Transcendence Dragon, Dragonic Nouvelle Vague – Vanguard Review

Saikyo
Cardfighter
R

WARNING: Big-Ass wall of text approaching.

I gotta be honest, my views on this card are…mixed. I’m not saying that this card doesn’t have a niche, it’s just that said niche is so specific, I honestly don’t think it’s that worth it (all deck changes just to accommodate this aside).

Breaking it down: it’s a Grade 4. That means you are basically stuck on Vague for the rest of the fight once you ride it once, unable to go into Waterfall (not that you should: it’s full Vague ham or bust for consistency purposes, I find). If you don’t draw into Roman then you haven’t got a ride if you don’t have an Overlord in hand.

As for the skill, I’m not down on going -2 (-1 to ride again and the loss of 1 Drive Check) and only about a 1/3 chance of a trigger for a column that the opponent can Perfect Guard (which they will, since this is clearly a Late Game card, the damage requirements say so), even if it can seal Miracle Heals for the turn. Some would say that the mass-board wipe makes up for it, but I’m not really sure. Retiring is first and foremost a defensive mechanic: less cards means less to bother you with and less strong attacks. So you’d basically undermine the defense entirely by allowing yourself to get to 5 damage just to wipe a board that the right decks can get back, so you only profit when it’s the OPPONENT is on 5 damage. 

There’s also the matter of the TIMING of said retirement. I don’t really believe that containing retires to just him is worth the risk. One way to go about him is to use the mass wipe to power up Raopia and Bellicosity Dragon, but I find that build basically relegates him entirely to Mid Game with only a few token kills with Berserk if you score any, and even though theoretically Vague is cheaper, I’d much rather not give good cards the opportunity to have longer to screw me (Spike Brothers springs to mind here…shudder). At least Waterfall can blow up an interceptor on-ride.

Or you could go the route of basically the same standard skeleton except Waterfall is replaced with Vague, and any slightly less important Grade 2s and something like Bahr is dropped for Roman and Critic Dragon. You’d then basically have the same tactics except the opponent is free to PG at leisure, and to be honest, being able to use Waterfall multiple times to shave down OTT’s hand is pretty much your best out to OTT, and that’s not worth giving up.

Try this out if you must but you could probably happily survive without it. Wait on the next round of Kagero support.

2.5/5