Grade 1 Manguard Rushdown: How It Works

   By now you've all probably become aware of the Grade 1 Rush Deck posted on Bushiroad's official Vanguard facebook page (if not, here's a link). The deck, aptly titled "Manguard Rushdown" was a homebrew created by us, the members of Team Manguard. A lot of people are questioning the success of the deck, and why it even got as far as round 6 of the Anaheim WCQ. I'm here to tell you guys what's up, and what real MANGUARD is all about.

   The idea started out as a joke:
"Dude, lets make a deck of all grade 1 vanillas! Just make 3 16k columns asap and swing in for game!". And we a laughed at that idea....

   And then we all seriously thought about that idea....

   And then we made this amazing deck.

• 1 x BT02/024EN Mecha Trainer
• 4 x BT02/046EN Cheerful Lynx
• 4 x BT02/045EN Sonic Breaker
• 4 x BT02/048EN Silence Joker
• 4 x EB03/023EN Kungfu Kicker
• 4 x EB03/003EN Reckless Express
• 4 x BT01/075EN Wonder Boy
• 4 x EB03/021EN Medical Manager
• 4 x EB03/024EN Gyro Slinger
• 2 x BT01/077EN Dandy Guy, Romario
• 3 x BT01/048EN Embodiment of Armor, Bahr
• 3 x BT01/066EN Sonic Noa
• 3 x BT01/054EN Oracle Guardian, Gemini
• 3 x BT01/060EN Tough Boy
• 3 x BT02/077EN Phantom Black

   The genius behind the idea comes from when you realize one of the often overlooked and forgotten rules of the game:
The opponent can only guard with units that have a grade equal to or lower than their vanguard's grade.

This is key.

   What it means is that on your first turn of attacking, your opponent will only be able to use the grade zero and grade one units in their hand to guard against your rush. Even better, if they missed their g1 ride, they'll only be able to use grade 0 units.

   Consider the following: The average opening hand (after mulligan) will ideally consist of 1 grade three, one or two grade twos, and one or two grade ones. Most people will mulligan away triggers in order to achieve a good ride-curve such as this. Now we all know this is the ideal and doesn't always happen, at least one or two triggers have a nasty way of finding their way into your opening hand. In fact, let's do the math:

   Using a Hypergeometric Distribution (via this hypergeometric calculator), given 49 cards in deck with an opening hand of 6 cards:
opening 0 triggers:: 7.92035593145677%
1 trigger: 27.1555060507089%
2 triggers:  35.1148785138477%
3 triggers: 21.8492577419497%
4 triggers: 6.87194396722611%
5 triggers: 1.03079159508392%
6 triggers: .0572661997268843%

   So more likely than not, the opponent will open at least two triggers in hand pre-mulligan. Post-mulligan, the stats get a little wonky so I wont get into that, but we can all assume that most good opponents who don't know you're playing Grade One Rush will send back all their triggers in hopes of drawing more grade ones, twos, or threes.

    Knowing this, it is the Rush deck pilot's priority to do as much damage as early as possible. Your early game is better than any other deck in the game, placing far more pressure on the board turn one than any other conventional deck could. Any time the opponent manages to take you to late game, the odds start tipping in his favor, as their aggressive grade two and three units, coupled with Twin Drive, will allow them to quickly out-advantage you and take the game away. For that reason, it is helpful to the strategy to actually go 2nd, since it will allow you the first attack, which allows you to put a lot more pressure on the opponent from the start. And early-game pressure is the name of the game with his deck.

   Now that you know a little bit of the theory behind the deck choice, let's go into a little more detail into the theory behind the build itself.

   We chose Spike Brothers as the core of the deck because Reckless Express is the only grade one unit capable of easily breaking the 20k magic number against grade two and grade three 10k vanguards, which is necessary for applying pressure in the mid-game stage where you are hoping to finish the fight before it moves to the late-game stage. Logically, utilizing Mecha Trainer as the starting vanguard to search out either Reckless Express or Wonder Boy(a static 8k vanilla) was a great idea. In order to make the Mecha Trainer more consistent, we added 8 more Spike Brother grade one units in addition to the four Reckless and the four Wonder Boy. Medical Manager fuels the soul for multiple Reckless Express hits and makes a 15k column with an 8k booster behind it, while Gyro Slinger makes the same 15k column with the potential to become another 16k column for counterblast one or a 20k column for counterblast five. The rest of the units are an assortment of 8k vanillas from various clans to round out the deck.

   Now that you all know all the theory behind the deck, hopefully you have a better understanding of how it was possible for a grade 1 deck made it to round 6 of the Anaheim WCQ.

So,  we encourage you to try it for yourself, see how you like it. The deck's really good (and quite the troll), we promise. Likewise, we encourage you all to try to build your own rush strategies! We found Spike Bros to be incredibly effective, but perhaps y'all have another cool idea that's just as good.