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Are You Sure That’s Enough Grade 3s? 

Because you definitely shouldn’t increase the odds of your main gambit happening at all (sarcasm).

Well, I actually managed to spend the first three months of 2016 almost without having to be reminded of the complete idiocy of my fellow man, so just to get back into the groove a little and show that the idiots can’t get complacent just yet, I’d like to talk about a trend that seems to be decently popular enough to write about. It’s about people who deliberately cut down on spare Grade 3s just to increase the odds of riding their main Grade 3. And why it makes me want to throw my hands in the air and shout “what the fucking hell are you smoking?”

As far as I’m concerned, yes, a deck ought to be geared towards your main gambit actually happening as much as possible. This does not mean completely burning all of your bridges that you built. What if all of the other bridges spontaneously combusted as well? To that end, only deciding to run 6 Grade 3s or hell, only your main ride is quite frankly an idiotic decision.

First off, I need to beat the notion out of people’s heads that it is simply not practical to just run a low Grade 3 count and then rely on some piss-poor answer like those fucking Grade 3 searching Forerunner cards to try and grab the card you want to ride. Those cards only search from a small pool, and by running a lower Grade count you are only worsening the already shaky odds of adding a Grade 3 at all to your hand. Anyone who does this deserves a good throat punching for not understanding even basic statistics. FUCK, it makes me angry. You should never assume best-case-scenario for anything, be it card or game state. It colours judgement and results in extremely retarded choices, like this one, in fact. It can be filed under the useless tech and horrible trigger lineup category of straight-up madness.

I also do not actively enjoy the thought of having to G Assist in the event of failure. Supposing your Forerunner turns up nothing, that’s a -1 to you. Then by resorting to G Assist, that’s another -1 to you. So you’re already down two cards assuming worst case scenario. Meanwhile, your opponent may not have the exact ride he wants, but he got close enough and can Stride/Legion without any unnecessary shenanigans. Incidentally, this is the part where he punishes you for your inane idiocy by winning.

Well, in the case of a reasonably assured searcher like Wingal Brave, I might be able to see the logic in it, but even so, it is not wise to proceed under the assumption something will not directly interfere. In case it gets sniped before you can search and that results in you having to draw a card and wish upon a star to ride properly, the deck should run the usual skeleton so that you can at least proceed with vanilla play. We haven’t yet gotten to a point where you can sacrifice that in favour of gimmicks. It also leams less situations in which things can go wrong, because don’t underestimate the variety of ways in which you can get totally screwed. As long as you can do the main thing (Striding usually) the game won’t suddenly go downhill. Or at least it shouldn’t, assuming no sack on the opponent’s part.

That’s another thing. Apparently, the popular decks at the time of writing that run a low Grade 3 count are Revengers and Nociel. I don’t frankly get why anyone would want to run the bare minimum Grade 3 count in either deck. Raging Form Dragon’s fail-con is Phantom Blaster Abyss, and Nociel has Gavrail in the meantime. PBA is functionally the same as Raging Form, but with less room to spam in one or several turns, whereas Gavrail allows the deck to play like regular G Angel Feather given it runs basically the same skeleton as Nociel. Neither is a totally horrible scenario to be in: it’s not like Dudley Emperor instead of Bad End Dragger levels of bad, so why the hell would you want to roll dice? Take what you have instead and do the next best thing until what you actually want arrives to bail you out. It also means more Stride fodder for you, doesn’t it?

Before them, I’m reminded of Cat Butler Raizers. That ran only four Mega-Flare and the bad Forerunner. That deck, frankly, had even less excuses for such a low Grade 3 count because at the time, G Assist didn’t exist. Now that it does and Raizers has more or less proven to be a bit less explosive (and stable given the mass retirement options) that deck at least has the good sense to hybridise it with Victor and the G Support, but still.

To be frank, now that Stride is a main-stay, I don’t get why people would even want to try this in the first place. For most boss Grade 3s, they usually carry some sort of bonus upon Stride to make the +1s for a cost pile up, or in the case of the Revengers and Nociel decks I mentioned, bide their time until not Striding is the better play. But in the event of the ride you didn’t want, you can still at least use Stride to get your Vanguard to do other things and not just relegate itself to only one task, like the Vanguard of old.

Running a low Grade 3 count to try and counter the need to fail-con ride is like trying to clean out a mould strain in your house by washing your own hands in gasoline and using a lighter to try and burn the mould, which is growing on your wooden kitchen desk top, away. It doesn’t mean you’re being clever. I’ve already explained why what you did was a mistake. I do not care if you say it works for you, because I can think of at least three arguments why it actually didn’t, and also because my faith in the Vanguard community has deteriorated to a point where I must assume people won despite choices, rather than because choices. You’re trying to avoid one thing by inviting several other more bad things that can happen in. I’m no economist, but to me that sounds like a fucking awful trade, buddy. It’s like when I swapped a Venom Dancer for someone’s Conquest Dragon. Pfft, didn’t say that the trade was necessarily awful for ME, did I?

Your soul for a Generation Rare, Deal or No Deal? Offers to be made at saikyocardfighter@outlook.com