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.