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Pojo's Yu-Gi-Oh Card of the Day

Vanguard of the Dragon

You can send 1 Dragon-Type monster from your hand to the Graveyard to have this card gain 300 ATK. When this card you control is sent to Graveyard by your opponent's card effect, you can Special Summon 1 Dragon-Type Normal Monster from either player's Graveyard.

Card Ratings
Traditional: 1.50
Advanced: 2.20 

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale
1 being the worst.
3 is average.
5 is the highest rating.


Date Reviewed - 06.17.09

Back to the main COTD Page

 

Dark Paladin
Wednesday

Vanguard of the Dragon, another Dragon who is Level 4 and of the Earth attribute, somewhat unusal for a Dragon, who has a respectable 1700 attack and a not terrible 1300 defense, and doesn't necessarily resemble a Dragon, but anyway...

You can send one Dragon monster from your Hand to the Graveyad to have this card gain 300 attack, giving it 2000, which is superb, and there is no limit (outside of how many you have and are willing to discard) of how many times a turn you can do this.

Secondly, as a bonus effect, when this card is destroyed by your opponent's card effect (not by Battle) you can Special Summon a Normal Dragon type monster from either player's Graveyard. Nice that it can be either Graveyard, although it will most likely only be yours...Blue Eyes White Dragon anyone?

Ratings:

Traditional: 2.25/5 Earth hurts
Advanced: 3.25/5
Art: 4/5 Sort of Centurion looking, but whatever.
General Zorpa Vanguard of the Dragon

This guy is a level 4 EARTH Dragon with 1700 ATK and 1300 DEF, which is pretty average/standard in the game right now. He can kill a lot of teh Gladiators and Blackings and does not suffer too much when facing Lightsworn either as far as ATK goes, but of course that is not all that makes a card.

His effects are that you can discard a Dragon from your hand inorder to give him a permanent boost of 300 ATK and when he dies by a card effect you can Special Summon a Normal Dragon from either player's graveyard. The effects are actually kinda meh. Trading cards for an ATK boost, even a permanent one is not really worth the effort of playing and losing the extra card from your hand. You can use White Stone of Legend, as then you get a Blue Eyes and then a target for his second effect.

However, he will most likely not die to a card effect. Everything is removed from play or killed in battle nowadays except for Mirror Force, DAD, JD and Torrential. If you have any of thos ecard used on you you likely have worse problems than even a blue Eyes from your graveyard can handle. Iin a Dragon deck there are far better choices.

Traditional-1/5
Advanced-1.5/5

Jeff Lang
Vanguard of the Dragon

    Today’s card up for review is Vanguard of the Dragon. More Dragon support, what I like to see! The first part of his effect is pretty cool. The skeleton of a Dragon deck is basically having Red Eyes Wyvern and Red Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon in it. Vanguard can help you out with pitching the two mentioned cards. Don’t even read the second part, unless you are planning on using Luster Dragon though. Very cool card though! Permanent attack boost and he let’s you pitch the main cards in the deck to get you going.

Trad: 1/5
Adv: 3/5

Freeza
Vanguard of the Dragon …

Dragon type. Fair enough attack for a 4-star monster. 1700 can fight a little bit if it has to. 1300 DEF? – not terrible. Earth type? … I dunno. That’s a decent attribute, but for Dragon types? I don’t know if it does much. Personally, I like my Dragons to be of the Dark, Light, or Fire or Wind variety. Then his discard effect boosts him to 2000 ATK. Nice cuz it stays boosted, which works in the Vanguard’s favor, or else I’d say skip I entirely.

So is he then worth it? Well, he lends support to Dragon type decks, assuming u have a fair amount of normal Dragons … Hunter Dragon, Red Eyes (which is still trying desperately to be its own respectable deck type), and Blue Eyes, which may be the ones u’ll find. The question is then – “how often will u actually get to make USE of Vanguard's 2nd effect?” (which would be the main reason u are playing him in the first place) He has to be destroyed by an opponent’s card effect to get the special summon, and if u boost him to 2000 he is JUST strong enough that your opponent may need to do just that … but that’s the downside … if your opponent sees that Blue Eyes floating in your graveyard, then they’d NEVER destroy this guy if it would only make things worse for them.

So what’s the point? – He’s not SUPER colossal that it’s IMPOSSIBLE to kill him just through battle … in fact there are many 4 stars (or quick combos) that can get the job done without resorting to effect destruction. So that aside – u just have an ok monster that isn’t doing much for u.

Meh.

Traditional: 2/5
Advanced: 2.5/5

- FREEZA

N o V a
Today we have Vanguard of the Dragon, one of the coolest dragons in the game, mainly for his art but still he's a cool card for his effect too. This card is one of Blue-Eyes' best friend. Vanguard is a earth, level 4, 1700 attack, 1300 defense dragon that has the ability to send a dragon in the hand to the graveyard to have Vanguard gain 300 attack, and when its destroyed by the opponents effect you can summon a normal dragon monster from either graveyard. Basically you can discard a Blue-Eyes from your hand to raise him up to 2000 attack, then if its destroyed by an effect you get the Blue-Eyes back. Its a pretty good card for a dragon theme deck. so long as you use some normal dragons too. You could probably build a Skill Drain deck with this using Blue-Eyes, the two Luster Dragon monsters and etc.

Traditional: 2/5
Advanced: 2/5
Lol Pisko Vanguard of the Dragon

Vanguard's first and second effect are supposed to combo together. Send Blue-Eyes, get Vanguard destroyed and special summon Blue-Eyes. The problem is, Vanguard is just way to easy to play around for it to be good at all. I wish I could say more, but this card just isn't good.

Traditional 1/5
Advanced 1/5

Darkstarr
I like this card allot. Sure it may not support hopeless but it does support a very underrated "Blue Eyes" theme. The discard ability is ok, as it may be needed in some tough situations but the revival ability is what really makes this card tick. Use him in a dragon deck that has enough normal monsters to support it.

Trad: 1 (Not a chance)

Advanced: 2.5 (Seeing it being great support for Dragon builds that have a large quantity of normals.)
Parallel Fates Vanguard of the Dragon…. Its first effect of gaining 300 attack points by discarding a dragon-type monster works hand-in-hand with its second effect. By boosting its attack high enough, you will force your opponent to find other means of getting it off the field aside from battling it. When they do so, this card’s resurrection effect kicks in.

The only catch is that the monster you choose to revive, has to be a normal dragon-type. This is where the problem is…dragons received a lot of support in RGBT, but why would someone choose to run a vanilla dragon? The only one that even makes sense is a Blue Eyes for Trade-In fodder. Given this catch, Vanguard’s second effect is basically useless.

Also, field destruction is quite easy in today’s metagame. For Lightsworn, they can easily power over you via Honest, or simply blow it up with Ryko, Celestia and Judgment Dragon. Blackwings have easy access to synchro-summoning. Gladiator Beasts have Chariot, Gyzarus and Murmillo. Synchro-Cat can easily bring out Arcanite Magician or just send it back to hand with GK Guard. It’s just not worth dumping cards to increase an attack by such a small amount when it can all be rendered useless a turn later because you have no viable targets in the grave.

This card will not see any play, not even in a dragon-themed deck.

1/5

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