Lens Of Truth: Transcendence Dragon, Dragonic Nouvelle Vague

• Brampton Booster
• Oct 10, 2013
• Comment

Woah there! This is a REALLY outdated post. For more current and accurate articles visit my main page.

It is time to review Nouvelle.

[ACT]【V】LB4:[CB(3) & SB(3) & Discard “Transcendence Dragon, Dragonic Nouvelle Vague”] Retire all of your opponent’s rear-guards.

[CONT]【V】:During your turn, the effects of your opponent’s triggers are negated.

[CONT]【V】:During a battle that this unit attacks a vanguard, your opponent cannot normal call grade 0 units to <G> from his or her hand.

[CONT]【R】:This unit gets POWER-1000.

[CONT]【V/R】: Lord (If you have a unit without a same clan as this unit, this unit cannot attack)

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Quick Links

• By itself + own support

• Ride consistency

No, a higher number of effects nor a better pay grade does not automatically make it broken. Let’s isolate each part before giving it the BS sign.

13k base

Yep. This douche is loaded with defense. Broken. I could end the article right here, but since there are 5 effects I will need to go into detail about each one.

Lord

This does make a lot of sense, at least you can’t clan hop with this card unlike Silvestro.

CONT: -1k on RG

Only one thousand. Are you kidding me? That is still a tanky 12k beatstick and ironically, anti-crossride power.

So the first three topics don’t pertain to any of the real eye poppers on this card, but it shall be noted that this alone is satisfactory to be game-breaking. However it is painstakingly clear that crossride defense is bull regardless of wherever you stick it, so I’ll play the nice guy and pretend that this 13k base never existed for now.

Persona Nuke

This is probably where you flipped. The ability to retire all rearguards? Yes please. As any player can see, you lose one card in hand to kill off four, so it is a +4 in direct advantage. However, let’s look at the cost for this in indirect advantage:

Retire 5 ?= CB3 + SB3 + Persona + LB + Extra ride
5 ?= 2 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 1
5 < 7

Oh look, it is actually costed properly. More effort is needed to use the effect then it is to use it. However, there is redundancy in the effect. Three constraints are equivalent:

Limit Break ~= Persona Blast ~= Grade 4 ride (Definition [1])

That means that, if you rode your grade 4 you are probably at 4 damage, and by standard deviation you got a second copy as well. Compressing these values will shorten it to 5=5. That means you got an equal outcome to your input, which is fine and all if it was the only skill. If you opponent does not have a full field, you actually lose out on the advantage, once again putting more in then what is being outputted.

The direct advantage is still very powerful. All that time spent on building the field (for crossride numbers) is gone, and the opponent will have to somehow manage to scrap together a new field next turn. If if they do, it is very unlikely they can hit magic numbers. But this really isn’t as blindy broken as it may seem, as devastating as it is. If I were to slap this skill on a vanilla grade 3 (crested dragon let’s say) then the card would be perfectly balanced. It is just the combination of a fat defense plus 2 MORE skills that brings Nouvelle up. Or does it?

Vague Tom

Oh the reminiscence of Silent Tom and how all non-OTT players loathe it so. That nagger always forces you to lose 2 cards instead of 1 in RG. But, is it actually better in VG? Interestingly, not for nouvelle. Recall [1]:

Limit Break ~= Grade 4 ride

When you ride it, it will be late game, and so you need to consider your opponent’s choices at this stage of the game:

1. Perfect guard
2. no guard

Huh, where is the “guard with triggers” option? It doesn’t truly exist. That is a last resort strategy in situations where the opponent lacks perfects, which pretty much signifies death since minuses are crazy heavy. In turn, Nouvelle’s skill is doing nothing but slaughter any moob still running less than 4 perfect guards. Optimal opponents won’t bat an eye at this so-called psuedo-Silent Tom. So why did it work for Tom? Simple; the opponent can normally guard for 1 card, but is forced to use 2 instead. For Nouvelle, you will never force any more guard out. This skill has negligible pressure in its effect: Glory Maelstrom is better in guard restriction.

This effect is actually very useful for grade 3’s for the sole reason in that you start the silent tom-fest in the mid game.
Consider this: Swing by itself for one stage (11k -> 11k). Normally it can be stopped easily with 1 card. However Tom’s forces 2 cards to stop it. Essentially you attacked for 2 stages. Hence, you can practically get by without a booster for the entire game like Alfred. Nouvelle or any grade 4 with this ability though is just pointless as it’ll be too late to take of this small advantage.

Trigger negation

OMVG (Oh my vanguard) !~>!!?!!<~! It stops clutch heals!!!!!!

In all seriousness: We are talking about an event that has a 4/49 chance of happening, where standard deviation helps us lower that even more. Yet again, [1] tells us your opponent has 4 damage giving you only a 16/49 chance of power-block. Since power is treated as a +1, in total it adds close to 35% to prevent a +1. This skill gives you a combined advantage of +0.35. Round of applause everyone.

Now consider if you had nouvelle on it midgame. You’ll get about 4 chances to negate triggers, maybe 5 if they got a heal on their turn. Combined with the fact that middle game passes trigger negations with rearguard attacks, you can easily get +3 a game. Too bad its a grade 4.

But Wait, There’s More

$^!&. Nouvelle has support. Oh wait, no, let me just take a deep breath and approach this without bias.

Dragon Knight Ashgal

As if a late game vanguards needed more power.

Nouvelle Critic Dragon

Counterblast 1 & reveal Vague to retire 1. Not a fair play, but the practical need of Nouvelle. Consider when you would have one in hand:

1. When you ride it next turn.
2. When you already rode it.
3. When you have one in hand turn 2.

In the first two cases, the vague condition is limited to the late game. So this skill is kind of stuffing a LB4 in the skill without actually writing it down. in addition, you have a very limited scope in what you can retire. condition 3 is most likely going to kill the starting vanguard, while condition 1 is only for a slice of the game. So I will say this skill is fair.

Nouvelle Roman Dragon

Roman thought he was smart and tried to increase the chance of riding consistently. In addition to all the other riding chances, you get to add the chance of:
Not having a grade 3, getting Roman, calling it, losing nouvelle, getting the grade 3, then getting the grade 4 again.

Hmm…is the chance really that important? Well, a grade three at 8 copies turn 2 is 85% without searchers, so already we have a 15/100 chance to fail. Add in 60% to get Roman, and 60% to get nouvelle you have currently 0.05 or five percent. If this was a calculus course I’ll be very temped to say the limit of this chance approaches zero (even though it is blatantly false). Therefore, Roman adds almost NOTHING to ride consistency. Nice job Roman.

He does increase persona chances though. If you look at the grade ratios later you’ll notice 4 spaces to add an arbitrary grade 3. What else to do but add one of the biggest rape trains that ever existed: DOTE. Now every copy of Nouvelle magically doubles as the end, making a persona skill that is normally found in the late game to be activate in the middle game. (I’m talking about DOTE). [All chances are found later. I wrote this section first and I’m too lazy to rewrite the section]

Dragonic Gaias

A very nice card to use, and can actually be considered if the cost wasn’t so large. Nonetheless it makes Vague a Majesty Lord Blaster for a turn, which is nice for pressure. But one turn likely isn’t enough to make a significant dent in the opponent’s hand. Tech with caution.

TOTAL ADVANTAGE FOR NOUVELLE VAGUE

Part	Advantage	Effective?
13k base	A crapload	Very
Lord	0	No
CONT: -1k on RG	Somewhat	Another 12k hitter. Yay.
Persona Blast	Indirect 0, Direct +4	Somewhat
Silent Tom	Shit	No
Trigger negation	Shit	No
Support	Shit	No
TOTAL (w/o) base	Meh	Meh

If this kagero did not have this dumb base it would be placed on the okay area. The base, even if it is facing crossride hating columns will be around the plus-good range (remember that a persona nuke will cut off the chance to remake 18k rows). From my points, you notice that if Nouvelle vagues effects are all middle game but he only becomes live late game. I can generalize this as:

 

Chance Calculations

Well, let’s do some math (or rather, I do all the math while you leech off me). Assuming you want a full set of nouvelle vague’s for its persona, the ideal ride chain for a normal deck is 10-10-9-4 at 67.03%*.
*It is based on getting the chain complete by TURN SIX. After that it will count as a failed attempt at completing the chain.

That is about a 16% chance from the 82.94% for a non-grade 4 deck (which is calculated on turn 3). 3/10 games (4/5 * 1/3) your opponent will have their ride while you don’t. So really, vague became a riskier crossride with less advantage (if you compare it to DOTE at least).

So without anything else nouvelle is not broken or overpowered due to Murphy’s law and entropy, in addition to its aforementioned marginal effects.

Now, I’m not going to sit here hoping to magically draw it. I’m going to aim for consistency here to up my super ride odds. Kagero just so happens to have just the trick: the Amber Dragon ride chain with insane odds of riding up. In this case, we have the following optimal ride chain: 12-7-10-4 at 71.68%. Which correlates to 7/10. This is comparatively better, only having 1/4 games being outstripped from riding it. However, the ride chain does not have much synergy with the main ploy and lacks efficient units. (And I don’t want another set of 6k grade 1’s)

Fortunately (or should I say unfortunate since it helps vague) it has access to not one but TWO superior ride chains, Aleph and Blazing Core here are the contrasts of each:

Blazing Flare Dragon

• [+] A combination of this on RG and the persona nets +15000 power
• [-] Draw triggers hampers guard quality

Embodiment of Victory Aleph

• [+] Critical trigger is useful
• [+] Vanilla booster
• [-] No synergy with Nouvelle (neither skill can be used)

Given the limited space in the deck, if you run both chains that is pretty much all you’ll run. If you want more space you’ll need to choose one. Regardless of what you plan, you receive the ride chain that provides you with superior ride chances, which is about 35%. Since it’ll take too much space to prove it, I’ll direct the proof to Alice’s article specifically talking about superior ride stats. Factoring this in, the new optimal chances are as follows;

• 1 superior rides: 11-11-7-4 at 75.16%
• 2 superior rides: 13-12-4-4 at 79.11%

3/4 for 1 is vying for trouble**, but the second option isn’t as bad. It fits right into the glove for “acceptable”, though standard deviation might not approve.
***Tyrant Deathrex + 4 Shieldon without any ride chain/superior ride has a higher chance to ride then one superior ride.

(Damn my messy programing)

• 1 superior rides: 11-11-7-4 at 71.4%
• 2 superior rides: 13-12-4-4 at 75.2%

Ya, this chain is 3/4 as well.

Finally, we try to implement the wonderful grade 3 searcher at our disposal. A word of warning though, because it does have a decent failure rate you are generally going to hurt yourself more than help. TehNacho helped me set up the numbers (indirectly), so I can plug this in to calculate the very best ratio. The general formula for not getting the grade 3 is

while for grade 4’s it is going to be:

Stuffing those odds and using the brute force method the output for the best ratio is: 11-11-7-4 at 75.58%
Success! We increased the ride chain to the max! However you lose the ride chain, the superior rides and Conroe – probably the best starter you’ll ever have. On the bright side, you don’t bunker yourself down 12 spots, freeing them up for other stuff for some gambit.

So in total, the optimal ratios to complete the ride chain by turn 6:

	Ratio	Chance
Basic with no support	10-10-9-4	0.6703
1 type of Superior	11-11-7-4	0.7143
2 types of Superior	13-12-4-4	0.7519
With Ride chain	12-7-10-4	0.7168
With Top 5 checker	11-11-7-4	0.7438

So whatever you try to help Nouvelle, it isn’t going to work. So what if, instead of straining yourself to such a terrible time, why not figure out the chance it takes to get the grade 3 irrespective of Vague? Quite irrelevant. Getting a vague turn 6 can be up to 93.33% (Not repeating). If you remove that percent from the type 2 superior you get 83!!! Yay, you have a higher chance to ride then the best ride ratio. Of course, you’ll need to consider other factors about this deck before you jump the gun.

What actually works

So I am pretty confident that Nouvelle really isn’t as broken as it seems (Sometimes I like to kid myself that 13 is an imaginary number in vg). But confidence can be my undoing, because remember this earlier?

This is fallacious. Yes, Nouvelle’s effects work in the middle game BUT it would be wrong to plainly assume Nouvelle can only be found in the endgame. I didn’t say this earlier simply because I don’t want to deter you from the train of thought. But I have to investigate all paths before leading to a conclusion. As you are well aware, middle game starts at the third turn. You might be saying: “Well, Nouvelle can’t be ridden turn 3, so I’m safe!!!”

Except that kagero has superior riders. TWO OF THEM.

IF the superior ride happens on turn 2,
AND IF you ride Nouvelle turn 3,
THEN you have a Nouvelle in the mid game.

That means you unlock the full potential of both the trigger negation AND silent Tom abilities, giving you a crushing advantage that is almost impossible to beat. The chance? For one superior (BFD | Aleph) it’s 1/3 games (2/3*1/2) and two superior 1/2 games (2/3*4/5).

50% percent is pretty freaking scary. In those games you are looking at a potential +6 for no reason at all. For comparison, A full Zeal ride chain generates about 4.5 (converting 2-3 damage) (with Zeal+Laurel generating the last power), 35% of the time. So not only do you get more advantage but you have a silly 13k base, an anti-anti-crossride pesona nuke.

I’d like to include a potential deck-list for this build based on these results:

Grade 4 (4)
4 Transcendence Dragon, Dragonic Nouvelle Vague
Grade 3 (4)
2 Blazing Flare Dragon
2 Embodiment of Victory Aleph
Grade 2 (12)
4 Dragon Knight Aleph
4 Blazing Core Dragon
4 Nouvelle Critic Dragon
Grade 1 (13)
4 Embodiment of Armour, Bahr
4 Iron Tail Dragon
4 Perfect Guard
1 Whatever the hell you want, Most likely Dragonic Gaias
Grade 0 (17)
1 Lizard Solider Conroe
8C/4D/4H

Last words

• Nouvelle => Dauntless : : It doesn’t re-stand like DOTE, nor has a pressuring on-hit. As I’ve said that late game is either PG or no-guard, break riding nouvelle is similar to break-riding Yaksha or Crested which is to say irrelevant.
• Nouvelle =>Yaksha :: oh ya. I considered this. Given that it has a slightly inferior 45% chance of AUTO WIN, but removing 8 spaces from the deck for better options it can makeYaksha a very unpredictable deck. Obviously, I meant Cruel Dragon competitively, butYaksha is more amusing to build.
  • Rechecking my work, I actually found that a top 5 checker has better odds of riding to Vague (about 0.04%), so including a Yaksha chain is an acceptable alternative.
  • Re-Rechecking my work, it fell back down. Silly programing
• Please leave a comment if there is any other support with Vague that I neglected, and I’ll be sure to address it.

Thinking about treating it like Exculpate and tech 1 copy? Then you have no problem when you damage it, but in very conditional situations you can pull off this unit to prevent the game from being stale. The problem with THIS technique is that you are locked out of the persona blast, which was the ONLY redeeming factor neglecting the beefy defense status. Nouvelle looks and plays ridiculously, but in all aspects he himself really isn’t something to commit suicide for. The only thing that would tip him into the realm of brokeness (More than the defense) is an even more consistent superior ride that enables him to operate in the middle game. Oh, but the game accelerates so fast Vague is actually pretty soft. Gg, why did I spent 3 hours writing this up?

 

Post Script

So the actual card is released and you see all of the tournament results coming in from Japan making this top like crazy, then you have that $30+ price tag. But going through all of this, Nouvelle isn’t scary and even in that specific deck where you optimize it a +6 it falters against a lot of decks. So what’s behind this craze? I point you to Dauntless Drive Dragon. As a restander,it has the innate ability to make any card seem much stronger than normal. When fused with The End it becomes pretty much ridiculous but even when you pit it with Yaksha it can strike fear. Nouvelle as I’ve said, gives nothing for DDD and his appearance is pretty much telegraphed (with the two support cards) so it isn’t like you’ll trick them into using PG’s. I strongly go against using Vague, since The End-Dauntless performs much better; or if you do use Vague put it in a deck with both DDD and DOTE since you’ve already stocked for a superior backup option.

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