Flash Shield, Iseult is the perfect guard I use in my Royal Paladin deck. I provided a link to it's wikia page. Everyone should be aware of perfects guards. For those of you that may be new though, they are all basically the same, the only difference between them is the clan they can protect.
I am going to come right out and give my opinion, I believe everyone should be playing 4 perfect guards regardless of which deck you are playing. Generally, the perfect guard is one of the more expensive cards in any given deck. I believe people have been trying to justify buying/trading for less of them in order to cut down the price. While you might get away with using 2 for a little bit, everyone should set their end goal to obtain 4 copies for a deck they are planning to use for a while.
A lot of people that choose the 2-3 perfect guard approach use the argument that they cause you to lose hand advantage. I have to question the common sense of people who say this. They have to be using perfect guards wrong. You are only supposed to use a perfect guard when it would take you 2 cards to block an attack anyway. Even then it is usually best to hold onto your perfect guard until there is a point where you cannot risk your opponent hitting a trigger.
Lets try an example. For instance, I drop a Soul Saver Dragon and boost 3 of my rearguards including my Pongal (7K power, now 12K power) that is behind my vanguard. With the boost that Soul Saver gives itself (3K), and the 12K boost that Pongal will give, I am swinging for 25K on that one attack and your vanguard is just a standard 10K power grade 3. Let's now say that you already have 5 damage, so this attack cannot hit. So you have to plan for the worse, me hitting 2 triggers. In order to block me for sure, you have to block for 40K because I could potentially hit up to 35K power. However, in order for you to block for this much you would have to drop 3 10K blockers from your hand or even more cards if you have to use 5K blockers. Instead though, you could just use 2 cards and block with a perfect guard.
Some might say, sure, that's why I have 2-3 perfect guards. Well I am here to tell you that you need 4 in order to consistently have one available just in case. At my last tournament I ended up winning game 3 in a Royal Paladin mirror match because I had 3 of my 4 perfect guards. My opponent dropped his Soul Saver Dragon and all three of his units were hitting at least 20K. He swung all three into my vanguard. I let the first rearguard hit since I only had 4 damage, but that hit gave me 5. He then attacked with his vanguard and I perfect guarded (I discarded another perfect guard for the cost, leaving me with 1 more perfect guard in hand). He was lucky enough however to hit a critical trigger and a heal trigger. If I hadn't used a perfect guard I would have lost. While he was not able to heal 1 damage he was still able to put 10K power and an extra critical onto his final rearguard. I do not remember specifically how much that rearguard was swinging for but it was a massive amount of power. Good thing I was lucky enough to have that third perfect guard. On my next turn I was able to land the last two hits I needed to win the game.
While in that situation 2 perfect guards would have sufficed, the extra perfect guard served as really good fodder for one of the discards. I also probably wouldn't have even had 2 in hand if I was not running 4. While this situation might seem extreme, it actually did happen. Expect similar situations to occur in your own battles and I hope you are prepared. Always be prepared, always assume the worst. It wins games.
While I intended to write more of an unbiased pro/con article, it kind of got away from me. If you are already running 4 perfect guards, good for you. For those of you who aren't, I hope this article has given you something to think about. If you think I overlooked some detail or just want to share your opinion/experiences with perfect guards please leave a comment and let me know. Thanks for reading this edition of The Fight!
No comments:
Post a Comment