G Trial Deck 4: Blue Cavalry of the Divine Marine Spirits review

You can purchase Cardfight!! Vanguard singles at Big Orbit Cards.

Aqua Force are a naval clan from Magallanica who patrol the seas with the goal of keeping order and justice among all marine environments.

This trial deck brings Aqua Force into the new G series with a pre-constructed deck containing 52 cards. As with all trial decks this comes with a rule book and playmat to help newer players get into the game. TD04 also brings multiple cards that older players can put in their competitive decks such as the new Aqua Force leader: One Who Surpasses the Storm, Thavas.

First Impressions

The box itself looks very nice with an eye-catching image of Thavas showing through the packaging, accompanied with a picture of Jaime on the box, the character who uses Aqua Force in the anime of Cardfight!! Vanguard G.

On the back of the playmat that comes with the trial deck there are examples of how to use certain cards to their full extent and how to combo cards to gain effects. Aqua Force have always been known for their ability to gain effects by organising the order of specific battles in a turn, so this guide will really help new players understand what Aqua Force is about.

From looking at the new cards we can see Aqua Force has certainly stepped up it’s game since the last trial deck. With the addition of perfect guards, G units, and two copies of the grade 3 leader, we can see that this deck can hold it’s own against even the strongest decks out there but there is still room for improvement…

We get a look at the first Aqua Force G unit. Marine General of Heavenly Scales, Tidal Bore Dragon shows us what kind of abilities we can expect from the new strides of this clan. With the classic “If it is the X battle of that turn” effect we know things aren’t going to be changing much in terms of skills.

The Pros

This deck provides multiple ways of attacking more than three times in one turn which givees more support to cards like Thavas and for previous Aqua Force decks, such as Maelstrom and Tetra-drive.

The new leader, Thavas, is just as formidable as the previous leaders of the G trial decks. With a breakstride ability allowing you to retire your opponents rear guards and a generation break 2 that stops your opponent from guarding with grade 0s and deals extra damage. Just like the rest of the G units thus far, Thavas will be receiving additional support in sets to come. We get our first taste of this in G-BT02 Soaring Ascent of Gale & Blossom with Kelpie Rider, Nicky, who will help you search your deck for a card with “Thavas” in the name, indicating we may get more Thavas cards in the future.

Tidal Bore Dragon has an easy skill to pull off, with it’s ability being activated through the third battle of the turn, so even if you can’t pull off Thavas’s breakstride skill, having to be on the forth battle or more, then you can still put some pressure on your opponent. Another interesting thing about Tidal Bore’s skill is that you have a choice when it’s activated. Once you draw an extra card you can either keep all cards in your hand, ready to defend on your opponents next turn, or place another card down to get an additional hit in.

Aqua Force get a great advantage in this trial deck with the addition of Magnum Assault. This grade 2 stands himself back up after attacking, no matter when he battles during a turn, providing an easy way to get to the forth attack for Thavas. With this effect Magnum Assault also gains 2k power making it easier to attack a grade 3 Vanguard. (Note: on the first print in the English version of this card there is no counter blast cost but this was fixed in future prints and people playing this card should abide by this rule in competitive play.)

The cons

There are some minor problems with this trial deck such as the misprints. Not only do we have the before mentioned “missing counter blast” on Magnum Assault but Thavas had his own misprint. In Thavas’s description it’s breakstride ability said “When this unit attacks a Vanguard” which indicated that even after striding over him, Thavas still had to be the one to attack. In future prints this card will say “When your unit attacks a Vanguard” meaning that the G unit will gain the skill instead of Thavas.

Misprints aside, this deck has a lot of cards that show up in plenty of other trial decks, especially the grade 1s. Once you get this deck, if you are already familiar with Aqua Force and have plenty of cards from this clan then you will most likely be switching out a lot of the support cards. There is one benefit to the cards being this way, in that they are simple enough to help new Vanguard players to learn how to play with ease, but veteran players may find themselves buying this deck for a handful of cards and then placing the rest to one side.

Summary

Despite the amount of cards that are just clones of units from previous trial decks, this deck’s star units really prove to be great assets to the Aqua Force clan. Thavas seems to be a worthy unit on his own and I’m sure he’ll be used in competitive decks for a while to come.

All-in-all these cards seem to belong with Aqua Force, and if you are new to Aqua Force then plenty of support will be coming out in the next booster set to help modify this deck to make it even better.

Remember you can purchase Cardfight!! Vanguard singles at Big Orbit Cards.