Its been a while since the last post. I’ve kinda been on hiatus from Vanguard, just kinda been knocking out video games and anime from my backlog while I still have free time.

So Maelstrom got some new stuff revealed. Some of my earliest content is about Aqua Force so I wanna talk about it. I’ll give both my initial reactions and my first impressions upon doing some proxy testing with these cards. As I’m working off unofficial translations the names and skills could change with the proper ENG release. Keep that in mind if it happens in the future.

Vacuum Reactions

Let’s start with the G3 since he would be the backbone of the deck.

Blue Storm Supreme Dragon, Lordly Maelstrom

Skills: [AUTO](VC):[Counter Blast (1)] When your G unit with “Maelstrom” in its original card name Stride, you may pay the cost. If you do, choose a card from your drop zone, put it into your soul, choose up to one card with “Blue Storm” in its card name from your hand, call it to (RC), and until end of turn, it gets “[AUTO](RC)[1/Turn]:At the end of the battle that this unit attacked, [Stand] this unit.”.

[AUTO](VC) Generation Break 2:[Counter Blast (1)] At the end of your turn, if there were four or more attacks this turn, you may pay the cost. If you do, draw a card, your opponent chooses one of his or her rear-guards, and retires it.

I love almost everything about this. The name, the art, the majority of his skill.

His first skill is a bit of a mixed bag for me. Needing to stride a Maelstrom right away hurts this card for me. With the reveal of the new stride we have 3 options to go into now, but there are pros and cons to all those options. Admiral Maelstrom is highly outdated. On hit draw and your opponent retires 1 is pretty negligible these days. I can’t imagine using it for anything other than first stride (if at all). So many decks have early pressure or fast advantage that relying on the on hit to gain anything is just too unreliable for me to advocate for. In addition needing 4th wave or more means if you can’t build a proper field he becomes completely vanilla. It also starts to get CB heavy with Lordly’s 2 skills, and Admiral needing a CB as well.

Our other option for first stride is Disaster Maelstrom. I will give this card props it made Disaster actually playable. The 5k helps to mitigate damage triggers and make attacks more threatening, and the free G3 is just a straight up plus. Combined with Lordly’s restand skill you can make pretty good first stride pressure. Disaster has his own problems. Needing a Maelstrom in soul can still present issues. Let’s face it, even with Marios to help search him out early, shit happens and you can’t always get him into the drop. So if you get stuck in the situation where you can’t get a Maelstrom into soul he’s a free G3 which is much weaker than having the free G3 and 5k.

It’s not the most horrible detriment to the card, but it certainly limits it. I can imagine wanting to use any number of other strides for various reasons, but the turns become much weaker because I don’t get a restanding rear from Lordly’s skill.

The other con is that Maelstrom can only give the restand skill to the unit he calls . So we don’t get the Altmile clause where we can call a unit and then choose any Blue Storm to gain the restand ability. This does create limitations. We’re gonna have to be more conscious about how our field is set up to take full advantage of the restand ability. And of course if you just plain don’t have a good call target the skill dies.

Its not all bad of course. For one Rascal Sweeper is a position swapper, so since the restand isn’t wave restricted you have the option of calling your restand target to Rascal’s column. There’s also the new Grade 2 (we’ll get to him) who can attack from the back row. So there are ways to keep spaces open for restand targets. And as stated with Disaster if you can set up the 5k with your restand target you can make multiple attacks for solid numbers first stride, while plussing. So all in all I think the concept of the skill is strong, the limitations balance it out to a medium instead.

The 2nd skill though is just great. Its an easy plus. It helps the ever crippling issue of not being able to find shit, and it also nets you a retire. With the stride skill restand 4+ attacks is relatively easy, though decks with Denial ability can shut that down pretty quickly. But I can’t complain too much about an easy plus. Being able to gain more cards, while taking away cards from your opponent, is always good.

Blue Storm Breaking Dragon, Engulf Maelstrom

Skills: [CONT](VC) Wave-4th time only:For the battle that this unit attacked, your opponent cannot call cards from hand and G zone to (GC) with a grade less than the number of cards with “Maelstrom” in their card names in your soul.

[ACT](VC)[1/Turn]:[Choose a face down card from your G zone, and turn it face up] If the number of face up cards with “Maelstrom” in their card names in your G zone is two or more, this unit gets [Power]+5000/[Critical]+1 until end of turn.

God that’s a sexy looking dragon.

I find it strange that his first skill is restricted to 4th wave only. Its a very weird quirk that makes it weirdly restrictive for no real reason. Its not like Wailing Thavas where the more attacks you make the more powerful he becomes. It’s not too major in the grand scheme of things, its just weird. The actual skill itself is good through. It seems Bushi decided to stick with the “Maelstrom in soul” they started with Disaster so since guard restricting is a thing Maelstrom did in his Glory days they merged the two to have a more comprehensive restrict. So your opponent cannot guard with, from hand or gzone, grades lower than the Maelstroms in your soul. Specifically being lower I do get, cause otherwise he would auto restrict G0s with no effort. I know some people will freak out at the prospect of being able stop hand guards and G-guards but really getting 5 Maelstroms in soul, in a timely fashion, seems like magical Christmas land to me. Most commonly you will probably be trucking with 2-3 in soul, which is still pretty good.

His second skill gies him +5k/1 crit for a generic flip, and having 2 face up Maelstroms in the Gzone. Again I’m not fond of needing to have face up Maelstroms. If circumstances prevent you from striding a Maelstrom first stride you pretty much lose access to this card. I kinda wish it was just GB3 instead, the first skill is what makes that 5k/crit matter and that’s already contingent on your having several Maelstroms to put in your soul so I don’t know why they had to force another restriction onto it. I guess they wanted to leave the door open for using it first stride, but its not really effective there so since Maelstrom already has a couple of early options they shoulda just loosened the restrictions in exchange for it being a hard GB3.

Overall I do think its a neat card. With a boost this can easily reach 36k+ so being cut off from 1s and 0s (and sometimes 2s if you got lucky with dropping Maelstroms) does make it harder to guard even with G-guards. At the same time a lot of stronger decks already have access to large G-guards so Engulf being a 31k base makes him a lot weaker against them.

Blue Storm Soldier, Eldermoss

[AUTO]:When this unit is placed on (VC) or (RC), choose up to one card from your hand, reveal it, and if that card or your vanguard is not a card with “Maelstrom” in its card name, this unit gets [Power]-5000 until end of turn.

[ACT](RC)[1/Turn]:[Counter Blast (1) & Choose a card with “Maelstrom” in its card name from your drop zone, and put it into your soul] Until end of turn, this unit can attack from the back row, and it gets [Power]+4000.

This card is pretty interesting. Its a natural 10k which is always nice. Needing to reveal or have a Maelstrom Vanguard or else he loses 5k is kinda annoying but in the grand scheme isn’t really a big deal. Once you reach G3 he will always be 10k and unless you need to ride him and don’t have a Maelstorm in hand losing 5k at G2 probably won’t matter much.

His second skill allows you to turn him into a 14k back row attacker. While it doesn’t play all that great with Rascal, he does give Lordly’s stride skill more flexibility. Being able to just pop him in the back with the restand skill gives you a little more wiggle room to commit early and still use Lordly’s skill later. The obvious con is that you must put a Maelstrom into your soul to get this back row attack. Like I said with Disaster, shit happens. If you couldn’t get Maelstrom into the drop early it could snowball out to this card being a vanilla 10k. I understand they wanted ways to get Maelstrom into the soul but making it a cost instead of a part of the effect is once again an unnecessary restriction that needlessly limits this card. It definitely looks impressive but the practicality of getting your Maelstroms into the drop to fuel him can cause problems for no real reason.

Initial Testing Reactions

Now that I’ve kinda looked at the cards just on their own merits I wanna take some time to talk about my initial testing results, since that was kinda my impetus for finally writing them up.

I played 4 or 5 games against Spikes proxying their new GBT-13 stuff (Shoutout to Living Proof check out his stuff here) so bear that in mind as it does affect my first hands on impressions.

Lordly Maelstrom: So far this card has been living up to my expectations pretty well. I managed to ride him pretty consistantly thanks to Marios letting me search early. As expected having a restander with Disaster’s 5k, alongside a bunch of easy 12ks like Theta and Gregorios meant I could put on pretty strong first stride pressure. Alongside just general early rush I could put my opponent in a pinch pretty easily. The Gb2 let me maintain a pretty consistent hand and gave me options to replace any rears being harassed and the retire did help to stop the new Rising’s GB2. Pretty happy with him so far, though needing to stride a Maelstrom did start becoming a problem when I starting doing some Goldfish sessions. Suddenly when I was testing just on my own I stopped drawing Maelstroms early and Marios kept missing. So I kept having to use Thavas instead cause Disaster wouldn’t get the 5k. I might try cramming in Admiral just for those situations, though being expensive IRL and on hit in game is several points against him. I’ll figure it out as I iron out my list.

Engulf Maelstrom: I think I’ve used him once so far? This is largely due to Spikes having a strong G-guard in Linus. Marios never left the field so my Engulfs could have reached 36k but Linus alone is already an easy 2 pass. I generally only had 2 Maelstroms in my soul so Linus plus a G2 is 3 to pass which is generally pretty safe. Really it just made me wish Maelstrom’s stride skill was generic so I could use him with Wailing. I still think its worth having at least 1 copy, both to just force extra attacks through the stride skill and as a Wailing follow up (or lead in) since they both force G-guards. If I ever make it to magical Christmas land with 5 Maelstroms in soul I’ll put up video evidence.

Eldermoss: Honestly that put a Maelstrom into soul cost is a killer for this guy. The only ways Maelstrom generally gets there is stride/pg cost or by healing him out of damage. Because of that its hard to be able to proc him at will, which hurts his viability because having a vanilla 10k is pretty pointless. He seemed really cool, but since Rascal can already enable you to call your restand target to the back I think the restrictive cost makes him a poor card. Its a shame being a natural 10k makes him a little more resistant to early bullying, and more attacks is never bad. Oh well, maybe Maelstrom will get some other cool cards to make up for this.

Edit: Thinking about it more you can soul blast the Maelstroms already in soul out and Eldermoss em back in. I don’t think this actually fixes the fundamental issue because it requires more moving parts but I thought I’d mention it

That’s it for this post. As always thanks for reading comments and criticism welcome ect ect. I’ll come back out of my hidey hole when we get Valeos related reveals.