Aichi's Legend Deck (or, Prepare For Small Children Ruining Royals For You)

 

Christ on a trike, it's Aichi's Legend Deck? Is it worth it? Let's find out.

   

Another year and therefore Legend Deck to pick apart and examine. And I would be lying if I said I sort of didn't want to see it, but given it's Aichi, I might as well try to turn the tide back with a fucking tea strainer for all the good it does.

 

So immediately you would suspect it's there to support Blasters, and you would be right...but also wrong. People would say it 'supports' Blasters in that a lot of its tricks are basically dependent on having a Blaster or Alfred heart or vanguard, but in all honesty most of it is pretty underwhelming. Remember Hero Barrier in Yu-Gi-Oh? It supports Elemental Hero cards, and yet no-one runs it because even if it were generic it would be shit. It's sort of similar here.

 

Okay, let's be fair and talk about the good things about it, I suppose. The G-Units are genuinely interesting. Myriad Soul Saver is Doom Brace except with more punch to him, and Alfred Holy Saver offers a different kind of finisher. And it's nice to have a Blaster heart that isn't Majesty Lord anymore, so you don't have to pick the crappier choices just for name. Also it comes with G-Guardians so you don't have to look too far. Aside from that though, you'll find that some of its best cards revolve around gathering more cards, and that's not primarily what people used Blasters for. As a stand-alone deck, it's going to get aggro'd to death by anything that can do what it does except with better finishers like Luard, or just get bodied to death by Aqua Force or similar.

 

The primary problem with the deck is counterblast management. You're going to quickly run out of available resources to unlock good plays. Kay and Bedivere act as the equivalent to Dorint and Claudias from Ren's Legend deck, and unlike the last 2 your PG is a Countercharger, but almost everything that does interesting things eats Counterblast. Exceed requires one every time you ride or call him or Stride into anything in the deck. Just about the only thing I can think of that gives it a leg up is staying power, with G-Guardians, because Alfred Holy Saver, let's face it, is no promo the Ace.

 

Okay, okay. Obviously this is meant to a placeholder until people manage to find the finances necessary for additional toys in G-BT11 such as Gancelot Peace Saver, and after two Legend Decks I'd be a fool not to see the pattern, but here is my biggest beef with this Legend Deck over the other two. Ren's Legend Deck had to wait a year before Diablo as a deck actually got supported with meaningful things, and even then, it only replaced a few cards and if anything, only INCREASED options because the G-Zone also grew larger. You therefore had more time to actually save up money and you had a reliable source to upgrade. Kai's Legend Deck also barely needed modifying, only really cherry picking a few pieces to replace, and support was more or less immediate. On top of that, what you did replace were at least resonably cheap options, only needing basic Lava Flows and changing the triggers around, and triggers are dirt cheap. THIS Legend deck requires that you overhaul most of its pieces with cards no longer in print via second hand marketing, making this a rather inefficient buy compared to the others. Off the top of my head you'd need the typical old engine like G2 Llew, Floral Flogal, Friend Barcgal, Sicilus, Alfred Oath as a placeholder fail-con until Grade 3 Llew is released, all of which need to be maxxed, except for the blatantly better starter Wingal Brave. You're essentially spending all this dough for the G-Units, Exceed, and whatever you wish to tech from the box.

 

That isn't necessarily a deal-breaker though. You WOULD typically only buy one of the Legend deck anyway, assuming you didn't give a shit about shiny foiling. But the problem is this: if you want to get into Blasters and you don't have the advantage of owning old Blaster cards from the get-go, you HAVE to buy 4 of this Legend Deck. Why? Because the deck only comes with one original Blaster Blade. This doesn't affect any of you who habitually bought 4 of the previous Legend Decks for the shiny, but it strikes me as somewhat of a dick move for the chronically poor. Oh, and also because then Wingal Youth only has like 5 targets to choose from from a small pool of cards, which doesn't help assuming you're playing from the box.

 

 A more alert reader would probably point out that I gave flak to Kai's Legend deck for needing to replace quite a lot of it too, but at least what you did replace only extended to triggers and a bit more Flame Dragons, particularly where triggers were concerned. Also we eventually got promo Burnouts. This Legend Deck not only FORCES the consumer to buy 4 assuming they lack even the most basic Blaster engine, whatever you then replace are ludicrously expensive or hard to find. Defeat Flare doesn't even reach half the price of Gancelot Peace Saver once it's released in English.

 

I dunno. The Legend deck comes with some neat things exclusive to the Blaster deck itself, but as for those who already packed the Blaster engine and combined it with Sanctuary Guard because of the beatdown potential, but honestly you could probably get away with not picking it up if that were the case. It seems to be designed only to screw the poor people wanting to get into Blasters while the rich bastards who already have Blasters, or would have bought 4 for foiling are unaffected. Not unlike the Conservative party really.

 

I’m taking requests for articles if there’s something about Vanguard you need to gripe about. Email ideas at saikyocardfighter@outlook.com. Or drop a message on my Twitter account!