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...