[ECG] Deck Check: The Bonds of the Golden!

[ECG] Deck Check: The Bonds of the Golden!

  Tuesday, July 15, 2014    byak

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Welcome back to our Deck Check series, celebrating the release of Booster Set 14! Gancelot has always been an important figure for the Paladin forces, and today we'll be going over his newest form, which gives Liberators a well deserved boost!

Liberators have been around since the beginning of the Break Ride era, but have constantly failed to place well consistently in tournaments. Liberator of the Round Table, Alfred and Wolf Fang Liberator, Garmore took advantage of filling their fields and were able to escalate to high levels of power, but other than that offered no other forms of advantage. While these two boss units were very good at capable of bringing a bunch of rear-guards to the field, they weren't able to pull off any other tricks, setting them below their other competitors at the time.

Liberator's primary Break Ride, Solitary Liberator, Gancelot, was designed to aid the new Gold Paladin forces, but ironically proved to be highly incompatible with the Liberator bosses at the time. When you Break Ride with Gancelot, you get to give three of your Gold Paladin rear-guards +5000 power for the turn, giving you a lot of damage pressure for a turn. Unfortunately, he didn't spark well with Alfred outside of providing a very high power turn, and he definitely didn't spark well with Garmore either, since Garmore wants to enter an empty field, thanks to his field-filling Limit Break.

This resulted in Liberator players shafting Gancelot to the side, preventing the card from showing off its true potential. Gancelot's Break Ride skill is far from poor, albeit he doesn't actually create raw card advantage like most of the other Break Rides. There is some counterplay involved as well, as your opponent can pick off at your field, preventing you from getting the value you want from him.

This time around, Gancelot's back, and better than ever! Booster Set 14 allows his new Cross Ride form, Liberator of Bonds, Gancelot Zenith to enter the fray! In addition to the Cross Ride defense he comes with, Gancelot Zenith has a Limit Break skill that activates on attack. By counterblasting a Liberator and shuffling a grade 2 or less rear-guard to the bottom of the deck, you can check the top card of your deck. If that card is a Gold Paladin, you can call it to an open rear-guard circle and give it +10000 power until the end of the turn. Basically what Gancelot does is allow you to create more than three attacks in your battle phase, while embracing Gold Paladin's theme of calling off of the top, which in turn allows Gancelot Zenith to work with a lot of the other traditional Liberators.

Obviously your attack pattern with Zenith should be swinging with one column first, then swinging with Zenith to refresh that column with a new unit that can more than likely land an attack. If you end up calling a grade 3 or a Liberator of Royalty, Phallon for example, you break the 21000 line without a boost, forcing out a lot of guard!

While Gancelot Zenith doesn't increase your board presence, he helps clean it up, since you can turn just about any of your rear-guards (including triggers) into a potentially more powerful unit. And if you don't get the best unit off the top, it still has the potential to hit with its +10000 power, plus you can end up shuffling it back the next time you use Gancelot Zenith.

Being a Cross Ride of Gancelot gives Gancelot Zenith a huge power turn, considering you can successfully distribute +5000 power to three of your rear-guards. When you combine their Limit Breaks, you get 21000+ attacks from both of your primary columns thanks to your Break Ride, then Gancelot Zenith kicks in with a huge boost of 12000, creating a new 15000+ column for a fourth attack!

So basically, despite the amount of luck involved in Gold Paladin's nature of mass Superior Calling, Gancelot makes it so his skill almost always creates a winning scenario, giving a lot of offensive power back to the veteran Gold Paladins! The only question remains is how  build the deck:

The Bonds of the Golden!
17 / 14 / 11 / 8

1 Little Fighter, Cron
4 Liberator of Hope, Epona [Critical]
4 Strike Liberator [Critical]
4 Armed Liberator, Gwydion [Draw]
4 Nappgal Liberator [Heal]

4 Fast Chase Liberator, Josephus
4 Barcgal Liberator
3 Halo Liberator, Mark
2 Little Liberator, Marron
1 Sword Formation Liberator, Igraine

4 Blaster Blade Liberator
4 Liberator of the Flute, Escrad
3 Liberator of Royalty, Phallon

3 Solitary Liberator, Gancelot
3 Liberator of Bonds, Gancelot Zenith
2 Wolf Fang Liberator, Garmore

Now, in most Cross Break Ride decks, you'd typically want to focus on both pieces of the combination, leaving out all other grade 3's so you can consistently combine them in your games, gaining the benefits of each. However, I saw a lot of potential in including Wolf Fang Liberator, Garmore as well in the deck. As I said before, Garmore isn't very good when used with Gancelot, but he exists in the deck to offer an additional route in the case of other match-ups.

Consider this, Kagero have just gotten a handful of mass retiring units like Transcendence Dragon, Dragonic Nouvelle Vague and Dauntless Dominate Dragon "Reverse", plus Narukami got an entire board wipe unit in the form of Eradicator, Tempest Bolt Dragon while having some other mass retire units like Eradicator, Vowing Saber "Reverse". Star-vader, Chaos Breaker Dragon also has the potential to drain your field after his locking frenzy, so in all, there are a lot of semi-relevant to relevant match-ups that you can go against in a tournament scene.

Now let's take a look at Garmore. By counterblasting three, you can call units from the top of your deck until your field is full. Neither Gancelot nor Gancelot Zenith have this much potential in filling your board, and they can fall behind due to the fact that they rely on you sustaining rear-guards. The theory behind playing Garmore alongside of them is that versus those retire-heavy match-ups, you have a backup plan that can launch you back into the game. As a bonus, Garmore also can benefit off of hitting one of your four copies of Fast Chase Liberator, Josephus, making him a solid choice to run alongside your heavy hitters.

Another important addition to the Gold Paladin arsenal comes in the form of Sword Formation Liberator, Igraine, one of the first Quintet Walls to be introduced into the game. For those who aren't caught up with what Quintet Walls do, they fall under the classification of Sentinel with Perfect Guards, meaning that you can only play a total combination of four. When Quintet Walls are used as guard, instead of nullifying the attack like Perfect Guards, you can counterblast one to call the top five cards to use them as guard. Unless you end up really unlucky, those five cards are usually enough to stop most attacks, turning what would usually be a double card investment into a single card investment.

Quintet Walls seem very strong at first glance, but there are a handful of downsides. The first downside is the amount of cards they remove from your deck. Five cards can be really significant, and you end up losing a couple of triggers in the aftermath, taking away from your total damage potential. Not to mention that if you use multiples they can end up quickly draining your deck, so you need to be really careful when using them.

The second downside is the fact that Quintet Walls eat up counterblasts, something that would be unfamiliar to players who have been so accustomed to using the old Perfect Guards. Especially in a deck that requires mass counterblasting, these Sentinels can either end up unusable, or they can make your bosses unusable.

Basically, there are almost no decks right now where playing four Quintet Walls is safe. But that doesn't mean we can't run one, right? In testing, I've found that in almost every game, you are able to afford one Quintet Wall use. Despite them being so dangerous to your deck, they can be very clutch at times when you have a low hand size. I would recommend trying at least one, but if it doesn't suit your play style, there's no one stopping you from taking it out. Additionally, if Igraine ends up being dead in the late game, you can just spin it back to the deck with Zenith, never seeing it for the rest of the game.

An interesting pair that has made its way into the Liberator deck this time around is the veteran Blaster Blade Liberator, and the return of Barcgal as Barcgal Liberator. Blaster Blade Liberator, as we should all, is not the greatest, as he eats up two counterblasts to retire a front row unit. Barcgal Liberator, on the other hand, makes him a much more valuable card thanks to their combination. When Barcgal Liberator boosts a Blaster Blade Liberator and the attack lands on a vanguard, you get to look at the top three cards of your deck and call a Liberator from those cards at rest.

The key benefit from using Barcgal is the fact that he doesn't cost any counterblast to use, and even without Blaster Blade Liberator he can still hold his own with 7000 power. His potential to find a Josephus is a lot better than some of the other superior calling units in Liberators, since he looks at the top three. It might be hard to piece the two together at times, but when you do, you create a beautiful pressure columns that can create advantage out of thin air.

I also don't think that Blaster Blade Liberator is that bad of a card to use in the deck either. The counterblast cost might be steep, but the thing to consider here is that Gancelot Zenith is not costly by any means. Surely enough, as the game continues long enough he'll end up costing three or four, but if the opportunity strikes, you should be fine with using Blaster Blade Liberator's skill to get the quick advantage from taking care of a front-row.

It's usually not the safest investment, but it can end up being useful in some situations. You definitely won't find yourself being able to use Garmore and Blaster Blade Liberator in the same game, unfortunately, but his practicality shines a bit more alongside Gancelot Zenith, so he's not the worst standalone card.

Liberators still play very similarly to how they've always been played. Prioritize riding Liberator of the Flute, Escrad whenever possible due to his on-hit power. Escrad is basically your early game card, allowing you to extend your field or just force out guard from your opponent. Escrad has always been a key card in the Liberator deck, and is even more necessary due to the fact that your Gancelots can't increase your field size. He falls off later in the game as always, but still carries a solid 9000 power body, so he can still land average attacks.

Like I said earlier, the deck's biggest weaknesses come from mass retiring decks, as Gancelot and Gancelot Zenith do absolutely nothing to fill your field. In those cases, you should hopefully come across one of your two Garmores to replenish your field and out-sustain your opponent's deck, as they might have used up their resources from the first retiring that they're unable to bring it around a second time.

On the other hand, this deck excels against match-ups that are unable to consistently retire units. This allows Gancelot and Gancelot Zenith to shine at their greatest potential, with your opponent being unable to contest their skills. Match-ups like these should be easy to end quickly, thanks to the amount of power your grade 3's can shove onto your rear-guards.

In conclusion, the deck feels very refreshing to play after playing all of the other top tier decks in the game right now. It plays a lot differently, as it doesn't involve field control or self-standing vanguards, giving it a unique feel despite the deck coming from Gold Paladin, a highly detested deck throughout the Limit Break era of season two. With all that being said, thanks for reading this article. If you liked what you read, stick around for more Booster Set 14 articles, and if you have any questions, leave a comment down below and we'll be more than happy to answer them!