Monday, February 23, 2015

News: Shadow Paladin Stride "Dark Knight, Grim Recruiter" Revealed, Legend Deck Beginning Set

The Japanese products page updated today to reflect the upcoming Beginning Set for Legend Deck 01: The Dark “Ren Suzugamori,” due this April. Among the merchandise to be included in the Beginning Set is a triple rare print of the promotional card Dark Knight, Grim Recruiter. A counterpart to Royal Paladin's Shrouded Divine Knight Gablade, Recruiter's skill calls a grade 1 or less card rather than a grade 2. This makes for easy access to Shadow Paladin's burgeoning pool of supportive rearguards, primarily the on-call draw unit Black-winged Swordbreaker. If stridden neutrally, calling a Swordbreaker off of Recruiter and drawing is a net +2 in card advantage. This can alternately help fuel the retire skills of the clan's upcoming boss cards, or provide an intimidating pressure unit that gives the opponent an incentive to drop a perfect defense card on a high power center lane early in the fight, similar to how Gablade has been used in professional competition.

AUTO (Vanguard circle): When this unit's attack hits a vanguard, search your deck for up to one grade 1 or less card, call it to a rearguard circle, and shuffle that deck.

Thematically the card is a successor to the trigger units Grim Reaper and Grim Revenger of BT04 and TD10, but unlike those cards Recruiter is not of the demon race. Grim Recruiter may be an early promotional print of a stride from the booster set G-BT03, as Shadow Paladin is to be included in the G-booster and only one copy of Grim Recruiter will be in each Beginning Set.

The set will also include a storage box, deck box and Fighter's Counters each featuring Blaster Dark “Diablo” and Suzugamori Ren on one face, and Phantom Blaster “Diablo” on another. Ren and Dark “Diablo” will serve as the +5000 power counter, while Phantom Blaster “Diablo” will serve as the +10000 counter. The set will include 60 card sleeves, and will retail for 3500 yen, approximately $29.50 at the current exchange rate.