Bushiroad Spring Fest 2024 season is about to kick off this weekend in California, and with the recent release of Chainsaw Man, it’s looking like it’ll be a high-powered metagame. But let’s take a moment to reflect on the dynamic metagame that we experienced over the past year before the Devil Hunters take the spotlight.

Bushiroad Spring Fest 2023

Bushiroad Spring Fest 2023 (BSF2023) kicked off on March 5 in Toronto, Ontario (CA) with almost the same card pool as what was available at the Bushiroad Championship Series 2022 (BCS2022) World Finals. Unsurprisingly, the most successful titles were those that had performed well at Worlds—The Quintessential Quintuplets and The Seven Deadly Sins, which took all top 4 spots in the event.

The decks’ ability to build resources towards their powerful finishers, Love Taking Off, Nino Nakano and Escanor: Arrogant and Powerful were, at the time, a step above the competition. The trios format did give other titles their moment to shine too—Kaguya-sama: Love is War was able to take the crown at the first BSF after the release of its second booster and hololive production continued to be popular throughout the season.

An observable trend among these other decks was that many of them played in a way that didn’t allow The Quintessential Quintuplets and The Seven Deadly Sins to go into their finishing turns comfortably; healing at level 2 with cards like Memories of Japan, Shizu and On the Stage, Amane Kanata to stay out of lethal range. There was even the unorthodox strategy of Tokyo Revengers, which aimed to hit level 3 first by attacking minimally with The Enemy in Front of You, Chifuyu so it could end the game with its explosive top end without giving the opponent a chance to play their finishers at all!

However, this metagame would change completely on April 21.

Restriction List (April 21)

Two major events would shake up the BSF2023 metagame on this day.

The first was the implementation of a new restriction list, which added a third card to the pre-existing choice restriction for The Quintessential Quintuplets, and a brand-new choice restriction to The Seven Deadly Sins.

The added restriction of Dozing Off, Ichika Nakano meant players lost access to an “emergency button” to get out of bad deck states, as well as an advantage Brainstorm that removed itself from the stage to open slots for Standby. Overall, it was a noticeable loss but not deck-breaking for the title.

The same could not be said about The Seven Deadly Sins. The choice restriction forced players to choose between Gilthunder: Negative Little Gil and Escanor: Master of the Tavern, but was effectively a choice restriction between Gilthunder: Negative Little Gil and Escanor: Arrogant and Powerful, which required the player to discard the level 0 Escanor as a cost.

This was a massive hit—using the ability of Gilthunder to open a lane and stack a timely +2 Soul trigger for Escanor to make 6 instances of 1 damage was the bread-and-butter of the deck. While it was possible to use Merlin: Wielder of Aldan and King: For a Special Someone together to cover the loss of Gilthunder: Negative Little Gil, requiring 2 separate cards to do less was certainly a higher bar for The Seven Deadly Sins to clear.

A restriction to the two best decks of the format would usually be quite the metagame shift, but the other event that happened on April 21 arguably changed the metagame more than the restriction list did.

Animation Sword Art Online 10th Anniversary was released on this day and it introduced the now infamous Alice engine.

Straight Path, Alice’s ability to bring out multiple copies of Shout Echoing Across the Battlefield, Alice at level 1 was a paradigm shift in how card advantage was generated in the English edition of Weiß Schwarz. To explain, Alice’s engine’s overwhelming advantage was threefold: the ability to effectively play cards from the deck, the climax combo, and the power of Shout Echoing Across the Battlefield, Alice.

Firstly, the ability to play cards out from the deck. A successful Brainstorm from Straight Path, Alice allows the player to bring out a level 2 character at level 1 without using a card from the hand. This fact often gets glossed over due to the other strengths of the engine, but paying 1 stock to get a 2/1 character at level 1 while keeping the same hand size is incredibly strong. In fact, players could use cards from their hand very liberally in the early game as they know it would probably be replenished. Although a similar ability already existed in Tokyo Revengers’ 3rd Division Vice-Captain, Peh-yan, Alice was in a completely different league by virtue of being able to bring out a character which generated multiple resources, as opposed to the textless 3rd Division Captain, Pah-chin.

This brings us to the second point. The character placed on stage with Straight Path, Alice generated even more advantage with its climax combo! By playing the associated climax, every copy of Shout Echoing Across the Battlefield, Alice would give the player a clean stock from the waiting room and a salvage, giving the player immediate access to the best cards in their waiting room while also tucking away the less needed cards, setting them up for the next turn to either protect their board state or re-play them if they get answered.

And finally, the raw power of Shout Echoing Across the Battlefield, Alice. Shout Echoing Across the Battlefield, Alice on a full stage hit 10,000 power, and with the assumed double Straight Path, Alice in the back row, you’d be looking at 11,000 power on multiple lanes (before accounting for any possible Backup which was most likely salvaged by the Climax combo). This was difficult, if not downright impossible, for most decks to handle, and even those that could contest Shout Echoing Across the Battlefield, Alice were usually doing so by forgoing their level 1 climax combo. This was much bigger a bane than it seemed on the surface—failure to remove Shout Echoing Across the Battlefield, Alice from the stage meant a possible second turn of the combo, but even if they were removed, they could fairly easily be played again using the Brainstorm.

All of the above wouldn’t be much of a concern if Sword Art Online could not reliably deploy multiple copies of Shout Echoing Across the Battlefield, Alice on its combo turn. However, even the most basic setup had a 70% likelihood to land three copies on stage, and a 99% likelihood to land two or more. There was even a method to land three copies at a 100% likelihood. The deck was alarmingly consistent and would define the metagame for the rest of the season, setting an incredibly high bar for other titles to clear. You can check out the detailed Alice setup lines on my blog, and the maths behind it on my friend Hakase’s blog.

Bushiroad Spring Fest 2023 (Post-Alice)

Fortunately, BSF being a trio format prevented the format from being dominated entirely by a single title (yet again). While some decks adapted to contest Sword Art Online, many others opted to win against the other two members of the team, but titles with access to stock swap abilities did see a noticeable rise in popularity.

The decks that aimed to combat Sword Art Online prepared some kind of answer to mitigate the strength of the Alice engine—The Seven Deadly Sins used Elizabeth: Trust in the Promise in the back row while using Diane: Childhood to contest Shout Echoing Across the Battlefield, Alice without losing out on its own combo; hololive production used On the Stage, Amane Kanata supported by Raid, Kiryu Coco to beat Alice at its own game; Tokyo Revengers used the aforementioned Peh-yan/Pah-chin duo to win battles against Alice.

Bushiroad Rumble Online 2023

Bushiroad Rumble Online 2023’s (BRO2023) took place on May 20 & 21, in the middle of the BSF2023 season and shortly after the advent of Alice. Players could compete online for a chance to win the exclusive As Five Now and in the Future promo cards in the only non-teams official event of the season.

There was varying speculation on whether BRO’s individual format would make Sword Art Online more or less prominent compared to the trios format of BSF, but the results showed overwhelming evidence for the former—Sword Art Online not only seized 11 of the 24 total top 8’s, but also won all three regions’ events. This was an unprecedented feat.

Bushiroad Championship Series 2023 Regional Qualifiers

There were three highly influential releases between the end of BSF2023 and the start of Bushiroad Championship Series 2023 (BCS2023) season, which fired off on the first weekend of September, yet again in Toronto: hololive production Vol.2, Avatar: The Last Airbender and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Vol.3.

The new hololive booster introduced a wide range of cards into the pool, from upgrades to older archetypes to brand new deck cores, but the card which performed most during the BCS2023 season was A Step Towards the Future, AZKi, a card which added a free search onto its already powerful Standby climax! Interestingly, the card was played in two completely different archetypes—the steady and defensive 8 Standby build featuring Himemori Luna and Haachama Beam, Akai Haato; and the fast and aggressive A Step Towards the Future, Gawr Gura build.

Avatar: The Last Airbender was the much awaited release of an iconic series, and its cardpool did not disappoint. With unique text that also expressed the World of Avatar in cards like Aang: Learning Avatar State, the title absolutely delivered to its fans. However, the card that pushed the title to competitive success is Sokka: Offering Different Perspectives. As the first card of its type to place standing characters on the stage during the attack phase, players would use cards like Azula, Sinister Scheme, Azula: Verge of Insanity or even Standby triggers to gain extra attacks during the midgame, endgame or both!

Finally, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Vol.3 brought with it A Throbbing That Signals Freedom, Mjurran, the key card of the deck that would become the most successful throughout the season. Despite being a variant of Shout Echoing Across the Battlefield, Alice that didn’t hit the stage until level 2, it proved to do well with access to support cards such as Captive Wizard, Mjurran and Quiet Anger, Shuna.

These three titles took the top 3 spots at the first BCS2023 event in Toronto and continued to win multiple players invitations to the world finals throughout the season.

Restriction List (November 24)

On November 24, we were given another restriction list update, this time affecting The Seven Deadly Sins, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime and Sword Art Online.

The Seven Deadly Sins change was largely inconsequential to the tournament scene, but now allowed players to play Gilthunder: Negative Little Gil alongside Escanor: Master of the Tavern in decks that wished to do so without playing Escanor: Arrogant and Powerful.

The choice restriction on That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime was quite impactful. Mjurran decks relied on “Conqueror of Flames” Shizu to fill the role of waiting room access and milling in the first deck cycle, so the loss of its level 1 combo meant that the deck now had to play its early game differently. The popular replacement option was Swept Along, Rimuru’s Standby combo which could bring out Mjurran or Quiet Anger, Shuna onto the stage at level 1, sometimes in multiples. This version of the deck would go on to win 2 BCS2023 regionals.

Lastly, Shout Echoing Across the Battlefield, Alice was restricted to 2 copies. Sword Art Online had not been performing as well since That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime appeared as its competition, but this restriction was the nail in the coffin. With only 2 copies, Sword Art Online could not even guarantee having two Alices on its combo turn, let alone three, and would basically be locked out of its game plan as soon as either copy became stuck in clock or deep in stock.

BCS2023 World Finals

The World Finals of BCS2023 made its return to Tokyo, Japan in February this year after a four year wait. The competition largely consisted of the usual suspects: That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, hololive production, Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Seven Deadly Sins.

The finals featured Birry, who played a That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime deck using Swept Along, Rimuru, against Ryoshun, who was playing a somewhat unexpected deck: a hololive production deck using A Step Towards the Future, Mori Calliope as the level 1 Climax combo of choice alongside A Step Towards the Future, Gawr Gura. While this deck type was not unheard of, it was not the deck that Ryoshun, or any other player in the event, had used to qualify for the world finals. Yet, Ryoshun was able to pilot it all the way to the finals. Another player, Savior, scored a top 4 finish using this too.

The finals came to a conclusive finish when Ryoshun skilfully used the ability of Which Is The Real One? Amane Kanata on his final turn to generate the two stock he needed to end the game with a double Gawr Gura turn, winning with exact damage through triggering on a side attack!

The many powerful cards printed over the year made 2023 a very dynamic year of Weiß Schwarz, where keeping threats unchecked was riskier than ever. I’m sure that the upcoming season will be similarly with the continued presence of Nazarick: Tomb of the Undead and the release of Chainsaw Man. Best of luck to all Weiß Schwarz Meisters for the upcoming season, and I hope we have another great year of Weiß Schwarz!

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Ken Takahata is a Weiß Schwarz player from Sydney, Australia who began playing in 2011. Most recently casting BCS2022 World Finals, he is an active member of the community who plays in, judges for and casts for tournaments. When not playing Weiß Schwarz, he usually watches or talks about anime and movies. You can follow him on Twitter at @zabuton78.