if CFV's D format keeps the same "throw a million power everywhere" gameplay of V, it's unlikely I'll play. What made the classic era work was the way the numbers fit together--anything over 21 required two cards to guard, a G1 and G2 formed a 16, a trigger made that 21...(1/12)

Over time that inflated as R&D explored the design space, we got access to healthy +5~6k buffs, conditional 10k bonuses on the VG, and this interacted well with the existing guard mechanics. (Less healthy were the conditional 13k bodies--now an unfortunate standard in Standard.)

Looking back, the big wrench in things was the introduction of Lock in the third block. LJ completely redefined the metagame, what was and wasn't viable, and necessitated heavy power creep just for clans other than Shadow Paladin and Kagerou to keep up. That gave us stride.

Stride was initially not *that* overwhelming. Introducing a static zone you always had access to was beneficial, if the cards in it were utility cards--and when the G Zone was used to build up to G3s with powerful G Breaks, it wasn't too different from the pace of Limit Break.

However, most strides weren't designed that way. Instead, your whole deck was made to revolve around strides, with the G3 reduced to a supporting role: Jingle Flower, Lambros, Phantom Blaster Diablo, etc, were your actual bosses. Not Ahsha/Thavas/Blaster Dark Diablo.

The introduction of G Guardians finally expanded the game's defensive options to scale with the offense, but this made it harder to actually finish anyone off and prolonged games--so offensive power creep was used to match it. And the speed at which you could increase the number

of face-ups in your G Zone provided an opportunity for higher GB limits to be reached faster, making GB3 and even GB8 skills playable. The Zeroth Dragons were the culmination of that, designed to be as invincible as possible as early as feasible; GB3 was the endgame of the match.

At that point, there was functionally nowhere left to go. Thus we arrived at the first reboot: and if it had been a reboot like the one we got *now*, it probly would have gone over better. Bushiroad effectively tried to create a brand new TCG with 24 clans, supported every year--

They were spreading themselves too thin. Some clans just felt starved for support in a format with such a limited card pool, and the inflated power scale of V era (+10k triggers & Imaginary Gifts, arbitrarily large buffs everywhere, Gift spam) made for a less cerebral game.

There was also the issue of supporting multiple formats, which I'm still skeptical about in D era. Vanguard wasn't a big enough game to support both Standard and Premium simultaneously; tournaments were understaffed and underpopulated.

The key for CFV to me is the balance between guard value, power, and drive checks. The decisions you weigh, like allocating a two-pass guard on a VG, betting the opponent won't go all-in on it, so you can stop an RG even with two triggers after that--that's the heart of the game.

If D doesn't have that, it's not the CFV I want to play. At that point, only way I'm in is if I think it's gonna be the end, and I wanna see its last stand firsthand. The good CFV formats are some of the best TCG gameplay I've ever seen--but there've been a *lot* of bad formats.