I hadn't played the game for almost three months before the new set (H-BT01) came out and I played and test some new decks for 20hours during the past 2 weeks. I have built and test Aoi, Mahiro, Lion, Nina; I have built and watched others played Ashery, Tamaki, Yayoi and Yukari.
Since it's confirmed that we are not going get a WGP of this game out of Japan (and even I am willing to travel I still can't played the JP WGP because I need a stable JP address for registing), there is no reason for me hiding my thoughts and strategy now (damn bushi now I get to player trigger fighters for the sick of playing a big tournamont).
I would still be too lazy to type all those random stuff out until I see the comments of this card "Alighting Heaven's Blessings, Lion" and other comments from the daily card of wiki and NA FB group. As far as I see I am the only one who post negative comments on some cards (ofc I also post very positive comments on some amazing cards) and some comments I saw just gave too much credit on cards that does not deserve it. I don't know whether the rest of the communite really think the card is great or people just don't want to talk a card is bad or even sh1t. So I think the only way to tell is talking it out include my thinking process. Maybe I was wrong about the card since the beginning and I am glad to get other people's thought to impove my understanding of the game. (wow, I truly love the mechanic and card design of this game).
So here we go:
A) New meta:
a) as we expected and as the game should be, new cards basically powercreep out most old cards.
b) now you almost always play nothing when you go 1st T1 and put your member in the back row when you go 2nd T1 because everyone play 4 copies of those convert (pay 1 stock to draw 1) vanguard foreigners. Not too much comments on this as the shelling off front row was never a huge play in the old meta. But I do feel a little bit laziness on the design of those cards. It taks away a lot of thoughts on the deck building part of the game and other possible early game strategies.
c) in the old meta most deck does not trance at T2 at all unless they are going for special setup play (tamaki, chole, aoi) or their hand is really bad. People normally mulligan for lv2 members. In the new meta if you don't trance at least once T2 you would be quite behind due to lose to use the convert and/or EX1 ability (I am not sure whether this would be true for Mejiko, I need to see the full list of H-BT02 to tell, but so far this is true for all the rest decks. EX1 ability is free plus, some of them even has a 2 stock LD, almost all your members has convert ability and you can only trance twice per turn so use they as early as possible). So you mulligan agressively for foreigners. Sometimes you would even trance twice T2, thanks to the new convert abilities you would not minus yourself for making these play however you do risk to have less foreigners in your deck for later turns.
d) game become faster in the sense of number of turns. In the current meta a lot of decks can finish the game T4 when they go 2nd: Lion, Nina, Mahiro, Aoi (tec-in Mahiro or Yayoi), Yukari (pure build or tec-in long bow Aoi). And some decks can even win T4 when they go 1st if the opp does not defend correctly (I had 2 games with 1st/T4 win as Mahiro). But the game still last quite long in the sense of time (40min+) due to so many plays and abilities you could make and trigger in the early turn. And players are not quite familiar with the new cards yet.
e) defending is hard, it was hard in the old meta too however with all the new abilities (plus almost all of them are offensive abilities) defending is so hard if not impossible in the new meta. Gate 4 is stable in every top list. Sigma (former WGP winner and 2nd place of the last big tournamont in JP this year) is the only player I know who does not run gate 4 in any of his builds, he prefers gate 5.
f) decking out: this was an issue for some decks in the old meta and viper fall is always part of some decks' backup win condition. Now the concern become even more serious in the new meta as you would trance multiple times (search your deck more often), draw more cards (faster on digging into your deck) and protect your member with souls for TC into EX3 (more cards stick on the board) and use less stocks (so less card get into your drop zone early). A complete new charactor deck would only have 20 to 25 cards left after their 1st refreshing of the deck. Sometimes you just get stopped by a gate 4 on your final push and then lose to viper fall the turn after.
e) luck draw: it was standard to luck draw back in the old days when you break or short on hands. It was O.K. to luck draw after you used your 2-stock LD but you'd better save it for tactics during BT04. Now it would be terrible to luck draw unless you break really hard because the current hand/stock economy is 1 stock for 1 hand and you have many abilities to get that trade done but unless you are playing green you would not get your stocks back by abilities.
f) R/C/P: in the old meta going 1st was almost equal to win the game in the highest competitive level. After BT04 top decks are those who are able to win or at least get a 50/50 when going 2nd. L&L club set made going 2nd equal to win so the other player had to viper fall on their T4 in order to get rid of "3 day meal" from their opp's hand when go 1st. In the new meta, go 1st or 2nd become very deck and match up depending. I will talk more about this in the next part.
g) Those Lv3 EX1-Convert cards. I mean those new Lv3 TC cards with an EX1 ability which only triggered when you trance with it again. These cards are TERRIBLE. I don't know how to make this more clear. At first I thought this should be quite obvious until I saw the most comments people say they are not bad or even great. This piss me so hard. Just look at the top list in JP, NOBODY run a single copy of those at all (except new Yukari build). Let logically anaylsis the reasons why they are bad:
1) They normally have under par power stats (7k for most Lv3 and 6k or even 5k for lv2 [talk about you Tamaki Lv2 TC], some have ok stats like 8k for Lv3 [Yukari, the only one worth running IMO] and 7k for Lv2)
2) They have no additional ability other than the ones mentions. This means if you play them from your hand, you get nothing immediantly unless you just want it as an TC piece. (In this case you could have better options like TC with LD or TC with auto or TC with EX1-nonconvert ability [rest itself for cost mostly]) So you don't want to draw them early. As a standard rule of control decks, cards that you don't want to draw early (the one does not develop your game stage) and you don't care you whether draw it or not lately (not part of your win condition) and are not used to counter certain meta decks are bad to be run in your control deck in the first place.
3) If you trance into them early you get nothing until you trance again. Those cards are normally to be used for power up your T4/5 play however they are slow if you trance into them T3, you get nothing immediately and you have to spend resouce for protecting them. So they are not only slow by themselves, they also slow down your game stage.
4) Maybe one of the most important reason: the effects even you get them off on T4/5 are not great. (Except Yukari Lv3, you have to run it as part of your combo piece if you are playing the new set build). Are you really going to waste a double trance (normal trance into these cards then TC it again into your boss) for their effect? Or are you rather get an EX3 with TC and a powerful LD card with your normal trance?
5) So when do you want to run them? Ideally never for Lv3 (except Yukari) and as less as possible for Lv2 (it needs to be as good as "Covenant Registration, Lion", bad example would be the Tamaki Lv2 TC). Some people are running they just because a lot of charactors are under support in the new meta you have to run them for TC only because those convert abilities of the new foreigners are so good. As soon as those charactors get their proper TC support and other options become avaliable these cards will be throw away immediately.
B) My initial thoughts of the characters during the new meta with my current play testing and JP top list:
a) Nina: as soon as I saw the new TR I said that just way too OP to be able to play any lv5 from hand. So bushi ban the L&L Lv5 before the new set is out and we don't get any new lv5 in this set (and the next). The new TR is quite meh in the competitive game play. It's not bad, it's just not good enough. It's a minus, I know, I know, you'd get the 2 card cost back through your level boost so it's a plus/minus zero, wrong, you'd only get those 2 cards back during the very late of your battle phase, you get nothing immediately during your main phase (include the 6 attacks). You can't even play it when you go first and get 5 attacks. The thing with Nina is in theory you can attack 6 times with her when go 2nd and win the game on T4 but impractice the opp would be able to defend one of your 3 punches most of the time. However Nina is still one of the top 3 meta deck right now. The hand advantage is real. I almost aways end my turn with 3 to 4 level boost remain and 8 hands in my hand. Plus the no stock cost LD and no stock cost tactics. Unlike the Tamaki deck in the old meta which also get plus out of nothing, Nina has great offensive ability with "Prayer of Hope" and "Sensing a Disturbance" to make the push and win the game in time.
b) Lion: another top meta deck, it's easy to build (but expensive), easy to play (once built, the deck play itself) and there is very little the opp can do to stop you. The only cons of deck are: 1. you have to play pure Lion (maybe tec-in Viper Fall but that's all). 2. you may break if your first few top deck purge are bad. Vs a Lion who goes 2nd, the only way to prevent a T3 double gate break is double trance on your T2 and T3 and also protect both your members with souls on your T2 which means you need to draw very well and commit to the board early in the game. In pracice it is hard to pull off and even if you do Lion could just switch to play a standard hand advantage game. "Twin Sword Wild Dance" is just too OP to defend. TR with 3 day meal is too OP to defend. If you are new to the game, I strongly recommed this deck. Again you need 2 copies of TR so this will be the most expensive deck to build now.
c) Aoi: currently Aoi build is the mixed of the old and new cards. The new supports increase its drawing ability to the next level and deck stacking become easier now. An important ruling: if you trance from your hand and you didn't search your deck before doing that, you don't shuffle your deck. So you can begin effectively stacking your deck as early as T3. This deck really shine in the hand of the top control players and it has the highest skill ceiling and lower skill floor compare to the other 2 meta decks. It requires a lot of pracitice and match up experience to play well. (This is the main reason I haven't play test it yet)
d) Mahiro: Explosion is my favorate new ability. The mind game and setup are so interesting (maybe I am not bored yet because I haven't figure the standard play in half of the situations I get into). The cards abilities do have a lot of disadvantages which hold it back for being top tier:
1) A lot of the set ability is mandatory (deck out is a huge issue), trigger of set cards are mandatory (this is fair), the effect of the explosion cards once triggered are mandatory (yes, "Scattering Mines, Seren", good play can even use this as their advantage to play against you).
2) The deck has no easy plus (out of the 1 stock 1 draw foreigner and the lv2/3 LD), you almost always get behind in hand size. A joke I made with my friend: "how do you gain plus as a Mahiro player?", "you luck draw"
3) The match up highly depends on the opp's skill to counter a Mahiro deck, your play are quite limited most cases. If the opp has little experince they would get out play hard (yeah, easy T4 win when going first without get into a real battle). But if they are experinced Mahiro player the deck offer you little outs.
4) The it has no offensive ability out of explosion, you need to tec-in Mana lv4 for finisher and other cards for bad match up like Tamaki.
5) The effect of the TR of H-BT02 is very hard to trigger however you may still run it just for the base 13000/2A.
e) Yayoi: like all the green members, every single card of this member is solid but when you put them together you just can't find a win condition of this deck. I still think the stock open/close mechanic is stupid compare to other new mechanics which directly offer new plays, this just creat a issue then offer us tools to solve it but if I don't play her I don't have to deal with these issues in the first place. I have built the deck but I haven't test it out. I have played 3 games vs this deck. For the moment there is only one thing I would like to point out: "Distant Peak" is soooo strong. It basiclly made the deck, without it the deck is just old BT01 chole level (trash).
f) Ashery: Ashery already is solid since BT04 and require quite a bit of skill to play well. Since green can't restand, does not have trick plays like blue and its defense has a higher cost than yellow. Green always had the short end of the stick in the old meta (green did the best after the hand limit rule change before L&L club set came out for like 3 months and now big tournamont during that time). However "Mischievous Tentacles" is the final answer to this. Now Ashery has a guaranteed strong push when there are 2 gates left. This deck is very hard to deal with when it goes 1st.
g) Tamaki: tamaki got the short end of the stick in H-BT01 (which is fair condiser she dominated the meta for more than a year when the game first came out). Her lv2 TC (the only lv2 TC bushi gave us) is too bad to be played at all specially when "Comforting Waves Edge" is still limited. "Pretty Guardian" is an interesting card which counter hard vs Mahiro/Ashery IF you go 1st (see the problem here?). And it also get countered hard by some Mana card which Aoi can tec-in. In Yellow mirror the deck lose hand advantage to Nina now. I still like the deck, lv3 TC is great. The deck also requires a lot of knowledge of match up for playing well specially vs top tier decks.
h) Yukari: I don't know how to say this, hmmm, this deck is...boring. I mean you use convert to draw, T2 you use "Mushroom Cannon Shell", T3 you use "Clattering Blender", T4 you TC "Clairvoyance of Guiding Light" into "Intersecting Fates" and do your rest/stand stuff and draw. You draw a lot during your battle phase which means you may break during your main early and if you lose the battle you lose all your resouce. And unlike Nina all your plays are fixed during your main phase. You are playing zerg here, you get all your resouce in, try to trade with your opp and then draw the cards back to creat advantage. Ah and thanks to TC, "Riot Meteor" can restand multiple times now. Yukari is my favourate girl in this game. But after building the deck I have no movitation to play it at all.
...To be added and edited later, this is going to be long.