Guide to Generating G Guard: Cray Elemental

Well, I'm back. A lot has happened since I've been not posting here: Team League, Granblue finally got a new perfect guard after 5 years, Bushiroad did something Konami still won't and expanded the G zone, and we got G guardians. Yes, after much boosting of offensive power and only a few tech guarding options we finally get a solid defensive option other than your four sentinels. The ability to pull out a strong defence from the G zone, even if it does need you to have a heal, can provide a lifeline especially against guard restriction skills.

Bushiroad have, on the whole, done quite well with the release of these cards - being introduced in the 2016 Fighter's Collection means everyone gets one, and being at RR to boot makes most of them easy to get hold of even on a budget. The first wave of G guardians are generally well balanced - a few are somewhat sub-par, but interestingly these tend to be in some of the otherwise stronger clans. However, I'm not going to look at those today, because one clan has already had multiple G guardians whilst the rest only had one.

Cray Elemental.

Much like with the G units previously, the introduction of G guardians came with a set of 'generic' Cray Elementals, giving everyone some options in what defences they have in their G zones - and for Touken Ranbu, who didn't get into the Fighter's Collection, G guardians they can use. In the first of a potential series, here's a study on everyone's guardians.

Light Element, Agleam

There's even a waifu G guardian

Agleam was the first of today's cards to be revealed, but at the time of writing is the only one yet to be released for the English game (it's due to be released with a fanbook available in early July), and provides a useful skill for decks with a need to get through the deck or refine their hand. When it's called as a guardian, you can discard a card to draw a new one. It's nothing special, but it does have uses for decks which don't generate their own card advantage. The other value it has is for deck who don't get much out of their clan's G guardians - Shadow Paladin's current G guardian doesn't gain any shield itself, instead allowing guarding from the field in a clan which doesn't tend to keep spare cards around, and Narukami decks other than Vanquisher builds might not find the Thunderstrike 1 easy to set up - where the discard and draw is more useful than an impractical shield boost.

Dark Element, Dizmel

The End's worst nightmare

Dizmel is one of two Cray Elemental G guardians included in the Fighter's Collection, and in terms of usefulness is something of an all or nothing card - either it's going to be a vital support for your deck or almost useless. Besides it's own resist, which ultimately isn't that useful, when called to guard it gives one rear-guard protection from being hit by any attack that turn, or being chosen for opponent's effect - resist in all but name. For some decks, it's not all that helpful - most modern Ganblue decks retire their rear-guards through hollow, whilst G Pale Moon do a similar trick with the soul via magia. If you have no rear-guards, the ability to protect them is usually unimportant, although even here it can be nice if you have room for one.

For some clans, however, it can be vital. If you have key rear-guards you need to keep alive, Dizmel's protection can be vital. Aqua Force and Nova Grapper often rely on key rear-guards to allow for their extra attacks, and by preventing them from coming under attack or being hit by retirement during the battle phase can make the difference between your next turn being the big push you need to win or a minor push to try and prevent yourself falling behind.

Even for more vanguard-centric decks, or clans with superior call options, where the rear-guards aren't individually as significant Dizmel still has value - more specifically against two cards for the same reason. Both Dragonic Overlord the End and Commander Laurel have skills which allow the vanguard to restand if it hits, and a common strategy with both is to target a rear-guard with the first attack. With most modern perfect guards unable to protect them, they're often hard to guard - an Overlord in legion is hard enough, a fully powered up Dimension Police G unit almost impossible - and can net an easy restand and resultant massive increase in hand size. Dizmel answers this in a single card, simply by preventing the attack target from being hit and thus not allowing the restand effects to activate, and thus provides a way for decks which rely on the newer sentinels to counter these plays.

Metal Element, Scryew

Screyw Diablo, I have a G guardian

The last of the Cray Elementals, Screyw, doesn't have any complex tricks. It just has a lot of shield. Provided you already have a G unit face-up in the G zone, you can discard any card for an extra 10000 shield. At the moment, the 25000 shield this card gives is the maximum shield value a G guardian can generate alone, and although some clans with more recent support have had second G guardians which can reach this power Scryew is the only one available to everyone. It costs two cards, but discarding a redundant grade 3 means you only used 10000 shield from hand for 25000 shield on the guardian circle. Even discarding a 5000 shield grade 1 or 2 gives you a net increase, and if you can't use certain cards to guard with due to your opponent's effect you can still discard them for the shield boost.

There's another benefit to these cards, and that is their status as Cray Elementals. Some of the main deck Cray Elemental cards require face-up Cray Elementals in the G zone, and any of these can deliver that. The major one would be Earth Elemental, Pokkur, who can unlock cards on call and give rear-guard reliant decks a way to combat Link Joker - especially useful for Granblue and Angel Feather, who's ability to swap rear-guards in and out of their toolboxes allows them to search out and then consistently re-use a single copy. The second card to note is Rain Elemental, Tear, who can counter charge for each Cray Elemental face-up. Noteworthy if you don't use your clan's own G guardians, as once you go through most of your G guardians you'll end up being able to refresh your counter blasts almost entirely in one go. Finally, there's Air Elemental, Fwarlun, who's mostly been ignored as it's skill - a 1000 power boost for each face up elemental - wouldn't do a whole lot with an 8 card G zone where maybe one card wasn't from the deck's clan. Given a wide spread of elemental G guardians and the space to tech some of the Cray Elemental strides, and it has potential use if you have need of a big booster.

So there we have it. The G guardians that anyone can use. With each clan having a 20000 shield clan-exclusive card, you should have plenty of options even before your clan receives it's second G guardian.

Friday Stride: Great Villan, Dirty Picaro

Another week, another new set. The first Technical Booster is now out, and comes with 3, yes 3, GR cards - one for each clan. This week, we'll be looking at a dirty cheat who you should never emulate - but you should probably run, because it's really useful. It's the new ace of Spike Brothers, Great Villain, Dirty Picaro.

Is that because you blinded him?

Like many of the traditionally 'Minor' clans, what Picaro does fits perfectly into his clan. At Generation Break 3, at the hefty cost of counter blast 2, turn another G unit face up and put a card from your hand to the soul he can call units from the deck up to the number of face-up G units from your deck. No grade restrictions, no top x search, any cards you want, and unless they have their own skill to leave the field they'll stick around. The cost is high, but since you'll have a minimum of 3 G units you can be sure you can get at least three attacks off even if you have no rear-guards before. He does call to open rear-guards, but for most Spike Brothers decks this shouldn't be an issue - either you cleared it last turn anyway, or your rear-guards will get themselves out of the way for Picaro.

What makes Picaro so special is that he's one of very few ways Spike Brothers can generate actual card advantage. The clan's overarching theme is to exchange it's own cards for more power, thus forcing the opponent's hand to drain away even faster. Most of it's 'advantage engines' are actually 1 for 1 card trades rather than gaining cards as many other clans do. Whilst you can sometimes combine the skills to gain the new card from two skills whilst only losing one, this isn't always easy since those skills aren't all that common (and often need to hit). It's easier to simply amass multiple power-ups and then get the one lost card back, which is what Spikes are meant to be doing anyway.

So where does Picaro do well? Since The RECKLESS RAMPAGE introduced the Charge build, it should be obvious that this will support it. With it's other major stride - Shootdown King, Miracle Ace - working with charge units to conduct a blitz which also clears your own field, Picaro's ability to call it all back (either for keeps or to charge off again) really helps recover from those turns. The only downside is that the charge build is somewhat counter blast heavy, and the unflip engine is a Stand Trigger, which isn't all that helpful for most Spike builds. Still, Picaro can make a dangerous finisher and can pull back a field once your charge units have all left your hand.

For Dudleys, the situation is similar. Although Dudley Jessica gives them free superior calls when they stride Great Warrior, Dudley Geronimo, the latter is likely to get rid of them. However, the deck as a whole is a lot less resource-heavy than other spike decks and thus can save enough counter blasts to use Picaro to fill up the field once Geronimo's emptied it.

It's the Legion-era decks that gain the least from Picaro, or rather Bloody Ogle, because that's the one people play. With the deck's main gambit being break ride, legion, then burn 5 open counter blasts to launch 7+ massive attacks, there isn't anything left for Picaro to use. He's still useful, however - some days things just won't go your way, and the ability to make a field from nowhere is one of those generally good skills that you should probably make room for - and the Legion deck really doesn't need much from the G zone anyway.

In conclusion, it should be clear that Picaro does what Spike Brothers does - call units for extra attacks - but does so to a degree that no other card can manage. Thus it becomes a lifeline for the deck, giving it options for that game where the rear-guards didn't come or the opponent managed to live through the rush. Picaro shows off the hidden side of the clan that often gets lost beneath all the power gaining and throwing cards into the deck - they have the most flexible deck searching skills in the game, even above the paladin clans - and with some liberal interpretation of the clan's rules you can do something quite different.

Friday Stride: Conquering Supreme Dragon, Dragonic Vanquisher "VOLTAGE"

Well, that's all the clans I haven't covered before out of the way, now onto the repeat offenders. This week it's Narukami's turn to get another look in, as we explore what happens when you take a new mechanic that began as much to make two cans distinct and run so far with it you create a monster. The ultimate powerhouse for his deck, I give you Conquering Supreme Dragon, Dragonic Vanquisher "VOLTAGE".

Does it involve free gold or fiery death?

Narukami have in the past struggled to make themselves distinct from Kagero. Upon the clan's release it was only Dragonic Kaiser Vermillion which did anything significantly different from Kagero, and the later dominance of the Eradicator subclan didn't help. During this time, what really set them apart was Kagero having more tools to pick off boosters whilst Narukami had to mostly beat at the front row, either with effects or multi-target attacks. Bushiroad haven't been slacking here - during the Legion Mate arc Narukami's Brawlers eventually centred around the Big Bang multi-attackers whilst Kagero's Perdition tended to target columns. By the time Vanguard G came around, Kagero were mostly back to their old tricks of picking off whatever they wanted, but that left an issue for Narukami - any changes to the targeting of these skills would inherently weaken them, whereas giving them exactly the same skills goes against giving the clans their own identities.

Cue binding. The bind zone is relatively under-utilised in vanguard, and generally used as a holding area, however G era Narukami took it to a new level. By binding the cards it retired as well as cards already in the drop zone, it created new problems for decks which use their drop zone (which includes anything using a perfect guard which needs another copy in the drop zone for an effect), whilst allowing it to become further distinct from Kagero. The first wave was nice facing these opponents, but against anything else the lack of presicion retirement meant it couldn't control as well as Kagero, especially in the back row.

Thus we reach Moonlit Dragonfang, where the bind playstyle was built upon. The new Thunderstrike keyword on several cards gives rewards for binding your opponent's cards even if it doesn't hurt them directly, and although VOLTAGE doesn't have the keyword himself, his skill works along much the same lines. By turning another copy face-up, he gains two skills. The first is a direct copy of the skill of Lightning Dragon Knight, Zorras - if he hits, your opponent retires one, and you bind two cards from their drop zone. Given that you could just stride Zorras and have the skill without the flip, as first stride he's only useful to activate Dragonic Vanquisher's GB2 sooner - and since Vanquisher's GB2 is pretty bad you'll very rarely need to do this.

What we're really after is the GB3, which gives your front row 3000 power for every bound card your opponent has. Whilst decks binding cards for use on later turns or time leap units stranded in the bind zone can sometimes give you a boost, you'll usually have to fill out their bind zone yourself. The on-hit skills will help, as will that of the Zorras you'll have gone into first, and from the first round of support you have Vanquisher and Voltage Horn Dragon retiring, as well as Demonic Dragon Berserker, Chatura's on-hit to empty the drop from the early game. More recent cards are Rockclimb Dragoon, a Vanquisher-exclusive grade 2 with an on-call retire & bind, and Blitz-spear Dragoon, a new backup ride who can bind a front-row on ride. Helping empty out the drop zone is Chain-bolt Dragoon, who can make the opponent follow up a bind with another one, as well as gaining 2000 power for the turn - not a lot, but could tip you over a shield stage with VOLTAGE. For a soul blast Dragon Dancer, Bernadette can, once you bind two cards, become a 9k booster which threatens to retire & bind some more if the attack hits, which can be especially dangerous once your attacks get big. Finally, Wildrun Dragoon, the new starter, can move to soul to bind something and hand out a 5000 power boost for the turn to another unit, provided you can have another card bound by that unit's attack.

With all this binding, and much of it able to activate regardless of your opponent, it's rather easy to get a good pile of cards bound - 9-10 or even more is not unreasonable, except maybe against decks which don't leave a field for you to retire & bind from, which means VOLTAGE can be putting 30000 power or more on top of that columns base power. For perspective, Sanctuary Guard Regalie can only give half this at most, and if you do you lose a lot of options and those columns will often lack base power. VOLTAGE can be 30000 with a Voltage Horn in the front row to add even more power as soon as the rear-guard attacks, or a Chatura for extra on-hit pressure - even VOLTAGE himself will give another 6000 if he can hit and the opponent still has a rear-guard. These numbers are somewhat ridiculous on what's nominally a generic G unit, and it's only the fact that you need Vanquisher's support to reach them that keeps VOLTAGE from becoming a monster in other Narukami decks. In it's own deck, however, it utterly outclasses Conquest Dragon as a finisher outside of some very bad luck, and whilst the older G unit still has it's roles (killing off a problem card, those games you just can't bind anything), VOLTAGE is what's going to give G Narukami the push it needs to stand alongside the clan's other decks.

Friday Stride: Dragon Masquerade, Harri

For every new mechanic, some of the existing clans will inevitably have to wait longer for cards using it. The wait for the first G era support has been especially long when a lot of clans didn't get anything during season 4, and thus have even fewer options to keep up. Of the five clans not to gain their stride support before the Girs Crisis arc of the anime, three did get set support in season 4 (though not a great deal in two cases), whilst Nubatama has only ever had one full wave of support and has one of the smallest card pools in the game - before the upcoming Techincal Booster Touken Ranbu has more cards. That just leaves one clan, and because I format my titles with the name of the card you'll be able to tell I'm talking about Pale Moon, who did at least get into two boosters in season 3. So, let's examine the latest performer in this circus, Dragon Masquerade, Harri.

You're a wizard Harri no, that's too obvious.

Harri is a future form of Pale Moon's strider grade 3, who naturally is also called Harri. Like his base form, this Harri utilises Pale Moon's new Magia keyword, which marks out skills which call units from the soul for a turn, before sending them back at the end of the turn. In comparison to permanent calls from the soul, Magia skills tend to either have a lower cost or give the called unit a power boost, and reduces vulnerability to control skills at the cost of having to keep using Magia skills to maintain a field. Harri is the big finisher of the Magia deck, doing quite a bit.

His skill is costly - you need to already be at GB3 before he attacks, and then counter blast 2 and move one of your rear-guards to the soul. In exchange, he can call three units out from the soul for the turn, then if you have five or more rear-guards (which at the present means five) you move two of your opponent's rear-guards into the soul. Whilst they get to choose which two units, this gives some degree of control to a deck which generally operates more aggressively, especially against decks which don't actively utilise their soul.

The key function of the effect, however, is to call out further rear-guards to generate more attacks. Since he can call over resting units, he generates five attacks in addition to what other units can set up. This does come with the downside of replacing a unit with a temporary one, but if you call over other Magia units then you've not lost any permanent cards (there's still a cost - units you retire aren't available for later calls from the soul). Likewise, if you use a unit called from a Magia skill for his cost, you don't lose a card in using his effects. 

Three units gives you enough to generate an entire column and another attacker. The first obvious play is to not boost one of your rear-guards when it attacks, to leave the booster standing for later. Darkside Princess is especially nice here, since she can make herself 14k to attack the vanguard before diving into the soul - right where she needs to be for Harri to bring her back out. Alternatively, if you use the booster, Flying Peryton can replace it for free, or good old Purple Trapezist can be called to the back and swap out the resting attacker for a standing unit.

There's one more issue, however, and that's the GB3. Needing two other G units face-up to use the skill means either he has to wait for your third stride or you have to flip over another G unit on your first stride. The go-to for this is Snow Element, Blizza for it's usability by every deck, but G era Pale Moon decks need their counter-blasts, and with access to Jester Demonic Dragon, Lunatec Dragon who can be used on the first stride for free this becomes the better option. Whilst you don't get Lunatec's critical, you get a 2k power boost for anything you call from the soul, which can fix columns or allow units to without boosters to force more guard.

Harri is big, and perhaps slightly too big. He does a lot whilst not needing multiple copies, but for that he's slow to activate and costly, and whilst the deck does have potential it has a few issues at the moment, and the other functional Pale Moon builds can't use Lunatech to make Harri faster, and generally have better things to do with the counterblasts.

Friday Stride: One Who Views the Planet, Globe Magus

So after so many very long months of nothing but side releases, we've finally got a new core booster set. Moonlight Dragonfang is now out, bringing Pale Moon into the G era and giving a boost to several other clans, including Oracle Think Tank. Naturally for the clans on the second wave of support, there are less new cards needed for the initial G era build and so those clans have the room for a bit more support for older builds, and for Oracle Think Tank it's the Magus build that gained the bulk of this. So, as I'm sure many of you would have predicted even without the title, let's have a look at One Who Views the Planet, Globe Magus.

She's now banned from entering Fantasy Football

The theme-specific Magus skills all focus on knowing the top card of your deck. A few allow you to see the top card, or otherwise put a known card onto the top of the deck; the rest require you to correctly name the top card of the deck in order to activate their skills. Since the latter set can also be used to check the top card of the deck, classic Magus decks would have some of these skills 'sacrificed' by making blind guesses to check the card for other skills, especially for battle phase rear-guard skills being used after the drive check had removed the card on top when the deck was checked in the main phase.

Globe changes all that. Her skill is simple but with the Magus support can be brutal. Her skill is a continuous skill to allow you to look at the top card of the deck at any time during the turn and put it back on top of the deck. This is at any time, effectively allowing you to play with the top card of your deck face up for you only. Whereas before Globe rear-guards attacking after the vanguard would need to match up their attack order very carefully to get the skills they wanted, with Globe you can check the top card immediately before you use each skill. Memorising the top card suddenly becomes much less important - whereas before you might check a card in the main phase, and then move on to the battle phase before you have to name it, with Globe you simply check right before you need to.

It's also easier to dig out your triggers. Whilst Globe herself doesn't dig through the deck towards the triggers, the ability to see what the top card is allows you to decide when to attack with Stellar Magus and Ring Magus on the rear-guard. If your top card is a trigger, swing in with the vanguard first. If it isn't, attack with a rear-guard, add that card to your hand, and then attack with the vanguard. As an attacking vanguard, Globe has one last trick, and it can be a game-changer. Because a card revealed for a trigger check goes to the trigger zone, there's now a new top card of the deck, and because Globe allows you to check at any time you can check what your next drive check will be before you assign the effects of a trigger you just revealed. Thus guarding for a 2-pass (or even 3-pass) nowhere near as safe as against many other vanguards - if you can see you'll get the second trigger you can put the bonuses onto the vanguard without risk, at worst losing 1 trigger if you're aiming to break a 3-pass guard.

Of course, Globe doesn't do all that much alone, and it's the rear-guards which are doing much of the work. The above-mentioned Stellar and Ring magi allow you to gain cards, Ring also gaining enough power to real 21000 with a 7k booster. Rhombus Magus gains power, whilst Cone Magus can unflip damage from either Stellar and Ring or G units besides Globe. Octagon Magus, by contrast, aids in defence - although you can't check during your opponent's turn, you can check what's on top after your last attack before Globe returns to the G zone, which also lets you know what your first damage check would be. Just be aware that if you call Lozenge Magus (or Sphere Magus) and boost with them, their skills will send them back to the deck after Globe returns to the G zone, shuffling your deck and denying this information. Finally Semilunar Magus, as the new starting vanguard, gives you a helpful checker early game before diving away into the soul for a net +1.

In conclusion, Globe is exactly what the Magus needed to gain a new lease of life. Whilst the deck's lack of legion or stride reliance allows it to function against the grade 2 game, once Globe hits the board all the guesswork, memorisation and skill timing is stripped away, granting you powerful effects for much less work. I suppose you could argue it's unfair, but that's really what Globe's stride skill is for - whereas other strides give you power or card advantage, Globe simply removes the hurdles for other units to do that with their own skills.

Friday Stride: Legendary Dimensional Robo, Daikaiser Leon

So Moonlit Dragonfang is almost upon us, but before we get into the strides in that set we've time for one more card from the Fighter's Collection. So, in the spirit of giving as many clans as possible equal exposure in this column, let's check out Dimension Police's newest offering, Legendary Dimensional Robo, Daikaiser Leon.

Clearly, he must like the Morikawa dimension.

Leon is the newest form of Daikaiser, and continues that unit's tradition of being able to break through the opponent's guardians, including Perfect Guards, when a grade 3 is damage checked. For Leon, this translates into a GB2 counter-blast 1 and flip a copy face up, provided you have a Kaiser heart. For clan fight (i.e the format all Bushiroad events currently use), this means one of Daikaiser's Grade 3 forms or Shadowkaiser - who's support for Daikaiser as well.

The first thing you'll note is that it's a chance-reliant skill. Whereas the previous guard breakers have either given an additional bonus or only paid when the grade 3 is revealed, Leon pays up-front for something which might not even work, and thus you're going to want to maximise your chances at pulling the skill off, and the easiest way to do this is more grade 3's. When the original Daikaiser was revealed, this was taken to it's extreme with decks running 12 or more grade 3's, with the resulting unbalanced grade ratios being patched by the Enigman ride chain (this type of chain guaranteed the grade 2 if you rode the grade 1, thus meaning having the latter in opening hand effectively gave you two of the cards you needed to ride). Whilst Nova Grapplers can still use this sort of build with Asura Kaiser and the Blau ride chain, True Great Daikaiser - Dimension Police's strongest Kaiser - requires Dimensional Robo soul for both him and his mate, thus pushing Leon into a purer subclan build. 9-10 grade 3's, however, is perfectly viable (in fact a grade 1-2-3 lineup of 13-11-9 is slightly more consistent for riding than the conventional 14-11-8, which sacrifices ride consistency for booster numbers), especially if some of your grade 1 slots would include stride fodder. Since you're running these to act as extra grade 3's, just run a grade 3 to trigger on drive checks as well. This also helps you get as many Kaisers in the deck whilst also having room for Great Daiyusha for the legion.

The more recent tool to aid triggering the skills is Dimensional Robo, Daibazooka, Kaiser's 11k attacker. His other skill makes him a grade 3 when revealed in a trigger check, as well as allowing a counter charge and soul charge when drive checked. Not only does Daibazooka repay Leon's cost when checked, he can also ensure you have the soul for True Daikaiser & Great Daiyusha, as well as any soul blast skills you may run.

Leon has one more issue, which is harder to fix: He doesn't give much pressure. Unlike his Grade 3 forms, he doesn't gain a bonus critical to force the opponent to guard. Triple drive somewhat makes up for this, but without being able to make his attack a killing blow the opponent can let the attack through and rely on you not getting those triggers - or drop a single perfect guard and bank on you not seeing both the triggers you need to push them to six damage and the grade 3 to get through. 12 criticals are advisable here, to maximise your chances of getting them, but 12 criticals are good almost everywhere right now. You could also use criticals on other units whilst getting to GB2 to accelerate the opponent to 5 damage so that Leon doesn't need extra criticals

However, if you want another option, there's also a helpful little trick which can give Leon his own criticals. Dimensional Robo, Gocannon is an unimpressive grade 1 who can at the cost of two units give a Daiyusha vanguard an extra critical. Since a stride unit can take the name of a heart card, all you need do is stride Leon over a Daiyusha, gain it's name, and voilà! You now have one grade 4, guard-breaking Daiyusha, all ready to gain a critical and make someone cry. But, you may be saying, didn't Leon need a Kaiser heart? This is true, but we can have both. Since True Daikaiser legions with Great Daiyusha, striding over the legion with Leon gives both cards in the heart. Leon doesn't need to take the name of it's Kaiser heart, only have one in there, so it's free to take Daiyusha's name instead and gain the benefits of even more support cards. This is not advised - it's very inefficient and doesn't give enough back to make it worth the investment - but it's there if you really want that critical.

Leon can be threatening, but the deck has to be build and played aggressively. If you don't deal them damage early, by Leon isn't going to threaten them by himself. Get the deck and play-style right, however, and he might just be even more of a danger than previous Daikaisers.

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.