Cardfight!! Vanguard

A new collectible cardgame from Japan, Created by the guys behind Yu-Gi-Oh and Duel Masters and headed by Bushiroad.

It's the Stride Generation, mate.

Before you freak out and dismiss it, Vanguard actually manages to avoid the pitfalls of those games (so far). The game is built around a mixture of luck and skills that while it's not random, there is still a chance of a standard deck beating a pro deck if things go well. Vanguard also has an anime series, which is notable for being about a normal player learning the game with a reasonable win/loss record and nobody tarding out over children's card games.

Vanguard is hugely popular in Singapore and other Asian countries and is gaining popularity in card-gaming circles worldwide. One draw factor is the incredibly varied card art and menagerie of characters, though not all of them are translated to English as of yet.

The Game

Typical Vanguard card. Note the combination of cool robot with cool shaolin monk. This is common in Vanguard.

The basic premise of the trading card game, is that the two players represent astral spirits leading a small army and dueling on the planet Cray. The cards in players' decks, called "units", represent characters from Cray that players can summon. Each unit has a name, clan, power level, shield value, one or more skills, and "grade", which ranges from 0 to 3. Overall strength of units increases with grade, but a unit can only be summoned if the player's vanguard is of that grade or higher. A deck must contain exactly 50 cards and 16 Trigger units. There is otherwise no restriction on how many cards of a certain clan or grade must be used.

Vanguard is a very fast-paced game with the players only having six hitpoints, and the speed accelerates with the usage of Triggers. A Trigger card is marked with an icon in the top right corner, and when drawn when either attacking or taking damage, it'll let you power up a card for that turn as well as either healing a damage point, adding to a card's critical rating, letting you reactivate a card you already used, or drawing an extra card. This means you can pretty much turn a game around with a bit of luck and timing. However, the game also requires intelligent, balanced deck building, as even though Grade 3 cards are strongest, Grade 1 and 2 are needed for their unique abilities, attack boosting and intercepting respectively.

The Clans

In Vanguard there are six Nations in the world, each with between two and five Clans.

• United Sanctuary: A monarchy ruled by Alfred, the King of Knights, a holy nation that combines tradition and magic with science and technology.
  • Royal Paladin: Defenders of the Realm, led by Alfred and his subordinates, such as Blaster Blade and Soul Saver Dragon. The quintessential beginner deck that focuses on large numbers of allies.
  • Oracle Think Tank: A powerful corporation of psychics, gods, and magicans who use their powers to foretell the future. Led by CEO Amaterasu and other Japanese gods, as well as demigods and spellcasters, Oracle Think Tank relies on manipulating draws and looking at your next card to form strategies.
  • Shadow Paladin: A group of radical, terrorist rogues who are made up of former Royal Paladins and spellcasters on the run from Oracle Think Tank, Shadow Paladin is full of monsters, witches and vagabond warriors who rely on sacrificing their own cards to power up.
  • Gold Paladin: Formed from the remnants of the Royal Paladin and Shadow Paladin clans that were left behind when the main forces of both disappeared, Gold Paladin is a rougher, more bestial version of the original.
  • Angel Feather: Based out of a teleporting Hospital Golem, Angel Feather are a collection of angels, fairies and androids who operate as medics, charging into warzones to rescue and heal the wounded. The deck style is very defensive and relies on transforming damage into useful cards or effects.
  • Genesis: A newly-founded Clan led by an experienced Goddess, Genesis consists of a troupe of aggressive battle maidens, witches, their cyborg pets, and agents. Their focus is around building up Soul power to break up an opponent's formation.

• Dragon Empire: A large, militaristic nation of dragons, reptilians, and savage humans. Has a long-standing rivalry with United Sanctuary.
  • Kagero: The Dragon Empire's Aerial Assault force, Kagero are the most elite fighters in the army. Full of dragons, wyverns, mounted knights and savages, Kagero focuses on targeting the enemy's rear-guard in order to gain an advantage.
  • Tachikaze: The regular rank-and-file infantry, Tachikaze is full of Dinodragons, cybernetic dinosaur-beasts who rely on building up strong attack spearheads and overpowering the enemy with brute force.
  • Murakumo: A Black-Ops force of beastmen and sword-weilding lizard samurai, Murakumo takes care of enemies that require more than just brute force. The playstyle of Murakumo is built around hit-and-run.
  • Nubatama: The original ninja-themed clan, Nubatama focused on forcing the opponent to discard, increasing their own power if their owner had more cards in hand than his opponent. They would not see support again until Booster Set 13: Catastrophic Outbreak, where their primary focus became binding the opponent's cards in their hand and the field, with some cards capable of sending cards from bind zone to drop zone, in addition to a few discard effects.
  • Narukami: A formerly-secret assault force that was dragged to the front line to replace Kagero after their disappearance, Narukami is a group of airborne thunder dragons that are all about shocking the opponent for extra critical rates.

• Dark Zone: A nation of demons, succubi, vampires and constant bloodshed, Dark Zone is an antagonist to all other Nations. The country hosts an annual Demon World Cup between their clans to see which will lead their constant campaigns.
  • Dark Irregulars: An aristocratic family of vampires and demons, the Dark Irregulars gained their power from black magic and sorcery. Full of various monsters, magicians, thieves, zombies, demons, and other strange creatures, Dark Irregulars are built around constant riding and building up magical counterblast attacks.
  • Spike Brothers: A bunch of loosely-affiliated demonic footballers who consist of everything from ogre midfielders to goblin doping agents and succubi cheerleaders, the Spike Brothers are a powerful clan devoted to swarming an opponent with reinforcements.
  • Pale Moon: A wandering clan, Pale Moon appears as a travelling circus, with brightly-decorated animals and colorful performers. However, they are actually an elite assassin band, and their focus is switching the vanguard card about, allowing a continuous stream of attacks.
  • Gear Chronicle: A clan of travelers who transcend over time and space on their journey of ponderation. This clan's playstyle seems to represent their ability to manipulate time through various methods such as giving the player an additional turn, returning units to the deck, restricting which units the opponent can guard with, etc.

• Magallanica: An ocean-bound archipelago of tropical islands, sunkern caverns, desolate undersea depths and modern cities, Magallanica is diverse Nation where the restless dead battle ancient warriors for control.
  • Granblue: Undead pirates, vampire captains, warrior spirits and wandering Necromancers, Granblue are nefarious pirates who wander Magallanica's seas and beyond. True to their theme, Granblue cards focus on reviving themselves over and over.
  • Bermuda Triangle: At home in the ocean or the cities, the popular Mermaid Idols of Bermuda Triangle are known all over planet Cray for their singing voices and cuteness. However they also make up a good card deck, constantly re-using their card effects as much as they can.
  • Aqua Force: Magallanica's unleashed navy, Aqua Force is made up of water-capable cyborgs that lead a jet-ski, battleship, gun-toting dragon attack on the nation's foes. Aqua Force are designed around attacking multiple times and gain bonuses if they do this successfully.

• Zoo: An incredibly-fertile forest nation, Zoo is home to a wide variety of ecosystems and is known for producing a huge amount of food for people all over Cray. Zoo has no clear leader, with two relatively-peaceful clans and one rogue element.
  • Great Nature: Based at the Great Nature University, Great Nature is composed of super-intelligent cyborg animals who devote themselves to studying various arts and sciences in pursuit of knowledge. Great Nature has a great variety of abilities, however, most of them require the user to retire. As such, they are versatile but fragile.
  • Megacolony: A massive, seedy crime syndicate run by insects, Megacolony is led by the evil Shell Shogun Giraffa, and has a distinctly 70s-80s Kamen Rider villain theme. Megacolony is built around slowing down and tripping up your opponent's fighting force instead of taking them head-on, strength-for-strength.
  • Neo Nectar: The breadbasket of Zoo, Neo Nectar is a green land full of nature and farmers. Elves and dryads work together to raise huge crops, and the land is defended by spirits, huge beasts, and biological soldier constructs called Bioroids. Neo Nectar represents this in the game by summoning reinforcements from the deck to defend itself.

• Star Gate: A massive orbital station that is locked above the planet Cray's South Pole, Star Gate is a high-tech stomping ground for robots, mecha, aliens, cyborgs and other strange creatures.
  • Nova Grappler: Under the commercial Wrestling Federation, Nova Grappler are a force of cyborg, alien, and robot wrestlers and warriors, constantly battling each other to dominate the ring. The most diverse clan, Nova Grappler are a mix of charging up special abilities and drawing new cards, making them versatile.
  • Dimension Police: An alien force of do-gooders, the Dimension Police are made up of robots and ultraman-like aliens as well as Kamen Rider-types and Japanese Super-Robots. The Dimension Police playstyle is all about powering up the vanguard and doing massive damage to the opponent.
  • Link Joker: They are the avatar of Void, the primary antagonistic force in Seasons 2-4 of the anime. Link Joker focus on locking your opponent's rear-guards, and gain benefits from doing so. Deleters, a sub-clan of Link Joker, focus on locking the opponent's Vanguard.

External Links

Official English Site
Official Japanese Site
Official Korean Site
Official Australian Site
Cardfight!! Vanguard Wiki

Card Games
Collectible Card Games:	Call of Cthulhu - Cardfight!! Vanguard - Fire Emblem Cipher Force of Will - Jyhad - Magi-Nation Duel - Magic: The Gathering Netrunner - Pokémon - Star Wars: Destiny CCG (Dead) - Yu-Gi-Oh
Other Card Games:	1000 Blank White Cards - 7th Sea - Apples to Apples - Bang! Cards Against Humanity - Coup - Decktet - Dominion - Dvorak F.A.T.A.L. - Keyforge - Mafia - Mag Blast - Mao - Munchkin Race for the Galaxy - Sentinels of the Multiverse - Tanto Cuore
Traditional Card Games:	Bridge - Cribbage - Mahjong - Solitaire/Patience - Poker - Rummy - Tarot