Know Your Cards, DRAW TRIGGERS

Hello everyone, Praetorian from check the drive trigger here. Wait what Sockies, im meant to write stuff now? FINE! I was happy just doing video. :(
Well its the time of the week where we give you something to read while you're at work, on the bog or otherwise bored. Today I'll talk a little about the new set 3 cards and also how Draw Triggers can win game and how to work with them in most decks. 

Booster Set 3: Demonic Lord Invasion
So set 3 came out a few weeks ago and i have started building Dark Irregulars. The clan is focused around building your soul. Cards like Demon World Marquis, Amon,  Doreen the Thruster and Stil Vampir benefit geartly from having cards in the soul

Demon World Marquis, Amon



This is my Favourite Dark Irregulars of Set 3, His skills and power make this deck very hard hitting. He's a Grade 3 twin driving BEAST. 
His skills 
The first of his skills is a continous skill, when he is your VG and during your turn, He gain +1000 for each Dark Irregulars in your soul.

Using cards like Blue Dust (when his attack hit, you can soul charge 1), Vermillon Gate keeper (when a Dark Irregulars Rides this, soul charge one), Alluring Succubus ( when placed on VG and RG, soul charge 1) Decadent Succubus( VG, when another Dark Irregulars is placed on RG, soul charge one) and Dark Queen of Nightmareland (Stand Trigger, when this unit boost a DarkIrregulars hits soul charge one and put this back in your deck), all these card add to your soul, powering him up. I had a game the other day where he was 40k by himself. you dont need to boost that, but it helps.

His second skill also help him power up and in clears your oppnents field. this ACT is to Counter Blast one & Choose one of your «Dark Irregulars» rear-guards, and put it into your soul. Your opponent Then chooses one of There rear-guards, and retires it.

Doreen the Thruster
Now with all these cards that can sould charge in the deck,  Doreen the Thruster  also get powered up, she is the same as the Royal Paladin card, Young Pegasus Knight. Every time you soul charge, she get +3000 for that turn.

Now we come to Stil Vampir,




He appears in the anime. He has two good skills to note. 
His AUTO,on the VG he can soul charge one and gains +2000 untill the end of the turn. 
And his mega blast soul blast 8 counter blast 5, Choose one of your opponent's RG, and put in on their VG. and the end phase they can choose one can from their sould and ride it. If you get his skill off then it is a game winner.

Any way onto draw triggers.
You know draw triggers, the little red trigger on the top right of your grade 0. Looks like this
These can win you games trust me. This nice little trigger not only gives you +5000 anywhere but allows you to draw a card, its great as a drive and damage check. The only down side is the 5000 sheild.

They are so good because there give you the extra card to guard with or to play. twin drive you could get 4 cards to your hand out of it. You get all the shileds. so in most of my decks i'm running at least 4 draw triggers minimum. And i know they only have 5k sheilds but your perfect gaurds would work wonders with these bad boys as the discard fodder over a card you would want to play.
Also add the fact that a few draw trigger have RG skills, Margal from the Royal Paladins, has a skill to move it into the sould and give a Royal Paladin +3000. 
Other Draw Triggers  cards with Skills include:

Gattling Claw Dragon

[Act] RG: Counter Blast 1, move this Unit to Soul If you have a Kagerō Vanguard, retire 1 of your Opponent's Grade 0 Rear Guards. 

Falcon Knight of the Azure

[Auto]: When this unit is placed on a RG from your deck, choose another of your Gold Paladin units, and that unit gets +2000 until end of turn. 

Rainbow Magician (Featured last week in Cottonsock's article about the Pale Moon Clan)

[auto]: [Soul Charge 1] when this unit boosts a [PALE MOON] unit and the attack hits you may pay the cost, and return this card to the deck and shuffle.

And many more. 
As you can see there are many benerfits to draw triggers get useing them and get winning game. good luck in your fights. Well that enought from me i'm starting to feel ill and need to hand this to cottonsocks. goodbye for now.

Pale Moon guide Part 2

Hey guys, as you know yesterday I posted an in depth guide helping you budding pale moon players build a deck that is focused on using the clans main theme of swapping from the soul.

However this clan has 2 builds from set 3 that can be used.

So today its time to show you 

TAMER BEAT!

Unlike the Robert deck that focuses on using the skill of Alice and midnight bunny to swap out cards for multiple attacks, tamer beat focuses on using  Crimson Beast Tamer her support to reach rear guard numbers of 20k+ at a time to rush your opponent for maximum damage, whilst using Alice to help set up the columns rather than swapping for more than 3 attacks a turn.

Tamer Beat is a deck which uses  Crimson Beast Tamer  and her support to gain massive attack power in order to force your opponent to guard with 2+ cards per attack to prevent the Pale Moon Circus' mightiest beasts and their bravest tamers to scare your opponent bad they'll crit their trousers in fear!

Key Cards

As with building all decks, we must first establish our key (signature) card in the deck, like with the robert swap where Alice is our Signature card, in this deck our Key card is  Crimson Beast Tamer 

Crimson Beast Tamer



She may not seem like much upon initial viewing, but after seeing her support it becomes obvious why we need to run her at 4 in this build.

Turquoise Beast Tamer

 

Crimson Beast Tamer 's little sister,  Turquoise Beast Tamer  is just as important as  Crimson Beast Tamer  in this deck as she becomes the main supporter on your back row, when tamer is in the soul she provides 9000 power permanently to her rear guard combined with  Crimson Beast Tamer  that makes a 20k column that is attacking on your turn, forcing 2 10k guards out of your opponents hand just to stop this combo. Combined with triggers these two sexy ladies are a force to be reckoned with in this build.

Barking Manticore

 

This guy is you're key vanguard, and I hope that this is obvious.

His first skill is awesome, +3000 power when  Crimson Beast Tamer  is in the soul. making him a 13000 vanguard when he attacks. This is pretty huge, and it means if you wanna be clever you can have a midnight bunny supporting and he still hits that magical 20k mark. However if you add a  Turquoise Beast Tamer  into the equation, he becomes 22000, now this may not seem like much, but because he can hit a total power of 32000 with two triggers, this little puppy becomes a frigging doberman that cannot be stopped!

And his second skill is just as amazing, if you ride him and you have no  Crimson Beast Tamer s in the soul, but you have on in your hand, just use his skill, and BOOM you're deck is instantly at full power and causing your opponent problems from turn 3 and can give you an advantage that you really cant lose unless you make some really really stupid plays.

Now obviously in this deck we dont have as much soul charging as the robert build, so we need a bit more burst when it comes to soul charging.

If you remember in the last build we used:



Well this time, we're going to be using Elephant Juggler:

When its the vanguard, every time you call a unit soul charge a card, compared to hungry clown who has to have an attack hit in order to soul charge. So what happens is this.

Turn 1 - Ride Skull juggler (2 soul)
Turn 2 - Ride elephant juggler and call your units. From here you can have anything from 3-7 soul. With this much Quick soul charging you're guarantee'd a beast tamer in the soul. And if by chance this hasn't happened  Barking Manticore  is always a last resort in order to get the tamer engine running.

You're other ways of soul charging are the same as the Robert deck for grade 1 and 0

-skull juggler
-rainbow magician
-Hades ringmaster

However in this build you also have Barking Manticore  to help control what you soul so that if you have an Alice or a bunny in play, you can manipulate your field to get the best possible set up.

So our build should look like this.

GRADE 0

1 Hades Ringmaster (start)
4 Rainbow Magician (draw)
4 Spiral Master (draw)
4 Dynamite Juggler (Crit)
4 Candy Clown (heal)

Grade 1

4 Skull Juggler (we need 4 as we need to get that  Crimson Beast Tamer  in the soul ASAP)
3 midnight bunny (in case we soul charge anything we need and have to retrieve it from the soul)
4  Turquoise Beast Tamer  (Staple at 4 - 9k boost in this deck and the heart and soul of the build)
3 Hades Illusionist
3 Dark metal bicorn (flat 8k is always good)

Grade 2

4  Crimson Beast Tamer  (do I need to explain?)
4 Barking Cerberus (flat 10k)
3 Elephant Juggler (For that extra soul power
1 Mirror Demon (this is because we only run 3 bunny, you can run 4 bunny and no mirror demon, again this is down to preference)

Grade 3

4  Barking Manticore  (our main vanguard, great for just raw power on the V)
3 Nightmare Doll Alice (Because she's our only option, after set 7 we have Nightmare Bringer then the fun can begin :D)


Thanks for reading this entire 2 part pale moon deck building guide.

Next week i'll bring you the SPIKE BROTHERS and their awesome rushing tactics.

See you all Saturday for our locals update and deck profile on our YouTube channel.

PEACE!

Cottonsocks

Very overdue Update and Pale Moon Guide from CheckTheDriveTrigger's Pale Moon player Cottonsocks

Hey guys,

As you know, we here at check the drive trigger have been away for some weeks due to university work and other complications like lack of internet etc.

So lets recap what we have missed.

EVERYTHING SO FAR IN THE CARDFIGHT UNIVERSE!

So what we're going to do, is every week on a saturday evening we'll update you with run downs from our locals and also update with Deck Profiles of the top player from each week, and also give discussion about certain clans and their future support.

So with demonic lord invasion being released a mere 2 weeks ago, I have finally been able to run my favorite and main Clan. PALE MOON.

So what I'm going to do as a treat for all you readers is write a Pale Moon Guide for set 3 and then next week, I shall update you all with what has been released in set 7, what looks like trash for clans and what cards are key staples for decks in clans and cards that can help them achieve a competitive state, whilst talking about other fun builds too for all the clans supported and give an analysis of the English meta after the set is released.

So lets talk about Pale Moon and how we build a Pale Moon deck with the cards we have :)

OVERVIEW

Pale Moon are a clan that are from the Dark Zone, like spike brothers and also Dark Irregulars (Another clan released in set 3), and like the Dark Irregulars, focus on soul charging to help them win in a fight.

However whereas Dark irregular rely on the amount of cards in soul to win and gain their abilities, Pale Moon focus on getting specific Units into their soul to call them from the soul to achieve more than 3 attacks a turn to gain an advantage over the opponent using Specific Units such as  Midnight Bunny and Nightmare Doll Alice as a toolbox style of play.
Units
So as with every clan, Pale moon also have some key units that need to be considered when building a deck in set 3 (set 7 guide next week guys don't panic).

There are two builds to think about

Robert Swap and Tamer beat

So before building our deck we need to consider what build we'd like to play and whether it will suit our style of vanguard fighting, do we want to win using skills or with RAW power, both of which pale moon can do.

The first build to consider is Robert Swap

Robert Swap focuses on using  Nightmare Doll Alice and midnight  Midnight Bunny  to achieve 4/5 attacks a turn while using Robert to help the Pale Moons most fantastic talents as support to help feed them triggers to get their abilities off and wow the Crowd by switching from one act to another.

Tamer Beat is a deck which uses Crimson Beast Tamer and her support to gain massive attack power in order to force your opponent to use at least 2 cards a time to guard from The Circuses mightiest beasts and their bravest tamers to scare your opponent so hard they'll crit themselves in fear!

So after deciding what we want to build, we need to look at what Cards we consider "Staples" for our specific build.

So with Robert Swap, the deck gets it's name from its main vanguard, Dark Illusionist Robert

So as you can see, he has the amazing ability to predict the future and help you in your assault, very handy for giving those boosts to  Nightmare Doll Alice  or to a row where  Midnight Bunny  Resides allowing them to use their abilities to swap with other cards in the soul to attack again.
not only this but because of his soul charging capability you constantly have a flow of Units entering the soul so you arn't spoiled for choice. And when boosted by a turquoise beast tamer he can hit for 21k forcing your opponent to guard with at least 2 cards, lowering their guard to activate  Nightmare Doll Alice  and  Midnight Bunny .

So as I've mentioned 2 specific cards many times, lets have a look at them.

First possibly the best card for the pale moon clan by far, NIGHTMARE DOLL ALICE!

Very powerful unit, with an equally powerful skill, as you can see from reading this, its obvious as to why we run her, she is the heart and soul of the pale moon deck and especially this build, and with Robert supporting her with +5k from the trigger you know is there, she will be a force to be reckoned with in any pale moon build

MIDNIGHT BUNNY

My favorite unit from the clan and definitely the most underestimated, she's not quite as potent as  Nightmare Doll Alice , but for a 7k booster she is definitely the dark horse in a pale moon build as most opponents look out for  Nightmare Doll Alice ,  Midnight Bunny  doesn't seem like much, but if she's on a column that's not attacked when you have a rested rear guard, she can provide that extra attack just as easily as  Nightmare Doll Alice  if the unit she's boosted has hit, OR provide more power by calling a more powerful grade 1 from the soul. Throwing off your opponents guarding strategy all together, hopefully guaranteeing you a damage. She's works very well when you have a crimson beast tamer in the soul and you need that all important turquoise beast tamer to get that extra 2000 power to smack your opponent in the face. I suggest always running her at 4 in any pale moon build as she's the best piece of utility you have until Purple Trapezist is released in set seven, and even then I'd recommend running  Midnight Bunny at no less than 3 :)


MIRROR DEMON

 

Not as good as  Nightmare Doll Alice  or  Midnight Bunny , but still nice to run in this deck because if you do get that trigger and there's no  Nightmare Doll Alice  or  Midnight Bunny  on the field, he's always the best option to go to, Especially if you're on grade 2 and have soul charged an  Nightmare Doll Alice  very early in the game.

So after looking at this, we need to think of the best way to soul charge besides Robert's own skill.

the soul chargers are quite abundant and also very good at doing what they do quickly, however they come down to preference when building a deck.

Grade 2 wise, we have 2 MAIN soul charging units

Hungry Clown
 
And Elephant Juggler
 

Both have different ways of soul charging, and again whichever you pick is down to preference, if you wish to get a quickly filled soul and rush your opponent with swap abilities, I recommend Elephant Juggler (Brilliant for the tamer build)

Whereas if you wish to conserve your hand and slow yourself from decking out, then hungry clown is the way to go, and what is good is your opponent often overlooks this guy and doesn't guard him, meaning you deal damage and soul charge (really good for the Robert build).

GRADE 1

we have just one unit right now that soul charges

Skull juggler
 

Very nice card and a staple in all Set 3 + 5 Pale moon builds after set 7 we get a better card who is grade 2. Nice ability and combined with our starting vanguard you can get any pale moon deck off to a flying start with his ability.

Another neat trick to do with this guy is if you're lacking that crimson beast tamer in the soul or have a midnight  Midnight Bunny  and you wish to soul charge again, just summon him from the soul to get that extra card that could help you win the game. However this is a last resort and should only be considered when you have no other options.

Grade 0

Hades Ringmaster
 

Our starting vanguard and our only option for now. Nice ability but could be a lot better.


Rainbow Magician
 

awesome card for early and mid game to help us gain that extra soul. Not only this but it gives us that extra trigger in the deck for late game. Never run a pale moon deck without him I say :D

So now that we've looked at all the soul chargers to help us use  Midnight Bunny  and  Nightmare Doll Alice's Skills we can look at a basic Robert build

Considering we have only 16 triggers so far, we can't be creative with our set 3 builds, but in the future I recommend running 7 stands in every pale moon build that focuses on swapping out units.


WHO DO WE WANT TO SOUL?

So with a deck that concentrates on soul charging, we must have cards that work when in the soul.

Right now we only have 1 card that does this, but she gives power to 2 very important units which we run in most pale moon set 3 builds

CRIMSON BEAST TAMER
 

Creates a 11k grade 2 interceptor when in soul, a 13k vanguard and a 9k booster whilst in the soul. A staple in every build. However depending on whether you run swap or beat down depends on how many of her you run :)

other cards which are nice to have in the soul

- Nightmare Doll Alice
- Skull Juggler
-  Midnight Bunny 
- Turquoise beast tamer
- Vanilla's (10k/8k)


Robert Swap Build

Grade 3 - 7

4 Nightmare Doll Alice 
3 Dark Illusionist Robert

Grade 2 - 12
3 Crimson beast tamers (we want these in the soul rather than the hand so i recommend 3)
3 mirror demon (at just 8k power 3 is enough as it saves room for more powerful units)
4 Barking Cerberus (Vanilla 10k)
2 Hungry Clown (we want a nice steady soul flow rather than a burst so this guy is better to run as Robert will provide most of the deck's soul charging power)

Grade 1 - 15

4 Midnight Bunny  (staple)
3 Turquoise beast tamer (if we run 3 we have a steady balance of swapping to power and calling power, also if we have 3 we aren't relying solely on crimson beast tamer being in our soul)
3 Skull juggler (main soul engine here)
2 Darkmetal Bicorn (vanilla 8k - helps us achieve the 20k boost when adding a trigger to our mirror demons, and also when boosting robert allows him to reach 20k if our tamer's are unavailable)
3 Hades Illusionist (perfect guard for the pale moon, not needed in 4's as otherwise you find yourself discarding him to activate his own ability)

Grade 0 - 17

we really only have 1 choice here :)

So this is the Robert swap build. A nice consistent deck that actually lets you get a full feel for the pale moon clan as they stand now.

Tomorrow I shall post the Tamer Beat build and we'll look at how their cards work compared to that of a Robert style build.

PEACE

Cottonsocks

**NOTE I have provided links for Bunny and Alice, as they're card tips on Cardfight Wiki is worth a read :)**

CTDT Week 2, KNOW YOUR CARDS!!!

Hey all, welcome to check the drive trigger, a blog about the cardfight vanguard TCG. What you can expect from this forum is clan expertise, card reviews, deck lists, tournament overviews from the UK cardfight Vanguard meta scene, weekly updates on the local cardfight tournament i attend, set inspections and updates also hopefully a youtube channel to boot :D

This week we're continuing on with looking at the basics of Cardfight Vanguard,and looking at Card mechanics.

Cards in cardfight vanguard are all made up of 'Units', unlike other card games where you have mana, monsters, spells, traps and creatures, this game only has the one kind. However they are broken down into many categories

CLAN
RACE
UNIT TYPE
GRADE

As such. So lets look at a card layout.

So lets look at the different features in detail.

• Boost

This symbol signifies that this card can be placed ona rear guard circle behind the Vanguard or a Rear guard to apply its power on top of that units current power for a more powerful attack.

• Intercept

This symbol is usually associated with Grade 2 Units, this skill allows them, when they are placed on a front Rearguard circle, to move from their current position and be placed on the Guard Circle to help defend your opponents attacks.

Another type of Intercept is a S Special Intercept. This is a Unit skill which increases the Unit's Shield value if a Unit in the Vanguard Circle is from a certain Clan; for example Knight Of Truth, Gordon or Dragon Knight Berger. (links given to show examples)]

• Twin Drive!!

Grade 3 Vanguards have this ability. When you attack with your Vanguard you can Drive Check two times. (TIP: because this gives you 2 cards, its advised to Ride to grade 3 AS SOON AS POSSIBLE).


Not only this but cards also have certain ability types.

Continuous - Always in effect.

Activation - Can be activated when certain conditions are met or costs have been paid.

Auto - Usually occur when a card is called, ridden or attacks. Then you can activate this skill. But only once.

(colours given represent the colours of effects oncard descriptions)

AND as mentioned above there are costs to be paid for certain Skills, these costs come in the forms of:

• Soul Blast (X):
  • Retire X cards from Soul (Send X cards from bottom of the stack of your current Vanguard to the Drop Zone (Bottom of the stack) ).

• Soul Charge (X):
  • Send the top X cards of your Deck to your Soul (Top of the stack)
  • [Example : CEO Amaterasu's soul charge, you put it directly below CEO Amaterasu]

• Counter Blast (X):
  • Flip X cards from the Damage Zone face-down.

(PICTURES GIVEN ARE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE SYMBOLS ON CARD DESCRIPTIONS)

There are also community terms that have come about referring to certain effects for example:

• Mega Blast : Retire 8 cards from Soul and Flip 5 cards from the Damage Zone face down. This is referred to as "Mega Blast" in the manga/anime.

• Persona Blast : A community-made term which refers to an effect where an identical copy of the card needs to be discarded from your hand as part of the cost.

(Links given to show examples.)

Finally onto the most important mechanic in the whole game. TRIGGERS.

Triggers or Trigger Units as they are known are a mechanic to allow combat to become more interesting and also can me bade to help your clans theme even more effective.

Trigger types include:

• Draw Trigger  (Draw triggers only have a 5k shield so be sure you're deck is well equipped to counter this)

When revealed during a Drive Check or Damage Check, select 1 of your own Units and it gains +5000 Power, and draw 1 card. Draw the card immediately after the Trigger is revealed (before your next trigger check, in case of Twin Drive or more than 1 Damage). (ORACLE THINK TANK'S MAIN TRIGGER)

• Critical Trigger

When revealed during a Drive Check or Damage Check, select 1 of your own Units and it gains +5000 Power, and select 1 of your own again and it gains +1 Critical. Power and Critical gains may be applied to different units. (EFFECTIVE IN NEARLY EVERY DECK)

• Heal Trigger

When revealed during a Drive Check or Damage Check, select 1 of your own Units and it gains +5000. When the damage you've received before the Heal Trigger is equal or more than your opponent's, you can put one card in your Damage Zone into your Drop Zone.(You cannot put more than 4 Heal Triggers in a deck.) (BRILLIANT IN ANY DECK)

• Stand Trigger

When revealed during a Drive Check or Damage Check, select 1 of your own Units and it gains +5000.Then choose a Rear-Guard Unit (You cannot stand the vanguard unless an effect specifies) and restand it. (GREAT FOR NOVA GRAPPLERS)


THANKS FOR READING THIS WEEKS INSTALMENT BE SURE TO CHECK OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL FOR CARDFIGHT VANGUARD GAMES CARD REVIEWS AND OTHER SHINNANIGANS :D

Welcome

Hey all, welcome to check the drive trigger, a blog about the cardfight vanguard TCG. What you can expect from this forum is clan expertise, card reviews, deck lists, tournament overviews from the UK cardfight Vanguard meta scene, weekly updates on the local cardfight tournament i attend, set inspections and updates also hopefully a youtube channel to boot :DSo, lets start with the first post and whats going on and the basics of Cardfight Vanguard for you guys as my readers or if you're looking to start playing.Since the start of the english release of cardfight vanguard my cardifght career has already gotten exciting, previously a top 4 placer in the yugioh nationals back in '07, im more than familiar with the competetive trading card scene. I decided that it was time to start a new game when i first got wind of this game back in november last year. I fell in love with the game almost immediately, the mechanics, the art, the difference in play and the simplicity.For those of you interested, I'm currently playing Granblue. Now those of you who are still new to this game you're probably wondering... "What is 'Granblue'?" Well granblue is a known 'CLAN' of cardfight vanguard along with 13 other Clans. (NOTE: the next section contains a lot of in game terminology which will be explained later in this post)

Royal Paladins - Known for summoning from the deckOracle think tank - Good at manipulating hand size and predicting your next cardShadow Paladin - Sacrifice Guardians to gain more power for attacking.

Kagero - Good at destroying Guardians/Rear GuardNabutama - Discard cards from the handTachikaze - Sacrifice others when summoned to gain advantage

Neo Nectar - Call more powerful versions of them selves or multiples of a weaker card to attack more than 3 times a turn
Great Nature - Have great power but sacrifice themselves at the end of a turnMegacolony - Stop your opponents cards from "Standing"

Bermuda Triangle - Bounce cards back to the hand to gain an advantageGranblue - summon themselves from the drop zone and gain power through milling.

Pale Moon - Have the ability to 'Soul Charge' a lot to then summon themselves from the soul for further attacks.Spike brothers - Have a play by play strategy like an american football team.Dark irregular - Simmilar to pale moon through soul charging, but 'soul blast' to perform very powerful effects.

Nova Grappler - strong beat down deck with abilities to let themselves 'stand' again to attack more.Dimensional Police - They increase their own power with effects to then gain extra abilities.

After reading this and what intrigues you check out http://cardfight.wikia.com/wiki/Cardfight!!_Vanguard_Wikifor more info on clans and their individual cards. Which I will be looking at every week on a wednessday. With local updates every saturday.But moving on. As you can see from the clan list, I stated a lot of terms associated with this game. Like "soul charging" and "Rear guard." In vanguard you have 5 'guardian zones' and a 'vanguard circle'LIKE THIS.You then have your 'damage' on the left and your deck and drop zone on the right and the green area is the "Guard Circle".Your vanguard is your main "avatar" it represents you the player and is the main source of damage and also the target for your opponent to deal damage.Around it are the 'Guardian Circles' where you can place other 'units' to attack your opponents 'Vanguard' or defend your own.


to start a game of vanguard both players take a 'grade 0' from your deck and place it in the vanguard circle (shown here as a blue circle) then draw 5 cards from your deck (a deck must be 50 cards and contain 16 triggers) you get a free 'mulligan' where you can take any number of cards from your hand, shuffle them into the deck and draw the same number. 


Now when it comes to a turn by turn basis the turn is separated into 4 phases.


Stand/draw Phase


Standing refers to untapping your cards similar to magic the gathering before drawing.


Ride Phase


This is when you can 'Ride' a new unit over your current 'Vanguard' that is one 'Grade' or the same 'Grade' as your current vanguard.


Main Phase


During this phase you can 'call' more units to the rear guard circles, activate effects of current rear guards/vanguards, or retire them to call new rear guards.


Battle Phase


During this phase you can use your rear guard to attack either your opponents vanguard/rear guards. Combat takes place as thus.


Attack - You tap a unit and declare your target.
- during this time you can boost with a rear guard in the same column as your tapped rear guard.


Call guardians - during this step your opponent can call 'units' to the Guard (green) circle to defend their vanguard/rear guard. (NOTE YOU CANT CALL UNITS TO GUARD WHO ARE A HIGHER GRADE THAN YOUR VANGUARD)


Drive Check - If your vanguard attacked you perform a drive check, This is where the attacking player reveals the top card of his/her deck to see if a 'Trigger' is pulled. You may only have 16 of these in a deck and there are 4 kinds.


Critical - +5000 + 1 Damage
Stand - +5000 Stand a rested unit (my favourite trigger type)
Draw - +5000 draw a card
Heal Trigger - +5000 Heal a point of damage, if your damage is more than or equal to your opponents damage. (ALSO YOU CAN ONLY HAVE 4 OF THESE PER DECK)


After resolving the drive trigger effects your opponent then performs a damage check if his/her vanguard is the target of this successful attack to see if a trigger is revealed for them. If a critical trigger hits, then you're opponent checks cards equal to the Damage before placing them in the drop zone.


(personally I'm a fan of this mechanic more than the rest as it balances out the issue of taking more damage with the increased chance of revealing a trigger to help your self defend better if you're opponent gets lucky :P)


End Phase


Once all your cards are rested and no more effects can occur your turn ends.




To win at vanguard all you have to do is deal 6 damage to your opponent. Simple :D




Next post I will cover the card mechanics in more depth in this game and cover what makes a good card and what makes a bad/average card to deck staples of certain clans.


Also this saturday I will bring you an update on how the big tournament in sheffield goes with pictures of the top teams their decks and of course how we get on. to support use please join our Facebook group http://www.facebook.com/groups/332661776769164/
for trades and updates on cardfight news, and to support our team. TEAM C-SQUARED.


Youtube vid's of the winning teams decks will also be made.


All I can say is now that I hope you enjoy reading this blog and dont forget to drive check!!!