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.