Cardfight Vanguard Deck Tech: Fortia and Friends!

By Serena L.

Stand Up! Vanguard!

Serena here again. And this time, I brought Friends! Today we’re exploring the new upgrades for Lyrical Monastario’s Fortia and her Friends. If you’re familiar with older formats of Vanguard, you are probably familiar with the Harmony deck. Friends are basically the updated version of Harmony. Most of our Units grant the “Friends” state when they have another unit in their column, and the ones that don’t all have powerful (but not ‘Powerful’) abilities! We will be calling the units that grant the ‘Friend’ status to themselves and their column-mates ‘Friend units’ for simplicity’s sake. The specific wording of the Friend ability is: “If you have another unit in the same column as this unit, that unit and this unit become “Friends”.

Starting off with our Ride Deck we have MiMish, Tubbylila. This is our starter, but you can use any Lyrical starter you want here. Next up we have the grade 1 MiMish, Azhachir, the first Friend unit we will be discussing. Other than granting the “Friend” state, you can call Azhachir from soul when rode upon by our next card, MiMish, Rikashenna. Rikashenna is also a Friend unit and says if you have another “Friend” when you would ride MiMish, Fortia you can ride without discarding from your hand. Now finally, our main grade 3, her name will actually be Full Moon Magic, Fortia, her new Dress-Up form, which is similar to the Loronerol and Feltyrosa Dress-Up forms mentioned in earlier articles. As a reminder, it states that during this fight, she’s regarded as having the same name as ‘Mimish, Fortia’. Full Moon Magic is a Friend unit but also gets an extra drive if you have 3 or more other friends. She also says if you Persona Rode this turn you may pay an alternate cost for her next ability. The normal cost is discarding a ‘Fortia’ card, the alternate cost is CounterBlast1 and discarding any card. The benefit of this is if you have 5 or more other Friends you can pay the cost to restand Fortia with -2 drive meaning she will still have 1 drive!

On to our grade 1 line up we have 3 of the new Perfect Guard, Sturdy Sweets, Sameel and 1 Elementaria Sanctitude for our Sentinels. Next is 2 copies of Irresistible Vibes, Ambel, another new card from the latest Lyrical set, and she’s a Friend unit that says when she boosts a unit attacking a grade 3 or higher unit if you have a Fortia vanguard and 5 or more other Friends, you can SoulBlast2 and your opponent can’t call sentinels from hand to guardian circle until the end of that battle! Then we have 4 An Egg Relay Full of Smiles! Juliana, a Friend unit that when she boosts if you have a Fortia or Mediell vanguard, she gives another Friend +5k for the turn. Up next is Sound in the Wind, Ducayla, who isn’t a Friend unit herself, but when you play one in her column, if you have 3 or more other Friends, to CB1 to draw a card. Rounding out the grade 1s we have a single copy of Lyrical’s new card from the Jeweled Beast cycle, Rainbow Jeweled Beast, Olpirais. When Olpirais is placed on rear or guardian circle you can put 2 cards from soul or drop that originated in your ride deck back into your ride deck face up to either gain 15k shield if it’s on guardian circle or return a card with the same name as our vanguard from drop to hand!

Now with our grade 2s, we have 4 copies of Crystal of Special Emotions, Belianne, a Friend Unit who while in the front row during our gives our Fortia vanguards +5k power and if our opponent is on grade 3 or higher, herself 10k power, making her a nice beater. Next we have Best Moment, Stolas. Stolas gains Boost if we have a total of 3 or more units with the “Friends” ability or the “Powerful” ability, and when she’s placed on rear during the main phase, we choose a card from soul and put it to drop. However, in exchange if we have a vanguard with “Friends” or “Powerful” we choose a card in our drop and call it to rear, but if we called a card from drop we can’t do so again for the rest of the turn. The best part of Stolas is this effect works even if you didn’t have a card in soul to send, as the sending is an effect and not a cost! Lastly the star of our grade 2 lineup is Hoppin’ Stellar, Melty, a Friend unit that when she’s placed on rear during our main phase we can CB1 and choose up to one card with grade equal or less than our vanguard from hand and call it to rear, and if we called a card, we draw a card, meaning that between her and Ducayla we can get to our grade 3s faster.

Speaking of grade 3, we have 7 in the main deck, 3 more copies of Full Moon Magic, Fortia and 4 of MiMish, Fortia. Since I already explained Full Moon Magic, MiMish, Fortia is a Friend unit, as a Vanguard at the end of the battle she attacked, if we have 5 or more other Friends, once per turn we can CB1 and discard a card to restand her with -1 drive and +5k power for the turn. The nice thing is since Full Moon Magic is a Dress-Up form of her, we can still use this to Persona Ride, and if we need the extra power to push we could easily use MiMish to help close out the game, provided we have the CB to do so, as only Full Moon Magic can gain the extra drive and restand without the need for it, making the deck a lot harder to damage deny.

Finally, to round out the deck we have 8 standard crits (in my case 4 of Glutton, Nora and 4 of the new Shocking Candy, Auris), 3 Snowskip, Palvi, the effect Fronts to help us push for numbers, 4 heals (I’m using the new Halloween themed Love Thy Cat, Lysanne and our Overtrigger is Spiritual King of Aquatics, Idosfaro. Idosfaro’s extra effect let’s us choose a card from drop (like a copy of Fortia we discarded to restand) and add it to hand, then we give one of our units an extra crit! The Lyrical OT doesn’t help us as much since we’re a vanguard focused deck, and while Idosfaro’s Ignition counterpart is very good, Idosfaro fits our purposes better here.

Other cards you could consider are Cheshire Smile, Larisa, a Friend unit that can gain power, Azure Resonating Holiness, Ulviel, who can gain 10k shield when she intercepts. If you want to really break the bank, there’s always Cooling Heart, Yuika who just received her second reprint in this set as well.

All in all, I hope I’ve convinced you on the Power of Friendship! I think that’s all from me for now and I’ll see you soon. Until then, you can find the full deck list on the official deck log.

Final Turn!
Serena, signing out!