Posted on Dec 30, 2018

Welcome back to another Premium Watch, where we talk about the latest and hottest new developments in Premium Standard.



Today, we will be talking about the Premium Standard decks to come out of the new VBT03 Set: Miyaji Highschool CF Club.

We have previously covered the developments for Oracle Think Tank and Narukami, with many developments coming to those clans from the trial decks. Be sure to check it out if you play those clans!

Today, we will be covering the developments of Gold Paladin: Both the Ezel Premium deck that is winning events left, right and center, as well as the fan favorite Garmore/Pellinore deck.

For Royal Paladins, we will be covering some developments in the ever popular and ever present Blaster Blade deck, with their new Alfred VR, whilst also at the same time covering Thing-Saver and its new tricks!

For Nubatama, many people are lost about how to build the deck, and we will be going over the basic build, as well as some other concepts and ideas that you may want to incorporate into your deck!

Gold Paladin

In Standard, Gold Paladins have welcomed their new support in the form of Raven Haired Ezel. If you go first, you can get as many as four accel circles while the opponent is only at G2 by taking advantage of Superior riding, and how consistently you can do so, overwhelming players with speed and fury, swapping between creating multiple accel circles with Raven Haired, pushing the opponent to 5 damage and Blonde Ezel's multi attack potential to reach victory. In premium standard, however, the game plan is mostly the same as before., only with more access to superior riding.

Raven Haired Ezel makes your superior ride turn much more potent, as well as serving as another copy of Ezel for Wonder Ezel to superior ride into to get even more Accel Circles. The addition of Raven haired ezel into the deck is an easy fit, putting the Ezel deck at the top of the meta, both in popularity as well as tops.

An interesting card to note is the new Wonder Ezel, which allows even easier access to Superior ride to Blonde Ezel, giving you not one but two options to superior ride at grade two alongside Beaumains. While the previous Wonder Ezel has been widely used to get multiple acccel circles in one turn, the new wonder Ezel does open up more deck space to play cards to gain advantage and fill your field such as Pwyll and Vivianne. One of the most interesting concepts out there is a deck that plays both new and old wonder ezel, increasing superior ride chances whilst at the same time keeping the multiple ride in one turn concept alive.





While previously Wonder Ezel was one of the only ways to obtain multiple accel circles in one turn, the new deck and Raven Haired Ezel together make it extremely easy to superior ride Blonde and then Raven Haired in a single turn, sometimes when the opponent is at only G1 or G2. This is why the old Wonder Ezel may be dropped from some lists you see winning.

The game plan otherwise, is the same as before: Ride up fast and access multiple attacks and accel circles, then stride when the opponent still has yet to ride to g2 or 3 because of your access to Superior Ride.

Extremely potent against Gyze decks, Gold Paladin Ezel has already established itself as a top contender in the meta, and it looks like it is here to stay.

The fan favorite Garmore is another card that was added to the gold paladin arsenal in this set. When you only have 1 card in hand, your rear guards cannot be attacked, and cannot be selected for effects; protecting your many rear guards. While this would also mean you cant deploy out new units next turn, the Garmore stride allows you to easily fill up your field as long as you can stride into him!

This example of the garmore deck uses Garmore as its main ride both for g3 as well as base for striding, while building up Counterblast and soul to use with Pellinore and for the garmore stride's skill. use this example decklist as a start for your own Garmore decklist!

Example Decklist: Gold Paladin Garmore

GZone:

1 Zeroth Dragon of Zenith Peak ULTIMA

4 Master Swordsman of First Light Gurguit Helios

4 Golden Dragon Glorious Reigning Dragon

2 Holy Sword of Heavenly Law, Gurguit

1 Sunrise Ray Radiant Sword, Gurguit

1 Golden Beast Sleimy Flare

1 True Liberator of Healing Ellise

1 Sacred Heaven Prayer Master Reia

1 Dark Element Dizmel



Grade 3:

4 White Hare in Moon Shadow Pellinore

4 Great Silver Wolf Garmore



Grade 2:

4 Holy Sage Pwyll

3 Knight of the Remaining Sun, Henrinus

2 Knight of Far Arrows Saphir



Grade 1:

4 Dawning Knight Gorboduc

4 Knight of Energetic Steel, Blennius

4 Listner of Truth Dindirane

4 Sunshine Knight, Jeffrey



Grade 0:

FV

8 Front Trigger

4 Halo Shield, Mark (Draw Null)

4 Heal (V)

Royal Paladin

Royal Paladin has gotten a huge boost this booster in Standard, with the addition of Monarch Sanctuary Alfred not only being able to return blaster blade to the hand but also gaining critical and huge power, becoming a threatening powerhouse that stabilizes the deck. Additionally, Royal Paladins have also gotten support in the form of Bedivere and Kei, units that gain advantage from each other, giving the deck even more ways to fill up the field and call from the deck, or call from hand while drawing. This solidifies the Royal Paladin decks early game and midgame, while making what is arguably the best card in Standard: Excalupate The Blaster, much more stable to play. while still having its weakness in cost management, Royal Paladin, with VBT03, has become in many players opinions one of the two top force clans in the standard game.

In addition to the Monarch-KOK build, the addition of Palamedes has allowed Soul Saver to become a much faster and stable deck in standard as well; starting to show multiple top 8 appearances across the globe despite its low popularity. Consistently bringing out the +15k to your board as well as extremely high numbers with Palamedes, the Soul Saver build of Royal Paladin boasts speed, consistency and impact, easily turning the tides against many other decks, including Protect type clans, while still threatening Excalupate the Blaster against Accel clans and Force mirrors.

In Premium Standard, the game plan for the blaster deck has not changed much from its earlier iterations: Call early, beatdown, and win with Blaster Blade with multiple force markers being restand with Flogal.

The addition of Monarch Sanctuary Alfred is a welcome one; being a skill that is on ride, this synergizes with Striding, allowing you to get back a blaster blade before striding every turn, where previously advantage would only be from Alfred Early.

That being said, for the games you go first, KOK Alfred is a very important tech, in order to get that blaster blade from the deck if you werent able to draw it.

Imagine this: Riding G1 and G2 without much action, but once you ride to Alfred Early in G3, using your starter Elron to search out Tarna, then riding into a KOK Alfred to get your combos started.

While not yet established as the popular build, several players have been experimenting with adding the new bedivere and kei into their decks to speed up the early game pressure and power lines, at the cost of giving up the Llew and Barcgal multiple attacks.

Another rising trend, as seen in multiple topping lists in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand is the use of 16 criticals instead of playing V Heals, valuing the extra critical number over the 5k more power from V Heals, but this has again yet to become the established norm. For Royal Paladin players, these options are definitely something to consider!

Example Decklist: Updated Tarna-Alfred





Grade 3

3 Monarch Sanctuary Alfred

1 King of Knights Alfred

3 Alfred Early

Grade 2

4 Blaster Blade

4 Swordsman of Light Blaster Javelin Larousse

3 Heat Element Bobo

2 Sage Tarna

Grade 1

3 Packgal

4 Sicilius

2 Lien

2 Null Guard

Grade 0

FV Sage Elron

1 Blue Squad Barcgal

The second Royal Paladin deck concept to come out of the new set is from Knight of Heroic Sword Lucius.

Knight of Heroid Sword Lucius is an interesting card that has its Auto effect activate when a G3 or higher unit is placed on V, moving himself to soul to draw a card, then calling one from hand.

This does indeed work when you stride, but most importantly: it works when you Re-Ride Thing Saver during your battle phase.

Imagine this: Re-ride to Thing Saver, and legion up. Say you have... only 3 open damage and only 3 soul. Call a Lucius to your rear guard with Force, and call a Blaster Friend Barcgal behind it. Call Palamedes to the other rear guard circle, and SC1. Attack with Lucius for 18k, then attack with Thing Saver. CB2 and SB3 to re-ride and re-legion as Stand, but dont forget to use Lucius to soul in, giving you a total of 3 soul, then draw 1, and call Blaster Blade in that circle with force. Because a Blaster blade is called in the same column as Barcal, and your Vanguard is Blaster (Blaster Blade Seeker is on your V), you can Counter charge 1.





Remember your soul blast cost just now? Palamdes gives itself +15k power to a staggering 28k without boost. Attack with your vanguard again, but now that you have 2cb and 3 soul once again, restand, give your palamdes 15k more power, and attack again!

The use of Lucius to build soul, speed up calls, give multiple attacks in conjunction with force makes this deck a fairly interesting deck that can beatdown consistently as well as do many attacks to end the opponent in one turn! Surely a deck to try out for the Thing Saver fans out there!



Example decklist: Thing-Saver

Grade 4

1 Blazing Sword Fides

1 Gancelot Peace Saver

1 Olbius Avalon

1 Myriad Soul Saver

2 Religious Soul Saver

2 Alfred Holy Saver

2 Altmile

1 Marron

2 Maskgal

1 Isolde

1 Ractome

1 Dizmel

Grade 3

4 Seeker Thing Saver Dragon

4 Knight of Exploding Flames Palamedes



Grade 2

4 Blaster Blade

4 Diciple of Light and Dark Llew

3 Blaster Blade Seeker



Grade 1

4 Knight of Heroic Sword Lucius

4 Blaster Friend Barcgal

3 Knight of Crescent Sicilius

3 Knight of Rose Morgana



Grade 0

4 Flogal Crit

4 Critical (V)

4 Iseult (V-Null)

4 Heal

FV Wingal Brave

Nubatama

Our last clan to cover is Nubatama.

In the G Era, Nubatama used Dominate, the unique ability to take control of the opponents units and attack with them as their main source of abilities. However, in the new V-Era, it appears to have lost most of that identity, and has seemingly conflicting concepts going on in the same deck: Multi Attack, bounce, discard, and soul and counter charge management.

That is mostly a ruse, however, with even the new standard Nubatama boasting stability and card selection beyond most other clans, and slow and steady resource grinding and discard being its main strategy, using multi attack as its finisher. It doesnt matter that your attacks only need 10k to guard each time if the opponent cant even afford that 10k guard!



In Premium Standard, the Nubatama deck has access to one of the most powerful strides in the game: Shiranui Rinne. Shiranui Rinne takes two cards right out of the opponents hand, followed by using them to attack the vanguard, easily burning the opponents hand as many as four to five cards! Just beware of fighting other Protect clans, though. if the opponent is hit with Shiranui Rinne's skill, they can choose their protect marker in their hand as one of the two cards to call. However, since protect markers cannot be called to RG, it will instead count towards the two cards, while never leaving the opponents hand! All that Shiranui effort for nothing!

In the deck I will be introducing, the main engine of the deck is Kujikiricongo, with its support cards Stealth Dragon Dreadmaster and Shura Stealth Dragon Kabukicongou, all of which are discard engines. Ride to Kujikircongo to make the opponent discard cards, and use Dreadmaster to further strip the cards away. Even striding to another unit allows you to still use Dreadmaster, so keep its cost available and use it alongisde your powerful strides!

Both Dreadmaster and Sakurafubuki are G1 units that have a discard 1 draw 1 skill when placed, so use this to your benefit to dig through your deck for more combo pieces and to select the cards you need! To complement this, the deck wants to play extra draw triggers, as many as 6 to 8. Magatsugale's soul in to bounce 1 skill may seem like harsh disadvantage, but the extra soul fuels Dreadmaster, and gives you another use out of it, translating directly to another discard. If you wish, you could play Voidmaster to return these units to your hand for even more use.

Perhaps the most stand out card is of the new set is Kokushigarasu, with its ability to discard as many as five cards from the opponents hand! While its soul blast 3 cost is heavy, the difficulty is to have the two sentinel cards to discard for its cost. Riding a protect gift gives you one, and you will have to re-ride to get another protect gift or draw into one of your nulls to be able to afford the cost of this powerful effect. That being said, it is fairly difficult to pull off, with other cards in the deck vying for soul and protect markers already being a valuable resource to give up, and hence you can get away with playing as few as 1 or 2.

One of the interesting cards to play to make Kokushigarasu more viable are Tenrei and Utsuroi. Tenrei keeps your soul built up while discarding cards from the opponents hand, while Utsuroi has a unique effect of being able to increase the number of null guards in your hand by reutrning them from drop zone! Use this to have a constant flow of null guards!





You may wonder why we play Magatsustorm, as it is indeed a fairly difficult card to take advantage of in Premium. But the honest answer is its mainly used as a counter to a few decks, while being a unit with Protect gift. His first skill to cb1 to evade attacks is a fairly important one, especially against decks such as Blaster, which uses huge attacks to lead them to victory. Turn the tide against the popular deck with his skill. Guard restrict based decks such as Ichi-Tom are on the rise with more support in the new booster, so Magastustorm's skill to evade attacks as well as a protect gift instantly bring you to a safe amount of guard to avoid their win condition, while other protect clans need to re-ride once or twice.

But its the second effect, the skill that requires a G3 soul blast to use, that is the key point to counter Gyze. Yes, Gyze decks. By riding up first and using cards such as Tsunamasa, you can randomly soul charge in one of your many grade 3 units, then use the second skill to gain 5 attacks in that single turn, following up your already present aggression, which will force Gyze players and NoLifeKing players to start dropping a lot of hand to keep themselves alive.

Example Decklist: Nubatama Hand Destruction

Grade 4

1 Steel Blade Shura Stealth Dragon, Hayakujirakan

1 Rikudo Stealth Dragon Jorurirakan

4 Evil-eye Vidya Emperor, Shiranui "Rinne"

1 Evil-eye Hades Emperor, Shiranui "Mukuro"

1 Rikudo Stealth Dragon, Rokushikirakan

1 Zeroth Dragon of Inferno DRACHMA

1 Rikudo Stealth Rogue, Atagolord

1 Rikudo Stealth Dragon, Gounrakan

1 Rikudo Stealth Dragon, Tsukumorakan

2 Jinx Stealth Fiend, Zashikihime

1 Rikudo Stealth Dragon, Gandokurakan

1Rikudo Stealth Dragon, Gehourakan

Grade 3

3 Stealth Dragon Magatsustorm (V)

4 Shura Stealth Dragon, Kujikiricongo (V)

2 Stealth Beast, Kokushigarasu



Grade 2

3 Demon Stealth Rogue Tsunamasa

4 Stealth Beast, Tamahagane "Metsu"

4 Stealth Dragon Magatsugale (V)

Grade 1

4 Stealth Dragon Dreadmaster (V)

4 Stealth Beast, Katarigitsune (Stride Fodder)

4 Stealth Rogue of the Night Sakurafubuki (V)

1 Stealth Dragon Tenrei

Grade 0

FV Magatsu Wind (V)

4 Critical Trigger (V)

2 Stealth Dragon Noroi (Soul in, draw 1, vanguard +5k if your vanguard is Shiranui)

4 Draw Null Guard (V)

2 Draw Trigger (V)

4 Heal Trigger (V)





Nubatama is a tricky and hard to handle clan with a lot of complexities in it, in both the Standard and Premium iterations. For the player that can plan, the player that can strategize, and the player that likes to be fifty levels of thinking ahead, Nubatama just might be the deck for you.

That brings us to the end of todays Premium Watch. I hope that this article has given you new insights and ideas to the world of Premium Standard, the format where you can build and play the deck you love!

Information about the author:

CanYouSayG/Dr Sei-Ji A. Keong is an avid Cardfight Vanguard blogger whom has played in Europe, Japan, and East Asia, bringing you new and enjoyable insights to the world of Vanguard for both the card game, competitive environment, and the community. He plays Neo Nectar and Royal Paladin.



