Premium Watch: The Answer of Truth Meta

With the release of VEB03: The Answer of Truth, Great Nature, Genesis, and Gear Chronicle have brought new cards to the pool for these clans in Premium Standard.

Today, we will be going over some of the new cards, the new deck concepts that are introduced with them, and combos to watch out for.

 

GEAR CHRONICLE

Gear Chronicle has always been about stride, and their standard deck is no different, using LostLegend to gain force markers and stride up to grade 4 every turn, making it a very popular deck with a unique playstyle around using Grade 4 units.

However, in Premium Standard, there are a wide range of cards that impact future deck builds.

For example, Wedgemove Dragon is a unit that, when discarded for cost counts as Grade 3. This allows you to use them as Stride fodders, an upgrade from previous iterations due to them having 10k shield.

 

While most discussion has been around Mystery Flare Dragon and its ability to gain an extra turn at 19 grade bind, its practicality seems limited in nature at first glance. However, it is important to remember that with the effect of NeonGyze, Zeroth dragons in bind zone count towards this total grade number, meaning that when you ride mystery flare dragon with 5 bind zeroth dragons, you can count those as 20 towards your total.

 

Another core concept for the clan is normal riding up to Grade 4, using Idealize Dragon's skill to gain advantage, then using that as your base unit when fighting with strides, taking advantage of your 15k on the defense to tank through most attacks the opponent throws at you. While this does cut you out from future imaginary gifts, sometimes it is what you need to fight.

Force gift, however, appears to be extremely important in the future of deckbuilding, as Time Leap allows for the clan to get easy access to multiple attacks, taking advantage of the increased power in the circle. Additionally, if you go first, you can get two force gifts by the time you get to striding by using Lost Legend's skill to ride a G4 from the deck then going back down to G3 and getting another gift, greatly increasing your combo potential. Its like a built-in Alfred-Tarna!

Placing a force gift or two on a rear guard circle, followed by multiple calls of Steam Maiden Melem and time leaping via TickTock Worker or History Maker Dragon, can give you access to more attacks with extra power from the force, while using Steam Battler Ur-Watar to maintain hand.

The basis of the combo is the same as before: Call Melem, attack with it on a force circle to get a 21k attack. Then, at the end of battle, call a G0: Tick Tock Worker or Ur Watar, then use History Maker Dragon to time leap it when you attack, calling back Melem for yet another attack!


Lost Legend's mini-stride ability gives you two force gift in a single turn. make sure to take advantage of this when going first!

One cool interaction between the Bind zone mechanic of the newer cards and stride is with Metapulsar Huang-Long, whom would have difficulty having cards to call from bind without support, but now that your deck already does so, Huang-Long gives you an extra attack!

Proceed sheep is an interesting card, as it can give you as much as 7 grades in the bind zone, all for cb1 and no lost advantage.

 

 

 

While not used in this example deck, if you ride Lost Legend and put a force gift on Vanguard, an interesting interaction is had with Chronodragon Gearnext.

While Nextage and Gear Groovy may specifically ask for you to ride Chronojet Dragon, Gearnext does not, instead only asking that your hearts is Gear Dragon, which coincidentally, Lost Legend, Mystery Flare, and Idealize are; giving you access to the Gearnext's powerful restanding ability. This is used heavily in the ZTB-Force hybrid build, that uses both ChronojetZ and Lost Legend to beatdown and gain advantage, where you can easily get the ZTB cards necessary for the effect.

Imagine this: Using multiple force markers on a rear guard and restanding it with Pulsar Hypno Sheep, or multiple calls onto that circle with Pulsar Spearhead Unicorn!

 

Another interesting deck to think about is the fan favourite Chronofang Tiger deck. Using the new cards to accelerate bind zone, the issue the deck previously had, we can now access the strong and powerful cards that the deck so sorely depends on with more bind and faster binding. Chronofangs ability to be flexible with deck building due to its not needing stride cost is extremely handy. Not to mention the new FV Primordial Dracokid giving us extra soul without having to go through some effects or GB1 to send it to soul, the resource the deck so craves.

 

Example Decklist: Tiger Time Leap

 

 

 

GENESIS

Genesis, in standard, is an incredibly tricky and complex deck to play, with seemingly two to three different styles of play going on, and no immediate clear way of working together, and takes a master to understand deeply and pilot well. A straightforwards but also interesting style of play, which will catch many players off guard when you face against them.

In premium standard, however, there are several archetypes and concepts to be used.

The first concept that has become popular is the Himiko-Gyze concept. Previously, Genesis and Amaruda had used their Revelation keyword to filter the deck, increasing the chances of hitting triggers, and using Deemed Angel to maintain hand and card advantage, ending the game with Gyze.

Himiko, in combination with Gyze, allows you to get 2-3 confirmed triggers to activate, giving you 2-3 more Zeroth Dragons open to get to Gyze faster.

Its important to note that Himiko's ability looks at the opponents grade, so if youre going first, and your opponent is g2, you only get to activate two triggers.

While seemingly similar to Oracle-Gyze, this deck doesnt have protect markers, meaning it relies on limited number of null guards to keep yourself alive while setting up that gyze.

Between revelation, Goddess of the Milky Way Pleione, and Himiko activating triggers during main phase, this deck is stable in searching up triggers and setting them to the top of the deck, as well as opening the zeroth dragons needed to set up Gyze, but may find weakness in getting the necessary ultimate stride costs, keeping your hand up to size, and fighting against Shadow Paladin with their Phantom Blaster Diablo.

The deck uses Battle Maiden Mihikarihime to reduce soul blast costs, keeping your himiko always live.

While it is a functional concept, with the popularity of NoLifeKing Assassin on the rise, Gyze decks like Genesis Gyze look to have a hard time in the coming months.

 One of the interesting developments some players have come up with to counter this is to include the Wiseman-Tahro loop into the deck. This results in a deck that instead of reducing soul blast costs, soul charges instead, and coincidentally had the wiseman loop parts to create a deck that has two different win conditions.

One of the shortcomings of himiko-gyze is the lack of effective use of Force gift, so including the wiseman loop by including Angelic Wiseman, Taro, Gelgja and other soul charging cards gives you a way to cover this, should you choose to build your deck that way.

The second key concept for Genesis from this new set is Witch of Frogs Melissa.

Melissa allows you to soul blast 3 to force the opponent to call from the top of their deck cards equal to the number of rear guards they have.

In standard, this is used in conjunction with Witch of Cats Cumin to return Melissa to the hand and re-use the ability to fight certain decks, especially protect clans such as Angel Feather, Dark Irregulars, Oracle Think Tank, and Granblue by decking them out instead of dealing damage.

This also translates to premium, where the ability to feed soul to Melissas effect and consistency of drawing into them is much higher. This concept is used in the Tahro-Wiseman loop deck, to, as before, create another way to achieve the win condition.

This deck plays much more as a combo deck, with the player looking to identify how to win, and then setting up said combo, while the opponent is trying to figure out which way they are going to be defeated, or perhaps not being able to see their opponents plan.

The key cards to help you draw even more are Dark Wolf that Hunts Deities Fenrir, and Battle Maiden Sahohime. Both of these do similar things, increasing your hand by drawing extra cards while selecting cards to send too soul. Use these to search up parts needed for the combo while maintaining a solid defense, and baiting the opponent to call more cards to be more at risk of decking out against Melissa.

While this deck does not play force markers, if you wish, you can try playing Eternal Goddess, Iwanagahime, whom not only comes with Force gift, but also a handy skin to filter your deck to find necessary parts, and the ability to sit on a 13k defence, bolstering your defences against decks that like to poke with 11k or 12k attacks.

 

Example Decklist: WisemanLoop/Melissa DeckDeath Hybrid

 

GREAT NATURE

Great Nature appears to be the cheapest and least popular of the three clans to build in Standard, with complete decks going for as low as 4000-5000JPY in Japan. However, in Premium Standard, a lot of old parts have become difficult to obtain and thus it has become difficult to build decks, owing to its status as an unpopular clan previously. High attack power and consistent drawing and a lot of combo-like movement, this clan has always been for the more advanced player.

With the release of The Answer of Truth, a few cards and concepts come to the forefront to be played in Premium Standard: MonoculousRhinoZoa, Hammsuke Aggro, and Leopald Break Ride Turbo. 

All three of these decks take advantage of Great Nature's previous support in the form of Mikesaburo and Coiling Duckbill to gain advantage starting from the early game, as well using Accel circles to gain more attacks on top of using Crayon Tiger to restand units. This is on top of the consistent draw power to solidify defence, and using the stride Omniscience Dragon Balaurl to give on hit draw to your entire front row. As accel circles from Imaginary gift Accel count as front row Rear guard circles, Balaurl can give extra power to even more units!

One of the key interesting cards to use in the deck is the Big Belly stride, which allows you to restand multiple units on the field. Usually, it would give only two more attacks at best, but with Accel circles, this number increases greatly.

 

The first concept we want to discuss today is the Monoculous Tiger, Talented Rhino, and Zeroth Dragon of Death Garden Zoa combo.

Monoculous Tiger is a G1 card from the new set that has the ability to, upon boosting, soul blast one to send the top card of your deck to the drop zone. If its a trigger unit, the opponent cannot call sentinels from their hand, and if its a normal unit, they cannot call non trigger units from their hand. In Standard, this would mean they would have be able to null guard only if it hit a trigger, and effectively sealing off Protect markers.

However, in Premium Standard, a large number of decks play G1 null guards, for trigger space, draw effects, or other effects such as Esras, over the more recent G0 Draw trigger null guards. This means that agains decks that play this, moculous tiger would be able to block null guards regardless of what card is sent to the drop zone by its effect. This makes it a perfect card to combo with Zeroth Dragon of Deaths Garden Zoa, whom wins the game if your rear guard hits the vanguard.

However against decks that use G0 null guards, its also important to have a card that can block G0s, in order to steal the win when fighting decks such as Megacolony or Gyze decks that play their G0 Null. Talented Rhino fills this role, as a high powered attacker that seals off Grade 0 units, including their draw trigger null guards.

As for securing Ultimate Stride cost, Mikesaburo is a card that gives you easy access to searching out G3 at the end phase, making it easy to secure a card with the same name as Vanguard, to ultimate stride. Mikesaburo also does double duty in the deck, helping search out your Talented Rhino.


The rest of the deck functions as the great nature deck, making this deck a beatdown style deck with a hidden win condition to surprise unsuspecting and unprepared opponents.

 
Our second concept employs a different interaction, the use of Hammsuke as your main G3 ride in order to speed up the accel circle creation, giving you access to more and more attackers and pressure via Balaurl.

While the deck does play similarly to the Standard style of early game aggression followed by riding Hammsuke to get two accel circles in one ride and the standard deck would have difficulty maintaining cards in hand due to both losing cards to both Hamusuke's effect and not having reliable or good draw source, the premium rendition can easily replenish hand thanks to Crayon Tiger, Mikesaburo, and Coiling Duckbill, followed by Balaurl once you get to striding, easily covering for some of the weaknesses of the otherwise weak concept.

The main weakness of the deck is still requiring you to pull off the ride chain and makes it up to g2 Hammsuke. That being said, between early game draw and Mikesaburo easily fetching up G3, Great Nature has an increased ability to mulligan more cards in the early game, making you draw the G1 or G2 hamusuke even earlier.

 

Our third concept to talk about is the interaction between School Hunter Leopald and Honorary Professor Chatnoir.

School Hunter Leopald's first skill makes all auto abilities it has trigger twice if there is a Grade 3 card in soul. This does mean that abilities that are given to the vanguard, such as via Chatnoir's break ride, are also triggered twice, giving you far more turbo and draw at the end of the turn, with each rear guar attack becoming two extra cards in your hand! Thats at least 6 extra cards in your hand at the end of the turn from draws alone!

The winning image of this deck is to usually to first pull of the Chatnoir-Leopald combo, loading up your hand with many cards including several heal triggers, then using those heal triggers to accelerate into a very destructive GB8.

 

Great nature is a solid deck in both offence and defense, and while their new cards do not necessarily synergize very well with some of the older builds, their accel gift certainly does. Make use of the advantage gain from older cards to dish out consistent high powered attacks while maintaining balanced defence.

 

Example Decklist: Great Nature Beatdown Feat. MonoZoa

 

That's all for our VEB03 The Answer of Truth Premium Standard update! 

I hope you now have more insight to how you can build your favorite clan, with more ideas and interesting decks running about. Premium standard is a great place to play your favorite combos and decks, where they will last for all eternity, and as such the meta is incredibly diverse, even at the competitive scene! Be sure to use the ideas you learned here today to build your own deck and give it a spin at your nearest locals or BCS!

 

Information about the author:

CanYouSayG/Dr Sei-Ji A. Keong is an avid Cardfight Vanguard blogger whom has played in Europe, Japan, and East Asia, bringing you new and enjoyable insights to the world of Vanguard for both the card game, competitive environment, and the community. He plays Neo Nectar and Royal Paladin.