



Written and Edited by:

John Tjaden, James Chung, China Ross and Chad Leiske





Akin to Vintage in Magic, welcome to the format where almost every card in Vanguard is able to be played... This is the format most regard as: “Gyze, Lock, and Loop”. With the release of V-SS-01 Premium Collection, nothing can be further from the truth. Welcome to Vision's first article on Premium, where our resident grinders will take you through the format post PremColle and what to expect from each deck in it.









Bushiroad finally released the first set of the promised Premium support! With its release, the premium meta will be shaken up entirely, dethroning Ange from best deck and bringing five new decks into the top of the premium meta-game.





The difficulty scale is based on how difficult it is to optimally pilot the deck where 1 is “Strap that helmet on and go” and 10 is “You mess up, you lose”.









5. Universe Ace, Bustered

(Difficulty: 7.5)

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to take Winning Champ Victor and make it 200x better? Well this is the result! Universe Ace, Bustered allows the user to drive check up to (in optimal setups) around 9 to 10 times with the average amount of 6 when you have a more common setup.





Not only do you build up the pressure on your Vanguard, but you are also providing a multitude of attacks that hits well above your standard G-Guard numbers. This allows Victor to have an extremely powerful first stride to snowball a ton of advantage to lead into a Fang Dragon King Fist, Driger turn immediately after.





Bustered lets the user have extremely easy lethal setups after first stride and if you hit enough triggers, to have an easy first stride lethal. The main thing that holds this card back from being higher on the list is the fact that drive checks are inconsistent, you can check a lot of blanks, and sometimes you just straight up don’t have a great field setup.





Example Post EB07 Nova Grappler List:





4. Pure Saintess, Green Katrina

(Difficulty: 4)

Welcome to the most affordable top tier Premium deck. It comes in at a whopping 60 dollars without Zoa and Megaloma which aren’t super necessary. Premium Neo Nectar also does not use Cecilia which keeps its cost down.





It fixes the main issue that plagued Premium Neo Nectar since the format started: you couldn’t use any of the standard cards with the bloom strides. In addition, she even provides Neo Nectar with a way to multi-attack, which was only available to them when Velhemina was printed. The deck plays very similar to what Sanctuary Guard Rush was like back in early G. Rush early into a powerful first stride to cripple or kill the opponent outright.





It is able to do this with the "[CONT](VC):All of your plant tokens get [Power]+10000.” skill along with its AUTO skill on attack which lets you call more token producers like Pansy Musketeer Sylvia for more high powered attacks.





Card World Akiba - GP Akiba Qualifier (1st):





Business Trip! Grand Prix Akaba 2019 Hakata (4th):





3. Evil God Pontiff, Gastille Daimonas

By: James “Big Daddy” Chung

(Difficulty: 9)

All hail the return of the apostle, Gastille Daimonas. When initially revealed, many people speculated the card is borderline “broken.” However, after the initial testing has settled down and the meta has solidified, the card has a very high skill cap in order to be utilized to the fullest. The first build everyone was testing and had seen successes, was Turbo SC. This variant utilizes Gastile’s secondary skill of obtaining the skills of those soul charged by his own ability. Turbo Soul Charge focuses on the end-game of big beat sticks swing at your opponent for “PG or nah” numbers. This, however, leaves your side fragile and susceptible to counter attacks, if your opponent survives the onslaught.









In the light of this, a new variant has emerged and took 2nd place in GP Akiba Top 4 Finals. Darkness Combo. This variant is more stable in mid-to-late game, providing necessary soul charge at your own pace and with selective charging through the Darkness engine: Covetous Succubus , Glanzend Vampir , etc. While it has shown its prospects through the GP Akiba stream , the deck still shows the obvious glass cannon syndrome. Gastille Daimonas brought Dark Irregulars back into the meta scene, however it is no longer as oppressive as it once was.





GP Akiba Qualifier Winner:









2. Dragprincipal, Morfessa

(Difficulty: 8)

Alright Vanguarders, how many fingers you got on your hand? 10? Can you count them? You got it! All jokes aside, this stride is absolutely amazing. Providing such a heavy power boost to front-row along with a critical on the side, is genuinely competing for the spot of “Best Stride in the Game” for its sheer power.





If the luard player has Dragfencer, Dagda on board and 1 counterblast they have 4 attacks minimum. If a stand is hit then the attacks go up to 6 with another Dragfencer, Dagda resolution. This means that the luard player has 6 attacks first stride that all have 2 crit and Battledore’s effect, which makes guarding it especially brutal.









The only downside is that despite that “count to 10, win game” effect is that it is very easy to misplay and overextend in trying to get to Ritual 10, and you will lose the game on the spot. The deck has been performing well in Japan and will continue to have success here in the west. It's definitely a deck to look out for!





3rd Iwamizawa VGCS (1st):





Yellow Submarine Akihabara - GP Akiba Qualifier (1st):





1. Abundant Water Honorable Deity, Ichikishima

(Difficulty: 3)

This card is absolutely broken. It single handedly pushes OTT to the best deck in the format. Not only does it draw a card and give your front-row units +2000 per card in hand but it completely turns off ALL [AUTO] abilities of your opponent’s guardians. Yes, that does include any form of perfect guard and g-guard.





This makes this card and all of your rear guards extremely difficult to guard. Because this is such a potent first stride, decks have completely dropped Silent Tom and the cheesy “Cardfight NoGuard” combo because it just outright isn’t necessary. To elaborate, the Ichikishima’s secondary skill to also count the face-up G-zone as a hand count makes Oracle easier to achieve, in conjunction the power threshold is way too high to hard guard 3 attacks.





Given OTTs ability to filter and scry with cards like Battle Sister, Panettone , you can easily one shot the opponent with checking multiple criticals and sending them from 2 to 6 or more. It 100% will be a powerful contender in the meta as it has some of the best grade 2 gaming with the 12000 Base Battle Sister, Orangette and all of the V-series cards in the deck, along with the most powerful stride in premium





Ichikishima Example List

https://twitter.com/ryogyoza/status/1139847988321193984?s=19













Conclusion





That's all for this time Cardfighters. V-SS-01 Premium Collection really shakes the format up. Gone are the days of Ange mirror, long gone are the days of Gyze memes. Premium is a interesting and unique format to learn, it offers players more agency and control over the pace of game play.





This is just the first in a large number of Premium articles that Vision will be producing. Our goal is to support both formats, and to make sure players are comfortable with competing in both!





Follow us on our social media:

Facebook