What if we all just calmed down and let the game breathe and print more cards? We are literally only 3-4 sets in

From a future proofing perspective how would this hold up 2-3 years from now? Say it does make mono colour strategies more of a thing you'd start having competition at each slot for other limited cards. Also deck size is very relevant. A limited list like duel links works in a small deck size game but in this surely actually filling the deck with not dogshit cards gets harder? Also what stops just splashing weaker cards? I think this would lead to a more swingy but lower power format that wouldn't be fun personally. I think good stuff is an oversight in a poor mana system

Well the Dopplegator Full Moon deck might be the one to make turbo better, but that's what some people thought about the 3 cost solar boys and what most people thought about Morphrost. It turns out combo is bad when you have finite turn actions and that eats your hp too. I like the Duel List style list. It would be a headache in Elestrals since the gap between cards is already so big. To make a "diverse" format, you would have to go pretty ham on that type of list. I think Elestrals just needs more thoughtful design and to start printing archetypes to be okay power creeping just one level to get a nicer foundation

lock the spirit deck to 2 elements via master rule

Honestly, rather than that, I think that the kind of banlist that should be done is banning/limiting card *interactions*, like "you can't play this card if you're playing this other card in your deck" for example

Could an additional list of cards thats basically the "Good Card" list where if a card is on the list, you can only have X amount total of good cards. like, 6 or 8 or whatever. That many cards off the good card list.

I have a lot of love for the duel links ban list style, especially as duel links was really my entry into playing tcgs but I honestly hate the idea of it being done in literally anything else. I am personally of the opinion that goodstuff isn't really a problem and rather just a thing that happens when a card game is in its infancy but I personally think that the best solution if it really is seen as a problem would just be to do what a lot of the more niche card games have done and have a limit on the number of elements you can be in (for elestrals I think the most reasonable number would be 3) and in addition they need to just kinda start phasing out the generic good backrow and actually give each element a reasonable amount of decent backrow. This is a solution I have spoken of elsewhere before and every time I have been called crazy and/or stupid but ultimately if this is a real problem that needs to be fixed this is the most reasonable way to do it.

Only thing i see the would require testing with the dl style list is the deck size. How does a 40 card v 20 card effect the lists impact

A points banlist is probably better tbh.

This also remind me of choice restrictions in cardfight vanguard but I am not sure if that is a good choice for elestrals

lmao i love your shirt

Knowing absolutely nothing about Elestrals (and mostly commenting for the Engagement): what if the player doing the damage had some level of control over what spirits get destroyed when they deal damage? Want to splash Earthquake off of a few measly Earth spirits? Hope your defences are rock solid for when my aggro deck comes after them!

I like that Digimon shoots the gap with this kind of ban list. It isn’t one or the other, cards can be limited and then there are cards that cannot be played in the same deck.

I really hope good stuff piles don’t become a main stay of this game, mostly because it really hurts people who want to commit to a certain element or deck archetype but have to get walled by wet 5s all the time. The last tournament the only really fun and interesting game I had was against Penterror, the rest were just “out my Galaxea lmao”

If/when they have actual archetypes I might be willing to give the game a try. Doesn’t seem as fun when the “best deck” is really just the best cards.

What if...the gameplan in my gameplan deck...was leagues better than a pile of good stuff? Oh no wait I've reinvented archetypes again damn. I mean I'd like gameplan decks to actually do something that can't easily be removed...like some way to protect something so your opponent needs two answers in a row instead of flipping Sakuretsu Armor and undoing all your work. There's gotta be a balancing point....like I want Pantheons outside Earth and Thunder to be good enough to play outside of casual tables. Give Trish some busted-ass Solar cards or something idk, he's been a good boy he deserves it.

So speaking as someone intimately familiar with another game, Final Fantasy actually started having a similar issue, especially once they started printing multi-element cards that were extremely pushed - it just no longer was worth it to not play 2 or 3 or even 4 of the game's 6 elements, especially with the fetching and color engines the game had produced in 8 years as an eternal format. However, at the most recent world championships, mono-earth, mono-water, mono-wind and mono-ice all had a significant presence and it was a game design decision from the developers to reward playing mono-decks for more than their stability and speed. The best way I could describe it is, imagine if you had a free effect veiler hand trap but only if you had 80% wind spirits in play or break zone (not exactly how it works but close enough). What about Earthquake on a massive cheap body but you need every one of your spirits to be water? If Elestrals really wants to prioritize these, it's a card design angle in the same way YGO archetypes work, but they can find ways to be creative and still push individual pantheons. I also think it'd help if they'd stop doing the Pokemon thing of making elements not work against themselves. While the Tsunami counterplay of enchanting water spirits is very, very cool, it also leads to water having an even larger presence in the game. And let's be real, the gameplay of "my deck isn't weak to Tsunami because it happens to have a blue spirit in the middle" isn't... very fun or engaging. And how bad does it feel when you do have a set Tsunami that effectively doesn't have text. And this runs through all of Elestral's design language. Specteris doesn't suppress lunar elestrals iirc. All this leads to is situations where the best counterplay to the good stuff is to play the good stuff which is absolutely a problem. I'm excited to be able to play Elestrals when Clash is done - been following it lightly ever since it was announced and more so through you and creators like Jess. And I think that for the early part of the game, it's probably not a bad thing for good stuff piles to... be good and fun to play with. It's just going to be some learning quirks to the way that Spirits work which is great - that's a really good selling point that Elestrals has over any other card game.

I think the problem here isn't the choice of banlist. It's that, currently, there is no downside (well, very few downsides) to having more types of runes. Magic is actually having a problem with this in older formats. Due to the ubiquity of fetch lands and the introduction of triomes (lands that remember trapped with three basic land types), splashing for two even three extra colors isn't that hard to do. It makes only the most aggressive of strategies stick to only one or two colours. The solution to both is: make playing less colours more appealing. Make new cards that punish having multiple colors/runes. Make rules that increase the cost of playing multiple colors. Make it more inconsistent, make it more punishable.

i think a better system might be a "Your deck can only contain 10 points worth of cards" with most cards costing 0, and some going all the way up to 3. This would mirror the existing resource system of the game, making it easy enough to intuite for players. "Yeah, Ambrosia has a Competitive Cost of 1, so if you want to run all 3 copies, you gotta consider what other powerful cards your cutting" this would FUNCTIONALLY make it the same as the duel links system. Since if you make a card cost 3, it's basically going to be the ONLY card you get to play among these powerful cards. This wouldnt straight up be limit-1. But I think a format where... sure, you can run 3 copies of pot of greed in your deck... and nothing else, would result in some interesting deck building. "Do i want to efficiently have access to 3 copies of earthquake in my deck at the cost that i cant run a single other powerful card in this game?" this might result in like people playing powerful 1-ofs like they are now. But even then, you still only end up with 3 1-ofs and the rest cut off. and if a card really is so broken you cant be allowed to run more than 1 copy period?? well at that point just ban it. I think this system provides all the same pros of the duel-links system, BUT makes it easy for new players to understand since it functions so similarly to the existing spirit system

Unrelated, but where can I get that shirt? Asking for a friend. Or, more like a friend of a friend. My friend’s friend. Me, I’m asking for me.

Should there be limited 4 and 5 in that case maybe?

I think you can quite easily fix this by just implementing a hard 2-3 element limit to decks.

I think the main thing bringing "goodstuff" to the top is the Big Three counter runes, Shield, Gorgon's, and PTA. They exist as weird pseudo-removal that overwhelmingly punishes gameplan decks, not because of spirit economy, but card economy. 3-costs don't get played because the 1- and 2-cost needs to dodge all removal/interruptions or you die. The Big Three also hurt the player that's behind more than the player that's ahead. They're all reactionary, so the player that can afford to not attack/cast/use effects can sit on their board while the player behind must push. Laurels was meant to help, but the condition was too easy to meet. And lastly, while you can put 5 or 6 elements in a single deck to use all those good Elestrals, it would be a LOT less feasible if the Big Three weren't all Omni element. If you had to save some of a specific spirit for your backrow, you might be less inclined to boymath too close to the sun. But instead everyone gets to play 9 Solemn Strike that are almost always live. Why does non-generic Counter Counter with downsides not see play? All of this leads to a meta where the best way to mitigate being hit by one of these is for your deck to be an Endless Conga Line of Assholes. Putting any more than 1 egg in each basket is a great way to lose.

Honestly, I love the premise of the Duel Links banlist, allowing you to play any card you want, no matter how strong... just stopping you from stacking specific combos. Like having three semi'd cards meaning you can run two of them at 1, but not have all three of them. It forces you to choose where you want the cards to work, like if you wanted Jet Synchron to work with Junk cards or if you wanted to summon a lesser tuner off Halq. More TCGs should do a payment banlist system.

Interesting idea

The issue is the duel links banlist is good because of the deck size... your more likely to use that limited one then a limited one in a 40 card deck compared to 20. I feel like the best answer to this and some sort of loyalty system for the issue cards. Play X amount of this element in the spirit deck and your now able to play with X card from that element in your main deck. The only issue i see with this is how would the opponent know if you can run X card. My answer is to maybe Make the spirit deck public info at the start of the game but then private afterwards.

That’s an interesting idea but I do think it plays against Elestras strengths as pointed out in the video. Thinking about it I believe “good stuff” should be a thing and my hope is that as we get more sets the synergies for game plan strategies becomes the thing that makes them a strong option. I think having to make the choice of forgoing potentially stronger cards with higher ceilings that necessitate heavy investment into a specific element or type of elestrals, over efficient but outclassed the longer the game goes on generic good stuff could be an interesting way of balancing the game while not having to restrict deck building.

i think some goodstuff is fine but i think all they need to do is just print cards that fallcilatate different "archetypes" like mill or Chronodile or whatever instead of way too generic stuff like Lavalith. though i think some goodstuff is fine. i also think duel-links style banlist would go against aDrive's visions too since this game is supposed to be an alternative pokemon or whatever which i guess means it would be best if you can get to use all your favorites in a deck.

It's definitely a weird spot. Every deck in Elestrals right now starts with that fat core of good runes, and then branches from there. I think the fact that so much room is taken up in a deck in the first place limits creativity a LOT in this game. I think pulling back these staple base set runes a bit allow for players to add In-Element Elestrals into their decks that attempt to solve the same problems. Such as Frostmite becoming a more popular answer for Galaxea because runes barely deal with it. This is the ideology I would like to see, rather than relying on the same 15 cards in every deck to solve your problems. If you use the duel links system, or what's known as "Choice-Restricted List" in Bandai games, it can run into the problem of what's the next best rune or Elestral, but I think that's just an eternal card game problem. I don't want archetypes to solve this in Elestrals personally, it's lazy and centralizing. What's unique about this game is that it's very much about being the first person to establish a board presence. But, we don't want decks that fully establish boards in 1 turn. It we limit the runes that make the back and forth more Elestral-choice focused more-so than "I drew more PTA's and Gorgon's" focused, I'd like to believe that it's better for the game in general, because now your Elestral choice and deck building matters more.

I really hope elestrals doesn't implement a duel links style banlist. A lot of banlists styled like this just lead into situations where your gameplan is entirely focused on your limited card of choice, leading to sacky games that end with "he drew tth/(insert autowin here) so i lost instantly". Another problem I rarely see mentioned is the expectation that cards just won't be banned. Why ban one finisher when you can limit 2 enablers that functionally kills the deck in a comp sense, but still lets it crush people if you open well.

prob going to have to do what lorcana does eventually and just lock decks to X colors max to stop multcolor good stuff piles (Lorcana your locked to 2 colors max) since I don't see them ever fixing this issue with how they design cards it to free to just splash a bunch of colors

I think I would prefer a points list over a dl banlist, since it's more customizable and is less likely to lead to people just playing the best card in each limit category. Admittedly my only experience with this style of list is in a Highlander format, so it might not translate well

Has nothing to do with the video... buuuuut... what does the shirt say? "An evil Black Dentist"? "By the name Kakaud"? I cant make it out... :(

The closest comparison I could think of from my own experience are the “complex bans” in competitive Pokemon. One infamous example is that in Gen 5, you could not use a Pokemon with the ability Drizzle nor a Pokemon with the ability Swift Swim in the same team. Such examples don’t occur much anymore, but it’s something that I was reminded of when you talked about the Duel Links style banlist.

The issue, and i'm using the word issue very lightly is that the spirit system as is kinda means that 'best card tribal' will always be one of the most viable options. Why jump through hopes for synergies when you can slap down 2 for 1's every turn. I don't think there is a Solution that will ever 'sort the issue' (If you think it is an issue) outside of printing synergies that are broken with a capital B.

Probably. Even a 1900 vanilla seems like it would be good in this game. Best to keep duel links banned.

I find the duel links style banlist a headache, especially with rules as to how siding with those cards would work. Would you be allowed to put an extra limit 3 card in the side if you swap a limit 3 card out in deck in exchange during siding? It's just not super straightforward compared to "This card is at one. You can only have one in your deck" or "This card is banned. You can't play it". I personally favor trying to make gameplan decks capable of outpacing the midrange goodstuff piles but not to the point goodstuff dies out entirely. A good example of that kind of balance, oddly enough, would be Yugioh's HAT format. HAT pretty much is a goodstuff deck, but dedicated gameplan decks like Mermail or Spellbook thrived, and more middle of the road decks, like Geargia, also flourished. I think card design is the key to solving this issue

The "difficult to explain to new players" reason is the best reason to never do this. One of the biggest boons of elestrals is ease of access Im also on the "wait until end of year 2" train until big changes to structure like that are made

Could be a deckbuilding keyword or something like that for super powerful cards, like "Loyalty: Thunder" so you can only play it if every card in your Main and spirit deck are Thunder for example. Or the other way around, where it cannot be used if you have X/Y element on the deck.

I actually like Digimon’s form of banned/limited. Where they will limit/ban a card. But, if a piece is important to a certain deck, there’ll be a rule where you can’t play two certain cards together. So, example, if someone had Galaxea and Astrabbit and if that’s an op combo, the creators of Elestrals can put up a rule that those two can’t be played together.

Android Netrunner had a restricted list at one time that worked that every deck only got one restricted card in it. it worked okay, but they ended up moving away from it b/c it wasn't quite granular enough.

Im only here to hear this man yap

The biggest problem with this style of banlist is that sometimes limitations effectively become bans. About half of the currently Limited cards in Duel Links are cards that no one would ever consider playing, but they are theoretically mildly annoying, so they’re limited so that you can’t play them alongside the other slightly annoying cards or more powerful bosses

I just think Banlists can only ever be half of a solution. As you mention about Limit 2, every new card risks breaking whatever balance this kind of list enforces. If the point is to restrict generic tools, then the Dev Team won't be allowed to print much generic utility going forward still, which isn't good long term. I see two real roads. Introducing those hard lanes inside the card pool ala archetypes. Or change the core rules in a way that makes the Spirit Deck less mixable or some other rule that accomplishes a similar result. A lot of new games introduce hard walls (Lorcana, One Piece, Star Wars, Flesh and Blood) for this exact problem.

What about a Gwent ban list?

I think the Duel Links banlist is a little fiddly and weird, but I can't deny that the system would work wonders.

No please god no

The term I tend to use is Choice Restriction, cuz almost all Bandai and Bushiroad games have a similar style of restriction, and this is the term they use.

Theres a similar, but different, system in the Canadian Highlander MTG format (dw it is NOT commander) that might also be a neat idea.

At limited 1 i have galaxea