My Love Affair with Madew

Madew is Ma-Dood. One of those bros you can always count on.

I've always kinda liked Madew, mostly because of my obsession with card advantage and my love of 10k Grade 3s. The more I played with it in the OTT Sakuya build and abusing Dark Rex, I realized how powerful it actually is. It's legitimately really good and part of the reason for my increased affection is thanks to Timpowergamer. He's got a lot of great articles so you should check them out even if he is pretty inactive. His last article was a huuuuuge eye opener and has basically made me decide that Madew is one of the best cards in the game.

Here's a link to Tim's Article and the list he used to get 16 in a Bushiroad Regional Qualifier.

Starter - Shining Knight, Millius

12 Critical Triggers
4 Heal Triggers

4 Rainbow Guardian
4 Air Elemental, Fwarlun
3 Light Elemental, Peaker
3 Laurel Knight, Sicilus

4 Knight of Twin-Sword
4 Knight of Fragment
3 Transmigration Knight, Brede

4 Gigantech Charger
4 Stardrive Dragon

4 Rain Element, Madew
2 Shrouded Divine Knight, Gablade
1 Snow Element, Blizza
1 Miracle Element, Atmos

We can examine the list if we want, but I mainly talk about Madew in comparison to other "First Strides" like Gablade or Arborea or Tidal Bore. These "First Strides", which I call them because generally they are used to stride before going into the GB2 strides (Lambros, Rootflare, etc) are used to set up the G-zone and provide on-hit pressure. If they do hit, you get a free card. All of them are pretty much strict +1 effects. +1 meaning that you are getting an extra card or depriving your opponent of one or superior calling a unit, etc. Many of these effects also come with enablering skill as well. Judgement Messiah is able to unlock a unit to enable Messiah's skils, Lila provides soulcharging to help with Dark Irregulars high soul requirements. But the real question is how does Madew compare to these cards?

If we have a 10k base vanguard or are in legion, Madew lets us grab a grade 3 from the dropzone and put it into our hand. That's a free card right there. Sure its a grade 3, but they can be used for attacking if you have too many, they can be used for striding more, and for being discarded to a PG. Without having to do anything other than have a 10k vanguard you can use Madew to get the same +1 as all the other "First Strides" but without having to hit and that's really what it comes down to. Madew gets you free cards without requiring you to hit your opponent or counterblast or basically anything really. One Madew can lead into another and another and another until you run out. It seems as though its almost a strict upgrade to other "First Strides" if you have the ability to run it. The exception would be heart strides such as, Machining Destroyer, Sanctuary Regalie and others which do incredibly powerful things right from the get go.

Another advantage of Madew is that any deck can use him. This means you can use Madew to start gaining advantage in clans that don't really have a good advantage engine of their own. Take for example Dark Irregulars which are very strong, but lack a good advantage engine. You could make a build around Master of Fifth Element to use Madew to fix that problem and free up your counterblasts for lots of soulcharging. Another great example is Nova Grapplers. Their crazy powerful multi-attacks can destroy the opponent, but they lack a solid advantage engine, which Madew can fix.

But let's go back to Tim's deck. How did this deck really turn me from Madew is awesome, to Madew is a god? Well, the deck is focused around comboing Madew into Gigantech Charger which lets you superior call the top card of your deck when you call it. This turns Madew into a +2 now that Charger can be used to stride, picked up by Madew (+1) and then called (+1). I have been doing the same thing for a couple weeks with Dark Rex, but I didn't delve into other clans enough to realize that this sort of potential existed all over the place, nor did I really do the "card math". So now that I've done my research and my "card math" I can't get over how good Madew is. I don't think I would ever run a deck again that can't abuse him. Yea its a little restricting but I think its well justified (I'll probably be playing Dark Rex with Madew "DarkDew" for a long time to come anyway.)

I hope you liked my explanation of why I think Madew is one of the best cards in the game! I really like doing this sort of card analysis so you should expect so see more of it in the future once I work out my "Tech to Wreck" series and get it up and running. (Don't hold your breath, because it will be at least a couple weeks if not longer and possibly a Patron only thing, though I haven't decided yet.)

I'll try not to let my love of Madew invade Budgetguard to keep the decks diverse and interesting :)
As always thanks for reading.

~Chris 

Vanguard Random: Limit Break Enabler Decks

Hey Cardfighters,

After testing some Limit Break Enabler decks for the past couple weeks I wanted to discuss a bit about LBE decks and why I think that most of them are not viable in Legion format. I'm going to go over a list of problems that they have and these are things that you should really look into solving if you plan on playing a LBE deck during Legion format. (I think that things will be different when stride comes out as you can use stride to cover Limit Break decks lack of abilities during the mid game. But even then I'm not sure.)

1. The are just too inconsistent/slow.
        This is a huge issue and is combined with the fact that they are generally slower because many LBE decks do not have a way to search out their LBE which means that those games where you don't draw it or are forced to ride is will set you really really far behind. Good examples of decks that avoid this problem are Jewel Knights, Sanctuary Guard Dragon. These decks can easily tutor for the limit break enabler which lets them consistently compete with legion decks in terms of speed.
   
   
2. They aren't powerful enough.
        This is the second problem with LBE they don't hit the same numbers as Legions do. If we look at how much each is when they are boosted. LB will hit around 16k where as Legions will hit around 26k. This means that a legion deck will force your opponent to guard for 10k more guard every turn when compared with a LB deck. To compete on this front you need to be able to add that kind of power to your attacks consistently. Decks that do this well are Sanctuary guard dragon (+9k if you have 3 grade 1s puts it in legion power range), Star-Vader, Nebula Lord Dragon, (+3k to your front row per unit your opponent has locked can make up for the 10k guard for not being in legion). Any deck can compensate slightly by using 10k boosters or 8k vanillas if applicable to make a 21k vanguard column. But this solution still puts you under 5k guard a turn  and you can't always rely on having the 10k booster either.
   
3.  The don't do enough.
        While it might sound similar to not being powerful enough, what I mean this time is that they don't get enough mileage from their counterblasts. Most limit breaks come from an era where 2 Counter Blasts is worth approximately 1 card. (Signified by iconic cards like Berserk Dragon and Dark Cloak Revenger, Tartu) However in the era of Legions Counter Blasts have been redefined to having a 1:1 value with cards, which you can see in cards like (Blaster Blade Seeker and Perdition Dragon, Menace Laser Dragon). To solve this issue is really up to the boss unit you have or how much unflipping power you have in the deck. Boss units which can keep up are Chaos Breaker Dragon (The combo of his limit break soul blasting and non-limit break locking abilities is enough to put him on par with legion levels of doing stuff), and Cocytus Reverse (He can revive a card from the drop zone by putting the top 3 cards of your deck into the drop zone essentially giving you a card for free.) 

Those are the 3 main aspects of a deck that I think cause LBE decks to be sub-par in comparison to Legion decks. In my opinion if you can cover 2 aspects of the 3 in your deck then I think you can make a successful LBE deck. The best example of this is the Sanctuary Guard Dragon deck because the boss unit by itself can cover 2 of the conditions (1 and 2). This means that you can try to flesh out the rest of the deck with cards to cover the 3rd option or focus on working around Sanctuary Guard Dragon itself. As a side note a good way to correct the 2nd issue of power is to use a Legion unit as your secondary grade 3 and switch to it for the late game.

What do you think about LBE decks? Do you think I'm wrong? Please comment below 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

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!

Also please follow me if you'd like to get notifications when I put out content, I guarantee one in-depth Budgetguard article and atleast one shorter article/tournament report each week.

Thanks for reading!

~Bambi

Vanguard Random: Net-Decking

Hey Cardfighters,

Lately with all the buzz about net-decking I wanted to give my two cents on the topic.

Starting off, what is net-decking? 

Net-decking is the practice of copying a winning/popular decklist from online tournament results.

I personally see nothing wrong with this practice, but I believe there are two sides to it and the more negative one attracts a lot of the stigma associated with Net-Decking.

Here are some attributes of what I refer to as unhealthy and healthy net-decking. (Not all of these will apply at one time and some may be a little ambiguous)

Unhealthy Net-Decking

• Primary objective is winning
• Seeing a winning deck, copying the decklist and then changing cards in it because you think they are bad. 
• Complaining when losing, because "I have the best deck I shouldn't lose"

Healthy Net-Decking

• Primary objective is learning and improvement of ones skills (deck building or playing)
• Trying to understand why a person chose the cards they did.

From these points I think you can see that I believe net-decking should be used for improving you own abilities rather than for the sake of winning. For example take my blog. I'm not suggesting that my decks will win you every single game in fact I give you some quick testing results showing that isn't the case. What I want to give you, my readers, is a cheap deck that you can learn how to use, understand and improve when you want to add more money into it.

What are your opinions on net-decking? Do you think its good, bad or somewhere in the middle? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Thanks for reading,

~Bambi

Vanguard Random #1: Whats up with this "Meta" word?

(Disclaimer: This is more of a pet peeve of mine because the slang meaning is so close to the original meaning that I feel it could convey wrong information. Not trying to pick a fight with anyone.)

Meta...

You guys use this word but I don't think you know what it means.

Meta. {Cardname} is so Meta. Meta-deck. I've heard alot of these getting thrown around and it just is a bit odd to me.

Meta refers to something that references itself. In this case when you say Meta you mean "Metagame" or the game about the game. Kind of confusing right? Almost like Inception D: Basically the Metagame is the collection of decks that you expect to see play and Metagaming is predicting that Metagame state (or meta) and making the according adjustments. Where as the slang Vanguard meaning is that meta=top tier. My guess the transition occured when someone overheard another person talking about a tournament meta and saying something like "The meta is mostly _____" and then this person is like ooooh meta thats such a cool word i gotta tell all my friends "that _____ is meta".


So that brings me to why it bothers me, when I hear statements like "Vague is so meta" or "Thats a meta deck" in reference to vague I assume they are saying that their local tournaments comprise mostly of or have a high amount of vague decks in comparison to the other stuff. (if you take 10 decks then 2-3 of them will be vague would constitute a high percentage of the meta) but I assume thats not the case for a lot of people because vague is pretty expensive and a lot of people have their little pet clans and maybe even if they do own Vague they play a different deck because they don't wanna be that guy. In these cases you might say "Vague is so meta" which its not actually a big part of your local metagame at all and thats the reason it bothers me.

Just wanted to give a little background to people who just throw the word around without really knowing where it came from.

Bambi