Link Joker Analysis: Glendios, Messiahs, Starvaders and Deletors

When I first started playing Vanguard about 3-4 years ago, I remembered it was still the Limit Break era. My Vowing Saber Dragon was essentially a vanilla unit until reaching 4 damage, and one of my early lesson from playing Vanguard was that an opponent could disrupt my strategy just by not giving me the  requisite number of damage for my skill to activate.

The arrival of Link Joker and the Lock mechanic changed the game meta by making it harder or impossible for your opponents to make certain kinds of plays and thus became a strong anti-meta strategy.

In this post, I'll go through the 4 main subspecies of Link Joker and highlight their main strengths as well as ways of playing around it. I have no decklist to offer because I do not play Link Joker, but as as a strong anti-meta clan, it is important to know what LJ can do and what you can to circumvent it.


Glendios

I placed Glendios separately from the rest of the Star-vaders because its playstyle is different enough to distinguish itself from the other Star-vader bosses. Omega Glendios is a unit with an additional built in win condition at LB5, where at the beginning of the Glendios player's turn, if his opponent has 5 or more locked cards,  the Glendios player automatically wins the game.

This win condition was incredibly difficult to fulfil when it first came out, but in the Stride Age it is now possible to fulfil the win condition much more easily with World's End.

Let's look at Glendios other abilities. Glendios has an ACT ability at LB4 that when the player pays the cost of 1 CB and discard 1 Reverse, the player can omega lock all of his opponent's locked RG units. This is a strong ability that extends the lock by another turn for potentially 2-3 units, thus further weakening the opponent's offense.

Glendios' third ability is its bread-and-butter lock skill. Basically when a Reverse unit is placed on the RG circle, the player can lock a RG on the opponent's field, once per turn. By locking a front row RG, the Glendios player can completely shut down one column of attack.

Glendios' fourth ability is what allows the whole Glendios deck to function with Reverse from other clans. All Reverse units are treated as Link Joker units, allowing non-Link Joker Reverse units to attack on RG circle, as well as giving them +4k power. This allows RG columns to push for 15k guard with a booster, thus forcing at least 2 cards per turn.

Omega Loop Glendios circumvents the age old problem for LJ players of not being able to lock a unit on a RG circle until your opponent called it to RG circle. Omega Loop enforces the Lock by forcing the opponent player to call one RG from the top of the deck for every Reverse unit that the Glendios player has. In other words, if the Glendios player can have 5 Reverse units on his RG circles, he would be able to activate Glendios win condition at 5 damage. This final turn move which a Glendios player can unlock at 5 damage makes an opponent extremely reluctant to push Glendios to 5 damage, coupled with lock, granting additional survivability to the Glendios player while allowing the Glendios player to gradually grind away at his opponent's strength.



Ways to play against it
-Don't give the Glendios player 5 damage. If he is already at 4 damage after taking 1 damage from your VG attack, use your RGs to attack his RGs. Besides denying him the use of his ultimate ability, you help to weaken his attacks. With consistent lock pressure every turn from Glendios' third ability, you lose one column's worth of attacks while he is able to swing at you with all his 3 columns. If he does not have enough RGs, it may be possible to shut down one of his lanes.
-Give the crit to another unit. If the Glendios player is at 3 damage, and you drive check a critical trigger, you can pass all the trigger effects to a RG even he no-guarded the attack. If you check another crit, you form a 3 crit lane that the Glendios player must guard or he dies. If you do not check a second crit, use the RG unit with 2 crits to attack the Glendios' rearguards. Do not push Glendios to 5 damage unless you are certain he is unable to World's End.
-Snipe his backrow units. The Glendios deck is constructed in a way that is top-heavy (with 12-13 G3s). This means that boosters in a Glendios deck is alot more scarce. If you have a way to retire the back row, you should do so to get rid of various G1 on hit effects that are splashed in a Glendios deck.
-Beware of his Rubidium. Rubidium's ability can only be used in a Glendios deck, and is an extremely strong defensive ability. When the opponent's VG attack is aimed at the VG, Rubidium can redirect the opponent's vanguard attack to a RG circle with a unit with Reverse in its card name. Basically, for virtually no cost, your all in final gambit based on your VG can be wasted by Rubidium (Restanders, Auto-Criters etc). One way to play away it is to snipe his Reverse units, so that there is no unit on the vanguard circle for Rubidium to redirect. Another method is to take note of his drive checks.


Overall verdict: The Glendios deck remains strong and relevant in the Stride Age. Its defensive capabilities based on locking, LB5 deterrent and Rubidium makes it hard for a opponent to end the game. Even if a deck based solely on twin drive may seem weak in today's meta, it also means that a Glendios deck is unlikely to ever deck out, and its defensive abilities allows it to keep up with newer decks.



Messiahs 

Messiahs are the G-Link Joker units that focus on locking on their own RGs to gain abilities and power up. As a G-era deck, the deck's ace are the two powerful Messiah strides, Amnesty and Excelics Messiah.(Ok, Amnesty is kinda outdated now, entirely surpassed by Excelics, the same way that Aurageyser Doomed has surpassed original Aurugeyser)

The premise of both Excelics and Amnesty are simple. They give the ability to unlock any number of RGs on both the Messiah player and the opponent's fields, and if 3 or more cards are unlocked, they gain +1 critical. Excelics has an additional effect of retiring all unlocked opponent RG units, thus permanently weakening the opponent's field. Additionally, Messiahs have also recently gained the support of new units that unlock in the battle phase, thus giving them multiple attacks to bolster their offence. As a result, Messiahs are a strong LJ archetype that combine the defensive power of Lock with offence coming from a strong VG column  and multiple RG attacks. 

Ways to play against it.

-One of the most glaring weakness of a Messiah deck is that it is much slower than the other Link Joker archetypes to lock the opponent's defence. It suffers from the same weakness as all other G-era decks, in that it is virtually vanilla until GB1 is unlocked. That means that it is possible to go on full offense 1-2 turns more before your units will be locked compared to the other pre-G era LJ archetypes.

-It is also slow in the sense that its' advantage engine only really builds up from GB2 onwards. Messiah's breakstride unit, Alter Ego Messiah provides a defensive GB2 ability on par with Choas Breaker Dragon that allows the Messiah player to draw a card for each unit unlocked, for the cost of 1 soulblast. To aggravate things, Excelics retires each unlocked unit on the opponent's field, creating even more bonuses for the Messiah players. Messiah players will want to activate the GB2 ability as soon as possible by striding Blizza so as to unlock GB2, while unflipping to setup for Excelics next turn. By doing so, the Messiah's player offense is compromised. 

-As a result, it is possible to push Messiahs to high damage early or weaken it by targeting key RGs (eg. Lady Battler of the White Dwarf) such that their late game is not as strong as it can possible be. 

Starvaders 

The original Link Joker; Star-vaders have evolved a great deal with new support for the Starvaders more recently. There are a wide variety of units with strong Lock effects because they do not need stride to activate their effects, since most of them are old cards. With some additional revival units, they become  really great throughout all stages of the game. I'll only be focusing on Chaos Breaker Dragon which received support recently. 

Chaos Breaker Dragon has quickly returned to the meta with the introduction of its new stride as well as G3 fall ride. 

CBD's LB4 gives it immense defensive card advantage by allowing it to soulblast 1 to retire a locked card from the opponent's field and draw a card, resulting in a -1/+1 advantage. With soulcharging support, the CBD player can draw numerous cards over the course of a few turns, and coupled with the defensive advantage gained from locking down one column, is a tough combination to beat. 

Chaos Universe is the new stride for CBD that updates it for today's meta. When Chaos Universe's ACT skill activates, G-Persona, CB1 and the opponent is forced to call a unit from hand onto an open RC of the CBD player's choice. This card guarantees consistency in locking the front row, a problem previously countered by the opponent playing carefully not to call front row RGs, or removing them with their own unique mechanic (Murakumo, SP etc). If the CBD player has 2 or more face up units on the G-Zone, Chaos Universe gains the additional ability to lock another unit for free. 

 

Chaos Bringer is the fail ride for CBD. It's LB4 ability allows you  to CB1 during your opponent's main phase if it has 2 or more locked cards, to search out a CBD from the deck and ride it as stand. It's on call ability also allows it to CB1 to lock an opponent's unit in the backrow. The LB4 ability is great as it ensures CBD arrives on the Vanguard to activate its LB4 ability when the opponent's units unlock at the end of their turn.

With the new stride and fail-ride, the CBD deck gains incredible locking consistency on first stride and the ability to search out the CBD easily, coupled with the original strength of the CBD deck that works pre-stride. With Chaos Bringer, the CBD can easily counter GB1 decks since both RG columns can be locked by G3 turn with their native lock skill and 1 Photon . 

Ways to play against it

-Above all, play smart. Since you know that Chaos Universe can lock your front row, and you can afford it, why not flood your front row? Chaos Universe becomes alot more 'meh' when used to lock the backrow. 

-Dont try to grade stall it unless you are also playing a pre-GB1 deck. 

-CBD is a strong defensive deck but it lacks in offensive power. Use that to your advantage by rushing early (if you can) or stride over a few turns to wear down your opponent. 

-Snipe key units if possible (eg. LB enablers) through retires if you can. 

-Damage control (sometimes attacking his RG is better than just giving him one free CB). Pay attention to the drive checks, sometimes he may not have replacements. 

-Don't play Aqua Force. :)

Deletors 

The Deletors are a LJ subclan that focus on "Deleting" the Vanguard. Their unique mechanic allows them to force the opponent to flip the Vanguard face down, causing the opponent's Vanguard to lose all text (as well as any abilities that they have) and their native power. This means that a Deleted Vanguard has 0k power. Deletors became a crazy anti-meta subclan for a while based on how difficult is it to guard when your Vanguard is deleted and nullifying all effects and abilities on the VC. However, when the coming of the Stride Age and its ability to nullify Delete, Deletors lost popularity because its chief mechanic can be so easily countered. 

Despite this, a competent Deletor player can still cause you alot of pain. The good thing about facing a  Deletor deck is that the main gambit of Delete is very resource intensive. 

Docking Deletor, Greion's skill allows you to Delete the Vanguard for the cost of 2 CB and Banish Delete a card from your opponent's drop zone for the alternative win condition based on Banish Delete. Pretty standard for a Deletor deck although Greion is considered to be one of the lower costed Deletor Vanguard.

However, what is truly formidable about a Deletor deck is the ability to abuse the Deleted Vanguard to force the opponent to drop 2 or more cards just to guard a simple RG attack. 

Hailing Deletors Alba and Elro work as a set, requiring them to be on specific RG columns. Alba requires itself to be on the right RG column while Elro requires itself to be on the left RG column, which activates their ability to +3k when attacking a Vanguard. Since a 12k RG attack is directed against a Deleted Vanguard of 0k power, the opponent player needs to guard 15k shield just to guard a simple RG attack that one would usually not bat an eyelid about. It is really the RG support that makes the Deletors formidable. Couupled with a couple of stand triggers, the damage advantage generated pre-stride can be extremely devastating.


Ways to Play against it
-Deletors  are very CB heavy: Try to engage in damage control if possible. Eg. If for some reason the Deletor player has only one open CB and you know that he is going to ride to G3 next turn, it could be a good idea to attack his RG instead, since you know that Deletors need alot of counterblasts to activate their effects. In short, if the Deletors cannot Delete, they are pretty manageable.
-Field Disruption: Deletors more than other LJ subclans rely on having some kind of decent RG attacks to force high amounts of shield for guarding from their opponent. Any ability to disrupt field will make it harder for Deletor players to make full use of the heavy cost of their Delete mechanic. Attacking RGs with your VG works as well.
-Don't gradelock against Deletors. They don't need to stride to trigger their effects.
-Be wary of Deletor units that can lock as well.
-Be wary of the Stand triggers. Stand triggers are very strong against a 0k Vanguard.



That's all folks! I hope that the above LJ analysis will help the next time you ever play against a LJ deck by knowing their unique strengths and weaknesses, as well as how you can play around it. Hopefully, that may be sufficient for you to snatch a victory against LJ. It's not easy but it is possible to maximise your chances by following some of tips as outlined above. Leave comments if you have any questions in the chatbox! 

General Strategy: Stride Rule #1

On our genesis clan analysis post, we made mention of Stride Rule no. 1, which may have raised a couple of eyebrows for some of you skeptics.

This is the rule as stated:

Your opponent guards for 2 pass, and you have a Vanguard that does triple drive. If your first drive check is a trigger, you should all-in, because the chance of netting an additional trigger on 2nd or 3rd drive check is high.

Imagine a common scenario: You smile to yourself as you declare an attack with your stride unit, knowing your opponent has to guard your attack. (extremely evil on-hit effect or extremely evil attack when your opponent is at 4 damage) Well, your smile starts to fade a little as you notice your opponent's eyebrows starting to knit. I mean, you didn't even bother to announce the power level, knowing the effort would go to waste if your opponent smacks a perfect guard on the table.

But alas, your opponent starts putting down 10k shields with contemplation, hesitating a little. (At this point, your own eyebrows start to knit) Finally, your opponent says, "two to pass". Taking a deep breath, you reveal the top card of your deck.

It's a trigger. What now?

And so, the question arises: should you pass the trigger effect to your Vanguard, knowing that you have two more chances to check a trigger?

It's the kind of thing that could spark off some friendly debate among friends or in forum discussions, an idea which taunts at the nerd within you. Intuitively, you "feel" that it's right because in many games, you opt for the safe route, and then regret it as soon as you check a second trigger that could have had devastating (and extremely evil) effects.

What, then, are the actual probabilities? If you're interested to see the calculations, scroll down a bit more. For now, let's focus on the results.

Okay, so your first check is a trigger. Let's just say we want a probability of at least 50% to check another trigger in the next 2 drive checks. In other words, we are interested in cases where we can succeed most of the time.

If it's a serious game, you'd better start counting your triggers, because that may affect your decision. It's pretty obvious that if you have more triggers in your deck, the chances of success will be higher. And of course, you'd fare much better with a "thin" deck that contains higher trigger density.

So, let's consider the probabilities when we have, say, 30 cards left in our deck:

Scenario: Triple Drive! First check is a trigger!
y-axis: Probability of second and third check containing 1 or 2 triggers
x-axis: Number of triggers in a deck of 30 cards

The red bars highlight cases where the probability has risen over 50%, and these are the cases when we want to all-in. In summary, what this bar chart tells us is that when we have 30 cards left in our deck, we should expect to succeed most of the time if we have at least 9 triggers left in our deck.

Here is the full list of the minimum number of triggers required for a 50% success rate for different amounts of cards left in your deck:

For 10 cards in deck: at least 3 triggers left
For 11 - 14 cards in deck: at least 4 triggers left
For 15 - 17 cards in deck: at least 5 triggers left
For 18 - 20 cards in deck: at least 6 triggers left
For 21 - 24 cards in deck: at least 7 triggers left
For 25 - 27 cards in deck: at least 8 triggers left
For 28 - 31 cards in deck: at least 9 triggers left
For 32 - 34 cards in deck: at least 10 triggers left
For 35 - 38 cards in deck: at least 11 triggers left
For 39 cards in deck: at least 12 triggers left

Do you notice something about the trigger density required?

A general rule of thumb can be seen from this: you only require a deck of at least one-third triggers to have a better-than-average chance of benefiting from Stride Rule #1.

Considering that the initial proportion of triggers in a deck is 16 out of 49, or about a third, a well-shuffled deck with an even distribution of triggers should always contain about one-third triggers. This means that Stride Rule #1 would work most of the time for a well-shuffled deck!

I hope that this post has given a somewhat legitimate support to a rule that we mentioned in passing. It may seem a little bit crazy to be so rigorous on a game meant for fun, but it's always good to reassure yourself with extravagant details, because... why not? Good luck and have fun in your games!

Details of calculations

In my post, I only consider raw probabilities of drawing X number of triggers from a deck of N cards (without replacement). This can be done rather conveniently through the hypergeometric distribution function.

There are 4 inputs to this function: N (number of cards), X (number of triggers), n (number of cards drawn) and x (number of triggers drawn). It calculates the probability that, from a deck of N cards containing X triggers, after drawing (or drive checking, in this case) n cards, we get exactly x triggers.

In MATLAB, the calculations can be performed by the in-built function hygecdf(x,N,X,n).  For instance, in the case where there are 30 cards left in a deck of 9 triggers, we want to calculate the probability when we drive check 2 cards (n = 2) and get 1 or 2 triggers. Because this is a cumulative distribution function, it sums up the probabilities of all cases where we get x triggers or below. So, taking hygecdf(1,30,9,2) will give us the probability of checking 1 or 0 triggers. When we enter hygecdf(0,30,9,2) we get the probability of checking no triggers. Therefore, one way to calculate our desired probability is to take 1 - hygecdf(0,30,9,2), which gives us 0.5172.

This calculation can then be repeated for varying numbers of triggers (varying X) in a deck of 30 cards, to generate the bar chart shown. The same set of calculations was then performed with varying numbers of cards left in deck (varying N). From the set of probabilities generated in these calculations, we are only interested in the minimum value of X that would cause the probability to rise above 0.5.

One should note that such calculations are general and can, in fact, apply to a twin drive instead. It does show that you are indeed more than likely to check at least one trigger in a twin drive, given that your deck contains one-third triggers. This is by no means the only way to analyse the situation, and there may be some other way that could provide a more comprehensive outlook.

General Strategy: What to attack with first when your opponent is at 5 damage?

When it comes to Cardfight Vanguard, even small decisions can change the course of the game. In this article, we will explore the possibilities of what you can use to attack with first when your opponent is at 5 damage and almost on the brink of losing the game.

The first question to ask yourself is: what is your deck's trigger lineup? If your deck contains Stand Triggers, the intuitive decision would be to attack with one rear-guard lane first, before the vanguard lane attacks. This is so that in the event that you drive check a Stand Trigger, you are able to stand the front row rear-guard that you had previously attacked with to gain an extra attack. The confusing part comes if your deck does not contain Stand Triggers (or, after some hard work of counting your own triggers, you reached the conclusion that your deck does not contain any more Stand Triggers for your drive check).

Let us analyse the guard requirements for the following situations, assuming you have 2 functional rear-guard lanes and each generating an attack that requires a 10k shield to guard.

SCENARIO 1: Both Guard 10

A: No triggers after drive check

It would not matter if you attack with rear-guard first or vanguard first. The amount of shields dropped by the opponent will still be the same.

B: One trigger after drive check

The attack order still would not matter. The guard requirement is Guard 10 and Guard 15 regardless of the attack order.

C: Two triggers after drive check

Here's where the difference starts to show. If you had attacked with one rear-guard first, you would be forced to pass all trigger effects to the remaining rear-guard, resulting in Guard 10 and Guard 20. This means that the opponent needs to drop a minimum of 3 cards to guard your rear-guard attacks.

However, if you were to attack using your vanguard first, you can assign the trigger power bonus between your two rear-guard lanes, resulting in two Guard 15 lanes. This means that the opponent needs to drop a minimum of 4 cards to guard your rear-guard attacks, and hence this move is a better one.

D: More than two triggers after drive check

If you were to attack with one rear-guard first, once again you would have to pass all trigger effects to the remaining rear-guard, which could allow the opponent to easily survive by dropping a Perfect Guard to that high-power rear-guard.

Attacking with your vanguard first would allow you to split the trigger power and minimise the negative impact of your opponent having a Perfect Guard in his hand.

Conclusion: If both your rear-guard lanes are Guard 10, attack with vanguard first.

SCENARIO 2: One lane is Guard 10, and the other lane is already Guard 15 inherently (before assigning trigger power!)

A: Attack with the Guard 10 lane first

Following our previous analysis, any trigger power bonuses you get will all be assigned to the last rear-guard lane, which allows the opponent to easily Perfect Guard the attack.

B: Attack with vanguard first

This is where it gets a little iffy. Now, let us assume that the opponent does not have sufficient shield in his hand to guard all your attacks this turn. His logical decision would be to no guard your strongest attack, which most likely is the vanguard attack. If you attack with your vanguard first, he will immediately declare a no guard. Assuming you did not check a critical trigger, or any triggers for that matter, but your opponent pulled off a 6th damage heal, your two rear-guard lanes would have turned from Guard 10/Guard 15 into Guard 5/Guard 10, further enhancing your opponent's ability to survive this turn.

C: Attack with the Guard 15 lane first

Assuming the same situation as case 2B, your opponent will have to drop a 15k shield first, before declaring a no guard to your vanguard attack. If he heals and you didn't check any triggers, your remaining rear-guard lane will be worth a Guard 5. Overall, your two rear-guard lanes turned from Guard 10/Guard 15 into Guard 5/Guard 15, and as a result, your opponent would have dropped one more card than case 2B.

Conclusion: If one rear-guard lane is Guard 10, and the other rear-guard lane is Guard 15, attack with the Guard 15 lane first, followed by the vanguard.

OTHER SCENARIOS: It is possible to have many other attacking powers for your rear-guard lanes, but you can still apply similar principles to help you decide which to use for your first attack. Remember to try to cause your opponent to drop as many cards from his hand as possible to guard your attacks!

Alright, that's all for this strategy review article. Thanks for reading, and feel free to comment if you have any queries or doubts. (: