Welcome to The State of Premium, where we will be going over all the decks that have come into the game of Premium Standard, and how your clan has adapted, evolved, and improved!

Today, in part 3 of 5 of The State of Premium, we will be going over the updates to the clans featured in VEB01: The Destructive Roar

The clans for today are Tachikaze, Spike Brothers, and Megacolony



For those who havent read part 2 where we go over Kagero, Royal Paladins, Oracle Think Tank, and Nova Grappler check out part 2/5 here

Tachikaze

Rex Rapid Attack

Tachikaze is another deck that suffers from a similar issue to Nova Grapplers, where the older support focusing on Gaia does not fully work well with the newer support.

Therfore, the tachikaze premium deck that is currently in the vogue is Tachikaze Rex.

Although not very popular in the meta, the deck concept is to focus on maintaining advantage while retiring own units via Laceraterex and Gigarex, while using on retire call skills and RG whom retire to retire the unit on accel circle, call a new one, retire that one, call another, and deliver multiple attacks in this way.

By being able to retire your own frontrow and maintain (or even gain) advantage in the early game, while mounting an offence, you are able to force the opponent to give you more and more damage, counterblast that you will use in order to deliver a devastating multiple attack turn, with up to 11 or more attacks on first stride turn.

While a devastating deck that mounts a steady offence from turn 1, Tachikaze does have a limited popularity and high cost of entry, due to several core G-Zone cards being limited in number, as well as your main G3 being Gigarex, a card only used for its REX name combined with an accel circle. Dropping 20-30 for each just for this is not a cost many people are willing to play, but if you play Tachikaze in standard, do look into building a build similar to this, as a lot of the other G Era cards are very cheap.

Spike Brothers:

Adapted GB8 OTK

The Spike Brothers deck has not changed much from their GB8 Style OTK, the main difference is the addition of two cards: General Saifreed to get Force Marker, and Spike Bouncer.

Force Marker may not seem that much when your Hellhard Eight delivers +10k to each attacking unit, but an additional 10k will allow you to break through damage triggers as well as blow through more hand of the opponent. HighSpeed Brakki and Juggernaut Maximum gaining 10k on rear guard allows for early game pushing of damage while setting up your combo, as well as even larger numbers when executing the hellhard eight combo.

The biggest change to the deck is definately the addition of Spike Bouncer. While a CB1 SB1 cost for calling a single unit from the deck may not seem like much, it is important to remember than Spike Brothers have a grand total of TWO ways to gain advantage via extra calling or draws: Dirty Picaro (GB3) and Spike Bouncer.

Example Decklist: PreVEB01 Updates. Good framework to work off of

Spike Bouncer gives the deck not only an option for early game advantage, but also takes use of the abundant CB and SB resources available to the deck. remeber that by calling Spike Bouncer during the GB8 turn, you get not one but TWO more high powered attacks, and if you call it during your set up stride turn, you get to check the top 4 cards of your deck for a unit to call. Use this to thin the deck, set up while mounting an offensive to push the opponent to a safe 3-4 damage while searching up all your heal triggers to pull off the Hellhard Eight combo.

Jason Roberts (LivingProof21)'s ForceHellhardEight list. Champion ARG Nationals 2018.

Megacolony:

Machining ZoaOnePunch

Ah, the new deck archetype that has become one of the formats ticking time bombs, hence becoming a benchmark for any slower decks that wish to break into the meta. Keep in mind that the machining deck is actually coming up in prevalence and popularity. While held in check by its general lack of popularity for the clan and number of Zoa available, the Machining OnePunch IS a very powerful, extremely stable, and flexible deck, meaning it may take off in popularity amongst the more competetive crowd, but its overall player numbers amongst the casual crowd are not as high.



Its game plan is actually rather straightforwards:

1) Dont Die. Protect Markers from Machining StagBeetle and Antlion help against DI and OTT with Guard Restrict, and attacking RG and controlling how much damage you give your opponent. Drawing 3-5 cards off of Overwhlem also helps against aggressive decks like Blaster and AquaForce

2) Set up your Zoa. Zoa requires Ultimate Stride, 2 CB, and Antlion requires 2 hand to drop, and a G3 in soul. The cost for ultimate stride is incredibly easy to secure, thanks to Machining Mosquito and Machining Mantis searching up your G3 for use, but not to be missed is Machining Beet Atlas, whom most of the time will be your main ride. In addition to calling units from soul to fill up your field and set up Machining Despot and Machining Destroyer to force a re-ride and deprive the opponent of effective stride to keep that hand low for the kill turn, but his GB2 will allow you to soul in a G3 from hand during end phase as well to avoid being forced to re-ride to get that g3 in soul, all while providing counter charge and extra draw.

One common play is to call out Machining Stagbeetle, call two units from soul such as Machining Mosquito, restand them with Despot thus opening your GB2, and then hit with all forces trying to dig up extra G3. During the end phase, soul in the Machining Stagbeetle and something else in order to get that CC, and youre all set for a Zoa turn with a single G-Guard

3) ONE PUNCH Use Zoa with Antlion to create a 99999 power unit that the opponent cannot null, meaning that they have to hard guard with 90000 guard from hand and G Guards together, or die on the spot. While some clans can rapidly try to farm that much hand, most agressive and midrange decks cannot. In conjunction with Phantom Black, you will have to guard that 90,000 shield with ONLY G Guards and Triggers. Any deck is hard pressed to do that (Unless they are Ange)

That brings us to the conclusion of the State of Premium Part 3:

I hope this article has been of benefit to show you how myriad and vast premium is. Dont be afraid to jump in, because your clan is doing a lot better than you think!!

Thats all for Part 3/5.

Join us again later tonight when we go over a few decks that got changes in VEB02 Champions of the Asia Circuit, and how they have come into the meta!

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Shameless Plug:

GiFT Vanguard Championship (3v3)

GiFT Vanguard Championship will be held on 16th of September 2018.

3v3 Standard

Entry cost is RM110 per team of 3, but each player will get original gift counters, winners will get our tournament exclusive playmat, and many, many more giveaway and promo cards!

Take part in our side events, lucky draws and enjoy a day of Vanguard!

We will be holding a staff challenge for premium, as well as a King Of the Hill Challenge for Premium format as well. Dont worry, we have many premium decks for you to borrow if you dont have one for yourself!