This Space
For Rent

Saikyo’s Six Steps to Stop Sucking Significantly

Saikyo goes over the inexcusable mistakes Cardfighters make when they should know better.

We’ve had a good long run for over four years. Five, if you leapt on it the moment it hit Japan and used online sims until then. But I have to say that I’ve been encountering several people recently who keep on repeating pretty obvious mistakes game after game. Unless I’m just such a genius at this and the mistakes aren’t actually that obvious but come on.

I don’t think the players who keep repeating these mistakes constantly have any excuse anymore, to be honest. If you visit my articles I can only assume that you came here to watch me dispense advice on how to get good/slightly less bloody awful. If you play casually and don’t care then I have nothing to say to you.

So it is now up to me to address some of the common misplays people make that have often made the difference between my loss and victory. Avoid these common mistakes and you’ll find yourself being in less of a jam. And I would also only mock you for your bad deck as opposed to bad play. Which I would consider a step in the right direction.

1.     Don’t just always swing with the vanguard first, even if you run no Stands.

The penalty for this may not be obvious, but let me explain why. If you swing with the vanguard first all the time, the opponent can then damage check a trigger which can make their vanguard harder to hit. Even worse is the scenario where one of your rearguards cannot hit a vanguard by itself anyway and can only attack the opponent’s weakest front row. What if the opponent checks a trigger, and powers up the weakest rearguard? Now your puny unit can’t hit anything and you’re down an attack. The smarter option is to have the weakest unit attack something first. Doesn’t matter what, as long as it can hit, since even if you power up that unit it’ll only force at best 5k, which you could easily take away attacking an interceptor anyway. And you’re free to power up a column with a nastier effect. Only start swinging vanguard first once the opponent’s on 4 damage. Guarding’s different around that time so it pays off better.

2.     Watch the cards, for god’s sake.

I addressed this point in the Rearguard Hate article. Basically, the amount of attackers compared to boosters is higher, so attacking rearguards constantly is generally a bad idea owing to how easily they can be replaced and how much shield the opponent saves. You also need to remember the opponent’s drive checks, which should tell you what to do next. There is absolutely no point trying to power up your vanguard and increase its critical if the opponent has a Perfect Guard to drop in its face. Failure to pay attention is going to eat resources you can’t afford to waste for a gambit doomed to fail.

3.     Watch your own cards, too, for god’s sake.

There’s no point dropping shield to protect a rearguard if you’ve got a replacement attacker ready to go. Also, count your guard. Too often I’ve seen people over-guard an attack and that screws them that turn because they sucked at maths.

4.     Don’t aim to use your starter’s skill right away.

Chances are, your first vanguard will have a skill that will cost resources to either then +0 wash you, or sometimes even -1 you in the process. A common starter I saw almost everyone try and use as soon as possible was Captain Nightkid for Granblue. Using him to set up your drop zone all sounds good, but it’s a CB1 and a -1 cost to you and any plus you could then generate after that will come at a +0 wash overall at the end, not to mention you could potentially lose a valuable booster in the process. There’s no point in deliberately using up your finite materials simply because you like him more. Nowadays, it’s the Grade-3-top-5 searchers that almost everyone tries to use now, but again, it’s not necessarily a good play. Fail, and you’ve lost a card and a Counterblast for nothing. Succeed, and you got a +0 wash out of it, maybe not even a high quality one unless you’re Grade-stuck.

5.     Psychic Bird and similar cards are for desperate situation only.

For those who don’t remember my Stand Trigger article, I address the point that losing a 10k shield for a play that’s basically almost always going to net you a 5k shield back is not efficient because you lose out on guard quality. Unless you absolutely need something important, like a missing Grade, it’s often better to just keep them, particularly since the decks I often see these cards in are good at recouping losses back anyway, so it’s just winmore and unnecessary.

6.     Get a haircut.

You look like Kamui Katsuragi got trapped in a whisk.

NOTE: The boss is taking a week off, so no reviews or articles until the week after. So you have no right to complain about the lack of activity. You didn’t pay to see this. If you did, you may want to consider that someone’s scamming your balls off.

Try your hardest to convince me I’m wrong (I’m not) at saikyocardfighter@outlook.com