Article by: One Who Gets Crits, Commander Jaime

Hey amigos, we got some great news a while ago that new support was announced for Aqua Force! We got a little bit of some key information regarding what the future holds for Aqua Force. I will go over some of that, but I will also take a bit of step back and really reflect on what our clan needs to continue on competing in the meta game once it comes out. Of course things will change, since there are some boosters yet to be released by then, but let’s start discussing!

Key Information of New Support

Maelstrom Support

We got word that Maelstrom will continue to get support. This is interesting since this can take a few routes. A new Maelstrom form? A retrain of Blue Storm Karma Dragon, Maelstrom “Яeverse” or Blue Storm Supreme Dragon, Lordly Maelstrom? We don’t know currently.

Last Card, Revonn

Like what?! I don’t think anyone was really expecting a retrain of Last Card, Revonn at this point but it’s happening! Some key info is that his skill will be related to power decreasing on the opponent’s vanguard. Sounds beneficial, but how much is the decrease and what about triggers when they are damage checked? There’s also some Blue Wave units confirmed to come back so more info is yet to come.

Taking a Step Back

As for the moment, Aqua Force has been getting some solid cards. However, other clans have gotten superior cards in both quality and synergy with older cards too. Those clans have a slight edge over Aqua Force currently.

Aqua Force’s Current Support

Let’s go over a few of Aqua Force’s current support.

Glory Maelstrom is currently the iconic G3 for the clan’s image. The card has a solid skill and of course the potential still relies on your rear guard formations and having a Maelstrom in the soul.

Coral Assault has been huge on making solid attacks and then rewarding the player with putting itself into soul and draw one at the end of the turn. He’s always good to play from your G2 turns to even your stride turns. Good all around card.

Wheel Assault is fantastic both on vanguard circle and rearguard circles. Early on he can help getting a +1 and even call G3s like Riptide Dragon. Later on, he’s good on abusing the Accel circles by swapping units, getting the most of your attack formation.

The Valeos stride is a solid card in terms of hand advantage generation and eliminating damage checked triggers. Works well with cards that act as “mirage” units, units that remove themselves from the field and gain back some form of card advantage. Cards such as Saberflow Sailor, Direct Strike Brave Shooter, Valkyrias of Oath, Dhine, etc. With the right formation and his skill fully active, you can have a lot of attacks that will defeat or cripple your opponent.

And there’s plenty more cards I haven’t mentioned here that are also great cards.

Other Clans’ Current Support

I’m going to go over a few top clans in the current meta game and explain one or a few things that makes these clans perform at a higher level.

Shadow Paladin – Mordred w/ Blaster Dark (Standard)

In Standard, Mordred has been a solid G3 for the clan. The fact that you get additional Force Gifts, by just placing a Blaster Dark, is really powerful and of course they stack over time. One thing to note is that only real requirement of his 2nd skill, is that it requires the opponent to have a G3 or greater Vanguard. Where as with Glory, you still need to reride (or have a way to SC a Maelstrom in Premium), to get his full skill. Also, the support around Blaster Dark is solid on searching and reviving it, such as the Masquerade G1 and G2.

Shadow Paladin – Luard w/ Morfessa Stride (Premium)

In Premium, the Luard deck with 1st stride Morfessa is still strong. The deck can draw some cards and build a field that is flat out +15k/+Crit in the front row. The deck also has great synergy with the V series support such as Skull Witch, Nemain and Black-winged Swordbreaker to generate field and hand. With Aqua Force, we have access to both Valeos and Marshal General of Surging Seas, Alexandros but both strides are NOT as strong and consistent on 1st stride compared to this.

Murakumo – HYU-GA w/ Shirayuki (Standard)

In Standard, Murakumo has become a solid strong deck. HYU-GA’s skill on shuffling your RGs is powerful and can be very disruptive to Aqua Force’s field formations. Also, during our turn we also have to deal with Fantasy Petal Storm, Shirayuki‘s skill. When she’s placed on GC, 3 of our units lose 10k power for the turn. Making our turn literally useless. One of Aqua Force’s biggest weaknesses, is NOT being able to generate advantage from when they are behind on resources already. It’s all down hill from there unfortunately.

Gold Paladin – Ezel w/ Spearex Stride (Premium)

In Premium, there’s another Accel clan that can do a bunch of attacks early on, with utilizing the Accel II gifts on reriding multiple Ezel G3s in one turn. Cards like Flame Wind Lion, Wonder Ezel really synergize with the deck. Another thing to note, as an Aqua Force player, you can be on your G1 turn facing a G4 Golden Dragon, Spear-X Dragon with 4 Accel circles on a full board. Yes, you can play it smart and not give them CB to prevent that turn, but still the Ezel deck can speed up to G3 with multiple Accel circles. Plus their vanguard will be 12k base already early on, with plenty of units to intercept with. Aqua Force does have access to restanding units to help mitigate, but it’s still underwhelming when compared to what the Ezel deck can do easily.

Side note, if they do stride with Spear-X Dragon early on, all they need to do on your 1st stride turn is to G-Guard. If they do, they can literally perform Ultimate Stride into a very strong finishing turn with Zeroth Dragon of Zenith Peak, Ultima.

Of course, there’s more decks in the current meta game but these are just a few to illustrate some points.

New Support That Can Help Aqua Force Continue On To Compete

After taking a step back and seeing what we really have to compete with currently, now we can get into some high level ideas that can help the clan compete still. Also, we do have to keep in mind new support that will come out before this booster and the other clans in that same booster. So again, these are just some thoughts that could help.

Also, a very important side note, these ideas may be in different directions or might even go with each other. They’re NOT intended to be “broken” ideas where Aqua Force becomes an unfair strong deck. The ideas are more geared to having Aqua Force on still being a great contender in a big event for the meta game.

A G3 Clone of Gleaming Lord, Uranus (Accel Gift Giver)

I do like the idea of having an Accel gift giver, just like Uranus’ 2nd skill. We can SB2 to get an extra Accel circle. If we use Accel II, then we can draw extra as well. It would be a solid RG as well too on being able to activate that same skill. We can build strong formations more easily and consistently.

With Standard, we can have that unit have an additional VC skill that can do pressure as well, such as restanding 2 units and giving them power similar to Alexandros.

With Premium, the fact the skill is “on place”, we can easily make sure we can stride efficiently and even get a good combo piece for that turn to actually use. When you’re not in a good position or behind to begin with, two things can happen. The first is when you have to discard 2-3 cards to stride, which in Aqua Force hurts like hell since they’re combo pieces needed that same turn. The second is when you even discard a useful G3 RG that you’ve could used that same turn.

An Improved V Series Saberflow Sailor

A new and improved version of Saberflow would be greatly appreciated! This card has always served me well in the G Era. It was really one of the few ways to really gain hand advantage during your stride turns. However, it had some cons as well. Two big ones was that it was 8k base and she needed to be one of your attackers in the front row while hitting at least 4th Wave. This card was NOT meant for the early game. Also, you had to rely on another RG to really do some pressure on your stride turns until this got big enough on its own with a 2nd/3rd Alexandros turn.

So how do we improve it? We can take some inspiration of what happened with Wheel Assault. Literally, Wheel Assault’s original skill became cost-less and he got a 2nd skill. I like to propose something similar to Saberflow. Also, let’s make her a 9k base this time around ha.

1st skill, “(RC) [Put into Soul] At the end of the battle this unit attacked, you may pay the cost. Draw 2 cards.”.

So this fixes a couple of things that Aqua Force struggles. One of them is generating advantage when we’re behind. I took away the battle requirement so it’s more flexible to use in those scenarios as well. It’s nice to have a unit be called then disappear after it’s done attacking and giving you back some advantage. Sometimes you need to throw down a unit to hit an extra battle as well. The cost is going into Soul rather than Retiring itself. Some units in the clan utilize the Soul, so it will help further synergize with those cards. Last thing, it’s not GB (Generation Break) restrictive, so it can actually be used early game to help with those turns too.

Edit: After some discussion via Reddit, this skill can easily be abused in the early game. A consideration to help address this and also still help with easier hand generation, is to add the clause, “if your opponent’s vanguard is G3 or greater,”.

2nd skill, “(RC) [4th Wave or more] When this unit attacks, it gains 10k for the battle.”.

This skill does have the battle requirement but it rewards the unit with power to also apply some pressure and hit over VGs on its own too. Nothing too dramatic. It does sound similar to Coral Assault, but at least with this requirement and reward, it’s NOT exactly like him. Coral Assault gets +15k for seeing 4 other rested units, which isn’t battle restrictive.

A G3 That Can Superior Call Unit(s) From Deck

I’ve always wanted a unit in Aqua Force that can superior call any unit(s) (at least a G2) from deck to RG. Why is that? Aqua Force is a clan that specializes in battle formations that really determine the power of your turn. If we have a unit that can create your battle formations on will, it will make it very consistent. There have been a times where you may have no real field and a decent size hand, but lack the key cards to really execute your power turn. Especially in the days of Lambros and before, if you didn’t have a 4th battle enabler, you literally could NOT do your turn as you wanted to.

I propose something very similar to Cocytus’ skill, “ACT (VC) 1/Turn [CB1] Call up to the number of G3 cards in your soul +1 of cards from your deck to RG.”. So on your first G3 ride turn, you can call one unit. Then if you reride or SC’ed a G3, then you can call +1 more, and so on. Literally, at will you can grab a Tidal Assault, Marine General of the Restless Tides, Algos, Coral Assault, Wheel Assault, Calm Assault, Riptide, etc. This generates advantage and thus you can conserve your hand as well.

A 2nd skill can help with increasing the effectiveness of your battle formations, “ACT (VC) 1/Turn [SB1] This turn your front row units get +10k.”. Simple and yet effective.

With these skills together, you can plan out your battle formations on a turn by turn basis. This also leaves rooms for possible tech cards as well. Currently, you try NOT to run “1-of’s” in the clan, but you can to help in certain match-ups or late turns.

A RG Unit That Can Remove Gifts And Potentially Gain

This is totally different and perhaps way left field in ideas. But let me suggest a skill, “(RC) [4th Wave or more] When this unit attacks, choose a Gift on your opponent’s hand OR field, remove it from play. If that Gift was of type Accel, you gain an Accel Gift.”. This kind of skill serves a certain purpose and removing existing Gifts from your opponent can be of value.

Edit: Since Aqua Force is navy based, I wanted to add some flavor of having the sense of “sabotaging the enemy“.

Examples:

Protect I Gift from hand -> Weakening opponent’s guard potential.

Protect II Gift from field -> Eliminate intercept potential and power.

Force I Gift from field -> Weaken their next turn.

Force II Gift from field -> Weaken their VG attack threat.

Accel I & II Gift from field -> “Retire” the unit on there and weaken their next turn as well as you gaining the Accel Gift.

In Premium, you can restand the unit too and have the skill activate a 2nd time or more on the same turn. Cards like Battle Siren, Orthia will help with this abuse.

A Slightly Different Alexandros Stride (Premium Wish)

Don’t get me wrong, Alexandros is a great card AND a blessing to Aqua Force in general. I propose a slightly different variation of him. Everything about his skill is the same except this small part, “choose two of your RGs, Stand them,” becomes into this, “call 1 unit from deck to RG, that unit gets +Crit,”. This will help guarantee a RG with having 2 Crit and as well powering it up by the amount of face up cards in G Zone. A restanding unit like Tidal Assault, Battle Siren, Adelaide, etc. and even beaters like Riptide and Coral Assault can be abused. Furthermore, this unit called can be abused with cards like Orthia and even having a Wheel Assault move a 2nd Orthia behind the powered up unit. Your RG attack is lethal when your opponent is at 4 damage. Adding more Crits with drive checks, then it becomes more lethal at 1-3 damage too.

Against decks that have removal G Guards or skills that choose like Shirayuki, you can call a unit with Resist. Units like Battle Siren, Melania and Blue Storm Marine General, Milos.

A Much Better G Guard (Premium Wish)

Aqua Force’s G Guards are NOT the greatest both in shield and battle requirements. Because of this reason, we generally have to guard with more cards when we don’t use a PG. I personally like a G Guard that would reward us for the prior turn on how much we’ve committed to the number of battles. Let me suggest 2 skills that go together, “AUTO (GC) This unit get +10k shield for every battle from the prior turn, from 4th battle and on.”, and also, “AUTO (GC) [Flip a card in your G Zone face up] This unit gets +10k shield.”.

The 1st skill, helps with creating much bigger shield power by just reaching and going beyond the 4th battle. For example, if we did 7 battles the prior turn, then this will get +40k shield. If you have more than 1 copy of this G Guard, you can use a 2nd one on the same turn to still get that same benefit too. Numbers in Vanguard have gotten really huge and this would help the clan to defend.

The 2nd skill, honestly helps with increasing the number of face up cards in G Zone for strides like Alexandros, Blue Storm Breaking Dragon, Engulf Maelstrom, the one I made up, etc. Also, it’s not GB restrictive, so you can G Guard and go into a GB3 turn which allows a better follow up turn. This can help Aqua Force push back better too, such as Alexandros would give +15k to 2 units. Which is an equivalent of a Morfessa stride without the +Crit. In Blue Wave, you can have a full power Blue Wave Marshal Dragon, Flood Hazard Dragon turn.

Conclusion

Again it’s always exciting when Aqua Force is announced for new support. This article was also fun to write. I hope you as the reader enjoyed some of the ideas I’ve mentioned. Reminder, these ideas weren’t meant to make Aqua Force “broken and unfair”. Do you have suggestions that can help the clan out too? Comment down below or even reach out to any of us via Reddit, Facebook, Discord, and even Youtube. Feel free to share your ideas. See ya amigos, Commander Jaime signing out!