CFV - Diablo/Deathspray Deck Jul16

I've secretly played Diablo since he came out in the Legend Deck but the guy seemingly just never took off, most of us pretty sure thought the new "Diablo" support would make him relevant but honestly? Not really...instead I thought his GB2 skill had really good synergy with Deathspray Dragon, an ugly common and long behold my hypothesis was correct as this deck has probably the only Shadow Paladin deck topping here and there since G-BT06.

Grade 4:

4 Dark Dragon, Phantom Blaster "Diablo" 

3 Dark Dragon, Spectral Blaster "Diablo"

1 Supremacy Black Dragon, Aurageyser Doomed

2 Supremacy Black Dragon, Aurageyser Dragon

1 Dark Dragon, Distress Dragon

1 Dark Knight, Grim Recruiter

1 Air Element, Sebreeze

1 Dark Knight, Ludvik

2 Metal Element, Scryew

Grade 3:

4 Blaster Dark "Diablo" (BDD)

3 Deathspray Dragon

Grade 2: 

4 Black Chain Flame Dance Formation, Hoel

3 Dark Night Maiden, Macha

3 Dark Saga Painter

2 Skull Witch, Nemain

Grade 1:

4 Karma Collector (Sentinel)

3 Pitch Black Sage, Charon

3 Black Chain Spirit Dance Formation, Kahedin

2 Dark Heart Trumpeter

2 Cherishing Knight, Branwen (Stride Fodder)

Grade 0:

4 Revenger, Undead Angel (Critical)

4 Leaping Knight, Ligan Lumna (Critical)

4 Howl Owl (Draw)

4 Flatbau (Heal)

1 Promising Knight, David (Starter)

The deck is rather easy to play, essentially a bunch of "good" cards put together to abuse the synergy between the Phantom Blaster, Blaster Dark and Death Spray's abilities. When playing any Shadow Paladin deck, your opponent must have at least 2 units on the field at all times otherwise they're in threat of being unable to guard a Phantom Blaster attack with 2 criticals and if you're on Blaster Dark they'll need 3 units to be safe because Blaster Dark retires a unit when you stride Phantom Blaster over him. This is info your opponent will know if they've played against Shadow Paladins. Deathspray has a very simple ability; at the end of its battle you can retire one of your rear-guards to retire one of your opponent's rear-guards. In essence he gives an extra retire. If your opponent didn't prepare for Deathspray or couldn't and didn't have 4 rear-guards on the field, this is a potential game ending turn with Phantom Blaster. This is the "cheesy" play and the concept of how this deck "works".

If your opponent understands the concept then he will always leave 4 rear-guards on the field so you can't "cheese" him. This is where the deck "works", it's kinda a big mind game where you play around your opponent knowing how your deck functions so when your opponent commits to a full field of rear-guards to prevent the cheese you don't stride in to Phantom Blaster and instead go in to something else usually Spectral Blaster. The theory here is because your opponent dropped cards on to the field he'll likely have less cards to guard with in this case you can take advantage of that by going in to something like Spectral Blaster which restands or Doomed and Distress Dragon to reduce their card advantage.

This is probably the only competitive way to play Shadow Paladins as the clan in general has deteriorated a lot, its definitely no top tier deck but still competes fairly well against decks that require setup.

Strengths:

• Field control
• Able to play against/around annoying decks such as CBD, Nociel & Overlords by controlling the field (retire your own units for pluses before they retire/lock yours)
• Variety of stride options
• Cheese potential

Weaknesses:

• Somewhat combo reliant so it can be slow to set up correctly and disrupted.
• GB reliant therefore weak early game and dies to rush (thus why I draw triggers and Nemains are played, get that card advantage to survive the early game)
• Slow to gain card advantage (unlike say Nociel where that can go +5 a turn)

*Notes:

• I only play 3 Deathspray so that if I ever need to G-assist the chance of riding Blaster Dark is higher.
• Nemains are used to generate card advantage in the early game as well as deck filtering, remove them if you don't care about grade 1-3 turns.
• G-zone can be modified, play whatever you want as long as you have 4 Phantom Blaster, 2 Spectral Blaster, 1 Doomed and 1 Aurageyser.