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Musketeer Dead-Horse Syndrome

Old archetypes would need a complete revamp of everything to be good again. The support required would take up about half a set.

In between people wanting to build a Musketeer deck for whatever goddamn reason (I’m assuming the poor little shits don’t know any better) and Verthandi being introduced to Genesis, I figured this was a good a time as any to get this out. Nowadays people would rather stick to some extremely specific archetypes in Vanguard rather than play any other old deck. To them, I say fair play. That was probably one of the better decisions. Not THE best, because a $20 deck exists, but never mind.

I mentioned in a previous article (I forgot which one, for once) that it’s not entirely healthy for people to suddenly expect an old deck to receive the support it badly deserves. It’s not that the entire premise is impossible, but it would be difficult without almost entirely overhauling what made the deck unique in the first place.

Looking at Musketeers as a base compared to Ahsha Neo Nectar, the entire Musketeer deck is basically made up of +0 washes for field consistency galore, with a bit of columns thrown into the mix. Ahsha on the other hand is all about +1s with more ridiculous columns than Musketeers by quite a long way. Both have pretty similar timings as both decks require that the opponent be on Grade 3 to function, except Ahsha has a much better Late-Game plan and can go off arguably faster given Stride’s easier to set up than Legion. So if Ahsha is clearly the better deck to use, one can hardly blame the fact that Neo Nectar’s G Guardians are based around supporting Ahsha over the other decks.

For Musketeers to be actually viable again, they would have to have many, MANY cards introduced all at once to make the deck. A more general G Unit, a G Guardian exclusive to them, several cards that could gain power and other bonuses upon calling from deck, not just another roulette or +1…but even then, the deck would effectively still function like a generally worse Gold Paladin. Or alternatively, make an extremely kickass G Unit finisher that works around swapping around rear-guards, because even a re-standing Vanguard would solve an otherwise crap deck.

Compare and contrast this to Jewel Knights, who were admittedly sort of average until Swordmy was released. (I’m not picking Liberators because there’s too many of those for this to be fair). The entire deck assuming G Units fucked off and died was solid enough. There were quick high quality +1s to you early, it had decent enough rush potential if necessary, and enough room to toy around with newer tricks as required. With the release of Evangeline, the entire deck as a whole required almost nothing else apart from the more generic staple G Units. It also helped that the G Guardians were at least generic enough to be used at a decently high quantity.

But why Jewel Knights over, say, Seekers? Well, the problem is quality. Seekers for the most part operate around the assumption that you’ll perform Legion, and that tends to take a backburner over Stride because, you know, more Drive Checks and it ditches a dead Grade 3 for shield. The only unit I’d actively want to use Legion over Stride for is Thing Saver Dragon, and only if I wanted to end the game then and there. But sadly, there’s too many focusing on Altmile and/or Brave for the G Zone to be truly high quality compared to existing options.  Jewel Knights on the other hand existed before Bushiroad introduced another mechanic to shove into our fucking gormless faces, and so their support for the most part wound up more generic and flexible. It also helped that Swordmy was still useful even without Yvain, which is honestly what they should have done for all the Legion partner Grade 2s, just for future-proofing.

What I’m getting at here is that for an archetype to be updated to the levels of the newer, shinier shit, the next set would basically have to spend a lot of cards and perhaps a lot of RR and RRR slots trying to fix it, and even then, odds are it won’t be high quality, because who’s going to effectively overhaul their main gambit and admit ‘sorry, this turned out to be shit, just ignore this and move on’? If your archetype is bound by conditions such as Legion, and the end result is G-decks can do better, it’s a dead horse. It is no more. It has ceased to…and that’s where I stop referencing Monty Python because I want to have stuff with substance to type.

This may require some experience to gauge whether or not there is any hope for an old deck to get up again. Musketeer decks have almost no fucking chance of being relevant again because it ticks almost none of the boxes. The most recent build for it mostly revolved around some +1s and +0s and occasionally columns, and revolved around Legion. The LB variant was even worse: both of their main Grade 3s were total ballsacks. But probably the most debilitating reason they now suck is the fact that despite this, it still has to run mostly Musketeer units for the deck to work at all. I refer you to something like Regalia, who can run far more generic and useful cards because in the end all you need is enough Stride fodder and in a pinch enough fuel for Minerva (let’s pretend that the new Grade 3 doesn’t exist for a moment because she isn’t that good). That’s why I said: you’d have to introduce almost an entire deck’s worth of new toys to an old archetype because the newer ones simply will not cut it anymore. And that’s fine of you can spare a set entirely dedicated to fixing it when you can, it’s how PRISM decks suddenly got amazing, but for the most part if it has to room with more than one clan, then expect the support for your nostalgia decks to be dick.

Going by this criteria, the deck that I would find the easiest to fix off the top of my head that hasn’t received G support yet is the Blau deck. For the most part it’s solid enough, not being bound by anything the opponent needs to do first, so all they really need are triggers with Blau in the name, which are entirely optional, and some sort of G Unit that can apply pressure extending to rear-guards (we don’t need another re-stander as we have Victoplasma and Bustard for that).

Musketeers? More like Must Get Tears, amirite?

I’m taking requests for articles if there’s something about Vanguard you need to gripe about. Email ideas at saikyocardfighter@outlook.com. Or drop a message on my Twitter account!