Friday Stride: Black Seraph, Gavrail

So after splitting a case of G-BT07 with a teammate, an abundance of Angel Feather foils left me with half a rescue deck despite that not being a clan in my half of the split. Then a couple of weeks later, I obtain the rest of what I'd need for a Gavrail-Rescue build from my other teammate, to go with all the stuff sat in my binder waiting for me to get rid of it. OK, it's not a 'complete' build - no Raphael, Sunny Smile Angel or Harut, and don't even ask about Nociel - but it's fun and demonstrates what rescue decks can pull off. So for this week, let's look at G Angel Feather's new centrepiece in Black Seraph, Gavrail.

She is a Waifu, and a Persona Stride

Gavrail's grade 4 form, like most of the recent evolutuions for the stride bearer grade 3's, works with her clan's new keyword rescue. Rescue is of the type which prefixes skills with a certain effect, in this case being an effect involving healing damage before inflicting the same amount of damage back to yourself. Unlike conventional Angel Feather damage swaps, this does activate trigger effects, giving the potential to gain additional pseudo-drive checks in the form of damage checks in your turn, as well as additional damage checks when defending.

Gavrail herself has two skills, which need to be activated by a counter-blast and turning up a copy of herself. Once she does, she can give two units 2000 power each for the turn every time a card enters the damage zone in the battle phase - which will happen with every rescue going off during said battle phase. The second skill ensure the first is meaningful, with the only current rescue 2 ability. After she attacks, she heals two damage, and then takes two damage, complete with trigger checks. This gives more chances for heals, extra crits, more stands, and if you really wanted more draws - but the rescue ability takes a card from the deck every time you heal, making the deck too fast for draws to be safe. Since you can heal face-down damage, it also gives an effective counter charge 2, more than recovering the counter blast cost to activate the effect.

Gavrail thus has 5 drive checks and 4 lots of 2000 power to distribute for persona flip and counter blast 1 which becomes a net counter charge by the end of the turn. The amount of digging for triggers she can do means she plays very nicely with both criticals and stands. The former rack up damage quickly, and can ensure an opponent has to guard everything far sooner due to extra criticals floating around. Five checks make stands more reliable, and allows you to attack with everything in the reasonable confidence you'll restand it. With 8 stand triggers able to return themselves to the deck, it's also quite easy to compress the deck to the point where a stand is more or less certain to show.

However, like most good medical professionals, Gavrail works best as a team. The usual power gainers - Thousand Ray Pegasus, Million Ray Pegasus, and Nurse of Broken Heart - gain power with rescue just like everything else, and can also take advantage of Doctoroid Refros to gain power. Whilst the Black Seraph herself can't hand out boosts from the fridge's own damage swaps, returning damage checked triggers back to the deck (along with Refros itself) and pulling out non-triggers instead increases the trigger density of what remains to up your odds of hitting triggers. This process is somewhat luck-based (refros can also put triggers into the damage zone, in which case they won't activate), but get the deck small enough and you can do at least a small loop even without the damage swapping of the Nociel engine.

A standout of the new rescue units is Black Bomber, Maalik, who if called from the damage zone triggers a rescue every time she attacks or boosts against the vanguard. She's especially potent with stands, since hitting them allows her to immediately re-stand for another attack and another rescue. Black Seraph's power boost helps Maalik become even harder to stop, get over annoying defensive triggers, or build power elsewhere whilst hitting even after whatever boosted the first swing is resting. The 5 trigger checks on the vanguard swing also helps dig through to another stand to allow Maalik to swing even more.

It's not just the stands which can generate more attacks - Laser Clutcher, Ke'el and Drill Motor Nurse both call themselves when sent to the drop zone from the damage zone, and if they were sent by rescue they gain 3000 power as well. Bringing them in over resting units allows further attacks, and with effects ordered correctly they can gain power from Gavrail's other skill as well - just one boost allows Drill Motor to solo 11000 vanguards without a boost, whilst the two from Gavrail's rescue 2 would put a Ke'el to 16000. If there's something else you want called, there's also Black Report, Ridwan - when you move a damage to the drop, she move to soul to give up to one rear-guard 4000 power, as well as call the card from the drop zone if it was healed by a rescue. The ability to trigger on-call skills mid battle is never a bad thing, allowing for potentially more damage swaps, more attacks, and more rescue.

In summary, Black Seraph, Gavrail provides a much more offensive G zone option for Angel Feather, and in particular for Gavrail builds, which previously only made offensive pushes through mass damage swaps to power up. Coupled with the clan's naturally strong defences, Gavrail provides a more balanced deck better able to apply pressure to the opponent.