Royal Paladins: Soul Saver Dragon

The english version of Vanguard has finally reached set two, which would usually bring up a lot of questions about what the best decks are. Luckily, set two is when the japanese version of the game started having regionals and a their National tournament, and every single one of them were won by the same clan: Royal Paladin. More specifically, these decks were based on Royal Paladins all are focused around activating the ability of a certain card known as Soul Saver Dragon.

The Royal Paladin's are a clan composed mainly of Knights and mythical creatures such as Elves and Nymphs. They are focused around calling out allies and gaining power from or giving power to other Royal Paladin units. Of course, Soul Saver Dragon is a unit that really shows off the potential of giving power.

As you can see, Soul Saver can give up to 3 of your rear guards an extra 5000 power and gains 3000 power when attacking a Vanguard (with a 7000 point boost, that brings it up to 20000) and if you've managed to deal damage earlier, it's not that hard to end the game when you ride it.

Of course, it's ability comes at a cost of 5 units from the soul, but that is easily doable thanks to the Barcgal/Llew combo (most of you probably know what that is, but if not, here's a quick reminder). When you ride a Royal Paladin unit on top of Barcgal, Barcgal can call itself as a rear guard. Then, you can rest Barcgal in order to call a Flogal or a Llew from the deck. Assuming your opponent can't retire any of your units in their first turn (if you're first) or second turn (if they go first), then you will be able to call out both Flogal and finish the combo. Llew's skill is a counterblast (1) that sends Flogal, Barcgal, and itself to the soul when you have a Grade 1 Vanguard in order to ride Blaster Blade from the deck. The Vanguard stack now consists of 5 cards. Blaster Blade, Flogal, Barcgal, Llew, and whatever the grade one is. As soon as you ride a Grade 3, there are 5 in soul.

Basically, this combo is hard to avoid and is now very powerful. In set one, it would usually be better to call and keep Flogals for boosting, unless you had no other Grade 2 units, since they would help more in the long run. Now, Barcgal is even more dangerous, quickly filling up the soul for Soul Saver Dragon.

Of course, even though all of the Regionals and the summer Nationals were won by the same basic deck, there were some differences in the cards that the decks used. A general build looks something like

4 King of Knights Alfred

2 Soul Saver Dragon

1 Knight of Conviction Bors

4 Knight of Silence Gallatin

3 Blaster Blade

3 Covenant Knight Randolf

2 Knight of Truth Gordon

4 Little Sage Marron

4 Pongal

4 Isolde

2 Soul Guiding Elf

4 Bringer of Good Luck Epona

4 Yggdrasil Maiden Elaine

4 Future Knight Llew

4 Flogal

1 Barcgal

One of the pluses of the deck is its consistency. With Barcgal, riding to Grade 2 is pretty much guaranteed, and Pongal allows you to search for the Grade 3 Soul Saver. This means that as long as you have a Grade 1 at the start, which is almost guaranteed, you won't have to worry about Grade troubles.

This consistency seems to be the main reason that Royal Paladins were so popular, but Soul Saver's ability is definitely still powerful and consistent. With set 3, Barcgal was banned from being starting Vanguard, due to Royal Paladin's superiority to other clans, throwing off the Soul Saver combo, and requiring more Barcgal's to be run.

Overall, Royal Paladins are a very powerful clan and will definitely be making an impact.