Friday Stride: Sunrise Ray Radiant Sword, Gurguit

If I were to go through the clans from Glorious Bravery of Radiant Sword that I play, we'd be looking at a Dark Irregulars stride here. However, since they held Scharhrot Vampir's G unit form for set 8, all we got is a single rare. It's not a bad card, but it's clearly not a headline card for the set. So for this week, let's just get right on with the cover card of the set, which conveniently happens to be in the one clan which I haven't yet covered in a Friday Stride post.

Sunrise Ray Radiant Sword, Gurguit

The sun may well be what finally ends the world

Gurguit's grade 4 form comes immediately following Bushiroad's commitment to avoid GR rarity cards requiring multiple copies to work, and whilst some upcoming cards may go back to flipping up cards in the G zone without caring what those cards are, Gurguit cut out all interaction with the G zone entirely, beyond requiring generation break two to activate. As the ace of the new unite mechanic, he also has this as an activation requirement, which means two units have to be called to the rear-guard during that turn. This isn't as difficult as it sounds, and if you've even seen a gold paladin deck ever it won't sound remotely difficult. It means you'll probably have to think a turn or two ahead of when you want to drop him to maximise your efficiency, but if you can't get the unite off then you're either about to lose anyway or should be using something else right now.

The actual cost is interesting though - counter blast 1 and soul blast 2. Sunrise Ray Knight, Gurguit was one of the first GB2 units to use the soul as cost for it's effect, and expectation was that his grade 4 form would leave well alone to allow for the defensive GB2. However with no limit to how often the grade 4 can use his GB2 in a turn, the soul blast was clearly intended to provide another limit to this.

For all this cost, you get quite a bit. All of your rear-guards gain 5000 power for the turn, which those familiar with Platina Ezel may recognise, but on top of that Gurguit himself gains 5000 for each rear-guard. On top of his own power, a full field will allow him to cap out at 51000 power - or it would if you couldn't then use the skill again. Breaking 100,000 power on the vanguard lane is not impossible, and if the stars align and you get to use the GB2 five times you're looking at 150,000 power before boosting, which is very much "Perfect Guard or die" territory. You won't pull this much power very often, if ever, but a 75-100,000 power vanguard lane is still a big problem, especially when backed up by rear-guards with an extra 10-15,000 power each.

Gurguit's clearly a finisher then, and a potent one. No restands, no guard restrict, no criticals, just buckets of power to everyone and a whole barrel for himself, and steamroller over any hand without enough perfect guards for everything. However, that soul is an issue. We can excuse Gurguit's main deck form using it to a degree - he's consuming counter blasts as well, and if the grade 4 can take the game you don't need soul to defend yourself - but if you're going to spam that g unit's GB2, or even stride gurguit multiple times, you'll need to build up soul.

Knight of Far Arrows, Saphir is a card Gurguit decks have liked for some time. When called from the deck, it counter charges and soul charges 1, funding the entire cost of using the grade 3 GB2. Whilst Saphir can't quite match that with the grade 4, he still helps build soul. The low power isn't ideal, but between both Gurguits and Scourge Point Dragon giving power, and the deck's ability to easily grab a booster for him it's not a huge issue. G Set 7 followed up on this design by giving us Knight of the Faint Sun, Marcia, a card with a similar impact, and also an 8000 power grade 2. Unlike Saphir, Marcia puts herself into the soul, costing a card in exchange for that counter charge. However, she has a few benefits over her older counterpart. First off, she activates at the end of a turn, as long unite is active, not caring where she came from. In short, she isn't dead in hand like Saphire. Also, that applies to the opponent's turn as well, so if she lives through the turn, and you called at least two cards to guard that turn, she can jump in on their end phase to flip damage and load soul for your turn. Finally, she has resist, which can be key in some matchups, especially against Link Joker Chaos builds.

Further counter charge from moving to soul comes from Player of the Holy Pipe, Gerrie, who functions slightly differently. In exchange for a 3000 power bonus whilst unite is active, he must move to soul after he attacks or boosts. He needs a little care to work with - it's not a good idea to spam him if you have no damage face-down, but he makes himself a full 7000 booster, and stands work well with the big Gurguit, since you have beefy rear-guards to stand. Gerrie isn't the only trigger to put himself in the soul however - Scarface Lion is Gurguit's RR critical trigger, moving to soul for a draw and another 5000 power to an attacking Gurguit vanguard. Besides pumping the grade 4 even higher, he also helps build hand, which gold paladins tend not to directly do, usually relying on deck thinning and not using hand to build up their defences. There's also Flame of Victory, a very old critical able to give any Gold Paladin 3000 power for the turn. Since it's now easy to obtain, it's worth running, but don't rely on it for building soul - it's better guarded with, to save Gerrie and Scarface for soul building.

There are several starters which move themselves into the soul, but I won't discuss them here. The final card we will look at, however, is Sunshine Knight, Jeffrey. Much like Scarface Lion, he moves himself to soul for a draw. He is, however, a unite card, doing so after boosting if the conditions are met. Unlike Gerrie, Jeffrey is optional, allowing him to stick around should you want to minimise calls or utilise defensive cards which require you to have rear-guards. However, the ability to be called, boost, and then retreat into the soul with no net loss of card advantage is a nice bonus against control decks.

There's another advantage to all these cards flinging themselves into the soul - you now have open circles to call new units. All of them give you either an extra open damage for a call skill, or a new card which could be called (or be used as shield over another unit which can be called), which makes it much easier to bring unite on line without losing cards from calling over them,

With these guys around, the soul isn't really an issue, and as a bonus neither is counter blasts, allowing perfect guards which work from the deck to be used. Thus Gurguit managed to pick himself up from being one of the less effective G decks to being a rather good one.