Card of the Day 12/10/12 - Convicting Dragon, Chrome Jailer Dragon

Another sac 2 to get +10000 and +1 crit unit, and this one has a Persona Blast that gives you units to sac!

I love it

In terms of cost, this is the better deal over Blaster Dragon, since retire 3 is typically too steep versus the cost of dropping a perfect defense card to keep the attack from hitting. (Hence why SDD was so great, screwing over the Blaster Dragon counter.) But in the greater context of things, this card doesn't have the same level of consistent support from Nemain and Badhabh Caar. Persona blast isn't necessarily consistent since you need one of three cards remaining in the deck after your ride to use it, unlike with PBD where you had probably six and maximum eight different instances of putting the opponent behind in card advantage at that stage of the game. And Chromejailer clashes with existing Black Horse support because he can't be searched by Black Dragon Whelp, while also taking up grade 3 slots that you'd probably give to Garmore or Charger in an SDD deck.

You also can't play damage control with Chromejailer the way that you can Blaster Dragon. The Shadow Paladins can basically take two or three damage and then sit on it for most of the game by guarding earlier while the opponent desperately tries to not take a sixth damage point. Just by comparison to BT04 ShadowPala, Chromejailer lacks defense for being base 10000, but the era of 11-and-up vanguards is basically over unless (until) BT10/11 revitalizes it because everyone and their mother is getting or has gotten a Susanoo and other toys like Narukami's sealed units that turn defensive vanguards into pushovers.

Phantom Blaster opens up the field in a way that Chrome doesn't. You can deal with terrible Caar calls and putting Nemain down because it doesn't matter what you're killing, it matters that you can replace it. Being able to have three options for units to put down after retiring is more flexible than two--if you want to retire a backrow unit with Chrome, you suddenly can only get rid of one front row unit, and there are a plethora of ways that this could go very very bad very very quickly.

Getting into the raw deal, let's assume there's no persona blast at first; you retire 2, call your replacements and attack, the opponent drops Iseult and discards 1 for her skill. You retired 2, they dropped 2, you break even.

Then, factoring in the persona blast, you've called 2 and retired 2 but because you had to discard a card to use it, you've still lost one card. On the opposite side of the board, the opponent's Iseult has caused them to lose two cards. Like Phantom Blaster, Chromejailer lets you can protect an existing lead in card advantage because if the opponent was at +0 and you were at +1 beforehand, then being at -2 is a worse position than being at -1, they have less cards to play, they're more strained to defend later on, and unless they check draw triggers you can keep on doing this each turn without ever persona blasting again, simply protecting your lead by only losing as many cards as them per turn until the opponent gives out. Keep in mind that many of the top competitive decks on the Japanese side right now run 12 crits and will never see a draw trigger checked in any of their games. (And unlike PBD, Chromejailer isn't relying on a rearguard attack versus interceptors before his attack to defend the lead. Golds actually have room for Tripp too, unlike Shadows who just can't find room for Lancer without it being awkward.)

I wasn't such a fan of this guy when I first saw him, but I think I've warmed up to the pseudo-Phantom Blaster. Not as an avatar card or anything, he's too much of a goody two-shoes compared to Blaster and even his reincarnation Vortidragon, but maybe this will provide a model for the Shadow Paladin's return? I'm not really sure what he has to do with Duke lore-wise, but at least Studio TMS can animate him, right? That's gotta be an improvement over Duke.

Ride 101 Spoiler:

Right as I thought it was safe to shake my fist at GoPala forever and stick with the Nostalgia Paladins, they get something cool grumble grumble get off my lawn you gaudy PintoPalas.

If one can warn me when my job'll be taken, that'll be nice.

And yes, this card's that amazingly awesome, and yes I don't care that it nearly invalidates PBD. Hell, nobody does.