker, letting you Time Leap the unit you called with the first Worker's Time Leap after it attacks. This combo gave Gear Chronicle decks absurd rush potential, not helped by their access to a powerful finisher in the form of Chronodragon Nextage.
- Tick Tock Worker can now be starting Vanguard again for Premium and G Formats.
- Steam Battler, Ur-Watar, when bound from the field (such as by a Time Leap ability, which also calls a card with one grade higher), returns itself to the deck to draw 2 cards and return a card from the hand to the deck. It can be searched by Steam Maiden, Melem, then a Time Leap ability can search Melem, repeating the process and potentially gaining massive draw power and cycling triggers from hand to deck if comboed correctly. This resulted in its restriction to 1 in January 2017.
- Ur-Watar is now unrestricted.
- Mick the Ghostie and Family is a Stand Trigger unit that can be Hollowed, a Granblue ability to forcefully retire itself at the end of turn in exchange for additional abilities. Specifically for this card, when it's called from drop zone and Hollowed, give a single unit an additional 10000 power. In addition, when it is retired while Hollowed, it simply goes back to the deck allowing you to abuse its bonuses many times and set up for a turn guaranteeing roughly 5 to 7 attacks by the end of the game. It was restricted to 1 in the Summer 2017 Restriction List, but has since been unrestricted.
- Fantasy Petal Storm, Shirayuki immediately became a fixture of the V-Era Murakumo deck upon release. When placed on any circle, it saps away either 5000(rearguard) or 10000(vanguard/guardian) power from 3 units in the opponent's front row (their entire front row if they aren't using an Accel clan). This allows Shirayuki to either drastically weaken the opponent's defenses or completely neuter an offensive push. To put a cherry on top, Shirayuki's two support cards, Rainy Madame and Jakotsu Girl, made it much easier to get a copy of Shirayuki to the hand, allowing reuse of its powerful effect, especially the former as it allowed you to retrieve a copy from the drop zone if any of your attacks failed to hit. (Shirayuki herself could also retrieve a copy of itself from the drop zone if it was the Vanguard and its attack did not hit, but at the time there were much more powerful cards that a Murakumo player would prefer to use as the Vanguard instead.) The card was restricted to 1 per deck on the March 1, 2020 Restricted List, where it remained until 2021 when it was unrestricted to promote a pure Shirayuki playstyle thanks to support in the new Clan Selection Plus set.
- Thundering Sword Dragon, Angerblader made V Premiumnote Tachikaze decks a force to be reckoned with. Its first skill allows it to send send rearguards to the Equip Gauge to retire enemy rearguards, while also fueling its second skill, where upon attacking the player can use a single Counterblast to stand up to 3 rearguards that have 3 or more Equipped Gauge each. While sounding balanced on paper, the card advantage of the Accel II Gift and the numerous cards that benefit from the Equip Gauge mechanic made it very easy for a Tachikaze deck to field several massive attackers on their first Grade 3 ride, resulting in a minimum of 5 powerful attacks and quite possibly a One Turn Kill depending on your hand. Angerblader was restricted to 1 per deck on the March 1, 2020 Restricted List, but has since been unrestricted.
- In Standard, decks based around Apex Ruler Bastion will generally play many Grade 3 cards, which cannot boost. However, Dark Strain Dragon can give all Grade 3 units Boost for a turn. This led to the deck becoming much more powerful as they could push for 30,000 Power columns very easily, and led to it being limited to 1 on July 22, 2022, as one of the first restrictions to the Standard format.
- Dark Strain Dragon is no longer restricted as of the January 2023 lists for each language.
- Also in Standard, Blue Artillery Dragon, Inlet Pulse Dragon is a card meant to support Flagship Dragon, Flagburg Dragon by giving the deck an extra attack and some draw power. However, with the release of Sylvan Horned Beast Emperor, Magnolia Elder, Magnolia players started using the card for its ability to draw cards, since that ability was not restricted to Flagburg Dragon. This led to Inlet Pulse Dragon being choice restricted with Magnolia Elder on July 22, 2022.
- This choice restriction is no longer in effect as of the January 2023 lists for each language.
Errata
- Most of Vanguard's errata is done to fix typos or other small errors, but a few cards received errata because they would have been broken on release without it:
- Fetter of Leather, Leyding, when first revealed, could call any Soul Blasted card once per turn, including itself. Players quickly noticed that any Vanguard with a main phase Soul Blast cost, such as Goddess of Good Luck, Fortuna, could abuse this ability by continuously reviving Leyding and putting itself into the Soul for another chance to use the ability again, and with 3 copies this would allow such a Vanguard (as well as any rear-guard Mythic Snake, Jormungand) to reach near-infinite Power. Bushiroad responded by changing the effect to exclude Leyding from being called.
- Guile Shade, when first revealed, didn't have a Soul Blast cost on its second ability and could be called to any rear-guard circle, not just an open one. While not an issue in the Nightrose deck it was intended for, as soon as the card was revealed via Bushiroad's Card of the Day feature, players realised that when combined with Seven Seas Pillager, Nightspinel and Seven Seas Helmsman, Nightcrow in the already powerful Seven Seas Grade 1 rush deck, you could infinitely loop Guile Shade and Nightcrow by retiring Guile Shade to resurrect Nightcrow, then calling Guile Shade on top of Nightcrow from the drop zone, in turn allowing Nightspinel to be pumped to infinite power as soon as Generation Break was available. Bushiroad responded by adding a Soul Blast 1 cost to Guile Shade's ability and restricting it to being called to an open rear-guard circle, preventing the loop from going infinite.
- Perhaps the single most infamous case of a game balance errata was Zeroth Dragon of End of the World, Dust. Already widely considered one of if not flat out the best of the Zeroth Dragons due to its skill imposing severe penalties on your opponent's ability to guard, when Dust was first revealed, it was even more powerful due to the damage-dealing clause of its skill lacking the 'if your opponent has four or less damage' clause traditionally given to such abilities to prevent them being an Instant-Win Condition. This was not helped by Dust being accessible by clans like Spike Brothers, Dark Irregulars and Gear Chronicle, all of whom had access to extremely powerful attacking lanes, multiple attack combos, or both, allowing the decks that could use it to push the opponent to five damage easily before Ultimate Striding Dust for a high chance of winning the game on the spot if they didn't get a Heal Trigger. When it was later errataed to add that exact clause, Bushiroad noted that it was a decision partially informed by sheer negative reaction to a card that could easily reduce the game to a Luck-Based Mission.
- Fetter of Leather, Leyding
- Top Idol, Riviere was one of the most feared cards upon being revealed, for very good reasons. Her second skill allowed her to, after attacking, discard two cards to ride a copy of herself from the hand, with one less drive check. This skill was not limited to once per turn, and between her first skill allowing a double draw (with a discard) upon riding her, and her support cards providing a large amount of draws/searching, it was very easy to have 2 or 3 copies of Riviere in hand in addition to riding one as your first Grade 3. Once the combo got rolling, a Riviere player could unload three to five vanguard attacks, gaining a Force Gift and a double draw every time a new Riviere was ridden to increase the power even more. Riviere proceeded to achieve major results at tournaments until Bushiroad finally reeled her in with the March 1, 2020 Restricted list by introducing an errata to make the re-riding skill be usable only once per turn across all copies of the card.
