Cardfight!! Vanguard Introduction: Part 2-A

Card anatomy: Know thy card

Photo owned Cardfight!! Vanguard USA (Bushiroad).
 No copyright infringement intended.

                      Now that you've gotten the cards, it’s time to learn what are the parts that make up the card, and to know how each part works in the game. This is very crucial in the same way as you need to know how  oxygen and two hydrogen atoms come together to form water.

Blaster Dark (left) and Fortune Bell (right)

In the game, the “cards” being played are called “units”. There are two types of units:  Normal Units (left), and Trigger Units (right). Normal Units are units whose primary purpose is to be (or at the very least, ‘be called upon as a guard or rear guard or) the Vanguard in the battlefield. Meanwhile, Trigger Units are units who serve as support to the Vanguard during a drive check or when taking damage. We’ll discuss later in the succeeding posts about what a drive check is and what a Vanguard, or a Rear Guard  is all about.

"Stand, my Avatar and send thy enemies into hades in scourge! Blaster Dark"- Ren Suzugamori

Here, we have Blaster Dark. Blaster Dark is a Grade 2 Normal Unit which has a power of 9000. Basically, a card’s Power indicates how much attack value it can deal to an opposing unit. Below the Power, you will see the Set Number of a card (which signifies the information of what or which set and volume that card is available from) and the Rarity of the card.

Right to the power is the critical value (amount). Critical values indicate the damage value taken by a player when the Vanguard unit is hit by an opposing unit. To its right is the clan affiliation of that card and that card’s race. The clan and the race of a card shows as to what tribe or archetype that card is associated to. There are 23 different clans in total which will later be discussed further in the future posts to come.

Above the card name, a card’s skill can be found. The skill indicates the ability and/or capacity that a card is able to do. There are three types of skills: 1.) Continuous Skills [CONT] which are active skills of a unit and remain as ‘active’ over a period of time depending on the card text and the met conditions, 2.) Automatic Abilities [AUTO] are skills that activate during a specific or a particular part of time or phase (there is a timing required), 3.) Activate Skills [ACT] or skills that are ‘manually’ activated during the main phase of the turn (unless stated otherwise). Most skills have a required cost to pay or condition to fulfill in order for that ability to be activated. Albeit some units lack skills, in return, they are compensated by their higher Power value to those who have (these units are unofficially called "vanillas").

On the middle left side of the card is the Shield power of a card (or the power value added to the power value of an attacked unit) when used to guard against an attack of an opposing unit. Grade 0 units except draw triggers have 10k shield power (draw triggers only have 5k shield), while Grade 1 and Grade 2 units have 5k shield value. Grade3 units however do not have shield values. Only Grades 0-2 have shield power.

The Four types of Triggers

On to trigger units (or simply put, “triggers”) are cards that add a 5k power boost to any unit on the battlefield until the end of the turn .There are four types of triggers available in the game. Namely, a.) Critical Triggers, b.) Heal Triggers, c.) Stand Triggers, d.) Draw triggers, with each trigger having a corresponding effect on the game. A deck must contain exactly sixteen (16) triggers in total. These units ONLY activate during a drive trigger check.

Critical triggers (infor., “crit/s”) are triggers that have one function in mind: to beat down an opponent so bad and in as much as possible, end a game quickly. What a critical trigger does is that it adds an extra (+1) critical value to any unit on the field in addition to the 5k power boost that a trigger provides. This gives easier access to easily reach the 6-point damage victory condition of the game.

Stand triggers on the other hand are triggers that provide extra attack opportunity in a single turn. After a unit attacks, that unit is put to rest (or is faced sideways) and is allowed only to attack once again during the next turn of the player (who attacked). However, with stand triggers, in a single turn, a player can reach up to more than the regular number of attacks - which is up to three only – and cause more damage to the opponent.

Draw Triggers – in comparison to the aforementioned triggers – are triggers that are of most versatility among all the four types of triggers. Simply because it gives an extra card to the hand whenever it is drive or trigger checked. That extra card can either be used as an extra unit of defense for guarding against an attack or as an offensive unit that could help in bringing an end over the game.

Of all the trigger types, Heal triggers are the only type of triggers that are limited to up to four (4) per deck. That is, a deck can only have no more than four heal triggers. What heal triggers do is that whenever it is drive/trigger checked and the player has more or equal number of damage as to the opponent, then that player  who checked the heal trigger may heal one point of damage in his/her damage zone –  giving the player more chances of winning the game by surviving an extra turn or so. 

Most triggers though have no skill whatsoever, albeit a few have. Such an example is seen above where Flame of Victory,a critical trigger, has an [ACT] skill while Darkside Trumpeteer doesn’t. Trigger units like these often are lower in power compared to those who don't have any.

And those are the types of cards that are played in the game (as well as what a card is composed of or its parts and components). On the next post, we’ll discuss about Grades and the types of grades that are played in the game and what is the significance of grades. Till then, ciao.

-KamiPrince-