Seven Seas Rush

So, only weeks after releasing my grade 1 rush video stating that Seeker Rush was the best rush deck and that grade 1 rushing has become largely obsolete (but still mediocre, Sanc Blaster just does everything every other grade 1 rush deck wanted to do while still riding up) in the current metagame due to effects not being as heavily restricted by generation break in this current format, we have a new grade 1 rush monstrosity.  Seven Seas Rush.

This decklist originated in Japan and quickly made its way over here after it topped.  I hadn't seen the spoilers for the set 8 cards involved by time this happened, so I am not the originator for this deck.  All credit to the guy who came up with the base idea.  I did make improvements on the base list to make it stronger, but then I was told after the fact that it may not have been the base list.  Regardless, I especially love that the Vanguard community is proving to me that it can continue to be thorough, innovative, and talented in deckbuilding unique decks without my help.  The community has grown and improved in so many ways over 2 and 4 years ago that I can't help but feel like I'm a bit obsolete.

That being said, this is something right up my alley, and I can explain how this beast of a deck works in a way that anyone can understand.  I want to preface this by saying that this list has 8 grade 2's and 2 grade 3's.  It can ride up at pretty much any point it wants to.  But, without GGuardians or Heals, you typically won't want to unless the stride will give you game.  That being said, your opponents can't Sebreeze you on your grade 2 ride, so you always have that advantage of safely negating stride and generation break outside of Twitterun plays.  Here's the list.

Starter - Rookie Pirate, Gina (Discard a grade 2 or 3 you can't normal call and scry and draw)
4x Seven Seas Apprentice, Nightrunner (bae, FREE CARDS FOR FREE, turns into a different card)
4x Rough Seas Banshee (Crit) Consistency buff in an already consistent build
4x Cody the Ghostie (Crit) MORE FREE CARDS
4x Performing Zombie (Stand) - On call, look at top 10, mill 1. Turns into a 7k pretty easily.
4x Vanilla crits

4x Greedy Mimic (9k attacker)
4x Skeleton Assault Soldier (turns into a 5k shield in the bind zone instead of being a generic sacrifice, thus, you plus when sacking it)
4x Witch Doctor of the Seven Seas, Raistutor (Primary Vanguard.  Can set up another row with its effect, then be sacked to call Nightcrow.)
4x Seven Seas Helmsman, Nightcrow (Sack any unit, call this from drop. Free row fixer. Bae.)
3x Evil Shade (Making those numbers with your Vanguard)

4x Seven Seas Pillager, Nightspinel (Discards the grade 2's and 3's you won't be using otherwise, and also puts your grade 1's and 0's into the drop zone so you can both call itself from drop and have them where you need them to be so they can activate their effects. Gets HUUUGE with enough memes)
4x Seven Seas Master Swordsman, Slash Shade (11k call from drop when your Vanguard attacks? Works on grade 1? YES PLEASE!)

2x Seven Seas Sage, Plegeton (Can be ridden from drop zone without needing a discard. You can go straight into a stride if you have enough grade in hand to try and push for game when you're ready for that.)

GZONE - Whatever you want that works on GB1. Probably the Nightmist stride. Maybe Rum if you're out of counterblasts?  Obadiah is another option. No GGuards because heals are for the weak.)


After reviewing the cards, it may not be apparent at first, so I'll make it abundantly clear.  All of your grade 2's can be called from the drop zone while you are on grade 1.  One does so by filtering out cards that you either want in your drop zone or can't use.  The other works by sacking a grade 1 or greater unit and comes in at 11k mid battle phase.  This means you can attack up to 5 times with this deck, all for 11k or more.  That's the real crux of this deck, death by a million cuts, wearing them down with a standard rush going into a much stronger mid-game rush.  It's essentially what Tachikaze Rush wants to be with infinitely more consistency.

Let's go into my current rating for the deck's statistics.


Consistency - 9.5/10

Power - 9/10 

Reach - 8/10

Rescalability -10/10

Recoverability - 10/10

Survivability - 6.5/10

Denial - 7.5/10

Let's explain why I gave these ratings, and what some of these mean.

Consistency is self-explanitory.  This deck works if you ride any Seven Seas grade 1.  It has numerous targets that help fill up the drop zone with your key cards, and can chain insane effects to get your board and drop zone set-up exactly how you want it to be.  Even if you miss your ride, you have enough advantage to just reride later.  Nightspinel also works just fine even without a Seven Seas Vanguard, and the first turn is typically set-up from hand instead of drop anyway, so you aren't even severely punished for missing the correct ride early.

Power is pretty easy to understand, too.  How strong is the deck.  Opening with 10k+ to guard from every row turn 1, sometimes 15k to guard or more if you open the nuts, can be devastatingly difficult to deal with.  Especially when this deck transitions so well into reach.  It doesn't have the row consistency of say, Seeker Rush, but its obscene mid-game and potential game ending power more than compensates for it. 

Reach is the ability to close out games.  It's how well you can finish off an opponent when you're pushing for the win.  This deck can attack up to 5 times all requiring 5-15k guard, making sentinels essentially ineffective for your opponent, and destroying their hand size.  This is only an 8 because if you want to see a 10/10, imagine a Diablo stride when the opponent has no rear guards.  You're dead, Jim.

Rescalability is the ability to fix your rows if you have to field weaker units.  There's no doubts here that this deck is rescalability incarnate.  You can call your size 0 from the drop zone for free, mill 4, then turn it into a 7k unit.  Have a Seven Seas in hand?  You can swap it out for Nightspinel.  Have a grade 1 Skeleton in your hand that you don't want to stay on your board?  Call it, boost it, and swing with it, then turn it into a Slash Shade (getting 5k free shield, too!).  Turning one dude into the next dude isn't difficult, and even calling over existing units on the board doesn't impact your card advantage too negatively when you can get free calls every turn that also increase your toolbox.

Recoverability is the ability to recover from mass card disadvantage.  I will just give you an example of what this deck can REALLY do.  Let's say you got boardwiped COMPLETELY.  You also had to discard EVERY CARD IN YOUR HAND.  And then you draw a GRADE 3 you can't field or ride on grade 1.  You can STILL GET A FULL BOARD FROM ONE UNUSABLE CARD IN HAND.  How, you ask?  Well, you have MULTIPLE WAYS.  Any combination of four Nightrunners or Cody the Ghosties can fill four spaces from your drop.  Then, discard your Plegeton to call Nightspinel.  After that, sack your remaining board into four Nightcrow.  Now you have 14/14/24k rows.  Attack with the 14k RG row first.  Attack with VG, sack Nightcrow for Slash Shade.  Now you get a potential trigger, an 11k attack, and a 26k attack.  FROM ONE CARD IN HAND AND NO UNITS ON THE BOARD.  HNNNNNGGGGGHHHHHH.  Sure, it cost between milling 16 cards and 1 counterblast to milling 4 cards and 4 counterblasts, but the option to recover on this level is INSANE.

Survivability is of course the ability for a deck to not die.  This deck is actually way easier to kill if you swing face than most other rush decks.  It literally can't run quintet walls because it will deck out.  It also doesn't have hand advantage for normal sentinels.  It doesn't have a happy medium defensive card outside of Skeleton Assault Soldier.  That being said, you still have a good chunk of 10k shields to work with, and you have the advantage of shutting down many spooky, scary things that might kek you.  That being said, if you face consistent 17k+ rows early or anything that can get bonus crit without needing Generation Break, you could be in for a world of hurt.

Denial is the ability to shut down the opponent's strategy.  Naturally, with many decks wanting to stride, by playing this deck, you can deny them in that aspect.  The denial here isn't as hard as it may have been previously, due to many decks opting to have an early game instead of building for late game.  It is still a powerful facet to this deck and gives it an edge over decks that can't transition into a strong early game, like Gear Chronicle.

As with every deck in the game, it has favorable match-ups and unfavorable match-ups.  Let's list out my observations for this.

Favorable Match-ups

Generation Break locked decks - These decks can't use their primary facets, are much slower, and can't impede upon the deck's strategy.

Wall decks - These decks simply can't get enough cards to weather that many attacks.  Especially since most reliable wall decks have a legion or stride engine to fuel themselves.

Retirement focused decks - Perditions aren't going to have a good time when you can poop out a field from your drop zone with no hand investment, then can rescale the board.

Anyone that thinks swinging into RG's is a good idea that isn't playing Chaos Breaker.

Unfavorable Match-ups

Chaos Breaker Dragon - Poops on every rush deck.  We also don't have the ability to choose to hollow any front row outside of with Raistutor or Skeleton.  Even if we do, we can't Slash Shade in addition to that.  This is one of the match-ups I may consider riding up.  I'm not 100% sure if that's the best idea yet, but I'm going to play around with it some more in testing.

Seeker Rush - 17k rows with insane consistency and counter-rushing are the banes of this deck.  While this deck is better than Seeker Rush, it still loses the face-off due to these factors.

Season 3 Decks - While you can recover your board easily, facing down 22k multi-crit Vanguard swings is devastating for this deck.  Minerva can out-pressure the deck if it hits a critical on the first drive check.  DDD"R" can force high numbers against it.  All of these archetype decks also get 12k attackers, which are strong against 7k base Vanguards.

Sacking Triggers - I mean, it's Vanguard.  I haven't lost a match yet that wasn't to Chaos Breaker Dragon that they didn't heal more than twice on.  But when I'm playing to 9 damage, it's a bit hard to win. 


Due to how the deck intrinsically functions, it actually does well against or breaks even with decks like Sanc Blaster and Nociel, decks that were outperforming the other rush decks in face-offs.

This is all my initial analysis.  I will probably be making a video for it with some gameplay features in the near future (still waiting on the singles to get here).  My current analysis is this:  This is the strongest grade 1 rush deck, one of the best decks in the current format (since many of the counter decks are very sparse in the current meta, unlike the other rush decks' counters of literally the metagame sans Gear Chronicle), and it will have a large impact on the metagame because many people are boarding the hype train for this deck.  Expect to see it in regionals over the next few months, especially since it has already topped.  I will update this as more information and testing is revealed.