Friday Stride: Holy Seraph, Raziel

Another Friday, another G unit. Moving through Soul Strike against the Supreme, the clans yet to be covered on this blog are almost out, and so we move to the only clan in the set I haven't personally used - Angel Feather. As a result, my analysis of Holy Seraph, Raphael would probably be "run 4, play 8 damage Vanguard," so let's move on to the slightly less powerful but more interesting card, Holy Seraph, Raziel

MEDIC!!

Raziel is Angel Feather's rare stride in this set, and since the clan already recieved their on hit (Holy Seraph, Uriel) in the Fighter's Collection, they get the opportunity to branch out into something a little more diverse. Like many similar cards, he doesn't give you direct card advantage, but what he does do is allow you to set up combo plays with the rest of the deck, allowing you to do more than any of the pieces do alone.

Raziel's skill isn't inherently complicated - on stride, he can Soul Blast 2 to return the entire damage zone to the deck, shuffle, and put the same number of cards back into the damage face-up.

The first thing to note is that all the face-down damage will be replaced by face-up cards, essentially re-setting all your counter blasts for the turn. A potential counter charge 5 is nothing to be sniffed at, especially for the same cost as the 5000 power grade 1's pay to unflip just two. Of course, you won't have that all the time, but even a single unflip would be worth the 2 soul alone, and we're just getting started.

G Angel Feather are a bit more counter blast heavy than the old Season 2 era builds, as they now have counter blast costs and have to take face-up damage for their superior calls. They aren't in any real danger of running out - even without this guy their new stand also replaces face-down damage with face-up cards, and it's only cards which give hard +1s from damage who have a hard counter blast - but the deck can drag out the game, and eventually the damage can get clogged with face-down triggers, PGs, grade 3's swapped in for guard and other things you don't really want. Enter Raziel. In one move, he seeps all that clutter up, pitches it back into the deck where you want most of it, and pulls out a fresh damage zone, hopefully with less triggers than before, and ideally some nice goodies for your other units to get out for you. Notable is Black Shiver, Gavreel's on-stride skill, who can either take her pick from a fresh damage zone, or can drag out a unit which can benefit from the damage zone refresh immediately before Raziel's skill triggers.

Not bad, but for generic builds there's more fun to be had. As hinted above, Angel Feather have several older units which all gain 2000 power for each card placed into the damage. Raziel can in one move give all of them up to 10000 power, as well as freshening up the damage for more potential damage swaps to crank those power levels even higher. The new Nurse of Broken Heart has the same skill, but also hands that same power boost to Raziel, pushing him to even greater numbers. Since Raphael is more defensive, that ability to push the centre lane up along with the rear-guards helps give the deck a more offensive side to it.

Celestials, however, don't quite appreciate this guy quite as much. They also have hard counterblasts on (most of) their hard +1s, so the unflip can keep them going, but they generally rely on a more static damage zone, keeping a copy of their vanguard in there to unlock skills. Obviously, when you send your damage zone back that's going to take the unit that was keeping your deck from being vanilla with it, and without units gaining power from the swaps there's not as much benefit. However, if you have a way to put that unit back in there should it not be part of the new damage zone, the unflip can be helpful, and if you get lucky you could set off a Emergency Celestial, Danielle during the re-shuffle for an easy plus.

Overall he's certainly a card to consider. Celestials don't really need him, but if there's space freshening up the damage zone might just help, and since Celestials don't use the soul he can't hurt anything besides static damage that the deck ultimately has ways to fix. For G builds, however, he's an easy 2-of. He functions as the deck's true finisher, and thus is vital to being able to do more than whether the opponent's assault, and it's really only his soul cost and the need for other things in the G zone keeping him from being run at more copies.