Striding towards the Future - Narukami in Vanguard Zero Part 4

 Heyo.  It's that time again.  What time?  The "Bluestar899 makes Narukami speculations" time.  I figure this would be more fun to do rather than rip on Vowing Sword Dragon from V-Collection (TLDR it sucks in V but is decent in Premium) since I actually play a fair amount of Zero compared to the paper game fuck DBS and Buddyfight for killing my locals and I enjoy making these speculatory kind of posts.  I might do these for Neo Nectar, Granblue and Genesis as well since they were also clans I invested alot of time into during the G Era and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on them again.

Back to Narukami though since at the time of this post being written Brawlers are one of the best decks in Zero (Knuckle Buster got a significant buff) and the first batch of G support the clan gets benefits them greatly in a couple areas that will help keep the deck going strong until Dragonic Vanquisher is able to take over in later sets.  Vermillion and Eradicators also get some stuff here and there (especially Erads) so all those RRRs and RRs (and Super Deck) that you grinded for will still have use going forward depending on where they release cards from the Fighter's Collection.  I'm pretty confident Turbo's going to be in their first wave but Warning may come later since it appears in the mid point of G's story.

With that being said here's how we'll break it down.  This post (and the following ones) will be discussing cards that Narukami got from G-Set 2 Soaring Ascent of Gale and Blossom along with the first Fighter's Collection released in G (and one hot take).  I'll also be talking about Grades 0-1 and 2-4.  I'm pretty certain these cards will appear in the 2nd G set for Zero just like in the paper game and as before I'll be looking at the cards from the perspective of how I think they'll fair/be adjusted for Zero's format and mechanics.

Also before going any further I need to reiterate the changes that will be coming to the game when G begins;

-The conditions to Stride are the same as Legion.  The player that won the dieroll may Stride on Turn 4.  The player that lost may Stride on Turn 3.  Your opponent's grade does not matter.  This is a direct counter to decks that stayed on Grade 2 (Ripples) or Grade 1 (Sevenrunner) in order to prevent their opponent from striding before riding up and killing once they had depleted their resources.  How much this changes the "Grade 2 game" remains to be seen as dedicated G-Decks were infamous for their lack of early game and this could be exploited by archetype decks that could rush them down on the Grade 1 and 2 turns.

-The cost to Stride is still a Grade 3s worth of cards from hand.  You now draw 1 card upon striding to make up for the lack of cards being added to hand off Triple Drive.

-The G-Zone is 8 cards right now.  This changed to 16 when G-Guardians were introduced in the TCG.

-G0 Triggers are being added to the game.  They're set in regards to what type of trigger they are and cannot be changed.  Busted AF Stand Triggers can't be made into Heals or Draws.  Sorry bro.

-G0 Heal Triggers act as pseudo PGs in hand against lethal hits.  They'll block any attack that's less than your VG's power +15000 and will trigger before PGs do.  Finally!  I'm no longer fucked when I draw double Heals off Dragonic Descendant!

-You can only still have a total of 13 triggers in your deck between your G0s and G3s.  Basically if you only play 4 G3s then you'll need 9 G0s.

With that all said let's begin.

G was when Bushiroad started to really push their goal of getting people to play Stand Triggers (up until G almost no competitive player worth their salt played Stands) by printing really strong effects on them.  Vianne definitely makes a strong case as she cycles herself for a draw and gives you a Countercharge for the low requirement of the clan doing it's natural thing of retiring.  Even triggers in Battle Phase.  Honestly this one's a tough as by playing Vianne you have reason to not play Demonic Dragon Berserker, Garuda as your CCer but on the other hand just about every deck in the game benefits from 9 Draws.

Spoiler Alert: Every set of support Narukami got in G also dedicated way too many slots towards making different Eradicator builds work while failing each time.  For Set 2 it's Tempest Bolt/Twin Thunder Dragon.  You know the ones that saw no play outside of memes.

Whoa really?  Yes really.  We saw during the intial reveals for triggers that Gear Chronicle is already getting Heart Thump Worker which Reseph is a clone of.  Furthermore we've seen that these crits also have the bonus effect of drawing you cards if you hit any as damage checks which is pretty much them saying "STOP PLAYING 9 DRAWS PLZ" which is cute because even then I think draw heavy lineups may still be the way to go.  The thing is in spite of the buff to these RR crits and Vianne being a cycling CCer I don't know if they're still better than sticking with max draws.  Stands are good on offense only and sure the new crit gives you a draw on defense, but not on offense and in a clan that has often been reliant on Draw Triggers to maintain its hand is it REALLY worth it to cut them out for Reseph?  I think in the end 9 draw will probably be the better route to go just because Draws are good 100% of the time vs other triggers being good some of the time.

Honestly I have the feeling that G-Forerunners are all going to have Resist just like the ones we saw during Legion format.  Just like Legion starters these guys are slow to act and can therefore be picked off.  If so then there may be a case for Dracokid as he scales every time any card is bound and the Vanquisher deck at this point will be able to bind 2 a turn.  Otherwise I guess you can still run Saishin to pick off key Grade 1s like Dorint.

This is Narukami's 2nd G1 Vanilla.  Hard to imagine it took until G to get another one!  Also for a short period this guy (and Red River) also saw play in one of the Narukami decks during the mid G format so there's merit to this!  The TLDR is that riding an 8k base allowed you to defend against early game rushes easier since alot of decks couldn't make numbers that got over 13, 18 and 23k which mattered at that time.  Plus 8k paired nicely with a certain 11k attacker.

Pyglma was pretty good for the format he came out in.  A grade 1 that could swing at the Vanguard by itself if you needed it to was a nice utility option to have.  Zero's Intercept mechanic however hurts Pyglma and IDK if he'll see play over other options like Shuki, Koumei or Castor.

That's right Eradicators get their own Balan/Dorint and all you have to do is kill intercepts with Saucer Cannon or maybe Cho-Ou if they finally decide to release him.  This along with Zuitan can help the deck fund some pretty greedy plays with Gauntlet or give you more uses of Sweep Command Dragon (we'll get to him soon) and all you need is some soul.  Hoping he isn't a RR.

Not much to say on Stride Fodders.  Every clan gets one for their original G3 boss and I really hope these aren't RR.  I still have PTSD from how V-Series made them pricey RRRs.

EDIT: Lol they're RRs.  In addition they've been changed so that when placed on RG you discard any card to add the designated G3 to hand.  Straight improvement.  Shame it's going to be a RR.

     

Our last card for this post is a new type of PG introduced in G that sometimes go by the name of Unflip PG or CC PG.  These were commonly some of the most expensive cards in a G Deck due to lack of reprints (Kagero's Protect Orb topped at nearly 40!) and in Zero we don't have to worry about that because of Sentinel Medals.  Yay!

That aside PGs that CC are obviously good.  Their existence kind of adds a new dynamic to how some people will go about attacking as in the past decks like MLB would purposely try to bait PGs while damage denying.  Now we have PGs that circumvent that so now it becomes a matter of how far obnoxious decks like those will be willing to go to be scumbags.  I do wonder what the activation conditions for these will be.  My gut says the same as BR-Era PGs.

That's it for now.  What we see here isn't anything too noteworthy which is to be expected with first wave G era cards since it was at this point they were coming up with new playstyles for some of the clans at this time.  Narukami definitely got tweaked to be less of a Kagero clone in this set which we'll see when we dive into the 2s and higher in the next post.