Quick Start on the Meta Part 1

Published on 8 April 2024 at 16:00

Good morning class. In just a few weeks time, the English side of Cardfight Vanguard will be moving into the DivineZ era with the new Quick Start Decks, giving us our first experience of Energy generation. So whilst every deck will now gain access to Energy Blast 7 to draw 1 card, I have decided to use this article to dive into some of the new bosses and see what we can do to make them fun to play with. Please keep in mind that the lists I share here are just examples, and can easily be adapted to suit the playstyle of the user. Obviously these will not be with their intended ride lines, as they do not release until DZ-BT01, but we still have some fun ideas to work with. There is going to be 3 decks in this article, so let's start off with the first one of Dragon Empire.

Roaring Thunder Dragon, Triumph Dragon

So Triumph Dragon is all about using Energy to retire opposing rear guards to gain pressure on the Vanguard circle in the form of a critical, which alone is a very solid base to start with for a Trial Deck boss. Add on the fact that he can search out your persona ride copies for the cost of a Counter Blast, something which all of the bosses share, adds even more consistency and pressure to the deck. With the Energy skill being so generic, it opens up so many options for stuff to pair with Triumph Dragon, so lets take a look at what we can work with.

Clicking the image will open it up in Decklog (new tab)

So with the rideline, there isn't that many generic ones for Dragon Empire to use, so we have gone with the ever faithful Bavsargra rideline, as it then gives us a free discard to ride for the following 2 ride deck uses. What is more interesting however is what I have bulked out the rest of the deck with.

So the first part of the package I have gone with is the set 11 Order package of "Dragritter, Lateefa", "Beat Up Dracokid" and "A Serious Fight!". This is carrying on the retiring of your opponent's rear guards with "A Serious Fight!" and letting "Dragritter, Lateefa" gain extra power for each of those open Rear Guards allowing it to scale even higher and cause pressure based on triggers. I did also go with "Stealth Dragon, Togachirashi" as combo's off nicely with the second part of the effect of "A Serious Fight!", generating the soul that you used to pay for the order in the first place.

Comboing off with the order package, we have also gone with Stealth Fiend, Shenryi, as it lets us bypass the opponent needing one or less rear guards to activate her skill, although with us being retire based anyway means that condition is not hard to reach either. Added soul generation along with replacing herself with a card in hand is really good for digging for either the key order engine pieces in the deck, of for looking for the additional defensive cards in the deck, such as "Red Jeweled Beast, Galnet".

Overall, this is a somewhat budget deck that works really well in constantly retiring the opponent's rear guards, forcing them to commit more cards to board every turn. But now let's move in a different direction this time, and take a look at Dark States.

Cruel Beast Demonic Lord, Oselargest

So "Cruel Beast Demonic Lord, Oselargest" focuses heavily on utilising its soul to extend its multi attack engine, similar to how a Pale Moon deck acts, meaning that this deck is going to focus a lot on getting a nice selection of different cards into our soul. That rear guard called from soul also gaining 10,000 power is also really useful as allows the unit to scale over any defensives the opponent may have hit. So with this boss being so simple, let's take a look into what a list may look like.

Clicking the image will open it up in Decklog (new tab)

As for the rideline here, we have gone with the simple one Favrneel gained back in it's Start Up Deckset, as its is so generic and allow us to filter in the beginning whilst also setting up our drop to be able to use "Steam Scara, Zargon" as early as turn 1. The free ride up on turn 2 is nice, as we can use our starter to pay that cost, seeing as we will never want to call it from soul. But, talking of calling from soul, let us look at one of our ideal targets. 

So it may come to no surprise that we have got "Brainwash Swirler" in this deck, as it is the epitimy of generic Dark States staples. being able to become a 13,000 unit on its own as of turn 3 just for being placed is really strong. Combining this with being called off of Oselargest leads to a 33,000 attacker on its own during a Persona Ride turn. But he can also double as a scaling booster after that attack is done, due to cards such as "Amazement Magician", "Cage of Furious Star" and "Crimson Igspeller" providing a soul charge with their own skills. But what do we do in the situations when we do not have a unit in soul that we want to call out in the later turns of the game?

Well that is where "Clean-sweep Dragon"  comes in, as he is a really good unit in this deck, as getting Persona Ride is no problem due to "Cruel Beast Demonic Lord, Oselargest" being able to search them out. But, "Clean-sweep Dragon" can be used offensively as well as preperation setup, as he can target any player's rear guards to move into soul, allowing for a combination of both players off a single effect, and he then gains power for himself on top. The Counter Blast costs in this deck do start to build up after a while, so timing the use of "Purple Jeweled Beast, Almethys" does become key in order to win.

Overall, "Cruel Beast Demonic Lord, Oselargest" is a fun start into the combo based decks of Dark States, and only improves once we get the DivineZ set 1 when we get cards that tuck our Rear Guards into soul during the battle phase, removing the overcalling that we currently do for the multi attack. But that's enough about Dark States, as we do need to move onto our final deck that is for Brandt Gate.

Blitz Gigamobile, Asturm

So "Blitz Gigamobile, Asturm" has the Brandt Gate issue of being reliant on a set order, and this is amplified that he doesn't gain that set order till DZ-BT01. But even without that, he is still a solid Nova Grappler style deck of restanding the rear guards to gain his multi attack. Unlike "Cruel Beast Demonic Lord, Oselargest" where all the power is given to the unit perfoming the multi attack, Astrum shares the power between itself and the unit that has been stood. But where do we go in terms of supporting this when Astrum doesn't have a dedicated set order? Well let's take a look down below.

Clicking the image will open it up in Decklog (new tab)

So we have decided to go with the Arkhite rideline here as it guarantees us an order that we can place on turn 1 and turn 2, setting off the multiple generics that need us to have set orders. It also allows us to utilise other key cards that we can search off of "Torrential Energy Research" such as "Detonation Monster, Bobalmine" and "Craggy Monster, Girgrand". But let's take a look at a few of the other cards in the list. 

The first card I want to look at is our other set order - "Dispatch! Three Sisters of Cleaning!". I have put this in here, as lets our front row gain 2,000 power for each copy of it in the order zone. What makes this even better is that it is costless to activate, leading to us having extra resources to pay for cards such as "Combine Rusher" when we do the activations. Plus we do have the ability to search for these without running the dedicated support, due to cards such as "Abent Robust" and "Sickle Blade of Inquest, Habitable Zone". having 2 of "Dispatch! Three Sisters of Cleaning!" in the Order Zone is the ideal number, as allows "Combine Rusher" to reach 29,000 power after being restood on a non persona ride turn, which is a magic number for breaking past a simple 15,000 power shield.

We can also keep up with our constant Persona Rides in Brandt Gate, thanks to our second talking point of "Obliging Monster, Secondel". This card allows us to return our extra copies of "Blitz Gigamobile, Asturm" back to our deck, and because it's a grade 3, we can then soul blast and draw a card, all just for placing Secondel. This is really good as the deck generates a fair bit of soul with such little way of using it. Add on the fact that we can then use "Blitz Gigamobile, Asturm" to search the Persona Ride back out of deck leads to some really interesting combos. The extra bonus is that Secondel is also a monster, so can be searched for in the early game due to "Torrential Energy Research".

At the end of the day, "Blitz Gigamobile, Asturm" will improve more once DZ-BT01 will drop and the deck gets access to its own order, but for now, the basic lists that we can get due to Brandt Gate generics is really good.

Final Thoughts

Overall, whilst none of these decks may be massive meta in the current format, all of the basic improved versions are a good starting point to learn about the nation and how it plays. I will be covering the final 3 Quick Start Decks next week, as this article has already been long enough, so will catch you in the next one.

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