This Space
For Rent

Spamming Stride
for Its Own Sake Is Noobish 

Sometimes the wisest decision is simply not to make one at all.

Despite what you may think of me, I’m not a completely heartless emotionless fuckface. I do to some degree understand that if something leads to a butt-ton of flashy plays followed by a lot of pain on the part of the other guy, it may be a decent avenue to approach. However, with the advent of certain decks (Stride dependant ones particularly) came plays that only compounded on the idea that using something because it’s there can’t hurt. Oh believe you me. It can.

I am, as you should know, not a fan of spamming triggers that have skills that 1:1 you unless I need them for certain plays I cannot unlock efficiently otherwise (such as Amber with Heart Throb Worker, for example), or I’m desperate for a hand I can actually use. The reason being-save for a few rare circumstances that primarily isn’t occurring often enough to worry about, they aren’t efficient. If you are not in trouble, holding on to them as 10k shields tends to be the better play.

However, I’ve mention before Stride added on the problem of using things because they are there. I’ll give you an example. A friend of mine built a Blademaster Kagero build. His GB2 skill was online and he had no G3s or Lava Flow Dragons to perform Stride again. His field looked a bit thin but his hand could fill it up again, the opponent’s on 4 damage and his field was also looking thin thanks to my friend’s early field nuking. What would you do if you were him? If you said “Stride with the G2s and 1s in my hand”, then congratulations, you just described the reason he ended up losing. He tossed away his potential column of attackers and got met with a PG to the face all the same. Except he couldn’t follow it up with another attack because he threw them away for a Stride that he didn’t need. The smarter play would have been to leave it, call, then swing.

I’ve seen people throw away 3 Grade 1s to Stride before, and each and every time they do this the reason they give me is so retarded I actually want to eat my own hair because idiocy is so contagious. It also tends to be the same: they want the extra chance of a trigger, or POWAH. Are you fucking listening to yourself? You tossed away three cards just so that you could get one of them back, so your overall plus for the turn is only +1, including your draw for the turn? When you could have just left the fucking thing and swung normally for your overall +3 for the turn? Giving me that shit of the triggers appearing is stupid: if they turn up as a first or second check then they would have appeared regardless of whether or not you performed Stride in the first place. And even if the third one turned out to be the trigger you so desperately wanted, I’m fairly sure it wouldn’t really outweigh the shield you tossed away initially. I think it would be infinitely more sensible to just take the top 2 cards of your deck instead and use it in conjunction with the options you ought to be keeping.

And yes, I am sort of aware on some level that context matters, but I do have to wonder: is your situation really that ludicrously desperate you honestly cannot win without destroying your own hand? Because I’m pretty sure your GB2 skill is not so important it requires losing your boost and attack options just to Stride a second time, and if it were, your first Stride would have probably been Blizza or anything that G Persona Blasts and isn’t GB2 if you wanted to rely on that. But what if your main boss doesn’t even have a GB2 skill at all and is a Limit Break unit or one that performs Legion? Well then, you have even less excuse than that, dill-hole, because at least your Vanguard should have a skill that’s useful to some degree and is useable now.

Of course, there might be some other reason for it, but it really does depend on whether or not it actually can win you the game that turn, and those tend to be reasons unique to individual decks. The extra power’s basically redundant since when a second G-Unit appears, it’s PG or bust time anyway, which would have happened if you just sat on your current Vanguard. Perhaps the G-Unit has some sort of skill that could end an opponent on the spot and you’re very certain it will, in which case you can sort of go ahead if you must, but most of the time I’d hold off on it until my position is a bit more favourable. Hence why I said it’s unique to a select few: the Ace for Kagero and Viktoplasma for Nova Grappler are the few that spring to mind, Lambrose by extension if we must talk of extremes. Twin Drive is already turning up decent chances for Crits and my first Stride should have already unlocked my GB1 skills anyway so at least my turn won’t be boring.

Don’t take this as me saying do not Stride if it’s the right thing to do. I’m just saying don’t be wasteful about it and don’t use it stupidly. Stride is something that should either define a deck and thus should be geared to take full advantage of this (plenty of G3s and 4 Stride enablers), or use it in conjunction with your primary strategy, either as a way to have a Mid Game before you move on to your late strategy, or something to fall back on when your first strategy fails. Some of you who use Metalborg Heavy Duke or Big Bang Knuckle Turbo or similar may not need reminding of this, but the concept goes over the heads of some people.

At the end of the day, Vanguard still hasn’t gotten to a point where it is worth sacrificing straightforward vanilla play for gimmicks that aren’t even that useful, generally. Sacking cards for power is redundant when coupled with the fact PGs are run in high numbers BECAUSE you can do that, and the loss of your options could be what means your own defeat. An ill-timed blowing of your load early is probably the reason you’re still single, you loser.

If you can tell me a story of hand neutering not involving a G-Unit that ends games prove your worth at saikyocardfighter@outlook.com