Vanguard Card Analysis: Lizard Soldier Saishin

Hey Cardfighters,

There won't be a tournament report for this week because the only one I went to was a single elimination and I lost the first round I played so not super exciting. Instead I'm going to do a short analysis on Lizard Soldier Saishin.

Lizard Soldier Saishin, was an okay starter which was soon outclassed by Eradicator Linchu, who did the same thing but better. So why is Saishin better now? First, Eradicators don't have a legion which makes it a lot harder for them to compete on par with decks that do have legion. Linchu is required to boost an Eradicator so you're forced to play them if you want to use him. Second, unlike Linchu Saishin is not sub-clan restricted allowing us to use him in the new Brawler Legion decks. Finally, many starters these days are legion restricted which means that they are sitting ducks for Saishin during all of the early game. Mainly from this last point I believe that Saishin is extremely well positioned in the current meta.

First I want to do a comparative analysis of the main starters that Brawlers use and then go over how Saishin affects other top tiered decks.

1. Spark Kid Dragoon,
     The starter of choice for a lot of big bang brawler deck builds, letting you get Knuckle Buster easier and activate his skill easier as well. In other decks such as Shotgun Blow Dragon you can search for more copies of him to ride and get the skill off.

2. Brawler, Fighting Dracokid,
     Another Great starter giving your vanguard the ability to kill units behind the front row by using an extra Counterblast 1 everytime a front row is retired. He really burns up your counterblasts but he can turn Knuckle Buster's skill into a field with for CB 3 which is really awesome.

3. Lizard Soldier, Saishin
     Pretty straight forward he either kills your opponent's starter unit or sits there as a free rearguard. More often than not the best choice is to kill their starter when possible.

Now that we've examined the common starters Brawler Deck's use lets look at how Saishin will affect your opponent.

VS. RPBA,  
     You get to stop Judgebau which is their main advantage engine. While blocking judgebau doesn't totally nullify their deck and puts them way behind where they would like to be comfortably. You may argue that your opponent can block judgebau but your opponent will have to block Saishin too and for atleast 1 turn longer than you will.

VS. Thing Saver,
     This isn't always going to set them back but if you kill File, and they go straight into Thing Saver they won't actually have 3 soul to do the restand. This forces them into riding their secondary grade 3 first to build up soul or find a margal to get the restand.

VS. Kagero,
     Honestly this won't do much if its Red Pulse. I would suggest letting them use up their counter blast and hope they wiff. If its Petal Flare then you save yourself a lot of rearguards by dodging the Petal Flare combo with DOTG

VS. Bluish Flames,
     By knocking out Guido it makes it a lot harder for them to hit a ton of superior calls for a super bruno boosted Explosion Blue and it forces them to use counter blasts for all their superior calling which will limit the times you have to deal with it as well.

VS. Cat Butler Raizers,
      Success!! Catbutler is  a Grade 0 so you can take out one cat butler by taking an attack or two the deck leans heavily on cat butler and is much less of a threat without it. One less cat butler is huge.

VS. Link Joker,
     Against robin knight you get to ease out of 2 locks and against bravefang you get to dodge omega locks. With out mass locking power/ omega locking Link Joker will be a lot easier to fight.

That's the end of my little summary for Lizard Soldier, Saishin. I think he's extremely well positioned in the current meta and when generation break starters come out he's only going to get better. So you should definitely try him out.

Have you tried Saishin in your deck? Got questions about using him? Do you like this kind of article/would you like to see more like it? Please comment down below and let me know!

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Thanks for reading!

~Bambi