Cards of the Week! 2nd Edition

New Card:

Liedown Deletor, Givun

The only Deletor that likes Mondays...

[Auto] [CB1]Card with "Deletor" in it's card name] & Retire this unit & choose 4 other rearguards with "Deletor" in it's card name, and retire them.] After the battle that this unit attacked a Vanguard, if you have a grade 3 vanguard with "Grei" in in it's card name, you may pay the cost. If you do, [Stand] all your vanguard.

Another Deletor again? Yes. Personally, the Alfred support released in the last week has been extremely lackluster and uninteresting to me.

So Deletors now have a rearguard based Vanguard restanding skill. These cards in the past have shown to be extremely powerful and heavily restricting on the clans these cards are in can be given, as the two cards that could restand a vanguard as a rearguard in the past, Cat Butler and Commander Laurel had no counterblast cost and gained advantage.

Givun on the other hand has a counterblast cost and is a -3 in advantage, while being extremely easy for other Link Joker archetypes to disrupt and "Diablo" being un-guardable because of it's skill. Seems to be a rather unreasonable restriction for this card, don't you think? Personally, I think it implies that Deletors are going to get a good advantage engine to help support Deletor's near constant self minusing. (They do however have an amazing filtering engine now thanks to Illfate Deletor, Dorohn)

As of right now? This card is only viable as a finisher, and even then it is extremely risky, if you don't kill them that turn, you've probably lost because Givuns huge advantage lost is extremely hard to mitigate right now in Deletors.

Verdict: Has potential, but right now is risky.

Old Card:

Blue Storm Marshal Dragon, Admiral Maelstrom.

Best. Centaur. Ever.

[Stride]

[Auto] [Wave 4 or more] [CB1] & Choose a face down card in your G-Zone, and turn it face up.] When this unit's attack hits a vanguard, if you have a heart with "Maelstrom" in it's card name, you may pay the cost, if you do, draw a card. choose 3 of your opponent's rearguard, your opponent chooses a rearguard among them for each face up card named "Blue Storm Marshal Dragon, Admiral Maelstrom" in your G-Zone and retires them.

A card that I have seem very often criticized by the vanguard community for being bad. I disagree with this sentiment.

First of, thanks to Blue Storm Marine General, Despina, Admiral Maelstrom can block grade 0'Ss for attacking 4 times and a -1, and while that is a huge commitment to the board, it is a great way to capitalize on your opponent's lack of P-Guards, force P-guards out and be used as a first stride finisher. Using Admiral this way can be done both in Maelstrom and Thavas decks. What harm comes from toolboxing a single copy of what can become a Psuedo-Ragnaclock?

Secondly, Admiral's skill is a great way to grind your opponent down while gaining advantage yourself in Maelstrom decks, especially against more aggressive decks. They either guard (+2 soft advantage at least) or take the hit (+2 hard advantage,). However, Admiral's more demanding conditions make it less of an option against control decks that specifically focus on the rearguard (pretty much all of them.) So if a Maelstrom player is running this, I'd also highly recommend that you run this with Tidal Bore Dragon, Who is a staple in any Aqua Force player's G-Zone.

Thirdly, Admiral Maelstrom, just like Stun Spear, only persona flips when it hits. This makes it a lot easier to fit Admiral into the G-Zone. Unlike Stun Spear however, Admiral is even easier to compress into the G-Zone, and only has to be run at 2 to use it's skill.

Verdict: A very flexible G-Unit, who can be used in several different ways.