Random Rants: To boost or not to boost

Hi this is very random, but here is a tip for all you people who hate swordmy. This came to my attention when this was posted, but i was really surprised how many people never even considered it.

Gn vs JK RP

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He Did WHAT?!?!

Slow and Steady; that's my motto...

The highlight of the video is at 0.34. The GN player rode the PGG, and opted to NOT boost and attack the vg. This has a few very key factors:

1) The attack will not hit the VG without any triggers, so opponent will not take a damge

2) If there is a trigger, you can opt to give the booster the trigger effects, hence the attack will still not hit (6k vs 7k).

3) If there was a crit trigger, you still can give all effects to booster, and RP player will NOT have 2 CB to work with next turn.

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Where is my counterblast!?!?

So why did he do that? Because of swordmy. This card is a moronic pain in the ass to deal with early. An entire column for a lowly JK counterblast. And since your vg is only 6k, a few things are gonna happen if you hit:

1) the next turn he make a 16k column with swordmy, which means thats 15k guard, very painful

2) RP will zerg you to death, and being GN with stride support, you do not have much early game at all, and want to conserve cards for combos later.

So it was a very good move on the GN part. He still got his drive check for the turn, as well as ensure opponent does not get to do his nonsense until the GN player was more prepared. Also GN is a clan in for the long haul, so doing 1 less damage now is not gonna make a difference to them, but if opponent is given oppotunity to rush you, hell its gonna hurt your future plans.


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Porting to Other Matches

So is this applicable to other clans? Very much yes. You need to note which clans are dangerous to give CB to work with(shadow, royal, kagero are very scary examples). And particularly for clans that are really weak early (G-era clans), you might not want to give those decks the counterblast. That said, this does not apply to rush tactics as you wan him dead asap, and are prepared for all the nonsense he is gonna give you anyway.

Note that if you have same power as his vanguard, this tactic will not work that well as you cannot control if it will hit or not. However, you can control if you give him 1-2 damage if a crit shows up. You can still transfer the crit to the booster, hence only doing 1 damage. Also if you do not boost, an opponent may be tempted to just throw a 10k shield anyway to save damage, which telegraphs he does not have a swordmy.

The last possibility is not attacking. This is a very challenging option because you are taking a minus to ensure he does not have a counterblast (-1 drive check). Is it worth it though? Depends on the state of your hand. If  your hand is in good curve and cannot guard swordmy turn properly, you can probably skip a draw. If your hand is terrible and you need to find a card asap (all triggers, risk of miss-grade), I'd suggest you attack in anyway as you need to dig deeper into the deck. So its really situational

To summarize:
Early game if your opponent has higher base than your vanguard, you HAVE the option to not boost. This allows you to generate a scenario where opponent is starved of counterblast early, and cannot make full use of those effects. You still get your drive check, so you just only lost 1 damage.

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So what do you think guys? Leave your comments and opinions about this type of scenario!