Guest Cope: An Analysis of Guilty Gear
By Brett Hillmann
With Guilty Gear: Strive being spoiled the grand work begins: staring at uvsultra.com for hours in pursuit of the most terrible takes I can possibly come up with.
But seriously, whenever a new set is fully spoiled is when I actually start to take a hard look at the set as a whole. I try not to give spoiler season too much attention because whatever handful of cards are being shown at any one given point in time are missing the context of the rest of the set.
I am approaching my look at Guilty Gear: Strive a little differently than I do your average set. The Tension mechanic is such a wild ability that a large majority of the attacks are balanced entirely around it. Which is fair considering not only can a Roman Cancel Token do four different things on its face, it is also actually usable as an actual momentum for paying costs. If you put a card like At The Ready (without Tension) into a set you’d probably get laughed at. Slap Tension on it and suddenly it’s a whole lot more interesting to think about.
For this analysis I want to give my thoughts on each character and maybe comment on their relationship with the Tension mechanic. Some of the characters will love to have access to a couple Roman Cancel tokens over the course of the game, some will just appreciate the value of flexible snap momentum, and some of them feel like they weren’t even aware that Tension is even in the set.
Please do keep in mind that this article is my opinion. I am not an absolute authority on card design or analysis. Just some idiot with a laptop and enough time on his hands to actually approach this sort of thing.
Without further ado, let’s get the most important thing out of the way first. Let’s quickly rank the characters from Best to Least Best.
Bridget
Ky Kiske
May
Sol Bad Guy
Nagoriyuki
Happy Chaos
I-No
Potemkin
And while the comments section lights itself on fire, let’s get into it.
Bridget
~Sigh, let’s talk about the elephant in the room first. For those of you who don’t know, Bridget, as is, has a combo that “instantly” wins the game in a way that doesn’t involve bringing the opponent’s life total to zero.
Step 1: Have Ray Fillet, Singing Sting Ray in Play. You can play him naturally or you can cheat him into play with Hunter’s Ally.
1a: If you cheated him into play with Hunter’s Ally: Use Ray’s Enhance to put a card into their card pool, then for your 2nd enhance use Bridget to turn your Hunter’s Ally face down (this aborts your attack).
Step 2: Play a Fillet Fling, use its blitz to return the facedown Hunter’s Ally to your hand. Use Ray Fillet to put a card into their card pool, then use Bridget’s enhance to turn your Fillet Fling face down.
Step 3: Play a second Fillet Fling, use its blitz to return your first Fillet Fling to your hand, use Ray Fillet to put a card into their card pool, use Bridget to flip your Fillet Fling
Step 4: Provided you can check enough 4s (you will be able to), you repeat step three and put the opponent’s entire deck into their card pool, winning instantly through exhaustion.
I fully expect this combo to be “fixed” in some way with the release of the set, even though I think the company would be cowards for doing so. So let’s talk about Bridget outside of the combo.
I think Bridget is GOOD. She’s Pony-shaped and that character just caught hands not too long ago. I don’t think she is quite as insane as Pony is, as she can’t rip through her deck at light speed, but getting -1 progressive difficulty +1 momentum twice per turn supplemented by an ability that helps you activate that effect is considerably strong. Her response ability also allows her to easily turn on Tricky Spinner which is probably one of the more broken things you can be doing in the set (and will need to eat a Unique errata most likely). Suddenly you’re kick-flipping like Porco and also rigging the top card of your deck.
Bridget also actively likes all 4 pieces of a Roman Cancel. Red helps her response go off, she can consistently fuel purple on turn 2 strings, if she’s not popping purple she’s using Yellow to pad her life total, and if you’re racing the opponent Blue can help keep the opponent off tempo. She’s not quite as flexible as Ky is, but her offensive snowball feels a whole lot scarier.
Ky Kiske
Ky sits near the top of the pile for a couple of reasons. The first is that he has text that is active during both player’s turns. All your stuff being +1 speed and all their stuff being -1 speed is already a pretty decent advantage to innately have. Having that ratchet up to +3/-3 means that if the opponent overcommits (or simply checks poorly) during their turn you’re going to be able to block fairly deep into a kill string and your own offense is going to quickly approach unblockable. His response can also quickly spiral games out of control. The commit is TARGETED and having Freeze built into the character means you will just be able to mise entire games by freezing 2-3 of the opponent’s foundations on turn 2 and icing any hopes of retaliation. The only reason I don’t have him at the #1 spot is because he doesn’t have any velocity on his face. And while he doesn’t draw cards, snap off momentum, or cheat a bunch of foundations into play, the fact that he is active across the entire turn cycle and that what he does is strong+free means you can dedicate more deck slots towards your acceleration while Ky handles the stat manipulation.
He’s also a character that can actively profit off all 4 abilities of a Roman Cancel. Red can get an attack through for his response, Purple helps him assemble strings, Yellow can bait an opponent into overextending to turn on his Enhance, and Blue helps him Time Walk an opponent on turn 2. Very flexible character both offensively and defensively.
May
No, your 8 allies are not going to be Black Abyss.
No, your 8 allies are not going to be Tasty Riff (I commend you if you do it anyways).
Your 8 allies are gonna be a Banned Card and the sooner you come to terms with this the better.
Being blank on the opponent’s turn is certainly a strike against her, but I feel like I cannot stress this enough: YOU GET TO PLAY 8 COPIES OF A BANNED CARD. You also get to surround yourself with some strong Ally synergy cards. Personally I’m leaning towards Water because Demon Plants+Youko Form means you get to dodge progressive difficulty while turbo charging your Great Yamada Attacks.The other option would be a Hunter’s Ally package. Snap in Ray Fillet to clog the opponent’s pool or snap in a Cammy, Covert Chameleon to turn off a problematic foundation. Once you solve for any consistency issues I think May is going to be a real terror.
It’s at this point in the rankings that how much a character likes/benefits from having a Roman Cancel starts to homogenize for me. Where-as I can see Ky and Bridget actively using all 4 abilities of a Roman Cancel at some point in a game, the remaining characters will primarily like Tension for the snap momentum, then Purple, then Yellow, with the occasional use of Red and ignoring Blue almost entirely. Just copy paste this portion over to every remaining character so I don’t have to keep repeating myself.
Sol Badguy
I like Sol quite a bit, but this is where I think we start getting into the B-tier and lower characters of the set. He instantly snaps on things like Support from the Female Titan/Rapid Speed Slash and goes Sicko mode with Reflecting on Choices. Easily turning on both halves of Heaven or Hell will allow him to produce offensive pressure while maintaining card quality, and I imagine the most successful Sol decks will be base Fire for this reason. The flexibility of his response is also not to be ignored. You can stockpile your responses for a massive boost at the end of the string (the Tyrant Rave dream), or you can space it out over a string of fire attacks to help keep your control checks smooth.
While I consider what he does to be inherently unfair in terms of velocity (snapping a momentum and boosting your control checks) the lack of some sort of stat manipulation or card economy on his face means he’s going to have to work just a little bit harder than some of the more premier decks of the format who do can do Sol-shaped things just a little bit better than he does
Nagoriyuki
Ever hear of the phrase “The only life point that matters is the last one?”. This character embodies that mentality. 10 life doesn’t matter when you’re shutting off their Moment of Normalcy and stacking +4 damage onto everything. What he lacks in any inherent Velocity he makes up for in sheer damage output, and having access to arguably some of the best Tension attacks printed (Kamuriyuki, Dust Attack, and Bloodsucking Universe) means he also plays very nicely with Echo abilities (Thunder Spear Barrage is 20 by itself for instance). This is the character I wouldn’t be surprised to be the most wrong about in some capacity. +4 damage is basically 3/4s of a 4 difficulty attack and he adds that for free but -10 life also means you might just get lmao’d if you can’t end the opponent that turn. This push and pull between big damage and big life loss (some might say….”the Tension”) means this will probably be the character I keep an eye on the most in the nascent stages of the Guilty Gear metagame. Who needs speed when you can Psychic Spirit Glass/Farewell to Friends someone out of the game?
Happy Chaos
On his face this is a character I should be moderately excited about. He pumps some stats, maybe draws some cards, maybe snaps a bit of momentum. Basically just all around a “solid” character.
But all I can be about this character is “whelmed”. Having your resource unfairness hinge on the opponent not blocking makes that maybe a really crucial maybe. Being locked to a single keyword for deck building for what is no real equivalent boost in power also SUCKS. Imagine if Toji’s Heavenly Restriction made his forehead flicks hurt just a little bit more. That’s what it’s gonna feel like playing Happy Chaos. If you want to be stats+draw there are better, less restrictive options. Cool flavor though, and a bananas Secret Rare that I am going to make them regret printing, but a hard pass from me.
I-No
Oh boy, a lot of new people are going to be learning a real hard lesson when they start jamming with I-No. Abilities that give control to the opponent, almost without exception, are awful. When you need the zone change the most, the opponent is going to let a foundation get sealed. When you need to seal something they’re going to let the zone get changed. Any intelligent competitive player is going to know which is the worst end of the stick to give you, and her payoffs just aren’t strong enough to warrant taking this character seriously. Characters like this need an enormous amount of support behind them to create a cascading chain of consequences for the opponent regardless of which choice they select and that support simply isn’t there.
Potemkin
Designing a 5 hand size character is really hard. You give them some sort of velocity mechanic to compensate for the low handsize and you’ll have the peanut gallery screaming “fake 5hs”. Make them a real 5 and you have to figure out what you can print on it to compensate for the hand size without also just being completely cracked.
I don’t think Potemkin is anywhere near close to the power level he needs to be at to justify his handsize. His health is equivalent to the majority of the 6 handsize characters in the set, his damage reduction ability is not a real ability, and it will be incredibly difficult for him to capitalize on his discard ability because by the time you get the opponent to no cards in hand you’re probably going to be near out of gas yourself. Potemkin Buster checks a 2, Walking Fortress will be close to impossible for him to turn on while also just being completely incoherent as a piece of his designated support. You sacrifice the foundation, and you get to build a card from the discard face down but he doesn’t have any face down synergies. Gives the next check +3…as a five handsize character…who has no way to generate gas on face. If the format tolerates Grog Strongjaw and Metalhead you could have tuned the dials on Potemkin considerably higher. Avoid this character at all costs.
Overall I like this set quite a bit. Tension is an interesting mechanic even if I don’t agree with the Token being usable as a basic momentum (very very very scary). It being tied to the words “Roman Cancel” is definitely a strike against it, as it means we’re probably never going to revisit the mechanic again unless we get another Guilty Gear set and I dislike mechanics that get introduced and then immediately abandoned. Part of the beauty of a card game is being able to iterate on ideas in new and interesting ways and we will most likely never get to see that with Tension.
My least favorite thing about this set is its size. It is basically not possible for this set to be a jumping in point for new players who are excited about the Guilty Gear license. They’ll buy a box or two, mash every air symbol card they acquired into a deck, and they will have what is arguably the most incoherent mess a new player could possibly ask for. This game already struggles with the mechanical power/coherency of a character being concentrated at the higher levels of rarity, but it is especially noticeable in this set. So many of the commons and uncommons feel like just a random hodge-podge of stuff. This wasn’t the set to be printing things like Awakened Samurai and A Wolf’s Ferocity. I understand it’s cute to hint at what Baiken and Giovanna might do if they ever see print but those slots should have been used towards boosting the characters that are actually within the set. Lord knows I-No and Potemkin could have used the help. How can you get a new player invested in a set when they don’t even get a fully functional deck out of that set? “You should go buy the Godzilla Challengers” already feels like beating a dead horse.
That’s gonna be it from me. Overall my initial impression of the set is a solid 6/10, being carried almost entirely by my interest in Bridget’s infinite and seeing how Tension impacts the format. I cannot stress enough how poorly I think a lot of the non-Tension common and uncommons are executed and how this wasn’t the set to miss on that execution.
Let me know what you think down in the comments or find me on Discord (Arch419).
