#CFV - Gold Paladin Impression & Review (Part 2)

Moving on from my previous post, let's see what Gold Paladins has to offer in term of Grade 1 and Grade 2 units and how good they differentiate themselves from Royal Paladins. Like I mentioned earlier, when I first saw the first couple spoilers of Grade 1 and 2, I wasn't happy to see very similar cards to Royal Paladin's cards. Although there were some different cards here and there such as Waving Owl and G1 Slaygal Dagger, nothing too impressive was released until this card was spoiled:

Little Duelist, Toron

Auto【R】：When this unit boosts a 《Gold Paladin》 vanguard and you have more rear-guards compared to your opponent, the boosted unit gets Power +4000 until the end of the battle.

On paper, Little Duelist, Toron seems like it's going to be one of the best Grade 1 booster in the current English meta. If we decide to analyse him without his effect in the equation, having 6000 power means that behind a 10k power Vanguard or beat-stick such as Bohman, he is able to bring them to 16k power which is a magic number to force out 10k blockers for 11k power Vanguards. Being already a decent card at that point, his effect just adds up to how good he becomes. With his effect activated, he essentially becomes a 10k booster which brings 10k Vanguards to another magic number: 20,000 power. With that said, we can say this card will be an exceptional support for 10k or 11k Vanguards.

Considering the fact that Gold Paladin's main strategy, aside applying pressure, is 

swarming  the field with units, I can see his effect being active pretty consistently throughout a game. Indeed, in addition of being supported by a clan that swarms a lot, nothing prevents the player to setup Toron's effect when his opponent has equals number of Rearguards as him. By simply targeting one of his opponent's front row Rearguard before attacking with the the Vanguard by Toron makes you able to swing with high magic numbers.

Royal Paladins and Kageros are the two clans that might give Toron's effectiveness trouble as Royal Paladins seem better at swarming than Gold Paladins in general and as for Kageros, they can diminish your Rearguard count by retiring them with effects or they can simply decide to retire Toron if they see he's a threat to them. 

Unquestionably, this card will have it's ups and downs depending on the matchups and situations, but I'm pretty sure it's going to see a lot of play in any Gold Paladin decks.

Speaking of cards that has ups and downs, Assaulting Chariot Knight is one of those cards that got a lot of mixed reviews because of how subpar his brother in Royal Paladins, Covenant Knight, Randolf was.

Assaulting Chariot Knight

Auto【V/R】: When this card attacks, if you have less cards in your hand compared to your opponent, this unit gets [Power] +3000 until the end of the Battle.

Me, trying to make Randolf work in the early days of Royal Paladin made me yell ''finally!'' when I first saw Chariot Knight. Finally a card that is actually productive to the main strategy of the deck. Randolf made me frown a lot of times during some games because of how situational is effect was and how counter-productive it was to Royal Paladins. Personally, when I play Royal Paladins against other decks, I almost never have the hand advantage because I'm too busy trying to swarm the field, rush and hit hard (which is RP's and GP's main goal). So most of the time, Randolf was just a G2 8k vanilla on my field or in my hand. Assaulting Chariot Knight seems like it's going to be a more consistent version of Randolf because the more you remove cards from hand to play them on the field, the more power you get with both Chariot Knight and Toron! And as a side note, triggered effect Chariot Knight boosted by triggered effect Toron reaches 21k which is another magic number for 11k Vanguards!

Assaulting Chariot Knight is definitely a card to consider in more Aggro Gold Paladin builds. He's not Randolf, so I would suggest not sleeping on him!