Fundamentals: Guard Restrict





[Blog: 13 minuites read]

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Today we are continuing our series on fundamentals, where we go over and discuss some of the core and basic 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 going over the basics of Guard Restrict effects, how they are used and how to think about them: both using them and guarding against them.

So what is guard restrict?

Guard restrict is a type of effect that limits what the opponent can use to guard this unit’s attack. They come in many shapes and forms, and mostly serve to make it more to guard an attack, therefore also make the attack easier to hit.

One of the core concepts of Vanguard is that its is a game about making the opponent say “No Guard” six times, with power, critical, heals, and effects all affecting how many times they can say them and when the opponent has to say it.

There are several types of Guard restrict, but some of the more common ones include: Not Allowing Sentinels to be used, Requiring Multiple Cards to Guard, Preventing specific grades from being called, or restricting only Normal/Trigger units to be called.

Do note that preventing normal units from being called is very similar to only allowing trigger units to be called, but there are few outliers such as Protect markers. Another thing to note is that as currently most triggers are G0 units, preventing G0 from being called also does provide a similar guard restrict to only allowing Normal units to be called.

Some examples of cards that prevent Sentinels from being called are Dragonic Waterfall from Kagero and Danger-Lunge Dragon from Shadow Paladin. Both of these cards also gain 1 critical and 10k power, and are used as finishers for the deck in combination with very high power, aiming for an attack that cannot be guarded.

Some examples of cards that create a guard restrict that require multiple cards for guard are Top Idol Pacifica from Bermuda Triangle, Variants Hardleg from Dark Irregulars, or Drill The Dual from Nova Grappler. Multiple card guard restrict are either used in mid game to drive damage or gain a massive advantage over the opponent by forcing the opponent to guard very ineffectively,

Some examples of cards that restrict normal or trigger units from being called are Knight of Fury Agrarvain from Gold Paladin, Wyvern Strike Doha from Kagero, and Ichikishima of Oracle Think Tank. This type of Guard restrict is used for making it more difficult to guard individual attacks by restricting the types of cards that can be used to guard the attack. This over several turns can easily deplete the type of card used to guard the attack, letting the attack to hit easily despite being easily guarded.

While guard restrict does make attacks harder to guard, do note that the opponent guarding an attack is not necessarily a bad thing, and that the mastery of guard restrict comes from the ability to capitalize on both the opponent guarding and wanting to no guard. Guard restrict is best used in order to affect the opponents decision to guard or no guard, as if they were planning to no guard the attack, applying the guard restrict would only exhaust your resources.

Thinking about guard restrict in numbers or Guard Value

With Guard Restricts in play, one way to think about Guard restricts are to think of them as similar to changing the power of the attack. This is especially useful to understand guard restrict of multiple cards and guard restrict restricting what type of cards can be called.

This is because trigger units tend to have higher shield values (15k or 20k shield), while normal units in G1 and G2 generally have other values such as 5k or 10k shield.

If there is a guard restrict that requires two cards to guard the attack, but only 5k power to guard it, you can think of the attack as having slightly more power, such as 10k guard, so you have to add on another card to guard the attack.

Similarly, if you are facing down an attack that requires you to guard with only triggers, because triggers mostly come in 15k or 20k shield or Perfect Guard, an attack with only 10k shield to guard will be 15k at minimum to guard, so each of their attacks effectively have more power.

This is just one way to think about guarding against these types of guard restrict.

Making it matter.

By limiting what can be used to guard, the attack becomes either highly ineffective to guard, or becomes incredibly difficult to guard the attack. Guard restrict can be used in the mid game where the opponent is aiming to guard effectively in order to gain an edge over the opponent by either driving damage or by making the opponent guard ineffectively, or used as a finisher of the game by combining the guard restrict with an overwhelming power of an attack or number of attacks to drive the final damage.

When playing guard restrict type cards, its important to keep in mind when you are aiming to use your guard restrict, in order to maximize its effectiveness in helping you in either of these two potential goals.



The great counter to any form of guard restrict is just not caring about the guard restrict and saying no guard. Guard restrict is only effective if the opponent has to change their decision or outcome because of the guard restrict. Because of this, it is important to make your guard restricts matter either by making the opponent guard if they would want to no guard, or to no guard if they want to guard.

The most obvious is the ability to restrict sentinels from being called. This takes the option to perfect guard away from the opponent, making them either no guard or to guard with hard power, often throwing multiple cards. Therefore, to make this guard restrict matter, you must either create a situation where there is no option to no guard. This is most easily done by putting the opponent to 4 damage and then using the attack with a critical to win, so the option to no guard is followed by instant loss, forcing the opponent into taking the hard guard path.

To take full advantage of this, it is important to give the attack large amounts of power, so the opponent has to guard with large amounts of cards against the attack, but this is always secondary to making the opponent guard. This is also how you win with this kind of guard restrict: the opponent not being able to afford to guard the attack.

Often times this sentinel guard restrict is used not to try to win the game that turn, but instead force the opponent to hard guard and lose all of their important cards they want to be saving for the next turn, so you can easily win the following turn.

The next type of guard restrict is one to restrict the type of card being called. If the unit attacking only allows trigger units, the amount of power that will be used to guard the attack will always be in multiples of 15k and 20k power. This is used to your advantage by creating attacks that can either sneak through early when the high shield value cards are being used to guard other attacks or used when the opponent wants to guard the attack and has to save their trigger units to guard this attack. This also can make the opponent have to guard your other columns with normal units instead, increasing the number of cards being used up from the opponents hand, while not actually changing the shield value being used.

One important thing to keep in mind is how much power you are giving to the column. Because all of the guard is in multiples of 15k or 20k, how much guard value the attack has is very important. For example, if it only requires 5k to guard, the opponent will still have to guard with 15k shield, but if you gave it power from a trigger, the opponents play will remain the same: guard with the same 15k shield. Any power would be better placed in a different column where it can be used to make the opponent guard.

On the other hand, if the power needed to guard is 15k, by giving the unit another 10k power, it instantly goes from 1 card of 15k shield being used to a combination of two 15ks or 20k shields being used to guard for a 25k shield, very effective as you can make the opponent guard with up to 35 or 40k shield value for an attack that would otherwise be easily stopped by a Grade 1 and a trigger.

The third common type of guard restrict is a guard restrict that requires multiple cards to guard. To make this type of guard restrict effective, you have to time the effect to a turn where the opponent will want to guard as well as potentially be planning to use perfect guard vents. Often times this is done with multiple attacks in a turn in order to break through any shield the opponent, creating an attack that the opponent cannot afford to guard to finish the game.

As the calling multiple cards to guardian guard restrict affects perfect guards you have to call the perfect guard as well as other cards before using the perfect guards ability, forcing the perfect guard to cost additional cards as well to block an attack.

In guarding an attack that requires multiple cards to guard, you have to throw additional cards in order to create the guard value. By keeping each attacks guard value low, you can easily create a situation where it is impossible to guard effectively, forcing the opponent to be throwing upwards or 30 or 40k shield value against attacks that require only 5k to guard.

When used in the mid game to block attacks to keep damage low, this highly ineffective play will result in the opponent reducing their options of play for the following turns.

However, with this kind of guard restrict, if you are keeping the attack powers low, do remember that the most common counter play is to take damage and open damage triggers, potentially shutting down attack columns. This is why you want to aim to time your guard restrict to the turns where it will matter: either they guard when you want them to guard or you no guard when you want them to no guard.

Immediate vs Impending Guard Restrict

This is the concept that: When facing against guard restrict, by knowing when the guard restrict is coming, you can plan for it for turns in advance and adapt your gameplay accordingly.

Immediate and Impending Guard restrict is a slightly more advanced concept mostly stemming from it requiring the players to understand the speed of the opponents deck and the timing the opponent is going to apply the guard restrict, but the concept in itself is fairly simple.

For example, against sentinel guard restrict, you can plan for this by guarding with your sentinels to stop damage earlier so you have enough guard value to stop the guard restricted attack, or perhaps by guarding very hard earlier on in the game, you can simply no guard the sentinel guard restrict attack, reducing the opponent’s guard restrict to nothing.

Or perhaps you want to plan against the opponent putting guard restrict on all of the attacks for a turn, so you guard very hard early to keep your damage low, and when the opponent plays their guard restrict, you can just no guard all of the attacks and only need to guard one.

Immediate guard restrict is how the guard restrict effect changes how the opponent reacts on that turn, and if they can react or not. Impending guard restrict, on the other hand, is the concept that your opponent knowing you have guard restrict and when it is likely to come makes them play in a certain way in order to optimize how they guard/no guard that turn.

Mastering this concept will allow you to take advantage of the opponents guard patterns in order to create an optimal situation for yourself, just because the opponent is playing in a way to avoid your guard restrict turns. Examples of this are to show the opponent you are playing Variants Hardleg very early so they guard very hard in the early and mid game in anticipation of having to guard with three cards every attack, only to punish that by taking advantage of their lack of resources by pushing power based attack pattens such as by using Brufas and Dimension Creeper to punish the opponent for doing so.

Outpacing Impending Guard Restrict

With impending guard restrict, once you have a good understanding of when the opponents guard restrict will come, one of the interesting tactics to take is to try to outpace the guard restrict. Instead of guarding heavily in anticipation of the guard restrict or perhaps saving cards in hand to guard through the guard restrict, if you think you can win before the guard restrict comes into play, its an option to take the aggressive route and try to end the game before the opponent can open their guard restrict on you.

While not an option every game or every deck, it is an option available when fighting against guard restrict, which is very important to remember.

Guarding without Calling

A lot of guard restrict abilities prevent certain cards from being called from the hand, or prevent grades from being called from the hand. however, this does mean it is exactly that: Preventing cards from being called from the hand. Guard restrict often does not extend over to G Guardians, or guarding with cards on your field, which are factors you need to take into consideration when playing guard restrict.

G Guardians are an option that allows heal triggers to be discarded and G Guardians to be superior called from the G Zone, and as they are not called from hand, most guard restrict does not affect them.

Intercepting is the other effect you should take into consideration, as moving a card from rear guard to guardian to guard an attack is not considered calling a card. It is because intercepts can guard an attack that has guard restrict easily that you often want to create power lines that are 10k to guard, not just 5k shield, as 5k shield is a very common value for intercept.



An interesting card to take into consideration are the existence of cards such as Fallen Dive Eagle, which can intercept and block an attack no matter how big the attack is, getting over your guard restrict very easily.

Although it is in a single clan, be sure to factor it into your play when fighting against shadow paladin

Our final option against guard restrict is to simply make the guard restrict not matter by no guarding the attack. In order to do this you have to have planned ahead and have enough damage to safely take the hit, or perhaps be willing enough to gamble on that heal trigger. If the opponent was aiming for you to discard multiple cards to guard certain attacks with guard restrict, or perhaps was baiting you into guarding ineffectively with a guard restrict that constrains their options to guard, this is another option available to you.

Conclusion

Today we discussed some of the concepts that go with Guard restrict; The Common Types of Guard Restrict, Thinking about Guard Restrict and its uses, Making Guard Restrict Matter and how to time your guard restrict to maximize its use, Immediate and Impending Guard Restrict and how it affects the opponents play, Considering outpacing the impending guard restrict, and finally thinking about other options for guarding against a Guard restrict attack.

Guard restrict is a commonly seen effect that you will see being used both in your own decks as well as against you the more you play! Learn how each deck uses their form of guard restrict to your advantage and try to image the road to victory that your deck has against them!

The world finals are only one week away, who are you cheering on to win the biggest tournament in Vanguard!? Be sure to tune into the stream to watch DifferentFight, Kai from WCC and Card Protagonist live cast the event!

Thats all for today folks. Be sure to factor in guard restrict attacks into your gameplay strategy, both using them and facing off against them in order to imagine your road to victory.

Be sure to tune back in this Thursday when we discuss how to Mulligan your opening hand

If youre looking for more articles on some of the basic concepts of the game, be sure to check here