Vanguard 101: Preventing Trigger Sacking Without Shuffling Tricks

Vanguard 101: Preventing Trigger Sacking Without Shuffling Tricks

  Friday, July 18, 2014    Lt. Duck N.

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Welcome to the third installment of Vanguard 101. The community loves hating on how they lost due to triggers, yet serious discussion on the subject is scarce because most players believe there is nothing to talk about.


After all, when most players only feel comfortable sharing strategies they can know are optimal, like columns, its obvious that triggers are an uncomfortable subject. In a perfect world, the optimal strategy to dealing with triggers would be to block for "one to pass" only when they would get no trigger, and block completely when they would get double triggers. Yet without cheating, we can never know when a drive check will reveal triggers, and in some cases even the safe strategy of saying "two to pass" can be completely denied by a lucky application of two triggers to the vanguard. Why share a strategy that has often resulted in failure?

Follow this line of logic: if everyone is trying to win, everyone will play the best deck. If everyone is playing the best deck, then what will determine winners are skill and uncontrolled variables (triggers in this case). Most players are inclined to believe that the skill ceiling involved in playing this game is quite low, and that triggers are often powerful enough to override the small gaps in skill differences between players. By believing so, players will ultimately conclude that winning a decent tournament involves too much luck and faith, so why bother trying to play competitively? Yet, the players who win tournaments are usually consistent at doing so.

After consistently winning tournaments, I have concluded that players have access to strategies, specifically rearguard sniping, that both minimize the utilization of triggers by their opponents, as well optimizing their own triggers, and with skill in these strategies a player can “break the limits” of the supposed skill ceiling in this game and trump the influence of triggers that prevents consistent wins.

Critical Triggers

I figure the best way to describe how to “minimize the effects of triggers” is to talk about each type of trigger individually, and this is because while all triggers give +5k during drive checks (which you can answer by saying “two to pass”), their unique trigger effects influence play-styles outside of guarding and in some cases, ways to address one kind of trigger may contradict how to address another trigger.

I start with critical triggers because they’re the most common sense to deal with. The fear of critical triggers only comes from drive checks, so for the most part “two to pass” is how you should mitigate their influence. Now it should be obvious that constantly saying "two to pass" does not answer the problem of lucky players constantly drive checking critical triggers, because by having triggers constantly drive checked against you, you are now forced to over-guard all the time and just by the extra guarding a player can lose from loss of resources. Despite the fact that the surest way to deal with critical triggers is by over-blocking every vanguard attack, which usually is not practical, there are still ways you can reduce the value of the extra damage you would take from a critical trigger.

On the subject of rearguard sniping, getting rid of early game pressure from rearguard attacks also helps deal with triggers both in general (the +5k gained) and their unique effects. With critical triggers specifically it would be in your opponent's favor to have more than one attacking unit during their turn if your opponent trying to apply a crit properly, as the way you typically treat a critical trigger if you are trying to block it is by considering that both the critical and the power are given to the vanguard and one other unit, which is why critical triggers are so hard to block and have so much power early-mid game. If your opponent lacks rearguards to attack your vanguard however, which can happen due to rearguard sniping, then the potential behind their critical triggers is greatly diminished. Rearguard sniping also makes it less likely your opponent will damage check a trigger, making it more likely that you will get your crits to resolve the way you would want them to.

I believe most players understand they don’t need to be too afraid of critical triggers when they’re at two damage, and staying at this amount of damage is very effective against decks that have scary late game plays, such as Spike Brothers. To stay at this low of a damage count however, it usually means that your opponent has not been attacking the vanguard all that often, and/or you have been blocking their attacks in the beginning of the game. The second way of taking little damage is very difficult to do, since it is hard to block early vanguard attacks, especially if they put a booster behind the vanguard. However, if they do not put a booster behind the vanguard, take this opportunity to block with 10k shields. As to how you can avoid damage in the beginning, having a vanguard with high power (either innately such as Compass Lion, or from drive checking triggers) or sniping their rearguards can greatly help.

Staying at low damage is not possible in the majority of the games played however, since it is very easy for your opponent to force you into a position where you could get hit by early game (grade 1-2 vanguard) crits. These kinds of crits very often have a huge impact on the outcome of the game, yet can also be used in your favor. For decks with very powerful limit breaks or counterblast effects, such as Link Joker, you can see extra damage as extra resources and heavily punish your opponent for giving you this advantage. Some players may acknowledge that they will lose if certain decks (like Ethics Buster "Reverse") get to limit break early, and will try hard not to get these decks to four damage. If you are playing one of these decks, you can put your opponent in a really awkward situation if they hit a critical when you are at two damage. In some situations, your opponent may opt to not give you the extra damage altogether. As a sort of silver lining, when you reach five damage, the extra critical from a critical trigger becomes less relevant, although at this point any trigger terrifying. Last, having high damage early has a strong impact on your ability to control heal triggers.

Heal Triggers

When considering what kind of advantage you might have while you're at high damage in regards to heal triggers, being at a higher damage than your opponent means you can resolve your own heal triggers, while they cannot. If you want to prevent heal trigger sack, you want to always be one damage above your opponent, and I cannot ignore the fact that damage is the primary win condition in Vanguard, and thus if you carelessly let yourself get to high amounts of damage, you will probably lose.

One instance where players carelessly taking damage would be to take a vanguard attack that you could have completely blocked (no pass) with a 10k shield. Generally speaking, you want the damage you took to have “high value”. Here, I grade value of the damage by the amount of shield necessary to have blocked the attack that dealt said damage, with damage dealt by an extra critical being worth about half the value. An example of valuing a damage would be "this third damage I took was worth 20k shield, because the attack was 26k to my 11k vanguard." When taking damage, you want to make sure the damage you do take is of the highest value your opponent could make it (in other words, how big their columns could potentially be, since its ultimately how much they swing for that determines the value of the damage).

Damage value is important when considering heal triggers, because of the huge difference in healing an attack that took 5k shield to block and an attack that took 20k to block. effectively, healing an attack that would have taken 20k to block over an attack worth 5k shield saves you 15k shield, which on average is enough to say “two to pass” to the majority of average sized boss monsters. Here comes the interesting problem though, which is how do you make sure you stay at one damage above your opponent, while also getting the best value out of your heal triggers? The highest value of damage that comes from your opponent during the early game is from the vanguard which, when combined with a constantly present starter like Battle Maiden, Amenohoakari, is consistently worth about 15k. Here then, rearguard sniping offers you solutions to both problems, in that you are dealing less damage to your opponent (while still putting your attacks to effective use), and like mentioned with critical triggers, they will have a lower chance of being able to make columns to attack with. Also mentioned earlier was the idea of using vanguards with high power, either from damage checks or innately. What heal triggers ultimately add to the incentive of rearguard sniping then is maintaining an appropriate damage gap for heal triggers to be live.

Draw Triggers

Draw triggers are most powerful when they are damage checked, as they are the most likely to be live when they are damage checked. Thus, it is generally a good idea to not let draw triggers be damage checked by not letting your opponent damage check. Draw triggers are most powerful during the beginning stages of the game, since they are mostly useful for their damage potential, which is to say, a draw from a draw trigger supplies a player with columns they usually don’t have access to prior to getting their twin drive. For example, if your opponent damage checks a draw trigger, and draws a grade 1 booster, during the turn they go for grade 2, they will now get an extra powerful column, and that advantage will speed them up into their late game setup.

Draw triggers begin losing power during the late game when your opponent already has their “end game fantasy” in terms of column numbers, as draw triggers lack the same ability to close out games (like critical or stand triggers do), and they don’t have as much advantage or sustain power as heals do (healing a 20k value damage is worth more than the a draw trigger stealing another crit from your deck, valued at about 15k worth of shield). The most powerful thing a draw trigger can do at this point is grab you a sentinel, which would still be worth less than a heal given that the perfect shield + draw trigger would save you from one damage, while a heal trigger would not only leave you room for additional damage, but also refuel your counterblasts and will still be worth the 10k shield (you lose both the draw trigger and sentinel when you block, or a grade 3 and a sentinel, but 10k is still greater than 5k).

Stand Triggers

Stand triggers are very rare to find, because they are very inconsistent. However, some decks like Great Nature may run them for powerful late game and combos, while other decks have very powerful stand triggers that give incentive to play them just because of their skill, like Hades Steersman for Granblue. In the event someone does run these, if you snipe rearguards, you win harder because they require having relevant rearguards to work properly. Stand triggers are most effective during the late game, so the longer you prolong your opponent from reaching their "end game fantasy", the lower the value of stand triggers. Also, make sure not to get to high damage against decks running stands, by the time you get to five damage stand triggers can become the most powerful type of trigger to drive check in the game, competing with clutch heal triggers. Being at five damage also saves stand triggers from one of their other weaknesses, which would be damage check triggers.

Conclusion

For the most part, you can play around sack potential from triggers by focusing on the early game and sniping rearguards. In a couple of examples, I may have provided contradictory strategies, such as trying to get your opponent to damage check their critical triggers before they could apply them, and to avoid letting your opponent damage check for fear of draw triggers. Here I will say it comes down to the possibility, and your actions should be based on what kind of deck your opponent is playing. For example, if your opponent is playing a deck like Oracle Think Tank, remember that it is incredibly easy for them to replenish their board if you decide to snipe rearguards, thus you may want to focus on the block potential of their units over their damage potential (try to deal a lot of damage to them). Also remember that these decks like OTT do not usually swing for high numbers, so its not necessarily a bad thing to take early damage, for the value of the damage never changes all that much, thus letting you keep a damage gap in favor of heals if you decide to focus their vanguard.

Also notice how much playing a good deck factors into dealing with triggers. Since triggers ultimately affect the damage and block potential of your cards, it only makes sense that the power of your triggers are determined by the power of your deck. Here I go against the belief that triggers are equalizers, and instead support the claim that triggers rather vary in power and potential, significantly depending on the decks they’re played in.

If a player would really like to avoid trigger sacking, they could play Transcendence Dragon, Dragonic Nouvelle Vague. Ironically, while the deck is probably the best in the ECG for getting around the big variable problem of triggers, it also suffers from a fate that all most all card games are subjected to, which is luck of the draw. All players understand the fear of getting grade locked, and there are decks that are better at avoiding grade lock than others, Tsukuyomi. Still, when the current Lord of the format is not dictated by triggers, but by getting the right draws, perhaps Noboru Kodo is right in believing that card games are nothing but luck.