VBT05 Standard Budget Builds: Thunderbreak-Stinger

Salaam, lads and ladettes, its me it’s your best friend, its CanYouSayG, and welcome to the blog where we learn how to be a better cardfighter.

Today, we are continuing with the second part of our Standard budget builds series, focusing on a second clan from VBT05 Aerial Steed Liberation.

If you missed yesterday's article on Soul Saver Palamedes and its potential with Force II, check it out here.

Since each clans second wave of support, many clans have been getting alternate main units to build their decks around, such as Garmore in Gold Paladin, Blademaster in Kagero, Kujikiricongo in Nubatama, or Brandt and Messiah in Link Joker. While not every deck becomes competitive or top of the tournament scene, these decks become played and loved by players of all levels, bringing more variety to your vanguard fights, as every clan has far more than just one deck going for it. Some of these have shown the potential to take down national level events, or in the case of Garmore, to top international level events.

While prices for certain cards may vary from region to region, most of deck's most expensive part are the VRs, so budget decks feature options to build your deck without them.

The focus of today's deck is Thunderbreak Dragon, a fan favourite for many, as it was the key card from the first Narukami Trial Deck.

BARBARIC THUNDER BREAK!!!





Thunderbreak Dragon is a RR from VBT05, Aerial Steed Liberation, with two effects.

His first effect is to be able to attack the entire front row, every turn, for no cost! This means taking down at least two rear guards (or more against accel) with his attack every turn!

His second attack is a set up skill. By counterblasting one, you can drag the opponent’s rear guards from the backrow to the front, allowing you to pull up units from behind vanguard or even to different rows! He even allows you to move the units across columns; so not even behind the vanguard is safe.

This deck is built around trying to take advantage of the first skill, by eliminating the opponents front row, dragging units to the front row during your main phase, and then swinging your sword across all the opponents rear guards every turn. This results in the opponent being unable to sustain a full field, or one of quality, as you will easily remove it every turn.

There is no hiding from his Barbaric Thunder Break!

Now, if you attack with other units first, especially if they are low powered, the opponent will intercept with the units before Thunder Break can catch them with his attack, so most of the time, you will attack with Thunder Break Dragon as your first attack. This goes very well with Front triggers, allowing you to use the massive power boost to push through your other attacks.

As Thunder Break has limited power, no guard restrict, nor any restand ability, Critical Triggers often fall short of being able to be fully utilized, especially with the limited power output of rear guards, another reason to focus more on Front Triggers.

Using all forms of cost for eradication.

With Thunder Break Dragon, you need to use on counterblast to bring the opponents rear guards to the front where they can be hit with Thunder break's attack, or with one of Narukami's bind abilities. This means that if you are planning on using counterblast to bind their front row units, you need to spend more counter blast to bring up units to be hit with Thunderbreak.

Imagine if the opponent has a full field. Spend one counterblast to bind one front row, spend another to bind the other, and use thunderbreak's skill to drag up the backrow to the front. While you did wipe the opponents field almost clear, it also took 3 counterblast!

Not every game will you have access to counterblast so readily, and many players will try to control the amount of damage that is given to you.

So, the response is simple: Use other forms of cost to bind the opponent’s rear guards.

Dragonic Deathscythe, as well as Ceremonial Bonfire Eradicator Castor are two cards that can bind the opponent’s field, without using counterblast. In the same scenario where you want to get rid of the opponent’s whole field, if you used Castor and Deathscythe, you would instead only need one counterblast to do so!







Dragonic Deathscythe previously did suffer from a lack of soul in the Narukami deck, as there were no methods of Soul Charging, giving Deathscythe only one or two uses throughout the game, at best. However, this deck plays RaiRai as well as Zuitan, whom while providing other roles in the deck, and also supply you with more soul to use Deathscythe more readily!



Ceremonial Bonfire Eradicator Castor is a new grade 1 unit from VBT05 Aerial Steed Liberation. For the cost of one card in hand, she, when placed, will bind the front row unit of the opponent, while gaining 5k power for a turn.

This Additional 5k power not only creates a 13k column to hit force clans vanguards, but also reaches the 18k power column on a Force II circle.

Castor, being able to function both as an attacker as well as a boosting unit with this power boost is very helpful in the deck.

Synergy with Cho-Ou

Fiendish Sword Eradicator Chou-Ou is a RRR out of VBT05, with two very powerful abilities:

First, his ability when placed allows you to bind a unit in a front row, and instantly pull up the unit behind to the front row, ripe for the killing with other Narukami units and Thunder Break.

His second ability is at the end of the battle your Vanguard attacked, if there are no units in the opponent’s front row, counterblast 1 to restand this unit.

While the first ability is very welcome in this Thunderbreak Dragon deck, it’s the second ability that does not work very well with Thunderbreak.

Chou-Ou's second ability allows him to restand after your vanguard attacks, if your opponent has no rear guards in the front row.



While this may seem very odd to you, as Thunderbreak Dragon does exactly that: Clear the front row every turn, the reason why synergy can come across as lacking is the timing of the restand.

As mentioned before, Thunderbreak is at its best if it can take down all of the opponent’s front row at once. In order to take advantage of the opponent not being able to handle small poke attacks, Thunderbreak would like to attack first, before the rear guards attack, in order to seal off the opponent intercepting, the most effective way to handle small attacks that only require 5k shield to guard.

With Chou-Ou, you first have to place him on an Accel circle to gain enough power to hit the vanguard, as well as make sure the opponents front row is full, but full of units that cannot intercept, while still having excess counterblast to spend on his restand skill. Additionally, without significant power on the first attack, and having to wait on trigger power to force significant guard amounts on the second, often times this restand ability will only require 5k power to guard for one of the swings. This results in you effectively paying one whole counterblast just to get 5k worth of shield out of the opponent’s hand.

While it may be the key to victory, a meager amount like that wont swing games in your favor every day. It’s often best to save this restand skill for when the opponent is at 5 damage. Just make sure the opponent wont be intercepting against its attack.

With Gauntlet Buster Dragon, you often would attack with Gauntlet Buster dragon first, in order to threaten the opponent with those extra Criticals, meaning that it would be fairly infrequent for Cho-Ou to be rested at the end of the Vanguard's attack. If you attack with the opponent at low damage, they would take the attack, hoping the open a damage trigger to make your other attacks easier to guard, meaning that, like Thunderbreak Dragon, Cho-Ou's restand skill will not shine very well until the opponent is at 5 damage.

Cho-Ou is, however, a very good inclusion in the Detonix Drill deck, where he works in well with the multiple attacks of Detonix Drill Dragon. Combine him with Rising Phoenix, and you will be able to multi attack by calling Rising Phoenix from the drop zone during the battle phase. After attacking with boost, you can even restand a Cho-Ou on a normal rear guard circle, and revive a Rising Phoenix behind it off of Detonix Drill Dragon's bind skill to get two uses out of boosting Cho-Ou.

Maintaining Hand and Conversion of Field to Hand.

Narukami is a clan that suffers greatly from difficulty to maintain its hand and have enough to guard, making up for it by punishing the opponent for committing to attack the next turn, and therefore require whatever extra help they can get to filter the deck, search their parts, as well as get additional draw power.

Accel II has proven to be an exceptionally important part of the equation for Narukami, as given Narukami's ability to give their rear guards power fairly easily, the drawback to Accel II is limited, allowing the deck to take full use of the draw that Accel II brings with it.

This is, of course, never enough, but VBT05 has brought two RR units to the card pool to help: Supreme Army Eradicator Zuitan and Dragon Dancer RaiRai.

RaiRai comes first. She is a grade 1 with the skill that upon her attack, or an attack she boosted hits a Vanguard, you can search the top 7 cards of your deck and add a Thunder Break Dragon to your hand, and she would move to soul from your rear guard.

While only 8k power, this is just enough to provide boost for your Vanguard against force clans, as well as form a 13k power column with an Accel II.

After her attack, she would be able to change a card from the field into an extra card in your hand, leading to the next ride and more Accel II. Riding into a new Thunderbreak Dragon is effectively using one card to draw one card, so if RaiRai's skill goes off and brings you a Thunderbreak Dragon, you can convert it to a fresh card the very next turn.

As mentioned earlier, she works very well with Dragonic Deathscythe, whom requires soul to function, by going into the soul as part of her effect.

Our second key component is Supreme Army Eradicator Zuitan. Zuitan has two skills that we are here to use. The first skill activates when an opponents rear guard is bound by a skill, giving 5k power to both itself as well as Gauntlet Buster Dragons. While this deck does not play Gauntlet Busters, Zuitan itself can gain a bit of extra power for each unit you bind in the front row, before setting Thunder break up by pulling units from the back row.

Zuitan's second skill functions regardless of who your vanguard is, and is an important part of this deck: At the end of the battle this unit attacked, if the opponent has no rear guards, put this unit into soul to draw 1. This is a common effect seen in several decks, but allows you to play out units without fear of them being retired or you losing card advantage, as they become one card in your hand for guarding the next turn. In this deck, with Thunder Break Dragon, you can clear the opponent’s front row every turn.

Detonix Stinger and its importance in Narukami

Detonix Stinger Dragon is the RRR of Narukami from the VBT03 set. With Accel gift, he is a great first ride, a bind skill with an extra power boost of 5k power, making a 22k power column on an Accel II, as well as a second skill that gives your Vanguard 10k power, and calls itself to rear guard when you ride over Detonix Stinger.

While Detonix Stinger was a great partner to Detonix Drill Dragon, as the power increase to after riding to Detonix Drill would carry over when it restood, one of the best points about Detonix Stinger is its ability to be called to rear guard after being ride upon. This gives Narukami a way to handle one of its greatest weaknesses: deploying units.

As a deck that classically has limited ways to superior call or benefit off of calling, most of your field will be coming out of your hand. Therefore, in order to cover for this weakness, Detonix Stinger is used, a card that gives you one superior call when you ride over it, another attack in a deck that finds it hard to maintain attacking units.

Additonally, by playing stinger with Accel II, you can help maintain both hand and field together by simply riding over this card.

As a unit that not only fit the narukami theme of binding units in the frontrow, but also provides a means of superior call and draw, Detonix Stinger contributes to covering for Narukami's weaknesses and therefore is the main unit we have chosen to play as the second grade 3.

Decklist

4 Thunderbreak Dragon

4 Detonix Stinger Dragon

4 Supreme Army Eradicator Zuitan

4 Dragonic Deathscythe

2 Fiendish Sword Eradicator Cho-Ou

3 Recklessness Dragon

4 Rising Pheonix

4 Funeral Bonfire Eradicator Castor

4 Dragon Dancer RaiRai

4 Dragon Dancer Catharina

3 Zephyr Kid Hayate

1 Old Dragon Mage

4 Wyvern Strike Guld (Draw Trigger/Null Guard)

4 Worm Toxin Eradicator Seiobo

FV Spark Kid Dragoon

Against Accel

Fighting against Accel clans is Narukami's, as well as Thunderbreak's main strength. While you normally would be killing two rear guards a turn with Thunderbreak, against Accel clans you can kill three or even four in one fell swoop!

Against Protect

Against Protect the key point to keep in mind is the 22k power column, in order to be able to hit the opponent with mulitple attacks even if slowed down by a damage trigger. Dragonic Deathscythe on Accel II will hit 22k power. Detonix Stinger Dragon on Accel II will also reach 22k power.



Against Force

Against force, it will be a difficult matchup, but the key point is to get your attacks to be at least 5k to guard(and thus still hitting with a front trigger even if they get a damage trigger), and focus on controlling the amount of units the opponent has, constantly dedicating units to removing them from the board to keep the opponent from mounting high powered attacks against you. Focus a lot on gaining advantage via Zuitan, Detonix Stinger, RaiRai, and Accel II. The strategy against accel clans would be to use Damage triggers to shut down a whole turn, so you must adjust your power gains accordingly.

Versus Spinning Valiant





Basically: Cry.

Your whole Thunder Break mechanic doesn’t work against them

The upside is that you are against a Hero deck, whose defense relies a lot on rear guard abilities giving extra shield power. Use your front row removal to get rid of these issues before they become a problem.

Thunder Break Dragon is a great addition to the Narukami card pool, and a fan favorite. If you like Thunder Break's design, or want to try Narukami without buying too many expensive cards, try to pick up this deck! Its a good starting point to work towards a complete Gauntlet Buster build or Detonix Drill Dragon build over time as well!