As I asked for 18 ANGERY emotes on Facebook to confirm my place as Clam Liter, and ended up getting 96 ANGERY emotes, I have decided to release my updated Clore Elmimantle dacklost.
Starter - Shining Knight, Millius
8x 5k Royal Paladin Crits
4x Thunder Elemental, Goloro (Critical)
4x Royal Paladin Heal Triggers
4x Light Elemental, Sunny
4x Air Elemental, Fwarlun
3x Light Elemental, Peaker
3x Laurel Knight, Siciilus
4x Knight of Twin Sword
4x Transmigration Knight, Brede
2x Escort Eagle
1x Earth Elemental, Pokkur
4x Knight of Mastery, Glenus
4x Gigantech Charger
GZone
4x Rain Element, Madew
3x Blazing Sword, Fides
2x Aerial Divine Knight, Altmile
1x Divine Knight of Flashing Flame, Samuel
1x Air Element, Sebreeze
1x Snow Element, Blizza
2x Dark Element, Dizmel
1x Light Element, Agleam
1x Metal Element, Scryew
The first observation you will probably make is, "Oh hey, this looks pretty much the same other than filling out the GZo- WHERE DID STARDRIVE GO?! YOU TRAITOR!"
Hear me out, bro. Fides can only search for grade 2's and those grade 2's need the "Brave" keyword. Fides draws a card, retires a unit, gets a grade 2 out of my deck, AND gives me 10k power to distribute to my board. It's an INSANE card and the only reason it isn't played at 4 of in a bunch of decks is because those decks can't afford to run "Brave" units. The unit that has replaced Stardrive Dragon is Knight of Mastery, Glenus. Glenus, being a 10k power Royal Paladin unit means that it, of course, does everything Stardrive did in the deck, including being able to proc Madew. Additionally, Glenus' skill is, "Brave: Cont: This unit gets grade -1 while in the deck." This means we can grab him directly out of the deck with Fides (who can only grab grade 2's), and the check for his Brave keyword is done after the discard for Fides and after the cost for stride has been paid. So, if your hand was 5 or less cards at the start of your turn, Fides into Glenus can definitely be a good move.
Now, you may be thinking, "Tim, how necessary even is that? You're running Escort Eagles in your deck already." Brede is mandatory at 4 of (switchable and interchangeable with Knight of Fragment who is 11k when attacking vanguards and rear guards vs. 12k vs. Vanguards only. I'm running 2/2 at the moment, but I think Brede is better, which I'll cover shortly). Knight of Twin Sword is our only multi-attack enabling unit in our deck (and he can grab Glenus too, if done before my Vanguard attacks or if I have 0 cards in hand at the start of the battle phase), so he's a 4-of. We only have 3 spaces, and Pokkur is just amazing in a deck with 10 Cray strides and with the ability to grab 2's on-demand. So Escort Eagle is down to being a 2-of. If I draw EITHER of them pre-Fides plays, I can't proc the draw for Fides. This is why we play Glenus. That and he makes 21k with any non-sentinel grade 1 booster in my deck, which is icing on the cake.
Now that that's out of the way, let's discuss updates. We added in the Cray Elemental critical trigger, Goloro. Goloro's guard restriction ability (you can only call this card as a Guardian if you have another Guardian on the circle) is actually pretty bad, but it can be pitched with Fides, Agleam, Scryew, or used for its useful ability, to count as a grade 2 when pitched for stride. In this deck, we can easily convert our strides into hard advantage generation. Even just ditching Goloro and another card to stride into Madew will take our previously +2 turn and convert it into a +1 turn. Whether or not this is mandatory isn't super important to me, I am playing it for the Cray Craze. The vast majority of the time, you will not be impacted by its negative or positive effects. It does have a 4k body, however, and that is why we made the next change.
Knight of Fragment and Transmigration Knight, Brede are our Brede and butter cards to call off of Knight of Twin Sword. (NYEH HEH HEH) With Goloro being a potential call from Gigantech Charger, Brede makes numbers with EVERYTHING where Knight of Fragment has this weakness with only being 15k with Goloro (and requiring another 2 out, which cards like Heteroround, Denial Griffin, having a locked front row, and getting Fragment called off of Charger can make difficult). While you can easily build around this in most cases, I've found that the only advantage that Fragment gives over Brede is the ability to hit 10k+ rear guards unboosted, since the counter-charge is typically useless and the soul charge is almost detrimental.
Escort Eagle made its way into the list due to being a Brave and a Resist unit that is grade 2. It gets Fides synergy, and helps handle a big weakness the deck has in its Link Joker match-up. The extra shield is just icing on the cake.
Now, for the GZone, we have 8 new spots to fill. Of course, Cray Elemental GGuardians are entering four of these spots. Reason 1, they are all relatively powerful Guardians due to having some nice secondary effects. Reason 2, pretty much all of the Royal Paladin GGuards have been roasted garbage on a stick. Reason 3, they give Fwarlun power and enable Pokkur plays without having to stride into Madew and waiting a turn. For our remaining spots, we have made the following changes.
-1 Atmos
-1 Gablade
+2 Aerial Divine Knight Altmile
+3 Fides
+1 Sebreeze
Atmos was in the deck as the designated flip target for Blizza. We no longer need that, since Sebreeze took its place. Gablade was never really good, but it didn't require a flip and I had one space open previously. I actually did switch both Atmos and Gablade out for Aerial Altmile before the 16 card GZone happened, but not much else has been changed from the base list. We added in Sebreeze because it is a Cray Elemental (procs Fwarlun and Pokkur) and the deck is very Generation Break heavy. We also have a large amount of counterblasts available to expend where a Samuel or Sebreeze doesn't kill our resources all that badly anyway. I feel like Fides was already covered, but I'll just recap. You can flip Sebreeze with it for more effects with your Cray Elementals, and it's discard a card to make big numbers, draw a card, retire a unit, and call a unit. Like, it does so much for such a tiny cost.
That covers the major changes. I hope you don't rage on me too hard for dropping Stardrive. On that note, the original reason I played Stardrive was due to their being NO suitable 10k Royal Paladin unit that made a meaningful difference. Palamedes was the best one initially. I'm not counterblasting 2 to call a grade 1. I didn't have enough spots in my GZone to play Regalie, so I couldn't risk having a dead, vanilla stride when I missed my Sanc Guard. There was no room to put in Jewel Knight archetype support, and Swordmy would be useless without JK grade 1's, even if I could use him with Charger. I could have run the 10k Vanilla legion, but I don't think the 10k grade 2 was worth running at the time. The long and short was that there wasn't much that was really useful to run, and anything that may have been useful would compromise my GZone.
That's it for now. Clyde Ornamental Cornpattytav Clumb Looper, signing out.
