Learning and Improving 8: Timing

 Hey Cardfighters!

This week I will close up the articles on game play by discussing Timing. Timing is a skill which is a culmination of all the other topics we have discussed so far and a lot of learning timing comes with practice.

Basics:
The basics of timing is to use your skills when they are most effective. A pretty obvious concept but learning the best timing for things is actually really hard.

Base Strategy:
I can't really give you a simple strategy to go on this time. So I will explain each of the concepts we talked about before applies to Timing.

• Guarding: You need to guard well so that you have the correct amount of damage and so that you haven't lost by the time your key abilities are useful.
• Trigger Placement: If you don't place your triggers well then you may not survive long enough to start doing your thing and you're opponent might not be at the ideal damage.
• Attack Patterns: This may be more relevant to your actual skills your trying to do than the set up. But in most cases it is similar to Trigger placement in wanting to get your opponent to the right damage.
• Memorization: Being able to remember the cards in your opponent's hand is the biggest influence of timing. Using Guard restrictions when they don't have enough to guard with or retiring key units that they don't have replacements for.
• Resource Management: This is important just because most skills use up counterblasts and if you've used them all up for other skills earlier then you might not have them to finish off your opponent. 
• Field Presence:  If you have kept a good amount of field presence throughout the game then your big skills will be more effective. Also if you have skills that give power field presence helps you take advantage of those most effectively.

More Advanced Ideas: 
Since this is pretty much the most advanced idea we can get at for gameplay mechanics so I will go over a very popular deck Shadow Paladin, Revengers (Revenger Phantom Blaster Abyss (RPBA), Mordred Phantom) and give concrete examples for the generic ideas I went over above.

•  Guarding: This is super super important for this deck since its main play is breakriding RPBA over Mordred which requires limit break. The game plan forces you to decide between taking damage to make you plays and guarding easy attacks.
• Trigger Placement: This is important to get your opponent to the right damage and to maximize your restanding vanguard.
• Attack Pattern: Attack patterns are important for RPBA's skill as it requires you to retire 3 rearguards so you will want to have attacked/boosted with them first.
• Memorization: Knowing the cards in their hand will let you go for your big plays when they don't have any perfect guards.
• Resource Management: Since Mordred requires a counter blast and RPBA requires 2 to restand you'll need 3 open counter blasts or a way to unflip damage easily to have 3 total available that turn.
• Field Presence: Maintaining field presence throughout the game is important so that your opponent won't have enough shield for your wombo combo and obviously its important when you "go off" so that you have enough units to retire.

Was this article useful to you? Is there anything that I can do to improve? Do you have any topics you would like me to write about? Please leave a comment and help me help you.

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Thanks for reading,

~Bambi

Learning and Improving 7: Field Prescence

Hey Cardfighters!

Field refers to all your rearguards and your vanguard. So field presence means how many rearguard circles you have occupied and can be a good quantifier of how is in the lead. (More so than who has more damage than who)

Basics:
The basics of field presence is that the more field you occupy the better situation you are in. This is because you are able to make more attacks which can convert into more damage and more damage means you win the game. Even if you have less damage and the same amount of cards in hand as your opponent if the opponent has more field presence it is likely that they are going to beat you because you need to use more cards to guard every turn and they can slowly recover.

Base Strategy:
      There are two basic strategies for keeping field presence. And one key rule being: ALWAYS have a vanguard booster.

1. Keep one of your columns full.
2. Keep your front row full. 

These two strategies have different goals. For strategy 1 you will have a full column along with your vanguard column. This lets you have two strong attacks and a good place to pass triggers especially critical triggers too. This strategy emphasizes getting your opponent to higher damage. For Strategy 2 you want to keep your front row full to maximize the number of attacks that you can make each turn. The focus of this strategy is to wear down your opponent by making them guard more attacks every turn whether they are a towards a vanguard or rearguard.

Once you have reached a late game state you should convert to having a full field if possible to maximize damage and number of attacks each turn. 

More Advanced Ideas: 
Once you are good with when to use each strategy and which one works best for your deck then you can start to think about the following.

• Does your opponent's clan have retiring effects? If so you might not want to be too aggressive or they will retire your units and nullify your advantage
• If you have really good front row unit like Silent Tom or Binoculus Tiger then you may not want to leave it open to being attacked early in the game.

Of course this isn't everything that can come up when setting up your field. Maybe you have units that work well in the same column or you need to/are unable to make good numbers to attack your opponent's vanguard.

Was this article useful to you? Is there anything that I can do to improve? Do you have any topics you would like me to write about? Please leave a comment and help me help you.

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Thanks for reading,

~Bambi

Learning and Improving 6: Resource Management

Hey Cardfighters,

This week we will be talking about resource management. Resource management is important because you only have a limited amount of resources (Soul or Counterblasts) and once you use them all up you won't be able to do much other than attack. I will focus on Counterblasts in this article because they are more prevalent than Soulblasts and both ideas apply to them both.

Basics:
Counterblasting is the action of taking a face up card in the damage zone and turning it face down. Thus a Counterblast refers to a card that you have available to turn face down. Most effects come from using up your Counterblasts thus it is important to learn how to use them efficiently. Up until around Set 15 2 Counterblasts were about equivalent to 1 card. (Ex. Beserk Dragon). However now 1 Counterblast is about equivalent to 1 card (Ex. Twilight Arrow Dragon). So it is possible to think about Counterblasts as extra cards if you prefer to think about it that way.

Base Strategy:

•      Only use Counterblasts for your Vanguard's effects

This strategy means that you will only be using your resources for the signature moves of the deck. A plan that will improve your understanding of your deck's main goal and prevent using up Counterblasts for effects that won't help you achieve that goal.

More Advanced Ideas:
     Now that you know what will happen only using your vanguard effects you can expand to all the units in your deck. To understand the purpose of each unit you can do a similar strategy as before or you can decide that certain effects are more important than others and focus on them. Ultimately how you use your counterblasts and what effects are available to you comes down to deck building which is something I plan to discuss more in the future. The main question you should ask yourself now is.

• If I use Counterblasts for this effect how will it help me win?

Ask this question to yourself while you play it may be slow at first but you can start preempting the next turn as your opponent does is thinking about their plays or doing their skills. Soon you will be using Counterblasts most effectively to help you win the game.

Don't forget that this article applies to your Soulblasts as well and while Soulblasting effects aren't as common they are still important to manage.

Was this article useful to you? Is there anything that I can do to improve? Do you have any topics you would like me to write about? Please leave a comment and help me help you.

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Thanks for reading,

~Bambi

Learning and Improving 5: Memorization

Hey Cardfighters,

This week we'll talk about Memorization and its importance on the game.

Basics:
Memorization is a key part of the game and this is because as you may have noticed Drive Checks are put into the hand. This means that while your opponent is essentially drawing 3 cards per turn you get to see 2 of them. Hypothetically you could know 2/3s of the cards in your opponent's hand. If you can master memorization you can time skills better, and choose the best things to attack.

Base Strategy:
The most basic strategy we have for memorization is

• Only memorize triggers and perfect guards.

This may seem simple but it gives you a lot more control over a match versus not memorizing at all. If you know that they got a bunch of triggers over the past turns then you can target their rearguards and know that they likely won't have a replacement. The same goes for the opposite if you haven't seen triggers in a while then you can use your extra power and critical skills to take advantage of their lack of guard.

More Advanced Ideas:
 The obvious way to advance your memorization tactics is to just memorize everything but I'll break it down to help you to prioritize your mental efforts before you can remember everything.

1. Grade 3s
• Memorizing Grade 3s serves a similar purpose to triggers since they can't be used to guard. They are also used for strides now so if you see your opponent get a Grade 3 then you know to expect a stride next turn and you can play around that. 
2. Grade 2s
   • This is important because Grade 2s are the ideal units for the front row letting you put up an offense without losing their shield value by intercepting. It is important to remember them because then you will know when it is useful to attack/retire the front row since they won't have any replacements.
3. Grade 1s
   • Finally the least important unit to memorize is grade 1s this is because most likely you are unable to affect the back row which means memorizing grade  1s are only useful for determining your opponent's next play and taking advantage of their 5k shield. There is 1 exception. If you are playing a retire based clan mainly Kagero then you can timely hit their back row with retires if you know they don't have replacements.

I don't cover memorization techniques because I think its more important to know how to prioritize your mental energy. As well as the fact that different techniques work for everyone. Many people talk about the Mental Mansion Idea where you imagine a huge house and have rooms for what you want to remember. I tried this and while I can visualize very well I can't hold the image of a mansion and the rooms very well. This meant I could remember what they drove check but the next turn I forgot so I would never know more than 2 cards in their hand. What ended up working better for me is getting accustomed to the cards, I would call it a database of cards in my head as I play with and against them, I can memorize drive checks a lot easier now because I recognize the artwork and its associated to a card in my mental database which helps me retain the information better.

Was this article useful to you? Is there anything that I can do to improve? Do you have any topics you would like me to write about? Please leave a comment and help me help you.

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Thanks for reading,

~Bambi

Learning and Improving 4: Attack Patterns

Hey Cardfighters,

This week we will talk about attack patterns, what to attack and what different options you have for aggression.

Basics:
To attack you rest your front row unit and then if you have either a grade 1 or 0 in the back row in the same column you can rest that as well to add its power to the front row rearguard. If the front row unit is your vanguard you get to do the appropriate amount of drive checks. This leads us to the two main attack strategies which are derived from your most prominent offensive trigger. Since stand triggers put a rearguard into stand it can allow you to attack again. You can also choose to use primarily critical triggers to give your attacks more "oomph".


In general Stands allow you to make your opponent guard more and Criticals add pressure to your attack. Pressure meaning that your opponent is more inclined to guard said attack.

Base Strategy:
To determine your attack pattern you need to decide on which offensive trigger to focus on. We will consider the 4. main options to develop a strategy unique to each one. 1. #ofCrits > #ofStands, 2. #ofCrits = #ofStands and 3. #ofCrits < #Stands. 4. No Stands.

The General Rule we will stick to is: ALWAYS ATTACK VANGUARD.
     This rule is for simplicity and because by always attacking vanguard you will be able to see when its not a good idea.

R = Rearguard, V = Vanguard

1&2: These two have a similar attack pattern where you want to attack with one rearguard then your vanguard then rearguard R->V->R. This allows your stand triggers to affect your rested rearguard but leaves one still standing for your critical triggers to be placed for extra pressure

3: In this case your attack patter is R->R->V. This is because you have enough stand triggers that a double stand is likely and will be most effective if you can stand 2 front row rearguards. Leaving a rearguard for criticals isn't as important since you are more likely to stand one.

4: V->R->R This is the attack pattern for no Stands. We don't have to attack with our rearguards first since there are no stands. This can allow for more pressure plays and sometimes more variety.

More Advanced Ideas:
Once you have mastered the basic attack pattern for your deck you can start to think about several things.

• Does your opponent need a certain amount damage to use his effects?
• Is there a really important or pesky rearguard that you need to get rid of?
• If you Vanguard has certain types of guard restriction skills could you attack their interceptors to make it even harder to guard?

These are a few of the things that you should consider when trying to improve your attack patterns.  Part of learning the best attack pattern for you is through testing the different trigger styles and then learning what works best for you in each scenario.

Was this article useful to you? Is there anything that I can do to improve? Do you have any topics you would like me to write about? Please leave a comment and help me help you.

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Thanks for reading,

~Bambi

Learning and Improving 3: Triggers (Placement)

Hey Cardfighters,

Last week we talked about basic defensive strategies so it would make sense to talk about attacking next, but instead I'd like to delve into Triggers. Triggers set Vanguard apart from other Trading Card Games and have very important consequences for attacking so before I can talk about that I need to go over triggers.

Basics:
There are 4 types of trigger units. Critical (Crit), Draw, Stand and Heal. You must include 16 trigger cards in your deck but the type doesn't matter. The only restriction is that you cannot have more than 4 total Heal triggers in your deck. Trigger effects are activated when they are revealed during a check. This can be either a damage check or a drive check. So let's go over the effects

• Crit
• Give one of your units +1 Critical. Give one of your units +5000 power. 
• Draw
• Give one of your units +5000 power. Draw a card. Unlike other Triggers a draw trigger only has 5000 shield.
• Stand
• Put one of your units into the [Stand] Position. Give one of your units +5000 power
• Heal
• Give one of your units +5000 power. If your damage is equal to or greater than your opponent you may take a card from your damage zone and place it into the drop zone.

It is important to note that for triggers such as Criticals and Stands the two abilities can be separated so one unit can stand and another can gain power. Both of these triggers are referred to as Offensive Triggers since they are most useful when revealed during a Drive Check. Heals and Draws are Defensive Triggers since they are most useful when revealed during a Damage Check.

Base Strategy:
Since one can check triggers on the offensive and defensive we will separate base strategy into these two scenarios.

• Defensive Triggers
• Always give the power to vanguard. This will make the next attack easier to guard and sometimes prevents them from even hitting. 
• Offensive Triggers
• Always put all effects to vanguard with one exception. 
• Exception: If your opponent gets enough shield to No Pass, or uses a Perfect Guard, choose one of your front row rearguards and give all effects to that unit.

More Advanced Ideas:
Once you have use the basic strategy some, hopefully it should become fairly obvious when it is a good idea to split up the effects of your Offensive Triggers. With that said here are some things you can keep in mind to help you improve your Trigger placement.

• Defensive
• Do you have a rearguard that you want to protect from attacks?
• Do you need more damage? Maybe you can put power to a rearguard to incentivize them to attack your vanguard. 
• Offensive
• 2 pass scenario
• What are the chances you will get a second trigger?
• Should you put all effects to a rearguard?
• No Guard Scenario
• How do I split up my triggers to maximize them? 
• Ex: Critical Trigger reveal -> "Crit to vanguard Power to rearguard"

I hope you enjoyed learning about triggers and trigger placement. The more you play around with it the better idea you'll get of how to do things. While it may not seems super complicated it is necessary to build good basics in trigger placement so that one can develop their offensive strategies which we will talk about next week.

Was this article useful to you? Is there anything that I can do to improve these articles? Are there any topics that you would like me to write about? Please leave a comment and help me help you.

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Thanks for reading,

~Bambi

Learning and Improving 2: Guarding

Hey Cardfighters,

This week I want to talk about Guarding. I think this is a really important topic for beginners because learning good guarding habits and then actively thinking about guarding is probably the easiest and best way to improve how well you do in matches.

Basics:
Each card with the exception of Grade 3s and 4s has a shield value in the middle left hand side of the card. To guard you call the unit to the Guardian Circle in rest position and add the shield value to the power of the unit being attacked. (Since it is a call you can't use cards with a grade higher than your vanguard)

Guarding is the reason for the term "Numbers/Magic Numbers". Since the attacker wins ties if your opponent attacks for 5k more power than your unit you are forced to use 10k worth of shield rather than 5k, thus making you use more cards in your hand.

The most important aspect of guarding is when you have to guard the vanguard. The game is set up so that drive checks happen after the guarding step. This means you have to take into account whether or not your opponent will get triggers or not. This is where the terms 1 Pass, 2 Pass and No pass come up. referring to how many triggers are needed to pass a certain amount of guard. (As the person guarding you will say these terms to help speed along the game and your opponent may confirm with you using these terms)

Base Strategy:
For a simple strategy to help guide your guarding thought process and improve your guarding is:

1. Don't guard until you are at 3 damage. Then guard all attacks.
2. Guard ALL vanguard attacks for 2 to Pass, exception being a perfect guard.

This basic guarding pattern should help you conserve cards for later in the game, give you counter blasts to use your abilities, and provide a good platform to build guarding skills from.

More Advanced Ideas:
Once you have gotten used to the basic strategy then you can start to think about these things to improve your game play. The things I have listed are general ideas that you should consider to develop your own style.

• Damage Control
• You might want to keep yourself at a low damage to prevent your opponent from making a comeback easily, or if you need to let an attack through to be able to use Counter Blasts the next turn.
• Pressure
• If your opponent has a pressure unit will you let it hit or guard it so that they can't use the abilities.
• Triggers
•  Opponent's Triggers and Yours. How likely is it that he gets a trigger and what type? If you get a defensive trigger will it cut off his offensive?
• Do you have enough shield?
• If you 2 to pass their vanguard will you be able to guard their next attacks even if they get a trigger? If they have a guard restricting skill will you have enough to play around it?

There are a lot more things to think about when you guard but the main thing is to actively think about guarding. By figuring out what works well and what doesn't you can develop a strategy that suits you and your deck and counters your opponent.

Was this article useful to you? Is there something that I can do to improve? Do you have any special guarding techniques of your own? Please leave a comment and help me help you.

If you want to be updated on the latest information and be notified about new posts click the link below and like the Bambguard Facebook page. 

Thanks for reading,

~Bambi

Learning and Improving 1: Glossary

Hey Cardfighters,

Welcome to my new article series meant to help people who want to learn the game and improve their skills.  I will try to make this accessible to every level of player from beginners to more more experience players who are looking to hone their skills.

FIRST, I want to have a starting ground for this series and that is the How to play pamphlet in the trial decks or the basic rules you can find on the Wikia. It will also suffice if you have played the learning vanguard game on the Official Website.

This means that you should already know the basic rules of the game coming in such as, counterblasting, soul charging/blasting, trigger checking (both drive and damage), Game Phases, riding and some others. This is because there are a lot of good resources for those that aren't too hard to find.

With that out of the way I want to get into the beef of this article, which is a Glossary. This will be a mini dictionary for Vanguard terms and mechanics since there are a lot and they can be overwhelming to a new player. This will be a running thing so it may not include everything initial. If you want me to add a word :)


 Vanguard Keywords/Mechanics:

• AUTO/ACT/CONT - Types of abilities, AUTO: happens whenever the conditions are met. ACT: abilities can be used at anytime during the main phase. CONT: This ability is always active if the conditions are met.
• Rest - Turn the unit horizontal. (This is done when attacking and using some abilities)
• Stand - Turn the unit Vertical. (This allows it to attack or use abilities)
• Counter Blast - Turning a face up card in your Damage Zone face down
• Soul Charge - Putting the top card of your deck into the Soul
• Soul Blast - Putting a card from your Soul into the Drop Zone.
• Retire - Put the unit into the dropzone
• Lock - Turn the unit face-down and it counts as though it isn't there but you are unable to call a new unit to that spot.
• Limit Break - Usually refers to Limit Break 4 which is an ability that can only be used when you have 4 or more damage
• Legion - A special skill which lets 2 units be in the vanguard circle at the same time. Usually a grade 2 "Mate" and Grade 3 "Legion".
• Stride - Discarding a cards from your hand with grades totaling to 3 or more, to place a grade 4 card from your G-zone on top of your vanguard.
• Generation Break - A skill that is only active after a certain number of grade 4 (strides) are face up either in your G-zone or on your Vanguard. 

Vanguard "Might as well be a keyword" Slang:

• Crossride - Refers to units which get +2000 power all the time when a specific unit is in the soul.
• Breakride - Combining the words Limit Break and Ride, which refers to a unit who has a Limit break ability that activates when another unit rides it. 
• 12k Attacker - A grade 2 with 9000 power that gain +3000 power when it attacks under some condition
• 10k  Attacker - A grade 1 with 7000 power that gains +3000 power when it attacks under some condition
• Especial Interceptor - A card which gets +5000 shield when you intercept with it.
• "Magic Numbers"/Numbers - This refers to a number which is a multiple of 5000 above your opponent's guarding which forces out another 5000 shield due to equal numbers hitting
• Perfect Guard - A sentinel card which completely prevents an opponent's attack, with the cost of discarding a card.
• Quintet Wall - A sentinel card which lets you call the top 5 cards of your deck into the guardian circle for 1 Counter Blast.
• Stun/Paralyze - Megacolony's effect of not letting your opponent's unit stand during their stand phase
• Spin/Rewind - Gear Chronicle's Abilities which return a card to the hand.
• Bounce - Bermuda Triangle's ability to return a card to the hand from rearguard
• Clone - Murakumo/Neo Nectar's ability to get a copy of a rearguard.
• Damage Adder/Inflictor or Self Damager - A unit with an effect that allows you to put the top card of your deck into the damage zone and then return a card from the damage zone back to the deck at the end of the turn. 
• Limit Break Enabler - A unit which lets you use your Limit Break abilities while at 3 or less damage.
• Glory Effect - A skill which prevents your opponent's from guarding with Grade 1 or higher cards from your hand.
• Tom Effect - A skill which prevents your opponent from guarding with Grade 0s from your hand.

Vanguard Slang:

• Sack - Getting Lucky, (A person who drive checks a bunch of trigger may be called "sacky)
• Meta - Generally the same as in any game but it can also be used as a substitute for "top tier"
• Beater - A unit you are plan on using for your attacks. "My grade 3 is mainly a beater"
• Restander - A vanguard with an ability that lets it stand up again after it attacks.
• Numbers/Magic Numbers - When your attacking power is some multiple of 5k above the unit you are attacking.  
• 1 Pass, 2 Pass, No Pass - These are things people say when guarding which refers to how many triggers the opponent needs to get to break their guard or in the case of No Pass it can't be passed no matter how many triggers come up. 
• Pressure - A unit that has an ability that activates when you hit your opponent or gains an extra critical are generally refered to as pressure units because your opponent will likely not want them to let you hit or else you will get extra effects. 
• Damage Control - A tactic to manage your own damage for either counterblast, healing, or defensive purposes
• Early Guarding - Guarding early can let you take attacks later in the game which are generally stronger meaning you use less cards overall. Is a type of Damage Control. 
• All Effects - When you put all trigger effects on to a unit. Mainly either +1 crit and +5k to a unit or +5k and stand to one unit rather than splitting them up.

Again, let me know if there is anything you think I should add or would like me to add.

Thanks for reading,

Bambi