Silverthorn Victorious

Yesterday counted as a "money where your mouth is" day with the first local tournament of stride era and after all the theory craft put into my Silver Thorn deck I was going in to the 16 man event ready to crush and come top of the pile.

Format for the day was 4 rounds swiss draw (best of 3) then a cut-off to top 8 for single round elimination and as anticipated, almost everyone was running a shiny new stride deck. Matchups for the day were as follows:

Swiss

• Royal Stride (1-2) - The only match set loss for the day as I died on the backswing after my opponent 6th damage healed on the first attack and I proceeded to get no triggers from my Atmos Stride. The cross-ride from Luquier really goes a long way to hampering the Royal tide of superior called attacks
• Aqua Force (2-0) - Easy matchup vs one of the young local players.
• Nova Grappler Stride (2-0) - Got some good aggressive hands to deplete his field and hand early leaving him with nothing to stride with.
• Nova Grappler Stride (2-1) - Longer more drawn out games due to rides of 8K and 10K vanillas which slows the aggression right down.

Single Elimination

• Nova Grappler Stride (Win) - Very tough game here but managed to last out vs 3 stride attacks, deliberately keeping him off enough counterblast to use his second Victoplasma.
• Jewel Knights (Win) - Hit a perfect hand and won before my opponent got to grade 3.
• Gear Chronicle Stride (Win) - Again my deck got slowed down by the 8K/10K rides but the cross ride gives a great late game advantage against all the guard restrictions. He hit 3 of his draw triggers early to give a great hand advantage but my high power columns slowly whittled that down. Ended up all-in on the final turn but got the win.

Was hoping to come up against the Neo and Kagero stride decks that were about too but luck of the draw and all that saw me facing a spam of Nova Grappler. The key things i want to pull out from the days deck test though were:

1. Out of 13 games i never needed to G-Assist to hit my grade 3's. Theory says I should have needed to once or twice but in practice, running 6 grade 3's worked well in keeping the deck aggressive but reliable.
2. I saw spare grade 3's enough that over those games I got to stride 3 times. Each time the attack got hit by a Perfect Guard so definitely don't be wasting counterblast on Atmos unless your back is against the wall.
3. The Nova starter needs to die... horribly... in fire. Having no retire skills can certainly get frustrating for a deck.
4. The Silverthorns themselves were very soul hungry, so much so that i'm likely going to tweak it a bit to get Irina in the deck instead of the 10K attacker.

G-BT-01 Set Overview

The first full set for Vanguard G launches in the UK this Friday. As each new set launches for the season i will pull out individual cards or mechanics that personally interest me and may just get you thinking about things in a way you never expected.

At a quick glance, G-BT-01 is a great cover off for new players entering the game, giving access to the rudimentary basics of the five core strategies:

• Abrasion - Covered off in a halfway decent manner by Royals and their battle phase superior calling.
• Power - Ironically given by Nova Grapplers and their re-standing stride unit Victoplasma.
• Defense - Fueled by the draw power of OTT
• Disruption - With Kagero providing the most efficient back row retires
• Penetration - Gear Chronicle having a pseudo Silent Tom and guard restriction skills on their vanguards.

As a first set, it's rather well designed and balanced in this regard, however because this framework needs to be set in place, very few cards in the set actually stand out as doing anything new that wasn't already strategically available to players in the original series of Vanguard. The biggest potential within the whole set actually rather deceptively sits within the new Oracle Think Tank shell.

So what's so different? Oracle Think Tank (or OTT) have always been a clan focused purely on drawing cards however for a long time it's been proven that simply drawing a large volume of cards isn't enough to be a winning strategy. The Magus line and to an extent the original Amaterasu attempted to help out OTT players by giving a preview of cards they would draw and allowing some degree of card filtering but it became overly complicated.

Stride Generation has heavily moved this clan on by allowing OTT players to check multiple cards from the top of the deck and select the one that is most relevant to draw. For anyone who has played Magic The Gathering, this ability to filter your draws and dig deep into your deck is exceptionally powerful as it allows a player to reliably search for powerful combinations of cards that can win games together.

Here in Vanguard, this increases the defensive power of the clan as you are able to dig for your perfect guards and then play an outlast game. That however is not using the ability to its full potential as you ideally want to be finding an aggressive combo that lets you win rather than just bolstering your defense. To date OTT lack that combo, however my locals are deciding to hold extreme fight events so i'm rather looking forward to throwing the Nubatama Legion into the OTT shell to create what might be the first Defence/Penetration cross strategy deck.

Two more things from the set stand out from among the rest for me:

1, PG-G's or the new style of sentinels. With the cost of abilities generally stabilizing out to the point where 1 counterblast gets you 1 cards worth of value, having sentinels unflip a point of damage later in the game essentially nets out the cost of discarding. For extreme fight players, the removal of restriction on your vanguard needing to be of the same clan for the sentinel to work is just even more wonderful.

2, Trigger unit abilities

There has been a significant jump in the power of triggers that have abilities within the new G series. Not only do they now look to be going back into the deck to improve your drive check odds rather than vanishing to the soul, but doing so now gives much stronger benefits.

Before, trigger abilities were a way to gain a minor offensive edge, turning a defensive card into some more punch if you had pulled ahead or were in a desperate corner. You could generally value it at being a gain of around half a card on the attack. Now the abilities most definitely net you a whole cards worth of benefit and in the right situation can be worth even more. I greatly look forward to seeing what new trigger abilities come out in the future.

 

Taking Silverthorn into G-era

So after all this game theory, it's time to drill it down and put it into practical application. Going into the release of G-BT-01 it's essential that you prepare your deck to face both Stride and Legion as the meta will be full of it. With that in mind I settled on the following priorities for my chosen deck:

• I definitely want to be playing an abrasion deck and go aggressive in order to put stride decks under heavy pressure and fully take advantage of the benefits of G-assist.
• I will need a good amount of draw power in order to hit my perfect guards reliably to protect me against stride.
• With Kagero and Gear Chronicle both about, I will also want to be playing a deck that is resilient to retire - in particular I need to be able to recover my field if ever Chronos Command manages to hit.

From all of those criteria I have settled on an updated Silver Thorn deck to take me into G-BT-01. Back in BT-15 it was one of the most powerful early game decks and the ability of Dragon Empress Luquier to recover the full field if required is heavily appealing.

The basic Cray Elemental stride units add a lot to the deck as its main weakness was a lack of finishing power, now with stride, that problem is heavily reduced and if you lack the cards in hand to stride you still have Upright Lion to create a large attack with. So let's take the basic Silver Thorn deck template from BT-15 by taking Jeremie Raso's winning deck from France's regional qualifiers:

Grade 3

4x Silver Thorn Dragon Empress, Venus Luquier

2x Silver Thorn Dragon Tamer, Luquier

2x Miracle Pop, Eva

Grade 2

4x Silver Thorn Beast Tamer, Maricica

4x Silver Thorn, Upright Lion

3x Silver Thorn, Rising Dragon

Grade 1

4x Silver Thorn Hypnos, Lydia

4x Silver Thorn Beast Tamer, Ana

4x Silver Thorn Assistant, Zelma

2x Silver Thorn, Breathing Dragon

Grade 0

1x Silver Thorn Beast Tamer, Emile

4x Silver Thorn Juggler, Nadia (Heal)

4x Silver Thorn Beast Tamer, Serge (Stand)

4x Silver Thron, Barking Dragon (Crit)

2x Poison Juggler (Crit)

2x Silver Thorn Marionette, Natasha (Draw)

First things first, we can cut the grade 3 count down to just six thanks to G-Assist so Miracle Pop is out, freeing up two slots in the deck.

The initial instinct with those two slots is to straight away go for a 4-4-4 split on the grade 2's and have one floating slot free. However i'm going to push a different route - the true power of Silver Thorns comes from the combination of Maricica/Ana and having a Zelma in the soul; if you lack Zelma, it doesn't work anywhere near as well so i want to boost the consistency of Zelma.

Two copies of Dancing Princess of the Night Sky will help with that consistency challenge by being able to force a Zelma in the soul for the cost of a counter-blast. Now counterblasts are at a bit of a premium in the deck, particularly if you have to ride the original Luquier but being able to make your core work is vital.

The final thing to review is the triggers as right now they are set up for almost pure offense - we do however need to hit our perfect guards so a little more draw power is desirable, as such the quantities of draw and stand trigger will switch to 4x draw and 2x stand. Finally as a matter of personal taste, the quantities of Upright Lion and Rising Dragon will also switch.

With the addition of some Cray Elementals in the G-Zone, this gives a final list of:

Grade 4

4x Heat Element, Magum

4x Miracle Element, Atmos

Grade 3

4x Silver Thorn Dragon Empress, Venus Luquier

2x Silver Thorn Dragon Tamer, Luquier

Grade 2

4x Silver Thorn Beast Tamer, Maricica

3x Silver Thorn, Upright Lion

4x Silver Thorn, Rising Dragon

2x Dancing Princess of the Night Sky

Grade 1

4x Silver Thorn Hypnos, Lydia

4x Silver Thorn Beast Tamer, Ana

4x Silver Thorn Assistant, Zelma

2x Silver Thorn, Breathing Dragon

Grade 0

1x Silver Thorn Beast Tamer, Emile

4x Silver Thorn Juggler, Nadia (Heal)

2x Silver Thorn Beast Tamer, Serge (Stand)

4x Silver Thron, Barking Dragon (Crit)

2x Poison Juggler (Crit)

4x Silver Thorn Marionette, Natasha (Draw)

Winners and losers of "Stride Generation"

With the core mechanics looked over the next thing to think on is what it all means for your deck building and there are some definite winners and losers along with plenty to watch out for in the coming sets. Let's take a quick snapshot:

The Losers

1. Breakrides

Stride instantly puts the viability of every single breakride into question. Breakrides gave extra use to your grade 3's in the original game, allowing you to drop down a card in order to gain power and some additional effects on top, so long as you had ridden the breakride first. Stride let's you do the same, but it no longer cares about your ride order, making it instantly superior to breakrides as a core mechanic.

The only exceptions here are when the effects of the breakride carry stronger effects than striding. Notable cards for this would be Megacolony's Cyclomatooth and Kagero's Dauntless Drive Dragon.

2. Power Clans

There are several clans whose current mechanics revolve around pure power alone on the vanguard attack and the rear-guard columns. Stride has put a huge question mark over the viability of these clans since now every clan can achieve the same result; in particular Angel Feather and Dark Irregulars will be suffering for the entirety of Vanguard G unless the mechanics behind them get diversified into new areas.

The one upside these power clans have to hold on to currently is that they are able to achieve stronger attacks much quicker but that alone is not enough to keep them competitive in the new era.

3. Quintet Walls

Previously, a quintet wall would be pretty reliable at stopping a vanguard attack for just one card. With the power of a stride attack and its triple drive however, quintet walls will begin to struggle to reliably guard a stride attack. This doesn't mean they lose their use entirely though, since they are still great at blocking powered up rear-guard columns.

The Winners

1. Abrasion Decks
Between G-Assist letting you go more aggressive on your grade ratio's and the pressures on a stride deck to keep units in hand to early stride and activate generation break, aggressive abrasion decks such as Silver Thorns are likely to be in a good place for the new meta. Likewise the capability of striding works to round out the offensive capabilities of these decks since they generally lack a hard-hitting vanguard to finish games with.

2. Disruption Tactics
With stride putting pressure on players to keep their grade 3's in hand rather than committing them to the field as attackers, disruption decks may well have the potential to run amok. Narukami with its capacity to constantly blow up the opponents front row attacks stand as an example that will be well placed to ask a stride focused player the important question of, "will you stride? or do you want an attacker on the field to pass triggers onto?".

3. Bermuda Triangle
Calling it here, Bermuda Triangle will have one of the strongest stride decks going. Why? simply because of their ability to return units to hand.

Bermuda will be able to commit to the field early, and then return units to hand later to use as stride fuel giving them a fantastically well-rounded capacity for early offence and late-game power. When they get their stride enabler too, they will be able to use its enter the field effect multiple times to ensure that they never run out of fuel for striding

4. Draw Triggers
Almost every mechanic in Vanguard G pushes the importance of having draw power in your deck. You need to dig for your Sentinels, you need to have access to more cards in order to both fill your field and pay the costs of stride at the same time and you also need obvious cards to discard to your stride enablers.

The actual trigger effect itself may not seem as great as the others, but how all the mechanics stack up has really highlighted the importance of draw power in any deck. Not to say that draw triggers are now a "must have" for all decks but they are certainly something every player will need to rethink.

The one to watch

Megacolony

Yes, Megacolony.

My prediction for Vanguard G is that Megacolony are going to be the main "bad guy" in the manner that Link Joker have previously been. My reasoning for this is that their capacity to paralyze a vanguard completely screws over an opponent from striding, forcing a player to re-ride instead. No stride, no generation break, no Vanguard G new fun times for anyone.

Indeed with breakrides mostly out of the way, paralyze is stronger than ever, and when controlling the early game is becoming more and more important, there are few decks more capable of disrupting attacks than the bugs. All they need is a tiny touch more support.

Cardfight!! Vanguard G Mechanics Special - Generation Break

The last of the new core mechanics landing with the launch of Cardfight!! Vanguard G that needs reviewing is Generation Break (GB). By linking card abilities to your G-zone, this mechanic enables Bushiroad to control card scaling far more precisely, ensuring that certain abilities can only be used later in the game - similar to units whose abilities only activate when your vanguard is in Legion.

To date only GB-1 and GB-2 abilities have been revealed but I certainly wouldn't be surprised to see cards printed with GB-3 and GB-4 later in the series. For now though, with the existence of Persona Stride (stride units that also flip a second copy face up on use) the actual difference in when the current GB-1 and GB-2 activate is negligible so you can consider them both to be "active" after your first stride.

Generation Break is largely viewed as slow, effectively giving your rear-guards a speed reduction in the manner of Limit Break era but just how slow is it? In theory you can activate it as soon both you and your opponent are at grade 3 - just like Legion so where is the issue?

#Stride Enablers	Chance of 2 after draw 4
1	0.00%
2	3.06%
3	8.27%
4	14.90%
5	22.36%
6	30.20%
7	38.08%
8	45.74%
9	53.00%
10	59.74%
11	65.88%
12	71.39%
13	76.27%
14	80.52%

The numbers here are not 100% precise as it strips out any intent to specifically mulligan for grade 3's but it gives us a good indication to go by. When a basic deck consisting of 8 grade 3's is considered, you will have under a 50% chance of having a spare in hand when you reach the earliest possible point of striding - poor reliability indeed.

We can boost this to over 70% by including what is best called a "stride enabler" in our decks; a grade 1 which counts as 3 grades worth of cards when discarded for stride costs. The math there goes a bit fuzzy though as while you might pull both a grade 3 and that grade 1 stride enabler; you might have has to use that grade 1 as your ride early on. To give a better approximation let us also factor in the odds of successfully riding without G-Assist.

	# Grade 3's
#Stride Enablers	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
1	0.00%	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
2	0.72%	1.28%	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
3	1.95%	3.47%	4.65%	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
4	3.51%	6.25%	8.37%	10.01%	-	-	-	-	-	-
5	5.27%	9.38%	12.57%	15.02%	16.90%	-	-	-	-	-
6	-	12.67%	16.97%	20.29%	22.82%	24.75%	-	-	-	-
7	-	-	21.40%	25.58%	28.78%	31.21%	33.04%	-	-	-
8	-	-	-	30.72%	34.57%	37.49%	39.69%	41.34%	-	-
9	-	-	-	-	40.05%	43.44%	45.99%	47.91%	49.33%	-
10	-	-	-	-	-	48.96%	51.84%	54.00%	55.60%	56.79%
11	-	-	-	-	-	-	57.17%	59.55%	61.32%	62.63%
12	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	64.53%	66.45%	67.87%
13	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	70.99%	72.50%
14	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	76.54%

From this we get a more balanced view as to the likelihood of being able to stride using just one card on the turn you reach grade 3, without having had to drop cards due to G-Assist. In general you will be looking at a 50/50 chance if running 6 grade 3's and a 65% when running 8, not terrible, but certainly not reliable.

As such if you want to activate your Generation Break abilities quickly you need to be prepared in your game plan to discard two cards for an early stride. When you ride grade 3 if going second you will have seen just 9 cards and used three up in riding. By discarding two to stride early this leaves you with just four cards in the early game to mount an attack or defense - three if you need to G-Assist.

Initial thoughts would be that this makes an early stride very suicidal and that Generation Break is only going to be active late game when compared to Legion; and for many decks that will indeed be the case. But you can still create a fast deck with Generation Break. The secret there is that you need to be able to fill your field without using your hand, or draw lots of cards to refill your hand.

As such Generation Break is going to be far more useful to clans such as Royal Paladin and Oracle Think Tank and should be viewed as something to splash into other decks conservatively when the strength of the ability granted warrants it.

Cardfight!! Vanguard G Mechanics Special - Triple Drive

Central to Vanguard G is the introduction of Stride to the game as the core new mechanic of the season, available to every deck from the outset. Stride will likely be what receives the most support and focus ongoing, as such it's important to first take a look at what the very basics of Stride does for us as a mechanic and how it can be applied to our main strategies.

For the cost of discarding 3 "grades" worth of cards you get for one turn only:

• Retention of your vanguards' name so that you don't de-activate your rear-guard abilities.
• At least 26,000 power on your vanguard, comparable to that of break-riding a vanguard that can gain a 5K power boost independently.
• A triple drive-check, increasing your vanguard's attack pressure as it throws the reliability of a "two to pass" guard out of whack.

Roll that all together and you have a recipe that creates a "power" style vanguard attack on demand in absolutely any deck going! The core part in all of this though is that triple drive, which causes extremely difficult guarding decisions when also run with critical triggers; but just how reliable is that triple drive exactly? Time for more spreadsheets:

#Cards in Deck	40	40	36	36	32	32	28	28
# Triggers in Deck	Twin Drive	Triple Drive	Twin Drive	Triple Drive	Twin Drive	Triple Drive	Twin Drive	Triple Drive
1	5.00%	7.50%	5.56%	8.33%	6.25%	9.38%	7.14%	10.71%
2	9.87%	14.62%	10.95%	16.19%	12.30%	18.15%	14.02%	20.63%
3	14.62%	21.36%	16.19%	23.59%	18.15%	26.33%	20.63%	29.79%
4	19.23%	27.73%	21.27%	30.53%	23.79%	33.95%	26.98%	38.22%
5	23.72%	33.76%	26.19%	37.04%	29.23%	41.03%	33.07%	45.94%
6	28.08%	39.43%	30.95%	43.14%	34.48%	47.58%	38.89%	52.99%
7	32.31%	44.78%	35.56%	48.82%	39.52%	53.63%	44.44%	59.40%
8	36.41%	49.80%	40.00%	54.12%	44.35%	59.19%	49.74%	65.20%
9	40.38%	54.50%	44.29%	59.03%	48.99%	64.29%	54.76%	70.42%
10	44.23%	58.91%	48.41%	63.59%	53.43%	68.95%	59.52%	75.09%
11	47.95%	63.02%	52.38%	67.79%	57.66%	73.19%	64.02%	79.24%
12	51.54%	66.84%	56.19%	71.65%	61.69%	77.02%	68.25%	82.91%
13	55.00%	70.39%	59.84%	75.20%	65.52%	80.46%	72.22%	86.11%
14	58.33%	73.68%	63.33%	78.43%	69.15%	83.55%	75.93%	88.89%
15	61.54%	76.72%	66.67%	81.37%	72.58%	86.29%	79.37%	91.27%
16	64.62%	79.51%	69.84%	84.03%	75.81%	88.71%	82.54%	93.28%

So this one is fairly simple, showing the chance of hitting one or more triggers on your vanguard attack depending on remaining triggers and cards in deck. The first core pull out  is that an early Stride moves you from having a ~50% chance to a 2/3 chance of going critical when running 12 critical triggers; a very hefty jump in pressure. The second is that decks or clans with access to only 8 critical triggers jump up to having similar probabilities as that of a twin-drive with 12 triggers (both in blue).

With odds like those it becomes exceptionally risky to let a Stride unit attack through if you are at four damage. But what are the odds of hitting two or more triggers and bypassing that fateful "two to pass"?

#Cards in Deck	40	40	36	36	32	32	28	28
# Triggers in Deck	Twin Drive	Triple Drive	Twin Drive	Triple Drive	Twin Drive	Triple Drive	Twin Drive	Triple Drive
1	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
2	0.13%	0.38%	0.16%	0.48%	0.20%	0.60%	0.26%	0.79%
3	0.38%	1.13%	0.48%	1.40%	0.60%	1.77%	0.79%	2.32%
4	0.77%	2.23%	0.95%	2.75%	1.21%	3.47%	1.59%	4.52%
5	1.28%	3.64%	1.59%	4.48%	2.02%	5.65%	2.65%	7.33%
6	1.92%	5.36%	2.38%	6.58%	3.02%	8.27%	3.97%	10.68%
7	2.69%	7.37%	3.33%	9.02%	4.23%	11.29%	5.56%	14.53%
8	3.59%	9.64%	4.44%	11.76%	5.65%	14.68%	7.41%	18.80%
9	4.62%	12.15%	5.71%	14.79%	7.26%	18.39%	9.52%	23.44%
10	5.77%	14.88%	7.14%	18.07%	9.07%	22.38%	11.90%	28.39%
11	7.05%	17.81%	8.73%	21.57%	11.09%	26.61%	14.55%	33.58%
12	8.46%	20.93%	10.48%	25.27%	13.31%	31.05%	17.46%	38.95%
13	10.00%	24.21%	12.38%	29.13%	15.73%	35.65%	20.63%	44.44%
14	11.67%	27.63%	14.44%	33.14%	18.35%	40.36%	24.07%	50.00%
15	13.46%	31.17%	16.67%	37.25%	21.17%	45.16%	27.78%	55.56%
16	15.38%	34.82%	19.05%	41.46%	24.19%	50.00%	31.75%	61.05%

Here we are more worried about the total amount of triggers remaining in a deck rather than any specific chance to be crit. With a triple-drive we more than double our chances of two triggers, broadly looking at the chart, early on in a match we can take an approximate of a 25-30% chance for a double-trigger on a triple drive attack - certainly very risky to guard against with a "two to pass".

Later in the game the odds become deadly for any deck which is able to thin itself out and maintain a high trigger count. From this, it will pay off for an expert player to be very observant of both the size of your opponents deck and the amount of spent triggers, before deciding how much to guard a Stride attack for. Most of us though will simply boil it all down to "Perfect Guard Needed" which is exactly the situation a power deck wants to be in.

With that in mind, a large amount of dealing with a Stride triple drive will come down to players being able to find their perfect guards in the first place. This places an increased importance on draw power and deck thinning, though for clans which don't have a staple of draw abilities that's going to mean draw triggers suddenly jump up in importance.

What is truly interesting though is the comparison of Legion to Stride. With later game Legion activation's generally putting four triggers back in the deck, they also heavily increase their trigger odds. Using the above charts we can directly compare the two by taking any given triple-drive % and shifting to four more cards in deck and four more triggers as highlighted in red.

From this we can see that Legion can achieve broadly comparable odds for a single trigger hit as a triple-drive but is much safer to guard against early on due to low chances of a double trigger. Late in the game though, when decks are running very thin, Legion becomes much more favourable in comparison to a basic Stride.

Cardfight!! Vanguard G Mechanics Special - G-Assist

February brings with it the release of Cardfight!! Vanguard G, the new evolution of the game, and with it comes plenty to talk about that will change the future of your strategies going forward, as such February will be a Vanguard G mechanics special. All articles this month will take the opportunity to look through the new mechanics one at a time and review what impact they might have on your own decks and playstyle.

G-Assist

Probably the biggest improvement to the game comes from the new G-Assist phase. One of the biggest issues with the game currently is that player missing their ride usually gets utterly overwhelmed and destroyed purely because of bad luck, something that ruins the fun for everyone. On average a deck has a 81-82% probability of smoothly riding every grade, so for over 1/6th of your games, riding will be an issue - factor in both players and that's roughly 30% of games affected by mis-riding.

G-Assist manages to help fix this issue by greatly improving a players chances of smoothly riding up to grade 3, albeit at the price of dropping down a card in hand and revealing your cards if you require its use. This is exciting purely because it lets players be a lot bolder with their deck grade ratios going forward.

Throughout all of the previous edition of Vanguard, decks have largely followed a ratio of 13-14 grade 1's, 11-12 grade 2's and 8-9 grade 3's with few exceptions. These ratios came about purely because they gave you the greatest chance of avoiding a mis-ride. With the addition of G-Assist though, the probability of hitting your rides is that much greater so we can now afford to get a little bit more creative in deck design.

Let's assume a worst-case scenario on finding your grade 3's, you start after mulligan without one in hand and you are going first. This leaves you with just four cards to reveal to find a grade 3, three start of turn draws and your grade two drive check. So what are the chances of finding what you need? Here we need to turn to the wonders of math and excel! (gotta love a spreadsheet)

	Cards dug
# G3's in Deck	1	2	3	4
1	2.27%	4.55%	6.82%	9.09%
2	4.55%	8.99%	13.32%	17.55%
3	6.82%	13.32%	19.51%	25.40%
4	9.09%	17.55%	25.40%	32.68%
5	11.36%	21.67%	31.00%	39.41%
6	13.64%	25.69%	36.30%	45.62%
7	15.91%	29.60%	41.33%	51.35%
8	18.18%	33.40%	46.09%	56.61%
9	20.45%	37.10%	50.58%	61.43%
10	22.73%	40.70%	54.82%	65.84%

So as it stands, without G-Assist most decks have a 56% chance of finding their grade 3 if they are missing it in their starting hand; certainly not great odds. We can of course manipulate this with draw power to dig deeper, but most clans also have access to what is best termed a "grade 3 searcher" like this guy:

So what happens to our probabilities when we dig further?

	Cards dug
# G3's in Deck	5	6	7	8	9	10
1	11.36%	13.64%	15.91%	18.18%	20.45%	22.73%
2	21.67%	25.69%	29.60%	33.40%	37.10%	40.70%
3	31.00%	36.30%	41.33%	46.09%	50.58%	54.82%
4	39.41%	45.62%	51.35%	56.61%	61.43%	65.84%
5	46.98%	53.78%	59.86%	65.29%	70.11%	74.38%
6	53.78%	60.89%	67.07%	72.41%	77.01%	80.95%
7	59.86%	67.07%	73.13%	78.22%	82.45%	85.96%
8	65.29%	72.41%	78.22%	82.93%	86.72%	89.76%
9	70.11%	77.01%	82.45%	86.72%	90.04%	92.60%
10	74.38%	80.95%	85.96%	89.76%	92.60%	94.72%

At 8 grade 3's with a searcher supporting us, we now have just under a one in six chance to miss our grade 3 ride if it's missing from our starting hand, and nearer to one in ten if we manage to get just a single draw off. G-Assist effectively gives everyone access to this reliability but at that cost of losing a card, while in return giving you the benefit of choosing whichever starting vanguard you desire instead of needing to use a searcher, and that for me is a pretty good trade if you have a good draw engine to compensate.

Interestingly with G-Assist you now also have a better probability of finding your grade 3 when only running 4 copies (61%) than you used to have with 8 (56%). So what happens when we combine both G-Assist with a grade 3 searcher? Essentially we need to repeat digs 5-9 again as the cards go back in the deck which ends up looking like this:

# G3's in Deck	Searcher Dig (9 Deep)	G-Assist Dig
1	20.45%	30.40%
2	37.10%	52.02%
3	50.58%	67.26%
4	61.43%	77.90%
5	70.11%	85.25%
6	77.01%	90.28%
7	82.45%	93.67%
8	86.72%	95.94%
9	90.04%	97.43%
10	92.60%	98.40%

Combined you will have the capability of digging a total of 14 cards deep to find your grade 3 ride, leaving you a minimal chance of missing your ride when not in your starting hand, especially if you have some draw ability or are going second - albeit at the cost of both a card AND your starter which is probably a bit too high. But what if the cost for such reliability wasn't so high?

Marios is able to dig just as deep as a grade 3 searcher, if not even deeper if going second as you get two chances to get his effect off - vitally it has no cost, only the condition of a third attack which if you are only running four grade 3's is very likely. Even if Marios' effect never goes off, you still have a better chance of reliably riding than the average 8 grade 3 deck ever had before if you accept the cost of dropping down a card and add enough draw power to your deck to compensate.

Put it all together and Vanguard G provides a massive reliability boost to abrasion decks, letting them run fewer grade 3's than ever for a more aggressive start. Even without going to such extremes as Marios, most decks will be able to drop the amount of grade 3's if it suits their plans.

Now for the golden spreadsheet - let's factor in the opening hand and mulligan:

#G3's in Deck	Chance in 1st Hand	Chance after mull 3	Chance after draw 4	Chance after draw 5	Draw 4 G-Assist	Draw 5 G-Assist	Marios G-Assist 4
1	10.20%	15.94%	23.58%	25.49%	33.13%	35.04%	41.49%
2	19.56%	29.60%	41.96%	44.86%	55.72%	58.25%	66.22%
3	28.12%	41.29%	56.20%	59.48%	70.98%	73.47%	80.78%
4	35.93%	51.24%	67.17%	70.45%	81.19%	83.34%	89.22%
5	43.05%	59.68%	75.57%	78.62%	87.95%	89.67%	94.05%
6	49.52%	66.81%	81.95%	84.66%	92.37%	93.68%	96.77%
7	55.39%	72.82%	86.78%	89.09%	95.23%	96.18%	98.28%
8	60.70%	77.85%	90.39%	92.31%	97.06%	97.73%	99.10%
9	65.49%	82.05%	93.08%	94.63%	98.21%	98.67%	99.54%
10	69.81%	85.53%	95.06%	96.29%	98.93%	99.24%	99.77%

Current grade 3 ride reliability sits between 5-6 grade three copies in the era of G-Assist. For me this lets decks shift down to a new sweet spot of just 6 grade 3's for a under 1/5 probability of needing to utilize G-Assist in the first place and around 1/12 chance of failing after it is used. When playing a best of 3 format that is acceptable to me, but if going into a best of 1 tournament it may be best to keep bulked up a little.