Fundamentals: Mulligan

[Blog: 17 Mins Read]

Yahallo lads and ladettes, its me its your best friend its CanYouSayG, and you’re reading the CanYouSayBlog, where we learn how to be a better Cardfighter.

Today we are continuing our series on fundamentals, where we go over some of the core concepts in Vanguard. For veterans of the game you may know many of the concepts we are discussing, but it is always beneficial to review your fundamentals.

Today, we will be discussing about mulligan, how you change the cards in your hand before the game starts. Thats right, the fight starts even before you stand up!



If you missed out the recent segment on Guard Restrict, you can find it here

At the start of the game, both players decide which player is going first and second, then each player gets to look at their hand and decide how many to exchange, how many cards to send back to their deck, and then draw back up to 5 cards. This gives you many chances to get the cards you want in your starting hand, so lets discuss what to think about when you want to create your starting hand.

Prioritizing Ride

In Vanguard, you want to ride up from Grade 1, Grade 2, and then Grade 3 every turn to possess progressively more powerful units. Even in the beginner’s guide, players are taught to mulligan in order to obtain a Grade 1, Grade 2, and Grade 3 Unit in their opening hands so they can smoothly ride up the grades.



Yes indeed, one of the core concepts is to secure a smooth ride up from Grade 1, 2, and then 3. However, it is not the only concept in your mulligan, and some more veteran players do often see plays that give up their ride security in order to look for other cards.

Another concept to consider when exchanging your starting hand is your subsequent ride beyond Grade 3. Some decks aim to ride Grade 3 and then have to re-ride again as part of their core strategy. Examples of these cards include Maelstrom from Aquaforce, Cecilia from Neo Nectar, and Dragonic Waterfall from Kagero. If this is your core strategy then you have to consider another ride in your mulligan, while if you are playing a deck that does not need to re-ride, such as Tachikaze, you will not be aiming to mulligan into multiple grade 3s.

Turns to Draw Your Ride

One important concept to consider when mulligan, especially for your ride, is how many turns you will have until you actually need the card. While many newer players will always aim to get Grade 1, 2, 3 in their hand, the reason veteran players are sometimes more willing to forego this and mulligan their ride away is they have a good idea of how long it will take, or rather how long they will have, until you need to actually use that grade. As you cannot call that grade until you have ridden, cards of Grade 2 and Grade 3 in your hand early cannot do anything, and are waiting their turn in the spotlight.

In Vanguard, as you aim to ride Grade 1, 2, then 3, the ideal games will have you riding Grade 1 on turn 1, Grade 2 on turn 2, Grade 3 on turn 3. This in turn means that while you need to have Grade 1 on your first turn, you have two turns to get yourself a grade 2, and three turns to find yourself a Grade 3.

This is further compounded by some games, especially in premium, where you may choose not to ride and instead the amount of time for subsequent grades is extended.

So, on turn 1, you open with 5 cards, and then stand and draw for turn. This is the point where you ride your Grade 1. Therefore, after looking through Six cards, you need to have gotten your Grade 1.

But what’s this? If you factor in the mulligan, depending on how many cards you mulligan, you can have looked through six, seven, eight, nine, ten, or even eleven cards of your deck depending on how many cards you mulligan in order to find your grade one ride.

However, with the next grade, Grade 2, not only do you have your opening 5 cards which is anywhere from seeing 5 cards to 10 cards, you have the stand and draw from your G1 turn, your potential drive check, then your stand and draw from your Grade 2 turn. This gives you a minimum of 7 cards and as many as seeing 13 cards to find yourself a Grade 2 to ride, even before taking into account your first vanguard’s draw skill, or potential draw triggers!

Further along the line is the Grade 3 ride. You start from Seven to Thirteen cards, add on a drive check, and another stand and draw and now you have Nine to Fifteen cards to find your grade 3. This amount of time and at least two cards a turn cycle gives you far more than time in order to get your grade 3 to ride up. You can look through one fifth of your deck to get to your Grade 3 despite exchanging zero cards at the start of the game and not activating any draw effects, even the draw from the starting vanguard!







This concept is good to remember when performing your mulligan, as it shows you that you indeed do have many cards to go through before needing each exact grade, and that despite only seeing five cards in your opening hand, you will have up to twice that many chances to get yourself a grade three before it becomes a necessity. As you can see, because you need your Grade 1 to get started, its much more important to mulligan your first hand in order to get it, as compared to other grades where you have time to draw into it. Grade 1s have a higher priority to get into your starting hand than other grades.

Factoring in G Assist

G assist is to reveal your hand at the start of the ride phase, and if you do not have a card of the next grade, look at the top 5 cards of your deck and add one of the next grade to your hand, followed by removing two cards in your hand from the game.

G assist helps players struggling to find the next ride achieve it, at a heavy cost. While removing two cards from hand from the game can come across as hefty, do remember that your G assist added one card to your hand, making the total loss of advantage a -1.

In exchange, should you need to use G Assist to ride to the next grade, G assisting has a great potential; to look through five cards for your next ride. Note that when you are riding from hand, your options to look for potential units from amongst cards drawn becomes limited to your draws, drive checks, and early game mulligan.

Therefore, if you want to take the risk with accepting the -1 from G assisting, the number of cards you see before each ride is instead increased by five, as you look at the top 5 cards of your deck to get your ride.

Thats upwards of potentially twenty cards being seen to ride to grade 3, even if you remove the draw effect of your starter!

Also, if you assist you can chose which of the Grade you add to your hand from the top five, unlike if you had opened with that specific grade. Instead of riding the undesired ride target, you may sometimes get the option to pick between your main ride and your backup grade 3.

The existence of G Assist can definitely help you find cards to ride easily, and as such you have to consider its existence when deciding what cards you want to mulligan for.

These concepts does take time to get used to and engrained in your play, but are used to great effect by many veteran players whom are unfazed by the lack of next ride, instead believing in their deck and winning image of being able to assist or draw into the next card to ride.

Deck Balance

In deciding your mulligan, you should consider greatly how your deck is balanced. Certain decks have lesser quantities of specific grades, and as such you need to be more willing to return cards of other grades to your deck in order to draw into them.

Some examples include decks such as Gancelot, or Angerblader, both are decks that play only four grade 3s in some of their builds, and do indeed rely heavily on mastery of mulligan and G assist in order to maximize chances of drawing into it by the turn it is needed. What players often do in these decks is play a comparatively higher number of grade 1s and Grade 2s so the chances of G assisting into these cards is not only lower, but to also increase the chances of drawing into them blind when you return multiple cards to the deck for mulligan. If you are confident in being able to blindly draw into your grade 2s, you do not need to keep them in your opening hand, and can instead use them as extra chances to draw into your much more crucial grade 3s.

Similar logic is applied in decks with comparatively more Grade 3s and hence less Grade 2s and Grade 1s, such as Hyuga, Dailiner. While you do need to mulligan for specific cards, you are more willing to give up Grade 3s than Grade 2s or Grade 1s to find them because you are more likely to be able to draw into them by the time you need to ride, where as drawing into the Grade 1 or Grade 2 slots will be comparatively harder.

This is party how you consider your deck build and factor it into your mulligan. Now, various effects unique to each deck and clan will make it easier to find specific cards for the deck to do its plays, so be sure to consider your effects as well.

First versus Second

When choosing what cards to mulligan, several opening hands may contain cards that are better while going first and others better while going second, so you would mulligan the cards that are not immediately beneficial to your position of going first or second. Examples of cards include effects that some Grade 1 units have that give you card advantage when it hits an opponents vanguard. Its not incredibly useful when going first, but can completely swing the game in your favor if you are going second.

While going second, you get to attack first, making an opening for you to attack potentially two or three times. This in turn also increases the priority of Grade 1 units, as you may want to open with more than just one for the ride, but instead two or three to attack with.

Another aspect to take into consideration is striding. When going second, your opponent will have the opportunity to ride up to grade 3 first, meaning that you will in turn have the opportunity to stride first, giving you only your G1 turn, G2 turn, and G3 draw to accumulate stride cost in your hand if you want to stride that turn, increasing the priority of potential stride cost if you are going second, as compared to going first where you have your G1 turn, your G2 turn, your G3 turn, and then one more turn of stand and draw in order to draw into that same cost.

When going first, you are more likely to be willing to keep that second grade 3 unit, as you want to have the tempo advantage and more security in riding a second time, or perhaps have multiple grade 2 units to force the opponent to commit more to the board to attack back, especially if you are a force clan.

Additionally, as you are more likely to have more chances to draw into it, the necessity of having all of your effects online the turn you ride to grade 3 is lessened, meaning you can keep that grade 3 unit that isn’t your main ride in your opening hand, and rely on drive checks and draws to find you your re-ride into your main Grade 3.

Remember, vanguard doesn’t start when you ride your grade 3 and get your imaginary gift or start activating effects and striding, Vanguard starts on turn one!

Ride Target and Call Target

When performing mulligan, another key concept is whether you plan to ride or call the units in your hand. Several units only have abilities on rear guard circle, and as such you want to plan to call them, not ride them.

On the other hand, you want to be able to ride the Grade 1 and Grade 2s that have Vanguard abilities.

Thus, in your mulligan, you want to aim to draw what you do not have. If you have a unit you want to call, then you want to have another unit to ride so you can call it. If you already have the unit you want to ride, then you don’t need multiple copies of it, you can use cards to try to mulligan into drawing other units.

When you decide what cards to mulligan you also want to think about your game plan. Think about what cards you don’t have in your hand that would change your game plan for the better and how likely you are to draw them given how many cards are in your hand.

If you know your hand needs one of a few cards to enact its game plan on the first or second turn, giving up cards to try to draw into the cards may help.

Even if you have Grade 1, 2, and 3, without a solid game plan your chances of winning the fight go down, so identify what cards need to stay and have an idea of what cards you want to draw in order to have a solid game plan for the first one or two turns when you see your opening hand.

Sometimes you will draw into them and sometime your mulligan wont, but if you take the extra step the number of games where your game plan is smooth and progresses from turn to turn improves.

Returning Triggers.

Most beginners in Vanguard will instantly return triggers to their deck with their mulligan, and return only triggers, where as more veteran players use the above discussed concepts to think about what they want to return back to the deck and more importantly what they can draw into.

Triggers are most beneficial in the deck where they can be opened with drive and damage checks. This, combined with them being G0 which means they do not contribute to the all important riding up to Grade 3, are the reason behind always sending back triggers, but nothing is an absolute.

One of the most advanced plays I’ve seen is to keep in hand heal triggers in order to ride up to G3 first and use G Guardians to survive and retaliate, so blindly returning triggers to the deck is again not always a move that you would always take.

Additionally, retaining a G0 in hand to have extra high shield value is a valuable play, as it can mean the difference between having and not having the cards to guard an aggressive start from the opponent.

While most of these reasons do not make most triggers high up on the priority of cards you want to have in your opening hand, trigger units are not something you should be unhappy to see come into your hand after a mulligan.

Interpreting how many cards were mulligan

In Vanguard, as the concepts behind mulligan are similar in each deck, interpreting the opponents mulligan amount becomes another key point in predicting how the opponents first few turns will play out.

As players have to declare how many cards you mulligan, this can allow you to interpret how good, or how bad, the opponents starting five cards were.



If the player is mulligan away three or four cards, you can see they are often prioritizing getting their ride up to grade 3, or perhaps attempting to aggressively mulligan for a specific card. Either way, the likelihood of them having multiple grade 1s and grade 2s or the ideal grade 1 and 2s goes down, slowing them down and pointing towards their goal of extending the game in order for triggers to equalize the game for them or turn it around.

However, if your opponent saw their hand and changed zero cards or one card, you can interpret this as the opponent having a secure game plan and an ideal opening hand with the ideal ride and call targets, as well as having no triggers. This points towards the opponent being more willing to start with an aggressive start, aiming to finish the game with the tempo that is brought by their powerful first few turns.

Of course, there is always the chance they can draw a perfect hand after their mulligan, but that is a much lower chance and also a similar chance to them drawing no action but defensive shield value instead.

There must always be A Lich King

Our final concept we will be discussing is a combination of the two previous ones: how to interpret an amount of mulligan as well as returning triggers, and is a concept that I have seen some veteran players use to great effect. Not every player necessarily agrees with this concept, so be sure to think about it and see if it fits your playstyle.

This concept has to deal with always exchanging at least one card from your hand with every mulligan, even if your hand is “perfect”. This is partially due to no matter the hand, you must always identify the weakest link and play accordingly to cover up that weakness, but also that no matter the hand, even if it has G1,G2,G3, and no triggers, always has a weakest link, and removing it can replace it with a potentially better card without much risk of sacrificing the existing game plan.

The second part of this concept is how the opponent will interpret a hand that has mulligan zero cards: as being perfect and not having any triggers. A hand without triggers, while has a lot of things it can do proactively, also is notedly devoid of triggers. Trigger units bearing high shield value are used in the early game to stop attacks with a single card, and telegraphing having none of them means the opponent would focus on creating power lines that you have to use a trigger to guard effectively, or just play in a way to force you to guard with the cards that you do have, making you guard with valuable G1 and G2 that are crucial to your plan or be pushed to higher damage in the early game.

By simply changing one card, the opponent now has to think that you have at least one potential trigger, and overcommitting to the board will be punished and countered.

For these two reasons, some players will always exchange at least one card in their opening hand, just to lodge that amount of variance into the opponents calculations and plans.

Conclusion

Today, we discussed Mulligan, and some concepts to think about when exchanging and setting up your hand at the start of every vanguard fight. The fight starts before you flip your starting vanguard face up!

We have discussed several mulligan concepts such as Prioritizing riding, Factoring in G Assist, How many cards are effectively seen with the mulligan, Considering your own decks balance of grades, thinking about going first or second in setting up your hand, setting up your hand to have what to ride and what to call, as well as interpreting the opponent’s mulligan.

We finished off with a more complex concept that is used by several veterans of the game, how there always must be a lich king.

The world finals for the Bushiroad Championship Series is coming this weekend, and all the world is going to be watching it! Be sure to tune into the streams and think about how the players mulligan their hands and learn from how the best in the world play!

The mulligan is a crucial part of setting up your opening few turns, but is only one part, one part of the set up, of the vanguard fight. While you may be uneasy with certain mulligans or draws gone bad, its important to have confidence in your deck and imagine how you would use the hand, no matter how good or bad, to find a road to victory!

Image it how you would mulligan your hand, and what you want to see before and after the mulligan, and always remember to enjoy Vanguard fight!

I hope you enjoyed learning about mulligan today. If youre looking to learn more about some of the basics of Vanguard, be sure to check here