The misunderstood trigger

Stand Triggers. They are commonly considered the most useless trigger, as a weaker and falliable version of Criticals. Well, that is where you'd be wrong, because the weakness Stands is caused by misuse, rather than an inherent trait. If you see them as the watered down Crit, you obviously don't understand the real power of the Stand. You see, while Criticals ARE the best at damage advantage, that is ALL they can do. On the other hand, a Stand can deal more damage, discard from your opponents hand, or retire a rearguard. You see, the strength of Stands is versatility, as well as putting pressure on the opponent. How so? Well, as stated in Alice's post on pressure versus threat, most players will guard 2 attacks, and let 1 through, so each turn is, ideally, a +1 in card advantage, but what happens when you increase the number of attacks from 3 to 4? Well, as each attack takes AT LEAST one card to guard, it means they either lose their plus or take more damage. And that's only attacking the vanguard, so what happens when attacking a rearguard? Well, in that case it's ALWAYS making the previous turn a net gain 0, as whether they guard or not, they will lose a card. Again, versatility. Now, the next question is, why? I mean, why worry about card advantage, when I can just kill them faster? Well, I only have two words for that. Limit. Break. You see, although there ARE selfdamagers which can help achieve that state earlier, for the most part YOU are in control of when they gain access to these effects. Now, as Heals Screw up YOUR Limit Break, Crits can screw up your control of your opponents Limit Break, by making you deal more damage then you intended to, which once Limit Break gets involved, is not neccarily a good thing. Now this is merely my own thoughts on the matter, but I hope it makes some of you reevaluate the blue trigger.

P.S. And don't think that Stands should be simply relegated to NGs, and AF. The other clans can use them just fine, some actually getting better with them than Crits, such as Kagero. Trust me, they go from strong to downright brutal when you swap the Gold for Blue.

...Oh hey, a kindred spirit.

I actually agree with a lot of this- with the caveat that certain decks will still do better with criticals than stands as their weighted trigger (or draws, for that matter). One of the things I do like about V-Mundi (yes, I swear it looks like I joined explicitly to argue with everyone) is that most of Alice's deck templates do include concepts, at the very least, for stand-heavy builds in a variety of clans.

I'll note that it isn't that hard to screw with limit break with critical triggers. I picked up a fun little eff-you play from a friend of mine, best applied against decks which have a limit break they want to access faster rather than otherwise and abuse every turn (Shamshiel or Aqua Force decks for example).

You attack with your Vanguard, your opponent is at two damage. You check a critical. if you have a standing rear guard lane, put the entire effect on it.

Your opponent now has the choice of either a) using up two cards on what would normally be a one-card defense to keep from falling to critical levels of damage, or b) taking the rear guard attack and stay ahead in cards, but being stuck at five damage. If they don't check a heal in the next couple of turns, all your other attacks are must-blocks from that point on.

This is, of course, assuming that your opponent let the Vanguard attack through (putting them at three damage).

The real strength of stands, as I see it, is that they have a lot of synergy with decks that use units that have high base power when attacking alone or that have strong on-hit skills that don't need to target the center lane necessarily. That's why I love Voidmaster so much.

If you give all stand effects to a rear-guard, they will probably only be swinging again for stage 2 maximum. Granting the opponent didn't damage check a trigger on what you're attacking. Either granting you another damage (like a crit), or forcing them to lose a card. The beauty of criticals is when they don't guard your vanguard (fairly common in Vanguard), then you proceed to drive a crit, give it to your vanguard and the 5000 to another unit. That's the definition of pressure. Criticals can turn a game around, and put the opponent in late game early. At 4 damage, it's scary to let their vanguard through for fear of crits.

Of course, stands aren't bad. All triggers give you advantage, including them. In general though, and through testplaying, not as good as other options, in my opinion. For card advantage, just run draws. They can be damage checked and aren't null early game when you drive check and only have a vanguard.

Another Leather Lung wrote:

Of course, stands aren't bad. All triggers give you advantage, including them. In general though, and through testplaying, not as good as other options, in my opinion. For card advantage, just run draws. They can be damage checked and aren't null early game when you drive check and only have a vanguard.

I'd argue that it depends on the deck. If my winning image is having two center lane attacks that are really hard to block, I'll use critical weighting.

If, for any reason though, I have units that attack again and are a real threat without necessarily having a lot of power- or stand again and become stronger than before (for example, in Japan High-Powered Custom Raizer can attack at 16 with Battleraizer behind it unboosted, and then attack again for 21 with a stand trigger applied to it), or the deck's goal is taking away the maximum number of cards from the opponent every turn- those decks do well with stands.

Or as a cliffnotes-

-Criticals are better in virtually every mainstream straight-up beatdown deck (Royal Paladin, Gold Paladin, to an extent Shamshiel, etc.)

-Stands are very good in rogue decks that do a lot of on-hit stuff (Nubatama splices, Nova decks with Kirara, Sarah builds with Pale Moon) or decks that have an attack-again emphasis anyway (Asura Kaiser + Deatharmy, some Aqua Force builds).

It's really 'test which one works best with the kind of deck you're building'.

The upside of a Stand is that given you have all 11k+ rear-guards, they work equally as well as Criticals at getting extra damage or forcing out more cards.

The downsides are
-The opponent gets to choose damage or cards, whichever is the lesser evil at the time
-If they damage check a trigger, you now swing for less and can't go for the damage reliably (have to hit a rear) while a crit column can now swing for 2 stages crit 2, which is more pressure
-If it's earlier in the game.

Major pro of Stands is
-They are extremely good in Late game when the opponent is likely to have less cards in hand and surprise kill often.
-They force more unique guards, and therefore increase the number of cards that will leave the opponent's hand.

They're kinda situational and you really have to be careful how you build a deck for them, but you can abuse stands pretty well. Criticals are definitely the default go-to, but Stands shouldn't be counted out by any means.

@Scarlet: Which is why I said in general. In a Granblue deck with Thanatos and multiple Ruin Shade for instance, I'll run stands.

Also, even if the deck's winning image isn't 2 strong center lane attacks, early in the game vanguard attacks often go unblocked, letting a deck heavy on crits to get in there.

Another Leather Lung wrote:

@Scarlet: Which is why I said in general. In a Granblue deck with Thanatos and multiple Ruin Shade for instance, I'll run stands.

Also, even if the deck's winning image isn't 2 strong center lane attacks, early in the game vanguard attacks often go unblocked, letting a deck heavy on crits to get in there.

It should also be noted that if you don't throw down extra rears in early game (it may not suit your situation) and you check a stand, it's wasted. While any other trigger isn't.

Yeah, I mentioned it at the end of my first post. I would see that happening a lot to my friends when they used stands.

So, basically, the question is about options that require setup and dedication(My stance, as I'm a firm believer in the statement that "If you have options, you win.) versus consistent damage that doesn't, but can't do as many things. Again, I'm on the side of Stands, but understand the problems with them, as I understand the problems with Criticals. I just prefer the set of Pros and Cons of Stands, than those of Criticals.

End of the day, as long as you deal 6 damage (or drive them to a deckout), thats what you should be aiming for.

I find that stand is more effective if your front line easily has the base power to benefit from it. If my G2 line up is over filled with 9K attackers, I may consider against it. Clans like Kagero, Nova and RP which has the base power to back it up. (eg; 10K vanilla clones, Brutal Jack G3 hitting 11 or more)

There are exceptions though. Standing a TEJAS can be frightening. Its bound to hit something.

I must say at first I totally doubted the usefulness of stand triggers. I definitely had the mindset of DAMAGE DAMAGE DAMAGE. That is, until I built my Aqua Force deck. A well timed draw trigger is really great when units need that 4+ attacks in a turn go off.

Edit: Don't know why I originally typed draw...

Wait what. What do Draws have to do with getting 4 attacks?

Alice wrote:

Wait what. What do Draws have to do with getting 4 attacks?

That's what I get for multi-tasking @_@ I meant stand triggers! I'll fix my post!

Hahahha.

Pros of Stand Triggers:
- Great in Late Game.
- Great if you can get +1stage with the stood unit (AKA Miracle Beauty).
- Surprise! (Because no one expects them).
- Threatening with on-hit vanguards that don't Stand themselves.

Cons of Stand Triggers:
- Bad in Early/Mid Game.
- Unable to send opponent into Late Game easily.
- Crossrides.
- More builds are better with Critical Triggers.
- - Furthermore, no clan can use them ABOVE Critical Triggers.

The best way to explain this is to see if you can understand my train of thought:

We start off power wise and ignore any effects for now. I'll leave the math/scenarios for now (unless someone wants to know) but [CRIT] is strictly better in propelling the opponent into the Late Game, while [STAND] removes more cards from the opponent in the Late Game. While damaging a trigger might be worse for [STAND], it is actually the same as [CRIT]. Say a 2/2/- column and the opponent gets a trigger. The opponent only needs 1 card to stop the next attack if it happened to be a [CRIT] to stay at two damage. For a [STAND], the opponent needs to either use two cards to stay at one damage OR use one card to stay at two damage.

Although you do get more options when you check a [STAND], your opponent also gets more choices. They can pace themselves in damage and it makes them much harder to send them into the late game in the first place. An example is a 50k Ezel (10Base+5RG+10Boost+11LB+11LB+Flame Of Victory) swinging while you have 4 Damage. But they have no [CRIT] in their deck. The total threat is 0.

As well, letting the VG attack through will almost always let the opponent use fewer cards. To prevent them from taking advantage of that, our vanguard has to have some on-hit effect that allows us to persuade the opponent to block. But using [CRIT] always work regardless if the vanguard has a threatening effect or not.

I don't think the lack of a target for [STAND] is a large problem. It either has to have an equal amount of power as the opposing vanguard (11k nowadays) or has an effect that gives it enough of a boost (This is so that your unit can still hit an opponents vanguard even if they check a trigger). But if you are running [STAND], this should be automatic anyways with so many attackers able to reach 11k and higher easily. (Unless of course, the opponent happens to have a crossride...)

Most of the cards that can make use of [STAND] are either relatively unsupported(Indra, LionHeat&Clones) or there are much better options like Crossrides(Asure Dragon, Dragonic Overlord) and other grade 3's (Miracle Beauty, Holy Disaster Dragon) for that clan that can ultilize [CRIT] more efficiently.

Aqua Force is okay in using them, but if they lose so many cards to stop your attacks every turn then your [STAND] just becomes another [CRIT] (For the purpose of dealing more damage since they won't guard). Royal Paladin has great Rearguards that can take advantage of [STAND], but they have no threatening Vanguard and therefore brings them back to [CRIT].

Honestly, I can't think of one clan that can utilize [STAND] over [CRIT]. And that's an important point. A deck can work with a mix of [CRIT] and [STAND] but you'll always want to have equal or more [CRIT] then [STAND].

*Always attacks R-V-R with decks I use that have Stands, aside from full stand Asura Kaiser, so I'm going to jump straight into making my claims off these.*

From my point of view and how I've been bullying rearguards lately in any Stand based deck, I see Stands more of a way to wear down the opponent's resources like rearguard murdering (which can kill intercepts to still force out 10K more shield per trigger if there are still intercepts, and also doesn't require to meet 11K-13K attackers with their Vanguard most of the time) than to gain offensive advantage.

Of course, that kinda puts me on the fence between if Stand Triggers are really offensive triggers or if their actually defensive triggers, but that's a dilemma for me to decide later.

The real issue I see is that Stand Triggers, which means extra attacks, automatically labels them as purely offensive triggers, which isn't wrong, technically, it just sorta closes them off from newblets and most deck builders from other ways Stands can be used, or at least the ways I tend to run into, a lot :\. This also causes the big bad clash between Stands and Crits, which is actually much closer to an apples and oranges discussion once you iron out a few details.

You can name a list of every pro and con of how Stand Triggers work, and I can probably point out a common trend between most of them which can kinda point in the general direction of how I view them, a trigger meant to wear down the opponent rather than bumrush them.

-Stand Triggers aren't as threatening as Critical Triggers
-The opponent has a choice to choose between damage and cards *if you attack the Vanguard*
-Midgame
-Stands can't pressure the Vanguard as much while attacking a bigger Vanguard then your rearguards, and would probably be forced into attacking rearguards
-They require rearguards (okay that's a downside I won't defend)
-Unable to send the opponent into the late game

Just a few cons I've collected from here. Pulling out the second to last one because that's really a flaw that's much too hard to defend, the general consensus seems to be that Stands just aren't as good at punishing a Vanguard and threatening it. Meanwhile, I can't really find much flaws about what happens if you just Stand a rearguard, but put the power on the still standing column if the rearguard I stood is more powerful than a rearguard on the opponent's field, and I attack that. Unless the opponent really likes their rearguards, that avoids trigger and base powers cockblocking for more than most of the time. It doesn't put the opponent into a position where they have to choose between damage or card advantage, but rather drop more shields and save the rearguard, and while yes there's the issue about not pushing the opponent around, it does put up an issue for the opponent if I can keep poking their rearguards away so they'd have issues mustering up attacks.

And so, while I still won't take sides about which trigger is better for flat out damage, my views on how Stand Triggers are triggers designed to wear opponents down. Other than their late game ability to force out 10K more shield per check than just 5K more, usually.

It should be noted that the ability to force out more 10ks is actually advantage by Late game. This is partly how Tachikaze wins, by having more 10ks to drop one card per one attack. Instead of using multiple 5ks. Most other decks run out and start minusing heavily.

Stand Triggers need their own deck to work, but can work amazingly well when in their own deck.

Criticals simply don't suit every deck, it's just that Vanilla Beatdown is very popular in Vanguard.

So, I Replaced the Draws with Stands in my Angel Feather. It's working out awesome. I find that attacking with my Armaros first, then standing and attacking with it again puts immense pressure, because the opponent doesn't want me to draw from her ability but also isn't willing to get rid of precious shield for a rearguard attack. And just when they made that tough choice, I stand Armaros and force them to make it again. Very powerful psychologically. In theory it might be a little worse than running draws, but I also find the extra effect as a potential 4k boost to a properly made damage-swapper column as really useful.

Be sure to note that only works if they guard the first Armaros or you have 4 unflipped damage. While a draw trigger works every time.