So, we now have final confirmation of which imaginary gifts each of the 24 clans not filled with filler or crossover are going to be given in the new series, which makes now the perfect chance to have a look at each clan, and see how their gift would fit into their past and potential playstyles. For the moment, we’ll limit this analysis to the 10 clans without reboot cards revealed – that is, the final 7 confirmed, plus the 3 from V-EB03.

Gold Paladin (Accel) – Rushing out to the front

Gold Paladin originated as a substitute for Royal Paladin, back when Bushiroad didn’t want to launch a new arc with a huge power level jump. As a result, some of their early support shares similarities, mostly in powering up by having other units, along with a single card able to pull cards from the entire deck.

As the clan’s theme was a rabble of disparate volunteers, however, their true calling would be in calling from the top of the deck – initially the top card, though later this would be refined to the top 3-4, as power creep elsewhere meant that effectively drawing cards and throwing them onto the board wasn’t good enough (also as the clan’s backstory shifted from ‘nobodies on a quest’ to ‘the other army division’).

This style also ran into issues with the board clogging up. If you took on Kagero or Narukami, they may well clear your units, but facing a clan unable to do so often meant that you’d be limited to intercepting away whatever grade 2’s you could, or seeing your calls go to waste as the only slot for that grade 3 was behind another or having to immediately replace a trigger called with an actual attacker.

Whilst in G, the deck worked around this by battle phase calling, allowing the deck to reset the board and generate more attacks, Accel gifts are even better. Simply making more circles allows the cheap, low-quality calls of the clan meaningful by allowing them to make small, annoying attacks – and if your opponent insists on swatting them, now you have more space to flood out even more of the rabble.

Angel Feather (Protect) – Washing away the sins of the foes attacks.

Yeah, this was obvious. It’s difficult to see how they couldn’t be protect – sure, the G Era builds did have an element of attack extension, and power building is something of a staple, but it’s almost impossible to argue that the clan explicitly themed around field medics and recovery shouldn’t have the defensive gift.

We already know that moving a protect gift from the hand into the damage zone can effectively heal – a neat trick, especially if the power gains from cards entering the damage zone return, as it enables more defensive power gains to disrupt the opponent’s attack patterns. These buffs also justify the deck staying away from Force, as the higher base power on those clan’s units makes such increases hard to justify, and the attack extension wasn’t there for Accel to be appropriate.

Genesis (Force) – Pushing through to the new future

Every gift has been suggested for Genesis, though Protect mostly due to their similarity to Oracle Think Tank. This, however, was a red herring – outside of the G era Revelation the two clans were really similar only in visual design. Genesis has had a single consistent theme – take something another clan did, give it a cost in soul blasts, and put it in a pretty package. They’ve always been an all-rounder clan, and that’s why Force suits them.

Accel was suggested under the assumption that the gifts would be distributed evenly within each nation – not a bad guess, and maybe if the game had started here that would have been the case, but as is there’s too much baggage to make that sensible. Besides which, Genesis attack extension has come in two forms – direct restanding when they copy Nova Grappler, or the various calls of soul blasted units. The latter is the only one which has any distinctiveness, and it’s so similar in execution to Pale Moon that it would end up copying it whilst being less efficient.

Generalist clans are hard to place, but the roots of the clan are in varied effects centered around a soul blasting vanguard. Drawing and maipulating drive checks were notable early skills, though Minerva is a card with enough weight to headline the V era clan.

Nubatama (Protect) – Don’t trust anyone

Nubatama’s origins are in hand control – the first four cards, three of which could force an opponent to dicard cards if their hand was larger than yours, were so potent that they cause Bushiroad to put the clan aside for 13 sets, before they felt the game was ready for a clan which still mostly removed the opponent’s cards on a temporary basis. Whilst they did show up more in the manga, the extra cards there got converted to Murakumo units for the TCG, and as a result are Murakumo cards in the rebooted anime.

The shear power of hand control in the game is obvious, and when Bushiroad did briefly underestimate it the gave the clan the Dominate keyword, which ended up out of control. This gives us a clear idea of why the clan could not have one of the more offensive gifts – there’s no way anyone wants their hand to be stripped away when facing down a clan which gets power boosts from merely existing. As an added bonus, early hand control demanded the opponent have a larger hand – and Protect gifts increase the Nubatama player’s hand actually inhibits this.

Narukami (Accel) – Flying in the open sky.

Now this one is a strange one, because a rear-guard focus has never been something Narukami have ever had. In fact they’ve just about the least capacity to make additional rear-guard attacks of any clan in the game, so for them to get the ‘multi-attack’ gift seems rather out of place. In some respects this slot is very much a filler option, but there is an interesting opportunity when we look at the clan’s historic skillset.

Prior to G and the focus on the bind zone, Narukami have generally been differentiated from Kagero by being in general the blunt hammer to the older clan’s fine scalple. Whether it’s Vermillion’s one-shot againt the entire front row vs the original Overlord’s picking off units one by one, or the various field wipes in contrast to exact targeting, Narukami have always sacrificed accuracy for efficiency.

Notably, Narukami tend to be more willing to sacrifice their own units to get at the opponent, but despite this seeming completely antitheical to the accel gift, it was sometimes paired with the very interesting ability to gain power for each open rear-guard circle, and conveniently enough each accel gift gives you another rear-guard circle to add to the scores. Thus it’s entirely possible that Narukami has accel not for the space it gives for the rear-guards, but simply to unilise the additional circle mechanics. Whether this is implicit (that is, the circle that boosts the unit sat on it simply allows more efficient use of the few units you’re willing or able to call) or explicit (units on the accel circles are able to avoid rear-guard purges) remains to be seen. There’s also the potential for column-based interaction to be more effective, being able to get at opposing accel circles in a way other gifts wouldn’t allow.

Link Joker (Force) – Locking out options

The other oddity in the list, Link Joker were expected to end up with Protect, as it would hand Star Gate the last gift it was lacking. However, not only did it not materialise, the second unassigned protect gift expected from earlier information vanished entirely, and one extra force clan emerged. It’s thus likely that an intened protect clan got changed during development, and given that every other nation has every gift type, Link Joker seems the obvious case.

Protect for the clan stems from it’s origins with the Star-Vaders, who had a heavy locking focus, and even from very early could lock out both rear-guard columns and the vanguard booster, crippling the opponent’s offences. However the later Deletors (who are expected to lead in the reboot) had a more offensive power focus, whilst the G Messiah deck was able to combine it’s skills to trigger further attacks. However, whilst all of these playstyles had heavy control influence that leans in principle towards protect, heavy lock, especially in premium format, runs the risk of damaging game balance. Conversely accel is a risk to allow alongside the heavy power drain of the Deletors. Force thus becomes the only practical choice left, allowing power gains in the gift to let the clan’s own cards focus on the defence.

Gear Chronicle (Force) – Gearing up for the next age

That one clan who started in G get to show up in good order this time, alongside two other relative latecomers, and have been assigned Force. Like Genesis, they’re another generalist clan, but in this case it seems to stem less from their clan gimmick being in the cost and more that every season in G they got a whole new direction. Returning the opponent’s units to the deck, guard restrictions, grade-based superior calling, bind zone toolboxing and race-based synergy all fell under this clan’s remit at various stages. Clearly the clan is going to go under a tighter focus in the reboot.

The most obvious route is to go back to the start, with the ‘rewind’ approach. The issue here is that this functionally makes the clan Kagero but slightly worse, because the opponent is usually better able to recover the cards sent back. If presented as part of a wider package of grade-based manipulation, however, there may well be space for the clan. Guard restriction is also possible, but given this no longer hangs on the guardian’s grades it’s less fitting that it once was – and less atttractive in a force clan with access to high powered attacks.

On a side note, it seems there’s no Chronojet Dragon here – if they can go back to the steampunk aesthetic of the early clan I’ll be happy, even if no-one else is.

Bermuda Triange (Force) – Force yourself to sing

Another gift predicted by the lack of any other clans with the same gift within it’s nation, Bermuda Triangle’s self-bouncing strategy gives it a lot of flexibility, which is prime force material. Whilst options to recall during the battle phase for more attacks have existed from the start, they’ve also had the capacity to tank and grind out – like Link Joker, they could go anywhere, and thus force tempers this. It also helps that the first unit with easy battle phase calls – Raindear – had a new form right at the end of G, suggesting she’ll take a back seat here.

Of course the real interest in this clan is their new spin-off anime, and the new cast here is going to be taking up at least part of the set. However we’re also almost certain to get a decent set of older cards, covering the clan’s first extra booster. With the clan’s support being so late, we’re going to be well into wave two by the time this arrives, but an entire dedicated set should give more room for the clan to be able to retake the stage.

Great Nature (Accel) – Speed read your textbooks

Great Nature are somewhat similar to Tachikaze – both are rear-guard centred, both retire their own units, and both do so whilst maintaining card advantage. Great Nature makes itself unique by doing it’s retiring at the end of the turn, and at that point drawing up replacements from the deck. Much like other rear-guard centric clans, the accel gift only needs to give them more space to work with, as traditionally the power boosts were offered by attacking rear-guards, as well as vanguards, whilst several on-retire effects were handed off to other units – meaning more cards need to hit the field. As a bonus, unlike some clans the inherent impermenance of Great Nature’s rear-guards means that they can avoid losing advantage to opponents who insist on harassing said rear-guards.

Neo Nectar (Force) – Muskets loaded

And so we reach the end of this study with the third clan anounce for ULTRARARE MIRACLE COLLECTION, Neo Nectar. Whilst there’s a case to be made for the clan to be given the accel gift, this is more an argument for what the clan wants rather than what it is. Neo Nectar has generally been about refining the field and reaching higher power rather than attacking more – it’s Arboros Dragon ride chain copied it’s units to power up copies, Musketeers exchanged themselves for better fields as well as deck thinning, and even the G bloom deck was primeraly about power, only dabbling in extra attacks on rare occasions (and usually at a significant cost). Force thus suits in the same way it does for Spike Brothers – whilst the rear-guards are key to the deck, it’s their quality, not quantity, that matters.

Each gift complements the clan it’s in, even if it’s not obvious – or at least it should do (as until everything is revealed and released there’s always a chance for the designers to pull something completely different out). With the gift alignment now known, wild speculation is now free to move on to how each clan will exploit it’s gifts, as well as which old units will get to be VRs and which get OR prints.