Spectral Duke Rises Again

Ahh the duke, a seriously strong card upon release.

Now restanding vanguards and ride chains with Rush capabilities have sort of come back into the spotlight with stride. As an example look at Enigman or Ripple (wait for the release of the clan booster). In those cases however there has been some revival support however the Duke hasn't had any yet or is not likely to.

So the deck is composed as follows.

FV - Black Dragon Whelp Vortimer

Grade 0 - 16

12 Crit 4 Heal

Grade 1 - 14

4 Scout of Darkness Vortimer, 

4 Dawning Knight, Gorboduc,

4 Holy Mage, Bryderi,

2 After-glow Liberator, Belinus,

Grade 2 - 11

4 Black Dragon Knight, Vortimer,

4 Knight of Far Arrows, Saphir,

3 Holy Mage, Pwyll

Grade 3 - 8

4 Spectral Duke Dragon

4 Sunrise Ray Knight, Gurguit

G-ZONE

1 Rain Element, Madew

2 Golden Dragon, Spearcross Dragon

2 Fast Chase Golden Knight, Campbell

3 Golden Dragon, Scourge Point Dragon

Winning Image - Early pressure, have to hid ride chain at least to grade 2. Can aim to get opponent to 4 dmg by the time they are riding into grade 3.

Bit of an explaination here for the boss units.

Spectral Duke is only usable as a turn off stride or if opponent has no hand, its powerful as its a triple check however striding 9/10 times is better. The ideal run in the game is riding into grade 2 of the ride chain, if you went first then ride Spectral Duke if you went second and can stride then I say its Gurguit everytime.

The secret MVP of this deck is the Golden Dragon, Scourge Point Dragon now thats a mouthful. If you have a Holy Mage, Bwyll in hand and a Gurguit on VG you can add 10k to VG column which barring a PG is pretty hard to stop.

The deck does sort of go on autopilot until you start striding then you need to think a little more about what to do. if you dont have scout of darkness in hand then return 5 to the deck and re-draw.

Ideal hand is 1 scout of darkness, any other grade 1 or 0, Black Dragon Knight, Gurguit and anything else here.

This guarantees the grade 2 rush  for tons of dmg.

With regards to any changes I have no idea for this deck, I think its fine unless we get support for duke or maybe a shuffle of the grade 2 line up? I also might want to run 2 draw however cards need to stay in the deck here, there is nothing quite like decking out on a gold paladin deck, this has plenty of call power so anymore cards gone is dangerous.

Enjoy, I had a ton of fun putting this together, you will see nothing like this deck when you either face tank to grade 3 and get a duke turn off with 2 triggers. Feels good man.

Alfred/Ezzell Royal Paladin Stride Deck

So for the first deck profile I've decided t do my current favourite deck and one that I feel is about to become very competitive. As shown above its the King of Knights' Vanguard Ezzell/ King of Knights Alfred Legion deck.

In the current format for the English game at least I feel that stride and Legion decks provide a very powerful combo that as a standard can't go wrong.

Our Winning Image - Calling our friends up to battle dealing around 4 attacks per turn as a minimum at around 11K-30K

So before I waste time breaking down the deck lets list the current state of the deck.

FV - Shining Knight, Millius

Grade 0 (16)

8 Critical ( I use 'Burning Mane Lion' and 'Seeker, Hallowed Breath Dragon')

4 Draw (Margal no questions asked)

4 Heal (I'm currently using 'Yggdrasil Maiden, Elaine')

Grade 1 (14)

2 Gigantech Shot Putter

2 Hidden Sage, Miron

2 Laurel Knight, Sicilus (Stride Fodder)

2 Lake Maiden, Lien

2 Knight of Shield Bash

4 Rainbow Guardian (Perfect Guard)

Grade 2 (11)

3 Blaster Blade Spirit

4 Knight of Twin Sword

4 Knight of Fragment

Grade 3 (8)

4 King of Knights' Vanguard, Ezzell

4 King of Knights' Alfred

G-Zone

1 Divine Knight of Flashing Flame, Samuel

2 Holy Dragon, Saint Blow Dragon

2 Rain Element, Madew

3 Shrouded Divine Knight, Gablade

So the first things to notice is the Grade 1 line up, as we aren't a stride specific deck or run Altmille at all I don't see a need what so ever to have more than 2 of the fodder. As for the rest of the units they are the different turns that might be required.

For Under 1 Counter Blast and a Persona Blast/ 2 Soul Blast you can have a strong front row with Gigantech Shot Putter, Hidden Sage, Miron gives you more hand, Lake Maiden Lien allows you the change to 1 card in hand which could mean a perfect guard or more persona fodder.

And knight of shield bash provides a perfect column if needed, that 10K attack does more than you'd think.

The main idea is to Survive to Grade 3 (whilst there VG is at Grade 3) taking ideally 3 DMG. The ideal turn is to stride over Alfred using Ezzell as Fodder and stride into Madew to get Ezzell back, then just do a pressure turn to try and get another Grade 3 to hand (To pay for Ezzel next Turn).

If you miss Alfred prior to the above turn then using Ezzell and striding into Garblade works just fine, dont worry about using Ezzell as fodder in this case as we have Alfreds CB3 abilitiy to call any grade 2 or below to the field which can be used to get Hiden Sage Miron to the field and use that effect to get a second drawer next turn.

In  terms of attacking the ideal turn is to have GB1 and around 4 CB with Ezzell in Legion and at least 2 grade 1's in hand,1 grade 2 in hand and persona cost. This allows us to fill the field and resolve 2 effects buffing our units whilst ensuring our VG is at 31K as a minimum.

Take the below field as an example.

Empty                       VG - Ezzell/ Alfred Legion                       Empty

Empty                                       Empty                                        Empty

Say in our hand we have, 1 Lake Maiden Lien, 1 Laurel Knight Sicilus, King of Knights Alfred and 1 Knight of Fragment.

We are at 3 in soul, 1 Shining Knight Millius, 1 Knight of Shield bash, 1 Blaster Blade Spirit, 1 Knight of Knights Alfred.

GB 1 and 4 CB.

After we draw unless we get a Knight of Twin sword our turn would be to call Knight of Fragment to the top right rear guard column.

Knight of Fragment      VG - Ezzell/ Alfred Legion                  Empty

Empty                                       Empty                                        Empty

Then resolve Ezzell's effect, we discard Alfred from hand and soul blast our Alfred and the Blaster Blade Spirit.

In our deck we then seek assuming we still have them (awareness of dropzone and damage is needed) 1 Knight of Twin Sword, 1 Gigantech Shot Putter, 1 Margal

Knight of Fragment            VG - Ezzell/ Alfred Legion      Knight of Twin Sword

Gigantech Shot Putter                             Empty                                    Margal

We then use Gigantech Shot putters Effect CB 1 and retire that unit, power goes to Knight of Fragment and Knight of Twin Sword. Then we use Margal's power and give the power to either Alfred or Knight of Fragment.

After this we call the Laurel Knight and Lake Maiden to the field, Laurel behind Knight of twin sword and Lake Maiden behind Alfred.

Knight of Fragment            VG - Ezzell/ Alfred Legion      Knight of Twin Sword

Empty                                   Lake Maiden, Lien                 Laurel Knight, Sicilus

We would then use the effect of Alfred to call Hidden Sage Miron to the empty space behind knight of Fragment. We then counter blast 1 and drawer a card, this allows us to get a useful card to hand if its not good then discard it and stand Lien for another card.

Knight of Fragment            VG - Ezzell/ Alfred Legion      Knight of Twin Sword

Hidden Sage, Miron              Lake Maiden, Lien                 Laurel Knight, Sicilus

Now we can attack! So our first attack would be with Knight of Fragment if they have a small hand (the idea here is that they have to guard they can't afford not to, if they dont on an unboosted 16k knight of fragment then we un-flip 1 DMG and then knight of Twin sword calls a Blaster Blade Spirit or another Knight of Fragment which is then booster to either 16k with BBS or 17K with knight of fragment all assuming no triggers)

I'm sure that the rest can be imagined, I dont want to give away all my plans!!! ;P

When I get a bit of free time I'm sure I can work on a youtube video or two either explaining the above or showing it in action.

For improvements, although I love the way it works at the moment for improvements in the future, In the next Booster we get Altmille's Stride unit, we should change around our G-Zone to be  as follows.

G-Zone

1 Divine Knight of Flashing Flame, Samuel

1 Rain Element, Madew

2 Holy Dragon, Saint Blow Dragon

2 Soaring Divine Knight, Altmile

2 Shrouded Divine Knight, Gablade

Our Grade 1, 2 and 3 Line Ups would change to be as follows.

Grade 3

1 Blue Sky Knight, Altmile

4 King of Knights' Alfred

4 King of Knights' Vanguard Ezzell

Grade 2

4 Knight of Twin Sword

3 Knight of Fragment

2 Techgal

2 Blaster Blade Spirit

Grade 1

4 Perfect Guard (The unflipper one)

4 Laurel Knight, Sicilus (Strider and Altmile seekers)

3 Hidden Sage Miron

2 Knight of Shield Bash

Also with the addition of 3 Altmiles I would think that we could make a change to our grade 0's to include the booster crit.

Grade 0

8 Crit ( 4 Burning mane Lion and 4 Bringer of Dreams, Belenus)

4 Draw (Margal)

4 Heal (Whatever card you like best!)

As I've not used the above changes at all due to the lack of net decking I can't say if its a good change or if its not going to work, I think using partial Altmile Like this will be the best, if we miss alfred/ ezzell completely.

Its just another backup/ win condition.

Well then I think I've ranted another about Royal Paladin. Just wait for the Comic Booster that is coming to English format in November (I sadly see maybe 2 cards that I can use from it).  Any questions? want to ask why I don't use a 'insert card name here' or why I use a particular card?

Thats all for now till the next time (I'll likely use more pretty pictures next time)! Be Easy?

Maigcow

Stand Up the Vanguard

Hi All, This is the first post in a list of ramblings from a sub par vanguard player. Here I'll post my pondering on deck builds including some of my own current decks.

Bit of background on me, I was a big Yu-gi-Oh player a few years back and spent some time as a competitive video gamer. I'm now working full time in an office and its thanks to this job that I got introduced to Vanguard.

Thanks to a colleague that is into tabletop games and vanguard I got interested in the game. Obviously from there I did the only sane thing and googled vanguard and picked the clan I most liked the look of, This was Dimensional Police, next I moved onto Granblue (its too Manly) and then I moved to Link Joker.

Since then I've found my true love Royal/ Gold Paladin and my close second Kagero.

In terms of game ability in Vanguard I'm a complete novice as I've not once played in a tournament and in terms of actual play time I've maybe played around a few hundred games against 5-10 opponents. My win/loss wouldn't be too impressive due to playing mostly brawlers (the real OP).

I'll go through a few of my decks and their current builds and prospective builds with the upcoming cards to japanese or english format.

To request a specific deck send me a message via email on ulockongaming@gmail.com and I'll work on it. I'll be keeping a google doc likely of a list of decks that I've made to sell or my library of cards.

Thats it for now, enjoy and I look forward to seeing you all on the planet cray!
Maigcow
=)