As we mentioned in the Bologna recap, the next points update is scheduled for next week and will take Phantom Revenge into account even though its official launch date was moved to the 19th for North America (17th at your OTS).

The next update will be based on the results and Deck Lists received from tournaments starting with those at YCS Pittsburgh. Thank you to everyone who has been submitting Deck Lists, keep ‘em coming! Just so everyone knows, we do give strongest weight to complete submissions from tournaments (as in, best-of-3) where we see ALL the Deck Lists, since that’s the most accurate way to compile complete “census data” on who’s playing what how often. But all the information is useful as we keep looking into what the heck everyone is building. 😊

Once again, adjustments fall into several categories.

Severe Performance Outliers (i.e. “census data”)
This includes cards both on a Deck level and an individual level. For example, Dracotail’s performance as a Deck since October puts it in line for increases, and Droll & Lock Bird’s performance as an individual card puts it in line for an increase as well (more so in North America than in Europe, which is interesting).

As always, this is the most important criteria and the fundamental principle of Genesys: cards seeing excessive play see their costs go up, other cards come down, while keeping OTK’s boxed out. Everything listed below is just part of our initial ongoing early access tuning. Once we exit early access it will be a bit different (and we’ll be talking A LOT about the long-term Genesys plans, soon, and those plans are pretty extensive).

To put it another way, everything listed below is going to be a performance outlier unless we hit it now. That’s what early access is all about, setting up the initial points list. Once we exit early access, the purely census approach will take over, more. Although we’ll still need to assign some points to new cards, right out of the gate. (Which isn’t perfect – see Branded, below.)

On to the categories. (Also, of note, the categories are important because they’re a guideline on things we need to watch out for in the future when assigning preliminary points to new sets before they come out.)

Cards That Attack the Deck/Extra Deck
We mentioned Runick last time, but this category also includes Hecahands Gaigas, Hecahands Xeno, Kewl Tune Clip, and Kewl Tune Cue from Phantom Revenge, all of which proactively strike out or steal cards from the Deck/Extra Deck, so we’re hitting them in advance.

Cards That Multiply Excessively
Dodododo Warrior is the poster card for this category.

Cards That Insulate Turn 1 Combos
In Pittsburgh, players started gravitating en masse towards cards like Crossout Designator and Traptrix Rafflesia that help you force through your turn 1 combos even if your opponent has a way to respond. The price on these kinds of cards at the moment is a bit too much of a bargain for how much you stand to gain. Basically, the counters to the counters should be more expensive than the counters themselves. We might need to go into this more in another article.

“Towers” Monsters
(i.e. monsters that are pretty much immune to other card effects)
Likewise, we’re going to crank up the costs of monsters like Lunalight Liger Dancer and Super Quantal Mech King Great Magnus so that you have fewer points to give them generic backup.

Readjusting Extra Deck Monsters That Get You Another Card
Separate from ones that cheat out another Extra Deck monster, these are ones that just get you another card in some way. Gagagaga Girl and Wind-Up Carrier Zenmaity are both cards in this category.

Themes That Weren’t Tempting
Last time we reduced the points on some themes that were popular internally but not externally. We’ll do so again this time. Dragonmaid, Swordsoul, Tenyi, Snake-Eye, Ninjas (again), and maybe Centur-Ion and Six Samurai, although they’re trickier.

Re-Weighting Some Point Distributions
An example of this is the Adventurer cards, where Rite of Aramesir and Water Enchantress of the Temple are at 5 each, while the high spec Wandering Gryphon Rider is at 20. Gladiator Beasts and Crystron are also being looked at, for this.

A more high-profile case is Branded, where The Fallen & The Virtuous came out and we figured everybody would want to play it in 3’s, so we balanced things by putting points on the Extra Deck monsters. From what we’re hearing, most Branded players would have been perfectly happy with just 1 or 2 copies of their new Spell Card, and would have preferred the Extra Deck costs to stay where they were, so we’re going to make that correction.

This is an example of how, when we hit cards before they’re out, we might guess wrong sometimes. But we’re happy to correct that with the next list.

Generic Housekeeping
There are several handy generic cards that almost no one is using at their current values that will drop. We’re also still figuring out how gradual to make these declines. If a card isn’t played, but then drops to zero, suddenly everyone would play 3, and then it just yo-yos back and forth. There’s a sweet spot somewhere.

The next update after this one will happen around the release of Burst Protocol. There are no official large-scale Genesys events between now and then, so the primary purpose of that update will be to add points to cards releasing in Burst Protocol and adjust other costs based on the addition of BPRO.