I need to preface this post by saying my play testing with Vanquisher has been FUCKING AWFUL. With my Blue Wave post before I had enough meaningful matches to give solid informed analysis on all the cards, here I’m doing this in pure spectator mode, because all my testing has yielded is my luck with this deck is THE WORST. I’ve either been rushed down cause I didn’t draw any triggers, sacked to death, or had turns of nothing happening because I drew exactly ZERO combo pieces. I’ll try to keep my experience out of my analysis but if you find I’m underrating certain cards you’ll know why.

Anyways Vanquisher. I was hopeful for this set. Vanquisher was the second deck to catch my eye and I was initially really happy with it. I was sincerely hoping that whatever new supports we got would help shore up weaknesses in the deck and help augment our play style. Instead, we got a card that asks us to throw away our previous win condition, radically changes our playstyle (again), and all the supports are geared towards supporting that style. I feel like this has been the experience of Narukami as a whole, where Bushiroad has no idea what to do with the clan to make it different from Kagero so they keep flip flopping on play styles every new set. GeoNexuz of /r/cardfightvanguard made a post detailing Narukami’s identity woes you can find it here. It’s really disappointing to see cause Narukami already has a pretty hard time overall. It’s a slow buildup deck in a meta that is incredibly fast paced. It’s not godawful, but when faced with so many options that can outpace it or just deny its combos Vanquisher is sadly a B (maybe even C) tier deck.

Let’s start with our boy VMAX.

Skill: [AUTO](VC) Generation Break 3 Thunderstrike 5 (This ability is active when your opponent’s bind zone has five or more cards):[Counter Blast (2)] At the end of the battle that this unit attacked a vanguard, if your opponent has no rear-guards, you may pay the cost. If you do, choose one of your opponent’s vanguards, and deal one damage.

[CONT](VC):When this unit attacks a vanguard, choose one of your opponent’s (RC) for each face up card with “Vanquisher” in its card name in your G zone, and this unit battles both the vanguard and the units on the chosen (RC) in one attack.

People were flipping their shit when this card’s skill was first released. Everyone was all worked up about how broken it was and started trying to think of ways to cheese his ping. Meanwhile actual Vanquisher players just hung their heads in disappointment. I do have to start by saying VMAX isn’t a bad card by any means. Free damage is free damage and if the game does down to the wire this could help you pull through. Really the issue is he’s not adding anything else to the deck. The card is scary to think about sure, but really his utility is only in the late game. He can’t easily be used as pressure because you need face up Vanquishers for his multi-attack and the only other one we have is VOLTAGE.

I really really hate the idea of throwing away VOLTAGE first stride. Outside his GB3 his skill is literally just Zorras. Zorrass is already a shitty first stride and the idea of having to relegate what used to be my finisher to “still Zorrass levels of bad” is not fun. It’s likely something I’ll just have to get over though.

Beyond that Thunderstrike 5 can actually be a bit of a pain if you didn’t set up properly. If your opponent is smart they’ll figure out ways to dance around leaving things open, at least in the front row, to make you reach for your retire-binds. If you ended up not getting your combo pieces early *coughmyentireplaytestingexperiencecough* your opponent deciding to cockblock your first stride can kill your momentum pretty damn fast. I say this from experience doing it to other Vanquisher players. Overall VMAX is just a really medium card not godawful but not amazing either, the base deck he’s in just struggles too much right now and he just adds to existing problems.

Let’s keep the disappointment train rolling shall we?

Sky Guardian Supreme Dragon, Bluwerke Dragon

Skill: [CONT](GC) Thunderstrike 3 (This ability is active when your opponent’s bind zone has three or more cards):This unit gets [Shield]+10000.

[AUTO]:At the end of the battle that this unit was placed on (GC), choose up to one rear-guard at [Rest] in your opponent’s front row for every four cards in your opponent’s bind zone, and retire it.

Well it certainly looks impressive. The shield skill is fine for Vanquisher himself, but completely locks out anything that can’t play TS. That’s just shitty cause it’s Bushi telling everyone “Play Vanquisher or GTFO but buy all our new Descendant cards please”. However the big disappointment is his frikkin retire skill. Why the fuck does this card have so many goddamn restrictions on it?! Ts4 end of battle AND only things at rest in the front row. Is it because it has actual shield value? If that’s the case I might have taken a straight up denial over this. The skill can’t kill the majority of targets that are worth a crap. Restanders get up before him, hit n run also poofs before him, and giant columns Neo Nectar columns you still gotta find a way to guard before they actually die. The only way to look at the retire skill is as a bonus rather than the purpose of the card, which is frankly insulting.

“Oh it’s okay sweetie you can have your denial griffin. What, it sucks? Oh no no no, you see he’s an easy 36k shield the retire is just a bonus. See? you’re just like Big Brother Kagero.”

If they’re gonna half ass it then just don’t give us the skill at all. At least then I’m not frustrated by a subpar skill that barely ever goes off. I should mention that he can combo with chainbolt to give your Vanguard an extra 5 – 8k on their turn. That’s decent at least. I hate this card it makes me feel scummy since it locks out non-vanquisher builds, and it’s subpar retire is kind of insulting when you compare to denial griffin or defeat flare.

Moving on from my intense burning hatred

Martial Arts Dragon.

No image cause I don’t have much to say about him.

Skill:[AUTO]:[Counter Blast (1) & Soul Blast (1)] When this unit is placed on (VC), you may pay the cost. If you do, choose one of your opponent’s rear-guards in the front row, retire it, and bind that card face up.

[CONT](RC) Generation Break 1 Thunderstrike 2 (This ability is active when your opponent’s bind zone has two or more cards):During your turn, this unit gets [Power]+3000.

This card is okay. He gives us some recourse against early rush. I would have preferred that he work on RG too but I guess that’s too broken according to bushiroad logic. Beyond that he’s a 12k attacker, which is fine since the deck is sort of lacking in boosters. Next.

Ascetic Dracokid.

Skill: [AUTO](RC) Thunderstrike 1 (This ability is active when your opponent’s bind zone has one or more cards):When this unit boosts, this unit gets [Power]+2000 until end of that battle.

[AUTO](RC) Generation Break 1:[Retire this unit] When any player’s rear-guard other than this unit is retired from (RC) due to card effects during your turn, you may pay the cost. If you do, your opponent chooses one of his or her rear-guards, retires it, and binds it face up.

Ascetic is our new forerunner that’s basically Sadegh, except it only works during our turn, and retires itself instead of going into soul. This card is pretty sweet since it helps build TS quickly, and also performs crowd control against rush heavy decks. I’m personally struggling between choosing him and Wildrun because everyone in my area knows how to play around Vanquisher and setting up TS is a pain in the ass. He’s still a good main deck card though so I can imagine myself running multiples. He’s still a 7k boost after all. One of the few cards I am fully positive about.

I think that’s all the major cards I wanted to cover. We got more stuff like our TS searcher, who is not very noteworthy. We also got our TS PGG Wyvern Defender, Guld. The skill is rather bad going 1 for 1 and bouncing a Pg is kinda shitty in a deck that can’t recover resources and relies on certain cards like Chainbolt. We also have a TS2 clone of Rising Phoenix that’s only SB1 instead of 2 which I appreciate. Finally we have Ground-breaking General, Bisham. He’s an interesting card since he finally gives us some goddamn superior calling. On hit you CB1 SB 1 and search the same number of bound cards your opponent has for 2 TS units to call. Then you bind them face up after. Could be interesting but the lack of viable call targets for now means he’s not seeing play until we get more worthwhile stuff.

That’s all I have to say about Vanquisher, I was pretty negative here, and once again my play test data is garbage so if you think I’m completely insane for being down on all these cards let me know. Otherwise I hoped you enjoyed reading.