The Absolute Zero

Standard Format

Grade 3 (9 Cards)

x4 Blue Storm Supreme Dragon, Glory Maelstrom: The boss of the deck, really strong card at maximum power, capable of ending the game as soon as he appears. His skill limits your opponent’s guard to a single card per attack, while locking them out of intercepting for the entire turn, all for one counter blast is quite a force. Ideally, you want to ride him second after any Maelstrom; to give +10k to the entire front row, but even if you have to ride him first, the guard restriction alone is quite strong with a powerful board by making your attacks unblockable without either a heal trigger or a perfect guard in your opponent’s hand.

x3 Blue Storm Dragon, Maelstrom: While not nearly as deadly as Glory, regular Maelstrom is your ideal first ride as he pressures your opponent to guard early or risk him re-standing if either your third or fourth battle attacks hit. If you’re playing critical triggers too, they’d also have to consider blocking the vanguard attack as well or risk taking too much damage early, all of which conditioning your opponent to struggle trying to live a Glory Maelstrom turn.

x2 Riptide Dragon: We play two of him because while he is the worst ride; by having no gift marker, Riptide himself eats up a lot of shield from your opponent, and while on Glory he’s unblockable. Hitting 32k by himself means that even without the 10k bonus from Glory, all Accel/Protect decks have to perfect guard or take him, the same for Force decks for +1k more.

Grade 2 (12 Cards)

x4 Blue Wing of Obstinacy, Shimeon: Blue Wings are the newest archetype for Aqua Force from My Glorious Justice, in which they focus on swarming the field and gaining benefits for having other Blue Wing cards in play. Their offensive gimmick is that if you reveal a heal trigger during your drive check, they can stand themselves, once a turn, which is accessible on both rear-guard circle and vanguard circle. So with 12 offensive triggers, and a potential field re-stand, and vanguard re-stand from grades 1 to 3 (assuming you ride Blue Storm Dragon, Maelstrom), your aggression is really potent as early as your first attack. Shimeon is an 11k grade 2, who without any Blue Wings on the board (including guardian circle) will regress to a 6k. He’s typically your target ride especially going first to slow down opposing aggression.

x4 Blue Wing of Justice Fauros: Fauros is an okay rear-guard, with his only benefits being his name and his skills, that which he gains 5k for having another Blue Wing unit. However, if you have four or more Blue Wings, he trades the 5k for the ability to re-stand, which is always a staple in Aqua Force. His downside is that he’s very expensive being a counter blast and a soul blast for what can either be 5k or a re-stand. I personally think if he was allowed to keep the 5k with the re-stand, it’d of allowed him to be better making the cost reasonable or by splitting the costs (as shown with other units) one for each effect, it’d make him very versatile. Overall, you don’t usually use his skill however unless he has a critical or you’re going for the kill, regardless if he can stand because your counter blast is a very important resource for both Glory and another card.

x4 Coral Assault: Coral Assault, along with the grade 3s and triggers, are the only non-Blue Wing units in this deck. Being a 24k attacker by simply having four or more other units rested is really strong, especially in tandem with Glory Maelstrom who makes these heavy hitting swings nigh-unblockable. While he is able to soul charge himself, allowing you to draw, you won’t use this unless you’re up against control because it’d be beneficial to have him than to trade him without the guarantee of having another unit capable of hitting as high as him.

Grade 1 (12 Cards)

x4 Blue Wing of Faith, Basilea: Like Odysseus to Ripples, Basilea is what makes the archetype. While a 7k base, on place, she can check the top three cards of the deck, and adds all Blue Wing cards from among them to your hand for one counter blast. While the possibility to whiff is there, the ability to +3 is really powerful for an aggressive clan like Aqua Force. You’re building hand, which is your offense by extension, and you’re deck thinning to be able to hit more triggers. She’s never a bad card at any point of the game and especially if your board takes a hit from retirement or something of an Exculpate that attacks multiple cards. I’d say she’s a bad ride but being a Blue Wing means she can re-stand if you hit an early heal trigger. Overall really solid engine card and why you want to play as many Blue Wings as you can to always be rewarded.

x4 Blue Wing of Resonance, Maxios: If you have another Blue Wing unit, Maxios goes from 7k to 12k making him a big booster or a solo attacker vs Protect/Accel clans. If you have four or more, he gains +10k instead of 5k, making him a 17k attacker/booster. Good card to help your other units touch the unblockable threshold with Glory. Kinda reminds me of Melania minus the draw and resist.

x4 Blue Wing of Sympathy, Makarios: On the topic of resist, Makarios is the only 8k base grade one in the deck, (probably for the better so that most decks don’t try and damage deny us out of our counter blast for Basilea). Makarios gives himself “Resist” (not the exact skill but it’s a CONT: cannot be chosen by opponent’s card effects) if you have a Blue Wing unit in play. If you have four or more, this effect applies to all of your rear-guards. Not much to say except it’s a really good effect that allows the deck to not die immediately vs control decks.

Triggers, Starter, Gift Type

Blow-bubble Dracokid: Nothing fancy, typical draw one upon ride starter.

x8 Critical Triggers: I’m a firm believer of “early critting is early winning”. I feel the synergy between critical triggers and this deck is really high on reward. You want to attack with all of your Blue Wings first, followed by your vanguard: at which your opponent can decide to take it or guard it, without knowing whether you’re gonna hit them for more damage or re-stand your board. In contrast to Front triggers, which wants the vanguard to attack first (or as soon as possible), can lose the re-stand opportunities for the sake of higher power (which in a non-Blue Wing deck, they’d be fine). Plus, at the end of the day, I want my opponent to be at high damage or low hand (from guarding so much so early) so that Glory Maelstrom can push for game whether it’s due to having huge attack power from a full field, extra damage from critical triggers, or extra attacks via heal trigger checks. If you do want to run Front Triggers, I wouldn’t go more than 3.

x4 Draw Triggers: Extra hand and perfect guards are nice. You could be crazy enough to try maybe 12 Critical Triggers or 4 Fronts for maximum offense (16 offensive triggers in this deck at that point), but I don’t think it’s that necessary.

x4 Heal Triggers: So while heals are ideally what you want to check when you have a Blue Wing field, I do believe that you shouldn’t always bank on these since there’s only four of them in a deck. I urge people that do plan on playing this to consider optimal attack patterns and not tunnel vision into the idea of re-standing your board. That’s more of a bonus while the real benefit/purpose of Blue Wings is to swarm and plus from Basilea.

Accel 1 vs Accel 2: While Accel one guarantees the unblockable threshold on Glory, Accel 2 does give you an extra card. However, because both are stopped by one defensive trigger, I believe it’s better to get a draw than nothing at all, so I would particularly advise going Accel 2, especially considering Aqua Force wants/needs hand majority of the time (even with Basilea as she cannot add sentinels/grade 3s), and that your heavy hitters like Riptide and Coral Assault are already hitting that threshold by themselves with Glory’s +10k (especially Riptide).

Strengths

The most obvious strength is that we’re able to swarm faster than most decks especially with Basilea adding more cards to further our aggression and deck thinning. Faster swarming means more pressure on the opponent in having to guard or take attacks. And while I did mention to not tunnel vision or bank on checking them too often, checking a heal is still free extra swings along with an added 10k. There’s a lot of utility between having grade one attacker being 12k-17k, potential board resist, re-standing grade 2, and huge numbers, on top of the incoming threat that is Glory Maelstrom. You don’t have to worry too much about bricking because Basilea can push the momentum forward at any stage of the game.

Weaknesses

The most important weakness I can think of is being damage denied, which is another reason for your opponent to rear-guard hate you. While being rear-guard hated is not the issue because you will always be able to replace them, being counter blast denied is since you do not have Light Signals Penguin Soldier or any means of counter charging, to give you back a damage, which is needed for Glory’s skill. I did mention before that your grade ones are lower powered to ensure that you don’t lose out on a counter blast as early as turn one, but that will often by the one you use for Basilea to grab more cards. However, if it does come to it, you are able to ride Blue Storm Dragon Maelstrom for an extra accel circle, to increase your offense and even try to go for a vanguard re-stand. And while we do have Makarios, it is still possible to have a tough time against control and even more difficult if Royal Paladin hits you with Exculpate. So be mindful and be prepared for that.

Premium Format

Another reason why I’m playing Blue Wings + Maelstrom is because they have the ability to function in Premium as simply a “Standard+” deck, (simply put, take a Standard deck, add some premium cards especially your G-zone and you’re done). It offers the same strengths as it would in Standard.

I’m not gonna go through the boring process of listing each card again, I’m just going to simply explain new cards (especially card swaps) and that’ll be it.

x4 Blue Storm Marine General, Eldermoss: I traded Coral Assault for Eldermoss because while Coral hits a big number, Eldermoss has flex in being a 14k attacker who can fuel your soul with Maelstroms, while sitting on a 10k base. The 10k base is important because between having an 11k base grade two and a 10k base, in a format whose grade two base fluctuates between 9k-10k, it’ll make grade stalling and slowing down aggression easier. However, I do feel in terms of Premium, you can fit any card in this slot particularly something like Tidal Assault (original) for flexible multi-attacking.

x1 Swim Patrol Jellyfish Soldier: This isn’t necessarily replacing anything but the free spot was open to anything that can benefit the deck but wouldn’t matter too much since it’d be a single copy. I gave it to Jellyfish Soldier because Aqua Force really wants to be able to counter charge as often as possible. While we do have another means of doing so, having access to an alternative method is nice as well.

x4 Direct Hit Brave Shooter: Nothing special, just a critical who gives you draw and +10k to the vanguard.

x1 Blue Storm Cadet, Marios: Marios is probably the best starter for Maelstrom being able to consistently grab one as early as turn two. Later turns, probably won’t be as relevant since you’re triple driving and get a direct search from Disaster, but if your vanguard hits, never miss out on using his effect because deck thinning and always having a grade three for stride or to call as rear-guard is good.

Generation Zone (10 G Units, 6 Generation Guards)

x2 Marshal General of Surging Seas, Alexandros: Alexandros is typically your first stride because he can flip up anything your G-zone and stands two units with an additional +5k per face up card in your G-zone. Because he grows in strength as the game continues it’s important not to waste him too early. I will say that I feel he’s not as strong in this deck as he normally would be due to there being only one re-standing rear-guard who happens to need a specific condition on top of being expensive. So that is something to consider but having the option to have two rears stand with +30k power and higher is always something to aim for especially in the late game.

x2 Blue Storm Helical Dragon, Disaster Maelstrom: Another first stride target, Disaster gives +5k to three units in the front row if you have Maelstrom in your soul which makes him a tiny bit better than Alexandros for the first stride. He also doesn’t cost any resources in terms of counter blast, so if you get damage denied, he’ll typically be the best option as he’s able to get you a Maelstrom from deck to hand, both that and himself, setting up for future plays.

x2 Torrent of Determination, Valeos Revive: Aqua Force’s newest stride from the Premium Collection 2019 Set. On attack, you can call two up to two cards from hand per each face up card in the G zone, then draw equal to the same number of cards you called, so you reset your board while keeping cards in hand. However, his important effect is that he locks your opponent’s power to 11k for the entire turn if you have two or more cards face up in your G zone. This is actually very powerful because it means if you’re able to generate more attacks than your opponent has cards in hand, you’re effectively winning that turn since damage triggers cannot disrupt your attacks (while draws and heals do still activate however). He’s typically your go to second stride to push for damage especially if they’re at low damage.

x1 Blue Storm Breaking Dragon, Engulf Maelstrom: We run one of him because I feel you only need one. Simply put, if he attacks on the fourth battle, your opponent cannot call cards whose grade is less than the number of Maelstroms in soul. If you already have one in soul, you’re locking your opponent out of grade zeroes which is a huge restriction if they happen to run draw trigger sentinels (which most decks are). With 2 in soul, you’re completely stopping your opponent from guarding with perfect guards entirely leaving them only to guard with G-guardians. For Force and Accel clans, this is pretty decisive, though for Protect, this card is useless since Protect Gift marker does not have a grade. You can also flip a card in your G-zone to give him a critical +1 if you have two or more Maelstroms face up in the G-zone, making him lethal at four damage.

x1 Storm of Lament, Wailing Thavas: My all time favorite card in the entire game. Sadly he hasn’t aged too well because of the inception of draw sentinels making his guard restriction ability moot. However, having the option to board wipe is still pretty good for if the time comes. If you don’t prefer this, you can always swap him for another Engulf.

x1 Progenitor Dragon of Deep Sea, Balanerena: The newest wave of nation strides, units that are usable by all clans in it’s respective nation by dropping a card with the same name as your vanguard for the cost of stride, these dragons give you access to stride for the rest of the game without paying the cost, which I must say is something Premium (and even G) needed since striding is very important that whiffing it once, without a play that was as strong as striding, was pretty much the end of the game for you. You only really want to go into Balanerena if you know you won’t be able to stride the following turns (whether it’s because you need to re-ride or if your hand/field is low, both scenarios very possible and very common in Premium) or if your opponent is at 4-5 damage because every guardian that they call has the potential of being retired by discarding a grade one or lower from your hand. This won’t negate the perfect guard’s effect however, but this is on similar to Glory Maelstrom in forcing your opponent into sticky situations that can potentially end the game.

x1 Zeroth Dragon of Distant Seas, Megiddo: If you’re able to go for it, Megiddo can push for game with no repercussion since you have a somewhat strong non-stride turn in Glory Maelstrom (be wary that they can G-guard to bypass Glory’s restriction however). Like Alexandros, not as strong without re-standers but being able to swap units in and out of the Accel circle is good enough. Typically only go into this if you have nothing else, especially if your board is looking weak for anything else. Both nation strides are easy to fulfill given your starter and Disaster grabbing any Maelstrom of your choosing when he attacks.

x2 Guard Leader of Sky and Water, Ihoannes: Your biggest G-guardian especially if you have a big field. Gives resist and battle protection to your rear-guards, as well as accelerating your G-zone, along with +5k shield per each rear-guard.

x2 Blue Wave Armor General, Galfilia: Your typical G-guardian that ends up being the flip target for most of your cards whether it be Valeos, Alexandros, Ihoannes, or Engulf. That’s because for a soul blast, she can flip herself face down, and chooses a face down card in Vanguard, Rear-guard, or damage, and turns it face up. While she can counter charge, she can unlock rears, or even un-delete your vanguard. While she can flip herself face down, making her recyclable, it’s important to have two or more because she’s your go-to guardian most of the time and you don’t want to run into a situation where you can’t use her as an actual guardian.

x1 Blue Storm Deterrence Dragon, Ice Barrier Dragon: In very niche situations, he comes in handy being a 25k shield on a solo vanguard swing or a late power swing.

x1 Dark Element, Dizmel: Because rear-guard hating is common, calling this out to save your rear-guard is fine. Alternatively, you can just play another Galfilia or even Colburn for decks with a lot of hand.

Closing Statement

I believe this booster did a pretty decent job at supporting the clan. Could be better, minor nitpicks here and there, but overall things that can help keep us afloat until the next support wave.

I feel what it did right, aside from giving us a power house finisher grade three (which I’ll briefly touch upon when I talk about the decks themselves), and better grade ones since our current ones, aside from Penguin, were “ok” some of the times or had conflicted with attack patterns which is a no-no. We only got one grade 2 which is an instant inclusion to the deck.

https://cardfight.fandom.com/wiki/Coral_Assault_(V_Series)

Coral’s good because hitting 24k by himself with no Accel Circle and being able to fuel soul and draw for playing the clan is nice. You won’t use that skill all the time unless you know he’s gonna get retired.

Lastly, we get to the main grade 3 of the deck.

https://cardfight.fandom.com/wiki/Blue_Storm_Supreme_Dragon,_Glory_Maelstrom_(V_Series)

As I said before, he’s the power house finisher as he can force your opponent into guarding scenarios where they must perfect guard an attack or take it due to the restriction. Regardless of whether Aqua Force wanted a skill like that from Glory or not, the point is that we got it, so we have to make do with what we have until the next time.

So while the deck will definitely be built around Glory Maelstrom (and to some extent OG Maelstrom if you’re happen to be stuck on him), I feel that there are multiple ways you can go about it due to our upgraded grade one line up that more or less influences our grade two line up. Again, I’ll go over new grade ones in their respective featured decks. These decks are to be seen as a base concept: while I do think it’s preferred to stick to the same cards of each deck (which will be explained why), card copies can be played around with to get a desired result. Triggers I’ll go over at the very end since I feel those are personal preference.

This deck is meant to have a strong grade one to grade two transition, by either riding the Wheel Assault or Storm Rider, Nikoloz (I have the original card of Wheel for proxy purposes, don’t chew me out). Nikoloz especially giving you the ability to tutor out your Algos from the deck is really good since any form of tutoring in an aggressive deck is always welcomed. While it does make the deck even more of a high-roll, you have two good on-rides and you can always use Nikoloz throughout the game. Calm Assault is really strong to pump your attacks by an extra stage while on Glory (preferably to either force a heal trigger to guard or to become a “perfect guard or take”, which will be known as “the unguardable threshold” for the remainder of this post) and increases the pressure of the rear-guards who can trigger the original Maelstrom’s re-stand. Basil is here because given the nature of Glory, you want to have units that can hit that unguardable threshold, and since Basil goes above Force and hits a 14k magic number (for decks like Blaster and Brandt), he’s much preferred than any of the others for the time being. Resource wise, this deck is pretty balanced, not eating up too much of a specific resource. Riptide is a really strong card that continues to push in Standard for this clan. The only issue is that this build trades flexibility for the high-roll (borderline gimmicky), since every card here is important: you can’t afford to take out a card without running into some drawbacks.

This second build prioritizes flexibility and stability. While every card here is important, you’re able to swap out cards should the format call for it. Since you don’t have Algos tutoring, Tidal takes his place since the later doesn’t use up counter blast that can be saved for Glory, Maelstrom, and Basil. However, the deck leans heavily on it’s soul blasts (Tidal and Calm Assault who can be used twice a turn), so you’ll have to consider playing Battle Siren, Viviana to fuel soul, who also happens to go really well with Glory since attacks will be too large to guard, thus guaranteeing the on hit draw and +3k to another unit. I don’t think there’s much of a draw back to this deck except maybe running out of soul too quickly.

This last build is more of a “Power oriented” deck, focused solely on getting to those unguardable threshold. Lazarus by himself is a magic number to Protect/Accel decks with no cost, similar to Riptide only without the additional 20k. Like the previous deck, it’s completely flexible if the meta demands you to run a specific card. The only draw backs I feel is that, for now, your grade two alternatives don’t offer much that isn’t Tidal or Algos. There is a grade 2 promo via Tear Knight, Halpalos but it isn’t not available in English. Additionally, the nature of this deck values power over the multi-attacking via small pokes that Aqua Force is known for, without your enablers like Tidal/Algos, you have to commit a bit more than you would normally to achieve the same number of attacks, which does require hand. This also affects how much you have to commit to have a decent turn should you ride regular Maelstrom.

Triggers: Criticals or Fronts?

Honestly, doesn’t matter. Fronts push your numbers higher and can over power the value of any damage triggers your opponent should check. Critical triggers give your vanguard pressure, and can push for damage even before you ride to Glory, meaning the chances of damage triggers are lower the higher their damage is. Personally, I value critical triggers as you can see from the lists because I’m trying to push my opponent as quickly as possible, regardless of my match up and/or my resources (if I bricked, kept getting rear-guard hated, so on and so forth). I also feel criticals are better with original Maelstrom because they have to pick and choose whether to take the criticals now on the vanguard swing, or take it later with a possibility of re-standing my vanguard.

Closing Notes

Basically, I’m at an impasse with Vanguard, a spiritual limbo. I understand and acknowledge what Bushiroad was trying to do, I understand the pros and cons to each format from an objective stance. I love Vanguard a lot because it means a great deal to me as much as fighting games. My issue with the game isn’t so much the fault of a particular format, an era, a mechanic or anything: it’s about whether or not the experiences and investments made by the veteran players will matter and how will it matter enough to come full circle to reward us. I’ve played the game for five years, and naturally being a competitive player: I would like to be able to apply those five years worth of playing the game in future era’s, events, decks, plays, etc. This should be the case for every one of you as well, especially for those who invested in real life decks. However, with way Vanguard is now, I feel like I can only get that benefit from playing Premium, which is the format I prefer regardless of the consistent concerns of some questionable interactions between the newer cards and the older cards. I prefer to have multiple options as that is what me playing the game for so long has taught me, especially in the heat of a competitive scene where you’re forced to make meta calls, reviving old decks/archetypes that were thought to be dead, or utilizing strategies as countermeasures against decks (grade stalling, damage denial, etc). Unfortunately because of these concerns, the health of the competitive scene is called into question to turn people away preferring a “safe haven” that is Standard. Especially the case if your main clan hasn’t been supported via V-Standard yet and have to deal with higher shield and base powers.

Now again, don’t get me wrong: I don’t hate Standard nor am I bashing it or anyone who prefers the format, as I said to each their own. However, for me: I don’t feel Standard at its current point (and quite honestly, even further down the line except with the case being have more clan diversity) offers that benefit of being able to apply my experiences in the games to demonstrate that I’m a veteran player compared to someone who just started the game. There’s just not enough options both clan and deck wise to make those distinctions: making decks very “cookie cutter” especially with how dominant both the triggers and Accel Gift Markers are. Yes, I’m complaining about a mechanic that my main clan has for being too strong, though I believe this is only because of Front Triggers than the Gift itself. Like I can play AQ, kill on grade 3 ride, be happy because I'm using my main clan - but that's bout it. I don't think I'd feel anything from winning because my experience & deck dictates that I should be capable of getting consistent wins and if I lose it'll be frustrating because it'll be due to rng; whether it be triggers, grade stuck, incorrect rides, or in an accel mirror the toss of a coin, which doesn’t benefit me as a player in understanding what I did wrong in that fight. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before: but I’m someone who would rather lose to a strong card or if I know I misplayed than to see the result of a game decided by luck: which in Standard, triggers being abundantly strong in terms of power, will be the result of games 9/10 because of how much of an impact they make now in a slower paced game. And it's not about the result of games, it's more about me wanting to convey that I'm a veteran player and that my experiences and knowledge can be applied to demonstrate that beyond the usage of my cards as opposed to being carried by cards/mechanics/rng. All I'd ever feel is "I only won because my main deck did it's job regardless of any misplays I made" - which a lot of the G decks can say the same thing, but there is usually a case of back and forth before it reaches to “end game”. Which poses a bit of an issue for me personally because most people prefer Standard.

So after having a few months to think about it, after a lot of debates and actually trying out both formats, while I believe my experiences will benefit and come full circle in Premium, I’m ultimately just going to take a break from competitive Vanguard. It was also due to seeing how this same issue exists in the fighting game genre: with Blazblue Central Fiction vs Blazblue Cross Tag Battle. While Cross Tag appeals to a newer audience to get their feet wet in fighting games, the experiences accumulated from investing time and effort in previous titles like Central Fiction aren’t negated or diminished when transitioning (beyond learning the newer mechanics). This allowed seasoned players to still maintain their position and still kept it simple for newer players. I feel splitting the game into two formats was the biggest mistake, though I understand why, but I feel Bushiroad severely underestimated just how impactful some of the changes brought into the game would’ve leveled it out entirely. Higher bases, higher shield values, imaginary gift mechanic would’ve been enough to encourage people to ride first and perhaps even have the game not be so “Stride to Survive”. Blasters themselves demonstrate this by having the option to forgo stride to stack up Force Markers while the current top tier decks would have something to rival their strength.

My initial approach to the game was rather lukewarm because while it was a Blazblue game, it wasn't from what I heard and saw from gameplay of both seasoned fighting gamers and those new to fighting games. Many adjustments to characters, move properties, controls set up, new systems, and more threw myself and many others for a roller-coaster trying to find our place in the game, especially coming off of Dragonball FighterZ - DBFZ, a game similar in concept to XTB. Day One of the Online Beta was about me understanding that this game should be treated as it's own and not like anything before it. However, my impression of this game has greatly started to favor the game for more than just the franchises through it’s concept, it’s purpose and what it could mean for the fighting game franchise as a whole. Starting from the characters, I feel they were well represented, fighting wise, from what I could see between fighting them and listening to feedback of people who mained said characters from their original games, especially since I only played two characters, which I feel were handled properly. There were some major changes but only to accommodate the system but not enough to feel like "oh this character is unplayable/bad". When asked "Who did I think was the worst character in the trial?" I'm still, even now, am unsure because I feel so far there's not a character that's outright bottom tier - all of them felt really solid and with the auto-combo system, felt very encouraged to try new characters & team combinations. Defensive’s in this game is probably my favorite part and that the part that makes this game fulfill it's purpose more than DBFZ. When I finally learned all three, my time spent being juggled in combos was significantly lessened which is the fear when playing fighting games. My only gripes towards this game is the movement, distortion/special command, and button lay out. Button lay out can be mitigated by customizing controls, the distortion command is linked to your grab button which serves as an issue because grabs do a run up to close the distance; which in turn if you mistime the motion, you will run up towards your opponent which can fuck you up big time. Having your only movement be running instead of walking is a bit of an inconvenience when it comes to approaching the opponent when running was originally just tapping forward twice. However, even with these issues, I feel the game even from a demo was a great learning experience in both understanding the game and even improving myself without feeling overly taxed, physically. The challenges right now from what I can see is really just defensives (both when and how) and understanding your team composition both individually and mutually, of which you can learn at your own pace without feeling left behind.

The Mission of Cross Tag Battle!

Considering how late this deck profile is, Blue Wave’s (and to an extent Aqua Force itself) usage has went down post Star Gate due to Viktor, Deletors and Chaos. So I’m profiling this deck strictly as a vacuum with moderate competitive viability but not entirely directed at it. In other words, it’s not expected to be used competitively at the current moment since there are other decks stronger decks including Thavas, and am only doing this for the sake of Blue Wave’s as a whole.

(Grade 3: 9 Units)

x4 Blue Wave Dragon, Anger-boil Dragon: Anger-boil as stated above is the main Grade 3 because his synergy with the ideal re-stander Tetra-boil is what made Blue Wave a really powerful deck. Being able to stand two rear-guards when the Vanguard attacks, getting an entire column (or two attacks depending on units) is a huge plus in aggression especially if your field is looking a bare or minimal.

x3 Blue Wave Marshal, Valeos: Valeos is simply the alternative ride due to his heartbeat skill to prevent power increase during the opposing turn. Valeos’ also has the benefit to be searched via Beragios if you do not have Anger-boil or a Grade 3, at all, which is why I play him at three as opposed to two. It is a little bit unfortunate to have to ride him especially if you’re lacking rear-guards or are up against control, so you do have to drop a bit more whereas with Anger-boil you can just drop an enabler to your field and work with that and any other units are just increase the power of your attacks. Additionally, many people (myself included) did not think it was wise to really have both Valeos and Anger-boil because some of the newer rears worked better with Valeos as the vanguard and wouldn’t conflict as much as it would with either of Anger-boil’s skill, one of which being exclusive to Tetra-boil, but both requiring a specific attack pattern. I’ve heard people say that because Valeos works on any Blue Wave G Unit, it’s the better heart. Though true, I look at it from the perspective of which Blue Wave G Unit is worth going into or building around. In my opinion, it’d be Tetra-boil since Tetra-boil has two viable hearts as opposed to Flood Hazard only having one, being Valeos himself.

x1 Blue Wave Dragon, Arsenal fleet Dragon: Arsenal fleet is what most would play as a back up to Valeos because he’s an enabler for a counterblast and, his more notable skill, being a recyclable stride cost. However, riding him is a bit of a pain regardless if he’s a Blue Wave and of course Beragios can whiff even if you run 4 Valeos so it’s a bit of hassle that I don’t think it’s worth any extra spots especially since you really want him in your hand to drop for a cost or in the drop zone to pick back up if you’re lacking a grade 3 to stride with on the next turn. If you prefer not to have Arsenal fleet you can completely drop him but I do recommend keeping the next unit in the deck.

x1 Supreme Ruler of the Storm, Thavas: Thavas is the final Grade 3 of the deck. Outside of him being my favorite unit, Thavas is an enabler that can be tutored out of the deck with Nikki. Both Thavas and Arsenal fleet are not units you want to ride simply but if you had to pick a unit, Arsenal fleet would be better for the name/heart consistency. However with Thavas being searchable and Arsenal being in the drop zone majority of the times, having nine grade 3s isn’t as bad since these two are enablers and can be seen as “extra Grade 2s” like most of your enablers.

(Grade 2: 10 Units)

x4 Tidal Assault: Pretty standard Aqua Force staple. He’s free, flexible, really good for the early game. Most Valeos styled decks drop Tidal Assault because he doesn’t have a Blue Wave name which can conflict at times with Flood Hazard’s re-stand condition. However, I feel without Tidal, you’re losing out of major aggression and even having a very cost heavy deck.

x4 Blue Wave Marine General, Foivos: Foivos is just as important of a staple as Tidal Assault is and can be argued if he’s the better of the two. He hits 11k twice on the third battle and doesn’t have the mandatory re-stand clause like Tidal.

x2 Blue Wave Marine General, Medla: Medla is an okay unit. She can be played over by any other Blue Wave enabler like Lucianos or Galleass, however I do like her ability to attack from the back row with an 11k and a constant resist. However, she is an 8k base which is probably not ideal to ride but she only attacks for 11k if she’s attacking the Vanguard, so at times she can be an inconvenience but she’s also handy at other times since she doesn’t care when she attacks unlike other Blue Wave Grade 2s. (Alternatives: Blue Wave Marine General, Galleass | Blue Wave Marine General, Lucianos)

(Grade 1: 14 Units)

x4 Blue Wave Shield General, Yorgos: Blue Wave exclusive sentinel. I prefer this sentinel over Plato because it’s secondary skill to bind itself to give a Blue Wave unit the ability to attack from the back row. Yorgos’ self-binding also works in tandem with Cloris for a free 5k shield and to recycle repeatedly.

x3 Kelpie Rider, Nikki: Standard Aqua Force stride fodder. Can search Thavas but other than that, nothing else to say on it outside of I’d run four if the other cards weren’t as needed, especially since nine Grade 3s.

x3 Battle Siren, Cloris: Cloris is a really niche card for this deck because there is are a fair amount of cards that can work as shields if bound by an effect, including her own effect. She can call cards from the bind zone to guardian and give +5k shield to those units, which is especially good for the new Blue Wave heals to have an extensive supply of counter charging/soul charging when they’re discarded for G-guards.

x2 Blue Wave Soldier, Bright Shooter: Bright shooter is really just for the name and to pick back up grade 3s from the drop zone via boosting 4th attack or higher, especially if you can’t use Arsenal fleet.

x2 Blue Wave Soldier Senior, Beragios: Between this and Bright shooter, either one’s quantity can be played around since they both have their pros and cons. Beragios can try to grab you Valeos at the cost of having to drop units whose grades equal total sum of three (or more) from hand but after that he’s kinda useless outside of being a re-standing booster when the Vanguard stands.

(Starter & Triggers)

Bubble Edge Dracokid: I prefer Bubble Edge for this deck over Dagger Master simply because you have more ways to trigger Bubble Edge and you do want to be able to recover if you’re going for the early aggression. Dagger Master is better if you prefer Flood Hazard as your primary because the Critical+1 does give the final attack enough pressure to be guarded, in addition you are able to draw more with the Dagger than with Bubble. That being said, Bubble works amazing since being compensated for your rush or to draw more on top of Brutal Trooper is always nice.

x4 Blue Wave Soldier, Brutal Trooper: Blue Wave’s infamous critical that made the archetype really potent beyond their wave of attacks. The more you stack, the more you plus especially when Tetra-boil will only have you discard one card to re-stand.

x4 Supersonic Sailor: Standard counter charge critical. To be honest, you can go 6 Critical and 6 Draws since Brutal does recycle itself and hitting draw triggers is pretty cool too.

x4 Blue Wave Soldier, Bluegill Trooper: Standard margal draw but the Blue Wave name is something to note because of Valeos and Artiom’s soul blast cost. If you do go 6D/6C, you can also add Battle Siren, Malika with the same effect. 

x4 Blue Wave Engineer, Refit Soldier: This is Aqua Force’s best heal because being able to counter charge (and/or soul charge but counter charging is more important) is pretty helpful. With Cloris, after Refit Soldier is bound via her cost, you can call her back as 15k shields.

(Generation Zone: 11 Units, 5 Guardians)

x4 Blue Wave Marshal Dragon, Tetra-boil Dragon: Tetra-boil Dragon as stated before is the “main boss” and the preferred re-standing Vanguard. My reasoning is simply because Flood Hazard prior to Generation Break 3 is a major minus especially since he loses three drives. As I’ve ranted, I’m not a fan of that because it relies too heavily on Brutal Trooper which strains how you play prior to Stride: you have to make sure your have Brutal Trooper(s), Stride Cost, attackers, and defense (let alone the grades). Even if you G-guard, you’d be better off going into Tetra-boil who won’t cause you to minus super hard and stays consistent with the Twin Drive. While on Valeos, you’re eliminating any damage triggers to cushion your barrage of attacks and while on Anger-boil (ideally), you’re increasing the power of your attacks: making Tetra-boil the more versatile re-stander.

x3 Blue Wave Marshal Dragon, Flood Hazard Dragon: While Tetra-boil is the re-stander you’ll most likely be going for majority of the time, Flood Hazard is still a re-standing Vanguard, and at first stride at that. If you do have the pieces to make a powerful first stride break through, then by all means. However, I originally was playing because: again, the most times you stride for a re-stander, you will be going into Tetra-boil, and the game should already be done before you ever need to go to your third re-stander. Though, through testing, I was originally playing Lambros at two - I never went into him at all, so I cut him out for two cards: one being Artiom and the other was a free space, which I decided to give to Flood Hazard for the same reason Thavas plays it, for the Quad-drive effect when you’re kinda in a bad spot. Again, you can simply minus this for Sebreeze or even a second Alexandros: as you see fit. There have also been other times where I would commit to the first stride Flood Hazard and if my hand had really solid cards that I didn’t want to drop to re-stand, I’d end my turn and re-stride into it (or Tetra) and fully complete the skill fully with Quad-check, as a showing of what three Flood Hazard can do. (Alternatives: -1 for Air Element, Sebreeze | Marshal General of Surging Seas, Alexandros)

x1 Blue Wave Brave General, Artiom: Artiom is really played as another first stride specifically if you’re not on a good heart and want to try and replace it. Other than that, if you’re kinda in a undesirable position on your first stride, this is pretty okay to go into since Blue Wave units will get 3k per swing. You can drop this for one of the alternatives from Flood Hazard or even add the fourth Flood Hazard itself or you can remove the 1 Flood Hazard and this for a persona stride such as Lambros or Commander Thavas.

x1 Marshal General of Surging Seas, Alexandros: Alexandros is good on either first stride or later on when you’ve been striding since the accumulated generation break will make for an insane game-ender. It does have some complications with Foivos causing Alexandros needing to attack second for his skill to trigger but other than that, you are giving massive power, so a fair trade off.

x1 Storm of Lament, Wailing Thavas: Personal favorite card in the game, you won’t really go into him too much but if you do and if the field is set up, you can go for a devastating play of retiring the opponents board, a sentinel restricted power lane of over 41k.

x1 Zeroth Dragon of Distant Seas, Megiddo: I did have my reserves about this card but I feel Blue Waves (and Thavas to some extent) would want to see use it if the situation calls for it, Blue Waves especially since they don’t have resist everywhere.

x1 Guard Leader of Sky and Water, Ihoannes: Standard flip G-guard. Can protect rears and can be the strongest shield value. I only really use this to accelerate the Generation Zone for Alexandros or to flip up an extra Galfilia so I can have more counter charge options.

x2 Blue Wave Armor General, Galfilia: Should generally have about 2 of her since she can flip herself face down to unlock or unflip a card. Can even go with three. Her shield does cover Waves 2-3 while Ice Barrier covers Waves 1-4+.

x2 Blue Storm Deterrence Dragon, Ice Barrier Dragon: Nothing really to say except you can minus one for another G-guard of utility purpose like Dizmel, Scyrew, Colburn, etc.

Deck Summary

My approach to Blue Waves is centering the deck around Tetra-boil as the “primary re-stander” or the boss unit so to speak due to how affordable he is compared to Flood Hazard. From there, I decided that Anger-boil would need to be in the deck because Anger-boil does have better synergy with Tetra-boil than Valeos or any other Blue Wave Grade 3 that is currently available to us. However, I did want to keep Valeos in the deck for the Blue Wave consistency and because Valeos himself can be searched and that he also is a great Vanguard to be on if you cannot be on Anger-boil. I also aimed to have this deck be more early game oriented since Blue Waves were originally known for their Tidal and Foivos rush down and also included some very niche cards that wouldn’t conflict with the overall deck since Blue Wave is very flexible with only requiring the Vanguard to be Blue Wave with the exception of a few cards whose costs may require to be paid via Blue Wave units. Compared to the standard Valeos deck: which is very mid-range but with a very explosive burst on first stride, this is really meant to be flexible and stable throughout the game, allowing the player to adjust accordingly and play as they see fit.

Thank you all for reading my deck profile. Again, it was a bit late as I’m sure people are probably over Blue Waves (or Aqua Force post Star Gate), but I just wanted to get this submitted since I’ve been working really hard with the deck to try and figure out what Blue Waves could be doing as an alternative to Valeos, which isn’t to say Valeos is a bad deck by any means, he’s a really good and fun card to use and play with. My objective was simply to explore and expand upon Blue Waves and address the concerns that many people had that left them unsatisfied with Blue Waves. And again, this isn’t meant to say “This is on-par/better than Thavas” since I think both decks and any deck’s potency is relative to the current meta game, which before: it was better for Thavas than it was for Blue Waves due to resist, flexibility, inherent draw engine, and other stuff that Blue Waves were somewhat lacking in. That being said, please look forward to my next profile coming very soon!

As a disclaimer, I’d just want to say if you are a huge fan of Blue Wave - like a really ride or die fan, or even a user of Blue Wave: this is not to deter you from playing the deck or even liking the deck. If you feel content or even enjoyment from what Blue Waves are or have received as support, then please continue to do so as this isn’t to judge the players or the fans of the deck regardless if you’re a casual player or a competitive player, nor this is not in any way, shape, or form bashing or trashing this deck since, again, I’ll also be providing an upgraded deck list after taking another look at the deck and figuring out some stuff. This is just me looking back on the archetype from start to finish, and trying to decipher “What happened” or “What went wrong” from the perspective of those who do not like what Blue Wave ended up as a deck and archetype as a whole. With that further ado, let’s start from the beginning.

History of Blue Waves

Without going as far back as Tetra-drive Dragon, which was the only “Blue Wave” card at the time: Blue Wave’s were a sub archetype of Aqua Force revolved around the aforementioned Tetra-drive Dragon and the idea of re-standing after a specified number of attacks - usually fourth battle from rear-guard to opposing Vanguard. Blue Wave introduced the idea of abilities triggering whenever the Vanguard attacked either during or at the end of the battle, to increase your offensives or generate resources. This is best exemplified through the following units:

[ACT](RC):[Put this unit on the top of your deck] If you have a vanguard with "Blue Wave" in its card name, choose up to one of your vanguards, and until end of turn, it gets "[AUTO](VC)Wave-2nd time or more:When this unit attacks a vanguard, draw a card.". Shuffle your deck.

[ACT](RC) Generation Break 1:[Counter Blast (1) & Put this unit into your soul] Choose one of your vanguards with "Blue Wave" in its card name, until end of turn, it gets "[AUTO](VC)Wave-2nd time or more (Active during the specified battles of each turn):When this unit attacks a vanguard, draw a card." and "[AUTO](VC)Wave-5th time or more:When this unit attacks a vanguard, this unit gets [Critical]+1 until end of that battle.".

[AUTO](VC) Generation Break 2 Wave-2nd time only(Active during the specified battles of each turn):When this unit attacks a vanguard, this unit gets [Power]+5000 until end of turn, choose up to one of your rear-guards, [Stand] it, and it gets [Power]+10000 until end of turn. [AUTO](VC):During your turn, when your unit named "Blue Wave Marshal Dragon, Tetra-boil Dragon" Stride, choose one of your vanguards, until end of turn, it gets [Power]+3000, and "[AUTO](VC)Wave-2nd time only (Active during the specified battles of each turn):When this unit attacks a vanguard, choose up to two of your rear-guards, [Stand] them, and they get [Power]+3000 until end of turn.".

Needless to say, the more of these benefits you had stacked onto your Vanguard the more powerful your turns were both in strength and defense, easily making milestones being abruptly stronger than Lambros, Aqua Force’s sole finisher at the time, and being one of the best re-standing Vanguards: outclassing Dragonic Overlord the Ace, Viktplasma, and Homura Raider. As I’ve mentioned before in many of my posts on this page (though sadly I cannot remember which ones to be exact), Blue Waves had a “everything you can do, I can do better” moment with all of the other Aqua Force builds: Ripples (Post Ban List), Maelstrom, and especially Thavas. While the three builds shared the same end game via Lambros (although Maelstrom had an invincible attack through cross break ride) Blue Wave’s had Tetra-boil in addition to Lambros which meant that they had three guaranteed shots to end the game. I would comment the early game but each variant, except Thavas somewhat, had a relatively strong early game presence since Ripples had Odysseus, Maelstrom still had “Blue Storm” 10k/12k beaters, and Blue Wave’s having Foivos, it’s debatable to say which one was truly superior so I’ll end it off by saying that: Blue Wave with just a Stride and 4 main deck cards, one per grade + trigger, was a pretty solid deck.

The next time Blue Wave would receive another set of support was during Set 9′s Divine Dragon Caper, which at this point: a lot of things happened. The G zone expanded, our meta shifted a lot, we had to deal with the hand traps known as Denial Griffin and Defeat Flare, it was a roller coaster of swapping between Blue Waves and Thavas, myself making a hybrid called “Divine Storm”, in fact that deck profile can tell you more about my thoughts and my approach to the meta in a nutshell. It was a time period where I dabbled in both Thavas and Blue Waves as both were solid decks with specific strengths that led me to believe they were equally powerful and it came down to a matter of which deck was better against the most recent support until Set 9. Now, I’m sure you’ve heard me state this before: my thoughts on Divine Dragon Caper for Aqua Force was not good, I’d say it was one of the worst sets beyond getting two valued things: Wailing Thavas and a Reprint of Commander Thavas. We had one Maelstrom support after it was advertised that Maelstrom was going to be featured and the “Wave” support was okay but nothing truly impacting since we was still using the same units in our deck. Blue Wave support was I believe the worst because not only did any of the main deck support not make it in decks beyond 2-3 cards; it came in as a “surprise” since it felt like the attention was being directed to both Maelstrom and Thavas yet Blue Waves took over and got support that they didn’t even need. I’m not going to go through each and every Blue Wave card since most of them speak for themselves as to why they weren’t getting played but yeah. So from there, we got Wailing in our deck and nothing really changed our main deck for any Aqua Force build, but because of this: Blue Wave (or any hybrid that included Anger-boil) was the “better” if not the best Aqua Force deck because you had more options to approach your opponent, either Lambros, Tetra-boil, and now Wailing Thavas. In addition, the Blue Wave early game being stronger than Thavas’ only supported Blue Wave’s standing since the meta-game at the time was all heavy Generation Break decks like Nightrose, Luard, Gear Chronicle, Wiseman, etc. which gave Blue Wave an edge to hit them hard and fast before they set up and overpowered you. Sadly, it would remain like this until Set 11: which began a huge control spike through Kagero and Nubatama. It was at this time, where I personally, also switched to Thavas and started to drop Blue Wave because the game was reaching a point where the first stride was what determined the game whether if you began your multi-attacking or if you secured resources to guard and/or set up for your stronger plays. With Blue Wave needing a G-guard otherwise needed to survive into second stride to go into it’s infamous power play, it was not an effective strategy per se especially when you needed to finish them that turn or hope to god you stacked 2-4 Brutal Troopers on your vanguard to generate the hand needed to guard the more explosive plays and with nothing that could be done to make the first stride Commander Thavas an optimal push outside of sacking, it was looking more like Thavas was the better deck for the meta because Skyros and Resist gave stability against control, Thavas has an inherent draw engine through Melania and Petros, and Commander was better utilized in Thavas (as he’s always had) than in Blue Waves, especially considering Melania. Now, I know people are going to say “Why not put Melania in Blue Waves?” That is a good point and I did try that, however, unless you stride into a Thavas unit: Melania was useless if not a booster and the front row was still open to control which nine times out of ten, were units you desperately wanted like a Tidal Assault, Foivos, etc. My logic was simply: Thavas and Blue Waves, while neither were dominating the meta-game, even regarded as Tier 2, were equal to each other but the key difference was who could approach the meta better? Because of Resist and being able to draw/resource as soon as you stride and the ability to control made Thavas a better pick, despite glaring weaknesses, over Blue Waves who would do better in slower formats where their early game would dominate other decks and could make up for their sub par first stride into a decently good mid-to-late game. This moment in time can be better explained through another one of my deck profiles; Ultimate Storm which was, again, where I started to drop Blue Wave and the beginning of the meta shift. I wrap up this section by ending it off with: at this point in the game, it was the first time that Blue Wave would “need” support not only to be a rival to Thavas for “face of the clan” but to be a competitively viable deck as it originally was. 

Set 13′s Ultimate Stride, was packed full of expectations and wonder as to what Aqua Force was going to get. I kinda already ran through this in my “Ultimate Stride” Discussion, so I’m not gonna rant about the goodness of this set for the entire clan, but namely for Blue Wave. We had no idea what Blue Wave was going to do until we saw a quick glimpse of what Valeos was able to showcase in his fight against Shion, especially when Flood Hazard Dragon entered the battle. A first stride re-standing vanguard to make use of those Brutal Troopers early on was something we wasn’t expecting and it seemed perfect in addition to the rear-guards and Valeos himself...until the cards came out. There were restrictions upon restrictions, that watered down the support as a whole, no pun intended. Restrictions that I’ll explain in the next segment because I feel this “History of Blue Waves” is getting pretty lengthy now but it’s also the fact that, even designing the cards and their effects: it actually caused the archetype to split into two because it would be very conflicting to all of these cards together and have them synergize perfectly beyond them sharing the Blue Wave name. With that, I’m going to close this segment and discuss the problem, but to recap: Blue Wave started off really strong, brimming with potential and as the game progressed, they tried to as well but really couldn’t all that much especially in the control metas to now not knowing what they want to do.

The Problem

So with all of that history dump out of the way, I’ll just jump straight into the issues. Originally, after Set 9, Blue Wave’s issue was really a solid first stride to either push the opponent or to safely get them to their second stride and their main boss: Tetra-boil Dragon. This is an issue because Thavas’ was able to have a better and stable first stride and go safely into the next turn aiming to finish or devastate the opponent. In Ultimate Stride, they gave us Flood Hazard Dragon which was intended to be our “new first stride” that, in theory, pushed the opponent and gave us some resources. And somehow, they screwed it up. The Problem with Blue Wave is the newest stride Flood Hazard Dragon!

[AUTO](VC):[Counter Blast (1) & Choose a face down card with the same card name as this unit from your G zone, turn it face up, choose two cards from your hand, and discard them] At the end of the battle that a rear-guard with "Blue Wave" in its card name attacked, if you have a heart card with "Blue Wave" in its card name, and it was the fourth battle of this turn, you may pay the cost. If you do, [Stand] this unit, and it gets drive-3. [CONT](VC) Generation Break 3:This unit gets drive+1, and all of your rear-guards in your front row with "Blue Wave" in their card names get [Power]+2000.

Disclaimer: I love the art and the name: it’s a really cool card to have but to use in actual game play, that’s a different story. Now you’re probably looking at this and are thinking: “How can a stride ruin it when it re-stands and triggers Brutal Trooper?” Simple, it costs too much that it actually becomes starved for Brutal Trooper. You have to discard two cards and you get no extra drive checks, barring Generation Break 3. This is horrible: Tetra-boil at the very least, while Twin Drive, made you discard one and still get two extra cards on his second attack. You literally only get one card not including anything from Brutal/Dagger/Draw Triggers, which is hardly anything to survive off of. Sure you can refund by grabbing a Grade 3 through Arsenal or Bright Shooter, but a Grade 3 will pay for stride but it can’t guard and your hand size isn’t changing (unless you used Brutal Trooper). In a game state where you want to either getting as much resources or mounting an assault on your opponent on first stride, this isn’t exactly the best thing to do. Offensively, however, it does it’s job as it’s still a +26k attacking twice, however the only issue is that the final attack can be easily guarded with at minimum 20k shield. Sure you can eliminate power ups with Valeos’ heartbeat skill, but all of your attacks are worth 5-10k guards minimum. The way I see it, it’s effective when your opponent is sitting at 3-5 damage because all of the attacks have to or will need to be guarded to a certain extent. “Okay, so why not rush them down?” Well that’s the other part of the problem, Blue Wave’s early rushing is gimped because Foivos is their only early rusher as Tidal has been seeing less play in the deck due to “Tidal is not a Blue Wave”. Foivos requires another rear-guard in addition to the vanguard to fulfill the first and second waves so he can re-stand on third wave: getting four battles. This also requires a counterblast which, if you’d allow me to backpedal to Flood Hazard: his “optimal turn” requires three counterblast: one for himself, one for the re-standing rear-guard of choice, and one for Dagger Master. If you decide to early rush, the appropriate response of the opponent is to rear-guard hate you because it’s Aqua Force and you need counterblast. So rushing early, may not be the best thing to do which ironically enough was what Blue Wave’s did best compared to Thavas. Of course, with Valeos’ heartbeat and nullifying damage triggers and power ups, you can get six attacks in to make up for the non-existent early game but again, easily guarded attacks. The only way I’d ever imagine this is if you are running Tidal Assault, but there’s still the chance of being rear-guard hated while effectively being counterblast denied. The only way I can effectively see Blue Wave getting the opponent to 3-4 or even 5 damages pre-stride without early rushing is playing a high amount of critical triggers, possibly twelve, however this complicates issues because unless you’re checking Brutal Troopers to use on Flood Hazard later, you’re missing out on drawing necessary cards that you may or may not be missing: stride fodder, guard, rear-guards, essential stuff, which as I’ve said before: in my recent deck profiles: you want to play draw triggers now because drawing into those cards are important so that not having one of those cards can determine your ability to survive and/or counterattack. Most Blue Wave players have gone with a more draw heavy approach: 6 draws 6 criticals, I’ve even tried the Nova Grappler approach of 8 Draw 4 Critical but, it just didn’t feel like I was closing the game and drawing 5ks rather than pieces or resources.

Now, I know I should be talking about some of the other Blue Wave units such as Galleas/Arsenal fleet/Valeos vs Foivos/Anger-boil because this has been a focal point in Blue Wave discussions that have caused the idea of there being two separate decks but honestly, regardless of what units you use won’t change Flood Hazard’s effectiveness. I still feel like they designed the units poorly but it’s not like you have to use any of these effects but can consider them as options, more so speaking for Galleas, Arsenal fleet, and Foivos. Their effectiveness change depending on the situation regarding which stride, which heart, your damage, your field, your hand, etc. However, I should explain that the idea behind not mixing Anger and Valeos came about because the skills of Galleas, Lucianos, Arsenal-fleet overlap with Anger-boil’s GB2 and his heartbeat skill for Tetra-boil dragon since they all trigger on Wave 2. If you throw Foivos in the mix, then it complicates the Waves even further because if you allow Galleas, Arsenal, Lucianos to attack Wave 2, the vanguard is forced to Wave 3 because a rear-guard has to attack on Wave 4 in order for the Vanguard to stand. The vanguard also can’t attack on Wave 1 if you use Dagger Master/Brutal Trooper. So it’s understood that you have to prioritize which re-stander and which boss grade 3 you value more: Tetra and Anger, or Valeos and Flood. Valeos is valued more because his heartbeat skill can be used on any Blue Wave stride, however I still feel Anger-boil is still something to consider because he does get you a free column and of the two: Anger-boil + Tetra-boil is a stronger and more resourceful re-stand combo especially when your opponent is backed into a wall, compared to Flood Hazard is resourcing lower than Tetra-boil (regardless of Tetra’s heart) and getting the same value on Generation Break 3. In addition, Anger’s ability to stand two units when Tetra-boil attacks on Wave 2, not only increases the offensive power but at your bare minimum, you’re able to trigger a re-stand, which was another key feature of Blue Waves: the boss stride only needed 1 re-standing rear guard or two attackers (for 1 counterblast), Flood Hazard has to spend at minimum two counterblast to re-stand. Whichever rear-guards you decide to use really doesn’t matter as long as you’re able to re-stand your vanguard, the issue still boils down to Flood Hazard, no pun intended, the “ideal” first stride being the worst first stride and the worst re-stand as well. The only time the rear-guards are at fault is when it involves non-Blue Wave strides, which I’ll get into in a moment. However, it’s safe to say: that truly the issue does lie within the first stride not really doing much, even with Valeos, along with costing too much and relying on too much to stabilize safely into the next turn.

Lastly, I wanted to point out that: in my Blue Wave deck profile, well the first one after G-BT13, I made a “second deck” within that profile using the idea that both Valeos and Anger shouldn’t be played in the same deck: specifically meant for Anger-boil which is basically what Blue Wave’s have been using but with some of the newer cards. You can see more of what I’m talking about in the deck profile itself, but the deck is able to be a lot more flexible and have a variety of options to go into, still giving the Blue Wave feel of “anything you can do, I can do better” except the issue with this deck is that like Blue Wave’s before; does not have a lot of Resist and lacks an inherent draw engine as early as first stride (unless you G-Guard). Thankfully you are able to play Bubble Edge so you can draw off of that with a first stride Alexandros which is somewhat able to compensate but not entirely, in my opinion. Again, you could throw Thavas pieces into the deck to get a hybrid of sorts but the problem then comes down to Thavas himself needing to be on the Vanguard. If you ride Thavas, you lock yourself out of re-standing the Vanguard and rear-guards with Blue Wave (though technically you can just go into Flood Hazard and rear-guards will still re-stand and you’ll get a Quad Drive), and if you ride the “intended ride” Anger-boil or Valeos even, you have to stride into a Thavas to make those “Thavas pieces” work, which at that point put’s you back to playing the same way we’ve been playing up until Set 13. Needless to say: if you hybrid; you get more out of it riding Thavas than you do riding Anger-boil as the re-standing Vanguard may not be worth it if you’re stabilizing and resourcing to go into the next turn and finish the game with whatever finisher of your choice being Lambros, Alexandros, or Wailing.

So to recap on the “problem” (at least from my perspective), Blue Wave’s newest re-stander plays a big role in the problem, as well as the rear-guards but not as much as the first stride since this game is at a point where your first stride needs to be either pushing or resourcing so that you can safely go into the next turn, which Flood Hazard is only able to do both if you get the correct pieces especially to compensate for his costs, otherwise you go minus and will just die against any aggressive deck or won’t be able to make a comeback.

The Solution

Well I can’t kinda say a “Solution” since Set 13 was the last set for Aqua Force as far as the G-series goes. Also when I say a solution, I’m going to give the most realistic one and that’s simply just to use a better first stride or hope to G-Guard into Tetra-boil as you really want to be on Flood Hazard when you’re on Generation Break 3, unless you’re on Anger-boil then it’ll probably be better to just stay on Tetra-boil. Aqua Force did get a universal first stride in Alexandros, which is currently the best stride in Aqua Force, however he’s not perfect in Blue Waves because as I mentioned briefly before: the rear-guards. So, one of the two main differences between Thavas and Blue Waves is that Thavas had better flexibility in attacking pattern which allowed for cool combos like Bubble Edge drawing two with little to no complications since it would be the Vanguard to have a restriction on when it needed to attack to enable plays. Also, very quickly: when I say “restrictions” I mean units that have “Wave #th-only” clause indicating that they only work on those specific Waves vs a “Wave #th or more” as those are still flexible to work with. Blue Wave did the opposite: the Vanguard could essentially attack in whatever order, (though other skills benefited from attacking in certain patterns), the rear-guards were the ones with the restrictions. This is important to note because when you have a vanguard with a battle restriction trying to work with a rear-guard with a battle restriction in the same Waves, you can get really awkward battle patterns that can work sometimes but other times are artificial, like you know they aren’t really meant to work together. A big example of this is Alexandros and any of the Blue Wave re-standing rear-guards: most of them attack on Waves 2nd/3rd and by the time Alexandros attacks, some will either be standing or won’t be able to use their skill because of this overlap. Foivos is the safest one, which is putting it mildly, because he can just attack first then Alexandros second and upon Waves 3 and 4, he’ll keep his power up and luckily for us, you can give power to another unit that is still standing but not being able to attack multiple times with huge power is underwhelming in a sense. Your other first stride options are as followed.

[AUTO](VC):When your rear-guard with "Blue Wave" in its card name attacks, that unit gets [Power]+3000 until end of that battle. [ACT](VC)[1/Turn]:[Soul Blast (1)-card with "Blue Wave" in its card name] Look at seven cards from the top of your deck, search for up to one grade 3 card with "Blue Wave" in its card name from among them, place it on your (VC) as a heart, and shuffle your deck. If you placed one or more cards, put all of your heart cards other than the card placed due to this effect into your drop zone.

[ACT](VC)[1/Turn]:[Choose a face down card named "Storm Dominator, Commander Thavas" from your G zone, and turn it face up] Choose up to one of your rear-guards, until end of turn, it gets [Power]+5000 and "[CONT](RC):This unit can attack from the back row.", and until end of turn, this unit gets "[AUTO](VC) Generation Break 3 Wave-4th time only:When your unit attacks a vanguard, choose three of your opponent's rear-guards, your opponent chooses one rear-guard from among them, and retires it.".

Aritom decent because he can fix your heart, if you ride Arsenal fleet, you can drop zone him to pick him up later via his skill. The problem is that for starters, he doesn’t flip anything so you have to G-Guard if your intention was to Flood Hazard on GB3, Wailing Thavas’ retire, or even Megiddo. However, luckily for Blue Wave: the original boss Tetra-boil Dragon is only Generation Break two and is still worth going into over Flood Hazard. The other issue is that he doesn’t re-stand: so your more than likely sitting on Brutal Trooper until next turn, however the bonus is that you can still get 5-6 attacks with the proper set up, which is pretty solid especially if you’re on Valeos. He’s seen play as a “I don’t have the resources to Flood Hazard first stride beyond going minus”, which ironically enough he was released in Divine Dragon Caper and is one of the three cards I felt was something to look at and see competitive play.

Commander Thavas is like taking a step back but it certainly must be better than Drive-3, Discard 2, Counterblast 2, right? You have some flexibility in attack pattern and can give a 5k power bonus but since he’s not Blue Wave, Valeos can’t use his heartbeat, which was a point I forgot to bring up when talking about Alexandros: Valeos can’t use his heartbeat either so you’re very open to damage triggers. And unlike Artiom, your next stride is Generation Break 3+ (depending on G-Guards).

Now I feel like I can talk about some “hypothetical” solutions. Again, the word is hypothetical as I doubt Bushiroad would care too much even with a petition, to consider going through with this since Set 13 has been out for a month in ENG and longer in JPN, and considering Set 13 was the last G-Set for Aqua Force (unless Aqua Force support in the new season), I highly doubt this solution is worth arguing since at this point it’s too late and it is what it is but I thought I’d share just because why not. Errata Flood Hazard Dragon. How? Simple: Remove either Drive-3 or the Discard-2, preferably the Drive-3, I feel the discard two is fine as it is very reminiscent of Tetra-drive Dragon and is decent cost. As I said before, with the effect how it is: your first stride is only getting you 1 card, going from GB2 and the second attack on GB3 (meaning Drive+1 is active), you get 2 cards, and GB3 from the start means you get 3 cards. If you remove the Drive-3 completely: I feel people would say this is “broken” or is doing “too much” as you’d be getting 4 cards on first stride, to 5 cards with second attack being GB3, and 6 cards with GB3, so I’d say possibly adjust it to Drive-2. With that your numbers go: 2 cards for the first stride, 3 cards if you’re on GB3 for the second attack, and 4 cards if you started on Generation Break 3 making Flood Hazard an even break as Tetra-drive originally was. The other solution is giving Flood Hazard more power to make up for the loss Drives so he isn’t just a static 26k for two swings. A simple skill text of “This unit gets [Power]+2000 for each battle that your unit attacked this turn, until the end of turn.” If you have Flood Hazard attack on Wave 2, he’d be 30k which is the same value of guard as a 26k attack, but his final attack would be 36k which is significantly better than 26k and is actually worth the loss of Drives because it means your opponent is dropping even more cards. These idea’s came from looking at two very similar units as Flood Hazard but done correctly: Chronodragon Gearnext and Bravest Peak, X-gallop. Gearnext goes from 3 Drives to -3 either hand or field, to Drive -2 but on Generation Break 4, will get +10k and Drive+1. He’s still getting three cards but the +10k makes up for the loss drive and serves as a +1 (as the other 5k). Bravest Peak, released two sets after Flood Hazard: has Quad Drive, Re-stand but gets Drive-4. The biggest difference is the power needing to be 80k to Re-stand. The power makes up for the lack of drives because 80k is a very high guard to say the least. However, these two units both use the concept of loss of drives and have skills to make up for it. Now I know people will say “but Flood Hazard has Aqua Force’s multi-attack and damage trigger nullification via Valeos”, but my retort to that is Gearnext is in a clan that multi-attacks and tutors everything while Bravest Peak is rewarded by hitting specific powers via free perfect guards, free draws, or guard breaks. Flood Hazard can multi-attack but it’s not tutoring nor is he getting anything for free beyond Brutal Trooper which is at this point a necessity to make the play not be a minus.

I feel like the main issue with Flood Hazard is that, they saw how Tetra-boil was and said “Let’s make a stride that rivals it”, which was done by making it triple and even quadruple drive check and by making it a re-stander on the first stride. However, they probably figured that making an “opposite Tetra-boil” would either invalidate Tetra-boil or literally ruin itself, and Bushiroad went for the second option by ruining itself. A theory of mine is that I feel perhaps Flood Hazard was intended to be release earlier than it’s actual debut, which would be Set 9. Now I don’t work for Bushiroad nor know their R&D department so this is just headcanon at this point. But it just feels weird to me that they would create a really sub-par re-stander like this. Like we look at other older re-standers that we consider “bad” like Dragonic Overlord the Ace, Viktplasma, or hell even Spectral Blaster Diablo; these re-standers were pretty strong at their time but have aged into the game to where they’re sub-par or aren’t really the “go-to option”. Note: I’m not calling these cards “trash” or “bad”, I still see value in all of these re-standers especially Spectral, I’m saying over time they became less powerful than how they originally was upon release. Flood Hazard, upon release made as much of an impact on the meta game as it’s doing now, not much: and it’s not to say re-standers are bad, quite the opposite: I still feel re-standers are pretty strong looking at the aforementioned examples of Gearnext and Bravest Peak, or even Siegenburg, and Bladermaus all “recent” re-standing Vanguards and are still making an impact in their decks/clans even after sets. So I don’t ever think the power of re-standing Vanguards will ever not be strong because it’s two vanguard swings. Flood Hazard feels like was meant for an early point in time where Drive-3 wasn’t so bad because you could get away with whatever cards you got from Brutal/Dagger to survive off of. Although, this would require testing in me playing Flood Hazard into Set 9 meta which I kinda don’t really have time for sadly. I’m also inclined to believe when designing this they probably didn’t want the G-zone to be filled with eight really good re-standers as an automatic “must play 4 of” so, perhaps weakening one was better rather making them relatively equal or having Flood Hazard be a vastly superior re-stander compared to Tetra-boil since Tetra-boil at it’s time was regarded as one of the best re-standers, and to top that in addition to making Flood Hazard a first stride may actually caused Blue Wave to be too aggressive, so that’s also a possibility and wanted to avoid a situation like this. And with that I’m going to wrap this up with a conclusion.

Conclusion

This was a very lengthy rant, about two to three hours worth of typing but I feel it was worth me pouring or trying to address what went wrong with Blue Waves, since as I’ve stated before: they started off brimming with amazing potential being one of the best Aqua Force decks and even one of the top decks of it’s meta, holding onto one of the strongest if not the best re-standing Vanguards in the game at the time (until Spectral Blaster Diablo could rival it). And even during Set 9 with little to no support, was still rivaling Thavas as the “deck of the clan”, which personally was it’s main appeal because while most clans only had 1 deck that carried the clan: other clans had two - Aqua Force being one of them. But sadly, Blue Waves started age by newer support for both other clans and Aqua Force and effectively becoming unreliable in the competitive scene due to many different internal issues with the deck in addition to the control meta. Again, this is in no way, shape, or form of me saying the deck or it’s cards is “trash” or “garbage” or that you shouldn’t play it because even now it’s still a playable deck and when everything works as it’s supposed to: you can be successful with this deck because you have many great cards supporting the archetype such as Brutal Trooper, Valeos, Anger-boil, Tetra-boil and Flood Hazard himself to an extent just to name a few. I just feel that Blue Wave is struggling among it’s fan base and wanted to address what could be the reason why that may be the case. I will still post my deck profile for Blue Wave’s shortly via video format, again, I just felt it was better to write down my thoughts here and be able to refer back to this as a means of explaining my choices. 

So I should start this rant off by saying: I love fighting games, just as much as card games. It’s a genre in which you’re able to constantly challenge yourself and improve your skills and knowledge of the game and it’s players. Fighting games as a whole have this inherent replay value and rewards you for continuously pouring your time and effort into by mastering the game. Two of my favorite fighting game franchises are BlazBlue and Tekken, but I have taken interest in other fighting games like Persona 4 Arena (even though I know nothing regarding Persona as a franchise), Under Night In-Birth, Dengeki, UMvC, and a lot more. DragonBall FighterZ is currently one of the most hyped fighting games of all time simply because of two things: it’s a fighting game and it’s Dragonball Z. Because of that, many fans from both the Fighting Game Community and the Dragonball franchise are jumping at the chance to play this game and have gravitated a huge following, until the beta dropped.

During the beta, there were a notable of reasonable complaints like no challenge mode to learn combos. However, the other more outspoken complaints were many people saying something along the lines of “stop spamming guard” “stop spamming combos” which later escalated to “dumb try-hards from FGC (Fighting Game Community) ruining this game”. All of which was shocking and admittedly funny and somewhat sad and frustrated because while this does happen in other games whether it be fighters, cards games, shooters, this is probably the most I’ve seen and this is from an open beta no less. Thankfully, there were other people who were able to respond to those complaints but I wanted to put my two cents on this and explain why some players are behaving like this specifically towards this game because although it is easy to tell them “just drop the game” - which many of them have - it’s harder to drop this game in particular for reasons I’ll be explaining.

The Division of Players

There are two types of players that have taken an interest in DragonBall FighterZ. Those who love fighting games and those who love Dragon Ball, both of which I named above. Fighting Gamers, in this case we’ll just call them the “Fighters”, are starting show enthusiasm for the game because it’s made by ArcSystemWorks, same producers who worked on Guilty Gear, Blazblue, etc and their quality of content in their fighting game systems are exceptionally high and relatively enjoyable for many of their fans. Their objective is to simply play the game strictly as a fighter and learn it’s systems as it incorporates many new elements not seen in their other works such as the 3v3 system and even taking on Dragonball as a whole.

Transitioning from there, we have the other group of players who simply love Dragonball - aptly dubbed “The Dragonball” side. This is important to note because I can relate to both sides, hence why I’m even doing this post. Dragon Ball players simply want to see their favorite characters and how they’ve been incorporated into the game as far as how much the game stays loyal to the source material and how accurate it’s representing the franchise compared to other Dragon Ball games such as the Budokai’s, Xenoverse, Tenkaichi’s, so on and so forth. Being a new Dragon Ball game with new characters to play as in current relevancy: many of these players are coming in asking “Is this the best Dragon Ball game of all time?”

Here is where the division comes in. The Fighter’s side is coming in with the mentality to learn as much as the game and to be competitive as possible while the other side is coming in with little to no knowledge of fighting games but are trying to enjoy this new Dragon Ball game. When they get matched, obviously the Dragonball side are losing to the Fighters who are looking and playing the game as a fighting game. After a lot of frustration due to losses, as any player would, they get upset and are, well, being salty.

The Problem

The problem is really the “Dragonball” side although they’re not entirely at fault nor should they be shamed. Somewhere along the line, a majority of them thought that this was a Dragonball game first and a fighting game second, which is a rightful assumption given past Dragon Ball games. None of them were ever made to be fully fledged fighting games (with one or two exceptions that didn’t hit it off). They were made to be “Dragon Ball games” first, which is evident in the design of the games from it’s system to characters and other content. Some focus on RPG elements, others focus on story-telling narrative, and others are just action games: most, if not, all of which: you can fight either solo or online but they’re not fully constructed that way. Specific characters have higher or more significant advantages that allow them to be the best in the game with no disadvantages simply to emulate their power that is showcased from the source material or by a slight oversight, while other characters are just created but have very copy/paste moves that lose their originality.

Take Dragonball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3: widely acclaimed by fans, myself included, as one of the best Dragon Ball games ever made. Tenkaichi 3 features 98 characters in 161 forms, the largest character roster in any Dragon Ball Z game at release, as well as one of the largest rosters in a fighting game. However, what if most of those “characters” and “forms” are just the same as a previous character/form with little to no differences? This includes people who never fight in their base form but have it in the game simply because “it has to be there”, when their next/final forms are their highest representation. I remember playing this game when I was younger and I always thought “this game would be super amazing if it was in a tournament setting!”, looking back on it now? Online, sure. Tournament setting? Would be very boring. You’d have the same characters played not because of one being better than the other, but because the other characters are bland and generic with no originality in their moves but are placed in the game because they have to be included to stay loyal to the source material/story-telling part of the game.

There are other Dragon Ball Games that have a more fleshed out concept of character creativity, but, their combat system is a hit or miss mostly due to balancing. Budokai 3 - yet another critically acclaimed best Dragon Ball game that does focus a bit more to personalize each roster especially in the combat setting - is also an example of this. Their combat system is nice and can make for exciting matches but it’s very leveled where no character is outright stronger or has any minor advantages that makes them different from any other character. What I mean by this is that there’s no character meant to specialize in any particular style of play: rushdown/aggressive, zoners/defensive, glass cannons, etc. None of the characters are designed with these attributes incorporated into their movements, combos (with what little of), or energy consumption. This is important for any fighting game to allow players to comfortably lean into specific characters that give them what they want if they’re goal is to win and play competitively. As well as giving players a challenge to know the match ups and understanding how characters work. If all of them are more or less the same with little to no defining advantages/disadvantages, you’re not really gaining much out of it except from playing your favorite character rather than playing your best character. You can equip specific items to boost your stats - like ATK or DEF, in a fight, but those don’t make a dramatic impact nor change the character’s mechanisms (or lack there of). In fact, four that come to mind would be outright banned since they revive characters to at least half health when they’re knocked down or drain health from the opponent as the fight is taking place. And again, as a child growing up playing these games nonstop, I always thought how amazing it’d be to have this be played in a tournament setting, and much like the previous game: online? Sure. Competitively? Would be pretty boring and not really engaging.

So how does FighterZ fit into all of these? It places itself as a fighting game first and a Dragon Ball game second. It focuses on the combat system, the character’s moves and style of play that would have players spending time in the training room, immersing themselves into the game’s core: allowing them to demonstrate their mastery of the game in competitive settings: something that other Dragon Ball games in the past have not done for the players and fans of their games. Most of the Dragon Ball games are coming from Xenoverse which focus on the RPG element of the game and character building and although they try to stay loyal to the material by accurately portraying races and characters as they would be from the series, in addition to there being some re-balancing to make every character and race relatively equal so that players can safely pick whatever and whoever they want: Dragon Ball Xenoverse’s intention was to be a RPG game first before anything else. Which is fine, but when transitioning from different game plays but same franchise and characters: many of it’s players misunderstand and conflict between how the game should be played and how it’s intended to be played. In the case of DragonBall FighterZ: many Fighting Gamers understand that this is a fighting game and is intended to be played as such while the other Dragonball Gamers do not feel this way, and in that regard, I’m not sure what nor how they feel the game should be played, however, it also doesn’t help that because FighterZ’s competitive scene may be very hard to get into due to it being a fighting game: one of the hardest video game genre’s to get into and most competitive.

Conclusion