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| Why u no ride your awesome grade 3?!? ~ Morikawa |
What is Grade Locking?
For those who have not been on the receiving end of it yet, your opponent intentionally stays at grade 2 for 1 or more turns. This is quite different from what people term as grade stuck that g-assist is suppose to help smooth out: people will intentionally stay at grade 2, and still gain benefits off it even though they lose 1 use of twin drive by delaying.
Opponent is unable to stride or Legion:
Both of these require you and your opponent to be at least grade 3, so they are unable to access to most of their game plan. This is especially brutal to newer stride-based decks, where most of their important effects are stamped with Generation Break, and are pretty much vanilla before stride. Even a lot of legion era support needs vanguard to be in legion state, or perform legion for effects, hence most of the deck effectively turned vanilla.
2)You get first stride
This is the main reason why its so common. Being the first to stride is quite brutal to your opponent. You get first triple-drive, first activation of all your Generation Break effects, and your on hit-stride are painful to guard or take at this point of the game. So letting your opponent stride first puts you in quite a bad position.
3) Rushing the opponent:
If your hand is up for it, you can just rush opponent down with your units. Due to the nature of how many people mulligan for at least a copy of grade 1-3 in hand, hence they will have at most 2-3 cards to guard with for the first few turns. That means they are quite vulnerable to rushing early barring damage triggers, and even then, properly formed columns will still wreck them with a little luck from triggers. If you are at 3-4 damage by the time your opponent first stride, and have to guard everything, you are in for a rough time and have to guard pretty much all the big hits.
4) Riding is an actual Minus
By not having to use up a card in hand to ride, you actually save hand, assuming everything in your hand is playable at grade 2. While you make full use of your entire hand, your opponent has taken a -3 to ride up to Grade 3, while you -2 just to get to grade 2. The 1 card may not seem like much, but its potentially 1 more card to guard with. The game mechanics suppose to let twin drive from grade 3 help earn back the losses from riding, but we have already established how profitable it is to get the first stride, so even if riding to grade 3 gets you twin drive first, it will cause a lot of hurt when opponents gain access to their advantage first by striding before you.
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| If you see opponent intentionally sitting on this, be prepared for some rough early game |
How to Grade-Lock?
So I have talked about why it can be a strategic means to win your card-fights. so how do you go about this as profitable as possible? Here are some of steps people usually take if they plan to grade lock:
Sub-clan units
Particularly true for effects that happen before legion/striding. The most common are grade 1 10k attackers and grade 2 12k attackers, but also effects that let you use skills prior to a grade 3. Most of them belong to the pre-legion era, and the strongest few exist during the limit break era where the vg skills tend to be slower, and rearguard effects make or break a deck.
Run 10k grade 2
People have this hate for vanillas, but they need to get over the hate, cause the way grade-lock is profitable. barring restraint 11k grade 2, 10k vanilla is the safest kind of unit to sit on while grade-locked. They cannot be punished by all those vanilla 9k grade 2, and always trump a 9k vanguad as long there is at least a 5k boost (15k will still beat a 9k with 10k shield when theres a trigger pushing it to 20k, past the 19k). Defense and offense wise, if the fight is to be grade-locked, the one who rides a 10k vanilla has the stong advantage. If they had to call a booster just so the 9k can hit a 10k vanguard, thats one less card in their hand they can use for guarding.
Rush decks
I wrote about my seeker rush here. The principle is basically the same: get as many magic columns as possible while your opponent is still reeling from the minus they experience from riding, and also being unable to guard as some cards in hand. Its not surprising to see opponent be at 3-4 damage by the time they ride a grade 3, and since you are not a grade 3 yet, they dont have access to most of their mechanics to fight back, and if you factor in they have to guard like their life depended on it, their hand is gonna be in a rough shape. Basically this strategy is valid for most sub-clans, with those with strong flooding potential being the scariest (seekers,jewel knights,revengers, liberators)
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Why this is a problem?
Although I agree this is a very legitimate strategy for vanguard, there are a few foreseeable problems. Firstly it kills most of the fun for your opponent. Many people (myself included) love the awesome effects legion and stride brings to the table, and being denied these abilities is a killjoy. Granted it is a tactical decision, I rather not do this way too many times, or way too long in casual play. Vanguard is suppose to be fun for all players, and properly interactions; something you find happening when your stride deck is sitting there doing nothing, your grade 3 stuck in hand for fear of breaking the silence, or having a vanilla slug fest. I hope that Bushirod can figure out a good remedy for this, but unfortunately this is gonna happen a lot in tournaments cause to many, winning is everything at a tourney. Just don't be a prick and do this often to your friends intentionally to take the fun out of his games.
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| /Unstuck please! |
How to Unstuck
So now that I have talked about benefits and problems of grade stuck, here are my suggestions against them:
Play 10k & 8K vanillas
This is particularly true for decks with very weak early game (Gear chronicle). Vanguard's ultimate goal is to shaft six damage down your opponent's throat, and having the guard advantage by having high base numbers goes a long way to not dying. It sucks if you don't get to play some awesome skills, but if you are facing a lot of grade lock, they might as well be vanillas, so factor in this.
Guard early, and often
Grade lock turns the game into a damage race with vanillas. And if that is so, you want to take as minimal damage as possible. That means being liberal with your guarding. If opponent intends to stay grade locked, take as little damage as humanly possible, and let the twin drive overwhelm your opponent over a few turns.
Have strong early game plans
Most main clans have a lot of options early (shadow, royal are famous few), and most can operate even at just grade 2. Best advise is plan for early game interactions, be it playing vanillas, or skill that can be used early, which are commonly found in sub clan cards.
Just ride your grade 3
If your deck is incapable of grade lock strategies, don't force it. Just stick to guarding easy damage and taking the first stride attack that will be coming. If he continues to maintain grade 2, you will overwhelm him over 2-3 turns if you live that long, and you definitely need the extra drive checks to find more shields to guard with.
Play stands and draw triggers, they hate it
They will definitely try to guard for their rear guards if possible, and stand triggers will completely wreck them. Also for draw trigger, barring heal triggers, are the best thing to damage check against grade lock. More available options and the extra 5k just wrecks early rush like no tomorrow.
Mutual Agreement
Just tell your folks you hate it to the core. If they value social interactions, they will cut down the frequency it happens. That said, some house rules could help mitigate the frequency this happens. I suggest one of the following:
- If opponent intentionally miss grade and did not g-assist that turn, and the opponent was a grade 3 since the start of the turn, he has to return what the drive check back to the bottom of the deck (still get the trigger effect, but make the minus hurt a lot more)
- If a player strides first, the opponent gets to draw a card, and put a card back at the bottom at the end of the turn (to help facilitate guarding, which is downright nasty against first strides)
- The opponent who grade stuck for 2+ turns treats the other person a can drink (my personal favorite)
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So What are your guys' opinions? Let me know what you guys think, as well as your opinions on the matter.
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