The Beginning of V Series and Budgetfighting

I haven't been here in a while. Actually, none of our writers have. And I'm going to explain why.



My Issues with V Series (So Far):

Yes, I'm aware that one of our most recent posts is us preemptively praising V Era. And yet, I'm about to bash it a bit. When I was first were presented with the leaks and info of V Series, myself and others tried to remain optimistic. The power ceiling had been climbing ridiculously high, and with no intentions of slowing. A new meta was more or less formed on a set-by-set basis. The reboot would not just give us a breath of fresh air; it was to present our game in a much more healthy fashion.

Enter Unite!! Q4. Our new Standard format has all of four clan choices. Of course, in the game's early development, this is something we have to deal with. And it's really not a huge problem. Overall, I'm actually surprised by how well balanced the four clans seem to be. The thing that irks me the most, though, is that out of these four clans, only one of them can really be done on a budget.

Yes, I'm aware of how controversial that might sound on a budget blog. But lets look at these four clans.

Kagero relies entirely on Waterfall. It's the only way to break the OTT matchup, and the efficiency that he applies attached with his minimal cost is absolutely amazing. None of the other Kagero units are valid replacements, and the deck needs him at four. He's ~$25/each, meaning that he eats up the entire cost of a budget deck by himself. This doesn't leave any room to fit in Aermo, Berserk, and Barri into the budget.

OTT has Imperial Daughter. Although she doesn't do anything for the deck that is absolutely irreplaceable, she's still necessary. CEO Amaterasu grants advantage, and Deer applies offense. Daughter is the unit that does both, and she does both really, really well. The deck plays with a much, much lower ceiling if she isn't run. The point of budgeting isn't to gimp a deck by foregoing expensive cards, the point is to look for workable alternatives that are more friendly to the wallet. With such a small card pool, there's no real alternatives. I wouldn't play OTT without Daughter myself, and I refuse to recommend that our readers do.

Royals is a slightly different story. I have seen builds that run 4 Soul Saver and 4 Alfred Early function without using KOK Alfred. Soul Saver turbo builds also exist, and these lists often drop KOK. But, the optimal cookie-cutter build will run KOK Alfred at 4. He provides simple consistency: call stuff out and get some power. Alfred Early does give more raw advantage, but forgoes a big chunk of consistency while doing so. Soul Saver puts itself on a slow clock before you can do squat, and you don't really want more than 3 unless you're turboing it. You should have 4 KOK if you're going to play Royals. And like OTT, I'm not going to recommend for people to just drop KOK because budget.

Novas are the format's single budget option right now. Perfect Raizer is ~$15, and their only RRR is ~$1.50. They're a solid choice, and do pretty well. I can't really criticize the deck. It has been grabbing a decent amount of tops, and is going to get a huge power bump in ENG when King of Sword and Queen of Sword carry over as promos. In addition, some JPN builds that we're seeing don't even run the VR, Perfect Raizer, at 4 anymore, bringing the overall cost of the deck down drastically. Novas are a good investment for now, and a good investment for the future, which is pretty awesome.

We're finally here, but waiting so long after the original leaks raised our expectations for the series. We suffered through our last period of G and the Bermuda booster, and the format we were greeted with is honestly kind of stale. I don't really want to put effort into making a deck profile if I don't actually enjoy testing or researching it.

But don't fret, I'm not only angery. There's plenty of positives, too.

My Commendation of V Series (so far):

Now, I'm going to focus on what I do like, aside from simply not being bullied by Dominate anymore.

The reset did reward the veteran players by giving them their favorite units back. I'm biased, as I didn't start playing Vanguard until mid-G, and yet I still vastly enjoy seeing the legacy units retrained. The card art and anime are pretty great, and the card design itself is also, well, great. I think the clans are on about as equal footing as they ever had been, and we already have confirmation that each clan is getting support every year. I've called the format stale, but I admit to more bias on my side simply because none of my favorite clans have been brought back yet. There's plenty of reasons to enjoy the new format, even if budgeting isn't necessarily one of them.

I've also said that these VRs are absolutely necessary for an optimal deck. I'm going to hold that belief, but there are strategies that one can use to get to that point. Namely, buying the deck core and pieces so that said deck (Kagero, OTT, and Royals especially) is playable, and then building it up by buying into another VR whenever possible. If it works, then it works, and that's really all I can say.

I still enjoy Vanguard, and I'm going to continue playing it. I'm sure I'll start writing once Angel Feather is reintroduced, and I might be able to bulli Chang into writing more often. We all apologize for the dead period here at Budgetfight, but hope we'll get back to V Series sooner rather than later.

Until next time,

JamesTheFenrirFanboi