Royal Paladin defeats the Crossride!

Using a Royal Paladin deck after set 5 has been fixed by the addition of Wingal Brave making your deck that much more powerful.

You have 2 10k Grade 2 Rearguard's Available 1 13k Grade 3 Rearguard and 1 12k Grade 3 Rearguard. Along with that you have Majesty Lord Blaster and King of Knight's, Alfred.

So against DOTE you have Palamedes with Wingal Brave behind it. an Alfred with nothing behind it and another line with Gallatin with a Marron behind it... you now have 3 18k lines against a 13k Vanguard.

Meaning every turn your opponent either takes damage or guards for 10k every hit.  Meaning 30k Shield every turn at 5 damage minimum assuming you have 0 Triggers in your deck. They will Kimnara the Marron but not the Wingal Brave simply because it's not a minus to you and is easily replaceable. So now you replace the Marron using Alfred's' effect with another Marron... your opponent is out 5k shield or a 6k boost... Once again they have to take 30k Shield to block again.

So you can now run a Majesty Lord Blaster deck with backup vanguard of Alfred. But Alfred actually is also a good Rearguard because with your multiple 8 and 9k boosters you can still hit magic numbers on a Crossride and also Alfred's effect works from the Rearguard. Meaning the only bad Rearguard in the deck would be Majesty Lord Blaster.

being able to threaten a 13k Vanguard with either a double critting Majesty Lord that will kill if it hits most of the time or a 18k on attack Alfred without a boost letting you hold the equivalent of a 5k shield in hand at all times. Not to mention every line you have normally will be hitting for 18k or more at all times. Your opponent's 13k Defense won't be that big of a boost when it's still 10k to block... Palamedes without a boost is still 5k to block so nasty. Run that with Either Stand Triggers or Critical Triggers (Doesn't really matter but Critical's are Preferred to force 2 trigger blocks whenever your opponent is a 4 damage).

Alfred as the secondary or primary Vanguard gives you a way to absolutely demolish 13k Vanguards regardless of what you ride. Hence Royal Paladin with an Alfred bend are a really good anti-crossride deck quite possibly the best as stopping Crossride advantage gains.

Next time i'll cover another equally good at making 18k line deck Dark Irregulars.

BTW got second a locals this weekend with Galahad Paladins (Only the grade 0-2). My only loss was to Spectral Duke... I murdered it game 1 and then Game 2 I got stuck at Grade 2 the entire game... He only won because of a lucky Heal Trigger as his 6th damage letting him get another turn. I did though block Spectral Duke's Limit Break twice that game while stuck with Grade 2 Galahad as the Vanguard. Game 3 we both got stuck at grade 2 for 1 turn each. So eh he went on to win the rest of his games... against my brother he got off Lop Ear and Dindrane drew a card got another Lop Ear and then a Pellinore wound up with a 12 card hand and Goku Blade couldn't really do anything about the stupid amounts of lucky advantage and retiring anything would be pointless because everything was free. Sooo dumb.

I had to beat my brother for second as that was also his only loss. Before the tournament he showed me how to beat Goku Blade with Royal Paladins as I had little practice (First time using the deck in tournament) both games were extremely fast.

 I played against Ryan Vignetti and early game double triggered (1 Crit and 1 Draw) him for game. Game 2 he saw that he was Locked at 0 and scooped.

 I also played against Shamshiel. She was doing relatively well at surviving she lived through so many turns but I had 17k Lines which are perfect against Shamshiel... a 22k Palamedes line and a 17k Alfred Line with a 20k Alfred swinging in everyturn. Not to mention her putting her Heal Triggers back in deck lowering her total guard. I raped the first game and game 2 she actually had me against the ropes... I couldn't block for the turn bar a heal trigger... I didn't heal all game she healed like 3 times... I set my hand down and declared no guard. Heal Trigger check. Stood my cards and wanted to declare Final Turn but with 4 Heal Triggers left in her deck and it being late game I didn't. Swung in and she couldn't block my 17k Alfred even after using Nociel to boost her Vanguard to 12k beforehand. So eh got second pulled a 5th Daiyusha and a 2nd Edel Rose. Traded for a lot of random Trade stuffs and got rid of a lot of my Yugioh stuff.

Then I unproxied my Dark Irregular deck and just built it with what I had... My brother unproxied his Nova Grapplers and with our 5 Azure Dragon's he was able to mostly build the deck anyway. Minus the full guards...

The Royal Paladin build I used for the tourney:
Grade 3: 7
2x Swordsman of Explosive Flames, Palamedes
2x Twin Shine Swordsman, Marhaus
3x King of Knights, Alfred

Grade 2: 12
4x Knight of Tribulations, Galahad
4x Knight of Silence, Gallatin
2x High Dog Breeder, Akane
2x Blaster Blade

Grade 1: 14
4x Knight of Quests, Galahad
2x Lake Maiden, Lien
1x Flash Shield, Iseult
3x Toypugal
4x Little Sage Marron

Grade 0: 17
1x Drangal
4x Alabaster Owl
4x Bringer of Good Luck, Epona
4x Weapons Dealer, Govanon
4x Yggdrasil Maiden, Elaine

Spectral Duke is an easy matchup if you can make 16k lines and guess what I can make easily... 16k lines... Heck I can Call Palamedes after I ride Alfred and then play Akane CB 2 grab Toypugal and put it behind Akane and then play any boost behind Palamedes including but not limited to Marron to make a 21k Line... meaning 10k minimum for 0 triggers on vanguard. 15k minimum on Palamedes and 10k minimum on Akane.. to block for 2 triggers to pass you need 20k on Vanguard meaning 45k Shield every turn or take 1 damage... if you do block for 2 triggers and I get a Crit... I give all effects to Palamedes now Palamedes requires 20k to block meaning the turn now requires 50k to block or you take 1 damage. Allowing for Final Turn declarations against a 6 card hand at 5 damage and a 5 card hand at 4 damage... If you counted checks and see that they are mostly 5k shields and maybe 2 10k shields they now cannot block the entire turn and must take a damage if at 4 damage with a 5 card hand I'd assume an unknown card is a 10k Shield as i should know at least 3 of the rest to be something... with 45k required to guard for 2 triggers to pass.

Now one thing I want people to remember... If an attack would take 2 cards to block for 2 triggers to pass Them using  a Full Guard takes the same amount of cards while saving them some shield. It also means that if they had 5 cards... they now have 3 if you know one of those 3 is a 5k shield... and swing they at max have 25k left and thats assuming you don't know the rest of their hand meaning they'll be down to zero cards. If your opponent had 5 damage you most likely won. Otherwise you'd have to know your opponent's turn...

BTW If you have 3 lines that each take 15k to block and your opponent is at 3 damage and overextended to put down lines assuming only 1 front row is a grade 2 and they have 3 cards in hand... You can win with a single trigger assuming no Full Guard. Swing in and they have to block 15k meaning at minimum 2 cards if they had a 5k shield and 2 10k shields in hand and 1 Intercepter... But if your vanguard forces 15k shield for 1 to pass... If you are running crits they would probably not guard... You check a crit and give another Line the power and crit the opponent. One of those lines that forced 15k now force 20k... They are at 5 damage.... If they put up both 10k's to block the giant line. they now cannot block the last line and lose... bar any trigger checks on their side. If you check two triggers if one is a crit you win even if they have 2 intercepters... If they put down two Grade 2's they can live the turn against a single trigger check but if it is a two trigger check they still lose. If they happened to not have any Triggers in hand and had all 5k shields they  need 15k to block the Vanguard swing if they don't block it and you crit they lose as they cannot guard both hits.

If your vanguard is Daiyusha and you have it boosted to 14k with 2 crit pre-battle. and have 2 lines that each force 10k against the same situation. Your opponent now has to block the Vanguard for 2 Triggers or else they will instantly lose with a single Trigger check. But that means if you got to 4 damage beforehand Glory Maker makes that a 24k Swing which against a 11k Vanguard means 15k shield for 1 to pass and 20k shield for 2 to pass. If you were able to boost Daiyusha to 26k for that turn you will force 20k for 1 to pass and 25k for 2 to pass... meaning that once against no matter how much they guard a single trigger is GG.

So in certain situations even in early game if you only have 30k Shield to block with against a deck running critical triggers you will have a bad time if they can make Rearguard Lines that each take half of your blocking.

Meaning It's reasonable to actually declare Final Turn early game against an opponent who overextended. Like they rode to grade 3 and had already taken 3 damage. They play out lines to even up the damage making. So looking at an opponents handsize... turn 1 They have 6 cards and ride now they have 5 in hand... You make them take 2 damage turn 1. Turn 2 they draw to 6 and ride to 2 they now have 5 in hand. they swing and get 1 card to hand putting them at 6. You make them take 1 damage turn 2 (They spend 1 card to guard that turn). Turn 3 they draw to 6 and ride to grade 3 at 5 cards. They call out 4 cards to swing with... down to 1 card... They swing in and deal some damage... check up to 3 cards in hand. Your turn they have 3 damage and 3 cards in hand. You crit them and give power to a rearguard that also makes a line... there is a chance they can't block the boosted hit and you can win early. Or you just double trigger them and they lose. Basically 3 damage and 3 cards in hand and you have lines that force 10k at minimum they go down to 0 cards in hand if you get any critical triggers you can win that turn. It's actually possible... so Kai isn't a demon just really really good and his opponent was really bad that time.