So to round out the cycle of card game value articles, here’s one about Cardfight Vanguard. I’d like to preface this one by starting with the fact that I’ve only been playing Vanguard competitively for around half a year. The UK doesn’t have many large, regular tournaments for me to really prove myself in, but experience from other card games plus having a high-level playgroup means that I think I’m not too far off.

Vanguard has a nice little difference to Weiss and Wixoss in that cards aren’t moving around too much, and you can accurately gauge and measure how many cards are going where. In fact, the concept of Drive Checks will be a driving part of this article [heh]. There are a few other interesting factors such as cards that are active in other zones (such as Selim and Dark Rex), but most of the time value literally refers to how many cards you have in hand and in play, plain and simple. Card quality is a very minor issue relative to Wixoss or Weiss because at worst every card in your hand can guard, and Grade 3s can be ditched to Perfect Guards.

Damage is similar to Wixoss in that it’s not only discrete, but it’s also small and easy to measure. Even accounting for healing effects, it suddenly becomes possible to put a value on effects such as Dragruler Phantom. That said, actually getting damage through isn’t as clear-cut as Wixoss. While Nociel and Primavera can achieve 70k+ columns easily, the existence of Perfect Guards means that just building on your combo isn’t as easy as in other games. That said, it is less luck-based than Weiss Schwarz; as you can remember what your opponent’s drive checks are and play around that – knowing when to use Spectral Blaster Diablo versus Aurageyser Dragon is one skill, but recognizing that Phantom Blaster Diablo is better than both of them is something else altogether, and that’s what we’re going to try and cover here today.

Counting one-for-one

One thing I am appreciative of in Japanese card games is that they place a particular emphasis on vanillas as a baseline and continue from there (as opposed to Magic where a 3-mana 3/3 was unheard of years ago). It means that when we compare cards directly, we can also compare the power differences. For example, looking at Richard and Calamity Tower, we see that Richard’s prerequisite is the balancing factor for his higher power and lower cost. Some will argue that Richard’s requirement is actually not hard to achieve in Royals at all (which is correct), but context and clan should not have major factors to how cards are costed (hence why almost every clan has a Grade 1 5k with on-play, SB2 to either draw a card or counter-charge 2).

Let’s rewind the clock a few years and make a comparison. Dragonic Overlord The End is restricted to two copies per deck. A handful of weeks later Spectral Duke Dragon is released. I will preface this by ignoring the factor that The End has to hit in order for his ability to activate by also ignoring the fact that Duke is a Limit Break (Limit Break enablers would not exist for another 2 years). This is because we’re just trying to compare how much card advantage each one gives you. The End is costed as CB2, discard another copy of The End, restand. Duke is costed as CB2, and sacrifice three rear guards. While the ride-chain helps you call rear guards easily (Golds in general are good at calling via effects), you lose twin drive. Thus, assuming single use, Duke is overall -1, because you have two more cards in hand (from the first Twin Drive) but three less cards in play. The End is overall +3, because you twin drive twice, having discarded a copy of The End. Thus, in terms of raw value, The End is the better card, because the overall net worth of cards you gain is higher. This is why I ignored the fact that The End needs to hit; this is much harder to achieve as opposed to Duke’s only requirement of having to attack a vanguard, which is why The End is allowed to be much better. This is also ignoring in EN where if you have 2 or more The End you could potentially be +4 with a second restand (and the ability to prey on rear guards for easy hits and denying LB4).

Now, unfortunately in the modern day and age, effects are a lot more diverse and complex, and it’s harder to look at individual cards without counting clan context and synergy, so comparisons like this are much harder to gauge. For example, who’s to say that Gurguit’s on-Stride skill is better than Claret Sword Dragon’s? Is Dragonic Overlord The Legend’s on-play better than Vortimer Diablo? While counting raw card numbers is a good start, it’s not the be-all, end-all. Let’s look at a more recent comparison, sticking with Overlords: The Legend and The Ace. They both become 26k base attackers with Grade 4 and Triple Drive, and both their restands do not require a hit. The difference is that The Legend has to go after a rear guard first, whereas The Ace has to go for the Vanguard first. The Ace also gains a follow-up 5k on the second swing, but I’ll talk about that after; The Ace’s discard cost is any Overlord and any other card, and is Twin Drive on both attacks, whereas The Legend is Triple Drive on both attacks and requires any three discard. So while The Ace gets +5k, the fact that The Legend has two more drive checks means that you can see an extra trigger in those two checks thus also making effectively 5k also. The main “benefit” I guess you could call it is that you are more likely to see a critical or a heal, which is good. The reason why The Legend is probably better, however, is that it doesn’t have to go after the vanguard first. With The Ace, your opponent is given the opportunity to intercept or use effects such as Nurse of Broken Heart to make the second attack less scary, even with +5k. Whereas The Legend puts pressure on your opponent to either protect that Nurse of Broken Heart, or they’re -1 on field, which helps stabilize your next turn and pressures your opponent to commit resources to return kill. That, and the fact that The Legend is actually cheaper; it’s only 1 counterblast as opposed to two.

Of course, like in any card game, we also need to start evaluating card quality relative to card quantity

Trigger Warning

The main point of card quality when it comes to Vanguard when referring to the number of cards seen largely comes down to your triggers; as well as power, triggers also give you some sort of beneficial advantage, so on the whole I’d rather have The Legend’s triple drive with discard three as opposed to The Ace’s twin drive and discarding two. Of course, when it comes to actually drawing cards, you want to see usable pieces such as stride fodder or Level 3s. You definitely don’t want to be drawing triggers (usually), and the more cards you draw the more likely you are to draw a trigger.

If we take a look at say, X-Gallop who is effectively Quad Drive, the requirements are actually quite low; you need to have GB2 (so it’s not a first stride), and your power has to be 35000 or more after boosting. Starting with a 26000 base, you effectively need only a single +4k boost (which Cosmic Hero can do very easily) alongside your starter. The second effect is also good, but Power has its own value which we’ll talk about later. Don’t get me wrong, X-Gallop is an insane card, but this time we’re considering the factor of context; how easy it is to achieve that condition combined with the presence of Laurel makes X-Gallop an uber-threat. Though if we’re just talking about the number of cards in hand and suddenly refilling, you have to talk about Shadow Paladin. Specifically Aurageyser Dragon. The fact that it’s a first stride isn’t a huge point, but just looking at what you get from Aurageyser is what makes the difference; Aurageyser draws you two cards, and potentially gives you some extra power. Aurageyser has the benefit of not really needing to jump through any hoops; it just happens, you draw two cards, and maybe you get +5k or +10k out of it. Which is why the cost is a lot higher; as well as CB1, you also have SB1, which is a pretty steep cost for Shadow Paladins, given how soul-intensive the deck can be. That, and the Shadow Paladin staple of retiring your own rear-guards. Now, here, you’re retiring the same number that you’re drawing, so it’s actually overall neutral, but again, we bring context in and see that there are a handful of cards in Shadow Paladin that give beneficial effects when they’re retired, or a handful of cards that actually count as two retired units, such as the Stand trigger (meaning you’re overall +1, just like X-Gallop), or the fact that Claret Sword calls on stride anyway. What you lose out on is the ability to heal/draw/stand/extra damage. How much is stuff like that worth? Quite a lot, actually, though that’s a topic for another time. Again, we need to bring context into the discussion; Darksaga Painter and Perfect Guards influence the effectiveness of Aurageyser quite a bit, as does Laurel with X-Gallop. At this point, I will now emphasize how unfair it is to do cross-clan comparisons due to said context restrictions. Any other examples from here on will be within clan only.

Eye of the Storm

One factor that makes Vanguard very unique relative to any other card game is the concept of “subclans” or archetypes. Bushiroad’s other card games also put importance on names (as does YGO and Wixoss to an extent), but usually these are low-impact effects that you run because you’re already running the core*. In Vanguard, these name-based effects can make or break certain archetypes.

*with the exception of YGO, where archetypes define your deck almost as aggressively as Vanguard. ChaOS, WS, and L&L do not place as much importance on name/archetype, usually.

So I said I’d keep everything in-clan here, so let’s instead of comparing two cards directly, talk about how your deck and archetype composition affect the deck’s performance. Specifically let’s look at Aqua Force. While I am not an Aqua Force player, I am lucky enough to live with someone who is, and the many games we have played have taught me enough about various bits and pieces about the style to help convey the theory of this article. Here is one of the best Aqua Force cards in the game. Potentially the best. In fact, going by TCGPlayer prices (as of time of publication), ignoring SP values, he is the second most expensive Aqua Force card out there (behind only Thavas GR), beating out all three Maelstrom SPs and even some highly-playable Bermuda SPs. He even beats out Aurageyser Dragon, and you’ve just seen me rattle on about how much value Aurageyser is.

Now you might think of Aqua Force as “that clan that can kind of attack multiple times but instead of doing so with scary columns they get high pressure and card advantage out of it”. A bit long-winded, but you’d be right. It’s not like Novas or Spikes where you’re consistently pressured to not-die, but it’s also unlike Novas or Spikes where you’re also going to struggle to break through and regain control, because aside from the initial 2-3 attackers they have to commit, they don’t need much else, and a lot of their effects help them stay healthy in hand size anyway. Lambros in particular is one of the top finishers in Aqua Force along with Tetra-Boil. Usually the way people achieve Wave 4 for his skill is by throwing out a Tidal Assault first, that is, you throw an unboosted Tidal Assault at their Vanguard, restand with -5k, then attack their Vanguard again, this time boosted (thus usually hitting 11k, requiring a 5k guard or an intercept). Magnum Assault also does a similar job, except hitting higher pressure numbers and requiring counterblast. Usually once you reach your Vanguard attack, both your columns should be rested. Lambros then effectively gives you a free fifth and sixth attacks, both of which are high pressure, because of the additional 10k, litigating Tidal Assault’s -5k (so it becomes 14k) and turning Magnum Assault into a 21k attacker. You can even restand an entire column, which if you’re using Storm Riders maintains your 6 attack combo. So how does this tie in to value?

Well, now that I’ve explained Lambros’s versatility and power to you, it’s pretty obvious the point I’m trying to make; you would play him in almost any Aqua Force deck because of how strong he is. Or would you?

When I mentioned how the idea of subclans and archetypes made Vanguard unique, it’s because the value of a card suddenly becomes intrinsically tied to its name or how well it supports that archetype. So in the context of Aqua Force, let’s look at the strongest archetypes; Ripples and Blue Wave. Blue Wave effects tend only to check for “Blue Wave” in the Vanguard name, so it isn’t as big a deal to splash other cards into your build. A lot of the Ripples support, however, revolves around finding cards with “Ripple” in name.

Which sometimes may cause issues when you see core cards such as Tidal Assault or Kelpie Rider Nikki from among them. The question is, is it worth giving up this consistency to be able to use Lambros? To tie back into the article title, is Lambros that much value? The simple answer is yes. Let’s look at value again as a cost versus return situation. The cost here is that you’re giving up the ability to plus freely (from Orest and Prodomos), as well as mid-game pressure (from Lapis and Odysseus), and in exchange you’re getting the ability to unquestionably close out games. Because these are more abstract costs without numbers or measurable quantities, it’s a bit harder to say whether they are equal or not. But we can actually gauge on a rough scale how much consistency you lose versus how well you can end the game, even if it’s a bit of a guesstimation.

Let’s say that you’ve committed to play Ripple with Lambros. That means you need to have 4 of all pieces of the ride chain barring Alecs, the starter. So in a 49 card deck, 16 slots are already dedicated to Ripple (counting Militadis). Odysseus is restricted to two copies per deck (for good reason), and we might as well play four copies of Orest, bumping us up to 22 Ripples in the deck. This is where things get tricky; you want to max out on Pavroth because ride chain, and you need to have some number of Tidal Assault or Magnum Assault to be able to consistently use Lambros when you need to; so how many copies of Lapis can you afford to run? How does it affect your early, mid, and late-game? I won’t go through all the mathematics and statistics here because it’s largely unneeded, all you need to know is that even with only three Lapis and four Tidal Assault, you can still consistently get the bonuses you need. This means only 25 out of 49 cards in your deck have “Ripple” in name, so Orest and Prodomos won’t proc as often, but you can still get Lapis to high power by using Odysseus to superior ride your ride chain and then calling the spare ride chain pieces out to rear guard. Thus, the “cost” is kind of invisible because at best we could only play 26 total Ripples anyway, which doesn’t really massively improve the chances of snowballing with Orest or Prodomos. Meanwhile as mentioned, I can count on one hand where games did not end on Lambros turns or the turn after.

This is by far the gentlest example of making concessions in deckbuilding; some clans such as Royal Paladin have a lot more thinking to do about where they want their support to come from and whether it’s worth affecting some consistency for it. I’m aware that the past section may be a bit tangential in the grand scheme of things, but I felt I needed to touch on it earlier rather than later, because of how important card selection actually is in Vanguard deckbuilding; value here extends beyond just what your cards actually do.

Towers of Power

While not the main focus of discussion, it’s interesting to note how Weiss has moved further and further away from being a numbers-based game (though high-power decks are starting to make a resurgence), while Vanguard is still primarily all about making your opponent unable to guard. Obviously guard restriction effects such as Phantom Blaster Diablo and Gilles de Rais are still very good, but as of the time of writing, Doctoroid Refros and Cosmos Pixy Lizbeth have just been restricted to one copy per deck in JP.

I won’t go over the exact mechanics here, but in short, know that they both have the ability to set up near-infinite power loops in their respective decks. This is more or less guard restriction, because it’s not feasible to commit 8 cards in hand to guard a 120k column. Obviously on their own these two triggers don’t do a whole lot; especially not give lots of power. But there are many, many facets in this game that do that, from the basic “[Counterblast 1] This unit gets +1000” effect all the way up to “This unit gets +2000 for each of all fighter’s open (RC)”. So how much value is power worth?

Put simply, more than you’d expect. Just looking at a grade 2 vanilla makes you seriously consider things like “being 10k on the defense means I can afford to drop a trigger to guard for no pass”. Having a 4k starting vanguard means that your boosts suddenly are not worth as much. While nowadays units have so many random effects that make them far above par, we can always refer back to vanillas as a baseline; for example, your normal grade 2, 9k that becomes a 12k attacker when your vanguard is a certain archetype. They’re usually going to be better than vanillas on the offense, and they make up for it by being worse on the defense. Unfortunately as time goes on, it gets increasingly harder to value power, especially at the top end. For some clans, power is just an aside consideration (such as Kagero and Link Joker), whereas for others, it’s the make-or-break for their strategy (Dimension Police, Neo Nectar, Royal Paladin). So in actuality, for each clan, power has separate worth.

In order to stick to my rule of in-clan comparisons only, we can investigate one that isn’t exactly well-known for high numbers, but can achieve it very easily, and works around it in different archetypes. Narukami is one of those clans that I feel is always very underrepresented in the metagame, for no good reason. All the main builds, from Eradicators, to Brawlers, to Vanquisher are super powerful in their own right. Yet you don’t see them as a dime-a-dozen as you do Kagero, Gear Chronicle, or Royal Paladin. Anyway, while they all do power-boosts, some are better than others. For example, Vanquishers looks to gain aggressive advantage by heavy bind/retire effects and using VOLTAGE to give mega power across the front row, whereas Brawlers abuses the fact that your Vanguard is attacking every unit at once, meaning your rear-guards with “Whenever your vanguard with “Big Bang Knuckle” in its card name’s attack hits, this unit gets +3000 until end of turn” can easily turn into 21k monstrosities before boosts or triggers. Each of these has different intrinsic value, but instead we’ll be looking at each deck’s “core” as a whole so we have the full picture. Let’s start with Brawlers.

When your front row G2 rear-guard is being attacked, it is unable to intercept, thus by battling several units at once (usually the front row plus your vanguard’s booster) you can create insane pressure because they are not only unable to intercept to defend, but also will end up with net less units in play (making it harder to guard the rear-guard attacks that come later). That, or they’ll vomit their hand to defend their units and have zero tempo left to make any sort of play. So the value comes from the fact that your opponent is already heavily pressured into over-guarding your vanguard attack (which already reaches high numbers due to Big Bang Knuckle Buster’s cross-ride skill and +5k from the Legion skill) meaning your equally high-powered rear-guard attacks are more likely to connect. Thus, it’s the same as gaining power via retiring, which is common enough. You only need to Counterblast 1 and put a “Big Bang Knuckle” from hand into soul in order to get the +5k and the potential +12k spike across your rear-guards. In reality, putting a card into soul from hand is not a downside; it allows you to first ride Buster himself, because you can put Big Bang Knuckle Dragon into soul, which turns on your +2k crossride effect. The cost is very low, and it’s extremely easy to set up. The only “drawback” is how much you need to commit; you’ll often end up with a very minimal hand (the Big Bang Knuckle stride does not help), and it’s extremely difficult to refuel in this deck. It’s also very easy to play around; keep your board empty and they’ll have nothing to mass attack, meaning there’s nothing to hit and capitalize on (though this can be said of all Narukami builds).

Eradicators on the other hand are more about gaining criticals than power, but still are pretty good at that. Tempest Bolt in particular is notorious for being able to reach 31000 on its own in a time before Stride and Legion existed. Gauntlet Buster in particular is what most people would consider the “leader” of this build, as it’s able to consistently stack its power and crit bonus to reach 20k, 3 crit in a matter of seconds. Just like Bluish Flame, the fact that it also has a built-in Counterblast 2 retire effect means that it can kick-start its own engine which in turn propels a variety of effects that proc whenever rear-guards are retired by effects. Dragonic Descendant is also featured in a number of builds, but it doesn’t play a power-based game as much as “you have to let me hit and maybe die, or guard me and be forced to perfect guard”. The main source of “value” for Eradicators is that it’s relatively cheap on them to retire your rear-guards (though most effects give you a choice on what gets retired), while benefitting from it. There are grade 1s and grade 2s that power up whenever your opponent’s units are retired, which I haven’t shown, but take my word for it that with them around, Eradicators also has no hard time reaching the 21k columns advertised in Brawlers. In fact, Gauntlet Buster on his own is probably scarier than Big Bang Knuckle Buster, just because you might have crits coming out nowhere, and you’re less reliant on as many moving pieces. Limit Break means that while you aren’t as explosive, you are more consistent and can apply the pressure over several turns slowly, which is its own merit. The downside is obviously the ceiling is much lower. However, I would say that Eradicators is probably more overall value, just because you have already high internal synergy, you don’t require a lot to get going. If you think of it as you paying to retire rear-guards like Kagero, then Gauntlet Buster literally becomes free bonus pressure, and that’s as valuable as it gets.

Numbers numbers numbers

I’m going to skip Vanquisher for a moment so that we can actually talk about why power is so much more valuable in this game and go through some numbers, that way I’m not just all hot air and giving mini-deck profiles. In this game, the only real, reliable way to prevent damage is to guard attacks. Unlike in WS where you have zero interaction but are far more likely to cancel damage, or ChaOS where your interaction takes form in messing with your opponent’s power and reducing the damage you take, in Vanguard, because of the far lower damage threshold, it’s a very binary “you either get hit or not”. This means every single card in your hand either provides infinite value, or is complete trash. There’s obviously some overlap, but in general, you’re either committed to guarding or not. There’s no “I’ll throw this out there and see what happens” sort of deal unless you like living dangerously and go for a one-pass on all Stride turns. If you consciously choose to one-pass on a triple drive, then you should be very aware that most of the time, you are wasting that card in hand. Let’s take a vanilla first stride turn; you’re facing down 31k; 11k base vanguard, 15k stride, and 5k boost from the starting vanguard. You are 11k on the defensive, and have a grip full of cards. Throwing out two triggers puts you at parity, any further increment of 5k makes it one more to pass. You could count their cards and try and estimate how many triggers are left in their deck and how likely they are to break through, or you could just perfect guard. Perfect guards are the get-out-of-jail free, and it’s why nearly every deck plays them; for when the numbers don’t add up.

But what if you don’t have a perfect guard? Let’s say your hand is 4 critical triggers and a stride fodder. Thus, your total shield potential is 45k. Your Vanguard is base 11k. If your opponent goes all-in on a Gauntlet Buster turn, they’re coming at you with the following columns: 28k / 30k – 3 Crit / 28k. To survive the side columns you need to give up 20k each, leaving you with only 5k to guard the Vanguard attack (which is not enough). You can commit to a no-pass at 41k using three triggers, which leaves you unable to guard the side columns because you only have 15k left. Using two triggers and your stride fodder puts you at 2-pass, and leaves you with enough to guard one column and unable to stride. Now let’s flip the table around. You are the attacker. Your triggers are all only critical or heal, no stands. You know your opponent’s five cards in hand because you’re a good player who keeps track of your opponent’s drive checks. What’s the right order to attack in to make use of your power? Some would say to go column-vanguard-column; your opponent will either guard the first attack because they know it’s in range, leaving you to go in with the vanguard for either a no-pass; on which you can guarantee a hit with the last column plus triggers, or two-pass; allowing you to put the triggers on your last column, which puts it out of range of your opponent’s guarding. Perhaps going vanguard-column-column is better because once you see how your opponent guards your vanguard attack, it will give you better decision about where to split your triggers.

It doesn’t matter as much what decks the example uses; it could even be something that has no way of gaining crit itself (such as Kagero). As your power goes up, your opponent is forced to commit more from hand to guard the rear-guard attacks, which means you are given more flex room with your triggers. I just want to take a moment here to applaud myself for going two-and-a-bit paragraphs about power without using the phrase “magic numbers”. While I appreciate it’s existence, I don’t think it’s something players should be as hung up on as they usually are. While it’s true that for every 5k interval above 11k you breach, that’s another card that comes out, it’s not worth over-analysing cards to see whether they reach a magic number or not. For example, in Gold Paladin, a column I see myself with quite often is Regulation Liberator Aglovale and Fast Chase Liberator Josephus. With a Bluish Flame vanguard, this column becomes 18k. This puts us into the 10k shield bracket when attacking a vanguard, compared to Aglovale on his own at 11k, which is only 5k shield required. Oath Aglovale with Josephus hits 16k, which is also a 10k to guard, so it’s obvious that the better setup is Regulation Aglovale on one side, and Oath Aglobale Josephus on the other. Of course, adding Bruno to the equation changes everything; one proc on Bruno behind Regulation Aglovale turns him into 21k, which is 15k to guard, for example. So while yes, it’s good to remember your numbers to see where it is you can get your attacks to hit, it shouldn’t be the end-all of your decision trees. Especially when you’re dealing with on-hit effects or potential stand effects. The deck itself also comes into question here; while obviously your goal is to win by getting your opponent to six damage, some decks are more proactive in their timeline whereas others can afford to be more patient. It’s also worth noting how your opponent wants to play as well – if you can see that they’re going for the long game, then try and deny them resources early by swinging aggressively and forcing their low-value guards. Figure out whether your opponent is willing to guard heavily or light at which stages in the game and manipulating your field accordingly. That’s the final value of power numbers in this game.

The value of reading this article

Anyway, I just broke 5000 words and still haven’t fitted in everything I was planning on talking about. Whoops. Unfortunately this one ended up being a lot more content and strategy heavy rather than concept and theory-based. Hopefully you all were able to follow relatively well anyway. That about wraps it up for my “card value” series; if even one person finds “value” in having read this, then I’ll consider it a success.

This was my first article about Vanguard, hopefully more to come. The next in the pipeline is a mathsy article for Weiss, but do take a look at that if you like numbers. Until then, you guys know where to reach me, and I will see you next time.

~ Z