Fundamentals: Perfect Guard

Yahallo lads and ladettes, its me its your best friend, its CanYouSayG, and you’re reading the CanYouSayBlog, where we learn how to be a better Cardfighter.

Today, we will be discussing Perfect Guards, and using them.

As part of our series discussing some of the basic fundamentals of Vanguard, a lot of the discussion may be things you already know as a veteran player, but it never hurts to practice and refresh your knowledge of the basics

Perfect guards are a core aspect of Vanguard, and have been around since the beginning with BT01, and refers to the commonly seen ability of: When placed on Guardian circle, by discarding one card, that attack does not hit.

Over the years, Perfect guards, sometimes called Null Guards, have changed to take different shapes and forms, from being granted subclass in their name, to having the ability to countercharge in the earlier half of Vanguard G, to gaining clan keyword abilities to sometimes return to hand, sometimes do additional unique effects in the later half of G, to most recently becoming Draw triggers to free up main deck space even further!







However, these perfect guards have always had the same ability to negate attacks by spending itself and discarding one, and as such, learning how to make the most of perfect guards is one of the fundamental skills in Vanguard.

Perfect guards are both a very powerful effect as well as a very costly effect. While it can stop any amount of power and even more importantly, potential power from drive checks, it does also cost two cards to use and will be limited in number of times it can be used in a game.

While some decks do have ways of recycling and retrieving perfect guards, and others options to add some to hand, most decks will only have 4 perfect guards in the deck, and even fewer in hand at any one point in the game.

The key point in playing Perfect guards is timing and planning, both thinking hard about whether or not a perfect guard will be effective at this point in time, and when you are willing to spend your guard vent or not.

Timing of Perfect Guard playing:



One common play for beginners is during the course of the game, guard mostly with high shield value, and only towards the end of the game in the last few turns spend perfect guards, sometimes three or four in a single turn.

This play is commonly done because perfect guards something that are absolute in a game, something not left to chance nor the unknown. If you don’t know what the opponent deck does or sometimes are not as experienced in the game, you won’t know what potential power lines the opponent will be putting out. This leads to you wanting to always be ready for the high power that they may or may not be able to get, and save perfect guards for them.

Another reason for this thinking is simply game escalation and how the game progresses. In the early game, a 15k power attack can be considered very difficult to guard due to lack of resources and many more chances for both players to no guard, but towards the end of the game a 15k power attack is nothing! Thinking with this in mind, it is natural to expect the highest power attacks to come later in the game, right towards the final few turns.

After all the turn when you put all the effort into finishing the opponent is the final turn!

This leads to a situation where in the middle game, a lot of high value shield, low value shield, and perfect guards are in the hand, but by spending only high value shield, you end up with a hand of low value shield and perfect guards, forcing you to spend up your perfect guards against a turn that potentially did not have as high power as other turns!

One of the best advice I have received in the past was to think of Perfect Guards not as a special effect, but also as just a high shield value.

So, against a 33k power attack, an attack that would require 25k shield, I could either use up a 25k shield (often 15k + 10k), or use a perfect guard + one more card. If I discarded a 5k shield grade 2 unit to the perfect guard, the perfect guard effectively became my 5th to 8th copy of heal trigger in the deck. If I discarded a 10k unit, the perfect guard would have replaced my 15k shield, giving me one more chance to use up only one card to guard an or so attack that requires 15k or 20k shield with one card.

Of course, should the opportunity arise for using perfect guards as much higher shield value, that is just a testament to how effective perfect guards are.

When guarding effectively, you want to be maximizing the number of times you guard with only one card, and no guard or perfect guard as many attacks you need to guard with 2 or more cards. Therefore, unless you are planning to save your perfect guards and no guards for a later stage of the game, as soon as there is an attack that requires 2 or more cards to guard, you want to consider using your perfect guard there and then, or consider if you want to be guarding with your other options.

Another important point about perfect guards is that they effectively cover for “potential power” from drive checks as well.

When you guard an attack for “two triggers to pass”, you have guarded with more than the needed amount to stop the attack, as you have taken into account the chances of the opponent becoming a higher power during drive checks. When spending perfect guards to guard the Vanguard, this also accommodates the potential power of the drive checks, giving you more “shield value used” for two cards.

If you use up high shield value first on guarding with two cards for attacks, not only will you run out of shield faster, but there will be less chances to make maximum use of your perfect guards in later turns, as each perfect guard might have to be spent to guard an attack that can be guarded for 25k or even less shield, highly ineffective guarding.

As the turns progress, both players not only grade up, have more chances to drive check more triggers, but also have built their board states to maximize power output, creating a transition towards higher and higher power numbers to be considered “big” ,the concept of power scaling.

When factoring in power scaling, do remember how what constitutes “high power” in the early game can be a good timing for use of a perfect guard, despite that same power number not being considered very “high” in the later turns.

After all, its still the same one damage.

Thinking about No Guarding VS Perfect Guarding

Some people think about a game of vanguard as making the opponent say no guard six times.

No guarding gives you damage, but allows you to ignore the power on a single attack. It doesn’t matter if an attack is 15k or 150k power once its no guarded, it just deals damage equal to its critical.

Of course, by adding critical you can say no guard less often, and by adding more and more power it becomes difficult to guard the attack, and guard restrict makes it harder to guard the attack and thus more likely to hit, heal triggers throwing the number out the window altogether as well, but the fundamental concept is to think you can only say no guard six times.

Perfect guards are a great addition to this concept because it allows you to guard an otherwise unblock able attack, making certain attacks that would hit and thus reduce your number of no guards to lose. This increases the number of times the opponent has to hit you with an overwhelming amount of power (and/or other effects) in order to for you to go to six damage.

Vanguard is a game about making the opponent say no guard six times, not a game of how many perfect guards you can accumulate into your hand.

When there is a very large power number that is nigh unblock able, the only options are no guard or perfect guard. Therefore, perfect guards can be thought of as additional times you can perfect/no guard. When faced with a huge power number, you can either take the damage and go closer to death knowing your perfect guard will be there for you next turn (and one more counterblast), or use up your perfect guard and be safe knowing you have saved one more chance for you to no guard a very high powered attack.

While critical triggers and heals and other factors of course do very much affect this during the course of a game, be sure to see your perfect guards also as additional chances to no guard.

Planning to Perfect Guard

With perfect guards, the timing of playing them should not exclusively be towards the end of the game, but played in anticipation of the opponents high power and difficult to guard attacks.

For this point your gameplay should take into consideration what your opponent’s deck can and will do. Guarding a 30k power attack with a perfect guard one turn only for that same column to become 50 or 60k power the next turn is very different from knowing that column will be gaining power and saving the no guard/perfect guard for next turn.



Playing in conjunction with the previous point about aiming to no guard or perfect guard very high powered attacks, you want to be aware of where and when your opponent will be pushing out the highest power, and whether that power is sustainable or not. This dictates whether or not you can spend your no guards/perfect guards now or have to save them for later.

Instead of holding onto the perfect guards until the last moment possible, instead think about when you will need to be using them. Imagine what the field will be next turn and the turn after that and try to determine when the most ideal time to use a null guard will be.

Another point to consider when planning ahead with perfect guards is this allows you to potentially plan to use perfect guards that are not already in your hand. Given enough time, cards in your deck will eventually make your way into your hand through drive checks and abilities. If the chances are high, or perhaps the only way to victory is to bet your chances of drive/drawing into a perfect guard and the chances of so are high enough, planning ahead to see where to use the perfect guard can be beneficial to your game plan.

In planning to use Perfect Guards, the key point is to aim to no guard the highest power, perfect guard the second highest powers, and then guard the lower powers.



This is because if you save your perfect guards for the highest power output of the opponent, they will not need to put as much effort or abilities into creating the high power after that for the attack to hit.

When perfect guarding another point to take into consideration is how your opponent will interpret that use of perfect guard.

Will they see it as a sign that you can guard with nothing else and proceed to maintain their attacks at lower power to get you to spend the perfect guards ineffectively?

Or Will they interpret you using your perfect guards as just guarding effectively and see that you still have a lot of high shield value cards in your hand, forcing them to spend costs and formation on keeping their power values high?

Conclusion

Today we talked a bit about some of the fundamentals in when to use our perfect guards: Timing, Planning, and factoring in No Guarding attacks.

Join us back again on the CanYouSayBlog, where we learn how to be a better cardfighter, this wednesday when we discuss how to be a better community.