Alright amigos, today we’re going to discuss some tips and suggestions on how to effectively play Granblue with using your resource management skills!
What do you mean by resource management?
Glad you asked! In every clan in Vanguard, there are units that use certain resources to do skills and as well as game mechanics. Examples are Counter Blast (CB), Soul Blast (SB), discarding from hand, milling from deck, etc.
I believe Granblue is one of the few clans that are challenging on effectively using your resources. A few examples to point are such as using all of your CB & cannot CB during your next turn, decking out due to excessive milling, etc. If not well managed, 98% of the time you will “lose to yourself”.
There’s multiple aspects of the game on what we can count as resources, but for the sake of this article I will just discuss 4 of them.
- Counter Blast (CB)/Counter Charge (CC) management
- Soul Blast (SB)/Soul Charge (SC) management
- Drawing cards from deck/discarding from hand
- Milling from the deck/deck size
Counter Blast & Counter Charge Management
One of Granblue’s most important resources to literally do anything is counter blast(s) (CB). Most of the skills used in the clan use CB, primarily calling units from the drop to Rearguard Circle (RC). Cards like Cocytus, Obadiah, etc. use 1CB to call 1 to up to 5 cards from drop to RC.
That’s 1CB though, what’s the concern? Glad you asked! Ideally we want to maximize our main phase board setup with minimal CB used. If we can call 3-5 units from the drop to RC in our main phase with 1CB, that’s great! Then we can use our CB for other uses which can vary from the early, mid, & late game. Some examples would be Romario, Cannoneer, Nightstorm, etc.
During the early game, Romario helps setting up both your soul and drop zones with useful units. In the mid to late game, Cannoneer helps with retiring an opponent’s rearguard unit and draw you a card. Nightstorm can be use to extend more attacks within your turn to help you deal more damage to your opponent.
Because we can literally call a lot of units, a player is tempted to use ALL of their skills which can use ALL of your CB. Which can be alright or bad depending on how much damage you have currently and if you’re able to CC some of it. For example, if you use ALL of your CB but you’re at 2 damage, then you can easily take some damage on your opponent’s turn to later on use it as CB for your turn. However, if you’re at 5 damage then you CANNOT take damage otherwise you’ll lose the game.
As a result, one of the ways to effectively manage your CB, is to use it in moderation. Typically, you can spend 1-3CB and be okay if you’re expecting to take 1-2 damage next turn or even if you happen to heal some damage. This can help if you’re low on damage because then you don’t have to rely as much on counter charging. Also, when you CB, flip the damage that can be useful units in the drop if you were happen to heal them later on.
Let’s break it down a bit more. We use 1CB to call units from drop to RC during our main phase. Then in premium format, we have access to RGs like Nightstorm and Colombard so we can perform extra attacks. Another 1CB will help yield a 4 attack turn. Then using a 3rd CB, it will yield us a 5 attack turn. You can start seeing a pattern and from that you can plan your plays effectively.
The other way is to CC effectively. Thankfully, we have access to units that let us CC really easily. Two units that I will highlight are both Grenache and King Serpent.
Both units have been used in multiple builds throughout the years. Grenache is a unit that you want to call during your massive field call during the main phase. This way you can then just focus on doing the rest of your turn as you wish. Then at end of turn, Grenache dies because of Hollow and you CC2. If you have Nightrose as your G3 VG, then you can use her GB2 skill to bring Grenache back. Hollow him again, he dies instantly, and you CC2 again.
With King Serpent, he’s more of a on demand CC. Also worth noting he SC1 as well. He can be called during your massive field call and instantly refund it. This can help extend more into your turn by extending more attacks or even using a Cannoneer if needed.
You can also call both units too and get more out of your turn and be well setup for next turn.
Soul Blast & Soul Charge Management
Throughout the years, the soul has been another resource that Granblue can take advantage of. In the premium format we have amazing G Guards in terms of both Negronora and Negromode, that SB1 to help with guarding power.
These G Guards are currently our go to cards in most cases. So it’s important to have at least 1 card in the soul to be able to utilize them.
When we SB, it’s important to realize what we SB out of the soul will be a useful unit in the drop zone. Those units can be called from drop to RC. So you can see our soul as another zone of cards that will end up in our drop zone.
We also have main deck units that utilize the soul. Cards like Ripple Banshee and Cutlass are used for SB1-2 cards to draw an extra card.
These cards are super helpful for us to generate big hand sizes in order to properly guard against the opponent’s attacks. So be mindful of how much soul blasting you’re doing because you want to make sure you can generate advantage and also be able to effectively G Guard.
In order to help with those cards throughout the game, you must have some SC management as well. Granblue is blessed to have triggers that can go into soul and draw you a card in return such as Rough Seas Banshee and Wild Seas Banshee.
Not only you can call them from hand to SC them, but you can even call these from the drop zone if you milled them early or even guarded with them. King Serpent is also a great card that can SC1 when called from drop zone. Romario also adds one card from hand to soul using his on ride skill in the early game. Lastly, reriding a new Vanguard also creates more soul. Ideally, you want to reride a card with a Protect Gift, so you don’t lose hand advantage in doing so.
Drawing Cards & Discarding From Hand
Granblue has access to many different units that allow you to draw from deck. Great cards are Cannoneer, Ripple Banshee, Rough Seas Banshee, Wild Seas Banshee, etc. as first mentioned above.
Why is drawing cards from deck considered as a resource? Great question! Because Granblue is a clan that specializes in calling units from the drop zone to RC, we don’t always need to call cards from hand to RC. The hand then becomes more powerful in guarding power. In G Era, we could literally guard with our entire hand with at least 1 card left in hand, so we can stride the following turn. So in order to have bigger guarding power, drawing cards becomes very helpful in selectively guarding with the right amount of shield power. Especially, being able to see cards like Perfect Guards (PGs) and Heal triggers (for G Guarding or 20k shield value).
Against most matches, you want a big healthy hand size. Typically a size of 10+ cards in hand. If you have excess G3s, you can either reride to “replace” them with a Protect Gift or discard them for the cost of stride or PG’s discard cost. Essentially, get the best value for your cards if possible.
Discarding cards for skills such as Greed Shade, Violence Franger, and Negrosonger also become a resource to utilize.
Greed Shade is a fantastic card for many reasons. Greed Shade essentially helps with being able to ride G3 properly by being able to grab that card from the drop zone if milled early on. It also can improve the quality of your hand or turn by discarding lower shield cards for higher shield cards or units to call to RC from hand.
Cards like Violence Franger and Negrosonger are final turn cards where you want to end the game that turn. Their skill’s costs include discarding from hand, so their skills are bit more powerful than the average Granblue unit. Use them wisely, otherwise you may put yourself in a bad situation if you don’t win that turn.
Again you want to draw enough cards to have a great hand size to guard with and perform your turn. As well as having enough cards in hand to discard if need to by other skills and costs.
Milling From The Deck & Deck Size
Since Granblue specializes in calling units from drop zone to RC, one of the ways to get cards into the drop zone is to mill from the deck. There are multiple cards in Granblue that mill cards from deck but I will highlight the most used. Which are Ruin Shade, Greed Shade, and Obadiah. In fact, Greed Shade and Obadiah deserve a 2nd picture in this post ha!
Both Ruin Shade and Greed Shade help in milling 2 cards every time their skills activate. Ruin Shade’s milling can be done both on Vanguard Circle (VC) and RC. It also gains power to help hit over 13k Vanguards, which helps with not having to call an extra card from hand to boost it.
Another thing to worth note, is that both Ruin Shade and Greed Shade are great cards to stay at G2 an extra turn if appropriate. This can be because you missed the G Assist or to fight for the 1st stride turn (in premium format). Utilize these units in the early game to help setup your drop zone and have great cards to call from the drop zone to RC.
Switching to premium format, we have the amazing Obadiah stride! He does a lot and one of the key things is that he literally lets us choose up to 5 cards from deck to mill into the drop zone! This is very important because we can grab 5 essential cards from our deck that we actually need in the drop zone. Not only that, most of the time we are selectively milling non-trigger units, so thus we are deck thinning into a more of a chance to drive check triggers.
We have cards that can mill quite a bit, which leads me to the next part and that’s the deck size. Deck size is an important resource for Granblue because we are taking cards from it on a more frequent basis compared to most clans. It can be in the forms of drawing, SCing, and milling from deck. If we’re not careful, we can deck out and lose to ourselves.
As a result, we have to be purposeful in our drawing, SCing, and milling. This can vary a bit from archetype in Granblue such as Seven Seas, Nightrose, Cocytus, etc. So I highly recommend practicing with those decks to get a feel for it per say. Most Granblue decks, do have a stopping point in being excessive in getting cards from the deck. Get familiar with that stopping point and also it differs in certain match-ups.
Some applicable tips in this area are:
- In premium format, milling 1-2 times with Obadiah is good enough.
- In the early to mid game, once you have 10+ cards in the drop zone start being cognizant.
- If you have 15+ cards in hand, you generally don’t need more but you can focus on improving the quality of that hand with Greed Shade if need to.
- If you can still take damage and your deck is getting low, be mindful of how much actual damage you can take otherwise you’ll deck out sooner than you thought.
These are just some more general rule of thumb suggestions. I still highly recommend on practicing to get a feel for it.
Honorable Mentions
There are a few cards in the past that were used more frequently that slightly change the dynamics of resource management. Cards like Goauche, Mick the Ghostie, and Nightrose.
Starting off with Goauche, this stride really changed Granblue’s 1st stride turn. Cards like Rough Seas Banshee and Rampage Shade became essential in building the soul a lot more quicker in the early game. Once Goauche used it’s skill, the soul count would be sometimes anywhere from 0-3 depending on cards that SC.
Nightrose impacted the milling aspect because of her GB2 skill. Her skill enabled a Pseudo Denial Griffin play. Which meant her skill going off more than once in a single game.
Mick was a great card to be able to return to deck, which increased your deck size back up. This meant either extending an extra turn or enabling you to perform your drive checks. Knowing this as well, enabled players to purposely setup a final turn to beef up their units on board with Mick’s power up skill, then retiring them off immediately forcing them to go back to deck. Then you would have a good chance on drive checking 1-2 of them to restand the beefed up units.
Conclusion
Again it’s just covering some areas of resource management that can help Granblue players in their game play both for casual and competitiveness. I’m sure there are other aspects that are worth discussing and perhaps that can be another article! These suggestions and tips are things I’ve learned from other great players and/or by experience. Thanks for reading and I’ll see y’all soon amigos!
Rogue of the Seven Seas 
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