Just as short post, so I don't forget this myself haha.
I don't think it is immediately obvious, but the starting Vanguard for Jewel Knights, Dreaming Jewel Knight Tiffany, actually gives more power to the field with her skill than if she boosts (3k to 2 units for a total of 6k vs boosting 1 unit for 5k). Down side being the loss of 1 unit and the skill only lasts for a turn. Another thing to consider is giving yourself additional soul and being able to call Tiffany with Sybil or Salome, which essentially turns their skills into Counter Blast 2 to add 1 card to soul and give 2 Jewel Knights +3k power.
This is useful if you want to play Soul Saviour Dragon, which actually helps out a lot in ending games. Also useful to increase the number of Jewel Knights in the deck, since there aren't enough Jewel Knights at the moment to play a full deck of Jewel Knights with normal grade distributions.
Playing more Grade 0s also has other upsides. 5k boosts actually aren't bad at all, as they force your opponent to drop additional 5k guard when played right and Tiffany can leave the field easily with her skill. Also more 10k shields in the deck overall.
Personally, I consider playing 1 additional Tiffany, but I don't currently play Soul Saviour Dragon in my Jewel Knight deck. Trying a different build for a while and I won't change it any time soon I think. Playing 3 Dreaming Jewel Knight Tiffany, might be pushing it, but I think it's worth considering if using Soul Saviour Dragon's skill is a big concern. Since Tiffany can be called through skills and you only need 1 additional one to trigger SSD, Margal is not necessary and the deck can play a maximum amount of Jewel Knights.
Just some food for thought, if I do test it I'll probably update this post with my findings. If anyone else reads this and tries it, please do post in the comments how it went! :]
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Thursday, February 14, 2013
CFV Essay: Formed up and Ready to Strike!
Seems like most of the key Jewel Knights have been revealed already so seems like a good time to take a more in depth look!
This will be slightly different as the Jewel Knights have some minor peculiarities about them.
But as every Vanguard Deck still revolves around the main Grade 3 of choice I'll still start with that.
Leading Jewel Knight Salome
[AUTO](VC) Limit Break 4 (This ability is active if you have four or more damage):
When this unit attacks, if the number of other rear-guards you have with "Jewel Knight" in its card name is four or more, this unit gets [Power]+2000/[Critical]+1 until end of that battle.
[ACT](VC):[Counter Blast (2) - Cards with "Jewel Knight" in their card name]
Search your deck for up to one card with "Jewel Knight" in its card name, call it to (RC), and shuffle your deck.
Good card, but not really amazing. A passive Limit Break ability means that once you're at four damage this card will keep up the pressure. The bad thing is the extra Critical only really benefits you when your opponent is at 4 or less damage, once both players are at 5 damage, extra Criticals don't really matter as much as just having a high power and only +2k doesn't really help much. Additionally the requirement is having four or more Jewel Knight Rear Guards that means careful planning is required for Rear Guard placement if you want to include higher power boosting units, as the highest power Grade 1 Jewel Knight is 7k.
It's regular ability is really good though, on par with, if not better than King of Knights Alfred and Great Silver Wolf Garmore. The Counter Blast limitation shouldn't really be an issue the bigger problem is the call restriction on Jewel Knights, but even then it's not really a problem as you'll always want to have 4 or more Jewel Knights in the Rear Guard circles. However it does mean you can't call cards like Gorden for extra shield, at least until Jewel Knights get their own. The great thing is also the fact that it's an Activate ability. Meaning you won't run into the problem of not having enough damage when you ride Grade 3 like Garmore.
Pure Heart Jewel Knight Ashley
[AUTO] Limit Break 4 (This ability is active if you have four or more damage):
When a «Royal Paladin» rides this unit, you may choose one of your vanguards, and that unit gets [Power]+10000/[Critical]+1 until end of turn.
[AUTO](VC):When this unit attacks a vanguard, this unit gets [Power]+2000 until end of that battle.
[CONT](VC/RC): Lord (If you have a unit that doesn't belong to the same clan as this unit, this unit cannot attack)
Standard Break Ride unit. 11k base power gives a good defense at the very least until you ride another unit over. Ashley gets +2k simply for attacking the Vanguard, meaning she can hit 11k and higher Vanguards by herself, which is always good. As for the Break Ride itself, it might seem a bit underwhelming and it certainly is. The standard +10k power to Vanguard is still there, but other than that the only thing it does different is giving the Vanguard an additional Critical for that turn. Compared to other Break Ride units it does very little and is about on par with Vowing Sword Dragon. Other Break Ride abilities give +5k to multiple units some still have effects on top of that, or giving all Rear Guards, +10k when they attack etc.
So definitely it's not that amazing. However, in my opinion, it really can't be too great, because Royals already have many awesome Grade 3s that would be really good when riding over this.
Important to note is that none of the Break Rides are actually limited to their Archetype. So you want something like Liberator Gancelot? Break Ride Soul Saviour Dragon, some overall effect +1 Critical. Want high Vanguard power and want to save cards? Ride King of Knights Alfred 28k and 2 Critical if you want to save 1 card in hand by not playing something behind Alfred and you can save another card by calling a Rear Guard from deck with the King of Knights. Even Pendragon might be a good option because on the next turn you have a chance of riding another Ashley from the top of your deck (instead of your hand), which sets up another Break Ride the following turn.
Combined with Salome, it doesn't matter as much if your opponent has way less damage than you because you gain Criticals relatively easily to quickly catch up.
Now the interesting thing about the rest of the Jewel Knights is that, unlike other Archetypes, they don't rely on having a Jewel Knight Vanguard. In fact most of the Jewel Knights' abilities require a certain amount of Jewel Knight Rear Guards instead, usually 3 or more other Jewel Knights Rear Guards. Like everything, this has good and bad points.
This means that there's more freedom with the Grade 3s and it's not necessary to play the Jewel Knight Grade 3s. However it does restrict your options for all the other Grades as you'll always want to have enough Jewel Knights on the field to be able to make use of their abilities, and sadly not all of their abilities are that great AND there aren't really that many Jewel Knights to choose from in the first place.
Fellowship Jewel Knight Tracie and Stinging Jewel Knight Sherrie are the Bedivere and Kay for Jewel Knights. However, as already mentioned, they don't really on a specific Vanguard name, but need to have 3 or more other Jewel Knight Rear Guards in order to gain +3k.
Dogmatize Jewel Knight, Sybill is the same as Akane and can call any Grade 1 or lower Jewel Knight from the deck for a cost of Counter Blast 2 when you have any Royal Paladin Vanguard.
Jewel Knight Prizme is the same as Oracles Think Tank's Emerald Witch Lala. Prizme lets you discard a card and draw one if you have 3 or more other Jewel Knight Rear Guards when Prizme gets called to the field.
Dreaming Jewel Knight Tiffany is the starter Vanguard and is quite good. Like all starter vanguards now, Tiffany has the Pioneer effect and has a respectable power for a Grade 0 at 5k power. Her effect is what makes her so good though; at no additional cost other then sending Tiffany to soul, you can give up to 2 Jewel Knights +3k power until the end of the turn. And a well timed +3k to two units can be devastating.
Other then the above mentioned, the only other Jewel Knights are the Triggers (one each of Critical, Stand, Draw and Heal) and Iseult. So it's not really viable to make a deck with only Jewel Knights. However the upside is they all have decent power for their effects, and their effects aren't really bad.
So without further ado, time for initial Deck List:
Grade 0: 17
6 Critical
6 Draw
4 Heal
(Play max amount of Jewel Knights and top up with trigger units of choice)
1 Dreaming Jewel Knight Tiffany (starter)
Grade 1: 10
4 Stinging Jewel Knight Sherrie
4 Flash Jewel Knight, Iseult
4 Jewel Knight Prizme
3 Toypugal (or Little Sage Marron / Pongal / Lake Maiden Lien)
Grade 2: 10
4 Fellowship Jewel Knight, Tracie
2 Dogmatize Jewel Knight Sybill
2 Blaster Blade
2 Knight of Determination Lamorak
Grade 3: 8
3 Pure Heart Jewel Knight Ashley
3 Leading Jewel Knight Salome
2 Soul Saviour Dragon / Swordsman of Explosive Flames Palamedes
Some explanations:
Grade 0
This deck doesn't actually need 8 Critical I feel but it definitely won't hurt it either. So just use whatever Critical oriented setup you're comfortable with. Without testing it's hard to say if stands would work well, on one hand you gain Criticals relatively easily but on the other hand Jewel Knights don't really have big Rear Guards. For draws you could max out on Margal instead for additional power adding and soul charging options. If you don't plan on using Salome then I'd recommend to max out on Margal, otherwise stick with 3 copies of the Jewel Knight draw trigger at the very least. For the specific deck above, 4 Margal is recommended due the addition of Soul Saviour Dragon.
Grade 1
Maxed out on the Jewel Knight Grade 1s and 3 other Grade 1s of choice. I'm leaning towards Toypugal to at least let Salome hit 21k with the perfect setup, but the other options I listed are also pretty good. Marron for 8k power, Pongal for more consistent usage of Soul Saviour Dragon and Lake Maiden Lien is a great turn 1 ride and can still be occasionally useful during the game. Depending on your Grade 3 lineup you'll want to change the none Jewel Knight card and you might also want to lower the number of Prizme and/or Iseult (although nowadays it's better to have extra negators) which give you additional options.
Talking about Iseult, it's not necessary to play the Jewel Knight version as most of the time you won't be calling negators anyway and if you're forced to ride Iseult for Grade 1, that also doesn't change anything if you ride regular Iseult.
Grade 2
Tracie at 4 because 12k attacker is good and Sybill only at 2 because I want to play Salome. Both of them have the same cost, the only difference is Salome has to Counter Blast 2 Jewel Knights which shouldn't be a problem. Salome also has the Advantage of being able to call any Jewel Knight, including Grade 3s, which helps Toypugal be a bit more consistent. Sybill is also only an 8k and having to ride it at Grade 2 opens you up for a lot of damage. On top of that if you don't have enough damage to even use her ability...
The other 4 are really up to preference, I want to limit the number of 8k Grade 2s so I decided to go with good old Blaster Blade and Lamorak. Blaster Blade is a good card to have around in case you really need to burn Rear Guards. The only thing to look out for is the cost since most of the Counter Blast costs in this deck is 2, so deciding when you want to call more units instead of burning is important. Lamorak because he looks cooler than Gallatin.
Alternatively, you can also play 4 Lamorak or go with the none Jewel Knight Grade 2s in BT10.
Uncompromising Knight Idell is a base 8k that can gain 4k when attacking for Counter Blast 1 Royal Paladin if you have a Royal Paladin Vanguard.
Delicate Knight Clowdine is also base 8k and gains +3k when attacking and your Vanguard or a Rear Guard has a Limit Break 4 ability (it's not quite clear if you need to be at 4 damage or higher or if a unit simply needs to have an LB4 skill).
Both are good units, but I don't want to have that many 8k base Grade 2s. If I had to choose one, I'd probably play Clowdine as the deck is already quite Counter Blast heavy. (assuming the deck in it's current state)
There are a lot of options with the Grade 2s as you can simply intercept to clear them and replace with Jewel Knights if you need to, unlike Grade 1s.
Grade 3
Play whatever you like really. (Besides Majesty Lord Blaster, but even that could be accommodated with some changes...) Even Grade 3 lineups from the beginning of Vanguard would work well I feel i.e. King of Knights Alfred and Palamedes based.
For this specific build above I decided on 3-3 Ashely and Salome respectively. I'm contemplating of changing it to 4-2 because Salome is only 10k and having to ride Ashley and then another card over just for Break ride seems like a terrible loss in card advantage.
Soul Saviour Dragon is there for alternate Break Ride option and also for when your initial Break Ride didn't quite work and you somehow haven't lost yet haha (and also the promo Soul Saviour Dragon looks cool and should be easy to get)
If you already have Palamedes, that's always a good option but keep in mind the number of Jewel Knights on your field. Other options are Dignified Silver Dragon, Twin Shine Swordsman Marhaus, Knight of Conviction Bors etc. any 10k Grade 3 that gains power as a Rear Guard. (because 9k Grade 3s are terrible when forced to ride.)
Overall:
One thing you may notice about the deck list above is that I included quite a few none Jewel Knights. Of course there is some concern about not having enough Jewel Knights for Counter Blast to use Salome's call skill. But as I have said in previous posts, I don't think it'll be a huge issue. Even if you can't use Salome's skill to call unit, Sybill doesn't have specific Counter Blast restriction and Blaster Blade is always a good use of Counter Blast. With careful management it shouldn't be an issue (but of course I might change my opinions after testing).
Jewel Knights seem to be quite flexible in terms of Grade 3 and are really only limited by their Rear Guards. But that is what makes them really fit the Royal Paladin theme: Getting stronger through allies. I doubt Jewel Knights will be a top top tier deck, but I'm pretty sure they have a good fighting chance :]
This will be slightly different as the Jewel Knights have some minor peculiarities about them.
But as every Vanguard Deck still revolves around the main Grade 3 of choice I'll still start with that.
[AUTO](VC) Limit Break 4 (This ability is active if you have four or more damage):
When this unit attacks, if the number of other rear-guards you have with "Jewel Knight" in its card name is four or more, this unit gets [Power]+2000/[Critical]+1 until end of that battle.
[ACT](VC):[Counter Blast (2) - Cards with "Jewel Knight" in their card name]
Search your deck for up to one card with "Jewel Knight" in its card name, call it to (RC), and shuffle your deck.
Good card, but not really amazing. A passive Limit Break ability means that once you're at four damage this card will keep up the pressure. The bad thing is the extra Critical only really benefits you when your opponent is at 4 or less damage, once both players are at 5 damage, extra Criticals don't really matter as much as just having a high power and only +2k doesn't really help much. Additionally the requirement is having four or more Jewel Knight Rear Guards that means careful planning is required for Rear Guard placement if you want to include higher power boosting units, as the highest power Grade 1 Jewel Knight is 7k.
It's regular ability is really good though, on par with, if not better than King of Knights Alfred and Great Silver Wolf Garmore. The Counter Blast limitation shouldn't really be an issue the bigger problem is the call restriction on Jewel Knights, but even then it's not really a problem as you'll always want to have 4 or more Jewel Knights in the Rear Guard circles. However it does mean you can't call cards like Gorden for extra shield, at least until Jewel Knights get their own. The great thing is also the fact that it's an Activate ability. Meaning you won't run into the problem of not having enough damage when you ride Grade 3 like Garmore.
[AUTO] Limit Break 4 (This ability is active if you have four or more damage):
When a «Royal Paladin» rides this unit, you may choose one of your vanguards, and that unit gets [Power]+10000/[Critical]+1 until end of turn.
[AUTO](VC):When this unit attacks a vanguard, this unit gets [Power]+2000 until end of that battle.
[CONT](VC/RC): Lord (If you have a unit that doesn't belong to the same clan as this unit, this unit cannot attack)
Standard Break Ride unit. 11k base power gives a good defense at the very least until you ride another unit over. Ashley gets +2k simply for attacking the Vanguard, meaning she can hit 11k and higher Vanguards by herself, which is always good. As for the Break Ride itself, it might seem a bit underwhelming and it certainly is. The standard +10k power to Vanguard is still there, but other than that the only thing it does different is giving the Vanguard an additional Critical for that turn. Compared to other Break Ride units it does very little and is about on par with Vowing Sword Dragon. Other Break Ride abilities give +5k to multiple units some still have effects on top of that, or giving all Rear Guards, +10k when they attack etc.
So definitely it's not that amazing. However, in my opinion, it really can't be too great, because Royals already have many awesome Grade 3s that would be really good when riding over this.
Important to note is that none of the Break Rides are actually limited to their Archetype. So you want something like Liberator Gancelot? Break Ride Soul Saviour Dragon, some overall effect +1 Critical. Want high Vanguard power and want to save cards? Ride King of Knights Alfred 28k and 2 Critical if you want to save 1 card in hand by not playing something behind Alfred and you can save another card by calling a Rear Guard from deck with the King of Knights. Even Pendragon might be a good option because on the next turn you have a chance of riding another Ashley from the top of your deck (instead of your hand), which sets up another Break Ride the following turn.
Combined with Salome, it doesn't matter as much if your opponent has way less damage than you because you gain Criticals relatively easily to quickly catch up.
Now the interesting thing about the rest of the Jewel Knights is that, unlike other Archetypes, they don't rely on having a Jewel Knight Vanguard. In fact most of the Jewel Knights' abilities require a certain amount of Jewel Knight Rear Guards instead, usually 3 or more other Jewel Knights Rear Guards. Like everything, this has good and bad points.
This means that there's more freedom with the Grade 3s and it's not necessary to play the Jewel Knight Grade 3s. However it does restrict your options for all the other Grades as you'll always want to have enough Jewel Knights on the field to be able to make use of their abilities, and sadly not all of their abilities are that great AND there aren't really that many Jewel Knights to choose from in the first place.
Dogmatize Jewel Knight, Sybill is the same as Akane and can call any Grade 1 or lower Jewel Knight from the deck for a cost of Counter Blast 2 when you have any Royal Paladin Vanguard.
Jewel Knight Prizme is the same as Oracles Think Tank's Emerald Witch Lala. Prizme lets you discard a card and draw one if you have 3 or more other Jewel Knight Rear Guards when Prizme gets called to the field.
Dreaming Jewel Knight Tiffany is the starter Vanguard and is quite good. Like all starter vanguards now, Tiffany has the Pioneer effect and has a respectable power for a Grade 0 at 5k power. Her effect is what makes her so good though; at no additional cost other then sending Tiffany to soul, you can give up to 2 Jewel Knights +3k power until the end of the turn. And a well timed +3k to two units can be devastating.
Other then the above mentioned, the only other Jewel Knights are the Triggers (one each of Critical, Stand, Draw and Heal) and Iseult. So it's not really viable to make a deck with only Jewel Knights. However the upside is they all have decent power for their effects, and their effects aren't really bad.
So without further ado, time for initial Deck List:
Grade 0: 17
6 Critical
6 Draw
4 Heal
(Play max amount of Jewel Knights and top up with trigger units of choice)
1 Dreaming Jewel Knight Tiffany (starter)
Grade 1: 10
4 Stinging Jewel Knight Sherrie
4 Flash Jewel Knight, Iseult
4 Jewel Knight Prizme
3 Toypugal (or Little Sage Marron / Pongal / Lake Maiden Lien)
Grade 2: 10
4 Fellowship Jewel Knight, Tracie
2 Dogmatize Jewel Knight Sybill
2 Blaster Blade
2 Knight of Determination Lamorak
Grade 3: 8
3 Pure Heart Jewel Knight Ashley
3 Leading Jewel Knight Salome
2 Soul Saviour Dragon / Swordsman of Explosive Flames Palamedes
Some explanations:
Grade 0
This deck doesn't actually need 8 Critical I feel but it definitely won't hurt it either. So just use whatever Critical oriented setup you're comfortable with. Without testing it's hard to say if stands would work well, on one hand you gain Criticals relatively easily but on the other hand Jewel Knights don't really have big Rear Guards. For draws you could max out on Margal instead for additional power adding and soul charging options. If you don't plan on using Salome then I'd recommend to max out on Margal, otherwise stick with 3 copies of the Jewel Knight draw trigger at the very least. For the specific deck above, 4 Margal is recommended due the addition of Soul Saviour Dragon.
Grade 1
Maxed out on the Jewel Knight Grade 1s and 3 other Grade 1s of choice. I'm leaning towards Toypugal to at least let Salome hit 21k with the perfect setup, but the other options I listed are also pretty good. Marron for 8k power, Pongal for more consistent usage of Soul Saviour Dragon and Lake Maiden Lien is a great turn 1 ride and can still be occasionally useful during the game. Depending on your Grade 3 lineup you'll want to change the none Jewel Knight card and you might also want to lower the number of Prizme and/or Iseult (although nowadays it's better to have extra negators) which give you additional options.
Talking about Iseult, it's not necessary to play the Jewel Knight version as most of the time you won't be calling negators anyway and if you're forced to ride Iseult for Grade 1, that also doesn't change anything if you ride regular Iseult.
Grade 2
Tracie at 4 because 12k attacker is good and Sybill only at 2 because I want to play Salome. Both of them have the same cost, the only difference is Salome has to Counter Blast 2 Jewel Knights which shouldn't be a problem. Salome also has the Advantage of being able to call any Jewel Knight, including Grade 3s, which helps Toypugal be a bit more consistent. Sybill is also only an 8k and having to ride it at Grade 2 opens you up for a lot of damage. On top of that if you don't have enough damage to even use her ability...
The other 4 are really up to preference, I want to limit the number of 8k Grade 2s so I decided to go with good old Blaster Blade and Lamorak. Blaster Blade is a good card to have around in case you really need to burn Rear Guards. The only thing to look out for is the cost since most of the Counter Blast costs in this deck is 2, so deciding when you want to call more units instead of burning is important. Lamorak because he looks cooler than Gallatin.
Alternatively, you can also play 4 Lamorak or go with the none Jewel Knight Grade 2s in BT10.
Uncompromising Knight Idell is a base 8k that can gain 4k when attacking for Counter Blast 1 Royal Paladin if you have a Royal Paladin Vanguard.
Delicate Knight Clowdine is also base 8k and gains +3k when attacking and your Vanguard or a Rear Guard has a Limit Break 4 ability (it's not quite clear if you need to be at 4 damage or higher or if a unit simply needs to have an LB4 skill).
Both are good units, but I don't want to have that many 8k base Grade 2s. If I had to choose one, I'd probably play Clowdine as the deck is already quite Counter Blast heavy. (assuming the deck in it's current state)
There are a lot of options with the Grade 2s as you can simply intercept to clear them and replace with Jewel Knights if you need to, unlike Grade 1s.
Grade 3
Play whatever you like really. (Besides Majesty Lord Blaster, but even that could be accommodated with some changes...) Even Grade 3 lineups from the beginning of Vanguard would work well I feel i.e. King of Knights Alfred and Palamedes based.
For this specific build above I decided on 3-3 Ashely and Salome respectively. I'm contemplating of changing it to 4-2 because Salome is only 10k and having to ride Ashley and then another card over just for Break ride seems like a terrible loss in card advantage.
Soul Saviour Dragon is there for alternate Break Ride option and also for when your initial Break Ride didn't quite work and you somehow haven't lost yet haha (and also the promo Soul Saviour Dragon looks cool and should be easy to get)
If you already have Palamedes, that's always a good option but keep in mind the number of Jewel Knights on your field. Other options are Dignified Silver Dragon, Twin Shine Swordsman Marhaus, Knight of Conviction Bors etc. any 10k Grade 3 that gains power as a Rear Guard. (because 9k Grade 3s are terrible when forced to ride.)
Overall:
One thing you may notice about the deck list above is that I included quite a few none Jewel Knights. Of course there is some concern about not having enough Jewel Knights for Counter Blast to use Salome's call skill. But as I have said in previous posts, I don't think it'll be a huge issue. Even if you can't use Salome's skill to call unit, Sybill doesn't have specific Counter Blast restriction and Blaster Blade is always a good use of Counter Blast. With careful management it shouldn't be an issue (but of course I might change my opinions after testing).
Jewel Knights seem to be quite flexible in terms of Grade 3 and are really only limited by their Rear Guards. But that is what makes them really fit the Royal Paladin theme: Getting stronger through allies. I doubt Jewel Knights will be a top top tier deck, but I'm pretty sure they have a good fighting chance :]
Thursday, February 7, 2013
CFV Essay: Beast Deity, Buster Mode!
Finally, the Nova Grappler ace for BT10 has been revealed! More awesome Buster units!
Beast Deity Ethics Buster
[AUTO] Limit Break 4 (This ability is active if you have four or more damage): When a «Nova Grappler» rides this unit, you may choose one of your vanguards, and that unit gets [Power]+10000, and gets "[AUTO](VC):When this unit attacks a vanguard, [Stand] all your «Nova Grappler» rear-guards in your front row." until end of turn.
[AUTO](VC):When this unit is boosted by a «Nova Grappler», this unit gets [Power]+2000 until end of that battle.
[CONT](VC/RC): Lord (If you have a unit that doesn't belong to the same clan as this unit, this unit cannot attack)
Probably safe to say that Ethics Buster has one of the better Break Ride abilities, not quite as good as Spike Brothers but at least equal to, if not better than Gold Paladin's Gancelot.
Needing to get boosted to get +2k is not quite as good as just needing to attack the Vanguard, but it'll make little difference. It lets you be a bit more versatile if you feel you need to attack a Rear Guard and it works before your opponent has 3 damage unlike Vowing Sword. Ultimately though, as already stated, the difference is minor, the biggest down side is not being able to hit 13k on its own. But most of the Cross Rides aren't that consistent and even if, by the time your opponent Cross Rides you should have a unit boosting your Vanguard.
The main reason to play this card is of course, the Break Ride ability itself. The seemingly standard +10k power to Vanguard upon Break Ride also applies here. In addition to that your Vanguard will gain the ability to stand all front row Rear Guards when it attacks the opposing Vanguard (doesn't need to hit), until end of the turn.
While the last part doesn't matter most of the time, if your Grade 3 line up includes Stern Blaukruger and/or Mr. Invincible it's important to take note that the ability lasts until the end of the turn (and that Mr. Invincible works in the Rear Guard circles as well, how you're going to get 8s Soul I'll leave it to you to figure out!).
More importantly is that you only stand your front row Rear Guards, but it doesn't restrict you to any Archetype, meaning none Beast Deities will stand as well. This means you'll want to play as many big RGs as you can. Normally this would include Executioner clones, but Nova Grappler have much better options.
Besides Hatred Chaos, the Beast Deities Golden Anglet and Yamata Drake are also good options. Both Anglet and Drake get +3k power when they stand during your Battle Phase and also being Beast Deities, they benefit from the rest of the support the Deities get, like Blank Marsh and White Tiger.
These three will ensure that your RGs will be able to hit something after your Vanguards attack because they all end up at least 12k or 13k one way or another.
But of course Break Rides being meant to be game enders we need to try to maximize the potential of the increased number of attacks. Besides standing your Vanguard and then standing your Rear Guards again (which is unlikely), the other option we have is trying to stand the Rear Guard boosters as well.
With the release of Herarti Destroyer the Beast Deities actually have quite a nice amount of Grade 1s to choose from, some better than others of course. Scarlet Bird is only 6k and while it has an arguably decent effect it doesn't quite cut it as a booster, especially we have 2 other units with 7k power each. These are the new Herarti Destroyer and the old but good Blank Marsh. These being Beast Deities are important as they both can stand again with the help of another Blank Marsh or White Tiger.
Two ways to make use of this:
[AUTO] Limit Break 4 (This ability is active if you have four or more damage): When a «Nova Grappler» rides this unit, you may choose one of your vanguards, and that unit gets [Power]+10000, and gets "[AUTO](VC):When this unit attacks a vanguard, [Stand] all your «Nova Grappler» rear-guards in your front row." until end of turn.
[AUTO](VC):When this unit is boosted by a «Nova Grappler», this unit gets [Power]+2000 until end of that battle.
[CONT](VC/RC): Lord (If you have a unit that doesn't belong to the same clan as this unit, this unit cannot attack)
Before I continue on, it's important to note that at the time I'm writing this, there is still at least 1 unknown Nova Grappler card for BT10. I don't think it'll make much of a difference but who knows.
Other Beast Deities Nova get this set:
- Beast Deity Hatred Chaos, a Masquerade clone for Beast Deities (G2, 9k power, +3k when attacking and you have a Beast Deity VG)
- Beast Deity Herarti Destroyer, a G1 7k that has a discard and draw effect when it hits the Vanguard
- Beast Deity Riot Horn, a pioneer unit with the ability to stand when a Beast Deity in the same column stands
Other than the Beast Deities, there is Armored Heavy Gunner. A Limit Break 4 unit that gets +5k and has a RG only effect that gives it +2k when attacking the Vanguard. Same as the rest of the Limit Break Executioners.
Needing to get boosted to get +2k is not quite as good as just needing to attack the Vanguard, but it'll make little difference. It lets you be a bit more versatile if you feel you need to attack a Rear Guard and it works before your opponent has 3 damage unlike Vowing Sword. Ultimately though, as already stated, the difference is minor, the biggest down side is not being able to hit 13k on its own. But most of the Cross Rides aren't that consistent and even if, by the time your opponent Cross Rides you should have a unit boosting your Vanguard.
The main reason to play this card is of course, the Break Ride ability itself. The seemingly standard +10k power to Vanguard upon Break Ride also applies here. In addition to that your Vanguard will gain the ability to stand all front row Rear Guards when it attacks the opposing Vanguard (doesn't need to hit), until end of the turn.
While the last part doesn't matter most of the time, if your Grade 3 line up includes Stern Blaukruger and/or Mr. Invincible it's important to take note that the ability lasts until the end of the turn (and that Mr. Invincible works in the Rear Guard circles as well, how you're going to get 8s Soul I'll leave it to you to figure out!).
More importantly is that you only stand your front row Rear Guards, but it doesn't restrict you to any Archetype, meaning none Beast Deities will stand as well. This means you'll want to play as many big RGs as you can. Normally this would include Executioner clones, but Nova Grappler have much better options.
Besides Hatred Chaos, the Beast Deities Golden Anglet and Yamata Drake are also good options. Both Anglet and Drake get +3k power when they stand during your Battle Phase and also being Beast Deities, they benefit from the rest of the support the Deities get, like Blank Marsh and White Tiger.
These three will ensure that your RGs will be able to hit something after your Vanguards attack because they all end up at least 12k or 13k one way or another.
But of course Break Rides being meant to be game enders we need to try to maximize the potential of the increased number of attacks. Besides standing your Vanguard and then standing your Rear Guards again (which is unlikely), the other option we have is trying to stand the Rear Guard boosters as well.
With the release of Herarti Destroyer the Beast Deities actually have quite a nice amount of Grade 1s to choose from, some better than others of course. Scarlet Bird is only 6k and while it has an arguably decent effect it doesn't quite cut it as a booster, especially we have 2 other units with 7k power each. These are the new Herarti Destroyer and the old but good Blank Marsh. These being Beast Deities are important as they both can stand again with the help of another Blank Marsh or White Tiger.
Two ways to make use of this:
- Your 2nd RG attack is boosted by Blank Marsh or White Tiger and if it hits you can stand the G1 in the other column (assuming it's a Beast Deity)
- Your VG is boosted by either Blank March or White Tiger and hits you can stand either G1 in the side columns (again assuming Beast Deities)
7k power might not seem too impressive, but it's much better than 6k as it lets 11k RGs hit cross rides for 18k and when boosting 12k attackers, they are great for getting rid of 9k RGs.
On the topic of 7k G1s, another great card we must not forget about is Death Army Guy. Auto stand when you Drive Check a Grade 3? Yes please. Essentially turning your Grade 3s into triggers, albeit without the power boost.
I think that's all in terms of Grade 1s standing themselves or each other. The only other way to stand your 2 Grade 1s would be Azure Dragon and Iluminal Dragon.
Both stand 2 units with differences in restrictions: Iluminal can only target Beast Deities and cost a whooping 3 Counter Blast while Azure can stand anything but costs a Persona Blast and needs to hit. Even though you shouldn't rely on being able to hit your opponents VG, Azure still provides good pressure early on if you don't ride into Ethics Buster first, as Azure doesn't have a Limit Break restriction on his ability.
While Iluminal has the added bonus of being able to have a static 13k power, if your intention is to make use of Break Ride it'll get really messy to add cross ride to that. So we can safely ignore the cross ride ability.
With all that said, the plan is to Break Ride while having your big hitters in your front row and either getting your G1s to stand through their own abilities or getting off Azure/Iluminal. It's simple really. However one additional thing to take note of: Ethics Buster somewhat circumvents Perfect Guards because you stand your front row no matter what so you can safely attack with all your RGs first and still give them Critical Triggers after your Vanguard's attack.
On to the deck list. Do take note that this is how I would play it RIGHT NOW. Might change my opinion after I actually play against the deck or do some testing myself. But the set isn't even out yet so that's not possible.
Decklist
Grade 0: 17
7 Critical
5 Draw
4 Heal
(or any combination of Crits and Draws you are comfortable with)
1 Beast Deity White Tiger
Grade 1: 14
4 Twin Blader
3 Beast Deity Blank Marsh
4 Death Army Guy
3 Tough Boy/Herarti Destroyer
Grade 2: 10
4 Beast Deity Hatred Chaos
4 Beast Deity Golden Anglet
2 Magical Girl Kirara
Grade 3: 9
4 Beast Deity Ethics Buster
3 Beast Deity Azure Dragon
2 Beast Deity Yamata Drake
Seems a bit weird but here are my reasonings and some other options you have:
Grade 0
Not much to say about the triggers really, you can consider playing stands but I feel it's not going to be reliable enough in low numbers and you already have other ways to stand your units. As for starter VG, White Tiger is definitely safer and probably more consistent but Riot Horn is a valid option as well. It automatically stands as long as it's in the same column as a Beast Deity and when boosting a 11k still hits for a respectable 16k. It also saves you 1 card.
Another option is Evolving Reincarnation Miraioh, the Grade 3 searcher for Novas. It might not always get you something, but it's good because it lets you either search for Ethics Buster or search for something to ride over Ethics Buster.
Another option is Evolving Reincarnation Miraioh, the Grade 3 searcher for Novas. It might not always get you something, but it's good because it lets you either search for Ethics Buster or search for something to ride over Ethics Buster.
Grade 1
4 Twin Blader is a must because of the additional Grade 3 in the deck. The rest is quite straight forward. Death Army Guy is maxed out because of his ability to stand when you Drive Check a Grade 3. Blank Marsh is good early to mid game mainly for standing your attackers. The last 3 slots can go to either Tough Boy for solid 8k boost or Herarti Destroyer simply for being a Beast Deity to combo with Blank Marsh and his ability is decent, I haven't really made up my mind yet. Though with all the big Grade 2s and 3s I'm leaning a bit more towards Herarti Destroyer. If you decide to use Iluminal, definitely go with Herarti.
Grade 2
Also quite straight forward, both the big hitters are maxed out here. Kirara only at 2 because while it is nice to have something to use Counter Blast and drawing cards is good, there is not enough space for a 3rd one due to increased number of Grade 3s and standing a 9k by itself is terrible. Other options are Beast Deity Black Tortoise for searching power, Death Army Lady for more auto standing, or vanilla 10k for more beat power and solid Grade 2 ride.
*Was reminded about the existence of Genocide Jack. Oh good old Jack. If you don't care so much about drawing cards or just decide to play more draw triggers, Jack is a good card to replace Kirara. This deck doesn't have much else that uses Counter Blast anyway.
*Was reminded about the existence of Genocide Jack. Oh good old Jack. If you don't care so much about drawing cards or just decide to play more draw triggers, Jack is a good card to replace Kirara. This deck doesn't have much else that uses Counter Blast anyway.
Grade 3
Probably the most shocking part. 9 Grade 3s to increase the the chance of Death Army Guy going off. While it is weird, considering I didn't include Death Army Lady, you really want to make sure your Death Army Guys stand when you Break Ride. If you have 2 Death Army Guys boosting each of your RGs, getting a Grade 3 and a Trigger is actually better than getting double triggers in terms of power gain.
9 Grade 3s is also partly to be able to include 2 copies of Yamata Drake for more high power units after the stand. For this, Azure is only at 3 because you'll rarely get to Persona Blast more than once, so 3 copies is enough. Personally I prefer Azure over Iluminal because of the early pressure Azure provides if you ride him first instead of Ethics Buster and because Azure can stand anything with his ability, which lets us play Tough Boy. Ethics Buster Maxed out because it's what you'll want to ride most of the time. Yamata Drake could also be replaced with Iluminal Dragon if you feel like it, but I wouldn't recommend it. If you already have 2 Iluminal Dragons then it definitely won't work trying it out haha
Of course you can stick with 8 Grade 3s and just add another Grade 2 of your choice. In that case simply stick with 4 each of Azure Dragon/Iluminal and Ethics Buster.
And that's it for now =)
Jewel Knights are next as I'm interested in forming them.
Friday, January 25, 2013
CFV Essay: Pacing
As more and more BT10 cards are being revealed, I feel I need to get this out of the way now so here it is; Lets do some reflection on the state of Cardfight! Vanguard. Keep in mind all this is my take on the game and I don't claim to know what Bushiroad is thinking and some of the decisions are definitely based on more of a business stand point, as in the end, they are still a company that needs to give players a reason to buy their new products.
I am more interested in Game Design and thus will be looking at the Vanguard from that stand point.
It's going to be a long one like usual so if you can't stand reading walls of text, skip to the bottom for a TLDR.
At the beginning Cardfight! Vanguard was, at least to me, a more fast paced and simple card game. No need for keeping track of Life Points or other variations thereof, no need to build up resources turn after turn and the best thing; Most decks had a decent chance of winning, even though there were still decks that were clearly favored by the majority. Draw, Ride, Call, Attack, the game is simple to understand but had its intricacies in terms of both gameplay and deck building. To me this made the game interesting and I wasn't forced to upgrade my deck every single set with staple cards that every deck needed to play. Yeah sure I still got cards almost every set, but that's because I liked the card effects and the art; I thoroughly enjoyed playing the game. (but that's beside the point)
After the release of BT05 Twin Sword Awakening the state of the game took its first major turn. With the release of Majesty Lord Blaster, Phantom Blaster Overlord and the notorious Dragonic Overlord The End, their three respective clans were clearly a cut above the rest and only few other clans had a decent chance of competing with them. Sure, no matter what clan you played at that time, if you had luck you could still win, just like before, but the balance was upset and skewed heavily on the side of the "Big 3": Considering equal skill, one needed quite a bit of luck to balance it out.
While disappointing, this is not an unfamiliar thing. Most card games have decks that are heavily favored over every other deck because they are simply the best. Something else changed too though: The pace of the game.
While it was always possible to build decks that slug it out for the ultra late game and indeed some clans were more specialized in that particular area than others, after BT05 it was almost guaranteed that the game would proceed into ultra late game if it involved 2 decks of the
"Big 3" and if you wanted to have a fighting chance, whatever deck you played need to have the ability to be able to switch into hardcore turtle mode. And most people were playing the three builds in question.
One of the reasons was cross rides' ability to sit on a static power above 11k, particularly 13k and in the case of Majesty Lord Blaster, 12k. And this was achieved relatively easily, the biggest culprit and the most consistent static 13k Vanguard being Phantom Blaster Overlord and his Shadow Paladins with their ability to combo pull necessary cards. Second place is taken by Majesty Lord Blaster, though he "only" sits at 12k at his best but he packs the devastating ability to gain a huge power and critical boost without the need of Counter Blast. Probably the most notorious of the three also happens to be the least consistent 13k Vanguard, probably an attempt by Bushiroad to balance his awesome ability. However Dragonic Overlord The End proved way stronger than Bushiroad expected and proceeded to become the most popular deck and swarmed the competitive scene, to compensate for the consistency issue players just played 4 copies of each Dragonic Overlord.
Another reason was the rise of 11k base power Vanguards as the norm and it was quite difficult for Rear Guards to effectively and consistently hit 11k and above Vanguards for a decent number of shields. Even though Grade 2s started to become stronger being able to achieve 12k power by themselves, forming 21k/22k/23k lines with Rear Guards was just too difficult without triggers, especially for the latter. So with careful hand management and intelligent blocking, it's possible to tank through double triggers until ultra late game.
Consequently, due to the 12k Grade 2s, 10k base power vanguards were bullied out and most people leaned towards clans that had solid 11k Vanguards.
So what did people do? If your opponent has a ton of cards in his hand and is only going to cost him 1 card at most and only if he cannot afford to take damage, you might as well attack his Rear Guards with your own Rear Guards. That way your opponent will be forced to either guard or play more cards from his hand next turn in order to attack you, this means you can puzzle out roughly what cards he has in his hand and he'll hopefully have less to guard with. You also guarantee your opponent loses at least 1 card even if he doesn't guard.
This was good because 99% of the players were using an 8 Critical 4 Draw 4 Heal trigger setup so you could always just rely on your Vanguard and Critical Triggers for damage while taking out your opponents Rear Guards to protect your self.
So as you could imagine, this resulted in the game shifting more towards slugfests and, borrowing MMO terms here, a competition of which was the tankiest deck.
So what's the solution? Enter BT06 and Limit Break.
Now keep in mind a lot of this is my opinion. The impression I get from Limit Break is it's supposed to be a game ender. An ability to prevent your opponent from stalling during the late game. Instead what seemed to happen is a lot of the abilities weren't all THAT strong or are too costly to be sustainable for a long time so players could comfortably sit on 4 damage and use Limit Break like a normal skill, or just guard through the Limit Break until the opponent ran out of resources to even use it. Also a lot of the popular Limit Break units didn't have "normal" none Limit Break abilities, usually the trade off for being 11k or at least having an ability that puts them at 11k. This means that the only threat before Limit Break are triggers and their unpredictable nature. Thus if your opponent didn't get a lot of triggers early, chances are that you'll have enough cards to survive his Limit Break.
There are some exceptions like Maelstrom and Spectral Duke, but generally the Limit Breaks tend to be a bit wonky. Ezel being a random call and not gaining critical coupled with the fact that Gold Paladins don't have a good way to get rid of bad calls when not playing Duke, Pellinore usually lost you more than your opponent if it didn't end the game and is usually played for the superior ride rather than his Limit Break, Cosmo Healer lost a card for 1 less damage which ended up usually being an even trade and didn't actually gain you any advantage, Dark Lord of the Abyss just got Amon's skill with restrictions, Dungaree had too many negatives to even use.
You might think "Well, you only listed the bad Limit Break units!", but in actuality the "good" ones weren't all that much better than older units without Limit Breaks, especially when compared to Dragonic Overlord The End. Quite a few of the Limit Break units were the "Generic" Limit Breakers which all had the ability to gain +5k when attacking the Vanguard while at 4 damage, however that wasn't a game ending ability and what made them good was the fact that they had abilities other than Limit Break and pretty decent abilities at that, mostly calling units in some way.
The other LB units that people actually use are the ones that, while they could somewhat compete with the "Big 3", couldn't change the pace of the game to what it was before Twin Sword Awakening.
In my opinion, this is what led Bushiroad to make the rather extreme restrictions on Dragonic Overlord The End, Majesty Lord Blaster and Goddess of the Full Moon Tsukuyomi. Besides the fact that they were immensely popular builds for their respective clans, they were also arguably the most "tanky" decks at the time, quite easily able to drag a game out to ultra late game with their high defense Vanguards or easy access to abilities that let the player draw extra cards.
This probably also led to the strength of the new Break Ride units introduced in TD08 and TD09 and featured in the latest booster set.
The Break Rides revealed so far lean more towards the overpowered side: While the original Limit Break units had +5k, Break Rides give the Vanguards a whooping +10k AND additional effects, like retiring units or powering up your own, in terms of Vowing Sword Dragon and Liberator Gancelot respectively. While there are downsides to using these units such as their cost effectively being a card from your hand which also happens to need to be a Grade 3 and having to play multiple copies of the desired Break Ride units in order to consistently ride them before your main Vanguard and also even having to use almost vanilla units until Limit Break, these new abilities are clearly meant to end the game immediately or lose because you either didn't do enough or gave your opponent enough damage to use his own Break Ride.
Some of the so called negatives I listed aren't even that bad, particularly having to play near max copies of these cards and having to wait out for Limit Break: All Break Rides so far have a solid 11k base power and gain +2k when attacking Vanguards. This makes them decent Vanguard units both in terms of offense and defense.
Other than Break Rides, the new Limit Breaks are also shifting in a slightly new direction, although I don't want to speculate too much about it because not too many cards have been revealed, but quite a few of the new Limit Break abilities are passive in nature and only require 4 damage to activate or have other none "Blast" related or discard costs. Battle Deity of the Moonlit Night, Artemis has the highest cost that I have seen so far with a Soul Blast of 3 but the few cards that have been revealed for the clan so far lets players Soul Charge a lot, and I really mean A LOT. Dark Irregulars style, maybe more so than Dark Irregulars in fact.
Other than Artemis, Eradicator Dragonic Descendant has a cost of discarding 3 Eradicators but his ability is quite similar to Spectral Duke Dragon in the sense that you only need to activate it once if done right.
Also a lot of cards tend to gain Criticals along with their high power increases.
TLDR;
All this leads me to think that Bushiroad is trying to fix their game. They intended Vanguard to be a more fast paced game, but they made a mistake with the release of BT05 and it become more late game oriented. The first attempt to patch it up with Limit Breaks didn't quite work out although it did add a bit more variety in terms of competitive clans. Now with the restriction of the 3 more popular deck builds and arguably the 3 best at stalling, they also introduce the Break Ride concept and stronger Limit Breaks.
How this affects the state of Vanguard I can't say for sure, but it is quite certain that the pace of the game will change again. Ultimately, like with every game, the players are usually more cunning than the developers and always find ways to make the best use of the things given to them whether it be making the best use of certain abilities or finding loopholes to exploit and whether the new abilities Bushiroad decided to introduce is good or bad, only time will tell.
And that's all I got for now. I'll probably look at Break Ride in more detail when BT10 releases and cover it's good and bad points then.
Another thing I might do in the future is take a look at different card games and their mechanics. As I mentioned at the start, I'm interested in Game Design and might eventually post my own concept for a card game, will have to see how it goes.
Until next time. I'll probably take a closer look at the new Jewel Knights for Royal Paladins. Even though I really like some of the art for the new Gold Paladins, their effects don't really appeal to me.
*All images taken from CFV wikia.
I am more interested in Game Design and thus will be looking at the Vanguard from that stand point.
It's going to be a long one like usual so if you can't stand reading walls of text, skip to the bottom for a TLDR.
At the beginning Cardfight! Vanguard was, at least to me, a more fast paced and simple card game. No need for keeping track of Life Points or other variations thereof, no need to build up resources turn after turn and the best thing; Most decks had a decent chance of winning, even though there were still decks that were clearly favored by the majority. Draw, Ride, Call, Attack, the game is simple to understand but had its intricacies in terms of both gameplay and deck building. To me this made the game interesting and I wasn't forced to upgrade my deck every single set with staple cards that every deck needed to play. Yeah sure I still got cards almost every set, but that's because I liked the card effects and the art; I thoroughly enjoyed playing the game. (but that's beside the point)
After the release of BT05 Twin Sword Awakening the state of the game took its first major turn. With the release of Majesty Lord Blaster, Phantom Blaster Overlord and the notorious Dragonic Overlord The End, their three respective clans were clearly a cut above the rest and only few other clans had a decent chance of competing with them. Sure, no matter what clan you played at that time, if you had luck you could still win, just like before, but the balance was upset and skewed heavily on the side of the "Big 3": Considering equal skill, one needed quite a bit of luck to balance it out.
While disappointing, this is not an unfamiliar thing. Most card games have decks that are heavily favored over every other deck because they are simply the best. Something else changed too though: The pace of the game.
While it was always possible to build decks that slug it out for the ultra late game and indeed some clans were more specialized in that particular area than others, after BT05 it was almost guaranteed that the game would proceed into ultra late game if it involved 2 decks of the
"Big 3" and if you wanted to have a fighting chance, whatever deck you played need to have the ability to be able to switch into hardcore turtle mode. And most people were playing the three builds in question.
One of the reasons was cross rides' ability to sit on a static power above 11k, particularly 13k and in the case of Majesty Lord Blaster, 12k. And this was achieved relatively easily, the biggest culprit and the most consistent static 13k Vanguard being Phantom Blaster Overlord and his Shadow Paladins with their ability to combo pull necessary cards. Second place is taken by Majesty Lord Blaster, though he "only" sits at 12k at his best but he packs the devastating ability to gain a huge power and critical boost without the need of Counter Blast. Probably the most notorious of the three also happens to be the least consistent 13k Vanguard, probably an attempt by Bushiroad to balance his awesome ability. However Dragonic Overlord The End proved way stronger than Bushiroad expected and proceeded to become the most popular deck and swarmed the competitive scene, to compensate for the consistency issue players just played 4 copies of each Dragonic Overlord.
Another reason was the rise of 11k base power Vanguards as the norm and it was quite difficult for Rear Guards to effectively and consistently hit 11k and above Vanguards for a decent number of shields. Even though Grade 2s started to become stronger being able to achieve 12k power by themselves, forming 21k/22k/23k lines with Rear Guards was just too difficult without triggers, especially for the latter. So with careful hand management and intelligent blocking, it's possible to tank through double triggers until ultra late game.
Consequently, due to the 12k Grade 2s, 10k base power vanguards were bullied out and most people leaned towards clans that had solid 11k Vanguards.
So what did people do? If your opponent has a ton of cards in his hand and is only going to cost him 1 card at most and only if he cannot afford to take damage, you might as well attack his Rear Guards with your own Rear Guards. That way your opponent will be forced to either guard or play more cards from his hand next turn in order to attack you, this means you can puzzle out roughly what cards he has in his hand and he'll hopefully have less to guard with. You also guarantee your opponent loses at least 1 card even if he doesn't guard.
This was good because 99% of the players were using an 8 Critical 4 Draw 4 Heal trigger setup so you could always just rely on your Vanguard and Critical Triggers for damage while taking out your opponents Rear Guards to protect your self.
So as you could imagine, this resulted in the game shifting more towards slugfests and, borrowing MMO terms here, a competition of which was the tankiest deck.
So what's the solution? Enter BT06 and Limit Break.
Now keep in mind a lot of this is my opinion. The impression I get from Limit Break is it's supposed to be a game ender. An ability to prevent your opponent from stalling during the late game. Instead what seemed to happen is a lot of the abilities weren't all THAT strong or are too costly to be sustainable for a long time so players could comfortably sit on 4 damage and use Limit Break like a normal skill, or just guard through the Limit Break until the opponent ran out of resources to even use it. Also a lot of the popular Limit Break units didn't have "normal" none Limit Break abilities, usually the trade off for being 11k or at least having an ability that puts them at 11k. This means that the only threat before Limit Break are triggers and their unpredictable nature. Thus if your opponent didn't get a lot of triggers early, chances are that you'll have enough cards to survive his Limit Break.
There are some exceptions like Maelstrom and Spectral Duke, but generally the Limit Breaks tend to be a bit wonky. Ezel being a random call and not gaining critical coupled with the fact that Gold Paladins don't have a good way to get rid of bad calls when not playing Duke, Pellinore usually lost you more than your opponent if it didn't end the game and is usually played for the superior ride rather than his Limit Break, Cosmo Healer lost a card for 1 less damage which ended up usually being an even trade and didn't actually gain you any advantage, Dark Lord of the Abyss just got Amon's skill with restrictions, Dungaree had too many negatives to even use.
You might think "Well, you only listed the bad Limit Break units!", but in actuality the "good" ones weren't all that much better than older units without Limit Breaks, especially when compared to Dragonic Overlord The End. Quite a few of the Limit Break units were the "Generic" Limit Breakers which all had the ability to gain +5k when attacking the Vanguard while at 4 damage, however that wasn't a game ending ability and what made them good was the fact that they had abilities other than Limit Break and pretty decent abilities at that, mostly calling units in some way.
The other LB units that people actually use are the ones that, while they could somewhat compete with the "Big 3", couldn't change the pace of the game to what it was before Twin Sword Awakening.
In my opinion, this is what led Bushiroad to make the rather extreme restrictions on Dragonic Overlord The End, Majesty Lord Blaster and Goddess of the Full Moon Tsukuyomi. Besides the fact that they were immensely popular builds for their respective clans, they were also arguably the most "tanky" decks at the time, quite easily able to drag a game out to ultra late game with their high defense Vanguards or easy access to abilities that let the player draw extra cards.
This probably also led to the strength of the new Break Ride units introduced in TD08 and TD09 and featured in the latest booster set.
Some of the so called negatives I listed aren't even that bad, particularly having to play near max copies of these cards and having to wait out for Limit Break: All Break Rides so far have a solid 11k base power and gain +2k when attacking Vanguards. This makes them decent Vanguard units both in terms of offense and defense.
Other than Break Rides, the new Limit Breaks are also shifting in a slightly new direction, although I don't want to speculate too much about it because not too many cards have been revealed, but quite a few of the new Limit Break abilities are passive in nature and only require 4 damage to activate or have other none "Blast" related or discard costs. Battle Deity of the Moonlit Night, Artemis has the highest cost that I have seen so far with a Soul Blast of 3 but the few cards that have been revealed for the clan so far lets players Soul Charge a lot, and I really mean A LOT. Dark Irregulars style, maybe more so than Dark Irregulars in fact.
Other than Artemis, Eradicator Dragonic Descendant has a cost of discarding 3 Eradicators but his ability is quite similar to Spectral Duke Dragon in the sense that you only need to activate it once if done right.
Also a lot of cards tend to gain Criticals along with their high power increases.
TLDR;
All this leads me to think that Bushiroad is trying to fix their game. They intended Vanguard to be a more fast paced game, but they made a mistake with the release of BT05 and it become more late game oriented. The first attempt to patch it up with Limit Breaks didn't quite work out although it did add a bit more variety in terms of competitive clans. Now with the restriction of the 3 more popular deck builds and arguably the 3 best at stalling, they also introduce the Break Ride concept and stronger Limit Breaks.
How this affects the state of Vanguard I can't say for sure, but it is quite certain that the pace of the game will change again. Ultimately, like with every game, the players are usually more cunning than the developers and always find ways to make the best use of the things given to them whether it be making the best use of certain abilities or finding loopholes to exploit and whether the new abilities Bushiroad decided to introduce is good or bad, only time will tell.
And that's all I got for now. I'll probably look at Break Ride in more detail when BT10 releases and cover it's good and bad points then.
Another thing I might do in the future is take a look at different card games and their mechanics. As I mentioned at the start, I'm interested in Game Design and might eventually post my own concept for a card game, will have to see how it goes.
Until next time. I'll probably take a closer look at the new Jewel Knights for Royal Paladins. Even though I really like some of the art for the new Gold Paladins, their effects don't really appeal to me.
*All images taken from CFV wikia.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Artsy: The Journey
.
When I'm not playing video games or theory crafting about vanguard =)
Quite satisfied with it, but not quite the look I was aiming for.
Larger size here
Edit: Just feel like I need to add this somewhere, I just beat Belfry Gargoyles in Dark Souls no shield, no npc summon, relatively low vit also haha Not that great an achievement in the grand scheme of things, crazier stuff have been done in Dark Souls, but still quite an achievement for me :3 love this game
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
CFV Essay: Eradicator, Gauntlet Buster Dragon
It is 090113 and it's time for another Vanguard Card Review of sorts. This one should be shorter than the previous one as there are some general things that can be carried over to this card, such as the specific Counter Blast and the Lord ability, so I won't really touch on those anymore.
As promised:
Eradicator, Gauntlet Buster Dragon
G3 / Power: 11000 / Shield: 0
[AUTO](VC) Limit Break 4: (This ability is active if you have four or more damage):When you use a unit's effect to send an opponent's rear-guard to drop zone, during this turn, this unit gets [Power]+3000/[Critical]+1.
[ACT](VC):[Counter Blast (2) - Cards with "Eradicator" in their card name] Your opponent chooses one of his or her rear-guards, and retires it.
[CONT](VC/RC): Lord (If you have a unit that doesn't belong to the same clan as this unit, this unit cannot attack)
Once again starting from the least interesting skill.
Lord. I don't like it, but it serves its purpose. A skill to keep potentially game breaking cards in check. But lets hope Bushiroad comes up with something different again in the future, so we have some options in terms of mixing clans.
This guy's second skill is a Berserk Dragon on activate, with restrictions but some bonuses as well. The first restriction is that the two Counter Blast used must have Eradicator in their names. Not that huge a deal, as it is possible to create a deck containing only Eradicator units. Even if the deck contains none Eradicator units, careful management of Counter Blast (such as using none Eradicator units first whenever you can and healing none Eradicator units etc.) should mean that this skill will always available when you need it, assuming you have 2 Counter Blast.
The second restriction is that you can't actually choose the target, instead your opponent does that, just like Demon World Marquis, Amon.
This actually poses some problems. The cost of this card seems to be much higher than Amon at the cost of CB2, but Amon's skill has to add 1 card from the field to Soul, which is a -1 and makes his skill effectively a 1 for 1 and gives you no immediate advantage (although the power increase Dark Irregular units get from having more Soul can be converted into more Card Advantage later). Gauntlet Buster on the other hand pays 1 more Counter Blast but doesn't "sacrifice" any of your own cards. So the cost of the two skills can be considered equal when we consider the immediate effect they have on your Card Advantage (almost sounds scientific lol). Consider that both Clans don't really have ways to build up hand size other than draw triggers, this actually makes the Buster Dragon seem better.
However the main problem both skills have is that you can't choose your target. The only way you can "choose" what to retire is when your opponent only has 1 choice and you activate the skill then. But that single card might not always be all that important, so you will not always activate the skill when your opponent only has 1 card to retire since the cost of CB2 is quite high. Still the less cards your opponent has on the field, the better it is to use this skill in terms of retiring exactly what you want. Thinking like this, the best time to use this skill is in the early to mid game when both players will try to get a lead, your opponent will be likely to play some key cards, for example playing 8k G1s to attack to push for damage or card changers to cycle for G3s to avoid missing rides, it is also when the starting vanguards might still be around, which could be key to take out. This poses a problem in itself because you will only be able to ride Grade 3 on turn 3 earliest as Gauntlet Buster doesn't have Superior Ride available.
Another problem with that is the Limit Break that seemingly works well with his own retiring skill, in fact it works well with any retiring skill (if the translations are accurate). At the standard 4 damage mark, Gauntlet Buster Dragon's Limit Break activates and whenever you use any skill to retire an opponents Rear Guard, Gauntlet Buster's fist becomes more badass and he gets +3k and +1 Critical.
It's like stealing your opponents money and punching him harder than you usually would.
Like many Limit Break skills before it, this would be an exceedingly awesome skill if it weren't for the LB4 restriction. Being at 4 damage means either you ate one too many critical triggers or the game has dragged for quite a bit already. In the latter case, both fields are also likely to be full, so activating Buster Dragon's retire skill most likely means you won't retire exactly what you want, unless your opponents field is so awesome you want to just get rid of anything you possibly can (but in that case your chances of winning probably aren't looking all that great). Depending on the situation, the -1 of your opponents choice might mean all the difference or nothing at all and same goes for the plus to your Vanguard's power and critical. If your opponent was lucky with criticals and doesn't have many cards in hand the RG retired will mean a lot and if your opponent is at 3-4 damage you might force out a perfect guard, which means another guaranteed 2 cards your opponent will lose, or potentially lose the game. In a situation where both cases apply, you have a good chance of winning the game and this effect is awesome, but even when only one case applies this is still a good skill. However if none of the mentioned cases is in effect, this skill will do little for you. Keeping in mind their relative costs, Buster Dragon comes fairly close to game winning cards like a Soul Saviour Dragon, Platinum Ezels Ultimate Break or even Majestic Lord Blasters +10k with static 2 Criticals (all of which are good almost no matter when you use them) IF you can guarantee the minimum of 3 or more cards Buster Dragon can force your opponent to drop (or an equivalent advantage, although I can't give specific examples at the moment). This means your opponent is at 3, ideally 4 damage and has something you'd want to get rid of when you activate this Limit Break. Even better if your opponent doesn't have a perfect guard and you boost with Gauntlet Buster's custom booster, but don't count on it to always be like that.
A cool thing about this Limit Break is that it doesn't actually have all that many restrictions: Other than the usual LB4 and having to activate a skill that retires an opponents Rear Guard, there are no restrictions, which is probably why this card has the Lord skill. There are no restrictions in terms of the phase of your turn so it can activate during the battle phase as well, and it doesn't state that the retiring skill must be a Narukami skill, so you could use cards like Vortex Dragon, although that isn't really practical (that is a possible fun deck haha).
We can't really make use of the multi clan retire skills as most of the other practical retiring skills are on Vanguards or require Vanguards or a certain clan (Kagero mostly), but there is a Narukami card that can retire during the battle phase for a cost of CB2 when it hits a Vanguard. However it only has 8k power and can only retire the front row.
Other cards that will help trigger Gauntlet Buster Dragon's Limit Break are Vowing Sword Dragon (although I'm still unsure if sitting on an almost vanilla 11k Vanguard until 4 damage is viable), Narukami's own Berserk Dragon, Dragonic Deathscythe and Voltage Claw Dragon. Of the 3 of them only Dragonic Deathscythe can retire back row Rear Guards and only Vowing Sword is an Eradicator. So you'll be relying on Gauntlet Buster Dragon's own retiring skill more often then you'd like to.
Having said all that, this is the deck list I would use with Gauntlet Buster Dragon as the focus.
G0: 17
8 Critical
4 Draw
4 Heal
(Play max number of cards with Eradicator in their names where applicable)
1 Spark Kid Dragoon
G1: 14
4 Red River Dragoon
3 Wyvern Guard Guld
3 Thunder Fist Eradicator Doui (custom booster) / Eradicator of True Flames Kougaiji (10k booster)
4 Eradicator Demolition Dragon
G2: 11
4 Eradicator Spark Rain Dragon
3 Conquering Eradicator, Zuitan
2 Assassinating Eradicator, Suusei
2 Dragonic Deathscythe
G3: 8
3 Eradicator, Gauntlet Buster Dragon
3 Eradicator, Vowing Sword Dragon
2 Chain Attack Eradicator Shion
As much as I like Saishin, at the moment I don't think it is very practical in this deck, although I still consider it due to the rise of more good starting vanguards (Vanguard Y U NO SIDEDECK?!). 8 Criticals because you'll want your opponent at 3 damage quite fast and continue to pressure with a combination of +Critical on Vanguard and giving Critical Triggers to Rear Guards. For Grade 1s I max out on Red River because I heard 8k booster is good and only 3 Wyvern Guard as I feel this is more of an aggressive deck. 3 copies of the custom/vanguard booster of your choice, but if you decide to go with Kougaiji then consider I'd play only 2 copies as it only works on the Vanguard, compared to Doui which can also power boost Rear Guard Buster Dragons, in that case play 4 Wyvern Guard, cause no other reason not to do so.
Demolition Dragons to round out the G1s as the card changers condition is rather unreliable and having back up 10k attackers is good in a pinch.
To compensate for the amount of 6k booster, max out on Spark Rain Dragons, the Eradicator 12k beater. 3 copies of Zuitan for unflipping goodness but I contemplate playing 3 Spark Rain and 4 Zuitan instead. Not playing 4 of each as I want to have 2 Suusei for pressure and potential retiring during battle phase and only 2 Deathscythe because he is not an Eradicator sadly (and ironically). An alternate lineup would be 4 of each Spark Rain and Zuitan, then 3 of either Deathscythe or Suusei, Deathscythe not being an Eradicator but his on demand retire and ability to burn back row is good to keep in mind when making a choice.
And finally the Grade 3s; this is the one I'm most unsure about, I list my standard 3-3-2 lineup with 2 Shion BUT I feel maybe 4-4 Vowing and Buster Dragon is also viable and maybe better or even 4 Buster and 3 Vowing and playing an additional Grade 2, probably 1 more Dragonic Deathscythe. This would need testing before being able to make a definite conclusion.
As mentioned before, I consider building a Narukami deck and currently I'm leaning towards Gauntlet Buster Dragon rather than Dragonic Descendant mainly due to art and Buster Dragon kinda reminds me of awesome stuff like Mega Man and Gunbuster/Diebuster haha. But I also like the retiring play style which was the reason I used to play Kagero (but gave up cause everyone played Kagero back then).
Seems like I lied and this ended up being quite long after all haha. I'll be sure to make edit this if I change my opinion on the deck build or this card, but that will be all for now.
My next writeup will probably not be on a specific card but my opinion on the current state on the game itself, and following that I'll probably take a closer look at the newGodGancelot.
As promised:
From Vanguard Wikia
Eradicator, Gauntlet Buster Dragon
G3 / Power: 11000 / Shield: 0
[AUTO](VC) Limit Break 4: (This ability is active if you have four or more damage):When you use a unit's effect to send an opponent's rear-guard to drop zone, during this turn, this unit gets [Power]+3000/[Critical]+1.
[ACT](VC):[Counter Blast (2) - Cards with "Eradicator" in their card name] Your opponent chooses one of his or her rear-guards, and retires it.
[CONT](VC/RC): Lord (If you have a unit that doesn't belong to the same clan as this unit, this unit cannot attack)
Once again starting from the least interesting skill.
Lord. I don't like it, but it serves its purpose. A skill to keep potentially game breaking cards in check. But lets hope Bushiroad comes up with something different again in the future, so we have some options in terms of mixing clans.
This guy's second skill is a Berserk Dragon on activate, with restrictions but some bonuses as well. The first restriction is that the two Counter Blast used must have Eradicator in their names. Not that huge a deal, as it is possible to create a deck containing only Eradicator units. Even if the deck contains none Eradicator units, careful management of Counter Blast (such as using none Eradicator units first whenever you can and healing none Eradicator units etc.) should mean that this skill will always available when you need it, assuming you have 2 Counter Blast.
The second restriction is that you can't actually choose the target, instead your opponent does that, just like Demon World Marquis, Amon.
This actually poses some problems. The cost of this card seems to be much higher than Amon at the cost of CB2, but Amon's skill has to add 1 card from the field to Soul, which is a -1 and makes his skill effectively a 1 for 1 and gives you no immediate advantage (although the power increase Dark Irregular units get from having more Soul can be converted into more Card Advantage later). Gauntlet Buster on the other hand pays 1 more Counter Blast but doesn't "sacrifice" any of your own cards. So the cost of the two skills can be considered equal when we consider the immediate effect they have on your Card Advantage (almost sounds scientific lol). Consider that both Clans don't really have ways to build up hand size other than draw triggers, this actually makes the Buster Dragon seem better.
However the main problem both skills have is that you can't choose your target. The only way you can "choose" what to retire is when your opponent only has 1 choice and you activate the skill then. But that single card might not always be all that important, so you will not always activate the skill when your opponent only has 1 card to retire since the cost of CB2 is quite high. Still the less cards your opponent has on the field, the better it is to use this skill in terms of retiring exactly what you want. Thinking like this, the best time to use this skill is in the early to mid game when both players will try to get a lead, your opponent will be likely to play some key cards, for example playing 8k G1s to attack to push for damage or card changers to cycle for G3s to avoid missing rides, it is also when the starting vanguards might still be around, which could be key to take out. This poses a problem in itself because you will only be able to ride Grade 3 on turn 3 earliest as Gauntlet Buster doesn't have Superior Ride available.
Another problem with that is the Limit Break that seemingly works well with his own retiring skill, in fact it works well with any retiring skill (if the translations are accurate). At the standard 4 damage mark, Gauntlet Buster Dragon's Limit Break activates and whenever you use any skill to retire an opponents Rear Guard, Gauntlet Buster's fist becomes more badass and he gets +3k and +1 Critical.
It's like stealing your opponents money and punching him harder than you usually would.
Like many Limit Break skills before it, this would be an exceedingly awesome skill if it weren't for the LB4 restriction. Being at 4 damage means either you ate one too many critical triggers or the game has dragged for quite a bit already. In the latter case, both fields are also likely to be full, so activating Buster Dragon's retire skill most likely means you won't retire exactly what you want, unless your opponents field is so awesome you want to just get rid of anything you possibly can (but in that case your chances of winning probably aren't looking all that great). Depending on the situation, the -1 of your opponents choice might mean all the difference or nothing at all and same goes for the plus to your Vanguard's power and critical. If your opponent was lucky with criticals and doesn't have many cards in hand the RG retired will mean a lot and if your opponent is at 3-4 damage you might force out a perfect guard, which means another guaranteed 2 cards your opponent will lose, or potentially lose the game. In a situation where both cases apply, you have a good chance of winning the game and this effect is awesome, but even when only one case applies this is still a good skill. However if none of the mentioned cases is in effect, this skill will do little for you. Keeping in mind their relative costs, Buster Dragon comes fairly close to game winning cards like a Soul Saviour Dragon, Platinum Ezels Ultimate Break or even Majestic Lord Blasters +10k with static 2 Criticals (all of which are good almost no matter when you use them) IF you can guarantee the minimum of 3 or more cards Buster Dragon can force your opponent to drop (or an equivalent advantage, although I can't give specific examples at the moment). This means your opponent is at 3, ideally 4 damage and has something you'd want to get rid of when you activate this Limit Break. Even better if your opponent doesn't have a perfect guard and you boost with Gauntlet Buster's custom booster, but don't count on it to always be like that.
A cool thing about this Limit Break is that it doesn't actually have all that many restrictions: Other than the usual LB4 and having to activate a skill that retires an opponents Rear Guard, there are no restrictions, which is probably why this card has the Lord skill. There are no restrictions in terms of the phase of your turn so it can activate during the battle phase as well, and it doesn't state that the retiring skill must be a Narukami skill, so you could use cards like Vortex Dragon, although that isn't really practical (that is a possible fun deck haha).
We can't really make use of the multi clan retire skills as most of the other practical retiring skills are on Vanguards or require Vanguards or a certain clan (Kagero mostly), but there is a Narukami card that can retire during the battle phase for a cost of CB2 when it hits a Vanguard. However it only has 8k power and can only retire the front row.
Other cards that will help trigger Gauntlet Buster Dragon's Limit Break are Vowing Sword Dragon (although I'm still unsure if sitting on an almost vanilla 11k Vanguard until 4 damage is viable), Narukami's own Berserk Dragon, Dragonic Deathscythe and Voltage Claw Dragon. Of the 3 of them only Dragonic Deathscythe can retire back row Rear Guards and only Vowing Sword is an Eradicator. So you'll be relying on Gauntlet Buster Dragon's own retiring skill more often then you'd like to.
Having said all that, this is the deck list I would use with Gauntlet Buster Dragon as the focus.
G0: 17
8 Critical
4 Draw
4 Heal
(Play max number of cards with Eradicator in their names where applicable)
1 Spark Kid Dragoon
G1: 14
4 Red River Dragoon
3 Wyvern Guard Guld
3 Thunder Fist Eradicator Doui (custom booster) / Eradicator of True Flames Kougaiji (10k booster)
4 Eradicator Demolition Dragon
G2: 11
4 Eradicator Spark Rain Dragon
3 Conquering Eradicator, Zuitan
2 Assassinating Eradicator, Suusei
2 Dragonic Deathscythe
G3: 8
3 Eradicator, Gauntlet Buster Dragon
3 Eradicator, Vowing Sword Dragon
2 Chain Attack Eradicator Shion
As much as I like Saishin, at the moment I don't think it is very practical in this deck, although I still consider it due to the rise of more good starting vanguards (Vanguard Y U NO SIDEDECK?!). 8 Criticals because you'll want your opponent at 3 damage quite fast and continue to pressure with a combination of +Critical on Vanguard and giving Critical Triggers to Rear Guards. For Grade 1s I max out on Red River because I heard 8k booster is good and only 3 Wyvern Guard as I feel this is more of an aggressive deck. 3 copies of the custom/vanguard booster of your choice, but if you decide to go with Kougaiji then consider I'd play only 2 copies as it only works on the Vanguard, compared to Doui which can also power boost Rear Guard Buster Dragons, in that case play 4 Wyvern Guard, cause no other reason not to do so.
Demolition Dragons to round out the G1s as the card changers condition is rather unreliable and having back up 10k attackers is good in a pinch.
To compensate for the amount of 6k booster, max out on Spark Rain Dragons, the Eradicator 12k beater. 3 copies of Zuitan for unflipping goodness but I contemplate playing 3 Spark Rain and 4 Zuitan instead. Not playing 4 of each as I want to have 2 Suusei for pressure and potential retiring during battle phase and only 2 Deathscythe because he is not an Eradicator sadly (and ironically). An alternate lineup would be 4 of each Spark Rain and Zuitan, then 3 of either Deathscythe or Suusei, Deathscythe not being an Eradicator but his on demand retire and ability to burn back row is good to keep in mind when making a choice.
And finally the Grade 3s; this is the one I'm most unsure about, I list my standard 3-3-2 lineup with 2 Shion BUT I feel maybe 4-4 Vowing and Buster Dragon is also viable and maybe better or even 4 Buster and 3 Vowing and playing an additional Grade 2, probably 1 more Dragonic Deathscythe. This would need testing before being able to make a definite conclusion.
As mentioned before, I consider building a Narukami deck and currently I'm leaning towards Gauntlet Buster Dragon rather than Dragonic Descendant mainly due to art and Buster Dragon kinda reminds me of awesome stuff like Mega Man and Gunbuster/Diebuster haha. But I also like the retiring play style which was the reason I used to play Kagero (but gave up cause everyone played Kagero back then).
Seems like I lied and this ended up being quite long after all haha. I'll be sure to make edit this if I change my opinion on the deck build or this card, but that will be all for now.
My next writeup will probably not be on a specific card but my opinion on the current state on the game itself, and following that I'll probably take a closer look at the new
Thursday, January 3, 2013
CFV Essay: Eradicator, Dragonic Descendant!
Updated with Sample Decklist.
First proper post :O
Since the first few cards of Vanguard's 10th booster set and Trial decks 9 and 10 have been revealed a while back and I had some time to think about them, I'm going to dedicate some posts to them, most likely not all the cards though.
First up is going to be Eradicator, Dragonic Descendant. Because I feel like building a Narukami deck, so it's a good idea to review my options.
This guy seems to have managed to generate quite a bit of hype. His stats and ability:
Eradicator, Dragonic Descendant
G3 / Power: 11000 / Shield: 0
[AUTO](VC) Limit Break 4:[Counter Blast (1) & Choose three cards with "Eradicator" in their card name from your hand, and discard them] At the beginning of the close step of the battle that this unit's attack did not hit, you may pay the cost. If you do, [Stand] this unit, and gets [Critical]+1 until end of turn. This ability can only be used once per turn.
[ACT](VC):[Counter Blast (2) - Cards with "Eradicator" in their names] This unit gets [Power]+5000 until end of turn.
[CONT](VC/RC): Lord (If you have a unit that doesn't belong to the same clan as this unit, this unit cannot attack)
Lets go through those starting with the last, least interesting one.
The Lord ability is the new standard ability for 11k and above units. I don't particularly like this as it limits the player to only playing cards of a single clan in any given deck. Granted only very few players actually played multiple clans in one deck, there were some fun things that could be done, like playing Wingal Brave in a Shadow Paladin deck focus around Phantom Blaster Overlord. A lot of cards can be searched by Wingal Brave and a Vanguard PBO will still be 11k if you already ride Phantom Blaster Dragon, if you still have Wingal Brave around for whatever reason. There's also the option of just sticking with PBD if you have Blaster Dark in soul, since PBD will also be 11k. Other examples would be Dragonic Overlord or Stil Vampir in CEO Amaterasu decks.
Just a few example, but that aside, my main point is the Lord ability completely shuts down mixing clans, which is sad, but ultimately not all that big of a deal and may even be necessary to keep some of the cards balanced.
Dragonic Descendant's second ability is to give it self a power boost. Counter Blast 2 for +5k in power is quite a normal cost. Other cards with similar cost is Gancelot, who gets an additional +1 Critical but he is 9k base power and needs Blaster Blade in soul to activate his ability. The cards you flip over need to have Eradicator (or Eraser, whatever floats your boat) in their names, but that's not a huge deal as, if I remember correctly, most of the cards in the Narukami Trial deck have Eradicator in their names. There is the possibility that Bushiroad won't release additional triggers with an Eradicator name, but even then, playing none Eradicator triggers will only stop this ability from going off in the rarest of rare cases. It's very possible to build a deck with minimal cards without an Eradicator name, as Eradicators have their own versions of various essential cards, like unflipper, vanilla Grade 2, and 9k Grade 2 that gets +3k when attacking when your Vanguard is an Eradicator. So realistically, you should be able to activate this ability without thinking about the Counter Blast restriction 99.99% of the time. Also this is an activate ability, would be pretty terrible if it weren't (just so I covered every aspect of it).
The first ability printed on this card and the final ability we have to cover is Descendant's Limit Break. At 4 Damage and for a cost of Counter Blast 1 and discarding 3 cards with Eradicator in their names, this card can stand again if its first attack did not hit and it gets +1 Critical until the end of the turn. It doesn't lost twin drive.
This ability is similar to other self re-standing vanguards like Dragonic Overlord The End, Spectral Duke Dragon and Stern Blaukruger. Dragonic Descendant has the cheapest Counter Blast cost out of all of them, but has other restrictions in an attempt to balance it out (LB4 and specific discard cost).
Like The End and Blaukruger, the secondary cost is a Discard cost. This has ups and downs to it. Compared to the Duke, if you don't already have enough units on the field to attack with, you cannot activate this ability if you call everything in your hand to the field. This may sound like it'll only apply to last resort situations, but it's during those times that you'll really want to get an extra attack to attempt to finish the game. Spectral Duke doesn't have this problem unless you didn't have enough cards overall in the first place. Another requirement is to discard cards with Eradicator in their names. It's not really a problem if you decide to build a full Eradicator deck which is definitely possible. But as of the time I'm writing this, there are no additional Eradicator triggers and not many players like to play a rainbow trigger setup. Also Red River Dragoon, the Narukami vanilla Grade 1 is a none Eradicator and an 8k boost is always good to have and usually played in 4s. So unless there is going to be more Eradicator triggers if you want to play anything other then rainbow triggers and/or have an 8k booster you'll have to take note of this restriction and expend your none Eradictor cards first. A good thing about the cost being discard is you are not forced to attack with Rear Guards first, which in my opinion is pretty big unless you intend to play stand triggers.
Lets compare this card to Spectral Duke even more, since Duke has become one of the most popular decks before set 10. We've already covered a bit of the Retire vs. Discard so next is the ability itself.
Condition wise, both abilities are LB4, Dragonic Descendant can only activate if its attack is blocked but can attack anything while Spectral Duke has to attack the Vanguard but can activate no matter what your opponent does, but Duke also has the higher Counter Blast cost. Since Descendant can stand again and even keeps twin drive, you may think you can attack an important Rear Guard first without boosting then stand and attack the opposing Vanguard, but it's actually not that great since your opponent can just let his Rear Guard die and you can't stand again. On the other hand if you attack the Vanguard without boosting it may be easy to guard, but then your opponent loses 1 extra card and you can stand and attack again. If your opponent doesn't guard you may be able to deal extra damage with Critical Triggers (and maybe win with double Critical when your opponent is at 3 damage huehuehue) and it's like you attack with full force and your opponent chooses to no guard anyway.
Duke loses twin drive and Descendant not only gets to keep twin drive but also gets an additional Critical. This may seem absurd at first, and it is if we compare only the two cards themselves. Spectral Duke has a ride chain that helps swarm the field and later on that will pay for the cost of retiring 3 without directly diminishing the player's ability to guard. However that also means Duke is very reliant on its ride chain going off smoothly. Luckily Gold Paladins still have other means to call cards from the top of the deck, so it's not all that bad.
Narukami on the other hand have nothing to help them add cards to the hand besides draw triggers but it's OK cause Dragonic Descendant gets +Critical anyway (hint hint), this means that instead of relying on a ride chain Descendant relies on getting some early draw triggers to off set his LB cost.
In terms of direct support there are a ton of Eradicator cards to fulfill the specific discard cost and Descendant has an Ezel style Superior Ride. Besides the Grade 0, the Grade 2 required is the Eradicator unflipper which also Soul Charges 1 card when it unflips and the Grade 1 is Descendants custom booster, a 6k Grade 1 that can Soul Blast 1 to give Descendant +5k power. To make the Superior Ride as consistent as possible it is necessary to play both at 4 copies each. While it doesn't seem like a bad idea to play 4 copies of the Grade 1 (since its effect works on Rear Guard Descendants as well), you may run into a few issues. First, it is unlikely you will ever have that much soul to boost multiple Dragonic Descendants for multiple turns. Sure the unflipper lets you soul charge, but realistically, how often do people let you soul charge? Not that often. Also the threat of having the Vanguard boosted by an extra 5k is enough to make the other player keep blocking your unflipper if he can afford it, so it is unnecessary to have Rear Guard Descendants and custom boosters to pressure your opponent. The Superior Ride gives you extra Soul but that means 1 custom booster less and you have to draw into more. If you already had them, do you have Descendants to play as RG, if you have, you probably dealt minimum damage and may have received more than you like. This is an issue since the pace of the game will change but I'll cover that another time.
Another thing to consider is how often you will actually draw into both, before your Rear Guard slots are filled. Dragonic Descendant has no effect as a Rear Guard. Of course vanillla 11k is always better than vanilla 10k, but the fact is you could have played another card that actually has an effect as a Rear Guard. There's also the fact that very few people actually play more than 2 copies of any 11k booster, though Narukami could be an exception cause they have more and better high powered attackers so more weaker booster may be ok.
That said, one cannot argue against having multiple custom boosters for a Final Turn, however situational that might be.
Finally the last thing to compare is how much the ability costs actually impact your overall card advantage. Not accounting for draw triggers a normal turn will give you +3 from draw and twin drive. Spectral duke costs 3 cards and only drive checks once on stand ending up with a total of +1 for that turn (-2 compared to normal turn).
Dragonic Descendant's ability also results in -3 cards but keeps twin drive so gets you a +2 overall that turn (-1 compared to normal turn).
If you ask me, 1 card is a huge deal in Vanguard.
In my opinion, they are both about equal due to Spectral Duke arguably having the better pre set 10 support, Descendant can give itself power so it doesn't look as stupid if you didn't get any triggers at all. I say pre set 10 because obviously nothing can be compared to Liberator Gancelot, but that's for another time haha
I definitely think Dragonic Descendant is not as broken as some people may make you think it is. A good way to deal with it is to guard earlier, specifically, after Grade 3, guard more Rear Guard attacks so you can just take the Vanguard attacks and don't have to worry so much about having to guard extra attacks from the Vanguard and hopefully won't die to surprise Criticals. It would probably also be a good idea, to attack the Descendant players Rear Guards as he needs to keep at least 1 card in hand to be able to use Dragonic Descendants ability without having to rely on a draw triggers. It'll also give you an idea of what's in your opponents hand, depending on if he calls units or not.
Nevertheless Eradicator, Dragonic Descendant is still a great card and I feel it will be the card most people will favor for a Eradicator based deck (I may be wrong though). The threat of being able to check up to 4 triggers a turn if you are really lucky is huge. And not having to attack with Rear Guards first also gives you additional options in terms of attack patterns and trigger distribution. Another big thing, as already mentioned, is Dragonic Descendants ability to give itself +5k, this means that even if you boost and attack first, Descendant still has a respectable 16k power without triggers. Right now I feel the ideal, IDEAL Descendant attack would be attacking with the vanguard and boosting, playing critical triggers so you force your opponent to guard even before 5 damage, but also having stand triggers so you can re-stand your boosting unit as well. This actually works with my idea of a "strongest possible deck" but YET AGAIN that's for another time :P
Until Narukami gets something that lets them not play draw triggers you'll have to choose either critical or stand triggers and supplement them with draws. Either can work well; Criticals are always good and you may not have to play as many as other decks since Descendant gets an extra Critical on stand, and stand triggers are good because Narukami already have many units that either have 11k base power or can attack for 11k or higher even without boost.
Quick Sample Decklist:
G0:
6 Draw
6 Critical
4 Heal
(Play max number of cards with Eradicator in their names where applicable)
1 Eradicator Strike Dagger Dragon
G1:
3 Eradicator of Sword Dance Hisen
4 Red River Dragoon
4 Wyvern Guard Guld
4 Eradicator Demolition Dragon
G2:
4 Conquering Eradicator Zuidan
4 Eradicator Spark Rain Dragon
3 Eradicator Thunderboom Dragon
G3:
3 Eradicator Dragonic Descendant
3 Eradicator Vowing Sword Dragon
2 Chain Attack Eradicator Shion
Instead of playing it like Ezel and only play 2 copies, I decided to play 3 copies of Descendant simply because of its 11k base power. Could max out on Descendants and play 1 less Vowing Sword Dragon, but I'm more comfortable with a 3-3-2 setup for Grade 3s. Shion is in there cause he looks awesome and I like the CB1 +3k G3s. Could run Gauntlet Buster Dragon instead of Shion but I don't feel that would be as effective. With Strike Dagger Dragon and 3 Copies of Descendant you should be riding Descendant most of the time, even though Hisen is only at 3 (Maxing out on Hisen is also an option). Ride Vowing Sword Dragon first when you can as it is still a solid 11k VG unit and Descendant isn't really that threatening before 4 Damage. Rest should be quite straightforward.
Next card is most likely going to be Dragonic Descendants bro, Eradicator Gauntlet Buster Dragon.
Congratulations if you made it through that wall of text. Achievement unlocked I guess. I will consider adding more pictures next time. Also I did not proof read this and you probably know why D:
First proper post :O
Since the first few cards of Vanguard's 10th booster set and Trial decks 9 and 10 have been revealed a while back and I had some time to think about them, I'm going to dedicate some posts to them, most likely not all the cards though.
First up is going to be Eradicator, Dragonic Descendant. Because I feel like building a Narukami deck, so it's a good idea to review my options.
Taken from blog.livedoor.jp/freedomduo
This guy seems to have managed to generate quite a bit of hype. His stats and ability:
Eradicator, Dragonic Descendant
G3 / Power: 11000 / Shield: 0
[AUTO](VC) Limit Break 4:[Counter Blast (1) & Choose three cards with "Eradicator" in their card name from your hand, and discard them] At the beginning of the close step of the battle that this unit's attack did not hit, you may pay the cost. If you do, [Stand] this unit, and gets [Critical]+1 until end of turn. This ability can only be used once per turn.
[ACT](VC):[Counter Blast (2) - Cards with "Eradicator" in their names] This unit gets [Power]+5000 until end of turn.
[CONT](VC/RC): Lord (If you have a unit that doesn't belong to the same clan as this unit, this unit cannot attack)
Lets go through those starting with the last, least interesting one.
The Lord ability is the new standard ability for 11k and above units. I don't particularly like this as it limits the player to only playing cards of a single clan in any given deck. Granted only very few players actually played multiple clans in one deck, there were some fun things that could be done, like playing Wingal Brave in a Shadow Paladin deck focus around Phantom Blaster Overlord. A lot of cards can be searched by Wingal Brave and a Vanguard PBO will still be 11k if you already ride Phantom Blaster Dragon, if you still have Wingal Brave around for whatever reason. There's also the option of just sticking with PBD if you have Blaster Dark in soul, since PBD will also be 11k. Other examples would be Dragonic Overlord or Stil Vampir in CEO Amaterasu decks.
Just a few example, but that aside, my main point is the Lord ability completely shuts down mixing clans, which is sad, but ultimately not all that big of a deal and may even be necessary to keep some of the cards balanced.
Dragonic Descendant's second ability is to give it self a power boost. Counter Blast 2 for +5k in power is quite a normal cost. Other cards with similar cost is Gancelot, who gets an additional +1 Critical but he is 9k base power and needs Blaster Blade in soul to activate his ability. The cards you flip over need to have Eradicator (or Eraser, whatever floats your boat) in their names, but that's not a huge deal as, if I remember correctly, most of the cards in the Narukami Trial deck have Eradicator in their names. There is the possibility that Bushiroad won't release additional triggers with an Eradicator name, but even then, playing none Eradicator triggers will only stop this ability from going off in the rarest of rare cases. It's very possible to build a deck with minimal cards without an Eradicator name, as Eradicators have their own versions of various essential cards, like unflipper, vanilla Grade 2, and 9k Grade 2 that gets +3k when attacking when your Vanguard is an Eradicator. So realistically, you should be able to activate this ability without thinking about the Counter Blast restriction 99.99% of the time. Also this is an activate ability, would be pretty terrible if it weren't (just so I covered every aspect of it).
The first ability printed on this card and the final ability we have to cover is Descendant's Limit Break. At 4 Damage and for a cost of Counter Blast 1 and discarding 3 cards with Eradicator in their names, this card can stand again if its first attack did not hit and it gets +1 Critical until the end of the turn. It doesn't lost twin drive.
This ability is similar to other self re-standing vanguards like Dragonic Overlord The End, Spectral Duke Dragon and Stern Blaukruger. Dragonic Descendant has the cheapest Counter Blast cost out of all of them, but has other restrictions in an attempt to balance it out (LB4 and specific discard cost).
Like The End and Blaukruger, the secondary cost is a Discard cost. This has ups and downs to it. Compared to the Duke, if you don't already have enough units on the field to attack with, you cannot activate this ability if you call everything in your hand to the field. This may sound like it'll only apply to last resort situations, but it's during those times that you'll really want to get an extra attack to attempt to finish the game. Spectral Duke doesn't have this problem unless you didn't have enough cards overall in the first place. Another requirement is to discard cards with Eradicator in their names. It's not really a problem if you decide to build a full Eradicator deck which is definitely possible. But as of the time I'm writing this, there are no additional Eradicator triggers and not many players like to play a rainbow trigger setup. Also Red River Dragoon, the Narukami vanilla Grade 1 is a none Eradicator and an 8k boost is always good to have and usually played in 4s. So unless there is going to be more Eradicator triggers if you want to play anything other then rainbow triggers and/or have an 8k booster you'll have to take note of this restriction and expend your none Eradictor cards first. A good thing about the cost being discard is you are not forced to attack with Rear Guards first, which in my opinion is pretty big unless you intend to play stand triggers.
Lets compare this card to Spectral Duke even more, since Duke has become one of the most popular decks before set 10. We've already covered a bit of the Retire vs. Discard so next is the ability itself.
Condition wise, both abilities are LB4, Dragonic Descendant can only activate if its attack is blocked but can attack anything while Spectral Duke has to attack the Vanguard but can activate no matter what your opponent does, but Duke also has the higher Counter Blast cost. Since Descendant can stand again and even keeps twin drive, you may think you can attack an important Rear Guard first without boosting then stand and attack the opposing Vanguard, but it's actually not that great since your opponent can just let his Rear Guard die and you can't stand again. On the other hand if you attack the Vanguard without boosting it may be easy to guard, but then your opponent loses 1 extra card and you can stand and attack again. If your opponent doesn't guard you may be able to deal extra damage with Critical Triggers (and maybe win with double Critical when your opponent is at 3 damage huehuehue) and it's like you attack with full force and your opponent chooses to no guard anyway.
Duke loses twin drive and Descendant not only gets to keep twin drive but also gets an additional Critical. This may seem absurd at first, and it is if we compare only the two cards themselves. Spectral Duke has a ride chain that helps swarm the field and later on that will pay for the cost of retiring 3 without directly diminishing the player's ability to guard. However that also means Duke is very reliant on its ride chain going off smoothly. Luckily Gold Paladins still have other means to call cards from the top of the deck, so it's not all that bad.
Narukami on the other hand have nothing to help them add cards to the hand besides draw triggers but it's OK cause Dragonic Descendant gets +Critical anyway (hint hint), this means that instead of relying on a ride chain Descendant relies on getting some early draw triggers to off set his LB cost.
In terms of direct support there are a ton of Eradicator cards to fulfill the specific discard cost and Descendant has an Ezel style Superior Ride. Besides the Grade 0, the Grade 2 required is the Eradicator unflipper which also Soul Charges 1 card when it unflips and the Grade 1 is Descendants custom booster, a 6k Grade 1 that can Soul Blast 1 to give Descendant +5k power. To make the Superior Ride as consistent as possible it is necessary to play both at 4 copies each. While it doesn't seem like a bad idea to play 4 copies of the Grade 1 (since its effect works on Rear Guard Descendants as well), you may run into a few issues. First, it is unlikely you will ever have that much soul to boost multiple Dragonic Descendants for multiple turns. Sure the unflipper lets you soul charge, but realistically, how often do people let you soul charge? Not that often. Also the threat of having the Vanguard boosted by an extra 5k is enough to make the other player keep blocking your unflipper if he can afford it, so it is unnecessary to have Rear Guard Descendants and custom boosters to pressure your opponent. The Superior Ride gives you extra Soul but that means 1 custom booster less and you have to draw into more. If you already had them, do you have Descendants to play as RG, if you have, you probably dealt minimum damage and may have received more than you like. This is an issue since the pace of the game will change but I'll cover that another time.
Another thing to consider is how often you will actually draw into both, before your Rear Guard slots are filled. Dragonic Descendant has no effect as a Rear Guard. Of course vanillla 11k is always better than vanilla 10k, but the fact is you could have played another card that actually has an effect as a Rear Guard. There's also the fact that very few people actually play more than 2 copies of any 11k booster, though Narukami could be an exception cause they have more and better high powered attackers so more weaker booster may be ok.
That said, one cannot argue against having multiple custom boosters for a Final Turn, however situational that might be.
Finally the last thing to compare is how much the ability costs actually impact your overall card advantage. Not accounting for draw triggers a normal turn will give you +3 from draw and twin drive. Spectral duke costs 3 cards and only drive checks once on stand ending up with a total of +1 for that turn (-2 compared to normal turn).
Dragonic Descendant's ability also results in -3 cards but keeps twin drive so gets you a +2 overall that turn (-1 compared to normal turn).
If you ask me, 1 card is a huge deal in Vanguard.
In my opinion, they are both about equal due to Spectral Duke arguably having the better pre set 10 support, Descendant can give itself power so it doesn't look as stupid if you didn't get any triggers at all. I say pre set 10 because obviously nothing can be compared to Liberator Gancelot, but that's for another time haha
I definitely think Dragonic Descendant is not as broken as some people may make you think it is. A good way to deal with it is to guard earlier, specifically, after Grade 3, guard more Rear Guard attacks so you can just take the Vanguard attacks and don't have to worry so much about having to guard extra attacks from the Vanguard and hopefully won't die to surprise Criticals. It would probably also be a good idea, to attack the Descendant players Rear Guards as he needs to keep at least 1 card in hand to be able to use Dragonic Descendants ability without having to rely on a draw triggers. It'll also give you an idea of what's in your opponents hand, depending on if he calls units or not.
Nevertheless Eradicator, Dragonic Descendant is still a great card and I feel it will be the card most people will favor for a Eradicator based deck (I may be wrong though). The threat of being able to check up to 4 triggers a turn if you are really lucky is huge. And not having to attack with Rear Guards first also gives you additional options in terms of attack patterns and trigger distribution. Another big thing, as already mentioned, is Dragonic Descendants ability to give itself +5k, this means that even if you boost and attack first, Descendant still has a respectable 16k power without triggers. Right now I feel the ideal, IDEAL Descendant attack would be attacking with the vanguard and boosting, playing critical triggers so you force your opponent to guard even before 5 damage, but also having stand triggers so you can re-stand your boosting unit as well. This actually works with my idea of a "strongest possible deck" but YET AGAIN that's for another time :P
Until Narukami gets something that lets them not play draw triggers you'll have to choose either critical or stand triggers and supplement them with draws. Either can work well; Criticals are always good and you may not have to play as many as other decks since Descendant gets an extra Critical on stand, and stand triggers are good because Narukami already have many units that either have 11k base power or can attack for 11k or higher even without boost.
Quick Sample Decklist:
G0:
6 Draw
6 Critical
4 Heal
(Play max number of cards with Eradicator in their names where applicable)
1 Eradicator Strike Dagger Dragon
G1:
3 Eradicator of Sword Dance Hisen
4 Red River Dragoon
4 Wyvern Guard Guld
4 Eradicator Demolition Dragon
G2:
4 Conquering Eradicator Zuidan
4 Eradicator Spark Rain Dragon
3 Eradicator Thunderboom Dragon
G3:
3 Eradicator Dragonic Descendant
3 Eradicator Vowing Sword Dragon
2 Chain Attack Eradicator Shion
Instead of playing it like Ezel and only play 2 copies, I decided to play 3 copies of Descendant simply because of its 11k base power. Could max out on Descendants and play 1 less Vowing Sword Dragon, but I'm more comfortable with a 3-3-2 setup for Grade 3s. Shion is in there cause he looks awesome and I like the CB1 +3k G3s. Could run Gauntlet Buster Dragon instead of Shion but I don't feel that would be as effective. With Strike Dagger Dragon and 3 Copies of Descendant you should be riding Descendant most of the time, even though Hisen is only at 3 (Maxing out on Hisen is also an option). Ride Vowing Sword Dragon first when you can as it is still a solid 11k VG unit and Descendant isn't really that threatening before 4 Damage. Rest should be quite straightforward.
Next card is most likely going to be Dragonic Descendants bro, Eradicator Gauntlet Buster Dragon.
Congratulations if you made it through that wall of text. Achievement unlocked I guess. I will consider adding more pictures next time. Also I did not proof read this and you probably know why D:
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