These three words might not seem like much of a topic starter, or even the topic starter to start my blog, but in any case, they are more than enough for me.
A short introduction is probably in order before I start in earnest. I'm Spectral Duke, known on Cardfight Capital as Digi (assorted titles/tags vary), and on Neo Ark Cradle forum as Phantom Blaster. I've been cardfighting via Cardfight Capital since April of last year, and have basically been hooked on the game since then. My favorite Clan is basically Shadow Paladin, with my current favorite Unit on the other hand being, as you may have guessed, Spectral Duke Dragon.
Anyway. Onto business. Knowing that my favorite Clan is Shadow Paladin might cause some wonder as to why the words 'Fake Shadow Paladin' so annoyed me, so I'll put it into context. In context, those three words are the deck title used by a player I would rather not name, because honestly this goes beyond my personal issue and more into misconceptions made by the fanbase as a whole. This player, currently competing in the Chicago Qualifiers as far as I know, used the title to refer to their Spectral Duke Dragon Gold Paladin deck.
In other words, this player referred to my favorite Unit as being nothing more than an inferior sham of my favorite Clan. While I know full well this is not intended as a snipe at me by any stretch of the imagination, not only did it result in ten minutes of ranting, but it caused me to want to deal with the issue with my own personal thoughts on the exact nature of the connection the two decks have. Before I delve into individual Units, I'll look with a more general overview.
Shadow Paladins:
In terms of the lore of Vanguard, the Shadow Paladin Clan is an army of dissenters, traitors and second-rates dredged from the bottom of the United Sanctuary's society. Even molded by their leader, Phantom Blaster Dragon, into something of a fighting force, the Shadow Paladins are still ramshackle, ill-equipped and ill-trained for the most part. Their opposition, the Royal Paladins, are an elite, well-trained fighting force with the best benefits of both science and magic, with years of training and discipline. While the Shadow Paladins can contribute sheer numbers, this advantage only would not normally avail them.
This is where Phantom Blaster himself comes in. In gameplay terms, his infamous skill, Damned Charging Lance sacrifices three of your Shadow Paladin Rearguards and Counterblast two, in exchange for empowering Phantom Blaster by 10000 Power and an extra Critical. As a Shadow Paladin fighter, your general aim is to use the deck's advantage generation plays to build a resource surplus to spend on guarding and the field, before allowing the dragon to kill off your Units to empower itself. While later additions such as Phantom Blaster Overlord and The Dark Dictator move away from this general theme, it is possibly the single most enduring image of Shadow Paladin tactics, summed up best by Aichi in the anime: 'Give your lives to the cursed dragon!'
Spectral Duke Gold Paladins:
The Gold Paladins are equally ramshackle and varied as a fighting force, the major difference being their allegiance and their aims. While Shadow Paladins opposed the United Sanctuary's government and generally sought reform and change (with several notable exceptions, among them Phantom Blaster himself), Gold Paladins fight in the name of that government. However, their major conviction is a 'Grail Quest' of sorts, aimed at gathering the Seven Sacred Beast Armors, with which they can undo the seal holding captive many of the leading figures of Royal Paladins, Shadow Paladins and Kagero. The Gold Paladins are divided into six divisions, each led by and themed after one of the bearers of the beast armors. In this instance, I'm focusing on the Black Horse division, led by Spectral Duke Dragon.
As with Shadow Paladins, the Black Horse Gold Paladin build follows a trend of advantage generation, followed by a sacrifice of that advantage for a battle-oriented benefit. While the Shadow Paladin deck placed a fair amount of stock on both hand advantage and field generation, the Gold Paladins orient more towards the field generation, using their skills to call the top card of the deck cheaply, sacrificing the precision of their calls in exchange for making those skills cheaper. The winning image of the Black Horse deck is Spectral Duke Dragon's Limit Break skill, Spectral Halberd. With this, by sacrificing three Gold Paladin Rearguards and two Counterblasts, Spectral Duke can stand itself and attack again, regardless of whether the previous attack hit or not, and losing its Twin Drive for the second (and any possible subsequent) attack.
What we can immediately establish is that both decks have a very similar strategy. They both generate raw card advantage, often via imprecise but cheap methods, in order to then sacrifice their advantage into devastating and powerful skills held by their ace cards. It is even noted in the lore by implication that Spectral Duke is Phantom Blaster's successor, holding the same power but using it for the side of good. Now, this is all well and good, but you may be wondering exactly what this has to do with my anger at the 'Fake Shadow Paladin' thing.
My problem is simply put that Spectral Duke is, to my eyes, the superior in terms of design, consistency and general effectiveness. Calling it a 'Fake Shadow Paladin' implies it to be lesser in quality when in fact it is honestly a refinement of the strategy, turning it into a much more viable, efficient and devastating deck. Let's take a look at the effective cores of the two decks, the Ride Chains.
Ride Chains:
A divisive issue among players, owing to a perception of inconsistency, Ride Chains are sets of cards from Grade 0 up to Grade 3 which are designed to be ridden in succession in order to attain certain benefits, most often additional Power. The Shadow Paladin Blaster Ride Chain is a second generation Ride Chain design of the type debuted in and not continued past Set 4, Eclipse of Illusionary Shadows.
Fullbau
High Beast/Shadow Paladin/United Sanctuary
Grade 0/5000 Power/10000 Shield
Auto: When a Unit named 'Blaster Javelin' Rides this Unit, search your deck for up to one Unit named 'Blaster Dark', reveal it to your opponent, add it to your hand, and shuffle your deck.
Blaster Javelin
Human/Shadow Paladin/United Sanctuary
Grade 1/6000 Power/5000 Shield
Continuous [V]: If you have a Unit named 'Fullbau' in your Soul, this Unit gains 2000 Power.
Auto [R]: [Choose one Grade 3 <Shadow Paladin> in your hand and discard it] When this Unit appears in the Rearguard Circle, you may pay the cost. If paid, search your deck for up to one Unit named 'Phantom Blaster Dragon', reveal it to your opponent, add it to your hand, and shuffle your deck.
Blaster Dark
Human/Shadow Paladin/United Sanctuary
Grade 2/9000 Power/5000 Shield
Continuous [V]: If you have a Unit named 'Blaster Javelin' in your Soul, this Unit gains 1000 Power.
Auto [V]: [Counterblast 2] When this Unit appears in the Vanguard Circle, you may pay the cost. If paid, select one of your opponent's Rearguards and retire it.
Phantom Blaster Dragon
Abyss Dragon/Shadow Paladin/United Sanctuary
Grade 3/10000 Power/No Shield
Continuous [V]: If you have a Unit named 'Blaster Dark' in your Soul, this Unit gains 1000 Power.
Activate [V]: [Counterblast 2, retire 3 of your <Shadow Paladin> Rearguards] This Unit gains 10000 Power and 1 Critical until end of turn.
The Blaster chain is simplistic but effective. The aim of the chain, as with all Ride Chains of the second and third generations (the two first generation chains of course having their additional ability to search the top five cards of the deck), is to get the Grade 1 of the chain, in this case Blaster Javelin, in the first six cards in your hand. Upon riding Javelin, Blaster Dark can be searched from the deck, both ensuring the Ride to Grade 2, and providing an additional card of advantage. The +Power skills each stage have allow both defense and attack, making rush tactics much more difficult to employ against the deck without significant drain on the hand, and also ensure that short of special cases such as Genocide Jack, the Blasters will never be unable to strike the other Vanguard even without a boost.
This chain however has its flaws. It is practically mandatory to run Blaster Javelin at four and at least two Blaster Dark to get the chance of the chain, and as Shadow Paladins have no other starter option besides the vanilla Zapbau, every Shadow Paladin deck is therefore forced into running these Units. Javelin is effectively a sub-par boost in the Crossride era, and was inefficient even before this owing to the lower Power of two near-staple Shadow Paladin Grade 2s, Skull Witch, Nemain and Darkness Maiden, Macha. Blaster Dark's Counterblast is a sub-par rendition of his rival's, and is extremely unlikely to see use even when it can be because of the deck's dependence on Counterblasts. Why use two of your precious Counterblasts on a retire when that could be a total of two cards gained via double Nemain, or a Charon searched with Macha? In addition, Dark is a 9000 Power vanilla Unit outside the Vanguard Circle, all but ensuring the inability to effectively deal with Crossride Units.
The biggest issue the chain has is ironically the most memorable part of the chain. Damned Charging Lance turns three of your Rearguards into a gigantic beatstick to bludgeon your opponent into loss with. While a potentially near-30k Vanguard with Critical 2 is nothing to laugh at, Phantom Blaster Dragon suffers the tragic weakness many such boss Units have: Perfect Guards. One Iseult, Baryi or Chocolat dropped in front of the mighty Blaster Dragon renders the sacrifices a waste, and so Damned Charging Lance is often rendered a pressure move, unleashed earlier in the game to draw out guards when it's less likely that the opponent's accumulated a Perfect Guard. But on top of that, the lance itself is just plain inefficient. You sacrifice three Units for a momentary gain, but that gain is easily nullified by staples every competitive deck will run, and moreover, Shadow Paladins, unlike their close counterparts Tachikaze and Great Nature, lack any way to actually recover direct advantage from retiring their Rearguards (except for Origin Mage, Ildona, however what I refer to is more in the vein of Pterodactyl Skyptera or Pencil Squire, Hammsuke, Units which can be easily splashed into any build of the Clan regardless of Vanguard you intend to use). While your losses can be alleviated preemptively by sacrificing Nemain, Macha or Babd Catha, Units which provide extra advantage at the moment of calling, much of the deck lacks this capability, and as Shadow Paladins lack a second Draw Trigger, it's hard to rebuild advantage you spend on Phantom Blaster's skill.
In case anyone expected me to delve into the alternate builds of Shadow Paladin, this article is more concerned specifically with Phantom Blaster Dragon and Spectral Duke Dragon. As such, I don't intend to delve into Phantom Blaster Overlord, Ildona, or The Dark Dictator right now, though I almost certainly may cover them in detail in future. For this reason I am also not touching the Ezel/Garmore/Ezel-Garmore/Pellinore builds of Gold Paladin.
Scout of Darkness and Dragon Knight share a skill which allows for additional advantage. When you Ride the next stage of the chain onto them, if the previous stage is in the Soul, you can retire a Gold Paladin Rearguard to check the top two cards of your deck and call any Gold Paladin Units from those cards to separate Rearguard Circles. While the Blaster Ride Chain could only generate one additional card of advantage, if fully achieved, the Spectral Duke chain gives you three extra cards in effect, one added via Black Dragon Whelp's skill, the other two achieved by successive use of Scout of Darkness and Dragon Knight's skills. It is also worth noting the cost of Spectral Duke's Limit Break, is to retire three Gold Paladins. If you pull off the Ride Chain completely, then you have already gained those three Rearguards at a loss of one card from your hand (the Unit initially called to serve as the sacrifice for Scout's skill). This is a fantastic and cheap way to not only create advantage to feed Spectral's Limit Break, but also to fill your field at a minimal cost to your hand. As with the Blaster chain, the Spectral Duke chain has the same type of +Power skills, along with the same assorted defensive and offensive benefits.
In addition, even if you fail to get Scout of Darkness in your opening hand, the chain provides a backup there. When Ridden over by any Gold Paladin not named Scout of Darkness, Vortimer, Black Dragon Whelp can move to the Rearguard, providing a Unit for free. While Whelp is not an ideal booster or attacker due to its low Power, this is one less card needed from your hand to serve as a sacrifice for the Limit Break, which also clears the field, allowing you to set up more optimal columns as necessary. Scout of Darkness is a 7000 Power booster compared to Blaster Javelin's 6000 Power, more easily pushing the deck's usual plethora of 9000 Power Units over the key 16000 Power mark to deal with 11000 Power Units, and while Black Dragon Knight suffers from Blaster Dark's flaw, it is not necessarily so crippling in this deck as it is in Shadow Paladins.
The big comparison to make is in the final trump of the deck. Ultimately, the Spectral Duke Dragon deck, much like a Phantom Blaster Dragon Shadow Paladin deck, is generating fodder to feed to the cursed dragon. To fully evaluate the deck, we therefore need to look at just what the cursed dragon does with that fodder. Spectral Duke, rather than turning his sacrifices into more Power and Critical, instead uses them to re-energize himself. In gameplay turns, he sacrifices three Rearguards and two Counterblasts to stand himself. What is fantastic about this skill is that the only way to prevent it is for the player to check a Heal Trigger on the first attack which takes them below the four Damage requirement to activate Limit Break. Even if a Perfect Guard, the bane of Phantom Blaster's life, is dropped in front of Spectral Duke, the halberd will still strike once more. This is because Spectral Duke doesn't have to hit to activate his Limit Break, but neither does he have to have his attack foiled, as Destruction Dragon, Dark Rex does. Any attack result can still end in Spectral unleashing his halberd and standing. While Spectral loses Twin Drive on the second attack, this still provides another Drive Check, and more importantly he will hold onto any Trigger bonuses applied from the first two Drive Checks. In this way, Spectral can tear your opponent's guards apart, forcing more and more Shield with ridiculous ease.
The most important aspect of Spectral Halberd is that it is, in essence, self-sustaining. Even ignoring the Ride Chain's ability to provide your three sacrifices at the cost of a single card, the additional Drive Check means that in essence, you gain three cards by Drive Checks that turn, equalizing the three Units you cut down to activate the skill to begin with. If you received your sacrifices by the Ride Chain's skills or indeed, any of the Gold Paladin Clan's other ways to cheaply bring Units to the field, then you're only generating more of an edge. And on top of this key advantage, you're also taking, on average, three cards from your opponent's hand with just Spectral Duke Dragon's attacks, let alone your Rearguard lanes. This feeds into another of Spectral Duke's edges over Phantom Blaster: skill timing.
Phantom Blaster's Damned Charging Lance is an Activate skill, which means it must be used in the Main Phase, prior to attacking. This ensures that whatever you feed to the cursed dragon will not be attacking that Battle Phase, often forcing you to call new Units from the hand to replenish your field in preparation for attack. Because you will be sacrificing at least one Unit from the backrow no matter what, this often means calling Units to the backrow, which is in effect a loss of Shield. Spectral Duke on the other hand activates his skill mid-Battle Phase. As such, you can attack with a column first, then with Spectral's column, and sacrifice the three Rearguards which have already attacked/boosted, allowing you to conserve your hand for calls until the next turn.
In terms of Trigger lineup, Spectral Duke belongs to, for better or worse, one of the most supported Clans in the game. Gold Paladins have at the time of writing access to two Critical Triggers, three Draw Triggers (Speeder Hound will be available in the English game a week from the time of writing), and two Stand Triggers. This diverse Trigger lineup allows the Spectral Duke player many options compared to the restrictive one Draw, two Critical, one stand options of Shadow Paladins (this article assumes the presence of four Heal Triggers in all decks as standard), as well as the added advantage provided by being able to run up to twelve Draw Triggers if wanted. Gold Paladins also have a variety of support options to experiment with, and the benefit of an easily-available Damage unflipper, Mage of Calamity, Tripp, as opposed to the Shadow Paladin equivalent of such, Cursed Lancer, which is a promo given away exclusively with the CD of the anime's second opening, Believe in my Existence.
To evaluate this fully, the concise point I'm trying to make with this article is the reason I came to love Spectral Duke to begin with. Its strategy is a more refined, more viable and more effective play on the Shadow Paladin Phantom Blaster Dragon strategy, namely creating advantage cheaply, often by indiscriminately acquiring cards, then sacrificing that advantage for a devastating move. The key is that the Spectral Duke chain fuels the gaining of advantage much more than the Blaster chain, actually generating enough advantage to fuel Spectral Halberd via its own skills, as opposed to the Blaster chain's more pitiful single card gain by comparison. Although the Blaster chain requires less to actually get the benefit, the benefit itself pales in comparison to the cost demanded by Phantom Blaster Dragon to unleash its skill, a skill which carries an enormous risk. The Spectral Duke chain not only fuels its winning image skill on its own, but that skill is much more consistent and deadly by its nature. It is near-impossible to prevent Spectral unleashing the halberd, and when he does, more cards are demanded to hold his onslaught back. As a fighter who greatly loved the Shadow Paladin Clan for its distinct lore and identity, and deeply regrets their lack of options post-Set 5, I find the Spectral Duke Dragon deck a welcome refinement of a somewhat awkward, difficult strategy into a much more efficient and polished one. The ethos of the Shadow Paladin deck is still living and breathing in the Spectral Duke build. Your allies are still there to give their lives to the cursed dragon. The difference is that you can be sure their sacrifice will truly make a difference to the game.
This is what so got to me about those three words. Fake Shadow Paladin. Because in all honesty, Shadow Paladin is the less refined, less developed deck by comparison. Phantom Blaster Dragon's Damned Charging Lance always was and always has been a flawed, inefficient skill, costing a lot and usually receiving little in return. Lower down the Clan, Shadow Paladin suffers from a horrible lack of options, to the point practically every Shadow Paladin deck is railroaded into running Fullbau, Javelin and Dark even if the user has no intention of using Phantom Blaster at all. Gold Paladin on the other hand has a variety of options to supplement Spectral Duke, including the daring option to use it as a boss Unit without the Ride chain and fully experiment with the wide variety of support available to the Gold Paladin Clan. You can do as Ren did and use the Valkyries, or you could experiment in combining Spectral with the White Hare division.
So in conclusion, having analyzed two Ride Chains and skimmed two Clans to try and express my frustration at a really, really stupid deck title, all I can say is that Spectral Duke is a Shadow Paladin. If not by Clan, then by nature and by similarity. His deck plays like Shadow Paladins play, just refined into an engine which works much more efficiently than the Shadow Paladin deck does. His Clan has access to more options than Shadow Paladin does, allowing Spectral much more variety of deck builds even in the most competitive scenes, and his skill provides a much more certain and effective payoff than Damned Charging Lance does. To sum it up? Spectral Duke Dragon isn't a Fake Shadow Paladin. He's the very epitome of the Shadow Paladin playstyle and ethos, refined to perhaps the most perfect form of that strategy there is in Vanguard.
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