This Space
For Rent

Your Legion Unit’s Not THAT Important

Sometimes, to win, you have to resist wasting a ton of cards to load the drop zone.

I don’t think I was the only person who breathed a sigh of relief when Legion offered a way to get shit done without waiting until you were nearly dead. Critical gaining now mattered because the guarding game suddenly changed. You could pursue an opponent and widen your advantage gap without waiting until you were losing. And you could swing for columns for days (although Limit Break basically did that too so that wasn’t exactly original territory save for the novelty).

But really, even though Legion is good, I would not say that it was SO important it was worth guarding loads all of a sudden, or calling over rear-guards in succession just to get it live.

I’m not just saying this because Stride now gives you something to do before then. Even before then, I never considered it a good idea to load up the drop zone without much good reason, unless you could load it at little expense to you, like Soulblasting.

It’s largely because of two reasons. One, I haven’t really found too many of them who have skills that are important no matter what phase of the game you are in. Anything that can seal guard isn’t something to worry about particularly since the opponent shouldn’t be inclined to guard the vanguard early anyway. Not unless it was mixed with a Critical a la Ragnaclock/CEO Yggdrasil etc. and the opponent was on 3 damage.

Two, the power gain isn’t really anything that matters that much, largely for the same reasons guard sealing on 3 or below damage doesn’t matter. Pile the power on as much as you want, above 10k for 1-to-pass guard, the opponent will usually want to leave well alone anyway. And late in the game, it’s still subject to a PG to the face as was the case with Limit Break units since game ending skills seems to be the norm right about now.

A rule of thumb that I always follow is to never do anything unnecessary since it would probably screw you later. By trying to cater to gimmicks, you’re basically going to suffer against more straightforward decks that require less setup to do the same amount of murdering. Remember the old Crossride meta? Remember how you had to run vanilla because you would otherwise shoot yourself in the foot because you couldn’t hit numbers? It’s like that.

By guarding excessively or calling over units in succession, you are basically fucking over your guard quality against the attacks that will come later and actually matter. Unless the opponent sacks you to death you should come reasonably close to achieving Legion on the turn you ride, or a turn later if you just guard naturally. Soulblast or cycle on a 1:1 basis if you really must but don’t set it up at the cost of minusing yourself for no good reason.

I’m serious. Let’s look at the skills that are available for each clan and work out exactly what our overall reward is, shall we? Let’s see what you get for minusing yourself for setting up Legion:

Re-standing vanguard/Superior Riding during Battle Phase: Nice for chasing an opponent down, but it’s got more potency if you wait for the opponent to just have more damage.

Critical Gaining: Subject to a PG to the face. Which is why you have to run Soulblasters and Cyclers so as not to neglect defense on a gambit that may not work.

Guard Sealing: Come on, on three or less damage it seems a bit redundant.

Locking: Congratulations, you lost cards for a gambit designed to save cards. You just broke even. You might as well have not bothered.

Re-standing rear-guards: Not unless the aim was to spam them from the get-go. And they would have to be able to force 10k more guard EACH for them to be truly worthwhile.

Retiring cards: See my explanation regarding Lock.

Powering up VG: See my explanation regarding Guard Sealing.

Powering up RG: May have some merit but it has to be combined with something with a nasty on-hit skill for it to really work. The opponent will otherwise just take the one extra damage without a fuss.

Adding cards to field or hand: Again, why would you lose cards in excess to get them back to break even for a cost? It makes no sense.

You get screwed by lack of shield: You’re either new to this or you REALLY need to go back to school, pal.

Tell me about how you don’t plan to Stride in The X build at saikyocardfighter@outlook.com