Silver Thorns

Natsu here back with another deck profile, today we're going to be looking into Silver thorns.  Silver Thorns are the Pale Moon Archetype from set 12 that made a huge uproar at Japan by topping in a Descendant dominated format, so we're going to look at my build and I'll go over some of the choices and how the deck works.

G0
Silver Thorn Assistant, Iorena
Dynamite Juggler (Critical) x4
Silver Thorn Barking Dragon (Critical) x4
Silver Thorn Juggler, Nadia (Heal) x4
Silver Thorn Marionette, Natasha (Draw x4

G1
Silver Thorn Assistant, Irina x4
Silver Thorn Beast Tamer, Ana x4
Silver Thorn Breathing Dragon x4
Silver Thorn Hypnos, Lydia x3 (Perfect Guard)

G2
Silver Thorn Marionette, Lillian x4
Silver Thorn Beast Tamer, Marichika x3
Silver Thorn Rising Dragon x4

G3
Silver Thorn Dragon Tamer, Luquier x3
Silver Thorn Dragon Queen, Luquier Яeverse x4

Silver Thorns take a much more crit oriented beat down strategy than Pale Moon used to have so I run 8 crit 4 draw and 4 heals for my triggers, and use Iorena as my starter.  Iorena for those who don't know when boosting the vanguard if her attack hits allows you to check the top 2 cards of your deck, and chose one of them that's a Silver Thorn and put it in your soul while the other goes to the bottom of your deck.  This ability is amazingly good for Pale Moon and gives them a way to build a much better soul since you can pick what goes in.  Of course you still have your chance factor in it but you still have the option of choice to get good units in the soul unlike before where you sort of had to base it on luck aside from Dancing Night Princess.  It can also fuel for both of the Grade 3 Limit Break skills (Although chances are you will use regular Luquier's about once every 10 games).  One other great and your most frequent use of this ability will be to put regular Luquier in your soul to skip crossriding or to later in game allow you get to 13k after riding Luquier Яeverse. 

Now onto the grade 1s, since Iorena only puts Silver Thorns into the soul I run a pure silver thorn deck aside from my extra critical triggers, (although I've experimented with other versions of Luquier Яeverse decks and it works pretty well as well).  I run 4 Irina who on call/ride can check the top 2 cards of your deck and put one of those so long as it's a silver thorn into your soul while the other goes to the bottom of your deck.  This is one of your more important grade 1 units since it can once again allow for your selective soul charging like Iorena.  Also unlike Iorena she goes off just on call or ride, so you can also pull her out of the soul to get the eff
ect off even if you've already played/damage checked/soul charged all of your copies.  She's also a fun target for the effect of the next card on my grade 1 line up which is Silver Thorn Beast Tamer, Ana. This unit on boosted attack that hits the vanguard by counterblasting one can call any Silver Thorn from your soul to a RG circle and then at the end of the turn whatever you called goes back into your soul.  The main use of this (or at least of how I use it is either A. You can call Irina to get off an extra soul charge/use her to boost or B. You can call your regular Luquier from soul if your Luquier Я vanguard attacked already and use her to attack.  Since she'll be going right back into the soul again at the end of the turn Luquier Я won't really miss the temporary -2k in power.  The last two choices I have for grade 1s are Silver Thorn Breathing Dragon who is the standard if you have a X Vanguard it's a 10k attacking unit, and of course your standard perfect guard, so not too much to discuss there regarding those two units.

Now for the grade 2s of the deck, it's a pretty standard lineup for the most part.  I chose to run 11 grade 2s in favor of having 7 grade 3s for the extra shield in my deck to avoid having too many grade 3s and there only being 2 Silver Thorn grade 3s so not much variety can be had on a pure Silver Thorn deck for grade 3s.  I run 4 Lilian who is your standard grade 2 vanilla and 4 Rising Dragon who is your standard 12k attacking unit for Silver Thorns.  I chose to only use 3 of Marichika who is a on vanguard hit call a silver thorn to an empty rear guard circle mainly because I have a personal preference for the more high power attackers and already having 4 Ana I felt no need for another similar unit, although she can come in handy for getting extra Iorena soul charges in.

Lastly is the grade 3s of the lineup which are 4 Luquier Яeverse and 3 Luquier.  I chose to run only 3 Luquier because with all of the selective soul charging from Iornea and Irina you can USUALLY get her in the soul before you ride Luquier Яeverse.  Luquier is a unit that most people know about but incase anyone
doesn't she gets an extra 3k power whenever a unit is called from the soul.  Before this would allow for many shenanigans that would lead to her getting high power increases.  Before her Limit Break didn't see much if any use mainly due to it being a heavy counter blast cost of 3 but allowing you call one of each grade from the soul to your field.  However in this deck if any of Luquier's skills will be used this is the one since thanks to Iorena you can USUALLY get a pretty good soul for Luquier to call upon, but even then I personally only use this skill about once every 10 games or so and only to make a major push.  The main star of this deck is Luquier Яeverse.  Her ability is by simply locking a card and counterblasting one you can get ANY unit from your soul and give it 5k power.  So essentially for just a cost of a single counterblast, you can go +1.  The only downside to this ability is that after repeated usage you CAN find yourself running out of good stuff to call but it depends on how long a game goes on as well as how much soul you've accumulated.  The most common way I personally use this ability is to get grade 2s out from my soul so not only do I get myself a free 15/17k attacker, BUT I also get an extra 5k shield back for free, and who can complain about free shields.

Overall Silver Thorns are a very powerful deck to be added to the Pale Moon arsenal and it'll be interesting to see the support they'll be getting in the Brilliant Strike set.  For anyone hoping to make a Silver Thorn deck or who was having trouble against them I hope this article was able to help you get a better understanding of them.  Remember to check back next week for another article from the team and be sure to subscribe to our channel.

The card images used on this site have been obtained and reposted from the Cardfight!! Vanguard Official Portal Site (http://cf-vanguard.com/), in accordance to the guidelines stated there. Re-use of these images (re-post, distribution) is strictly prohibited.
© Bushiroad All Rights Reserved.

Cruel Dragon Deck Profile

Ascriptmaster here. Six months ago, Natsu of Team Fairy Tail posted the first deck profile to this blog, and then everyone on the team forgot about the blog for half a year. As such the blog was left untouched for that time, until I noticed the rather conspicuous Blogger icon on the Youtube channel and asked Natsu what we were going to do about it. There isn't much for us to write on quite yet, so for now the blog will be dedicated to deck profiling.

Anyways, the deck I'm profiling today is based on Cruel Dragon, seen below:

[AUTO](VC) Limit Break 4 (This ability is active if you have four or more damage): [Counter Blast (1) & Soul Blast (1)] When this unit attacks a vanguard, you may pay the cost. If you do, choose one of your opponent's grade 2 or less rear-guards, and retire it.   [ACT](Hand):[Reveal this card & Choose your grade 2 or greater «Kagerō» vanguard, and [Rest] it] If your opponent's rear-guard is put into the drop zone during the main phase of that turn, you may ride this unit as [Stand], and choose your vanguard, and that unit gets [Power]-3000 until end of turn.   [CONT](VC/RC): Lord (If you have a unit without a same clan as this unit, this unit cannot attack)

The debut video for the deck can be found here.

Grade 0: 1 Seal Dragon, Terrycloth (Starter) 4 Seal Dragon, Shirting (Heal) 4 Seal Dragon, Biella (Critical) 3 Blue Ray Dracokid (Critical) 2 Seal Dragon, Artpique (Draw) 3 Gattling Claw Dragon (Draw) .	Grade 1: 4 Seal Dragon, Rinocross (PG) 4 Seal Dragon, Kersey 4 Demonic Dragon Mage, Kimnara 2 Embodiment of Armor, Bahr
Grade 2: 4 Seal Dragon, Corduroy 4 Seal Dragon, Hunger Hell Dragon 3 Bellicosity Dragon	Grade 3: 4 Dauntless Drive Dragon 4 Cruel Dragon

The main appeal of Cruel Dragon is its Limit Break. For a Counterblast and a Soulblast, you can consistently retire virtually any unit you want, whether it is a dangerous attacker, or a booster. This fits the Kagero clan's playstyle of eliminating units, especially boosters, to conserve shield for next turn, or force your opponent to take cards from their hand to replenish them, tipping the scales in your advantage as the game drags on. Naturally, Break Riding Cruel Dragon on Dauntless Drive Dragon allows you to retire two units in one turn for a low cost! It's also a good unit to "sit on" as the first Grade 3 ridden in the game, because once it's the Vanguard, Cruel Dragon has no effects before Limit Break, while Dauntless at least has the potential to reach 13000 power unboosted.

While Berserk Dragon would be considered a powerful addition to the deck, I chose not to add it because its high Counterblast cost would add up too quickly and prevent me from capitalizing on Cruel Dragon's effect. Instead, I chose to include the Seal Dragons, who can retire units just as well for a lower Counterblast cost, albeit one that must be a Seal Dragon, hence the extensive number of Seal Dragons in the deck, including Kersey's drop-and-draw effect, triggers, Perfect Guards, and 10000-power vanillas. In fact, Embodiment of Armor, Bahr could easily be replaced by Seal Dragon, Flannel with minimal consequence. Kimnara and Gattling Claw Dragon also are included in this deck, not only to retire boosters, but also to add units to the Soul if needed for Cruel Dragon's Soulblast. Bellicosity Dragon naturally adds pressure to the opponent by giving me the potential to Counterblast more and retire additional units.

The ability to superior ride this card with reduced power when your Grade 2 is also a nice bonus, because an early Twin Drive Check gives an extra card early-game to guard or attack with. At such an early stage in the game, the power drop rarely matters since your opponent will be at Grade 1 or 2 at this time. This was why I chose Seal Dragon, Terrycloth as my starting Vanguard over the more traditional Lizard Soldier, Conroe. If the first damage I take in the game is a Seal Dragon, I can use Terrycloth to quickly trigger Cruel Dragon's Superior Ride. Of course, my opponent has the opportunity to find a dangerous Grade 2 to superior call, but to me the destruction of an important attacker/booster and the extra card in my hand are well worth that risk. I generally prefer using another retiring unit to trigger Cruel Dragon's superior ride, though, especially Seal Dragon Corduroy, who does not need to leave the field to activate its retiring effect. It is also possible to superior break ride this card on Dauntless Drive Dragon immediately after riding it, but I dislike using extra cards in my hand to re-ride once my Vanguard is already Cruel Dragon and thus rarely use this trick, but it's preference on whether it should be done.

The card images used on this site have been obtained and reposted from the Cardfight!! Vanguard Official Portal Site (http://cf-vanguard.com/), in accordance to the guidelines stated there. Re-use of these images (re-post, distribution) is strictly prohibited.
© Bushiroad All Rights Reserved.

Celestials

 Hello everyone, Team Fairy Tail’s Natsu here and I wanted to start off our blog by looking at one of my new favorite archetypes from Set 11.  We're going to look at Celestials. For this article, I'll show my build of Celestials and then I'll go over each card as well as the Celestials that were left out (although there aren't many) and how the deck plays.

Grade 0
First Aid Celestial, Penuel  x1 (Starter)
Care Celestial, Tamiel x4 (Stand)
Celestial, Landing Pegasus x4 (Draw)
Healing Celestial, Ramiel x4 (Heal)
Punishment Celestial, Shamihaza x4 (Critical)

Ok, so I run a 4 of each trigger set up for my deck, although you can also run 8 crit with 0 stand since this is a game ruled with preference for a lot of decks.  I, personally, am a fan of the stand trigger because of the main card Zerachiel's effect, but I'll get into that later.  The starter First Aid Celestial Penuel is probably (in my opinion) the best of the Angel Feather starters out there.  For her skill you can put her into the soul in order to superior call one face up Celestial from your damage zone to your field and then you move the top card of your deck to your damage zone face down.  She works very well for grabbing any units that you may have needed that unfortunately went to your damage zone at some point throughout the game, or for calling a unit that you put in your damage zone in order to get a unit with a higher guard. If you want, she can also work fairly well with Sariel who I'll get more into when we get to the grade 2s of the deck.


Grade 1
Adamantine Celestial, Aniel x4 (Perfect Guard)
Marking Celestial, Arabaki x4  
Underlay Celestial, Hesediel x4
Battle Cupid, Nociel x3

So for Grade 1s we'll start with Arabaki, who is the standard 7k G1 who, when she attacks if you have a Celestial Vanguard becomes a 10k attacker.  She's pretty good if your running low on units or if your front rear guard gets taken out and you’re low on Grade 2/3 units, since even if she can't hurt 11k+ vanguards on her own, she can still attack rear guards.  She also can provide for a good early game attack as well, so then if you run a stand and drive check it, it won't go to waste.  The next grade 1 is Hesedial who in my personal opinion is the best grade 1 in the deck.  She's a 6k base who, when you have Zerachiel in your damage zone, becomes a 9k during your turn.  With this build, I've been able to consistently get Zerachiel in my damage zone relatively easily, so she's pretty consistent. Not to mention that with Zerachiel's limit break this can be a 12k unit that's a booster, which can allow you to swing for consistent high numbers.  The last unit I run for grade 1 is Battle Cupid Nociel.  She's not a Celestial, which can potentially cause an issue if she gets damage checked, but since angel feathers are all about controlling the damage zone this will very rarely, if ever, be a problem. Her skill is when you guard with her you can damage swap, which allows you to have an extra way to put your Zerachiel in your damage zone if you can't draw your Sariel in time and you just so happen to get 2 Zerachiel in your hand.  For those who want a pure Celestial deck, you can also run Order Celestial, Yeqon, who is a 7k.  When you call her if you have Zerachiel in your damage zone, she allows you to drop and draw.  I personally have nothing against this unit, but I prefer Nociel in order to make sure I can have the Zerachiel in my damage zone.


Grade 2
Candle Celestial, Sariel x4
Essence Celestial, Becca x3
Wildshot Celestial, Raquel x3

Now for my grade 2s, I run 4 Candle Celestial, Sariels, she has 8k power and on call can counter blast 1 and then you chose any angel feather from your deck and put it into your damage zone, afterwards you then select a face up angel feather from your damage zone and send it to the drop zone. This unit is very essential to the deck as it's usually what's going to add your copy of Zerachiel to your damage zone.  The other good thing about this unit is that, if you play any non-Celestial units in your deck using her ability, you can send those to the drop zone in order to clear up space for Zerachiel's +5k ability.  Not only that but her effect puts a card into your damage zone, therefore allowing all of the Pegasus, Calamity Flame, and Shamshiel +2k abilities to go off, allowing you to hit magic numbers if you chose to run her in other decks.  Her ability can also put your Metatron superior ride pieces into your damage zone allowing you to later use their effects to power up your Vanguard.  Overall this is a great unit for Angel Feathers since every build can easily utilize her ability to their advantage.  The next unit I run is Becca who is just your standard grade 2 10k vanilla so there's not much to discuss there.  The last unit I run is Raquel. She's the standard grade 2 9k base who, when attacking while there's a Vanguard of her archetype, becomes a 12k attacker. What makes her so amazing, however, is that with Zerachiel's limit break she becomes a 15k attacker without boost allowing her to harass most rear guards for needing a 10k shield or 10k vanguards.


Grade 3
Prophecy Celestial, Ramiel x4
Solidify Celestial, Zerachiel x4

For the grade 3s, Zerachiel is an 11k base unit one of the first 11k base units of Angel Feather's and the main card of this deck/archetype.  Her limit break is a limit break of 4 and the only other requirement is simply having another copy of her face up in your damage zone.  With this, all of your Celestials gains 3k power, herself included.  This means that your opponent is going to need, at minimum, an extra 5k guard for each of your attacks if you have boosters and if your field is full, that's an extra 15k total.  This also means that on your turn she becomes a 14k unit allowing her to hit any Vanguard without the need for a boost.  The only downside to this ability is that you need a face up copy in your damage zone, so that's essentially a damage that you can't CB and of course you need 4 damage to keep it in effect, so if you drive check a heal trigger when you're at 4 damage and it has to go off, then the power up disappears.  The last ability of this unit is what seems to be an eventual standard of CB 2 Celestial units: to give it +5k until the end of the turn, which can allow your vanguard push to be even harder; although the ability will only go off at most twice in a fight, since you need your Zerachiel in your damage zone to remain face up for the limit break.  One more thing to mention about this unit is that its ability is what makes stands work well.  I am usually not a big fan of stand triggers in most decks, however, with stand triggers in this deck, thanks to her ability, your already powered up unit will be able to attack again and almost always (with the exception of Sariel) require your opponent to drop another 10k guard thanks to the 3k from Zerachiel.

The other grade 3 I run is Ramiel, who is the other 11k base unit for Angel Feathers.  She's their new break ride and she has two good abilities.  The first being whenever she attacks a Vanguard she's a 13k attacker allowing for her to hit any Vanguard without a boost.  The second being when you ride an Angel Feather on top of her, that Angel Feather gets +10k for the turn and you can take any card in your damage zone (face up or face down) and add it to your hand, then you take the top card of your deck and put it into your damage zone face up.  This ability isn't as good as some of the other break ride units out there, but it does allow you to get a free card, which is nice and allows you to get any card you may have needed that was damage checked, especially if you had 2 cards sent to your damage zone that you wanted (since your starter gets you a card as well).  The other good thing about this unit is that she's an 11k base.  Now while that may seem ok at first, one one card to remember is Hesediel who, when you have Zerachiel in your damage zone, is a 9k booster, this allows for you have a 20k rear guard column with this unit and not only that, but if Zerachiel's limit break is active, you then have a 26k column which can very easily overwhelm 11k vanguards.

Overall Angel Feathers benefited quite a lot from set 11 with their new archetype and this is personally my favorite of all the new archetypes since it allows for a constant pressure with your entire field turn after turn.  It also already has several cards that can allow you to get Zerachiel in your damage zone relatively easily, but more important: consistently, since at the end of the day one of the most important things about a deck is its ability to be consistent because consistency is what will win games.

The card images used on this site have been obtained and reposted from the Cardfight!! Vanguard Official Portal Site(http://cf-vanguard.com/), in accordance to the guidelines stated there. Re-use of these images(re-post, distribution) is strictly prohibited.
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