Hey lads and ladettes, its me, its your best friend CanYouSayG, and today we will be going over the developments in Premium Standard over the past couple weeks!

Its been a hectic couple weeks with Bushiroad Championship Series regionals happening all over the globe, showing development in the Americas, Europe, as well as Asia. This, combined with the Grand Prix Akihabara in Japan being Japan's first debut into the Premium Standard world stage, this past month has had a lot of very fun and interesting developments for the world of Premium Standard!

Answering questions such as why this guy is suddenly played in almost every deck



We start todays article discussing one of the archetypes that is rising in popularity: Accel Ripples!



The accel ripple deck functions off of early game aggression with Pavroth, and followed up by riding into a unit with Accel Gift, then using Oddysseus to re-ride into your legion. This give you access to both Imaginary Gift Accel AND your legion in the same turn!

First up is Joel Andrew Suryadi's winning decklist from BCS Singapore, coming in 2nd place, sealing a slot at worlds.

As you can see, the deck uses Storm Rider Diamantes with Oddyseus to achieve the combo. Of note is using the new Light Signals Penguin soldier with Oddysseus. Call Penguin, rest it to give 5k power to the same column, then send it to soul with Oddyseus.

One of the interesting things this deck can do is also have easier access to Ultimate Stride, with Genovious and Miltiades both being able to be used as cost once you are in legion!

Tidal assault, Sea turtles, and Argos all make for an agressive early game.

The next build we will be looking at is a lot of new development as brought to us by Tenma.



Check out the video analysing the deck below!

【天馬】アクアフォース（プレミアムスタンダード） - YouTube

This deck has a lot more going on than Joel's winning decklist, so its important to have a look as to what can and cannot be applied further.

Instead of Diamantes, this deck instead takes the trial deck card Gontines as their accel circle provider, for the purpose of functioning without accel circle and without counter blast. In Oddyseus-Diamantes turns, its often too common to call Diamantes to your new Accel circle, which can limit the full use of it. By playing Gontines, you can instead call to front row for smaller attacks, putting multiple attackers such as Argos, Tidal Assault, etc in the accel circle.

Another new tech is using Starless and Tempest Boarder in the deck. The condition to draw additional cards with Miltiades is often very difficult, as the ripple deck can easily field attackers but has a bit more of a difficult time putting out backrow, especially against retire based clans. This is solved by using the backrow as attackers, and swapping places during battle phase, easily filling your board with more and more attacks while enabling both of Miltiades's effects.

The biggest tech and development is the inclusion of Lynpia.

Many have overlooked this card, as it seems like direct support for Blue Storm Legion, but in fact it is general legion support.

With the cost of CB1, this unit becomes a 12k attacker that draws a card. This, combined with Galfelia and Miltiades's access to easy counter charge makes this card an excellent addition to the deck. Not to mention you can easily get its wave 3 condition off with Accel circles, as it doesnt need to swap or restand before being the 3rd attack... and to be restand again by Miltiades.

Just attacking with this, drawing, attacking with Miltiades and drawing and CC while restanding Lynpia, and then attacking and drawing another card again is already 3 card advantage, for the cost of cb1! Before your drive checks!

Tenma uses 3 copies of Galfelia to act as counter charge, but it is also main phase ACT soul blast, meaning you can use it to soul blast out legion parts and other cards you want to put back into the deck the turn you aim for legion!

Use Lympia to draw cards, maintain an offence, while legioning back triggers and key parts, and use Galfelia to soul blast out any legion parts you want when you re-ride for more accel gift, so your Genovious and Miltiades never end up in soul

This cumulates to our final entry in the development of Ripples for the month; Rickson Choo's BCS Malaysia Top 16 Lympia Ripples.

This deck incorporates the addition of Lympia to maintain hand advantage with the steady offence of Joels build, while playing a strong stride style game as well.

A key point in this deck in the inclusion of the OLD light signal penguin soldier to get extra card draw and soul blast, as well as playing more Tear Knight Theo to get strong boosters out for Pavroth early in the game.

An interesting change for this deck is giving up the ripple FV entirely, instead going for the draw of Elric, in the words of Rickson himself: "To get 12 chances to draw Oddyseus early"

Our next deck to discuss is Nova Grapplers

This is David Le's Nova Grapplers which he piloted to the Top 8 of BCS Houston.

This is an interesting deck, as you may notice the bulk of the main decks g1 and g2 lineup is directly from Standard!

Burst Raizer, Cool Hank, High Powered Raizer Custom all make for great units to restand your rear guards non stop! This style uses less G-Era Victor specific cards to achieve multiple attacks, and instead leans towards the newer cards to achieve the similar results.

The newest tech David Le has been playing is Quad Gigas and Envoy of Riteousness Crystaldevil. These two cards allow for more pressure and multiple attacks once you get into the stride timing of games. Quad Gigas is especially potent with the column of Cool Hank + Raizer Custom! By restanding Cool Hank, Raizer custom restands, giving Cool hank enough power to hit V. This makes the opponent have to guard all the attacks, especially painful for decks low on hand to do so.

Nova grapplers continue to develop further and further with their large card pool. Will we see anything meta definining in the near future? Only time will tell.

Next is David Senokossoff's Blau deck, which went 5-3 in Swiss at BCS Atlanta. The deck shows off how well the new front triggers work alongside the restanding power of Blau!

At the moment there is no other Blau winning recipies, so we will have to wait to see how they end up in the meta.

The next deck we will be discussing is Trois-Ange.

Winner, 2nd place WGP Singapore

Winner: BCS Houston

Winner: GP Akiba Shop Qualifier

The Trois-Ange Deck has not evolved very much since last month, but it still continues to hold its iron grip over the format as a whole. Winning the dice roll and going first and riding up to g3 and then striding when the opponent is G1 is far too impactful.

As of now, it does not seem to have any clear weaknesses in the meta aside from Oracle Gyze.

Oracle Gyze

Oracle Gyze continues its top slot in the meta once again, winning BCS Singapore, WGP Singapore, BCS Malaysia, BCS Chicago, and being the solid bulk of BCS Tops, including London, Chicago, Richmond.

No signfiicant developments in Oracle Gyze tech this month, but its still the top dog to fight in Premium.

We now move onto the third of the four top dogs in Premium Standard at the moment: Luard.

GP Akiba Qualifier won by Esse

GP Akiba Qualifier

BCS Malaysia 4th place Benjamin Russel Thaver

Below is a link to Soramame's build of Blaster; which won Grand Prix Akiba.It is almost identical to the above decklist.

トレカの洞窟 タワー店 on Twitter: "GPAKIBA2018 TOP4 デッキリスト公開② お二人ずつ公開しております。そらまめさんと涼さんのデッキリストはこちらです。 #ヴァンガード #ヴァンガードデッキ紹介… "

As well as a link to BCS Houston winner Blaster Luard.

Winner BCS 2018 Houston Premium, Blaster Luard Deck Profile - YouTube

Luard continues its reign on top of the meta, partly in virtue to lacking weaknesses in the meta, being able to keep up the early game with most aggressive decks, and having one of the best matchups against Oracle Gyze thanks to Phantom Blaster Diablo being able to go in for the 2 unblockable damage.

At the moment, there are the two directions people build Luard decks in: playing more Nemain for early game deployment and ease of using Ogma, and playing Slap Tail Dragon. Both are legitimate directions for the deck. Give both a try before choosing which one you want, as both are showing multiple wins.

Blaster Dark and Blaster Javelin have solidified themselves as staples in the luard deck, both for early game management as well as being solid, splashable cards with the increased sheld/power ratings of V Series.

Cursed Eye Raven is clearly a staple, but more and more players are playing more 15k G0 shields to keep up their early game defence.

Of interesting note is Blaster Aggro and its new development.

No deck pic avaiable, but this is a example decklist.

Blaster aggro has been showing some interesting development over the past few weeks, namely the inclusion of Dragfall Luard and Nightmare Painter (BT04).

The intial concept is still there; to fill the field early and create an assault while maintaining hand and offense, lead by Blaster Dark's twin drive and Hellheim/Macha + Force markers to do multiple high power attacks.

The inclusion of Dragfall Luard may surprise some, but its meant as a backup for stride, as well as a backup for Ultimate Stride into Ultima!

Dragfall luardo is a one card Ultimate Stride when you need it, so its place as a finisher must not be underestimated.

The inclusion of old Nightmare Painter may surprise some, but its to combo with Phantom Blaster Dragon. On the turn you ride to g3, you can use Phantom Blaster Dragon's Damned Charging Lance to power up and get a crit while destroying your opponents field. However, without much damage, the extra crit is not very threatening.

This is solved by using Phantom Blaster Dragon's damage dealing ability to push the opponent to 3 or 4 damage, where they are forced to guard the 28k+Critical+Boost attack of Phantom Blaster Dragon before any of their card advantage engines come online, a devastating move for most. At the cost of extra hand, you wouldnt mind, as it means the opponent will not be able to do as much next turn.

Blaster Aggro has not won any big events, but it is very much on the uprising trend, espeically in Asia regions, winning and showing up at medium to small sized locals events. Be sure to be on the watch out for this agressive deck.

Spike Brothers

Spike Brothers is on a rise in both popularity and tech!

First up is Dominic Juan's winning decklist from BCS Richmond



Spike Brothers have been consistently topping in the Americas and Europe over the past month, but have yet to make a splash in Asian regions.

Following in the footsteps of Living Proof and his success at ARG Nationals, the use of the deck has increased, and Spike Brothers have become a solid beatdown deck.

Our next decklist to be featured is Cyrille Boneau's Winning decklist from BCS London.

The new change this deck uses is bringing in Bad End Dragger for even higher power pumps via searching out Imaginary Gift units and combining their power increase via the way of Good End Dragger. By using its ability on a field with no empty rear guard circles, you ride both units you searched out, you can ride both G3 units, giving you either two imaginary gift or activating your break ride.

Do note that there is a new ruling for Good End Dragger, as when you ride two G3, you ride each one at a time, so you can either ride a Bad End Dragger + Seigfried to get 1 gift and 2 break ride, or 2 Seigfried to get 1 Break Ride and 2 Gift





Spike Brothers continues its position as a powerhouse of the format, but will this be reflected in the eastern regions of the world?



Next up is the Ichikishima-Silent Tom deck, combining Ichikishima and Silent tom together to create unblockable attacks to end the opponent.

First up we have a winning Ichikishima Tom build from GP Akiba.

In an effort to counter Oracle-Gyze, many players in Japan have started to play Heat Element Bobo, to give yourself more cost in the matchup where you would usually be denied a lot of cost.

This deck plays a full 12 criticals, using criticals to drive the early game and create the winning image of Ichikishima + Silent Tom = Win.

Note the use of Psychic Bird to draw into Silent Tom, as well as White Hare of Inaba to further accelerate the 2 G3 in soul condition for Victorious Deer, in a similar vein to Shadow Paladin Blasters.

Another example of Ichikishima-Tom, this time using the Tsukuyomi engine to filter through the deck at a faster rate, setting up criticals to finish the opponent from low damage.

This style has been used also in Japan at GP Akiba, but has not overtaken the imperial daughter based style in popularity.

The third style of Ichiki-Tom we will be going over is the Susanou/Oracle based style, piloted by Mohammed Abumahula in BCS London to 3rd place.

By putting more emphasis on power and early game plays, this deck aims to create the winning image not by setting up via digging up criticals alone (but is as much able to do so) but by also putting effort into hitting consistently and early, pushing the opponent with power and speed to set the opponent at the 4-5 damage needed to use the Ichikishima-Silent tom combo to win.

Next we will be going over Dark Irregulars.

For more extensive coverage of Dark Irregulars and their deck development, check out last months article

This is Suga's Dark Irregulars deckbuild used to come in 4th at GP Akiba finals, and was one of the only Dark Irregulars to be played at the event.

Although NoLifeKingAssasin combo has been touted as one of the top dogs of the format, it has not left any winning results since its debut in early September, missing out in Singapore and not topping in other locations. Perhaps the deck has yet to catch on, or its existence is being held back by Oracle Gyze, who knows?



Of note there seems to be two builds of NoLifeKing Assasin prevalent at the moment, one with 8 G3, and one with only NoLifeKing as its G3s.

Royal Paladins

Dantes's Top 4 Royal Paladin Alfred-Sing-Excalupate build

Ryou's GP Akiba 2nd place Alfred Blaster

Blaster decks, since their recent success at the ARG Circuit series, have not been winning as much in the west, but have come to popularity in Japan once again.

Ryou's build for Blasters is very similar to the Top 16 decklists from ARG Nationals, and clearly draws inspiration from them. However, the biggest change is the reduced reliance on Tarna, cutting numbers down to one and using the FV Elron to search it out when going first. A very potent combo as Blaster Javelin allows for easy deployment of your Floral Paladin Flogals as well as Packgal to access much needed CounterCharge.

Bobo has a rather interesting use in getting more trigger checks, as when you call Bobo, you CC and SC, but also get one damage which activates triggers. Use this to get a sneaky extra few trigger checks to pump up blaster blade's power.

The build carries the heavily used concepts of Tarna-Alfred, Blaster Javelin to search Flogals/Packgal, and using Force markers on the circle with Llew to have multiple high powered attacks from previous builds and cuts the number of G3 and G1 to make space for the extremely packed G2 slot.

Dante's build that uses Thing Saver to deliver 42k powered multiple attacks for the finish is another previously covered concept, but the new adaptation this deck has is Exculpate The Blaster, giving you access to a searchable stride fodder while providing the 14k defence, Blaster name to get more multiple attacks through Blaster Friend Barcgal, and having another restander to follow the Sing Saver turn. Imagine Double-Restanding with 1 or 2 force with Thing Saver, then following it up the exact next turn with Exculpate restanding with 2-3 force! Not to mention that Exculpate is searchable thanks to Wingal Brave

Granblue

Our second to last deck to be discussed today is the pirates of the Seven Seas: Granblue.

Granblue, while not popular in Americas or Japan, has been showing very high consistency in the European regions, using Skull Dragon to deliver multiple high powered devastating attacks, combined with Protect and ample draw to maintain defence even against guard restrict based decks such as Ichi-Tom, and using G-Guardian into perfect guard when necessary to hold its own against other high power based decks.

Top 16 BCS Malaysia Granblue

www.youtube.com

Top 8 BCS London Granblue deck profile by SolemnVanguard.

Both of these builds have very similar core cards, using Protect in combination with stride to maintain a good defence while using high powered multiple attacks to push damage.

One notable tech is the use of Violence Flanger to shut out Sentinels and all cards, in order to deliver the winning blow against Oracle Gyze decks.

Our final deck to be featured today is from Murakumo;

Murakumo, which uses Zanbaku to provide early aggression and follows up with Yasuie to maintain the flow of advantage. Instead of relying on Mandalalord and its high amount of main deck usage, this deck uses yasuie and shadowstitch to maintain pressure while aiming to finish with Yasuie Tenma.

Join us again back here on CanYouSay Blog, where we will be bringing to you initial builds of VEB03 Ultra Rare Miracle Collection for Premium Standard as well as a feature on the Excalupate The Blaster based Premium deck soon.