Cardfight!! Vanguard: Stand up the Vanguard!!

           Cardfight!! Vanguard is a trading card game created by Bushiroad. It is Japan’s latest (and one of its fastest-rising) TCG franchise today. Internationally, within just less than five years, it has already come to par with forefront card game franchises such as  “Yu-Gi-Oh TCG” (Konami Digital Corp.) and “Magic the Gathering” (Wizards of the Coast), garnering many players from around the world – some of which are former players of their respective card games and have transferred to try out this new and sensational card game – and establishing a progressive community of pioneering “cardfighters” from different regions across the globe.
                                                                      

"Rise, my Avatar! Blaster Blade!!"- Aichi Sendou (Photo courtesy of Cardfight Vanguard USA)

            The game integrates many similar elements and mechanics from already existing card games (e.g. the first turn five-card hand size from Yu-Gi-Oh). It is simple and can easily be learned by anyone who is interested - provided also that one is eager and patient in learning it.  The game is played using cards that are divided into groups called clans or archetypes that revolve around the game. Its sole objective is to win against an opponent by dealing exactly (or more than) six damages – which is very akin to the winning mechanic of the Pokemon TCG (Gamefeak, Nintendo).  And with itself being a ‘trading’ card game, trading plays as an important aspect of this card game wherein players can trade and exchange, or even sell cards to other people.

          Bushiroad, a  Japanese  card distributor company of  collectible card games and trading cards, conducts annual national, continental, and international ‘organized play’ tournaments of Cardfight!! Vanguard. The very first World Championship Tournament Series was held during the latter part of last year.  North American Cardfighter, Brandon Smith won the gold, and was crowned as the first ever “World Cardfighting Champion”. The deck that he used was the ‘gold paladin’ clan (the same clan that the protagonist in the animated show uses) and has then established and proved the efficacy of the clan per se.

                                                                                         

Brandon Smith is the upper rightmost player on the photo. Photo owned by Cardfight!! Vanguard USA.

     Since then, Cardfighting has slowly developed a sense of a universal parallelism of cardplays between players from all over the world: a metagame.  Competitive play is now seen almost everywhere. From the smallest of local shops to the very large regional hosted events, the metagame has changed the way that anyone would look at and perceive the game. The meta signified the rise of a competitive play scene in the game. Because of this, there was a necessity for the development and training of the skills of individual cardfighters in order to cope up with ever progressing state of the metagame – and we at Vanguard United heeded and answer to this call. Helping players develop excellence and dexterity over the game by educating and teaching them the path to greater power . . .