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Getting to know Cardfight!! Vanguard

Getting to know Cardfight!! Vanguard

Written by Ross Locksley on 22 Jul 2013



Having given so much of the site over to the lovely looking Cardfight!! Vanguard, I decided it was high time the UKA crew actually sat down and played the game to see what all the fuss was about. Customisable Card Games (CCG's) are huge business around the world, and although I do have an Ani-Mayhem deck I collected years ago (mostly for the Tenchi/BubbleGum Crisis cards) I haven't actually played one of these games since I dabbled in the Star Trek: Next Generation game back in my teens.

Therefore, you have to realise that this article comes to you from a complete novice, with only a superficial understanding of how to play these games!

The basics...

The fist thing that surpised me was that Cardfight!! Vanguard is a 2 player game. I had expected all of us to play together, but instead the game requires pairing up to humiliate your friends mano-e-mano. Happily we had Karl in the group who had far more experience of these things than the rest of us, so we sat about digesting the (very thick!) rulebook.

After a lot of confusing conjecture, I fired up Youtube and found some very useful (if sedate) videos which walked you through the rounds of the game. This simplified everything nicely, and if you're looking to get into the game, I recommend this video for your educational needs:

Cardfight Vanguard Instructional Video

So, with a solid (if not entirely confident) understanding of the rules, Karl and I did battle as playtesters for the rest of the group. So here's how the game breaks down:

  • You each have a deck of 50 cards
  • There is a playmat containing 6 spaces, 3 for attack, 3 for support and the centre attack spot doubles as your "main" card

Support cards work vertically and support only the card directly in front of them. You take 5 cards from the deck, select a card to act as your Vanguard, place it in the centre attack circle and set out your cards for attack.

The game requires that you build up slowly - each card has a level, and you start at level zero - you can only ever support your main card with cards of an equal value, so by levelling up your main card quickly, you can produce stronger supporting cards.

I won't go into details about the rules, the video does this far better than I can, instead I want to focus on how easy the game is to learn and how much fun it is.

So, admittedly, even with an experienced card player (though Karl was also new to Cardfight!! Vanguard) we had a little trouble understanding all the rules, to the point that one match lasted nearly 2 hours because neither of us realised that once you used a card from the mat to block, you had to discard it, so we spent ages attacking each other fruitlessly and just burning through our decks.

Strategy 101

We also discovered that selecting a deck based on which one had the sexiest girls in it was not a comprehensive strategy for victory (though the Maiden Princess deck looks rather sweet, and one of the characters from the anime uses this exact tactic). In fact, from our experiences, the best pack to use was the Slash of Silver Wolf deck - it has some powerful cards and the support units can really boost your attacks - to be fair we rotated decks to try them all, but Silver Wolf was a firm favourite by the end of the day.

The 2 player aspect was perfectly pitched, as the flow of the game was nice and quick - there's nothing worse in a strategy game than having your mind wander while you wait your turn, so the two-and-fro combat was a refreshing experience.

Clearing the mists

Regarding the rules, we came to the conclusion that they really weren't as complex as we had assumed from reading the instructions - yes, having to build up cards under your Vanguard to release more powerful attacks was a bit confusing at first, and some of the support rules/special effects cards had us scratching our heads at times, but the game has enough layers to keep itself interesting without being completely baffling, so we liked the fact that we felt clever when we figured stuff out, but not stupid for missing some of the intracicies of the game itself.

To be clear, we really aren't the target audience for these games, but it's safe to say that everyone enjoyed the experience, and went away with a trial deck each so that we could pull it out again when we next decide to get together and need something to do.

Should you stand up YOUR vanguard?

If you enjoy stimulating games with friends, then Cardfight!! Vanguard is a great way to spend your time. With 6 of us sharing snacks and coffee, it was a very pleasant way to spend a chilly afternoon.

 


Ross Locksley
About Ross Locksley

Ross founded the UK Anime Network waaay back in 1995 and works in and around the anime world in his spare time.


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