Card of the Week: Extreme Battler Malyaki

Today’s Card of the Week is Maruyaki! It may just be a rare, but it’s vital to any Victor Nova Grapper Deck! Maruyaki’s skill is:

 [CONT](RC) Generation Break 1:If you have a vanguard with "Victor" in its card name, all of your other units in the same column as this unit get "Rush-[AUTO](VC/RC):When this unit [Stand] due to an effect from one of your cards, until end of turn, this unit gets "[AUTO](VC/RC):When this unit attacks a vanguard, choose up to two of your units, and they get [Power]+4000 until end of turn.".".

He requires a Victor Vanguard so unfortunately it doesn’t work in any other Nova deck. The most important thing to take from this card is that it isn’t 1/Turn, which means this card’s skill STACKS ANY and EVERY time a unit in the same column as Malyaki stands you get to proc skill. Let me build you a scenario: You have Sazanda and Maruyaki in one column, Cool Hank and Rumbol in the other and Meteokaiser Victor on Extreme Battler Victor heart. Swing Sazanda with Malyaki first (16k), next week Cool Hank with Rumbol (14k) use Cool Hanks skill to re-stand Sazanda and proc Malyaki’s skill. Sazanda swings again (23k) gives +4k to Sazanda and Cool Hank. Swing with Meteokaiser Victor(26k), use both Victor’s skill to re-stand Sazanda and Cool Hank (as well as Rumbol) and proc Malyaki’s skill again. REMEMBER HIS SKILL STACKS! When Sazanda swings for the third time he can allocate +4k to two units, TWICE! So swing with Sazanda (41k) and give +8k to Sazanda and Cool Hank, and finally swing with Cool Hank and Rumbol (29k). That’s 105k to guard everything assuming no triggers were hit! During the turn, Malyaki gave +24k, all for free! This card is ridiculously good and needs to be in any Extreme Battler Deck. There isn’t anything I can think of that would make this design any better, the flavor of this card meshes so well with the Nova Grappler theme and gives them the power they need to push for games. A job well done Bushiroad: 10/10.   

Chaos Breaker Dragon: why we love him, hate him, and why he's so important to the Meta

Greetings Cardfighters! This week I wanted to talk about the Chaos Breaker Dragon Deck or CBD for short. It is extremely controlling and can be difficult at times to read your opponent and make the right plays. It combines the powerful Lock mechanic with retiring units and drawing cards making it one of the scariest decks to play against in this current Meta. Link Joker had two major flaws with their clan. One: You could rush them early and they would have a hard time coming back and Two: You could leave open rearguard circles and not let them lock those spots. CBD answers both of those problems. With many decks taking advantage of Generation Break, it makes units that don’t have that requirement “fast”, this also applies to CBD and with Charcoal you don’t have to worry about getting to four damage. With Chaos Universe you can force your opponents to play cards and force commitment on your terms. In the next few paragraphs I’m going to talk about why people love and hate this deck, and why it’s so important to the Meta of Vanguard. Let’s look at my teammate Hebi’s Deck:

G4:

1x Genesis Dragon, Amnesty Messiah

2x Nebula Dragon, Big Crunch Dragon

4x Death Star-vader, Chaos Universe

1x Genesis Dragon, Judgement Messiah

G3:

4x Star-vader, Chaos Breaker Dragon

2xStar-vader, Chaosbringer

2xStar-vader, Garnet Star Dragon

G2:

4x Companion Star Star-vader, Photon

Carbon makes the deck buttery smooth

4x Star-vader, Colony Maker

3x Disorder Star-vader, Iron

G1:

4x Flowers in Vacuum, Cosmo Wreath

3x Turmoil Star-vader, Zinc

3x Star-vader, Volt Line

2x Eclipse Star-vader, Charcoal

2x Destiny Dealer

G0:

1x Involution Star-vader, Carbon

4x Star-vader, Paradigm Shift Dragon

8x Star Vader Crits

4x Star Vader Heals

Why People Love CBD

I would say that majority of people who love CBD are people who play it. While I personally don’t play CBD I think it’s a fun deck to play against because it makes you think about the entire game. You know that come turn 4-5 your entire front row will be locked, so how do you deal with that situation? Do you rush early or do you hold your cards and weather the storm? It becomes much more tactical because you are forced to play their way. Another big reason why people love CBD is because it slowed the game down tremendously due to CBD’s ability to lock pre-GB and make early rush decks pay dearly, which means they need to think twice before flooding the field. It also has its own drawing engine which also retires allowing players to be aggressive and more critical triggers. 

Why People Hate CBD

Majority of these people are probably rearguard dependent players such as Nova Grappler, Aqua Force and Great Nature. They think that CBD muddles the game considerably and creates a game that is too slow and boring. CBD forces you to play their game and because they have such an efficient engine and is very consistent, it leaves very little room to counter play during the game and makes for very stale Vanguard play. People get upset that Link Joker as a whole makes it difficult to execute their plays to the full extent, CBD just takes it to another level. I play Messiahs and I can tell you that I’ve had my fair share of salty players and people who get frustrated because they “can’t do anything”.

Why CBD is important

The single most important reason is due to the slowing of the Meta. By reducing the pace of the game, it gives many other decks a chance to participate. With extremely fast decks like Regaile, games would be over within the first or second stride. How are decks with GB3 strides or GB2 bosses supposed to compete with that? The second reason why CBD existence is good for Vanguard is the closing of the Meta Triangle. Before CBD, rearguard dependent decks would run amuck and aside from The X, there wasn’t a really good competitive control deck. The CBD shift also causes a rise in Vanguard-centric decks because they can combat CBD better and also because there is less rush decks in tourneys. This creates a Meta Triangle where each deck has a weakness and advantage over the other two. People now have to seriously think about what decks to bring to tourneys because the counter-pick is very much alive. Either that or just play with whatever you feel comfortable with because there isn’t a right or wrong answer anymore. And that my friends is a sign of healthy Meta.

~kooj out

Card of the Week: Wink-Killer Misery

What’s up Cardfighters! Hope everyone is having a good week. 

Our Card of the Week is Wink-Killer Misery! She is the Amber Clone for Spike Brothers and definite Waifu material, her skill is:

[AUTO](RC) Generation Break 1 :[Counter Blast (1) & Choose a card from your hand, and put it into your soul] When this unit attacks a vanguard, if this unit is boosted, you may pay the cost. If you do, search your deck for up to one card not named "Wink-killer Misery", call it to an open (RC), shuffle your deck, and that unit gets [Power]+5000 until end of turn.

Her skill is very basic and is exactly what G-Spike Brothers needed. You can extend combos, tutor the correct units onto the field and build soul. One thing to note the unit called by this effect stays on the field permanently and also gets +5k which makes good numbers. With (Bulldozer Dobe) you can make 26k by himself. She is a must of in any G-Spike deck and even warrants merit in Bloody/End Decks. 8/10

What’s up Cardfighters! This week I wanted to discuss the results from Sakura VGCS in Japan that has been stirring up the Meta talk amongst the community. It’s really exciting to see what Japan brings to the table because most of the time it’s fresh decks and brings lots of hype across to the West. First off here’s the results:


Top 16 Decklist for Sakura VGCS:

Top 4:
1st - Royal Paladin (Thing Blaster)
2nd - Royal Paladin (Thing Blaster)
3rd - Shadow Paladin (Revengers)
4th - Gear Chronicle

Top 8:
Royal Paladin (SGD)
Gear Chronicle
Granblue (Nightrose)
Link Joker (Glendios)

Top 16
Link Joker (Chaos Breaker Messiah)
Link Joker (Chaos Breaker Messiah)
Bermuda Triangle (Duo Nemuel)
Royal Paladin (Thing Blaster)
Royal Paladin (Thing Blaster)
Royal Paladin (SGD)
Royal Paladin (Seeker)
Aqua Force (Ripple)

As you can see the event was primarily dominated by Royal Paladin with majority of them being of the Blaster. It’s strange seeing only one Revenger deck (even though he did top 3) and one Aqua Force (oddly enough being Ripples). I understand the high placements of Control Decks like Gear Chronicle and Link Joker because there are so many rear guard dependent decks topping, but the absence of Brawlers and Blue Wave was a little surprising. I’ve been toying with CBD/Messiah as well because it’s really useful to force-lock cards in the Messiahs although I think it’s sub-optimal, I’ll watch a few matches before I make my decision. It’s hard to tell what is going to translate to the US from Japan because they come up with wacky stuff and sometimes it just doesn’t catch on like Chatnoir/Testerfox even though that’s a killer deck. However the Royal Paladin hype has already hit the U.S. with MLB and Soul Saver reaching crazy prices, which means that people believe in the Blaster deck and rightfully so because they’re extremely potent and going to be around for a while. Let’s look at the Royal and Shadow Paladin decks that topped:

Thing Blaster:

G Units:
2x Holy Dragon, Saint Blow Dragon
2x Holy Dragon, Religious Soul Saver
2x Aerial Divine Knight, Altmile
1x Shrouded Divine Knight, Gablade
1x Rain Element, Madew

Grade 3:
4x Seeker, Thing Saver Dragon
1x Blue Sky Knight, Altmile
1x Majesty Lord Blaster

Grade 2:
4x Favorite Disciple of Light and Darkness, Llew
4x Blaster Blade
3x Blaster Blade Seeker
1x Blaster Blade Spirit
1x Blaster Dark

Grade 1:
4x Laurel Knight, Sicilus
4x Blaster Friend, Barcgal
4x Holy Knight Guardian
2x Swordsman of Light, Blaster Rapier Laura

Grade 0:
8x Crit (4x Floral Paladin, Flogal)
4x Margal
4x Heal
1x Wingal Brave


I really like the design for this deck because it plays much like an OTK deck. It goal for this deck is to use MLB to stack soul by adding all the Blasters on the field and gain extra power. When you have enough CB you go into Thing Saver Dragon and you are able to swing 3-4 times with VG. It is extremely efficient and very deadly because there isn’t much the opponent can do to counter or control this deck. If you do decide to stride you have a plethora of options from on-hit pressure to extra crits. I asked my teammate Hebi on his take of Blaster Thing:

Recently in Japan the release of G-Set 6 was released. The set gave incredible blaster support for Royal Paladins. The Royal Pally builds coming out of this set has been utilizing this support with the classic Thing Saver Dragon deck. Thing Saver Dragon needs huge soul to be able to restand multiple times and the new blaster support makes it easy to build soul and at the same time put a body onto the board. The new Llew lets you grab a blaster blade after attacking and goes into soul further fueling Thing Saver while also calling a unit for another attack! You can easily pull off triple Thing Saver in one turn! What makes Thing Saver shine even better is that at the moment there has been a rise of Link Joker, Chaos and Messiah decks just got support in the last G-Set and have been showing very positive results. Royals as a clan has a difficult match up against link joker, however Thing Saver is good against Link Joker because it can function through Vanguard alone. It has the ability to restand and has access to Soul Saver Stride, which gives a critical as a quick first stride. Most people let first stride hit, but if someone is swinging for an automatic 2 damage before triggers, they are more than likely going to dump hand to guard this first stride. Sanctuary Guard is definitely still strong, but just a lot more difficult to function if you have no columns. So if the front row is locked, Sanc Guard is essentially a vanilla stride. Although, there are some crazy heavy cb combos in the new SGD deck that I will definitely put together when new set comes out and it’s going to be nuts, it will definitely be harder to pull off because of the great number of control decks being played in this current meta.

The other deck I wanted to talk about is the Revenger deck that topped:

G Units:
4x Dark Dragon, Phantom Blaster "Diablo"
2x Supremacy Black Dragon, Aurageyser Dragon
1x True Revenger, Dragruler Revenant
1x Supremacy Black Dragon, Aurageyser Doomed

Grade 3:
4x Revenger, Raging Form Dragon
3x Revenger, Phantom Blaster "Abyss"

Grade 2:
4x Wily Revenger, Mana
4x Blaster Dark Revenger "Abyss"
4x Revenger, Dark Breath Angel

Grade 1:
4x Dark Revenger, Mac Lir
4x Vigor Revenger, Maul
4x Tempting Revenger, Finegas
2x Transient Revenger, Masquerade

Grade 0:

8x Crit (Revenger)
4x Draw (Revenger)
4x Heal (Revenger)
1x Judgebau Revenger

When I first saw this decklist I thought that this guy topping was a fluke. He played a deck that nobody really talked about with Raging Form Dragon and Abyss plus he was the only Shadow Paladin player to be in Top 16. But the more I discuss this deck with my teammate Hebi and the more I ran some simulations, I came to the conclusion that this deck is actually extremely dangerous. Its goals are pretty similar as Thing Saver in that you want to set up for a huge, multiple swing VG turn. The biggest difference is that this deck doesn’t have to wait for soul therefore you can get your combo off earlier. This form of Revengers is much more balls to the wall because you are sacrificing your entire field to swing 2-4 times with your VG and hopefully kill your opponent that turn, or at least whittle them down for an Abyss or Diablo turn. With Dark Breath Angel and Mana tutoring any G1 in the deck means that you will always have LB4 available and you will have enough Raging Forms in your hand thanks to Maul’s skill. With 3CB and a full board you can easily swing Raging Form three times. That’s 6 drive checks with no Laurel! I really like make or break decks so when GBT06 gets released this is the first decks I’m revising, I am super hyped for Raging Form!

It’s an exciting time of season due to all the tournaments being held both in Japan as well as here with Springfest. I am certain we are going to get a well diverse group of tops this year with many people experimenting not only with different clans, but different ratios of sub-clans also. SackSquad will be attending Springfest in Anaheim so be sure to say hi, we’d be happy to talk Vanguard with you! See y’all next week




~kooj out

COTW: Absolute Ruler, Gluttony Dogma!

This week’s COTW is Dogma! He is the new stride for Tachikaze and is hands down the best stride of the clan. His skill is if you Engorge three units he gains 10k and another skill: if he has engorge five units he can restand himself with -1 Drive Check. If you like Nextage, then you’re definitely gonna love this guy. He synergizes will with Gaia Emperor and Ancient Dragons extremely well because they are able to call units back to the field so you really don’t minus on those turns. You can also swing with your rearguards before you Engorge as well as after you call them back. If you can manage a full field for two consecutive Dogma turns, you should win majority of your games much like Nextage. Four copies of him is a must in any Tachikaze deck because one: there isn’t really much else and two: he’s actually a pretty good restanding stride. 8/10

Why is Moonlit Dragonfang so bad?!

With the rest of GBT06 being revealed due to the release in Japan this week, lots of people the community is hyped including myself. However I wanted to do somewhat of a rant of its ugly older brother: GBT05. Many considered this set to be the weakest of all the G sets and for good reason. What makes a set strong is the playability of the clans it supports. For example GBT04 was considered a strong set because it revived Angel Feather (pun intended), updated Genesis and made Megacolony the pain it is today. On top of that it gave us Nextage which is a mandatory stride in every competitive GC deck. In GBT05 there were very few cards that were worth playing, one obviously being Chaos Universe and the support for Chaos Breaker Dragon. Other noteworthy cards are Nightmare Doll Catherine which is the best version of Pale Moon even though G-Era Pale Moon received majority of the support. Excelics Messiah is easily the best stride for Messiahs but it requires 3 GRs to play, at least they got some decent support with their Messiah G2,G1 and crit. Gear Chronicle seemed like just a toss in, but they got Colossus Monarch which is extremely good if you can fit it in your stride zone. Narukami was pretty darn weak with Erradicator and Vanquisher support, nothing worth going out of your way to play. And the OTT stuff was so meh in comparison to the older support including KamuSusanoo who is a complete joke. What made this set worse was the rarity of these cards because most of the RR and RRR is garbage! Why would they make Clockfencer Dragon a RRR?! During my sneak peek kit opening I pulled: Chaos Universe, KamuSusanoo, 2x Clockfencer Dragon, Voltage and Gauntlet Buster. I was so disappointed that I wasted 150 bucks on cards not even worth 1/3 of what I paid. So moral of the story is unless you are going to be playing all the clans or have a team that can split the cost, don’t bother buying packs. Sure it’s fun and you might get lucky but if you’re on a budget like most of the world, save yourself the disappointment and go straight to TCGPlayer. Just make sure you buy ‘em a couple weeks after the release so the hype dies down. Even though Bushiroad completely ripped me off, I am still going to be splitting GBT06 boxes with the rest of SackSquad because all the clans in this set are going to be played and this set looks very strong. So keep an eye on our Youtube channel next month for that unboxing!

DOUBLE HEADER COTW: Rikudo Stealth Dragon, Tsukumorakan!

This week we have a double header for COTW! Today’s card is Rikudo Dragon Tsukumorakan from the new Tech Booster: Reckless Rampage! His skill is when he’s placed on VG: CB2 and flip any card up from your G-Zone. Then your opponent chooses 4 cards to keep in their hand, the rest gets binded face down and returned to hand at the end of turn. Tsukumorakan is a very powerful card and is just the type of finisher Nubatama needs. In combination with Shiranui’s on stride skill you can whittle the hand down to three cards and one less interceptor; and for each Miyabi column that you are able to fulfill the requirements, you would take an additional card. It’s very difficult guarding with restrictions such as Silent Tom and Glory Maelstrom, but if you can’t guard because you have no hand is a nightmare. I like the design of this card because it gives you the “comeback” factor for it doesn’t matter how much hand advantage you opponent has, all you need is a couple good swings. I also like that Tsukumorakan is a G flip rather than a persona flip because it gives you flexibility in your G Zone (also your wallet). 9/10