I’m just disappointed…

As with the title of the post, I don’t think any other statement better summarizes exactly how I feel about this card. Bushiroad has long been stretching “powercreep” and I did say that they were trying to push the envelope in my most recent talk about balance. Here’s the truth, and if I’m going to be brutally honest, while I was kindly talking about reaching the thin line of balance or teetering on it, the reality is that they’ve been more than ready to simply push the balance line further back. That is to say, and I’m not saying this is purely to increase sales, but they are just redefining powercreep by making cards explicitly more broken.

I absolutely hate this card design above. It encapsulates so many points I made in my previous post that I’ve hyperlinked in the previous paragraph. While, at this point in time, I don’t particularly care about the gains from this early advantage combo, I will lightly talk about this as well since the more egregious effect is actually its on-play ability. Justina here lets you check three cards at the beginning of her attack with her climax in play, and she lets you add up to two of any character or event from the three cards. Now, normally, most combos that give you an oversized plus will often limit what you can gain or have some amount of cost involved.

There’s an inherent sense of randomness involved with these types of combos. Furthermore, the ones that let you grab events to begin with, one of the more harder cards to get into hand outside of hard drawing, are typically rare and limit you to adding specially named cards. Justina completely breaks this mode. Unlike Itsuki, there is no discard cost at all. While Marisa, which was printed literally not too long ago from this post, does let you grab any event with her ability, you still can only ever get one card to hand.

Justina ignores any of this. She can grab two out of the three types of cards in this game with no real requirements or conditions. She does require a full board, but that itself isn’t exactly something that should be a primary struggle at this stage of the modern game design. From the way that I see Justina designed, this card is a supreme fail-safe. Players won’t be able to feel bad as this combo will refill their hands for pretty much no cost at all, so feel free to just dump your hand out. There’s no discard cost, no real nuance, and on top of that, with her primary ability in check, your opponent won’t even be able to react in the largest direct form of interaction with backups. This is just “winning” and “only winning” as a design.

Justina’s first ability is not new. It essentially is an upgraded form of a level down or kill effect, which have been around in the game for sometime, although, not to the level that Justina has been boosted to. Primarily, cards that have sunk other cards on board, outside of battle phase, have no other ability or a rather mediocre one at best. Level down is almost always associated with a cost. Justina does carry the same condition that Ninon on the left does as you do need a check to perform the effect, but granted, Justina is even more busted since she succeeds on both characters and events while the traditional profile only works on characters and maybe some very specific events.

Justina’s ability is also much more egregious simply due to the range of her ability. Whereas, Ninon does technically wipe the board if your opponent leaves the front row with some small characters, Justina can wipe about just anything for most of the game. Justina kills any character that has 8000 power or lower. That range does typically include level twos with utility abilities as well. The most immediate thought was this can be countered by standby, but you have to also remember that most standby cards will realistically reach around 7500 power at best for level ones standalone.

More critically damaging than trying to play around its power game is the fact that Justina essentially invalidates certain evasive profiles that have become a core part of the game. Certain game plans are quite literally dead in the matchup. J.C. profiles like Kazuki do nothing since they are obliterated immediately in the front or will have no targets when they are in the back. Maruzensky and other bouncing/Oboro-style effects are invalidated as they get immediately sent to waiting room. If anything, this is the biggest crime that crossed the line. I can withstand powercreep with more nonsensical power on baseline cards and annoying soul triggers on cards where they shouldn’t belong, but this is just unfun.

You may compare this to the Mina pairing from Kaiju No. 8. To be fair, I’ve also very much disliked that trio as well. However, at least that trio, including the Mina level one combo that fetches the event, requires you to build around that. You still need to have some amount of synergy and plays in mind. Using the event is also a net loss in hand; it trades one-for-one. Justina does not trade. Justina just kills as an on-play effect. Mina’s event also has a cost unless you have Mina’s support card on the left in play, which is, at least, a relevant condition.

And I don’t even know how they balanced or justified this card. This really boils down to a persistent meme that my community also shares. If you just stick pointless conditions like ENCORE (2) which will rarely ever be used in the early game or at all, or something like “cannot side” on a clean cut profile, you can stack whatever you want on the card. And, in this case, we have burned the raw power of the card down to an extremely low amount for a level one card as compensation. But how does that justify the power of the card itself and its combo? Furthermore, if this card was given that much power anyways through its abilities, why not just completely drop its power to the baseline 500.

They’ve given even less power for even more niche cards and less powerful cards in general. Furthermore, when the card is wiping the front row board, why does the raw base power even matter. This feels like a literal joke with the card still grasping onto a 1500 at its base. Justina wipes a card on play, and with her combo, she nets you a hard plus two in terms of hand. And to balance it all, the card is base 1500. Yes, that is my understanding of the rationale on balancing for this card. But this is okay, and everything is fine, just because this card doesn’t have a soul trigger. Sure, you do have to make sure to check a character, but that’s one of the laziest and easiest conditions you could ever meet. And even at worst, you can take a turn off to side and still push damage while netting your free plus two.

This doesn’t even consider talking about the functional problems of this design at its core. Similar to Mina, and now even more effective than Mina, this card can heavily push the early game through essentially slamming a two soul from opening boards and having a climax in play. Unlike Mina, which often needs a turn to actually set-up the events, this card just obliterates your opponent’s board immediately. And your opponent cannot do anything about it. Three of these with your opponent’s front row wiped results in a minimum of three soul swinging per character. If you so happen to hit a soul trigger, you’ve got anywhere from nine souls worth of damage to twelve unless you also have double soul icons in your deck. That’s almost half of your total life bar of twenty-eight in a single turn.

I hate it. I’m disappointed, and I don’t want this. This is lame and takes away multiple elements from the game. Counters are even more dead, already struggling with the turn player power nonsense. J.C.s and other board advantage profiles are gone. I don’t hate Justina. I don’t have anything against Brown Dust 2 as a franchise. But from what Justina’s card represents, I hate everything surrounding it. I’m afraid we’re speeding straight into the sun and the brakes have long been removed.

Ever since I had finished writing this post, there have obviously been new cards revealed, and to be frank, these cards just add further to my overall misery. It is clear to any experienced player that this set is a direct push in terms of powercreep. I do not know the exact reason, but even the cards that have been shown since Justina push that direct message.

For example, Elise on the left is a single cost card with three soul without any demerit. Usually getting a base soul of this amount carries some heavier condition or higher cost. Lubia is an enhanced Oboro combo which gives you the bounce-back ability whether or not she is fronted or sent to waiting room. This just makes her supersede all pre-existing Oboro effects in that regard. Perhaps this was designed for potentially a mirror match between herself and Justina? Luvencia essentially is a climax filter profile at level zero with base two soul and no demerit.

Genuinely speaking, what are we doing?