[Cardfight!! Vanguard] Aki's Bermuda △ deck

Name (Japanese)	Name (English)	Grade / Skill / Starting VG	Power / Guard / Critical	Numbers in Deck	Race	Trigger	Ability	Serial Number
バミューダ△候補生 リヴィエール	Bermuda △ Cadet, Riviere	0 / Boost / ✔	4000 / 10000 / 1	1	Mermaid	n/a	自 : When you ride "Mermaid Idol, Riviere" on this unit, you may look at the top 7 cards of you deck and select up to one "Super Idol, Riviere" or "Top Idol, Riviere" to add to your hand. After that, place the remaining cards to the top of your deck and shuffle. 自 : When you ride a 《Bermuda △》 Unit other than "Mermaid Idol, Riviere", you may move this unit to 【Ｒ】.	EB02/015 R
ドライブ・カルテット フロース	Drive Quartet, Flows	0 / Boost / ✘	4000 / 10000 / 1	4	Mermaid	Heal	(You may only have up to 4 Heal triggers in a deck.) 永【Ｒ】 : If you have a "Drive Quartet, Shuplu" on 【Ｒ】, this unit gains 3000 power.	EB02/031 C
ドライブ・カルテット　バブリン	Drive Quartet, Bubblin	0 / Boost / ✘	4000 / 5000 / 1	3	Mermaid	Draw	永【Ｒ】 : If you have a "Drive Quartet, Ressac" on 【Ｒ】, this unit gains 3000 power.	EB02/033 C
クッキング・カスピ	Cooking Caspian	0 / Boost / ✘	5000 / 5000 / 1	3	Mermaid	Draw	n/a	EB02/028 C
ドライブ・カルテット シュプリュ	Drive Quartet, Shuplu	0 / Boost / ✘	4000 / 10000 / 1	3	Mermaid	Critical	永【Ｒ】 : If you have a "Drive Quartet, Bubblin" on 【Ｒ】, this unit gains 3000 power.	EB02/032 C
コミカル・レイニー	Comical Rainie	0 / Boost / ✘	5000 / 10000 / 1	3	Mermaid	Critical	n/a	EB02/027 C
マーメイドアイドル セドナ	Mermaid Idol, Sedna	1 / Boost / ✘	8000 / 5000 / 1	4	Mermaid	n/a	n/a	EB02/021 C
マーメイドアイドル リヴィエール	Mermaid Idol, Riviere	1 / Boost / ✘	7000 / 5000 / 1	4	Mermaid	n/a	永【Ｖ】 : If your Soul contains "Bermuda △ Cadet, Riviere", this unit gains 1000 power. 自 : If you ride "Super Idol Riviere" on top of this unit, and your soul contains "Bermuda △ Cadet, Riviere" you may draw 1 card.	EB02/024 C
マーメイドアイドル フェルッカ	Mermaid Idol, Felucca	1 / Boost / ✘	7000 / 5000 / 1	4	Mermaid	n/a	自【Ｒ】 : When this unit appears in a 【Ｖ】 or 【Ｒ】 and you have a 《Bermuda △》 Vanguard, you may [Soul Charge *1].	EB02/023 C
マーメイドアイドル　エリー	Mermaid Idol, Ellie	1 / Boost / ✘	6000 / 5000 / 1	3	Mermaid	n/a	自 : [choose a 《Bermuda △》 from your hand, and discard it] When this unit is placed on 【Ｇ】, you may pay the cost. If you do, choose one of your 《Bermuda △》 will not be hit till end of that battle.	EB02/007 RR
トップアイドル アクア	Top Idol, Aqua	2 / Intercept / ✘	10000 / 5000 / 1	4	Mermaid	n/a	n/a	EB02/010 R
スーパーアイドル リヴィエール	Super Idol, Riviere	2 / Intercept / ✘	9000 / 5000 / 1	4	Mermaid	n/a	永【Ｖ】 : If your Soul contains "Bermuda Idol, Riviere", this unit gains 1000 power. 自 : If you ride "Top Idol Riviere" on top of this unit, and your soul contains "Mermaid Idol, Riviere" you may draw 1 card.	EB02/11 R
マーメイドアイドル、フルート	Mermaid Idol, Flute	2 / Intercept / ✘	8000 / 5000 / 1	3	Mermaid	n/a	永【Ｖ／Ｒ】 : During your turn, if you have four or more 《Bermuda △》 Rearguards, this unit gains 3000 power.	EB02/012 R
スーパー アイドル セーラム	Super Idol, Salem	3 / Twindrive / ✘	10000 / n/a / 1	3	Mermaid	n/a	自【Ｖ／Ｒ】 : [Counter Blast *1] When this unit attacks, you may pay the cost.  If paid, during that battle, this unit gains 3000 power.	EB02/008 R
トップアイドル リヴィエール	Top Idol, Riviere	3 / Twindrive / ✘	10000 / n/a / 1	4	Mermaid	n/a	永【Ｖ】 : If your Soul contains "Super Idol, Riviere", this unit gains 1000 power. 自【Ｖ】 : [Counter Blast *2, discard a "Top Idol, Riviere"] When this unit's attack hits the opponent's Vanguard, you may pay the cost. If you do, choose up to 3 of your 《Bermuda △》 Rearguards, the units gain 5000 power during this turn.	EB02/002 RRR

Analysis:

Imagine, the blue ocean, filled with lolis, hot chicks, boobs and more boobs. The only catch is, they live underwater, and probably has no feet, well, you get what I say. That's pretty much sums up Bermuda △, a clan filled with Mermaids.

Alright, I'll admit it, the only reason I'm playing Bermuda △ is due to all the delicious lolis. Don't look at me like that, IT'S LOLIS, LOL.

Anyway, the main feature for Bermuda △ is the bouncing ability, in which you get to have a unit returned to your hand due to an unit's ability. By returning the unit to your hand, you probably will gain more hand size, from the bounced back unit's ability or the unit itself. However, my build will not be focusing on that, no, it doesn't even have any cards with bouncing ability. I'll be introducing you guys to Riviere build, which focuses on her Persona Blast and boring hit and guard tactics. Kinda sound boring, unless you like boobs, eh?

Most will tell you this is a average build, it's not overpowering, the abilities are too plain, and Riviere has proportionate eyes. Unfortunately, it's kinda true. The deck has no draw power in late game, unless you're considering putting more Draw triggers; your opponent will keep guarding Riviere to prevent you from activating her abilities; boosters and attackers are just plain, they have none of the impressive abilities other builds have. So, how could this build strive among others? After throwing OTT aside, this deck has help me a lot in recent tournaments, I even managed to reach top 4 for some those tourneys. There are two things I've learned from this deck: memorizing my deck structure and my opponent's hand cards, perfect timing on ability activating. You guys will be saying, "LOL AKI! BUT LIKE WE CAN DO THAT ON EVERY DECK/BUILD...". Yes, but this build relies on these two aspect more than any other build, because if you fucked it up, you're pretty much a goner.

Without further ado, let's start dissecting my deck!


Starting off with Grade 0s, we have the cute loli starter, Bermuda △ Cadet, Riviere! Her abilities are actually kinda decent. Her first ability is worth to be noted, by riding Mermaid Idol, Riviere, you'll get to check the top 7 cards of your deck and keep either Super Idol, Riviere or Top Idol, Riviere to your hand if they're available among the 7 cards. Sounds profit, eh? Riding Mermaid Idol, Riviere on Bermuda △ Cadet, Riviere, you get a free Super Idol or Top Idol, Riviere to your hands. However, that only comes if you manage to get Mermaid Idol, Riviere onto your hands on the first 6 cards you draw. This pretty much means, 2.04% to draw the specific Mermaid Idol, Riviere you need. Don't let that statistic scare you off though, there's always a chance to get the card and it's not a must to ride Mermaid Idol, Riviere onto Bermuda △ Cadet, Riviere. Bermuda △ Cadet, Riviere second ability on the other hand is not too shabby actually. A 4k booster if you didn't manage to ride Mermaid Idol, Riviere onto her. It compromises the failure of riding G1 Riviere and gives you an extra booster. Well, kinda useful for early games, or against 10k Vanguards.

Next, we have the triggers lining up. The deck utilizes 4 Heal triggers, 6 Critical triggers and 6 Draw triggers. The reason for triggers placement is merely to just increase the draw power for the deck, while keeping the pressure on doubling the power on your opponent. Drive Quartet, Flows, Bubblin, and Shuplu's abilities are not even worth to mention. To activate their abilities are somewhat wasting, you might as well keep them on your hand for guarding purposes, unless you're facing the worst case scenario, then the last resort will be using them as either attackers or boosters.


Moving on, Grade 1's on the list. Firstly, we have Mermaid Idol, Sedna, the 8k vanilla of Bermuda △. It's important to have 4 Sednas in this deck, partly due to the fact that most attackers in this deck are 10k, actually 7-10 attackers are 10k, and you'll probably need to pump them up to 18k against 13k Vanguards, namely PBO and The End. Secondly, Mermaid Idol, Riviere the continuation of Bermuda △ Cadet, Riviere. Mermaid Idol, Riviere's abilities are quite good. Her first ability makes her a 8k Vanguard, if she has Bermuda △ Cadet, Riviere in her soul, basically forcing your opponent to ride a 8k unit or having a booster in order to guarantee a definite attack hit on her. Her second ability is practically a profitable ability. The ability allows you to draw a card if you manage ride Super Idol, Riviere onto her with Bermuda △ Cadet, Riviere in her soul. The best part? There's no cost to activate this ability at all, just the meager (perhaps?) requirement. In addition, she has 7k power by default, which makes her pretty useful as a booster.

Thirdly, we have watermelon boobs. No, I'm just kidding, Mermaid Idol, Felucca's her name, though she really does have those enormous boobs. As a 7k unit, Felucca is a decent booster, though her abilities are not as impressive as her boobs, I mean her looks, dammit. When she comes to play, you may Soul Charge *1, doesn't seem to fit in around the other cards in the deck, no? I have two words that sums up her usefulness and effectiveness among Grade 1's, "PROFIT CHARGE". Pretty much mean Soul Charging the correct card at the correct time, although this requires deck structure memorizing and anticipation. I'll talk about that other day, but this pretty much sums up Felucca. Fourthly, papaya boo... no, wait, I mean Mermaid Idol, Ellie. Aside from her boobs, she is the null guard for Bermuda △. Having 3 Ellies in the deck is more than enough, because having too many null guards in the deck might cause you certain disadvantage, even though it's nice to nullify attacks.


After that, time for Grade 2's. My deck has 3 types of Grade 2's. Let's first talk about Top Idol, Aqua the 10k vanilla of Bermuda △. Not much to elaborate, just 4 Aquas are needed in the deck since she provides the consistent power output among the Grade 2's. Next, the continuation of Mermaid Idol, Riviere, Super Idol, Riviere. Similar to her predecessor, Super Idol, Riviere gains 1k power when Mermaid Idol, Riviere is in her soul making her a 10k Vanguard. Her second ability somewhat similar to Mermaid Idol, Riviere, allows you to draw a card when you ride Top Idol, Riviere on top of her if Mermaid Idol Riviere is in her soul. Pretty much another profitable ability, eh? With both Mermaid Idol, Riviere and Super Idol, Riviere's abilities activating successfully, you're able to gain early hand advantage, which kinda helps if during middle or late game, Draw triggers are not triggered as frequent as desired. Therefore, the early cards drew will be a great help.

For the last Grade 2, we have Mermaid Idol, Flute. Flute is somewhat a decent card. After the Hey Yo Pineapple from Neo Nectar proves to be kinda broken in some way, Flute's ability is toned down to gaining 3k power if you have 4 or more Bermuda △ Rearguards during your turn, compared to having 4 units. The difference between these two cards' effects are actually kinda obvious, since Pineapple may gain 3k power when 4 units are on the stage, but with Flute, you'd need a minimum of 5 units, including of your Vanguard on the stage. See the difference? However, it's still a nice unit to be considered since there are not many other cards to be put in into the deck.


Lastly, Grade 3's. Firstly, we have Super Idol, Salem. Mainly deployed as Rearguard, she can fight as a Vanguard if situation needed. At a meager cost of 1* Counter Blast, she gains 3k power, which makes her a 13k attacker. That being said, this allows her to harass 10-11k Vanguards easily, without need to use Top Idol, Riviere's Persona Blast. This pretty much makes a one of the most efficient card to be placed as Rearguard among Bermuda △ Grade 3's. Secondly, we have the ace and the focus of the deck, Top Idol, Riviere. Just like Mermaid Idol and Super Idol, Riviere, Top Idol, Riviere gains 1k power when Super Idol, Riviere is in her soul making her the sole 11k Vanguard among all Bermuda △ Grade 3's. Her second ability, a Persona Blast driven ability, is just average among all kinds of Persona Blast driven ability. But, it could be deadly if you manage to time it well. For instance, your opponent has 4 damages and doesn't guard against your attack, this will be a great chance to utilize Riviere's Persona Blast. It could even well be his/her defeat. Even if the attacks do not finish off your opponent, you may have well reduce your opponent's hand card. She may not be flashy or has powerful Persona Blast as The End or Trailing Rose, but she's still a dangerous unit to face against.


Now, on the deck structure, the grading structure is 17-15-11-7, which gives more priority on having more boosters, rather than the traditional attackers over boosters. The deck itself is more of an offensive deck, pushing attacks with raw power, while pressuring opponents with attackers' abilities.

In my opinion, it's really worth to tryout this deck, if you're into girls (with fish tails, fins or gills) and pressuring opponents. I've tried it, and it proves to be a pretty good deck to me.

Feel free to post any questions on the comment box below, I'd gladly answer them. That's all for now, till next time! <3

[Cardfight!! Vanguard] How to play decently in Vanguard?

While playing a couple rounds of Vanguard, you might faced some opponents who trashed you ass so easily that made you look like a newbie. Perhaps it's time to rethink your strategies and how did you play the game.


There are three important aspects in playing Vanguard, deck build, memorizing cards, decision making and luck. These are the three aspects you'll have to review over and over again to make sure you're playing decently.


Let's go through the first aspect, deck build. I believe most players, regardless inexperienced or experienced players knows that having a good deck build is important. Having a crappy deck build is as if walking into a wall eventhough you know you will be hitting the wall hard.

For instance, playing a classic Shadow Paladin PBD build with only one PBD, one Nemain, one Macha (lol @ Kira), that's practically asking to be kicked in the ass. The deck has no draw power, you might fail in making your PBD to 11k in power, you might even fail in calling PBD. These are just some of the failing parts of the deck which will cost you dearly. Reminds me of another fail deck build, a MLB deck with 2 MLBs, 1 SSD, 1 Palomides, 1 Alfred Early and 2 Gancelot. The multiple Grade 3 in the deck build is just disastrous, and what makes the deck worse is the only 2 Iseult. Perhaps the deck is meant to be a laughing stock or a bad joke.

Another example is playing 12 same triggers in your deck. Yea, I know some of you will be saying, "but, Aki, 12 crits are fucking awesome, I crit everyday and you're a noob". No shit, you'll be drawing out critical triggers everyday, but where's the draw power? Same goes to those who tries 12 stand triggers. And for those who uses 12 draw triggers, don't even think about it, unless you like the feeling of decking out and weak guarding. Besides the obvious problems with drawing power and decking out, you'll be facing problems by not being able to guard with the right amount of guarding power. With full critical or stand triggers, you'll be facing dilemma in which you might over guard, since every trigger on your hands are 10k (*laughs*); while full draw triggers means throwing more cards into the guardian circle since you have mostly 5k guarding power cards on your hand. Having 12 same triggers also means that your opponent may predict your trigger build easily and it'll be easier to arrange strategies against you.

Not forgetting builds with no heal triggers. Don't even get me started on that, that's a fucking huge joke. Basically, you're denying yourself an opportunity to heal, a second chance to live if you made a mistake, or whatever. Without heal triggers, you're telling your opponent to kick your ass six times, you'll roll over and die quietly.

Don't take it the wrong, it's not wrong to set you deck with 12 critical triggers or no heal triggers at all, but it's the practicality that you have to think about.


Next, we'll be looking at memorizing cards. Well, memorizing cards is pretty important. Memorizing the cards that were drawn out during drive checks are one of the basic thing that a player needs to do while playing Vanguard. Furthermore, if you can, you may even try to memorize cards and triggers sent to the Drop Zone, Damage Zone or Soul (you may still check the cards though), or even if you're that good enough, deck structure itself.

Some of you might say, "LOL Aki, I just attack, attack and attack till my opponent has no cards, it's not hard to do so". Yea, right... Perhaps you could try that against a Shadow Paladin deck with enough draw power from Nemain or better, maybe playing against OTT. Alright, the latter is not that scary anymore due to all the POWDERFUL cards from BT05 and so on. The main point is, by memorizing cards, let's just take drive checks for example, you can arrange your strategies according to your opponent hand card. Maybe your opponent does not have enough cards to guard, you could take out their interceptor, take out his/her attacker if you want to prolong it to the next turn, or even just rush attack at their Vanguard.

By memorizing the cards, you'll be able to arrange your strategies one step ahead of your opponent, knowing what to expect during your opponent's battle and guarding phase.


The third aspect is the most important aspect among all aspects, decision making. Vanguard is all about making decisions. Every decision you make, no matter how unimportant it is, will affect the outcome of the game. A small mistake can cost you dearly, and with small mistakes stacking up, this will eventually cause a snowball effect which effectively kill off you chances in winning the game.

There are many things to be considered in decision making, I won't be going into details. These normally comes with experience as you play. The only advice I can give is, before rushing to ride a Vanguard, call a Rearguard, guarding or giving powers to units, think twice. Every decision you make is important - it might lead you to your demise; or perhaps your victory.


Finally, luck. It's impossible to manipulate this aspect, I mean, I doubt anyone can control luck. Every card game is influenced by luck. You might have one of the best deck, you are able to memorize everything, and your decision making is perfect. However, your opponent keeps getting draw triggers for damage check, drive checking double criticals every fucking time, heals multiple time that nearly made you flip the table. That's what we call luck.


Alright, that's all for now. These are some of the important aspect that I think a cardfighter ought to consider, while playing. I hope this will help you guys improve in playing Vanguard. Till next time!

April Fools '12

Kinda late, but eat this.



/update: Alright, alright. I'm sorry to annoy you guys with the song.