Reading Plays

Hello everyone, and welcome to SO IMBA!,

Where we learn how to be a better card fighter.

I am your host, Rauzes, and today, we will be reading plays!

Believe it or not, each individual play telegraphs more about your hand and potential plays than you think they do.

Before we begin, who else noticed that the Vanguard Logo in the anime for the posters/televisions has changed to the ENGLISH logo?


Vanguard is a game that rewards not having the better cards, but reacting properly to the cards you have received.


Once enough time has passed, you can essentially know more than 2/3 of the cards the opponent has in their hand.

But in the early game, knowledge of the opponent's hand will help immensely, depending on your deck/hand.

In decks like Shadow Paladin, it doesnt really matter since your choices for Riding for G2 is limited to one, and G3 to 2, no biggie.

But for other decks, it may matter. For instance, if you know the opponent has no Blaster in hand, you will choose to instead ride Bellicosty, Search and call Bahr, and swing to open damage, without being afraid of the MLB search by Wingal Brave.
However, if you know the opponent is holding a G2 Blaster, and has called wingal brave to the rear guard behind Vanguard, you are better off riding Striken(or Nehalem, but who uses that any more lol).
(The proper follow up depends if the opponent tries to lay out an attack. If he does, ride overlord, counter blast, burn them all to ashes. If not, Ride overlord and whack their Vanguard with the extra Crit.)

So what about some examples of reading plays?

Ill start you off with this example: The Kagerou player opens the game, riding Bahr, and calls conroe behind the vanguard.
They call Gojou to the rear guard in the corner.
They then tap Gojou, discarding Gojou to draw one.

Believe it or not, this has telegraphed a LOT about their hand

So, if they played this as their opening hand, this means two things:
They opened with 3 of more grade 1s(well, obviously, since, they have played 3 already this turn)
They do NOT have a Draw trigger/weak technical cards in their hand. If they did, they would discard those instead of a potential boost.

Considering they called Conroe BEHIND the Vanguard, they are considering using Conroe as a low power boost in the long term, so they do NOT have any Vanguard specific boost/Aermo/extra Bahr in hand, as they would play those behind the Vanguard instead. This also means that the enemy does not have extra G2/G3s to be boosted by Conroe.

They have very few Grade 3 or Grade 2.
They opened the game, but did NOT ride Gojou, instead choosing to call it to rear guard.
There is one advantage to this: Being able to use the effect more than once.
By calling to the rear guard, the opponent wants to use the effect more than once.
In fact, because they did not ride, chances are that they are missing a G2, not a G3.

Why? Because of Bahr's size as a vanilla, he can fight G2 units with Conroes help, and be able to guard to a minor extent. Gojou cannot. Hes just too small.

This lack of G2/G3 means hes lacking attackers in general as well.

From this information, I would say their hand would look something like this
Tahr, Bahr, Gojou, Gojou, Overlord, Bahr

Now, out of this hand, what would you discard?
Obviously, you would not risk losing your Overlord, nor that Tahr for the oh-so-important guard against a Wingal Brave boosted Blaster Blade/Dark

A second Bahr, and discarding that leaving only 2 in your deck? Do not even consider, up against a RP deck. A Bahr + Burning Horn is just so important.

So, the obvious choice would be Gojou.




Some of the less complex examples also exist

For instance, if the opponent had a field of the following:

Gojou(rest) - Bahr - Bahr
Empty - Overlord(V) - Berserk Dragon

and had three cards in their hand, you could estimate that none of them are grade 3 or 2, as they would have used them and called to attack. Hence, the best thing to attack would be the Berserk Dragon, as they seem to have little fighting power in their hand.
On top of this, they used Gojous effect to try to get new cards, further suggesting this.

Another example of the opposite

Empty - Conroe - Empty
Burning Horn - Overlord the End(V) - Overlord

In this situation, you can clearly see that the opponent has a lack of G1s to boost, and possibly a lack of G0 boosts as well. Hence, you would try to aim down their Vanguard, as even if you do kill off a rear guard, they will easily be able to replace them.

Putting G0 Triggers as boost.
This more or less outright declares your hand sucks. Dont do it.
This means that you have resorted to using your shield cards as boost, just to get hits in, and hence have no G1s and G2s and have a field and hand of G3s.
Just dont do it, especially against Kagerou and Dark Irregulars.

Thats all for today.
Until next time

See Ya!