The Four Triggers, Part 1: Introduction

In Vanguard, checking into the right trigger can really push your attack or defense over the edge and allow you to overwhelm your opponent. While the additional 5000 power gained from a trigger is useful regardless of which type of trigger you draw, the secondary effects should not be ignored. In fact, the effects that differentiate the four triggers from each other should be very carefully considered when building a deck. Having triggers that are nor optimal for your specific style of play will hamstring your ability and sabotage your chances of winning.

And that brings us to the purpose of this article. We will be comparing all the different types of triggers, their respective benefits, disadvantages, when you want to see them come up on a check, how to prepare your attack patterns and field for them, and how to select the right triggers to benefit your specific style of play.

To assist us in this, I have prepared the above chart. I've grouped the four types of triggers by four qualifying terms: Aggressive, Passive, Damage (Advantage), and Card (Advantage). Aggressive triggers are triggers that work best when activated via the Drive Check. If Aggressive triggers are activated during the damage check, their abilities tend to be rather lackluster compared to the other two. Passive triggers are the opposites of Aggressive triggers (go figure), in that their effects go off regardless of when they are checked, yet they tend to have alternate weaknesses which lessen their potential. Damage (Advantage) triggers aim to affect the damage zone in some way that will put you ahead of the opponent. Card (Advantage) triggers tend to change the game-state through changing (or at least threatening to change) the number of cards in the hand. Each type of trigger can be defined by two of these terms. For example, a Draw trigger would be a Passive Card trigger.

With all that out of the way, we'll move onward to the more specific analysis.