Vanguard Rant [Blue Waves]
This is a dozy. I intended this to be an updated deck profile regarding Blue Waves but I’ll do that via video rather than through text because I feel as though it’d be easier to explain my choices by referring to this.
A general synopsis, is going to be me talking sharing my thoughts on Blue Wave and why many people feel unsatisfied with the newest support and overall what the deck has transitioned into ever since it’s first conception. There may be some possible theories as to why Blue Waves have a lot of negative feedback but overall, just general thoughts regarding the topic and things that could’ve improved it. This is the “Rise and Fall of Blue Waves”.
As a disclaimer, I’d just want to say if you are a huge fan of Blue Wave - like a really ride or die fan, or even a user of Blue Wave: this is not to deter you from playing the deck or even liking the deck. If you feel content or even enjoyment from what Blue Waves are or have received as support, then please continue to do so as this isn’t to judge the players or the fans of the deck regardless if you’re a casual player or a competitive player, nor this is not in any way, shape, or form bashing or trashing this deck since, again, I’ll also be providing an upgraded deck list after taking another look at the deck and figuring out some stuff. This is just me looking back on the archetype from start to finish, and trying to decipher “What happened” or “What went wrong” from the perspective of those who do not like what Blue Wave ended up as a deck and archetype as a whole. With that further ado, let’s start from the beginning.
History of Blue Waves
Without going as far back as Tetra-drive Dragon, which was the only “Blue Wave” card at the time: Blue Wave’s were a sub archetype of Aqua Force revolved around the aforementioned Tetra-drive Dragon and the idea of re-standing after a specified number of attacks - usually fourth battle from rear-guard to opposing Vanguard. Blue Wave introduced the idea of abilities triggering whenever the Vanguard attacked either during or at the end of the battle, to increase your offensives or generate resources. This is best exemplified through the following units:
[ACT](RC):[Put this unit on the top of your deck] If you have a vanguard with "Blue Wave" in its card name, choose up to one of your vanguards, and until end of turn, it gets "[AUTO](VC)Wave-2nd time or more:When this unit attacks a vanguard, draw a card.". Shuffle your deck.
[ACT](RC) Generation Break 1:[Counter Blast (1) & Put this unit into your soul] Choose one of your vanguards with "Blue Wave" in its card name, until end of turn, it gets "[AUTO](VC)Wave-2nd time or more (Active during the specified battles of each turn):When this unit attacks a vanguard, draw a card." and "[AUTO](VC)Wave-5th time or more:When this unit attacks a vanguard, this unit gets [Critical]+1 until end of that battle.".
[AUTO](VC) Generation Break 2 Wave-2nd time only(Active during the specified battles of each turn):When this unit attacks a vanguard, this unit gets [Power]+5000 until end of turn, choose up to one of your rear-guards, [Stand] it, and it gets [Power]+10000 until end of turn. [AUTO](VC):During your turn, when your unit named "Blue Wave Marshal Dragon, Tetra-boil Dragon" Stride, choose one of your vanguards, until end of turn, it gets [Power]+3000, and "[AUTO](VC)Wave-2nd time only (Active during the specified battles of each turn):When this unit attacks a vanguard, choose up to two of your rear-guards, [Stand] them, and they get [Power]+3000 until end of turn.".
Needless to say, the more of these benefits you had stacked onto your Vanguard the more powerful your turns were both in strength and defense, easily making milestones being abruptly stronger than Lambros, Aqua Force’s sole finisher at the time, and being one of the best re-standing Vanguards: outclassing Dragonic Overlord the Ace, Viktplasma, and Homura Raider. As I’ve mentioned before in many of my posts on this page (though sadly I cannot remember which ones to be exact), Blue Waves had a “everything you can do, I can do better” moment with all of the other Aqua Force builds: Ripples (Post Ban List), Maelstrom, and especially Thavas. While the three builds shared the same end game via Lambros (although Maelstrom had an invincible attack through cross break ride) Blue Wave’s had Tetra-boil in addition to Lambros which meant that they had three guaranteed shots to end the game. I would comment the early game but each variant, except Thavas somewhat, had a relatively strong early game presence since Ripples had Odysseus, Maelstrom still had “Blue Storm” 10k/12k beaters, and Blue Wave’s having Foivos, it’s debatable to say which one was truly superior so I’ll end it off by saying that: Blue Wave with just a Stride and 4 main deck cards, one per grade + trigger, was a pretty solid deck.
The next time Blue Wave would receive another set of support was during Set 9′s Divine Dragon Caper, which at this point: a lot of things happened. The G zone expanded, our meta shifted a lot, we had to deal with the hand traps known as Denial Griffin and Defeat Flare, it was a roller coaster of swapping between Blue Waves and Thavas, myself making a hybrid called “Divine Storm”, in fact that deck profile can tell you more about my thoughts and my approach to the meta in a nutshell. It was a time period where I dabbled in both Thavas and Blue Waves as both were solid decks with specific strengths that led me to believe they were equally powerful and it came down to a matter of which deck was better against the most recent support until Set 9. Now, I’m sure you’ve heard me state this before: my thoughts on Divine Dragon Caper for Aqua Force was not good, I’d say it was one of the worst sets beyond getting two valued things: Wailing Thavas and a Reprint of Commander Thavas. We had one Maelstrom support after it was advertised that Maelstrom was going to be featured and the “Wave” support was okay but nothing truly impacting since we was still using the same units in our deck. Blue Wave support was I believe the worst because not only did any of the main deck support not make it in decks beyond 2-3 cards; it came in as a “surprise” since it felt like the attention was being directed to both Maelstrom and Thavas yet Blue Waves took over and got support that they didn’t even need. I’m not going to go through each and every Blue Wave card since most of them speak for themselves as to why they weren’t getting played but yeah. So from there, we got Wailing in our deck and nothing really changed our main deck for any Aqua Force build, but because of this: Blue Wave (or any hybrid that included Anger-boil) was the “better” if not the best Aqua Force deck because you had more options to approach your opponent, either Lambros, Tetra-boil, and now Wailing Thavas. In addition, the Blue Wave early game being stronger than Thavas’ only supported Blue Wave’s standing since the meta-game at the time was all heavy Generation Break decks like Nightrose, Luard, Gear Chronicle, Wiseman, etc. which gave Blue Wave an edge to hit them hard and fast before they set up and overpowered you. Sadly, it would remain like this until Set 11: which began a huge control spike through Kagero and Nubatama. It was at this time, where I personally, also switched to Thavas and started to drop Blue Wave because the game was reaching a point where the first stride was what determined the game whether if you began your multi-attacking or if you secured resources to guard and/or set up for your stronger plays. With Blue Wave needing a G-guard otherwise needed to survive into second stride to go into it’s infamous power play, it was not an effective strategy per se especially when you needed to finish them that turn or hope to god you stacked 2-4 Brutal Troopers on your vanguard to generate the hand needed to guard the more explosive plays and with nothing that could be done to make the first stride Commander Thavas an optimal push outside of sacking, it was looking more like Thavas was the better deck for the meta because Skyros and Resist gave stability against control, Thavas has an inherent draw engine through Melania and Petros, and Commander was better utilized in Thavas (as he’s always had) than in Blue Waves, especially considering Melania. Now, I know people are going to say “Why not put Melania in Blue Waves?” That is a good point and I did try that, however, unless you stride into a Thavas unit: Melania was useless if not a booster and the front row was still open to control which nine times out of ten, were units you desperately wanted like a Tidal Assault, Foivos, etc. My logic was simply: Thavas and Blue Waves, while neither were dominating the meta-game, even regarded as Tier 2, were equal to each other but the key difference was who could approach the meta better? Because of Resist and being able to draw/resource as soon as you stride and the ability to control made Thavas a better pick, despite glaring weaknesses, over Blue Waves who would do better in slower formats where their early game would dominate other decks and could make up for their sub par first stride into a decently good mid-to-late game. This moment in time can be better explained through another one of my deck profiles; Ultimate Storm which was, again, where I started to drop Blue Wave and the beginning of the meta shift. I wrap up this section by ending it off with: at this point in the game, it was the first time that Blue Wave would “need” support not only to be a rival to Thavas for “face of the clan” but to be a competitively viable deck as it originally was.
Set 13′s Ultimate Stride, was packed full of expectations and wonder as to what Aqua Force was going to get. I kinda already ran through this in my “Ultimate Stride” Discussion, so I’m not gonna rant about the goodness of this set for the entire clan, but namely for Blue Wave. We had no idea what Blue Wave was going to do until we saw a quick glimpse of what Valeos was able to showcase in his fight against Shion, especially when Flood Hazard Dragon entered the battle. A first stride re-standing vanguard to make use of those Brutal Troopers early on was something we wasn’t expecting and it seemed perfect in addition to the rear-guards and Valeos himself...until the cards came out. There were restrictions upon restrictions, that watered down the support as a whole, no pun intended. Restrictions that I’ll explain in the next segment because I feel this “History of Blue Waves” is getting pretty lengthy now but it’s also the fact that, even designing the cards and their effects: it actually caused the archetype to split into two because it would be very conflicting to all of these cards together and have them synergize perfectly beyond them sharing the Blue Wave name. With that, I’m going to close this segment and discuss the problem, but to recap: Blue Wave started off really strong, brimming with potential and as the game progressed, they tried to as well but really couldn’t all that much especially in the control metas to now not knowing what they want to do.
The Problem
So with all of that history dump out of the way, I’ll just jump straight into the issues. Originally, after Set 9, Blue Wave’s issue was really a solid first stride to either push the opponent or to safely get them to their second stride and their main boss: Tetra-boil Dragon. This is an issue because Thavas’ was able to have a better and stable first stride and go safely into the next turn aiming to finish or devastate the opponent. In Ultimate Stride, they gave us Flood Hazard Dragon which was intended to be our “new first stride” that, in theory, pushed the opponent and gave us some resources. And somehow, they screwed it up. The Problem with Blue Wave is the newest stride Flood Hazard Dragon!
[AUTO](VC):[Counter Blast (1) & Choose a face down card with the same card name as this unit from your G zone, turn it face up, choose two cards from your hand, and discard them] At the end of the battle that a rear-guard with "Blue Wave" in its card name attacked, if you have a heart card with "Blue Wave" in its card name, and it was the fourth battle of this turn, you may pay the cost. If you do, [Stand] this unit, and it gets drive-3. [CONT](VC) Generation Break 3:This unit gets drive+1, and all of your rear-guards in your front row with "Blue Wave" in their card names get [Power]+2000.
Disclaimer: I love the art and the name: it’s a really cool card to have but to use in actual game play, that’s a different story. Now you’re probably looking at this and are thinking: “How can a stride ruin it when it re-stands and triggers Brutal Trooper?” Simple, it costs too much that it actually becomes starved for Brutal Trooper. You have to discard two cards and you get no extra drive checks, barring Generation Break 3. This is horrible: Tetra-boil at the very least, while Twin Drive, made you discard one and still get two extra cards on his second attack. You literally only get one card not including anything from Brutal/Dagger/Draw Triggers, which is hardly anything to survive off of. Sure you can refund by grabbing a Grade 3 through Arsenal or Bright Shooter, but a Grade 3 will pay for stride but it can’t guard and your hand size isn’t changing (unless you used Brutal Trooper). In a game state where you want to either getting as much resources or mounting an assault on your opponent on first stride, this isn’t exactly the best thing to do. Offensively, however, it does it’s job as it’s still a +26k attacking twice, however the only issue is that the final attack can be easily guarded with at minimum 20k shield. Sure you can eliminate power ups with Valeos’ heartbeat skill, but all of your attacks are worth 5-10k guards minimum. The way I see it, it’s effective when your opponent is sitting at 3-5 damage because all of the attacks have to or will need to be guarded to a certain extent. “Okay, so why not rush them down?” Well that’s the other part of the problem, Blue Wave’s early rushing is gimped because Foivos is their only early rusher as Tidal has been seeing less play in the deck due to “Tidal is not a Blue Wave”. Foivos requires another rear-guard in addition to the vanguard to fulfill the first and second waves so he can re-stand on third wave: getting four battles. This also requires a counterblast which, if you’d allow me to backpedal to Flood Hazard: his “optimal turn” requires three counterblast: one for himself, one for the re-standing rear-guard of choice, and one for Dagger Master. If you decide to early rush, the appropriate response of the opponent is to rear-guard hate you because it’s Aqua Force and you need counterblast. So rushing early, may not be the best thing to do which ironically enough was what Blue Wave’s did best compared to Thavas. Of course, with Valeos’ heartbeat and nullifying damage triggers and power ups, you can get six attacks in to make up for the non-existent early game but again, easily guarded attacks. The only way I’d ever imagine this is if you are running Tidal Assault, but there’s still the chance of being rear-guard hated while effectively being counterblast denied. The only way I can effectively see Blue Wave getting the opponent to 3-4 or even 5 damages pre-stride without early rushing is playing a high amount of critical triggers, possibly twelve, however this complicates issues because unless you’re checking Brutal Troopers to use on Flood Hazard later, you’re missing out on drawing necessary cards that you may or may not be missing: stride fodder, guard, rear-guards, essential stuff, which as I’ve said before: in my recent deck profiles: you want to play draw triggers now because drawing into those cards are important so that not having one of those cards can determine your ability to survive and/or counterattack. Most Blue Wave players have gone with a more draw heavy approach: 6 draws 6 criticals, I’ve even tried the Nova Grappler approach of 8 Draw 4 Critical but, it just didn’t feel like I was closing the game and drawing 5ks rather than pieces or resources.
Now, I know I should be talking about some of the other Blue Wave units such as Galleas/Arsenal fleet/Valeos vs Foivos/Anger-boil because this has been a focal point in Blue Wave discussions that have caused the idea of there being two separate decks but honestly, regardless of what units you use won’t change Flood Hazard’s effectiveness. I still feel like they designed the units poorly but it’s not like you have to use any of these effects but can consider them as options, more so speaking for Galleas, Arsenal fleet, and Foivos. Their effectiveness change depending on the situation regarding which stride, which heart, your damage, your field, your hand, etc. However, I should explain that the idea behind not mixing Anger and Valeos came about because the skills of Galleas, Lucianos, Arsenal-fleet overlap with Anger-boil’s GB2 and his heartbeat skill for Tetra-boil dragon since they all trigger on Wave 2. If you throw Foivos in the mix, then it complicates the Waves even further because if you allow Galleas, Arsenal, Lucianos to attack Wave 2, the vanguard is forced to Wave 3 because a rear-guard has to attack on Wave 4 in order for the Vanguard to stand. The vanguard also can’t attack on Wave 1 if you use Dagger Master/Brutal Trooper. So it’s understood that you have to prioritize which re-stander and which boss grade 3 you value more: Tetra and Anger, or Valeos and Flood. Valeos is valued more because his heartbeat skill can be used on any Blue Wave stride, however I still feel Anger-boil is still something to consider because he does get you a free column and of the two: Anger-boil + Tetra-boil is a stronger and more resourceful re-stand combo especially when your opponent is backed into a wall, compared to Flood Hazard is resourcing lower than Tetra-boil (regardless of Tetra’s heart) and getting the same value on Generation Break 3. In addition, Anger’s ability to stand two units when Tetra-boil attacks on Wave 2, not only increases the offensive power but at your bare minimum, you’re able to trigger a re-stand, which was another key feature of Blue Waves: the boss stride only needed 1 re-standing rear guard or two attackers (for 1 counterblast), Flood Hazard has to spend at minimum two counterblast to re-stand. Whichever rear-guards you decide to use really doesn’t matter as long as you’re able to re-stand your vanguard, the issue still boils down to Flood Hazard, no pun intended, the “ideal” first stride being the worst first stride and the worst re-stand as well. The only time the rear-guards are at fault is when it involves non-Blue Wave strides, which I’ll get into in a moment. However, it’s safe to say: that truly the issue does lie within the first stride not really doing much, even with Valeos, along with costing too much and relying on too much to stabilize safely into the next turn.
Lastly, I wanted to point out that: in my Blue Wave deck profile, well the first one after G-BT13, I made a “second deck” within that profile using the idea that both Valeos and Anger shouldn’t be played in the same deck: specifically meant for Anger-boil which is basically what Blue Wave’s have been using but with some of the newer cards. You can see more of what I’m talking about in the deck profile itself, but the deck is able to be a lot more flexible and have a variety of options to go into, still giving the Blue Wave feel of “anything you can do, I can do better” except the issue with this deck is that like Blue Wave’s before; does not have a lot of Resist and lacks an inherent draw engine as early as first stride (unless you G-Guard). Thankfully you are able to play Bubble Edge so you can draw off of that with a first stride Alexandros which is somewhat able to compensate but not entirely, in my opinion. Again, you could throw Thavas pieces into the deck to get a hybrid of sorts but the problem then comes down to Thavas himself needing to be on the Vanguard. If you ride Thavas, you lock yourself out of re-standing the Vanguard and rear-guards with Blue Wave (though technically you can just go into Flood Hazard and rear-guards will still re-stand and you’ll get a Quad Drive), and if you ride the “intended ride” Anger-boil or Valeos even, you have to stride into a Thavas to make those “Thavas pieces” work, which at that point put’s you back to playing the same way we’ve been playing up until Set 13. Needless to say: if you hybrid; you get more out of it riding Thavas than you do riding Anger-boil as the re-standing Vanguard may not be worth it if you’re stabilizing and resourcing to go into the next turn and finish the game with whatever finisher of your choice being Lambros, Alexandros, or Wailing.
So to recap on the “problem” (at least from my perspective), Blue Wave’s newest re-stander plays a big role in the problem, as well as the rear-guards but not as much as the first stride since this game is at a point where your first stride needs to be either pushing or resourcing so that you can safely go into the next turn, which Flood Hazard is only able to do both if you get the correct pieces especially to compensate for his costs, otherwise you go minus and will just die against any aggressive deck or won’t be able to make a comeback.
The Solution
Well I can’t kinda say a “Solution” since Set 13 was the last set for Aqua Force as far as the G-series goes. Also when I say a solution, I’m going to give the most realistic one and that’s simply just to use a better first stride or hope to G-Guard into Tetra-boil as you really want to be on Flood Hazard when you’re on Generation Break 3, unless you’re on Anger-boil then it’ll probably be better to just stay on Tetra-boil. Aqua Force did get a universal first stride in Alexandros, which is currently the best stride in Aqua Force, however he’s not perfect in Blue Waves because as I mentioned briefly before: the rear-guards. So, one of the two main differences between Thavas and Blue Waves is that Thavas had better flexibility in attacking pattern which allowed for cool combos like Bubble Edge drawing two with little to no complications since it would be the Vanguard to have a restriction on when it needed to attack to enable plays. Also, very quickly: when I say “restrictions” I mean units that have “Wave #th-only” clause indicating that they only work on those specific Waves vs a “Wave #th or more” as those are still flexible to work with. Blue Wave did the opposite: the Vanguard could essentially attack in whatever order, (though other skills benefited from attacking in certain patterns), the rear-guards were the ones with the restrictions. This is important to note because when you have a vanguard with a battle restriction trying to work with a rear-guard with a battle restriction in the same Waves, you can get really awkward battle patterns that can work sometimes but other times are artificial, like you know they aren’t really meant to work together. A big example of this is Alexandros and any of the Blue Wave re-standing rear-guards: most of them attack on Waves 2nd/3rd and by the time Alexandros attacks, some will either be standing or won’t be able to use their skill because of this overlap. Foivos is the safest one, which is putting it mildly, because he can just attack first then Alexandros second and upon Waves 3 and 4, he’ll keep his power up and luckily for us, you can give power to another unit that is still standing but not being able to attack multiple times with huge power is underwhelming in a sense. Your other first stride options are as followed.
[AUTO](VC):When your rear-guard with "Blue Wave" in its card name attacks, that unit gets [Power]+3000 until end of that battle. [ACT](VC)[1/Turn]:[Soul Blast (1)-card with "Blue Wave" in its card name] Look at seven cards from the top of your deck, search for up to one grade 3 card with "Blue Wave" in its card name from among them, place it on your (VC) as a heart, and shuffle your deck. If you placed one or more cards, put all of your heart cards other than the card placed due to this effect into your drop zone.
[ACT](VC)[1/Turn]:[Choose a face down card named "Storm Dominator, Commander Thavas" from your G zone, and turn it face up] Choose up to one of your rear-guards, until end of turn, it gets [Power]+5000 and "[CONT](RC):This unit can attack from the back row.", and until end of turn, this unit gets "[AUTO](VC) Generation Break 3 Wave-4th time only:When your unit attacks a vanguard, choose three of your opponent's rear-guards, your opponent chooses one rear-guard from among them, and retires it.".
Aritom decent because he can fix your heart, if you ride Arsenal fleet, you can drop zone him to pick him up later via his skill. The problem is that for starters, he doesn’t flip anything so you have to G-Guard if your intention was to Flood Hazard on GB3, Wailing Thavas’ retire, or even Megiddo. However, luckily for Blue Wave: the original boss Tetra-boil Dragon is only Generation Break two and is still worth going into over Flood Hazard. The other issue is that he doesn’t re-stand: so your more than likely sitting on Brutal Trooper until next turn, however the bonus is that you can still get 5-6 attacks with the proper set up, which is pretty solid especially if you’re on Valeos. He’s seen play as a “I don’t have the resources to Flood Hazard first stride beyond going minus”, which ironically enough he was released in Divine Dragon Caper and is one of the three cards I felt was something to look at and see competitive play.
Commander Thavas is like taking a step back but it certainly must be better than Drive-3, Discard 2, Counterblast 2, right? You have some flexibility in attack pattern and can give a 5k power bonus but since he’s not Blue Wave, Valeos can’t use his heartbeat, which was a point I forgot to bring up when talking about Alexandros: Valeos can’t use his heartbeat either so you’re very open to damage triggers. And unlike Artiom, your next stride is Generation Break 3+ (depending on G-Guards).
Now I feel like I can talk about some “hypothetical” solutions. Again, the word is hypothetical as I doubt Bushiroad would care too much even with a petition, to consider going through with this since Set 13 has been out for a month in ENG and longer in JPN, and considering Set 13 was the last G-Set for Aqua Force (unless Aqua Force support in the new season), I highly doubt this solution is worth arguing since at this point it’s too late and it is what it is but I thought I’d share just because why not. Errata Flood Hazard Dragon. How? Simple: Remove either Drive-3 or the Discard-2, preferably the Drive-3, I feel the discard two is fine as it is very reminiscent of Tetra-drive Dragon and is decent cost. As I said before, with the effect how it is: your first stride is only getting you 1 card, going from GB2 and the second attack on GB3 (meaning Drive+1 is active), you get 2 cards, and GB3 from the start means you get 3 cards. If you remove the Drive-3 completely: I feel people would say this is “broken” or is doing “too much” as you’d be getting 4 cards on first stride, to 5 cards with second attack being GB3, and 6 cards with GB3, so I’d say possibly adjust it to Drive-2. With that your numbers go: 2 cards for the first stride, 3 cards if you’re on GB3 for the second attack, and 4 cards if you started on Generation Break 3 making Flood Hazard an even break as Tetra-drive originally was. The other solution is giving Flood Hazard more power to make up for the loss Drives so he isn’t just a static 26k for two swings. A simple skill text of “This unit gets [Power]+2000 for each battle that your unit attacked this turn, until the end of turn.” If you have Flood Hazard attack on Wave 2, he’d be 30k which is the same value of guard as a 26k attack, but his final attack would be 36k which is significantly better than 26k and is actually worth the loss of Drives because it means your opponent is dropping even more cards. These idea’s came from looking at two very similar units as Flood Hazard but done correctly: Chronodragon Gearnext and Bravest Peak, X-gallop. Gearnext goes from 3 Drives to -3 either hand or field, to Drive -2 but on Generation Break 4, will get +10k and Drive+1. He’s still getting three cards but the +10k makes up for the loss drive and serves as a +1 (as the other 5k). Bravest Peak, released two sets after Flood Hazard: has Quad Drive, Re-stand but gets Drive-4. The biggest difference is the power needing to be 80k to Re-stand. The power makes up for the lack of drives because 80k is a very high guard to say the least. However, these two units both use the concept of loss of drives and have skills to make up for it. Now I know people will say “but Flood Hazard has Aqua Force’s multi-attack and damage trigger nullification via Valeos”, but my retort to that is Gearnext is in a clan that multi-attacks and tutors everything while Bravest Peak is rewarded by hitting specific powers via free perfect guards, free draws, or guard breaks. Flood Hazard can multi-attack but it’s not tutoring nor is he getting anything for free beyond Brutal Trooper which is at this point a necessity to make the play not be a minus.
I feel like the main issue with Flood Hazard is that, they saw how Tetra-boil was and said “Let’s make a stride that rivals it”, which was done by making it triple and even quadruple drive check and by making it a re-stander on the first stride. However, they probably figured that making an “opposite Tetra-boil” would either invalidate Tetra-boil or literally ruin itself, and Bushiroad went for the second option by ruining itself. A theory of mine is that I feel perhaps Flood Hazard was intended to be release earlier than it’s actual debut, which would be Set 9. Now I don’t work for Bushiroad nor know their R&D department so this is just headcanon at this point. But it just feels weird to me that they would create a really sub-par re-stander like this. Like we look at other older re-standers that we consider “bad” like Dragonic Overlord the Ace, Viktplasma, or hell even Spectral Blaster Diablo; these re-standers were pretty strong at their time but have aged into the game to where they’re sub-par or aren’t really the “go-to option”. Note: I’m not calling these cards “trash” or “bad”, I still see value in all of these re-standers especially Spectral, I’m saying over time they became less powerful than how they originally was upon release. Flood Hazard, upon release made as much of an impact on the meta game as it’s doing now, not much: and it’s not to say re-standers are bad, quite the opposite: I still feel re-standers are pretty strong looking at the aforementioned examples of Gearnext and Bravest Peak, or even Siegenburg, and Bladermaus all “recent” re-standing Vanguards and are still making an impact in their decks/clans even after sets. So I don’t ever think the power of re-standing Vanguards will ever not be strong because it’s two vanguard swings. Flood Hazard feels like was meant for an early point in time where Drive-3 wasn’t so bad because you could get away with whatever cards you got from Brutal/Dagger to survive off of. Although, this would require testing in me playing Flood Hazard into Set 9 meta which I kinda don’t really have time for sadly. I’m also inclined to believe when designing this they probably didn’t want the G-zone to be filled with eight really good re-standers as an automatic “must play 4 of” so, perhaps weakening one was better rather making them relatively equal or having Flood Hazard be a vastly superior re-stander compared to Tetra-boil since Tetra-boil at it’s time was regarded as one of the best re-standers, and to top that in addition to making Flood Hazard a first stride may actually caused Blue Wave to be too aggressive, so that’s also a possibility and wanted to avoid a situation like this. And with that I’m going to wrap this up with a conclusion.
Conclusion
This was a very lengthy rant, about two to three hours worth of typing but I feel it was worth me pouring or trying to address what went wrong with Blue Waves, since as I’ve stated before: they started off brimming with amazing potential being one of the best Aqua Force decks and even one of the top decks of it’s meta, holding onto one of the strongest if not the best re-standing Vanguards in the game at the time (until Spectral Blaster Diablo could rival it). And even during Set 9 with little to no support, was still rivaling Thavas as the “deck of the clan”, which personally was it’s main appeal because while most clans only had 1 deck that carried the clan: other clans had two - Aqua Force being one of them. But sadly, Blue Waves started age by newer support for both other clans and Aqua Force and effectively becoming unreliable in the competitive scene due to many different internal issues with the deck in addition to the control meta. Again, this is in no way, shape, or form of me saying the deck or it’s cards is “trash” or “garbage” or that you shouldn’t play it because even now it’s still a playable deck and when everything works as it’s supposed to: you can be successful with this deck because you have many great cards supporting the archetype such as Brutal Trooper, Valeos, Anger-boil, Tetra-boil and Flood Hazard himself to an extent just to name a few. I just feel that Blue Wave is struggling among it’s fan base and wanted to address what could be the reason why that may be the case. I will still post my deck profile for Blue Wave’s shortly via video format, again, I just felt it was better to write down my thoughts here and be able to refer back to this as a means of explaining my choices.
I’d like to hear more feedback, some thoughts, and opinions about this rant and even about Blue Wave itself on whether or not there is an issue, is there something that can be fixed, or is this just people over-reacting or comparing it to Thavas too much, which is another issue separately. This is Zane Kisaragi, signing out.