Today's Card Analysis: Heavy Artillery Dragon Sharangastego and Sharp Blade Dragon Refilstego

 

The first Japanese Cards of the Day of June are two Commons from V-Extra Booster 01: The Destructive Roar, the grade 3 Heavy Artillery Dragon Sharangastego and the grade 2 Sharp Blade Dragon Refilstego. Sharangastego is named after Sharanga, the bow used by the god of preservation Vishnu to duel the god of destruction Shiva in Hindui lore, while Refilstego is named after Refil, an alternate name for the sword Ridill used by the blacksmith Reginn to cut out the heart of the dragon Fafnir in Norse myth. (The "f" is pronounced with a "v" sound.) Fittingly, these two Dinodragons are long-distance and close-quarters fighters, though they each possess the same skill to complement one another.

ACT [Vanguard/Rearguard Circles]: [Cost: Counterblast 1, retire 1 of your other rearguards] All of your "Heavy Artillery Dragon, Sharangastego" and "Sharp Blade Dragon, Refilstego" on your Vanguard and Rearguard Circles get Power +10000 until end of turn.

Although Sharanga lacks the Accel Gift and Refil is a base 8000, their skills make them two of the most powerful rearguards possible. Accel circles give Tachikaze access to more than the normal two front row rearguard circles, and in a given game you're likely to have as many as five front row units by the end of it. Being able to simultaneously pump up two to three of those at once is powerful, and what's more is that these skills are not once per turn, so if the opponent is at 5 damage and you have cards to spare you can use these skills up to 5 times to give +50000 to each of those units. Assuming no perfect guards, that's a 62k unboosted attack from Sharanga demanding 50k guard from Force grade 3s and 55k from Accel and Protect bosses--three to five guardians each depending on how many Heal and Critical Triggers they have to guard with. (Just don't try it versus Protect decks.)

This does bring up an important point regarding clans that use retiring as a cost: unlike other clans, Tachikaze, Shadow Paladin, and Great Nature each have the ability to give up a long-term booster in order to gain short-term power. In order for this to be a worthwhile play, the unit sacrificed has to contribute less power on that turn than what you would gain through the retire skill. So killing an 11k booster on par with Lion Mane Stallion or Aermo would be a total waste, while a vanilla Draw would be the perfect target.

The previous Japanese Card of the Day was Machining Mantis.

V-Extra Booster 01: The Destructive Roar will launch in Japan June 29th, 2018, and August 2nd for the English-speaking world. The accompanying new anime series, codenamed "Origin," began airing May 5th, with an English-subtitled simulcast on both YouTube and Crunchyroll.