THIS IS NOT A DRILL

I REPEAT EVERYBODY THIS IS NOT A DRILL

ON THE 1ST OF JANUARY 2019

MY BABY GUST BLASTER DRAGON HAS BEEN REVEALED

NOW THIS IS HOW YOU START YOUR 2019 BITCHES

AND IT'S TIME TO LOOK AT THE DAMN CARD AND OVER ANALYSE IT AND GIVE MY FIRST IMPRESSIONS!

Gust Blaster Dragon
"Disappear and lose yourself! Gust Blast Stream!"
[AUTO](VC):When it attacks, COST [Counter Blast (1) & retire two rear-guards], draw a card, your opponent chooses one of his or her rear-guards, retires it, and this unit gets [Power]+10000 until end of turn.
[AUTO](VC):When your rear-guard is retired, if a grade 3 card with "Blaster" in its card name is in your soul, this unit gets [Criticial]+1 until end of turn.

DO YOU HEAR THAT?? IT'S THE SOUND OF ME NUTTING AT 1AM!!

I was fucking shocked when this got revealed. Apparently there was gonna be no COTD, but Bushi was like: "Nah b to start 2019 off right we'll give you motherfuckers Gust"

AND HERE WE ARE—

Okay, firstly, this card is really good. I know, it's a bit underwhelming considering it is a VR, but the card solves one of Shadow Paladin's main issues, and that is a terrible first ride. Your first ride of choice was Dark Dicc, purely because nothing else was better. Now that we have Gust, we can finally get rid of Dicc and ride Gust first for that sweet sweet first skill.

The first skill is good cuz it's a 1 for 1, meaning you and your opponent lose the same amount of cards overall. Converting field into hand advantage is really nice, as this lets you dig through your deck and turn Nemains you called from deck into something other than a 5k body that sits there looking pretty. It's not hard advantage (since you had to retire two to get the draw) but this soft advantage is welcome. He gets 10k as well, and this will mean you'll be swinging for 23k, which is very nice. With a Force on VG, you'll be swinging 33k, which will force 25k hard guard, and 45k for a no pass. That's either two heals and a card, or a lot of triggers. Boosting him with an 8k will be 41k, which will make it a 35k hard guard, and 55k for no pass. This is pretty crazy if your opponent doesn't have a PG, so having this be a first ride to either: Force them to NG so you can rip a couple crits and push or force a PG out early, making you less susceptible for the VG to be PG'd easily.

The second skill however... now this is a spicy one. Unless we can cheat a G3 Blaster into soul, you'll be using this skill 2nd ride onwards, and man does it bring some pressure. Off his skill alone, that is +2 Critical, making your vanguard a 23k/3c swing at minimum, and this is not counting the cards that can retire such as Fear Sword, Invest Falcon and Cursed Lancer. This kind of pressure is awesome, making your opponent PG the vanguard or hard guard this fucker or else they'll be slapped with three damage. Getting the crits can alleviate some pressure of ripping Critical from your drive check, so running 6c/6d is more viable than before, and the constant pressure sitting on Gust and reusing his ability is awesome. As I mentioned earlier, with a single Force on VG, you can force a lot of hard guard out of your opponent, and when your swinging for 3 Critical as well, it really does become PG or die.

Other cards that can proc the 2nd AUTO effects (your welcome):
Fear Sword Dragon (retires himself during main phase)
Invest Falcon (retires himself end of battle he boosted)
Cursed Lancer (retires a unit to call him)

There has been talk about "damage deny" and keeping the opponent on 3 while you swing with this constantly but I'm not too sure about that strategy. Yes, I can see why you would do that, but I don't think you'd want to prolong games, and rather end them quickly since your best turn is admittedly the grade 2 ride turn, if you managed to hit your various board building pieces.

One more quick praise for Gust before we move onto the negatives of him: His critical gain skill is when something is retired— and no, it is not limited to retiring for cost or card effect. Calling over cards will give him a critical, so if for some reason you wanna do 0 Damage Gust Blaster, then one shot murder your opponent with a 6c beast, then be my guest.

Okay... time to do the section I most dread. As to any card, there are holes in Gust. Plenty of holes. I love the card and think he's an amazing addition, but he does nothing to solve the deck of it's issues outside of a good first ride/back up G3.

I want to first get rid of the elephant in the room, and to me, that is the fact Gust does not improve your Protect match up at all. If you play Shadow Paladin, you know Protect can outright stop you since your deck is very vanguard-centric. Gust Blaster, like Phantom Blaster, is PG bait, meaning they'll be PG'd almost 100% of the time if the opponent can afford to do so. Now... do you see the issue here? Protect decks create PGs just by riding. This single card will in turn block your VG, no matter how much power it has, no matter how much critical you have, it'll be nulled, unless you can negate nullification or guard restrict.

And that's unfortunately what we needed most. Either a restanding VG or a card with guard restrict. Currently, the best deck in format (post Miyaji) is arguably still Angel Feather, which is a Protect deck. Not to mention Oracle Think Tank (a Protect deck) received massive upgrades in Miyaji, and they also arguably one of the top three decks in the game right now. Outside of Miyaji, they still have access to their crazy good Q4 stuff + Promise Daughter, which can shut down your singular retires. Having some of the meta decks be Protect sucks for Shadows, since they cannot deal with them very well. We needed some form of counter, but we didn't get one, not yet at least.

So, with one massive hole already in Gust, what else could I possibly pick on him for? Well... I guess it's wishful thinking on my side, but there is a "very mediocre and nothing impressive" aura coming off this card. The skills are solid, but to remind you, this is a VR. You would see this kind of skill maybe on a RRR more likely. Why do I say that?

Well, let's compare him to another VR *from the same set* as him: ZANGEKI. ZANGEKI deserves his VR spot, due to his very powerful CONT skills, making him a 17k/2c during your turn, and having a blanket guard restrict for just having a Dueling Dragon in soul. Both skills are free, both skills are good, and this is VR worthy because not only does it synergise with the established deck, it also makes it better.

To be fair, ZANGEKI is a card from Accel, so let's compare Gust to Neo Nectar's (a Force clan similar to Shadow Paladin) VR, Cecilia. Cecilia's skill, for a single counterblast, can go +3 and give 3 of your units 10k. Gust Blaster in comparison... he CB1 and makes you go -1 for your opponent to *potentially* lose a rear-guard that miiiiight be important to them, and give 10k to himself only. Combined with the 2nd skill, while yes the plus 2 critical is very nice, doesn't scale as well compared to her. Cecilia is overall much better since she gives you actual advantage and more power, which is more preferred than the critical, sadly.

Yeah, I just don't see why they watered down his skill so much. At the very least, for a CB1, he should've retired two, or just have no CB altogether. Retire 2 to retire 1 of my opponent's rears seem fair, and I don't even get to choose what I retire... speaking of which, if it was CB1 for a retire of my choice, I'd also be happy. It wouldn't fit the theme, but this is our freaking VR. If he's only retiring one, he might as well let *me* choose instead! Of course, these are minor complaints on my end, but I still feel like there are valid in the holes of Gust. He's a VR which is not up to certain VR standards, and I'd expect this level of skill to be a RRR at most.

One more complaint, to rub salt into the wound for our terrible Protect match up, one of "outs" to Protect was having Cathbad be a massive beatstick for free, forcing other cards out of their hand while you slowly increased advantage with soft +1s. Gust does not have good chemistry with Cathbad, as staying on Gust will not nuke your opponent's board like PBD, meaning Cathbad can't utilise those empty circles for free power. In addition, since Gust retires two of yours, and one of your opponents, if you both have 5 rears, Cathbad wouldn't even proc as you have less rears than your opponent. This is honest frustrating as we had a R revealed earlier that when they attacked, gave 3k to one unit and I'm like... well, Cathbad exists.

BUT NOW IM CONSIDERING HIM SINCE CATHBAD AND GUST DONT MIX AND WE NEED POWER!

Sorry, I had to get that off my chest.

Yeah, so in a funny way Gust somewhat worsens our match up by not going with Cathbad very well... however, please do know I am all for Gust becoming better, and with SP having only 3 cards revealed right now, I'm hoping Shadows will pull a Royals or Angels. What do I mean by that? Well, Royal Paladin has a similar problem: Their VRs were mediocre, and their high rarity cards were as well. However, when actually putting these cards together, they functioned very well, with the rears almost carrying the deck, and they had a solid finisher in Exculpate. For Angels, on paper, they looked like a dogshit clan with no merits, but in playtesting, they were an amazing deck that became tier 1 and BDIF. Plus, their VR, Zerachiel, is weaker than their RRR, Metatron, who carries the deck on her thicc body. If SP get a busted RRR like Metatron, we might be saved.

In addition, with so little context revealed for us, there might be a card yet to be revealed to make Gust shine. And I'm banking on it to bring Shadows to that T1 status it had for a short period of time.

You know, it's ironic... all the cards revealed for SP during V-BT02 looked terrible before PBD was revealed. And then when it was revealed, everything finally made sense. But now, they reveal to us the high rarity stuff first, and nothing makes sense because we barely had any card reveals...

Man, Bushiroad be playing with my heart here.

Alright, so a quick round up:
First impression: Good card, but has some flaws. Hope they'll be addressed by other cards.
Standard: This automatically gets a spot in the deck to replace Dark Dicc, no questions asked.
Premium: G U S T B L A S T E R P R E M I U M
In all seriousness, I can see a possible niche for Gust in Prem, but the only viable SP Prem decks rn are Luard (and if I'm biased I'd say Claret) and (neither) Luard doesn't want additional G3s, so there's no spot sadly.
However I can see a meme deck which tries to reach peak critical for Gust and just one shots the opponent with a big dick 10 crits... and I would like to be the man that makes this deck :^)

...

So, I decided to finally test the card.

Yeah no, this thing is mediocre as fuck, it's like PBD and Dicc had a baby and that baby was Gust but Gust took too many of the shitty traits from the parents making him only okay at best.

Like I said, mediocre as fuck. He's... he's better than Dicc. That's the only merit I have for him. Definition of meh card.

Mediocre as fuck/10

Speaking of play testing, I did some tinkering and tried out Dark Bond Trumpeter.

My thoughts: when she was first revealed, I was hyped since you could shit all 4 Nemains out turn 2 with her, and yeah she probably needs a better 5k to work with her but I thought "eh fuck it I'll play her now" just to get a feel for the card. She adds consistency, only for the amazing grade 2 turn SP already has. Having more ways to shit out bodies is nice, and she usually becomes a 15k beatstick (one called from her, one called from Nemain) for relatively free. Past that... she became guard/retire fodder and her costing a CB led me to being damage denied and not being able to use my G3 skills. To add to this misery, she is 9k for some ungodly reason, and sits with Rapier as a "ruined Waifu" since... WHY IS SHE 9K?! THERE IS NO REASON FOR HER TO BE 9K! WHAT DID RAPIER AND TRUMPETER DO TO YOU BUSHI?! WHY MAKE THEM WEAKER?! WISJDODLSOWOWNRHFODKSNEKEODDKDOSOOSSK

(Seriously, some of these design choices make me want to rip my hair out...)

And I suppose she can tutor things, but I'd prefer to just Macha-Charon to keep face up damage so I can proc my G3s, not get my rears hit into the drop zone because my opponent doesn't want me to blow up their shit.

Overall, all I can say is add Gust Blaster to the deck as a first G3 ride, and don't bother with Trumpeter. Cutting Dark, Macha or Cathbad all feel bad, and she doesn't really prove herself to be worthy of replacing any of them so far. (Then tonight a 5k G1 is revealed which makes this card amazing and completely undermines what I said and I need to make an apology chapter for shitting on Dark Bond so badly)

Her art is cute/10

Finally our only other card revealed is Dordona... yeah man, I'm not feeling it. And I haven't even tested it. Card is straight garbo. It's a rare too. You know what's a common? Cathbad. You know what Cathbad does? Gain more power. I only hope this foreshadows Ildonna's return, or that Spectral Duke is becoming an SP unit since both come from the same set he did.

Waste of a R slot. Waste of a good art. Waste of my time.

Trash/10

Well, I hope you enjoyed my first post of 2019. Happy New Years, good luck to you all in this new year, and thank you for reading my stuff!

That's all, Fox out!