Core Principles - Offence Strategies Part III - "Abrasion"

So far we have talked mostly about big powerful attacks, but it's entirely possible to win with small attacks too. A weak attack may be easy to stop, but each individual attack you make still takes at least one cards worth of guard to stop, enabling you to make up for power with just sheer quantity of attacks. Indeed it can and has been said that quantity has a quality all of its own.

When you first start playing Cardfight!! Vanguard it's easy for a player to divide their hand up into "offensive cards" consisting of your grade 1, 2 and 3's minus any sentinels and then "defensive cards" which will be mostly triggers and sentinels; indeed that is how many players would prefer their hand to play out. An abrasion strategy however aims to throw a major curve ball into that assumption.

With triggers being predominantly worth 10K in guard value, if you are able to break your attacks up into numerous smaller chunks that only require 5K shield each, you force the following decision on your opponent:

1. Use those 10K shields and waste large amounts of guard potential or...
2. Break into your offensive units to be able to use 5K shields instead.

Indeed an abrasion strategy will put the average opponent instantly on the back foot as you are able to either overwhelm their defence if they commit too many cards to the field, or be capable of crippling any early offensive momentum against you if they hold cards back to guard, as such it does exceptionally well in the early game and is one of the fastest offensive strategies you can get. So what does an abrasion deck look like? There are several key components...

A Quickly Filled Field

Your attacks are at their most effective early on, before your opponent has even had a chance to get much draw power or in-hand guard. Abrasion decks look to leverage this by getting as many early attacks in as possible and the best way to achieve this is to fill your front row with attackers as quickly as you can. For that reason, abrasion decks are either able to quickly and reliably call extra units to the field, or run unusual grade ratio's such as lower amounts of Grade 3's or sentinels in order to bulk up on early attackers.

Stand Ability

All abrasion decks will want to be able to get at least four attacks per turn in once at grade 3, though five, six or even more attacks of good quality is desirable. Stand triggers is one way of boosting your attack count over a game but is not reliable enough on its own; superior calling new attackers during your battle phase or having re-stand abilities in built is what you are after as per the examples below.

Not all decks need the vanguard to provide these abilities though as there are countless supporting rear-guards that further your aim. Aqua Force in particular specializes in rear-guards that provide extra volume of small attacks in order to trigger additional abilities on your vanguard.

Draw Power

Lots of attacks requires lots of units on the field - units that can always be blown up in retaliation. A good abrasion deck will always be backed up by a consistent draw engine that ensures the deck doesn't run out of steam in the late game against decks with retire abilities.

When you combine the early pressure of an abrasion strategy eating up your opponents grade 1 and 2 units, with an improved draw engine, you are also generally able to put up a solid defense of your own, making the abrasion strategy overall a fairly balanced one. With that in mind, when playing an abrasion deck you are able to focus on putting up the best assault at all times, holding nothing back.

Core Principles - Offence Strategies Part II - "Penetration"

Most games of Cardfight!! Vanguard end with the defeated either having messed up their guarding, or running out of cards to guard with due to the strength and quantity of the attacks coming against them - But not all. Since the early days of BT-02, games have been ended with the loser still holding a good amount of guard in hand, how?

Enter this guy:

Silent Tom was likely the founder of what can be called a penetration strategy; one that aims to finish off an opponent earlier than they expect. Originally he was paired with CEO Amaterasu to gain an effective triple drive, increasing the chances of Silent Tom attacking with the boost of a critical trigger and requiring either a perfect guard or 3 valuable grade 1 or 2 cards to guard against.

As the game evolved though, further penetration units have been created. BT-09 saw the release of "Blue Storm Supreme Dragon, Glory Maelstrom", a vanguard who was capable of preventing your opponent from calling grade 1 or higher units to the guard circle at all - or in short, no perfect guards! This effect has been printed on numerous vanguards over time and thrives as a finisher when backed up with a high power vanguard column.

Seen in example above, Dark Irregulars, among others are more than capable of creating a massive central column that becomes basically un-blockable; without doubt that's a skill that finishes games. The big problem with most of these "Glory" attacks though is that it is usually slow to set up and only truly effective once you have pushed your opponent to 5 damage unless you get lucky with critical triggers - for that reason the early game is key, just like a power deck.

Indeed a penetration deck operates largely like a power deck and the same principles apply - it values a large middle lane and an aggressive start - its main variation is how it closes out a game. Because you are aiming to bypass defenses in the late game, the need for early guard pressure goes away and you instead only care about getting damage through to set up your finishing blow; as such it can pay off to fill out your field with boosters quickly and units that gain power early are to be valued.

There is one clan out there though who's sole purpose is to obliterate their opponents defenses and takes the idea of a penetration deck in a different direction, indeed you can't talk about penetration as a strategy without mention of Nubatama.

Now since we likely don't read Japanese, what you have here are "Shura Stealth Dragon, Mantoracongo" and "Shura Stealth Dragon, Daranicongo" a pairing about to hit the UK in the February release of Vanguard G that epitomizes a penetration strategy in a whole new way.

Unique in Cardfight!! Vanguard, Nubatama specialize in finishing an opponent off in a manner that has no workaround. This legion pairing is able to save up copies of itself for a persona blast that reliably smashes it's opponents hand size down to less than four cards - while also removing their interception options. With just 2-3 cards left in hand and your centre lane requiring at least two of those to stop, you are guaranteed to land a final blow.

Nubatama in essence are all about depriving people of even the possibility of guarding the entirety your attacks by actively attacking their opponents hand in a variety of ways. The only requirement? Drawing into the right cards to pull it off. Unfortunately the clan currently lacks full support in both triggers and backup rear-guards but if you are interested in penetration decks it's certainly one to watch closely in the future since with the right support it has all the right potential to dominate.

Core Principles - Offence Strategies Part I - "Power"

Something all Cardfight!! Vanguard players should be aware of is power, the basic premise of all attacks. The harder you can hit, the more cards your opponent must use to guard you, until eventually you break through their defence.

To adopt it as your winning strategy however requires quite a bit more finesse than most new players might think. All too often a player new to the game will flood the field with every unit they are able to call, only to find that they run out of guard and die to the return attacks or have their field destroyed - so what happened?

You can attack as hard as you like, but all of your attacks still only do one damage at base. With this being the case, why would you attack for more than you need to? With no outside factors, your opponent will always let the big attacks go through while stopping the smaller ones; it's a no brainer for them. Power decks as a result, are all about providing your opponent a strong reason to guard the large attacks you create, rather than letting your opponent save their cards to stop the small attacks. This principle is something commonly referred to as "guard pressure".

So how do you create guard pressure?

The primary concern of a player when guarding is "Can this attack kill me?", as such the first way of creating guard pressure is to have your attacks hit for more than one damage. The simplest way to achieve that is to run as many critical triggers as you can; though there are plenty of Grade 3 units which are able to gain a bonus critical as well.

Being able to hit for 3 damage out of nowhere is a part of your vanguards capabilities that all players must respect and this leads your vanguards attack to be the one with the most pressure on your opponent. Because of this, most power based decks revolve first and foremost around a high powered middle column - the best of which are vanguards which are able to re-stand for a second attack and multiple chances to hit critical triggers. Minerva typifies this strategy

When backed up with a fistful of critical triggers and Ordain Owl's skill; Minerva is able to attack repeatedly for ludicrous amounts, all of which has a high pressure to guard thanks to the triggers mechanic. She is however most effective in the late-game when attacking into a target already at 4 to 5 damage when no attack can be let through for fear of losing the game. Opponents can significantly reduce your guard pressure and let attacks through though, if they are able to mount a strong early defence and avoid damage until your big late-game attacks.

For that reason, a true power strategy also needs to find ways to apply the pressure early on as well so that you can overwhelm their defence later. Consider this; early on your vanguard's attack always wants to be for at least 5K power more than your opponents defence value - this is because if they do choose to guard with a 10K shield and you pull a trigger, they have essentially just wasted a card in guarding an attack that got through anyway. As a result most people won't guard the vanguard early on.

What you are trying to achieve in a power deck is to create reasons for the opponent to either risk that 10K guard, or, even better, put 15K shield on the table for a no-pass. At this stage of the game, critical triggers are not enough of a reason alone so further effects are needed:

So what do the above three cards create? Here you have a starter that is able to guarantee you your grade 3 ride in hand should your attack at grade 2 hits. Between Royal and Shadow paladins there are enough "blaster" cards in print that every one of your grade 2 units can be a blaster. This backbone created one of the strongest hybrid decks in existence - Thing Saver Dragon

By being able to guarantee your grade 3 ride in this manner, many players were able to build exceptionally aggressive decks with low amounts of grade 3 units and those decks dominated the format for a good while. The ability of the starter here is the prime example of what a power deck wants to be doing in the early game.

When guarding against the grade 2 vanguard attack here your opponent has going through their mind "If i guard this, do I stop them getting to grade 3?" or "If I let this through, am I letting them set up to win?" so the temptation to guard against the attack is massive when combined with the pressure from critical triggers. At 14K however, it's going to take them 15K of shield to do so safely, resulting in you successfully forcing a bad guard situation upon your opponent. If guarded, this heavily limits what else they can guard in the early game so that your rear-guard attacks remain largely unguarded, making it easier to put your opponent on 4 or more damage and let your game winning plan come into play.

When applied to a broad range of decks this all boils down to powerful on-hit effects. Drawing cards, destroying rear guards or setting up your soul are all effective at creating this pressure; the most reliable way to achieve those effects though is with a good starting vanguard as this then becomes 100% guaranteed pressure. For these reasons, your grade 0 and grade 3 units are probably the most important choices to make when constructing a power themed deck and should always be the first units you decide upon.

Core Principles - Defence Strategies Part II - "Disruption"

Outside of the basic defensive principles, a core consideration for a defence strategy is what could best be described as "Field Control". Link Joker brought this idea to the forefront of peoples minds upon their introduction as the lock mechanic entered the game but the idea behind it can be applied to any deck that is able to alter the opponents field state in some way.

While a basic strategy revolves around trying to build a "Rock" that your opponent cannot break through; a field control defence is centered around the disruption of any attacks against you to either reduce their power to a more manageable state, or stop them entirely. Within that goal there are two main categories that you can apply:

1. Permanent disruption: eg, Retire.
2. Temporary disruption: eg, Lock or Paralyze.

Permanent disruption

On average a deck contains between 13 and 14 grade 1 units, capable of boosting a players front row attackers. Of that sum, a majority of players will play with four sentinel cards which will never see a rear-guard circle in their life and a further one is used up during the ride process. This leaves a deck with just 8-9 potential boosters at their disposal and one starting vanguard - likely to go into the soul anyway.

The aim behind a permanent disruption strategy is to mercilessly hunt those grade 1 units and leave your opponent with no boosters at all, thereby reducing the strength of any attack coming your way. A good example of this are the Seal Dragons of the Kagero clan:

Historically it costs the equivalent of 2 counterblast to be able to retire a back row unit or you are otherwise required to fulfill a restrictive condition. By needing to stay in-clan and giving the opponent an opportunity to not be afflicted with card disadvantage, Seal Dragons manage to have access to plenty of cheap retire skills that can target grade 1's . As a result they are more than capable of reducing that 8-9 strong pool of grade 1's immensely by retiring them at the earliest opportunity.

One of the big advantages with continuing to snipe at your opponents back row is that it forces a choice on them. Either replace those units if possible and be down on guard power, or keep that guard ability up and compromise on the offence. With most rear guards unable to hit above 12K without a boost, if you back that up with a cross-ride, your opponent can find that their rear-guards are no-longer able to hit your vanguard at all.

There is an important distinction to make here though. Permanent disruption rarely counts as defensive if it is against front row rear-guards. There are plenty of retire effects that target the front row and these are predominantly offensive in nature - used to reduce an opponents intercept potential while letting you focus all attacks on the kill.

Temporary Disruption

Two clans in particular specialize in this - Link Joker and Megacolony. The base idea is to render an opponent unable to attack effectively in the first place by either locking or paralyzing a unit and so reducing your need to expend cards defending. Ultimately this boils down to additional card draw for yourself with the principle of "a card saved is a card drawn".

Lock and Paralyze truly shine above and beyond basic card draw though when you can disrupt all of your opponents rear-guard columns and leave nowhere good for their triggers to go, saving you a further 5K guard beyond the attacks you stop if they drive check a trigger. So when it comes to temporary disruption, it's best to go big on one or two turns for maximum impact rather than staggering your resources across a game.

The big downside is that the units that are disrupted in this way stick around, so in the long run temporary disruption alone is only a stalling action. This alone can be enough to get yourself enough time to win against some of the more fragile decks out there; but against other defensive decks you always require a way to make the time you bought mean something or you will run out of steam.

Combined Disruption

Disruption is ultimately at its best as a strategy when you are able to combine both permanent and temporary facets together and so attack your opponent from multiple angles.

Chaos Breaker Dragon infamously pulled this off for Link Joker and managed to break the meta for a while by combining a couple of turns of burst lock with retire and card draw abilites in order to cripple any attacks against it. My personal favourite combination though lays with Megacolony:

Here you combine what is likely the best break-ride in the game, able to temporarily disrupt an entire field at no cost, with the mass retire of Avectro Zeus sniping your opponents entire back row, leaving them in a crippled and vulnerable state.

It's a one shot wonder, but it gives a good flavour for the strength Megacolony could achieve if properly supported. Fingers crossed for them during Cardfight!! Vanguard G.

Core Principles - Defence Strategies Part I - "The Rock"

Defending in Vanguard can be a tricky thing to master for a new player. When first starting the game, it is easy to fall into a habit of guarding attacks on impulse, and without a good understanding of the game it's hard to know how you can build a deck to create an effective defence.

At its most basic, defending in Cardfight Vanguard! comes down to two things:

1. Your Vanguards' base power.
2. The amount of cards you have available to guard with.

So the first logical conclusion for a player to make is that clans such a Oracle Think Tank that can draw lots of cards do well at holding attacks at bay, and you can't argue much against that. The subtle twist to that is that every grade 1 unit you have to call to the rear-guard from hand diminishes your capability of defending; so clans that can fill their back row without calling from hand can also count as able to gain a defensive advantage.

How much your cards can guard though ultimately comes down to your vanguards' base power; this is best illustrated by the historical performance of cross-rides, vanguards who sit at 13K base power who dominated the competitive meta on release. The average late game rear-guard attack is built to be for 16K; against most vanguards this takes 10K shield to block, while a cross-ridden vanguard can stop the attack with a measly 5K shield - an advantage that can easily tip the balance of a game well and truly in your favour if maintained for long enough.

If there is a universal truth to the game however, it's that attacks get stronger and harder to defend the longer a game goes on. The best defensive strategies are therefore able to prevent damage early in order to give you the breathing room to be able to "no guard" your opponents biggest attacks later on. To do this requires a certain amount of forethought and deck planning, the principle behind it though is simple:

"If i can be a higher power than my opponents units, he can't attack me"

Looking at most of decks that are played in Cardfight Vanguard! once you step outside of the trial decks, units without abilities (so called "vanilla" 8K grade 1's and 10K grade 2's) are rarely used. As such you can assume for the majority of your games that all of your opponents grade 1's will be at 7K or less power and that all of their grade 2's will be at 9K or less. You can also assume that their starter will only be boosting for 5K and for many decks, this will be located directly behind their vanguard.

So on average, your opponents vanguard attack at grade 1 will be for 12K and at grade 2 it will be for 14K. If you can retain a higher base power on your vanguard compared to your opponent then you can completely nullify their attack for just a 10K shield. And since you will be a higher power than an unsupported attack, your opponent is likely to not play additional attackers that triggers can be passed to for fear of leaving a unit floating as a free target for you if they do not pull that trigger. That means you gain the potential to stop a whole turns attacks for just one card.

So how do you do this? The first way is to keep those vanilla 8K and 10K units in your decks, and depending on the rest of your deck build this can be good, but does not usually lead to a powerful deck in the end. The second way is by using a ride-chain, each have their perks, but let me introduce the best defensive ride-chain going:

Aurora Star, Coral

When it comes to ride-chains, Bermuda Triangle have what is likely one of the best. Not only can you gain the higher base power we are after in the early game, but the grade 2 of the chain allows you to put up a strong counter-attack by committing units to the field and then bouncing them back to your hand to retain your guarding capability afterwards.

Should you miss your ride-chain you can also simply bounce the starter back to your hand for a free 10K shield so the inconsistency commonly attributed to ride-chains is not an issue for Coral.

What tops this deck off however is the addition of a cross-ride to the deck who can not only put Aurora Star into the soul to easily achieve the desired 13K base vanguard power in the late game; but also gives you card-draw to supplement the amount of shield you have access to.

The one thing to keep in mind here though is that with all this potential to guard early, you likely won't be reaching limit break early so can find yourself stalling out. This makes a self damaging unit such as Library Madonna, Rion essential to the decks functionality until Bermuda Triangle get access to a LB4 enabler.

But having a higher vanguard power and drawing a lot of cards is certainly not the only defensive strategy at your disposal as a cardfighter...