I would Like to take a moment (Now that I have some time from work.) to comment about Allen Schaffer's triple Xtreme deck as well as my new thoughts on the Driver Variant Rule, after THE CIRCUT event in Virgina this past weekend hosted by StayCool. When it comes to Allen’s triple Xtreme deck in the finals he only did it because he made a silly bet with myself, geetster99, Sniper, and a couple others that were going to the event where if he made it to the finals match he would use triple Xtreme. To be honest none of us had taken him seriously, nor did we care if he actually did it. But after the event was over and we were in the car ride home Allen stated many times how he regreted his decision to do it, and that he should have just stuck with the double Drift deck he used in top 8 and top 4. Take that however you wish, I just wanted to clarify why he chose to use the triple Xtreme in the final match.
Now on the topic of the Driver Variant Rule. I will say that after this past weekend my view on the rule has changed a bit from where it was. I am still on the side of I want to see the rule in place. However, I am not to the far extreme as I was. From talking with geetster99 at the event he brought up a good point that ultimately, it’s a choice to use toxic decks like double Drift or double Bearing. However, we also talked about how at a competitive level if the statistics show that a double Drift deck can easily get you to the finals with minimal effort why wouldn’t a competitive player that is there to win the tournament do that? That’s like going to a Yu-Gi-Oh!! Tournament and playing a tier 3 deck against everyone else playing tier 1 decks. You’re going to the tournament to win, and if you put yourself at that much of a dissadvantage youre not gonna have a good time when you lose a lot. Yes, the spirit of the game is to have fun. But a tournament is still a competition, and some people have money invested into the game and they would like to try and win some of it back.
Now that I have made that point, I will say that watching the double Drift strategy in action by more than just 1 blader in the top 8 (We had 3 people do it and 2 of them made it to top 4.) I have thought long and hard about different ways to counter the strategy as well as examined the top parts used for the strategy. I can safely say I think the strategy isn’t as overpowered as I first thought it was. However, I will say that if enough people decide to use this strategy tournaments runtime will be way to long and judges will have a hard time determining winners. We had several battles where we ended up needing 3 different judges to look at the slow-motion video to determine weather a bey was still spinning or falling or turning and each judge would have a different result so we would be forced to call them ties. At this point I’m not even going to say the Driver Variants or even the players are the problem anymore. But, rather this boils down to the definition of “Spinning” that we have in the rule book, as well as the WBO Deck format itself. None of the other formats, Weather it be 3v3, P3C1, or even Single Bey has the issues that WBO Deck does. So maybe now we should be looking into a new format to use for the top cut? Maybe a simple 5v5 format similar to the WBBA’s 5G format?
I will make one side note as to why I still Like the Driver Variant rule. I just think it brings more creativity to the game and Beyblade combos. When you can just always use drivers that preform the same as another variant of itself, that just makes things a little boring to me. Even though Drivers like High Xtend+’ and Zone’+Z can act similar to Bearing/Bearing’, they still do not act 100% the same as Bearing/Bearing’. Anyways sorry for the long explanation but I wanted to get this out there so people know that my opinion has changed a little bit, since I have been one of the biggest voices on this topic.
Now on the topic of the Driver Variant Rule. I will say that after this past weekend my view on the rule has changed a bit from where it was. I am still on the side of I want to see the rule in place. However, I am not to the far extreme as I was. From talking with geetster99 at the event he brought up a good point that ultimately, it’s a choice to use toxic decks like double Drift or double Bearing. However, we also talked about how at a competitive level if the statistics show that a double Drift deck can easily get you to the finals with minimal effort why wouldn’t a competitive player that is there to win the tournament do that? That’s like going to a Yu-Gi-Oh!! Tournament and playing a tier 3 deck against everyone else playing tier 1 decks. You’re going to the tournament to win, and if you put yourself at that much of a dissadvantage youre not gonna have a good time when you lose a lot. Yes, the spirit of the game is to have fun. But a tournament is still a competition, and some people have money invested into the game and they would like to try and win some of it back.
Now that I have made that point, I will say that watching the double Drift strategy in action by more than just 1 blader in the top 8 (We had 3 people do it and 2 of them made it to top 4.) I have thought long and hard about different ways to counter the strategy as well as examined the top parts used for the strategy. I can safely say I think the strategy isn’t as overpowered as I first thought it was. However, I will say that if enough people decide to use this strategy tournaments runtime will be way to long and judges will have a hard time determining winners. We had several battles where we ended up needing 3 different judges to look at the slow-motion video to determine weather a bey was still spinning or falling or turning and each judge would have a different result so we would be forced to call them ties. At this point I’m not even going to say the Driver Variants or even the players are the problem anymore. But, rather this boils down to the definition of “Spinning” that we have in the rule book, as well as the WBO Deck format itself. None of the other formats, Weather it be 3v3, P3C1, or even Single Bey has the issues that WBO Deck does. So maybe now we should be looking into a new format to use for the top cut? Maybe a simple 5v5 format similar to the WBBA’s 5G format?
I will make one side note as to why I still Like the Driver Variant rule. I just think it brings more creativity to the game and Beyblade combos. When you can just always use drivers that preform the same as another variant of itself, that just makes things a little boring to me. Even though Drivers like High Xtend+’ and Zone’+Z can act similar to Bearing/Bearing’, they still do not act 100% the same as Bearing/Bearing’. Anyways sorry for the long explanation but I wanted to get this out there so people know that my opinion has changed a little bit, since I have been one of the biggest voices on this topic.