Today's Card Analysis: Archbird, Cheer Girl Marilyn, and Paralyze Madonna

The Japanese Cards of the Day for June 8th, 2018, are the three Double Rare perfect guards from V-Extra Booster 01: The Destructive Roar, Tachikaze's Archbird, Spike Brothers' Cheer Girl Marilyn, and Megacolony's Paralyze Madonna.

CONT: Sentinel (You may only have up to 4 cards in your deck with "Sentinel")
AUTO [Guardian Circle]: When placed, [Cost: Discard 1 card from your hand], and one of your units cannot be hit until the end of that battle.

These four cards are their clans' respective versions of Flash Shield Iseult, Wyvern Guard Barri, Miss Mist, and Twin Blader. Their set numbers more or less confirm what was speculated from the moment the set was announced; each clan will be receiving three Double Rares, with the two spaces between each perfect guard being the slots for their clan's remaining RRs. Of these we already know that Blightops and Sonic Noa are the other two RRs for Tachikaze, thus the clan has no RRs left in the set, while Spike Brothers and Megacolony each have two slots left to fill.

It bears repeating that while each clan will likely receive a grade 1 perfect guard as a Single Rare counterpart to the likes of Ruote Magus and Hate Reflector, Draw Trigger perfects are inherently superior for Standard format for how they free up grade 1 space by combining mandatory trigger slots with mandatory Sentinel slots. The only reasons not to run them are either for budget reasons or to run alternate trigger lineups, and the only clan likely to have alternate lineups at this time is Tachikaze with its Front Triggers. Spike Brothers and Megacolony are more likely to be put in the same position as Royal Paladin and Oracle Think Tank, locked into a minimum of 4 Draw and maximum of 8 Crit.

The previous Japanese Card of the Day was Jocular Cicada.

V-Extra Booster 01: The Destructive Roar will launch in Japan June 29th, 2018, and August 2nd for the English-speaking world. The accompanying new anime series, codenamed "Origin," began airing May 5th, with an English-subtitled simulcast on both YouTube and Crunchyroll. 

Twin Blader appears in first episode of Vanguard anime: Nova Grappler Draw Trigger perfect guard?

The first episode of the 2018 Cardfight!! Vanguard anime featured a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo by a new Nova Grappler Draw Trigger. Visible just as Miwa finishes fighting Morikawa, when rotated 90 degrees and scaled up the card appears to be a remade Twin Blader, Nova Grappler's original perfect guard from Booster Set 2: Onslaught of Dragon Souls.

The card would be an ideal fit for one of Nova Grappler's still-unseen Double Rares, as with the reveal of Miss Mist Tuesday they are currently only clan in V-BT01: UNITE! TEAM Q4 to lack a Draw Trigger perfect guard. With Iseult and Barri having set the bar, it's now expected that every clan will eventually receive a clone of these cards in order to free up their grade 1 space.

In addition to Twin Blader, the manga card Cat Butler also made an appearance in the opening sequence, still a grade 0. The card's original skill was to retire itself after your grade 2 vanguard's attack failed to hit, standing the vanguard; this proved devastating with the onset of Legion format in 2014, as Cat Butler could stand grade 2 Legion Mates, and when a Legion Mate stands its Leader stands with it. Cat Butler giving Nova Grappler a high-power 2 Critical center lane capable of restanding at a net +1 as many times as it had Butlers if its attack didn't hit eventually lead to the card's restriction in the Japanese format.

V-Booster Set 01: UNITE! TEAM Q4 will launch in Japan May 25th, 2018, and in English June 22nd. It will be accompanied by sleeves based on Dragonic Overlord and Blaster Blade. V-Trial Deck 01: Sendou Aichi and V-TD02: Kai Toshiki will launch in Japanese May 11th, 2018, and in English June 8th. They will be accompanied by a new sleeve based on the "Imaginary Gift" design.

The first Extra Booster set of Standard, V-EB01: The Destructive Roar will launch in Japan June 29th, 2018, and August 3rd for the English-speaking world. The accompanying new anime series, codenamed "Origin," began airing May 5th, with an English-subtitled simulcast on both YouTube and Crunchyroll.

Today's Card Analysis: Flash Shield Iseult and Wyvern Guard Barri

This is game changing.

The Japanese cards of the day for April 20th, 2018, are a pair of Double Rares from V-Booster Set 01: UNITE! TEAM Q4. Flash Shield Iseult and Wyvern Guard Barri will ring familiar to the old guard of Vanguard, and while like their 2011 incarnations they are Perfect Guards, this new generation of Sentinel units stands to completely overhaul how we build our decks.

CONT: Sentinel (You may only have up to 4 cards in your deck with "Sentinel")
AUTO [Guardian Circle]: When placed, by paying [Discard 1 card from your hand], one of your units cannot be hit until the end of that battle.

Every deck should run 4 Sentinels as a given, but now these units have been incorporated into the mandatory 16 Trigger Units every deck is forced to run. That opens up grade 1 space, and fixes the problems surrounding Draw Triggers by decreasing their shield value. In the classic game Draws ran into the problem of on average returning less shield than if you had just run Critical or Stand Triggers, and reduced the total shield value of the grade 0s in your deck, but making Draws into Perfect Guards fixes the problem since Draws now represent infinite shield and give you the card you need to discard for them when you check them. Manually drawing a Draw Trigger is no longer the great loss it once was, as it means you have a perfect guard you can conceal from the opponent until the time is right.

It also carries deep implications for guard restrict mechanics. Cards that prevent you from calling grade 0 guardians become much more power than those that block grade 1 and greater, and should these units make a return in Standard it may pay to divvy up your grade 1 and grade 0 Sentinels to compensate.

Beyond Silent Tom/Nouvelle threatlists, there's not really a question of whether or not grade 0 Sentinels are inherently better than grade 1s. Bushiroad Research & Development knows they are, as otherwise they wouldn't be Double Rares in BT01 while grade 1 perfect guards are handed out for free in Trial Decks. Trigger lineups now lean towards including 4 Draw as an optimal build, scaling back the aggression we saw from the 4/6 Stand 8/6 Crit and 12 Crit decks of old. Decks with access to Front Triggers, like Tachikaze and Aqua Force, have a powerful incentive to run a "rainbow" lineup of 4-4-4-4 rather than sticking to Fronts and Crits. Protect clans like Angel Feather and Megacolony no longer need to make a choice over whether they will or won't include regular perfect guards in their deck.

For an example of how this all works in practice, up to now we've been operating under the assumption Runoria or another grade 1 Sentinel would be necessary in Royals. The Iseult reveal means the grade 1 lineup can now be;

Grade 1
x4 Little Sage, Marron
x4 Knight Squire, Allen
x3 Wingal
x3 Pongal

This is unambiguously good for the game. There are now more viable grade 1s per deck that can hit the board as soon as you draw them, make more hand combinations playable compared to classic Vanguard, and result in a lower chance of your deck bricking overall. Barri and Iseult are just a small glimpse of what the Vanguard's future will look like; and it's shaping up to be a world where the triggers are for the first time fully balanced and equally desirable. A world where double crits occur less often, guard decisions are made based on a greater scope of outcomes, and variety is the name of the game.

Flash Shield Iseult's lore from the classic game:

A female knight wielding a massive but cursed shield.
Among the Royal Paladins that specialize first in attack and support, she is one of the few charged with "Defense."
With the "Flash Shield" up, she never flinches even when struck by an incredible weapon.

The previous Japanese cards of the day were Funnergal and Radical Knight Anil.

V-Trial Deck 01: Sendou Aichi and V-TD02: Kai Toshiki will launch in Japanese May 11th, 2018, and in English June 8th, 2018. They will be accompanied by a new sleeve based on the "Imaginary Gift" design. The first Booster Set of the Standard format, V-BT 01: UNITE! TEAM Q4 will launch in Japan May 25th, 2018, and in English June 22nd, 2018. It will be accompanied by sleeves based on Dragonic Overlord and Blaster Blade.

The first Extra Booster set of Standard, V-EB01: The Destructive Roar will launch in Japan June 29th, 2018, and August 3rd for the English-speaking world. The accompanying new anime series, codenamed "Origin," will begin airing May 5th, 2018, on TV Tokyo and affiliated stations. It will be simulcast with English subtitles on YouTube and Crunchyroll.