Alright, no more beating around the bush. On top of the Yellow Previews today, we got a very Anti-Yellow…or I should say an Anti-Shugesh preview today. It has rocked the community. Some are praising Zen-Oh now that Shugesh is wrecked, others worried about what it means. Let’s have a discussion.

The Card in Question

It’s pretty damn obvious what she was made for. To make sure Shugesh is a non-factor. But I want to talk about the actual design that comes into play here, the different directions it can go, and whether this card is truly good or bad for the future health of the game.

Silver Bullets

I’m going to first bring up a couple of definitions on the term, then mention what I believe the term to be in the concept of a Collectible/Trading Card Game.

First up we have one from Webster which states…

“One that instantly solves a long-standing problem”

That’s nice, but that’s a bit broad. We’ll now use something from Urban Dictionary (yes Urban Dictionary, just hear me out).

“A specific, fail-safe solution to a problem”

This one is a bit closer to what we want to talk about. Now the origin of the phrase, to those who don’t know (since the media source has started to fade in recent times) is based off of the weakness of a werewolf, being silver. A Silver Bullet was treated as the only surefire way to kill a werewolf.

My personal definition when it comes to TCGs is as follows.

“A card or effect specifically created to counter another specific card(s) or effect(s)”

That’s basically what we’re looking at here. What I want to talk about, is how Silver Bullets aren’t necessarily bad for a game…but when designed improperly or used improperly, the effect can be devastating.

Back to Chronoa

Now the thing about Chronoa is, she’s mostly a very narrow Silver Bullet, which generally suck. However, Bandai made it so that she would have an application even when not facing a deck using Shugesh. “So it’s a good thing right?” Well…here’s the thing. I agree that Shugesh is DEFINITELY a problem that needed to be addressed. The thing is that…there’s no downside to this card. Most Silver Bullets have a legitimate downside and for good reason. Usually the downside is indeed being a bit narrow. But this card is almost all upside. Think about it, 1 Drop Cantrips are used in a great MANY decks in DBS. Energy Boosted Majin Buu, Youthful Bulma, the Archetype Cantrips and so on. It’s extremely rare for a deck to not be using one, which shows their value. This is a cantrip for every single color, with the upside of outright eliminating Shugesh from the face of the Earth. And let me make it clear, it does do that. Unless you absolutely need the color fixing help (and some decks may indeed be tight on that), this card can slot in either in favor of, or alongside any cantrip. So Shugesh is gone. And that should be a good thing…but it’s not. Let me explain it like this (and yet I admit I’m rambling a bit).

If Shugesh is such a problem that a card like Chronoa needed to be printed…why isn’t Shugesh banned instead?

Let’s be clear on one thing. A great many TCG communities, especially new ones, hate the word “ban” with a passion. It installs a fear in them that they’ll turn into Yugioh. “Cards don’t need to be banned! Git Gud! They can just errata if they need to, or Rotate!” and so on and so forth. I mean it’s an understandable fear. In THEORY there shouldn’t be a slippery slope, some cards are just poorly designed for various reasons. No design team is ever perfect. In reality, it still ends up leading to a slippery slope a lot of the time either because design teams suddenly become emboldened to print stupid amounts of power creep because a ban or two can re-right the ship, or they go the other way and ban a bunch of things to continually keep the power level down at any cost. Even Magic the Gathering hasn’t been exempt of this. After many years, they banned a few (VERY necessary) cards over a year ago…and they’ve had a ban nearly every set since (speaking of Standard format) and we’re likely expecting another one coming up with Goblin Chainwhirler. So I honestly do get where that fear comes from. Still, sometimes a card has to go.

I know people will go “well we Errata’d Mecha-Frieza and Babidi, why don’t we do that?” The answer is that it’s almost impossible to Errata Shugesh in a meaningful way that doesn’t still open the floodgates for issues down the line. Forcing him into Yellow Saiyan Leaders doesn’t actually help anything. Shugesh still does Shugesh things, just with a smaller sample size of Leaders, big deal. You could force him to only put in play Yellow Saiyans, but it would just mean that Bandai would become VERY restrained in their ability to print Yellow Saiyans, not unlike what went on with Mecha-Frieza. There’s no way to really Errata Shugesh, without turning him into a completely different card altogether which is the last thing you want to do. Compare Shugesh to Saiyan Teamwork Cabba who can be very easily Errata’d to only putting in play 2 drop or less Cauliflas for free, since his text is generally future-proofed everywhere else. It would allow Bandai to go as big as they wanted on Cauliflas without nearly as much guilt and still maintains what Saiyan Teamwork Cabba wants to do. But Shugesh…not that simple. With Chronoa’s printing a full set later…Bandai themselves are aware of that fact.

My worry lies in two possible places.

+ They use this design to cut off other problematic cards and effects, homogenizing Sideboards and Mainboards too far and generally hurting future card design.

and…

+ They use this design as an excuse to print stronger variants of similar effects, because a silver bullet can fix things.

The second is my biggest worry, as it’s what happened to Yugioh. Hand Traps were initially printed to slow down the game, and honestly it was decently successful. Instead of taking that baseline and working down, they instead printed bigger and immensely more moronic card designs because they believed certain Hand Traps could handle it. When they couldn’t, they just made even stronger Hand Traps leading to Ghost Reaper and Ash Blossom. Now they’re making even dumber things to blow past those two (well there’s certainly more than those two, but those are probably the biggest examples, Ghost Ogre comes and goes depending on format). It’s like how Pepto-Bismol is used by a majority of the population. Instead of being used as a simple failsafe in the off-chance you ate poorly due to happenstance (and it happens, food poisoning, a bad cooking day, lack of real time to eat properly and so on), INSTEAD people use it as an excuse to continue poor eating habits because the ole Pepto would fix them right up afterwards. I know this because I did it as much as anyone.

This is even worse than banning because this ends up becoming the detriment of any deck that wants to compete. You’re forced to run these Silver Bullets as well. The card may as well be banned, but now multiple slots are taken out of every other deck in the process to keep one card jailed.

Am I happy Shugesh won’t really be a problem anymore? Sure, to a point. But I’m far more worried at HOW they went about it, because it causes me to see an uncertain future in their card design. I don’t believe the game is going to die, don’t get me wrong. In fact I will say that if nothing else I’ll give them credit for realizing that Shugesh was a big issue within a set and made moves to try and deter it. They do indeed keep their beat on the pulse of the community. It’s for that reason that we need to come together on this and show them that while they were right in what needed to get hurt, they can do a bit better in how they handle it. If Shugesh needs a card this specific to take it down, then it doesn’t need to be in the format. Don’t let the fear of the Slippery Slope take you in, you can be better as long as you’re willing to be better Bandai.