Deck Spotlight: Budget Brave (Royal Paladin)

So after me asking on the Budgetfight discord what my next post should be, mah boi Phantast said he wanted an updated Brave list on the blog. So, with the help of Phantast, Bluish, and Verz , we worked out a final list and a post. Now, I present to you budget Brave in 2k17!

Glancing at the market, Brave at first seems like a money deck due to the expensive Royals stuff. Blasters and Sanc Guard have caused some of the generic stuff to be stupidly expensive, and hard to get for budget players. Thankfully, a lot of the Brave-specific support was practically untouched by this market inflation, and is easy for players to get. In addition to being way cheaper than most Royals decks, it's strong. Sure, it's overshadowed by Sanc Guard and Blasters, but it can still be a tough deck to beat.

Deck Spotlight: Jewel Knight Rush (Royal Paladin)

Jewel Knights is that one deck that everyone wants because WAIFU, but it never really seems worth the price tag to actually buy. With Swordmy being $10, Asheli "Reverse" being $4, and the G Unit being around $4, it really starts to add up. It doesn't help that alot of the generic Royal Paladin stuff is incredibly expensive, thanks to Blaster and Sanc.

Budget Deck: Royal Paladin (Garmore)

So when I first looked at Garmore, I was kind of underwhelmed. The first skill needs the deck to run a ton of High Beasts for the skill to go off consistently, and the second skill is a slightly better Ebraucus. In addition, the GB2 restriction on the first skill seemed unnecessary and slow. G3 Garmore isn't great either and has a weak base, so that didn't help.

Most adorable doggo ever

After testing, I proved myself to be wrong about it being bad. Giving an entire formation power and getting a crit for essentially no cost is amazing. The dual-blast call can help build up a formation easy. Sure, G3 Garmore has a weak base and I don’t use his skills, but the skills don’t matter when I stride every turn. In addition, the weak base unlocks access to Madew and Valancher. Royals have a great generic stride lineup, so even is Garmore doesn't work out you aren't completely screwed.

Unfortunately, there is no way (that I’m aware of) to search out Garmore. Welp, I guess Altmile works as a backup.

Budget Deck: Royal Paladin (Altmile)

When you realized you never have written about Altmile. Ever.

And I'm gonna fix that issue now.

BAMF

I never really liked Altmile. Mostly because I didn't like Shion as a character, but also because his Stride Bonus was a bit underwhelming. +5000 Power to two units isn't bad(it's actually pretty damn good), but it's not much compared to the hard plus that other Stride Bonuses provide. But after awhile he's gotten some nice support and bathed in the other generic support that Royal Paladin has gotten. And after playing the deck for awhile he started to grow on me.

But I hate Brave. I cannot justify a mechanic that gives you bonuses only when you are in a losing position. I can't. Especially when all of the brave skills are rendered useless the moment you triple drive check. Yes, there are some good Brave cards but I can't bring myself to build solely around the mechanic. I just can't.

So, as a note, I'm not building this Altmile deck around Brave. I'll be taking the good brave stuff, like Suleiman and Selim, and putting it together with generic Royal Paladin support, like Benon. It's gonna be great. And cheap.

Deck Spotlight: 1-Trick Paladins feat. Spear People (Grade 1 Rush)

Amazing Character

Art

Grade 1 Rush is THE most hated rush deck and I'm pretty sure it's what started the hate for rush decks. By being able to hit pretty high numbers with just Grade 1s, the board is all set up for victory. Against any Stride or Legion deck G1 Rush will dominate the matchup. The strength of the deck lies in that any opening hand and anything you draw can be called and contributed to the rush. And if you choose to play the Liberator variant, you could be defensive as hell too.

Although while they ARE annoying, Grade 1 Rush deck isn't nearly as potent as it used to be. The meta is just unfavorable for it at the moment.  But if GB and Legion-based decks start to become meta and more popular, Grade 1 Rush will become more successful.

Deck Spotlight: The Real OG Royal Paladins (Alfred Early)

The young King of Knights!

Deck Spotlight is a new idea of mine. Probably won't be seen too much, but it's here now. 

So Verz was looking through the Japanese recent toppings and came across a Royal Paladin deck list that ran the original Gancelot and Alfred Early. He shared it with the guys on Discord and I thought the deck was pretty silly and only topped because of the pilot and trigger checks, but after giving it some thought I saw how it could actually work well. The actual deck was pretty wonky, since it was a Japanese deck list, so I changed it a bit to fit me. And to make it budget.

For you Royal Paladin players who wish to revive your old cards, I present to you The Real OG Royal Paladins!

Tips: Blaster Engine

Llew and Friends are finally back with

even more blaster support!

With the release of GBT-06 Royal Paladin decks got a HUGE boost of power with the new Favored Pupil of Light and Dark, Llew. It tutors any Grade 2 Blaster at the cost of itself during the battle phase. It is just plain awesome. And guess what? There isn't that little Generation Break restriction on it. Think of it like a Knight of Twin Sword, but with loads more utility.

The only problem about Llew? Blaster Blade is about $15-20 (Lucky you if you held on to your copies all these years.) But fear not! Your wallets will be safe, my fellow Royal Paladin players, and you will not be denied your new support. We have another, more budget-friendly option.

Budget Deck: Royal Paladins (Sanctuary Guard)

Oh my God I have been so looking forward to writing this.

Sanctuary Guard, an Archtype that has been out for a very long time now (Withought any direct support) suddenly got an amazing new support in FC 2015. Holy Dragon, Sanctuary Guard Regalie is a fantastic card. No, like seriously. It's one of the best Strides in the game so far. A deck focused on this guy can be scary, and due to the reason that most of their cards aren't foils (RR or higher) this build is fairly budget.

The only problem? Sanctuary Guard Dragon is $20 and the most consistent way to call Grade 1s to the field right now is Swordmy who has a fairly expensive price right now and sucks at being available.

Because of that I have, during the past few months, been looking for another consistent way to search out Grade 1s and, apparantly, RP has more than one ways of doing that. It was preety easy building a deck withought Swordmy.


The only problem left was how to bypass the original Sanctuary Guard Dragon... And I tried out a Sanctuary Guard deck with only Guarantee, and while the 10k base does hurt, I don't care. It worked a lot better than I expected. While Dragon does work better, this is equally as good. This deck, my friends, is the incarnation of pure rushing. Welcome to Sanctuary Regalie.

Budget Deck: Royal Paladins (Ezzel)

The damn original boss of
RP is now revived!

Are you an old school player who decided to pick up the game again? Do you have copies of the original Alfred and you wanna revive your old RP deck? Well then. This is the deck for you! The first ever Legion Revival we (ever) got, King of Knights' Vanguard,Ezzell is a Legion Revival for, guess what! Alfred! I honestly thought that this wouldn't be a thing... I never imagined that Alfred would ever come back... (The original at least) and look at what we have here! Wow. Bushitroll does some decent stuff once in a while.

Originally, my Ezzel deck consisted of Seeker hybrids. Until... G Comic Booster 1: Vanguard & Deletor decided to come out, and gave us a bunch of new stuff that I can work with. Honestly I was a bit annoyed because... well, I posted this like a week before that got officially confirmed.

Then I was saved by how crappy this set was.

There's next to nothing useful in this set. All they did was release a bunch of really horrible cards for people who wanted to use the Alfred deck again. The only cards that were actually worth a little were: Holy Squire Dragon (Possibly), Galehalt, and Eluron (ESPECIALLY Eluron). Then again, this set was a blessing in disguise. It reprinted Madew, Iseult, Ezzel and Alfred original for us as Rs, making their price drop very significantly.