Talk:Winter 2018 Event/@comment-25817276-20180316154258/@comment-32647310-20180316165404

Nope. Vanguard effectivly does the following:

Drops the "Main" ships' (Flag, 2 and 3) firepower and/or accuracy for a moderate evasion bonus

Drops the "Escort" ships (4-7) firepower and/or accuracy for a significant evasion bonus and also makes them more likely to be targeted.

What this means is that the Escorts are screening for the main body, so they're more likely to take a hit...but because of the evasion bonus, that hit is more likely going to be scratch damage. While it's possible for them to be the target of a random taiha or otherwise take a really nasty hit, the idea is that you *want* the weaker ships to take those hits (and are then retreated if necessary) so your stronger ships will make it to the boss.

This is why Subcheesing worked so well in Fall 2017 on E4; the Sub was going to be auto-attacked by DDs, CLs and Imps, but because of the massive Evasion bonus granted by Vanguard (plus the bonuses from putting on boilers and such), the attacks would usually either miss or do scratch damage.