Card of the Week: December 5th

Hello loyal readers! Despite the onset of finals week and the ever-growing pressure to devote my time to studying, I have broken through and delivered yet another week of Card of the Week. So without too much of a sob story, I present to you:

Wings of Annihilation, Blade Wing Tibold

[Stride] (Released when both players' vanguards are grade 3 or greater!)-Stride Step-[Choose one or more cards with the sum of their grades being 3 or greater from your hand, and discard them]Stride this card on your (VC) from face down.
[AUTO]:When this unit is placed on (VC), If you have a heart card with "Blade Wing" in its card name, return all the cards from your drop zone to your deck, and shuffle your deck. Then, if the number of cards in your soul is fifteen or more, until end of turn, this unit gets "[CONT](VC):All of your rear-guards in the front row gets [Power]+10000.", and if not, Soul Charge (5).

Oh boy is this guy really something. I know we got a lot of Monthly Bushiroad spoilers earlier today, but honestly I'm much more excited about this guy than any of those cards. Not only does he support an all-time favorite clan of mine (Dark Irregulars), he also breaths new light into Blade Wing Reijy, and old and decrepit card from Set 7 that didn't even see play when he was released. With the onset of FC2015 Winter, however, he has become his own deck type. Aside from Tibold, Dark Irregulars also got Blade Wing Sullivan who, having been one of the very first Fighter's Collection reveals, was drastically underwhelming. Tibold, however, fixed all of his issues.

First off, he is a deck refresher. Genesis originally got a card like this in the form of Dreaming Dragon and it was a god-send to the clan. Not only did it remedy the issue of the clan decking out from all of its soul charging, it also added a layer of skill by making it so your choices of soul blasting actually mattered, since they were going to end up back in the deck. Tibold adds all of this to Dark Irregulars, but more consistently, as a stride is much more available than a 4-of in your deck.

The rest of his skill follows the Dark Irregular motif of "X soul yields this effect, Y soul yields this effect." If you have 15 soul (the clan's go-to threshold), then your front row Rear Guards get 10,000 Power. This is incredible with stand triggers (which he can put back into the deck), and is essentially a free Conquest Dragon... that can be used 4 times.


If you don't have 15 soul, which is very likely, then you simply Soul Charge 5. Yes. five. Haven't hit the threshold yet? Ok, here's a third of it. Sadly he doesn't combo with Doreen, since these soul charges happen during the Stride Phase rather than the Main Phase, but he doesn't need to. This skill not only turbo's through your soul to hit the 15 threshold (for both himself and Gilles de Rais), but he also combo's with Blade Wing Sullivan. If Sullivan is your Vanguard and you have 15 soul or more, all of your guards gain 10,000 shield. This means a single trigger will 1-pass an unboosted Stride. How incredible is that? The downside is you have to Soul Blast 2 after he's attacked while this skill is active, which usually means 1 or 2 turns (at most) of its use before you deck out. But with Tibold, you can continuously refresh your deck and soul to turn it into a grind game. And if you soul blast your triggers for Sullivan? They just go right back into the deck with Tibold. Just look at his art; He's already laughing at your opponent for even trying to oppose him.

Tibold is great at all stages of the game. And, since he isn't GB-anything restricted, he can be your first stride. You can use him to spike your soul count in a pinch (as opposed to Kisskill Lira, who has to hit and can be blocked), to pump up your Rear Guards, or to prevent deck out late-game. One of the biggest issues Dark Irregulars had with their newest support is that they only had 1 or 2 turns of sitting at 15 soul before they decked out, meaning they only had 1 (2 turns if you're lucky) of being able to use Gilles de Rais. If an opponent wasn't at 3 damage (4 for the insta-kill), Gilles wasn't actually pressuring them too much. Especially if you soul charged a lot of your triggers and knew you weren't going to hit them. There was nothing worse than staring down a 2-damage opponent knowing you only had 1 turn left in you. However, Tibold remedies that by letting you drag the mid-game out as long as you need to before going in for the kill. He is the perfect disciple to the unholy Lord Gilles.