Friday Stride: Helleity Seal Dragon, Crossorigin

Kagerō has been a central clan for most of vanguard's history, but despite a large card pool much of their meta focus has centred around a single character - Dragonic Overlord. Frequently the clan has received new support focussed on different units, only for some form of Overlord to come along and overshadow everything else. The first occurrence of this was in set 11, which introduced the Seal Dragons. Based on the anti-interceptor Seal Dragon, Blockade, the subclan had a wider focus on the opponent having grade 2 units, with various skills reliant on opponents having grade 2 units coupled with cheap retires which gave the opponent the chance to call out grade 2's in place of them. Unfortunately, the subclan was overshadowed from the outset by the (non-Seal Dragon) breakride pairing better with Overlord, then by Nouvelle and Dauntless Reverse, before Overlord got more support at the end of the season. Odd bits of support made the deck more practical, but nothing really caught up to the power jump legion and stride provided - until they received their own stride, in Helldeity Seal Dragon, Crossorigin.

Thus dragons became good guys.

Crossorigin fits the mould of several of the GR units from the latest Fighter's Collection, flipping any G unit face up to activate a skill which becomes more effective the more copies of itself you have face-up (unlike some others, however, he doesn't need any copies of himself to have some effect). When his skill is activated and you have a Seal Dragon in the heart, he retires an opponent's rear-guard for each face-up copy in the G zone. He then forces the opponent to reveal four cards from the top of their deck and for each card retired call a grade 2 from those four, and then if the opponent has two grade 2 units he gains a critical.

First thing to note: The critical can be gained on the first stride, which is rather unusual - many strides can't gain any criticals until the second stride, allowing Helldeity to put some early pressure, especially if the opponent called a lot of cards early. The second part is that you only check 4 card from the opponent's deck regardless of how many units were retired, which means that the more units you retire, the less likely your opponent is to be able to replace them. Finally, the grade 2 calls are forced. Most Seal Dragon calls are optional, allowing the opponent to take the -1 to avoid some of the more devastating effects, however Helldeity demands those cards are called, even if the opponent would rather not call them.

Overall, Helldeity is a brutal card - highly threatening from the start, and capable of doing a lot of damage to the opponent's field - but it needs a Seal Dragon in the heart, which means we're going to need some grade 3 Seal Dragons. The original Seal Dragon, Blockade is a card long past it's prime, and can be ignored unless it's in your personal all-time favourite card list or something. It's crossride, Hellfire Seal Dragon, Blockade Inferno, was the deck's original ace. Intended to wipe out all those grade 2's you called, it's skill is still cost-effective if the opponent has multiple grade 2's - and between your forced calls and stride making grade 3's less likely to be called as attackers multiple grade 2's aren't that unlikely for most opponents to have. 

Seal Dragon, Georgette was part of the Lock Break campaign, and besides a secondary skill which has limited utility in evading Link Joker it's limit break is a 5000 power boost for each of the opponent's grade 2 rear-guards, with a bonus critical if they have two or more. With the critical, Georgette acts as a smaller Crossorigin, and one which doesn't need a grade 3 opponent - a helpful tool to fight off decks stalling at grade 2. The last grade 3 of relevance is Hellfire Seal Dragon, Weathercloth, a break ride granting 2 free retires and a single top 4 check for grade 2s to replace them. Stride helps break rides quite a bit - despite the conflict in grade 3 usage strides allow break ride decks to do more whilst setting up - and Crossorigin will put in work until you're ready to ride Blocade Inferno or Georgette.

The rear-guards which pull out your opponent's grade 2's require seal dragon counter blasts, as does Blocade Inferno, which means a seal dragon deck will probably be mostly Seal Dragons. This isn't all bad - classic 10k and 12k attackers allow for early game pressure, and the deck has enough triggers for it. The only non-Seal Dragons that might be needed are the Stride Fodder and the G era Perfect Guard, and possibly 1 set of triggers, depending on your ratios. As an alternative, Georgette/Weathercloth could potentially use generic Kagerō support instead. Whilst this setup may make Gorgette a little harder to pull off, Helldeity can cover for it a lot of the time, and getting away from the subclan gives a whole other card pool to work with.

Crossorigin probably isn't going to make Seal Dragons a meta deck by itself, but it will give them a much-needed boost, and hopefully get some more Kagerō players running something other than yet another Overlord deck - well, until the next wave of Overlord support (announced the day before this article went live) gets released.