Hybrid Deck Ideas

My long-tested NG/MC deck is up with tech notes.

Hybrid decks?

Well, for EVERY deck I currently use I change it up sometimes and put in Nubatama's and just mess with people. It's not just for fun though because I still use the deck really well. I consider Brakki and Tejas as a techs rather then hybrids.

Nova Grapplers can accept pretty much anything due to massive unflip ability and certian cards that don't require NG vanguards/rearguards (DA Lady, Dancing Wolf, Gold rutile, some other crazy things).

For me;
Universal donor: Nubatama
Universal acceptor: Nova Grapplers

WingZero wrote:

Its funny you mention that, I was just thinking about a deck thats Megacolony/Spike Bros. Basically it revolves around Units like Hell Spider and other Megacolony units while adding in the odd Brakki and Express.

DO IT!! THAT WOULD BE BADASS!!!

I currently have a Vanilla Kagero deck that runs about 17 Grade 0 Kagero, 8 Grade 1's, 10 Grade 2's, 1 Embodiment of Victory, and around 14 Grade 1 vanilla 8k boosters of varying clans.

It has proven surprisingly lethal.

I've had thoughts of combining Nova Grappler Beast Dieties with Tsukuyomi's Ride Chain as a way of stacking the deck faster. Maybe only run the Black Tortoise and go with Stern Blaukluger instead...

Have you heard of TimPowerGamer? He makes really good mix clan decks.

>Kageroyal Sackdown

Hello all. I normally wouldn't have come here but my blog kept getting visits from this site (with a couple different posts, some with not-so-nice thread titles). I made the decision to make the case for my deck. Naturally, these are your forums and I may not be welcome here. I'm not spiteful or petty, so if I'm not welcome, I will leave immediately. Hybrid decks are kind of my thing, so I figured I would expound a little bit on why Kageroyals has done so well for the 50 of us or so that have been playing it (and the number of people playing it keeps growing).

When I last discussed the deck with TehNACHO, I had played it maybe 30 times (getting 26 wins with it) and I didn't understand completely why the deck was winning. I initially thought that it all came down to just hitting more criticals and having consistency in knowing exactly how strong your rows and units were going to be. I've played the deck over 200 times now, and I can give you a far more in-depth analysis as to why the deck has been winning so many tournaments and has been hovering between a 65%-70% win rate.

The first major advantage is in early defense. All of your grade 1's are 8k and all of your grade 2's are 10k. This makes early rushes less effective on you on average and certain ride chains where the Vanguard doesn't move back (Tsukuyomi and Galahad) can't even hit you without a boost/trigger. Additionally, any additional units called need to be vanillas or have boosts/triggers in order to swing over any of your units. It makes guarding early easy. While other decks can also ride vanillas to be resilient in the early stages of the game, this deck does it 100% of the time that it rides up successfully, making the early defense not just consistent, but a guarantee.

The second major advantage is in early guarding. The only unit using counterblasts is Bors, so you don't need to take damage to utilize your deck optimally. This lets you justify guarding when it costs you the least amount of cards rather than having to hit some arbitrary amount of damage and using way more cards to guard later than you would have needed to use earlier.

The third major advantage is row power. Currently, no vanguards can withstand any non-trigger row combination the deck produces, as two vanilla grade 1 units make a 16k row. In the crossride meta, no combination of boosters and grade 2's or higher can make a row that doesn't force 10k shield. There isn't a single grade 3 VG in this deck that can't hit 21k with any grade 1 boost. There is an outlet for hitting 21k with a particular grade 3 rear guard and any grade 1. While many decks are capable of making these types of rows, no other decks can net this kind of consistency in doing so.

The forth major advantage is card quality. There are two major ways to create advantage in this game. There are cards that net you bonus advantage (units that retire, call, draw, grade 3 ride) and units that have enough quality in their own regard that having the unit can cause a net card advantage to you over time (crossrides, Palamedes). This is simply card quantity vs. card quality. With this deck, you can't draw any bad cards. You only have five types of cards you can draw (10k crit, 8k grade 1, 10k grade 2, 13k VG/RG beater, 13k VG beater/discard for 10k to another copy of said VG). Nobody will ever argue that a 10k shield, vanilla, 13k beater, or psuedo-persona blast is a bad unit to draw into. It would be kind of silly to think that. This isn't just a card quality advantage, though. It's also a consistency advantage. Knowing that what you're going to get is one of 5 types of cards greatly decreases the amount of worry you have in setting up your rows, wondering what kind of triggers you're going to get, and lets you set up solid replacements for units on the field. If anyone retires a unit of yours, it's not going to hurt your set-up (except Bors vs. a 10-11k VG, and even then only Blaster Blade, Blazing Flare, some megablasts, and a lot of Amon spam could retire him in the first place).

Finally, there's trigger sacking. Yes, it's a factor in the deck. It's no where near as important as I made it out to be. I've won games with this deck against an opponent who was sacking me and I won through stronger rows and guarding earlier. Trigger sacking is actually in the favor of this deck (offensively, not defensively), but the strong rows and incredible pressure are what carries the deck.

For the non-statistical side of things, it's also a major mind game. If you guard early, you could have a 3-4 damage lead over your opponent with a completely beautiful field set-up. That increases the intimidation factor quite a bit, even if you only have 1-2 cards in your hand. Also, I've had people stop, look at me riding Silver Wolf, pick up the stack, see Workerpod, put it back down, then I call Bahr and they're like, "What is going on?!" That reaction alone would make this deck worth running, even if it was bad.

Strengths - This deck performs amazingly against standard meta decks. You make better rows, have stronger defenses early, can afford to no guard later, and they can't really harm your rows since everything is easily replaced. It beats almost every conventionally played deck more often than not. We've playtested it 500+ times and have over 350 wins. The deck just destroys the meta style of gameplay and counteracts early crits through early guarding while doing the same back to the opponent with twice the consistency.

Weaknesses - All decks have them. I've played this deck enough to know what hurts it. Two heals puts this deck in a bad spot. It can shake off one heal from the opponent no problem, but when your opponent doesn't have to guard for a turn because of sacking two heals, it makes it rough to catch back up in the advantage game. Other than that, Aqua Force and stand-based Novas destroy this deck. If too much guard was used earlier and you can't guard OTK's like Stern, Reijy, or DOtE, then you have the potential to lose quickly. I try not to use too much guard early to prepare for those situations.

Kageroyals aside, in set 10 there's all kinds of goodies for multi-clan interaction. One of the most interesting ones I saw was: Beast Deity, Riot Horn. It is a 5k grade 0 that stands itself whenever the unit in front of it stands. According to the wiki, there is no same-type Vanguard or attacking unit requirements. This would tech well into Polaris Great Nature decks, Luquier/Alice On-hit Pale Moon builds, and Tri-Stinger/Benedict Critical Aqua Force decks. Keep in mind that 11k's typically don't mesh well with mixing with a few exceptions like Juggernaut Maximum, Dragonic Overlord, and Martial Arts Mutant, Master Beetle. (An interesting thing about those cards is that if they're Vanguard vs. Lawkeeper and he uses his Limit Break, they become 9k for the turn, Megacolony/DOtE users beware!)

...You don't sound like a jerk about it now.

Well, today's a good day.

I will fuly fess up, Iwas one person whoms comment you may have taken exception to. that said, your argument wasn't nearly as persuasive on the blog as it was here, and your saying that that was the best variation of the deck, period.well.I think you can understand.(plus, a decleration that something is end all and be all goes against my nature as a johhny.)

alexander.stone88 wrote:

I will fuly fess up, Iwas one person whoms comment you may have taken exception to. that said, your argument wasn't nearly as persuasive on the blog as it was here, and your saying that that was the best variation of the deck, period.well.I think you can understand.(plus, a decleration that something is end all and be all goes against my nature as a johhny.)

It's largely so I don't have to deal with the repercussions of leaving the deck open to bastardization. While I love innovation, whenever you "break the meta" everyone will simultaneously judge your every move as being retarded while taking any negative results and throw them in your face. The path to proving this deck's viability has been filled with a lot of difficulty, but the results have finally become significant enough that I feel I can stand on my claims. An example of why I'm cautious about this could be made with League of Legends. I'm an avid AD Sona player. I go 11-3~-5~ almost every game I play her. I had just gotten off of a 7 game winning spree with the build, but I had a rough lane match-up (Trist/Leona) and got beaten about 3-5-3~. Had I been playing a normal AD carry, that would have been viewed as "Well, that lane just gets kills. Not a lot you can do about it." Since I was breaking the meta, I was instead yelled at for being a troll or an unskilled player.

As I mentioned in another location, people want to alter the wrong portions of the deck to change one of three things:

1. They want to make all of the grade 3's from the same clan so they can-
2. Run perfect guards of that clan.
3. They want to add in heals to the deck.

The first option is completely on the table. It comes with two issues. There isn't a clan with a +3k when attacking VG that also has a Bors clone except Royal Paladins (Note, NOT a same-clan boosting requirement, like Armored Fairy,
Shubiela, as you can't guarantee 21k with your boosts being from different clans. This is why a
Dudley version of the deck hasn't been made, sadly.) Royal Paladins have Soul Saver Dragon, but Soul Saver would just be a vanilla 13k beatstick. At that point you'd be better off running 4 Bors/4 Palamedes. That option with Isuelts is fine, but you can't run 16 criticals until set 10 because you will no longer be able to the consistency of guaranteeing two clans on the field at the same time. When I say that the build is optimized, I mean it's optimized for what's currently out in English.

Perfect Guards can be played in mixed decks, but every card that's not a vanilla takes your row consistency down. Whether or not that's a fair trade is up to debate, but there's also other issues, such as having to ride grade 3's from a different clan or not having a unit of the clan you want to perfect guard with in your hand. It's not even that it's terribly inconsistent, it just forces you to have to think a little more when playing the deck. That's not a bad thing, but I designed the deck to be able to fully utilize every card, so having a potentially dead card in my hand is something I've been striving to avoid.

Heal triggers are an absolute no in this deck. 12 crit/4 heal barely works by itself (It does well with self-damagers). Guarding early (this deck is required to, especially without nulls) while running crits is just begging to hit dead heals. Healing is one of the reasons for a no-guard early meta. While having a heal trigger to fall back on if I can't win is nice, this deck is designed to not have cards be dead weight. While a 10k shield is still great to have, if I'm up 2 to 4 in damage because of early guarding, I'd rather my drive check be another critical. My own deck counters checking into heal triggers and healing in an attempt to gain card advantage over the long run.



I posted a lot of this elsewhere (and admittedly, a lot of things on my blog were very rushed), but it's not that I feel that people shouldn't be messing around with the decklist. It's just that some people have done crazy things to it (like made it into a Kagero deck). I saw one person run all Kagero grade 3's, 8 Kagero grade 2's, 3 Royal grade 2's, 4 Bahr, 4 Marron, 4 Barri, 2 Gojo, Conroe, 12 Kagero crits, 4 Royal crits. They raged at ME because they never hit their Royal crits since they never had a Royal out. The fact that they took that deck and played a few friendly games with someone under the title of "Kageroyals" and then tried to make me look like an ass for their mistakes... Well, you can probably see where this is going. Everyone wants to take it and make it better. Not that that's a bad thing, but some people simply don't understand that if you are splashing any amount of one clan's triggers into a deck, you want to have your deck as close to 50/50 as you can to optimize hitting said triggers. I apologize if my verbiage was offensive. As a fellow Johnny, looking back at that comment, I understand what you mean by it. I'm going to go edit it now and clarify what I mean by that a little bit.

TimPowerGamer wrote:

I posted a lot of this elsewhere (and admittedly, a lot of things on my blog were very rushed), but it's not that I feel that people shouldn't be messing around with the decklist. It's just that some people have done crazy things to it (like made it into a Kagero deck). I saw one person run all Kagero grade 3's, 8 Kagero grade 2's, 3 Royal grade 2's, 4 Bahr, 4 Marron, 4 Barri, 2 Gojo, Conroe, 12 Kagero crits, 4 Royal crits. They raged at ME because they never hit their Royal crits since they never had a Royal out. The fact that they took that deck and played a few friendly games with someone under the title of "Kageroyals" and then tried to make me look like an ass for their mistakes... Well, you can probably see where this is going. Everyone wants to take it and make it better. Not that that's a bad thing, but some people simply don't understand that if you are splashing any amount of one clan's triggers into a deck, you want to have your deck as close to 50/50 as you can to optimize hitting said triggers. I apologize if my verbiage was offensive. As a fellow Johnny, looking back at that comment, I understand what you mean by it. I'm going to go edit it now and clarify what I mean by that a little bit.

I finished updating it. It now reads:

"he biggest warning about this deck has nothing to do with the deck
itself. It is about changing the deck. You can, but be careful. The
general line of thoughts I've seen are, "Oh, I could just run more
Kagero g3's, 12 Kagero crits, some retire..." then all of the sudden you
aren't hitting 21k with anything but Waterfall and you miss all of your
RP triggers because you just don't have enough RP's out.

Right
now we don't have any clans that have a +3k vs. Vanguard And a Bors
clone, save Royal Paladins. Royal Paladins have Soul Saver, but she is a
vanilla 13k. At that point you're better off playing Palamedes/Bors.
That's not a bad idea, but if you get too many grade 3's, then you sit
on a dead hand. There are two +3k vs. Vanguard units that CAN get rid
of your excess grade 3's, Dragonic Waterfall (gets rid of himself) and
Origin Mage, Ildona (gets rid of excess Shadow Paladins to draw). The
reason I play Waterfall over Ildona is because Ildona can remove any
Shadows. That sounds more versatile (and it certainly is!) but you'd be
sacking vanilla 8k's and 10k's. That's not too appealing. If you get a
lot of Ildona (who is the target you want to sack) then you can do it
and feel good about it, but then your versatility just got reduced to
Waterfall levels (essentially a persona blast). They also have to be on
the field, so you might have to call over units, and then you don't
feel the card advantage you might have gotten otherwise. Dragonic
Waterfall keeps it simple."

Going on record to say I didn't make whatever thread is in question :X

TimPowerGamer wrote:

The first major advantage is in early defense. All of your grade 1's are 8k and all of your grade 2's are 10k. This makes early rushes less effective on you on average and certain ride chains where the Vanguard doesn't move back (Tsukuyomi and Galahad) can't even hit you without a boost/trigger. Additionally, any additional units called need to be vanillas or have boosts/triggers in order to swing over any of your units. It makes guarding early easy. While other decks can also ride vanillas to be resilient in the early stages of the game, this deck does it 100% of the time that it rides up successfully, making the early defense not just consistent, but a guarantee.

I'll say that, yes, having 8's and 10's makes for a better defense than a 9, 8, or 7. But you are trading raw stats for utility and field control. On grade 1, you are losing On grade two, you are losing Blaster Blade's ability, Akane being able to fetch and grab Pongal (Which in turn, grabs SSD), or utilise the g0-2 Galahad Chain (to help make sure SSD goes off) Berserk Dragon, and any kind of 10k intercepter, for a defense that often does not matter (18k hits a 10k hits a 9k defense for the same amount of shield).

TimPowerGamer wrote:

The second major advantage is in early guarding. The only unit using counterblasts is Bors, so you don't need to take damage to utilize your deck optimally. This lets you justify guarding when it costs you the least amount of cards rather than having to hit some arbitrary amount of damage and using way more cards to guard later than you would have needed to use earlier.

I don't really agree with this either. Vanguard, when you get down to it, is a game of attrition. You only draw 2 cards a turn until grade 3. By guarding early, you are leaving yourself vulnerable to any kind of burst later on in the mid/late game where you have to deal with twin drives and the very real possibility of double triggers/crits.
Furthermore, Taking damage early, as opposed to guarding is exactly for this reason, in that I do not want to get ranched by a double trigger, so I 'll take the 2-3 hits now so I can utilize my cards better in the future and react as the game changes. Additionally, your reasoning for using it soley for Bors isn't too sound. the CB is only useful in your deck IF your have it, IF you ride Bors as your vanguard...which then blanks your Waterfalls and other Bors. AND EVEN THEN! You'll get, what. 2-3 activations out of this?

TimPowerGamer wrote:

The third major advantage is row power. Currently, no vanguards can withstand any non-trigger row combination the deck produces, as two vanilla grade 1 units make a 16k row. In the crossride meta, no combination of boosters and grade 2's or higher can make a row that doesn't force 10k shield. There isn't a single grade 3 VG in this deck that can't hit 21k with any grade 1 boost. There is an outlet for hitting 21k with a particular grade 3 rear guard and any grade 1. While many decks are capable of making these types of rows, no other decks can net this kind of consistency in doing so.

Consistency is good. But not being able to adapt t any kind of change in the gamestate is worse. If a deck or player is able to take advantage of your deck, or is able to gain any kind of leverage, then your deck would straight up fold, wouldn't it?

TimPowerGamer wrote:

The forth major advantage is card quality. There are two major ways to create advantage in this game. There are cards that net you bonus advantage (units that retire, call, draw, grade 3 ride) and units that have enough quality in their own regard that having the unit can cause a net card advantage to you over time (crossrides, Palamedes). This is simply card quantity vs. card quality. With this deck, you can't draw any bad cards. You only have five types of cards you can draw (10k crit, 8k grade 1, 10k grade 2, 13k VG/RG beater, 13k VG beater/discard for 10k to another copy of said VG). Nobody will ever argue that a 10k shield, vanilla, 13k beater, or psuedo-persona blast is a bad unit to draw into. It would be kind of silly to think that. This isn't just a card quality advantage, though. It's also a consistency advantage. Knowing that what you're going to get is one of 5 types of cards greatly decreases the amount of worry you have in setting up your rows, wondering what kind of triggers you're going to get, and lets you set up solid replacements for units on the field. If anyone retires a unit of yours, it's not going to hurt your set-up (except Bors vs. a 10-11k VG, and even then only Blaster Blade, Blazing Flare, some megablasts, and a lot of Amon spam could retire him in the first place).

With this deck, you can't draw any bad cards.

That's not really true. What you are talking about is risk v. reward. By having everything in your deck doing one thing, you assume you have little risk as it achieves what you want, large columns. You'll be attacking for 18-16k. You don't have to think too hard, all you gotta do is put 1's in the back and 2's in the front, every time.

Except, what if you get grade stuck? Ah!, you may say, but that is why running all 10k's are great, I can still attack most of the time!

Except what if you draw a bunch of grade 2's? And you had to guard even more because they got off a trigger? You say your deck can easily replace what they lost because you don't have to worry about dropping a grade 2 at 9k with no booster. Which, yes, is true. But that's all it does. If you get into a hole, you are hoping that you didn't overguard too much, didn't have your field disrupted, didn't have to deal with a trigger. All of which your deck invites to do. As you said, your deck does pretty much one thing, and if I am decent player, I will find ways to disrupt that as much as possible, knowing your deck doesn't have any kind of field control (which also lowers my own risk of playing something and gives me MUCH greater information as I know what you will be playing every time)


Now, is this deck a worthless pile? I'd say no. Your deck has pressure, which is good, and consistency. But you have little utility, which valuable in any deck. What I think this deck is useful for is for people who are just starting. The deck is cheap, can be made pretty much by buying each of the trial decks, and requires little high-level thought. They won't take it as far as someone who knows the game better, but it's easy to play and the losses they suffer would help them learn ("I lost! How come? I have bigger columns then they did but...").

I just don't see why I'd run this over the other clans straight. I can achieve pretty much the same thing, but with added utility and force my opponent into bad plays making my rearguards threats instead of just a stage 2.

I agree with what you're saying Darkside but you're completely wrong about guarding early being bad. Most attacks in this game are 2 stage. Early game attacks are often 1 stage. Guarding early means using less stages. Ever since I switched people in V*Mundi to guarding early, they win a lot more games. Perfect Guards exist for "bursts".

I didn't mean to say that early guarding at all is bad. You don't want to rush into 4 damage to rush into LB, but I think you can take a hit or two early game If you have a draw trigger or the like, then you can guard for 1 stage. But I don't see why you'd have to guard the first or 2nd damage, really.

I was thinking a bit more into the context of this deck though. If your field is being disrupted, then you are relying on your replenishing your field pretty consistently. At the same me, uo have no heals, so if you take a hit, it hits harder as you have no real defense or chance to catch up. You'd be caught both ways. With a heal, you have more wiggle room. Kagero would have a ball with this if they don't care about damage and look mainly on field disruption.

Dark5ide wrote:

I'll say that, yes, having 8's and 10's makes for a better defense than a 9, 8, or 7. But you are trading raw stats for utility and field control. On grade 1, you are losing On grade two, you are losing Blaster Blade's ability, Akane being able to fetch and grab Pongal (Which in turn, grabs SSD), or utilize the g0-2 Galahad Chain (to help make sure SSD goes off) Berserk Dragon, and any kind of 10k intercepter, for a defense that often does not matter (18k hits a 10k hits a 9k defense for the same amount of shield).

I don't disagree with you. Utility is a great thing to have. Calling a free unit is great. My deck simply can't fill the same-clan Vanguard requirements reliably enough to utilize this type of utility. Also, every card that's 9k will make one more row that can't force 10k against crossrides or 5k unboosted against other 10k's. I'm not saying that any of these utility cards are bad, they're actually all great cards. Everything is a trade, though. This deck can't really do anything that any other deck can't do. it just aims to do it with as much frequency as possible. I could see Macha in an Ildona variation of this deck working extremely well, though.

Dark5ide wrote:

I don't really agree with this either. Vanguard, when you get down to it, is a game of attrition. You only draw 2 cards a turn until grade 3. By guarding early, you are leaving yourself vulnerable to any kind of burst later on in the mid/late game where you have to deal with twin drives and the very real possibility of double triggers/crits.
Furthermore, Taking damage early, as opposed to guarding is exactly for this reason, in that I do not want to get ranched by a double trigger, so I 'll take the 2-3 hits now so I can utilize my cards better in the future and react as the game changes. Additionally, your reasoning for using it soley for Bors isn't too sound. the CB is only useful in your deck IF your have it, IF you ride Bors as your vanguard...which then blanks your Waterfalls and other Bors. AND EVEN THEN! You'll get, what. 2-3 activations out of this?

The odds of my opponent hitting a single trigger on a single drive check are much greater than their odds of hitting two triggers with a twin-drive (about 33% to 10.6%). I have a much better chance to stop more total damage (or stop the same amount of damage, but for less shield) by guarding early when dropping 5-10k shield is enough to invalidate triggers (and thus, up to 2 damage). This is vital when my deck has no way to increase my own card advantage. Late game I don't have the utility to stave off three 20k+ attacks at 5 damage. I have to do what I can for as long as I can to give myself the wiggle room I need to finish my opponent off and dropping single cards early game seems to be the more practical choice over dropping 2-3 cards late game to stop the same amount of damage. I am more required to guard early largely because I don't have those perfect guards and I'm not restricted by needing to activate heals or counterblasts, so I don't miss anything for not taking early damage.

Dark5ide wrote:

Consistency is good. But not being able to adapt t any kind of change in the gamestate is worse. If a deck or player is able to take advantage of your deck, or is able to gain any kind of leverage, then your deck would straight up fold, wouldn't it?

I don't see what can be taken advantage of or quite what you mean by it. I would appreciate you expounding on what you mean here. As I will discuss below, most of the negatives, bad cases, and weaknesses that screw my deck over screw almost any deck over.

Dark5ide wrote:

That's not really true. What you are talking about is risk v. reward. By having everything in your deck doing one thing, you assume you have little risk as it achieves what you want, large columns. You'll be attacking for 18-16k. You don't have to think too hard, all you gotta do is put 1's in the back and 2's in the front, every time.

Except, what if you get grade stuck? Ah!, you may say, but that is why running all 10k's are great, I can still attack most of the time!

Except what if you draw a bunch of grade 2's? And you had to guard even more because they got off a trigger? You say your deck can easily replace what they lost because you don't have to worry about dropping a grade 2 at 9k with no booster. Which, yes, is true. But that's all it does. If you get into a hole, you are hoping that you didn't overguard too much, didn't have your field disrupted, didn't have to deal with a trigger. All of which your deck invites to do. As you said, your deck does pretty much one thing, and if I am decent player, I will find ways to disrupt that as much as possible, knowing your deck doesn't have any kind of field control (which also lowers my own risk of playing something and gives me MUCH greater information as I know what you will be playing every time)

So you just mentioned how well my deck handles getting grade 2 locked and getting a lack of boosters doesn't stop me from hitting over at least one unit with almost any field composition. And other decks? If they lack grade 1's, they have dead grade 2's unless they run a lot of vanillas or get lucky and get one of their 4. If they get ride stuck (or if it's turn 2), they might have a 9k VG and be susceptible to those same unboosted 9k attacks that my deck is immune to. If my opponent sacks, well that's kind of tough to deal with, but if I sack, the game is so heavily weighed into my favor that I either already won or I'm so far ahead that they simply can't catch up. If another deck got sacked, they're in a bind, but if they sack they have an advantage. My deck polarizes my own advantages while easing some of the pressure off of my opponent's sacking by having wiggle room to take the excess damage because of my early guarding. Still, chance can overpower my deck (and has before, and will again). But what deck hasn't been overtaken by an opponent hitting better triggers or from getting ride screwed?

This deck does a little more than just setting up big columns. It sets up big columns that are hard to swing over, that are easily replaced (especially my front row rear guards since any excess grade 1's, 2's, and 3's can force at least 10k from anyone (until set 5) with a boost, sometimes 15k if I get Bors or if they rode Negromarl or something silly like that), that force 10k from even crossrides (save a double grade 1 row), and that can pressure really hard when I do hit triggers. With a 53.5%~ chance to hit at least one trigger on a Twin-Drive!!, and with all of my triggers being criticals, my turn 3 pressure is actually way stronger than you give it credit for. This isn't even about sacking, the fact that I am extremely likely to hit a critical every other turn means that turns 3 and 4 are devastating for my opponent unless they also guarded me early. And with any extra copies of Waterfall, it can force my opponent to null or no guard on turn 3/4, and no guarding a deck with over a 50% chance to crit is tantamount to suicide by turn 4. This deck isn't necessarily effective for what it does so much as how it can be played to counter the meta. There are a lot of players that feel encouraged to take early, pointless, easily guarded damage so that they can use their counterblasts and limit breaks. There is a time and place for not guarding early, but it should largely be the exception if you are capable of doing so.

Also, I'm back to the other question I had in mind earlier. What exactly are you doing to disrupt my strategy or my rows? If I have a reasonable balance of units in my hand then it is very easy to replace units on my field if you swing at them. In fact, if you swing for a 10k guard at my grade 2 rear guards, I'm going to no guard, replace it, and save 5k shield in the process. It's entirely possible that I'm misunderstanding you though.

Dark5ide wrote:

Now, is this deck a worthless pile? I'd say no. Your deck has pressure, which is good, and consistency. But you have little utility, which valuable in any deck. What I think this deck is useful for is for people who are just starting. The deck is cheap, can be made pretty much by buying each of the trial decks, and requires little high-level thought. They won't take it as far as someone who knows the game better, but it's easy to play and the losses they suffer would help them learn ("I lost! How come? I have bigger columns then they did but...").

I just don't see why I'd run this over the other clans straight. I can achieve pretty much the same thing, but with added utility and force my opponent into bad plays making my rearguards threats instead of just a stage 2.

Honestly, very few multi-clan decks could be ran in a competitive fashion. You get a few splashes here and there (Brakki, Dragonic Overlord, etc.) and grade 1 rush decks. Outside of that, they're pretty rare to see. A lot of this has to do with how much this game discourages multi-clan play. This deck is actually very competitive (I place it as the 7th most competitive English deck, with it about to drop with MLB and DOtE around the corner), but I wouldn't say it holds a candle to a Garmore bunnies deck (without Pellinore and with Destroyer, which I currently rank as the strongest English deck).

Well, your analysis was pretty fair, but it has a few weaknesses. You haven't played the deck (an assumption, but I think it's a safe one) and I really think that if you play the deck you will understand a little bit more about how the strengths of the deck play out and you'll likely want to give it a better review after that. Before I started playing it, I had largely the same opinions as you. Then I won my first 10 games in a row with Star Drives and Cresteds as my grade 3's. I keep finding new ways that the deck secures advantages and it keeps winning tournament after tournament. The vast majority of your arguments against it were things that screw over almost any deck such as grade lock, getting sacked, and getting less boosters than you need to pressure (and some even screw this deck over less, like getting grade locked at 2 and not getting boosters, although hitting triggers makes the grade 0-1 grade locks very painful because of Workerpod/Rainbow-boosts). I could try and prepare my deck for the unlikely (but still common over many games) possibility of getting ride screwed. But my question is "why"? Most decks that try to prepare for that kind of case are either still going to lose or are putting in extra utility (like the Granblue superior rides) at the cost of having a weaker overall field. You could argue that ride chains also fit into this category of preventing misriding, and I would have to concede to that point. I would much rather let my deck lose if I got ridescrewed than weaken it when it doesn't. If I'm grade locked at 2, that means I can also just drop my hand for a rush, and an all vanilla (including triggers) rush is a powerful one.

I hope that this post is insightful and I greatly encourage you to try the deck a few times and see if you hold the same opinion about it. It's one of those, "You have to try it to understand it" deals. Keep in mind that certain decks counter it. Stand invalidate overguarding the Vanguard and let the same damage go through (Aqua Force, Stand Grapplers), on-hit pressure decks make you want to guard all of the attacks, especially draws, and the 7k draw units also can hit 15k with a vanilla and force 10k from all of my units (Novas, AF's to an extent), and Vanguard standing decks (Stern, DOtE, SDD not as much from lower base power and not being able to stand its booster which it probably ate) because I want to guard early, but no guarding Stern, even if I'm at one damage, could result in a OTK. So, pretty much Nova Grapplers. I just wanted to clarify this so that there isn't a bias if you play against a lot of those decks.

Dark5ide wrote:

I didn't mean to say that early guarding at all is bad. You don't want to rush into 4 damage to rush into LB, but I think you can take a hit or two early game If you have a draw trigger or the like, then you can guard for 1 stage. But I don't see why you'd have to guard the first or 2nd damage, really.

It all depends. If I can guard an attack at any point in the game for just 1 card (unless I'm at 4 damage and need to hit a trigger to have enough guard to block two other attacks or something weird like that) I expend as little shield as possible to guard equal or more damage over the course of the game.

Dark5ide wrote:

I was thinking a bit more into the context of this deck though. If your field is being disrupted, then you are relying on your replenishing your field pretty consistently. At the same me, uo have no heals, so if you take a hit, it hits harder as you have no real defense or chance to catch up. You'd be caught both ways. With a heal, you have more wiggle room. Kagero would have a ball with this if they don't care about damage and look mainly on field disruption.

If they retire my units, they use up their counterblasts pretty quickly. For Berserks, you can retire two then you're done. For Kimnara, it's a 1 for 1 trade which doesn't impact me all that negatively in comparison to them. Heatnail could mess me up (it's still tehcnically a 1 for 1 though), and Goku could be a dick to deal with, but Goku is so easy to guard that I'm not sure if it's all that beneficial to play over a stronger unit (and that's on top of how inconsistent hitting grade 3's can be on drive checks, especially if they are running less than 9). Even still, it's very rare to see more than three retires, and most of them will cost them a unit too.

This is also more justification for guarding when logical. If I take a hit, it stays. I have no chance of undoing damage that is done to me. That's also why I put myself in a huge lead (in terms of damage) early, so that they're the ones who have to catch up. To say I have no defense is a little bit of an oversight. I mentioned several ways how I mitigate early damage for less shield with my units doing what they do, and my deck is one of the most deadly decks in terms of generating large pressure to an opponent at 4 damage between a potentially 31k VG and 18/21k rows, so they have to drop cards to defend themselves for 10-15k per swing when I will be able to no guard at this point after dropping 5-10k's to stop the same amount of damage they were trying to do to me early. While I do as much as I can to compensate for some weakness in my defense, I still have one of the strongest offenses in the current English game. Kagero won't have the option to not care about damage since I rack up to 4 damage by the end of my 3rd turn almost without exception.

Actually the chance for single drive is 33.33% and twin drive is 56%.

Also I'm pretty sure Dark5ide purposefully disconsiders crossrides since none of us here use them.

Also I don't get your argument about their counterblast being used up when they retire you. That's the point of the retires, to make use of that resource.

Alice wrote:

Actually the chance for single drive is 33.33% and twin drive is 56%.

Yes, this is more correct than what I posted by assuming every card save your starting vanguard and whatever is doing the drive check is in your deck and checking the top two cards in a 48 card deck. Additionally, the 16/48 makes for more simple math.

Alice wrote:

Also I'm pretty sure Dark5ide purposefully disconsiders crossrides since none of us here use them.

Fair enough. I am going to have to deal with them pretty heavily though, and they are at the forefront of my mind with set 5 being released soon.

Alice wrote:

Also I don't get your argument about their counterblast being used up when they retire you. That's the point of the retires, to make use of that resource.

I'm not arguing against that. To word what I'm saying more carefully, the counterblasts are a limiter on how much he can retire (limited further by Conroe). My key point in that section was supposed to be, "Most of your units that retire also remove themselves from the field, making us even in net card disadvantage from the retirement."

I apologize if I said anything confusing. I've been under the weather lately and I don't see an edit button anywhere. ;__;

No Timmy, not assuming every card is still in the deck. It only assumes that the ratio of trigger units to non-trigger units remains close to the same throughout the game. That's the chance at any point in an average game. And since the ratio is 1/3 and you go through 3 cards per turn with draw and twin drive, it should be assumed that triggers come out at a relative ratio on average. So yes, that's the actual number.

Berserk dragon doesn't retire itself. It's a net +1 that they can use twice. And an RG overlord is net +2.

Alice wrote:

No Timmy, not assuming every card is still in the deck. It only assumes that the ratio of trigger units to non-trigger units remains close to the same throughout the game. That's the chance at any point in an average game. And since the ratio is 1/3 and you go through 3 cards per turn with draw and twin drive, it should be assumed that triggers come out at a relative ratio on average. So yes, that's the actual number.

You're saying exactly what I am saying. Assuming that all of the cards stay in the deck and assuming that the trigger ratio stays the same both create the same end result. Also, what I'm saying applies more to your math. Otherwise, the ratios would be negligibly lower than you stated since slightly less than 1/3 cards are trigger units (16/49) and then your correction of my saying one trigger is roughly 33% would be both a little silly and incorrect.

Alice wrote:

Berserk dragon doesn't retire itself. It's a net +1 that they can use twice. And an RG overlord is net +2.

Berserk Dragon was why I said most. I also explicitly mentioned him previously as an exception. He's also the reason why I brought up counterblasts in the first place, since he's a costly card to use (although very well worth it).

Overlord is an extra 5k shield to stop when activated (compared to its normal attacking power) or I lose two rear-guards and still take a damage. Comparing my choices between the two end-results of its skill, I think I would rather guard it than let it steamroll me. If I can't block (at which point activating Overlord is overkill and I'm likely about to lose anyway) I can't imagine myself not losing anyway. Additionally, few decks have the leeway to use Overlord's skill as a RG (save Nova Grappler decks) because of the extremely costly counterblasts for it. Assuming Conroe was used, that leaves you with one counterblast left. While it is nice that a boosted Overlord that activated its effect is always a +2 (it either takes 2 cards to guard, retires a RG and takes 1 or more cards to guard, retires two RG's, or just 1 Shirayuki <-- but that would be silly) it's not exactly like your opponent won't be willing to drop 2 cards to prevent additional damage/field destruction at whatever stage of the game Overlord is using his skill.

Why are we assuming every card is in the deck?

WingZero wrote:

Why are we assuming every card is in the deck?

It's the equivalent of assuming triggers are depleted from the deck at the ratio in which they appear without having to deal with the mess of mulligans and how they might potentially impact someone's drive checks.

Guarding Overlord still requires a minimum of -2. Overlord is always -2 for your opponent.