Hello everyone! Exciting times are coming up ahead with the reboot and split formats, but before I get into that, I will cover some of the new rule changes that will already affect the current state of the game and how some of our cards/combos will play out.

With the mid-March announcements that we’ve been waiting for there have also been some changes to the rules that will affect how we build our AqF decks and make our plays.

The “mulligan” change

“Mulligan” is the term borrowed from Magic: The Gathering for re-shuffling our hand into the deck (or a part of it) at the beginning of the game an re-drawing a new one. And just as the original has changed over the time, so did the one in CFV. From now on, the cards we don’t want in our hand are added to the bottom of the deck, new ones are drawn and the deck is shuffled only after we have drawn the new cards. Now this is not a massive change, however it will help with more aggressive mulliganing, lowering the risk of drawing cards as bad as the ones we’ve returned by just a noticeable amount. Not a major change but it’s still important to point out.

The 1/TURN mechanics change

This change is a bit more game-play affecting. The difference is, that we may now choose not to use the skill the first time it becomes on standby, but we may use it whenever it will become on standby, but only once per turn.

In AqF, the main units affected will be Magnum Assault, Supreme Ruler of the Storm, Thavas and Battle Siren Orthia. Now we are able to opt out of using their skills the first time they attack (or boost in Orthia’s case), letting us pull off combos with Alexandros or Lambros that won’t require them to not attack (Thavas), not boost (Orthia) or attack a rear-guard first (Magnum). Overall a positive change, not very impactful, however.

Important correction: it has been confirmed by Bushiroad judges that the 1/TURN clause now automatically adds a choice to putting the ability on standby (using it). This means that the information below is incorrect and units like Tidal Assault can be used in the same way as Magnum Assault when it comes to chosing the ability’s timing of activation.

Abilities of Tidal Assault and Blue Storm Marine General, Milos remain unchanged, as their skills aren’t optional in the first place and have to activate regardless of the player’s wishes. Same goes for ACT abilities, as their activation is already up to the player’s choice. Similarly, most other AUTO abilities will only have one chance to activate anyways, so the change won’t be relevant unless we get additional ways to do thing such as re-stand a stride unit on our VC.

The only other exception is Blue Wave Marine General, Galleas. However, with the way his ability works, there should be no reason not to use the ability immediately if the cost can be paid and the player would decide that they do want to use it, at least not as of now.

Stride requirements change

With this change, if a player is on a grade 3 VG at the start of their turn, they’re able to stride immediately regardless of the opponent’s VG grade.

This is probably the most important change of this set. The ability to stride while a player is either grade stalling or grade stuck is huge, however, this change needs to be examined well before the full implications are understood.

What I mean by that is, that while grade stalling indefinitely has been hit severely, the tactic is still very much viable and Sebreeze is still a card worth playing. In fact, in a clan like AqF it might quite be the go-to strategy, as this clan is able to put on pressure pre-g3.

This is because even with the new rule, the player who wants to stride has to have a g3 unit on their VC at the beginning of their turn. What this means is, that they’ll have to ride to a g3 for a turn, letting their opponent have the first stride of the game if they choose to/are able to go for it. What this means is that the control of who gets the first stride is now firmly in the control of the player that went first.

Example: The AqF player had the first turn and rode up to grade 2 normally, while their opponent went second and rode up to grade 2 as well. Now it’s the AqF player’s turn’s ride phase and they have a choice with 3 possible outcomes. The first one would be to simply ride into a grade 3, surrendering the first stride to their opponent, but may be a decent option if G-guards are available to them. The second option is to stay on the same grade two and force the opponent to either use Sebreeze or grade-stall themselves. The last option would be to re-ride a g2, leaving their opponent with little choice on what to do. Sebreeze is out of the question for them and if they wish to counter this grade-stall they’ll have to ride into a grade 3, leaving the AqF player to stride first. If they decide to stay on g2, the AqF player can resort to Sebreeze themselves or continue the same tactic with powerful g2 units such as Tidal Assault and Foivos to force more and more cards/damage out of the opponent.

In this case, the AqF player is the one forcing their opponent to make the difficult choice of either surrendering the first stride or going againt AqF’s strong g2 game and/or leaving themselves open to Sebreeze as well. This rule change, despite its intention still somewhat supports clans/decks with strong early game pressure. I also recommend that you don’t remove Sebreeze out of your G-zones just yet.

All in all these rule changes seem to be for the general improvement of the game and none seem to really be a detriment to AqF.

This article will most likely conclude my articles focused on pre-V content. So from this one forward every article I post will also be tagged in the title with either [STD] for Standard Format focused content, [PRM] for Premium Format content or both in cases where both will be affected. There might also be content focused on purely the G format with the tag [G].