Deck Dissection: Phantom's Successor

Hey guys, Homura here after another long absence (lol!). Work is getting very hectic as my company's project is coming to its final leg. Finally found some time to post something, and that's only when my boss is not in the office. All these aside, today's article is actually another request from one of my readers. And since the new set is coming out soon, I would say why not I write a few articles featuring all the new cards from BT-09?

All of us should know by now that BT-09 is one of the best season-end boosters ever released to us, with decent reinforcements and boosts for almost all main clans, and sub-clans that hasn't been getting new cards for quite some while. And today, I'll be covering one of the decks that all the folks out there are quite hyped of it - Convicting Dragon, Chrome Jailer Dragon (CJD). And without further ado, let's have a look at my take of the deck:

Grade 0
Little Fighter, Cron x1 (FV)
Flame of Victory x4 (Critical)
Dantegal x2 (Critical)
Speeder Hound x4 (Draw)
Arms Dealer, Gwydion x2 (Draw)
Elixir Sommelier x4 (Heal)

Grade 1
Knight of Fine Skills, Gareth x4
Listener of Truth, Dindrane x3
Halo Shield, Mark x4
Player of the Holy Axe, Nimue x3

Grade 2
Calamity Mage, Tripp x3
Blaster Blade Spirit x2
Blaster Dark Spirit x2
Lop Ear Shooter x3
Player of the Holy Bow, Viviane x2

Grade 3
Convicting Dragon, Chrome Jailer Dragon x4
Great Silver Wolf, Garmore x4

This deck only has one purpose, swarming the field with Superior Calls, and gain profit with it through units that has skills that activate when they are called out from the deck. CJD is the key card here as it allows you to swarm very fast at a small cost, and act as your finisher for the deck. Here is the analysis of the card inclusions.

Grade 0

We're not favoring any ride series in this deck, because CJD doesn't require any specific series to kickstart the engine. And also, because of CJD's Persona Blast, I opted to use Cron as he can possibly net me another copy of CJD in case I wanted to do a Persona Blast. The triggers here, as usual are pretty standard for Critical based decks nowadays.

Grade 1

Gareth and Mark is at 4x each without question. Gareth now plays a more important role because unlike Ezel, which can passively pump himself up, or Spectral Duke which has a base 11k power if you complete the chain, CJD doesn;t have any passive power bonuses, that's why Gareth is very important for him to construct 18k lines against Crossriders which will be running rampant this set. As CJD is a deck-based Superior Call deck, Dindrane is in for her self-replacing skill upon called out from deck.

Grade 2
Again no favoritism of any particular ride chains, Beaumains is omitted from the deck. You might wonder why is the 10k vanilla being axed? Because we have new replacements for him, the Blaster Spirits. An upgrade form from their previous incarnations, both Blasters retains their skills but with a additional 1000 power increment. Yes, their skills require them to be called out from the deck in order to activate, but even if they can't use their skills, they can be well considered as a normal 10k vanilla.

But, they do have a drawback by possessing such decent skills. When they are attacked, you must retire them during the end of the turn. In detail, as long as somebody attacked them, they have to die, regardless of the power, which means you can just call out a 5k Draw Trigger and attack them, and they WILL die at the end of the turn. Well, I wouldn't say this is a heavy drawback, if they attack the spirits, you just saved your Vanguard from a possible lethal attack, sounds good, isn't it?

This deck uses a lot, yes A LOT of Counterblasts, so Tripp is back in action to help recover some CB resources. Further emphasizing the deck-based Superior Callings, Lop Ear Shooter is here as well to help fish out more cards from your deck, hopefully netting out the Blasters in the same time.

Grade 3
Enter Chrome Jailer Dragon, the main star of the deck. CJD is a 10k unit, which doesn't look very impressive stats wise. But he does make it up with a couple of very decent skills at his disposal. Firstly, he has a CB1 Persona Blast which allows players to peek at the top four cards of their decks, and Superior Call up to two Gold Paladin units. This is a very good skill, as you're trading away a useless nonshield card for a more superior board advantage. And yes, you can call out the Blasters although they are originally from Royal and Shadow Paladins because they have a continuous skill which makes them Gold Paladins wherever they are.

The second skill, which is a 'combo' with the first, is a mirror of Phantom Blaster Dragon's skill. CJD's skill gets a reduced cost (you only need to retire 2 instead of 3 units), but the drawback is the skill is a LB4 skill, which makes it unable to be abused early game. But still, in a deck that can swarm easily, retiring 2 units to get a +10k and +1 Critical is not a tough job, and not a joke as well.

The supportive unit of the deck is none other than the first deck-superior call enabler from the Trial Deck- Great Silver Wolf, Garmore. Even if you failed to ride CJD, Garmore still has a Superior Calling skill, meaning you still can do your Superior Call mojos, albeit not so effective if you compared to CJD of course. And, Garmore also has a good LB, making it a 23k attacker once you hit LB threshold. So in short, no matter who you ride, the deck can still function properly, and you still have Cron to fish out the missing G3 for you!

And that concludes my analysis of the upcoming Chrome Jailer Dragon Gold Paladin deck. Those that played Phantom Blaster Dragon and Pellinore decks will definitely have an advantage in terms of understanding how this deck works.As for those new players, I don't really recommend this deck yet as it actually involves a lot of thinking because this is a combo deck more than a standard beatdown style GP. So, have fun trying this out, and good luck cracking out all your CJDs once the booster hits the shelves!