Fundamentals: The No Guard Line.

Avast Lads and Ladettes, its me its your best friend CanyousayG, and youre reading the CanYouSayBlog, where we all learn how to be a better cardfighter.

Today, were going over concept of the No Guard Line, an amount of power that the opponent will have to no guard due to not being able to, or not likely to guard.

This concept is based off the thought that as a fight progresses, the amount of power for an attack to hit the opponent, or rather the amount of power required for an opponent to choose to no guard, increases.

Of course, as players ride up from Grade 0,1,2,3 and higher, the amount of base power their vanguard will have increases, requiring you to give more power to your units for the attacks to hit, either through effects or boosting.

In the core game of Vanguard, the opponent can only say no guard six times (give or take, depending on critical triggers, critical up effects, heals.), as can you. So therefore, your strategy should revolve HOW you want to be pushing damage so that you can deal the sixth damage.

Of course there are a great many ways to be going around this, from focusing on reducing the opponents hand to controlling their field to using guard restrict or delivering few but with 3-4 critical attacks, but today we are going to be focusing in on how to deal the opponent damage early.

In Vanguard, shield value comes in many varieties, from 15k shield to 20k shield of the null guard, to the 5k shield of a grade 2. While at any point the amount of shield in the opponents hand is not going to change until they guard/add more cards to their hand, pushing in damage early is based around making it ineffective to guard attacks, creating a situation where they could guard an attack, but they would rather choose not to.

This allows you to have attacks hit with as low as 5k to guard the attack, either that they have next to no attackers if they choose to guard, or they need the counterblast in order to mount a proper offensive next turn. This creates this situation where an attack that is incredibly easy to block instead goes through.

The next concept is using high power to drive in damage, especially early in the game.

Imagine an attack that’s going to take you 40k power to block because of triggers and effects. You do have two 20k shield heal triggers in your hand, but you know that the next turn those two 20k shield heal triggers can be used to guard two separate attacks instead. So, instead of using up 40k shield on one attack and taking 2 damage, you choose to take one damage this turn and guard the two separate attacks later. Its just effective play.

If you can stop an attack with very few cards, its much more effective than stopping a single attack with many cards.

As the game progresses, players build up more cards in their hand and have had more time to accumulate null guards, high shield value, and prepare for high powered attacks. This creates a situation where your power has to be extremely high to be able to be no guarded, as during the mid to late game is when players dont want to be taking too much damage, as well as have the means of stopping attacks.

Contrast this to the early game, where resources are low for both players, and therefore options are low for both players.

In the early game, each card in your hand is a lot more valuable, not just because of what they can do but also that you have very few cards in hand. When you only have one 15k shield in your hand, as well as the option to no guard, you want to make sure that 15k shield guards a single attack. You would be more likely to guard one attack and no guard another than to try to spend that 15k shield with one or two intercepts to guard the attack.

On top of this, giving up multiple cards to guard in the early game is extremely difficult as a player, as it means your options to counterattack, further build your board, or otherwise turn the game around become extremely limited.

Therefore in the early game, to guard effectively, players want to be no guarding huge attacks, using damage triggers to slow down the offensive, and try to minimize how many cards you absolutely have to sacrifice to guard.

Turn this around and instead look at it from the attacking players point of view, and you have a situation where you want to create lines that

1) are too big to be guarded easily,

2) can hit, even if the opponent opened a damage trigger, and

3) if they have to guard, sacrifice crucial grade 2s and grade 1s to do so.

The longer the game goes, the more power is required to hit, but the earlier in the game, the less power is required.

This is the core concept of driving damage in the early game, so that the pressure is on from the early turns, limiting the number of times the opponent can no guard your attacks.

So how would you go about making those lines to push damage?

Obtaining those power lines requires you to play out cards in your hand. Not every game and every matchup that will be the correct play, but when it is, its good to know your options.

Here is an example play for Royal Paladin

With This play, you can see how with a Maron on board and Riding the Gordon, you not only can create a unit on board that the opponent wants to spend an attack on, but also conserve a lot of units in hand such as your key blaster blade, Tristan, as well as Loading Angel to set up for your Gancelot turn, as Maron will benefit your board whether it can stay on or not.

The other side of this play is that it will be difficult for you to drive damage early, meaning that you are relying a lot more on higher power later into the game to get attacks through, as it only requires 5k to guard the Maron Attack, and 15k shield to guard your Vanguard's attack, giving full control of how much and where the opponent wants to take damage. However, this does allow you to take a more damage control route of playing

And here would be another way of playing out the same hand.

While the board now has two more units on it, and you have used up your counterblast, look at the power lines created by your formation.

Gordon can attack first with 10k power, and the blaster Blade in center, although without a critical, still is asking for the opponent to throw their 20k shield to guard its attack. The final attack is 20k power, so even against a 10k grade 2, still requires 15k shield. All of this while retaining Tristan in hand to search your key card: blaster blade next turn.

Note how both of these hands had access to the same cards, yet by playing them out differently, pushes the game in a different direction, yet both rely on the same concept: correctly predicting whether the opponent will or will not guard by thinking about how effective it is to guard the attacks.

Here is another example for a hand for the Kagero player.



Here would be how some games would go, riding up to the Mukhtar, be sad a bit about how you were not able to draw into Berserk Dragon, and attack Vanguard unboosted. This will either result in the opponent throwing a 15k shield to guard the attack, or to take damage early, in which case you never needed to place down boost in the first place. Both of which will transition easily into Dragonic Blademaster next turn, either to punish the opponent for not calling rear guards or to punish the opponent for calling rear guards by attacking/retiring them with your other units (or rather the units the opponent thinks are in your hand).

And here would be another way to play out the same hand.

Here we see that if the opponent has no rear guards, we have a 13k line, 21k line, and 22k line with guard restrict.

With the 21k vanguard line, it requires 25k power to be able to no pass the attack, which is at least 2 cards of high shield value, and thus will be likely to be no guarded.

By using this formation, you can attack three times against a 8k or 10k vanguard while still still attacking through triggers, with two of the attacks requiring 15k to guard. This early in the game it will be rare for using two 15k shields so early in the game to be effective, especially with those attacks likely to be coming at you next turn again, requiring you to guard again.

Here we can see how you can choose to escalate the game or to hold back and respond with the same cards, and should you choose to go on the offensive, how to use power lines that the opponent cannot guard well are the key to actually pushing in the damage and starting the pressure.

Here is our last example: Neo Nectar





Here we see one example field, where we play out one Rebecca to attack, giving the Vanguard line 5k power, making it 20k power. This gives us two attacks, the first one that is only 5k to guard, and the second attack which is 25k to no pass, at least two cards. This creates a situation where the opponent wants to be guarding the 5k to guard with only one card (G1 or G2, for maximum effectiveness), while the vanguard is certain to be no-guarded due to its difficulty in no-passing, while having a different attack that is easy to guard.



While instead playing this way would be able to create different power lines, driving more damage.

This play does involve more cards played out from hand, but also creates better power lines for driving damage. The first attack is still 5k to guard if the opponent is 8k or above power, but the remaining two lines become very difficult to guard. After attacking with the rear guard, your vanguard will attack and likely be no guarded. If neither player opens a trigger, the last attack will be 15k shield to guard, but if you open a trigger, it becomes 25k to guard. This will have created two attacks that are not readily guarded because of low resources early in the game as well as ineffectiveness of guarding with multiple cards so early in the game.

Conclusion

The secret to driving damage is to hit early, hit fast, and hit hard, before the opponent can guard you effectively.

To this vein, you want to be creating lines that are very difficult to guard with one card, or two lines that require high shield value to guard, aiming for that power line of requiring 25k shield to guard, as that’s when it breaks the effective to guard line.

Most importantly, be sure that you follow each aggressive turn with another aggressive turn. By attacking in with high power lines, your opponent will be taking damage and have pressure on, but will still have shield value in their hands. Be sure to follow up with turn after turn of constant high power columns so when they have to guard, and they will very soon, they have to throw multiple cards to keep themselves alive, much more than they would have if they were able to guard earlier in the game.

Thats all for today. See you back next time on the CanYouSayBlog, where we learn how to be a better cardfighter. Join us next time as we discuss preparing for a big tournament, beyond just improving playing.