Fundamentals: Guard

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Today we are continuing our series on fundamentals, where we go over some of the core concepts in Vanguard. For veterans of the game you may know many of the concepts we are discussing, but it is always beneficial to review your fundamentals.

Today, we will be discussing calculating guard amount, how much you need to guard an attack, as well as using this to plan your guarding of attacks.

Calculating Guard Value

When the opponent attacks you, it's important to guard effectively, using the resources available to you optimally in order to guard the most possible number of attacks.

One of the common beginner mistakes is guarding attacks first and only no guarding when they have no cards in hand, a play style I’m sure most veterans will share that they also had in their early days of their play. Another common mistake would be to not plan out guarding for that turn, guarding the large attacks, while no guarding smaller lower powered attacks.

As the game progresses, both players have access to more cards and more effects, making attacks harder and harder to guard, while having more and more cards to block said attacks.

Therefore, it is good practice to learn and refine how to calculate your power lines effectively and swiftly, so you can easily pick out which attacks to guard, which attacks to no guard, and have an idea of what you need to be preparing to guard next turn.

The concept of the “Power Line”, “Magic Number” is a concept that will stay with you throughout your career in Vanguard. It is the concept that as all shield value is in increments of 5k power (5k, 10k, 15k, 20k, etc), only increments of 5k power above the opponent unit’s power matter to increase the amount of guard needed to block the attack. For this reason, how much power is used to guard the attack is the more important number in gameplay.

While speed of calculation of power does come with more practice and experience in the game, one of the tricks I have come across over the years is to calculate by adding or subtracting power.

For example if you are a force clan with base power of 13k power, you can calculate the amount needed to guard an attack by subtracting 8k from it.



Example: 22k Power Attack. 22 - 8 = 14, so 10k or more shield is needed to guard that attack. As shield value is only in increments of 5k, this requires 10k shield.

Compare this to 23k power attack. 23 - 8 = 15, so 15k shield is required.

Another example: 36 power attack: 36 - 8 = 28. Thus the amount of shield right below this is 25k shield. Another 2k power and it would require 30k shield.

As this amount would be the power to guard an attack before triggers, add another 10k power to this amount to guard for 2 triggers to pass.

Example: 51k Vanguard Attack: 51 -8 (one to pass) + 10 (second trigger chance) = 53k shield. Therefore a 50k guard would put you at 63k power, making it a two triggers to pass.

There are multiple ways of calculating out how much power is needed to guard, so be sure to find the one that suits you best.

Although calculating out how much shield is needed to guard, in more casual tournaments or while playing with friends its often good practice to calculate out the guard value for both players attacks, and communicate with those numbers.

Example: With boost this is 40k power, so 30k shield to guard since your vanguard is 12k

Without boost I’m attacking with 61k power. Since your Vanguard has a 5k trigger to be 16k, this makes it 50k shield to guard.

Calculating out how much power is needed to guard an attack will not only help you understand how to guard for future games, it also helps you plan out your own attacks and think about how the opponent will guard. Seeing an opponent place a 20k shield on an attack that only requires 10k shield tells you the opponent is running out of options to guard. Time to press that attack!

Considering Trigger Power

In Vanguard, due to the nature of triggers, it's important to factor in the potential power from triggers.

With drive checks, any power line can have its power line increased by increments of power given by the trigger, including the vanguard. Therefore, it's important to take this into consideration when planning how to guard your opponents turn.

As each power line will be increased by 5k or 10k according to the trigger, you can take this into consideration by having an extra 10k shield in your hand that you know will be used for one of the power lines. Instead of having to recalculate out the amount to guard again, think how many triggers gave power and add those into the amount needed to guard.



For example: the remaining rear guard currently has an attack that requires 15k to guard. After guarding the vanguard, you have the 15k shield in hand, while also having another 10k shield that you know will be used to guard the last attack if the opponent opens a trigger.

However, as you do need to guard the Vanguard attack first, this potential power on a rear guard should be considered before guarding the Vanguard, not when that power is more than you can handle.

Factoring in trigger power also works the other way, with damage triggers. If you plan to no guard, be sure to plan where you want to no guard an attack, as a damage trigger will reduce guard to block attacks. When planning around opening a damage trigger or potentially opening a damage trigger, try to image how much guard would be used for each attack, and how a single damage trigger would change how much guard would be used for each attack.

Example: The opponent has two accel circles, with all the attacks requiring 15k shield to guard. However, if you no guard the vanguard and open a damage trigger, suddenly all of those attacks only require 5k power of guard. Therefore saving you a lot of shield value for future turns as well as stopping yourself from going to higher amounts of damage.

Image is the road to victory.

Guarding Effectively, Planning your guards

In Vanguard, guarding effectively means guarding the attacks that require the least amount of guard and using each shield value to its maximum potential. Against an attack that requires 10k to guard, you usually want to aim be using 10k shield, not 15k or 20k shields to guard that attack. This is so you can use the higher value shield to guard higher powered attacks later on in the game.

Additionally, when guarding attacks you want to be guarding the smaller attacks, while no guarding the larger attacks.

If the opponents two rear guards each require 40k guard and 60k guard respectively, you don’t want to be guarding the 60k guard, you would rather spend 40k to guard.

After all, the outcome at the end of the turn will be the same: you taking one damage and the other attack being guarded, but the outcome that can be changed is how much shield you did spend.

Combine this with damage triggers, as even if you did open a damage trigger the 60k to guard would only become a 50k to guard, still more than the 40k, and you can see why you would rather guard the smaller attack.

Thus, when planning to guard, it's an important practice to assess how much guard is required for each attack, and planning out which attacks you want to guard, which attacks you don’t want to guard, and how to spend the least amount of guard for each turn. Guarding the smaller attacks, no guarding equal power attacks and high powered attacks to wait for damage triggers is a key concept of playing vanguard.

Thinking about guard in number of cards

When guarding, if you have infinite resources, you would almost always prioritize the most efficient way of guarding by spending only the exact amount of guarded needed.

However, in the game of Vanguard, the amount of resources and cards in hand vary from turn to turn, depending on how you attack, call, guard, and open triggers.

When thinking about how each attack is guarded, be sure to think about each power line and be aware of what shield values are available in the opponents hand.

As shield value is highest on triggers as well as lowest on higher grades, the combination of these two is what creates an efficient guard if the attack cannot be guarded by a single card. In a situation where an attack cannot be guarded with a single card, the attack is more likely to be no guarded the less cards in the opponents hand.

As the highest shield value is 20k shield, a 25k to guard is two cards to guard. Additionally, as there are only 4 (or less) 20k guards in the deck, even 20k to guard attacks fall into the two or more cards to guard territory.

However, once you pass the line to become two cards to guard, it requires far more power to hit the three cards to guard line, as not only can a 25k shield be guarded with a 20k and a 5k, but also between 15k and 15k, or 15k and 10k. A 35k to guard attack is still 20k + 15k to guard, still within the realms of guarding with two cards. This concept is also applicable in applying trigger power, as if you had a 10k and 15k to guard column, you would allocate power to make one of the columns two cards to guard.

This should also factor into how you guard, as while you want to be guarding efficiently with your shield value, you also want to factor into plan how many cards you are using to guard, as each extra card you use speeds up the opponents road to victory.

This concept of guarding in numbers and aiming to guard with as few cards as possible combines with the previous concepts to also lead into the discussion of the concept of thinking about guard in card quality in addition to quantity, as cards with high card power (G2, G3 cards) tend to have lower shield value, as well as the concept of attacking in a way to bait the opponent into guarding effectively, but diminishing their card quality for future turns by having them drop G2 units. This is a discussion for another day.

Conclusion

Today we have discussed guarding attacks: Calculating Guard Values, Planning guard, Factoring Triggers, Guarding Effectively, and Guard Quantity. Each attack and every guard is a step in the back and forth of a Vanguard fight, and understanding each guard of your own or your opponents is another step towards your victory

Be sure to join us back soon as we discuss the upcoming 2020 year, what it will hold, as well as some of our hopes and dreams for next years Vanguard