This Space
For Rent

What the HELL is Wrong with
Vanguard & Deletor?

Link Joker’s new mechanic is too token and Royal Paladin got crap nostalgia.

So the next Extra Booster is coming to the stores shortly and so it’s an appropriate time for me to review whether or not the set is actually worth getting. Long story short, it’s largely actually sort of shit. If you already knew that, then please forgive me as I give a lengthy explanation as to why to the rest of them starting below, and allow your attention to wander freely.

Two clans getting support here: Royal Paladin and Link Joker. Let’s get something out of the way quickly: you’re basically only going to get this for the Deletor support. The Royals can go fuck themselves. Anywhoo, the Deletors still do their usual thing of making things hell for the Vanguard, but they also incorporate a new mechanic called Vanish Delete, because Bushiroad apparently didn’t think that the B to make Banish Delete was worth keeping, even though the name would still work. What it does is take cards from the opponent’s drop zone and binds them face-down. So far, they don’t have anything that lets YOU choose the cards, it’s always the opponent that chooses.

Regardless, first thing you’re going to notice is that assuming you run a decent number of cards that can Vanish Delete, you would think that this would make Legion decks cry, or at the very least give Granblue something to worry about. Well, I’m afraid it really isn’t all that simple. In the wake of Stride, it’s not usually any skin off the opponent’s nose if they can’t if they can make a powerful Vanguard some other way. As for Granblue, they only need certain cards in the drop zone for their combos to work, and because the user of Vanish Delete can never choose what cards are lost, the opponent just needs to ditch the non-combo pieces to keep doing what they do.

Even with this in mind, the whole point behind Vanish Delete is that it has to work towards some sort of long term goal, like having a certain number of them to unlock skills, surely? Well…not really. Not unless you count the sum of all your efforts with Original Deletor Eigorg. But come on man, look at it. It needs THIRTEEN cards Banish Deleted in order to work to full effect. You’d have to run a lot of cards that do that and even then you’d have to spam it near constantly, which is sort of unfortunate since Eigorg is GB2 and not especially fast, especially if the intent’s to use Greion at least once. That’s it. Absolutely nothing else has any skills that work alongside Vanish Delete apart from more of the same, and Eigorg’s too unwieldy for it to be worth using over some of the more consistent Deletors that came earlier. I mean, a good Deletor deck takes advantage of 0 power Vanguards by using on-hit skills, and lots of them, Like Jail and Guim and Aieda.

What I’m trying to get at here is that the concept of Vanish Delete is way too token, at least until we get an actually justifiable reason to use it in the first place. You would pick this set up for SOME new support like another Critical, the new Perfect Guard and the new starter Luchi, but the rest of it seems largely pointless. Also, Eigorg’s a GR that needs to G Persona Blast. Have fun flushing your money away.

But as bad as that may sound, at least Link Joker got a new approach to try out, even if it’s slow. Compared to Royal Paladin, at least, which got support that can only amount to the crap kind of nostalgia, the likes of which can be observed in recent Mario games: more of the fucking same.

I was disgusted. I don’t even fucking MAIN Royal Paladin (anymore) but I found the support for them in this set to be wanting. I know that I wasn’t alone in thinking this. Lots of people lost their shit at how mediocre the Royals in this set were. It’s no Dazzling Divas, where everything was vanilla and all-around terrible, but everything here was just so…uninspiring.

The Alfred deck, as a concept, falls on its face for one reason: There is pretty much nothing it does that is not directly outclassed by another deck.

What the Alfred deck does, essentially, is support itself with Alfred restricted support to pull off tricks that can just as easily be done by other Royal Paladin decks. One advantage it has going for it is that it doesn’t need to restrict itself to needing to go second to work, not being Legion or GB1-bound, but none of it is really worth using over the stuff that’s available. Everything it can do can be done by something else and better.

Using Altmile.dek as an example, it can pull up a board once its GB1 skills get going. Not as fast as Alfred maybe but easier, Holy Squire Dragon is outclassed by Aerial Altmile combined with Pir and base Altmile, and if the intent is to use Altmile’s support such as Knight of Twin Sword in the Altmile deck, then you would be better off with the Altmile deck owing to the actual output being a lot better. Fuck’s sake, even Sanctuary Guard can pull up a board as long as Swordmy exists, and SG Regalie is again faster than Holy Squire.

The only way to actually make the deck as fast as it can be is to not use Ezzell as a lot of people would think (because ride, then Legion, then Stride twice to Holy Squire? Too fucking slow, especially if you go first) is to run regular Alfred and Galehalt. Or Alfred Exiv and Galehalt, although keep in mind Blaster Blade Seeker wouldn’t appreciate being cockblocked out of a retire.

The Royal Paladin cards in this set are a bunch of underpowered junk. They didn’t even reprint Blaster Blade in this set, the fuckers. Have fun with your G Regulations online in December.

Wow, it’s been a while since I vented on cards rather than people. It’s not something I’m used to. I shall resume my normal service of complaining about what’s wrong with players starting again after this one. I’m working on a new goal of 50 things wrong with players. See me work towards this next week, same time same place. If the boss fucking remembers to upload anyway.

Tell me I’m a heathen and Dazzling Divas was in fact fucking amazing at saikyocardfighter@outlook.com