Exculpate is a Grade 3 Royal Paladin with a base power of 12k!! It also has an incredible ability to attack all your opponent's rear-guards! However, he has quite a few limitations. Here is his massive amount of text of skills translated.
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Continuous [Hand]: If you do not have a Grade 3 <Royal Paladin> vanguard, you cannot normal ride this unit.
Continuous [V]: If you do not have a card named "Blaster Blade" in your soul, this unit cannot attack.
Auto: When this unit is placed on the rear-guard circle, retire this unit.
Activate [V]: [Counter Blast(3)] Until end of turn, this unit battles with every unit on your opponent's field in one attack.
Auto [V]: When this unit attacks, place all the cards in your soul except cards named "Blaster Blade" to the drop zone. For each card placed onto the drop zone, this unit gets Power +2000 until end of turn.
Auto [V]: At the end of the battle when this unit attacked, choose 1 card named "Blaster Blade" from your soul or drop zone, ride it at rest position, and place all your soul onto the drop zone.
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This card is a double edged sword, in return for dealing an immense amount of damage to your opponent's offensive and defensive powers, you are forced to return to a grade 2 at the end of the attack. This means that you would most possibly need to keep a grade 3 of your own for a re-ride. Besides that, the high cost would allow you only 2 more spare damage to use, and you would need an extra grade 3 before riding this unit.
To play this unit, you would most possibly need more grade 3 to have a higher guarantee rides and re-ride. You could have at most, up to 3 of this card in your deck however, I would recommend not going higher than 2, since Wingal Brave can help bring out Exculpate. Having more grade 3 would also mean that you should have cards which can help you exchange your hand like Lien and Miru Biru. Those would help you get rid of unnecessary grade 3 for better cards that can be used for guarding. Miru Biru would be very useful since you can swap out a card for each hit Exculpate does.
For the grade 3s, Gancelot is a great card to be used with this card, not only that it can secure you a Blaster Blade ride, you could also apply an early critical pressure with the extra 2 damage counterblast. With the increase in grade 3s, Brigitte is also a good cheap option for the deck. Pendragon is also a decent choice. Pendragon could decrease the amount of grade 3 left in your deck and also have a chance at bringing out Exculpate. Pendragon's power increase when ride also works great since your opponent should be pretty worn out after Exculpate's attack. Lohengrin is also an option, it stacks up soul for Exculpate to use and could possibly soul charge a Blaster Blade for you. Majesty is not bad but, without decent toolkit, Majesty won't apply much pressure, and I doubt anyone would really want to ride Exculpate over a Majesty with 12k defense and 2 crit attacks.
Trigger wise, I would use Criticals as Exculpate battles with every unit on the field, Exculpate should launch the first attack. Draw Triggers could also help with getting Exculpate faster and grade 3 for re-rides. Gordon could help fill the extra shields needed due to having more grade 3 and draw triggers. You could skip using Heal Triggers for more offensive power but I won't recommend it.
Though the damage usable is scarce but it's there, you should plan what you want to use them for. It could be used by Blade to retire more units. Akane could help call out units for a little hand and field advantage. Garmore is another unit to help fill your field in exchange for a card in your hand.
I think this is a very interesting card, and is very excited to be able to test it. This card is also the best card to use against Platinum, it would deplete your opponent's field before they can use the limit break.
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CoCo 4 Lyf
Peace Out
Actually i disagree with ur comment about not riding it over MLB. I have been playing MLB since it was released and I noticed 1 of the thing that MLB truly lacked was second end game finisher, something that can truly devastate the opponent even if he managed to survive the finisher in a scenario where the Blaster user have trigger problems which does happen quite frequently in real life (based on my own experience). From my opinion, I see that with barcgal still banned as the starter, the only deck with the greatest chances of using Exculpate is a MLB one. I do agree using Lohengrin is useful to SC for his SB, Bridgitte for his power boost and Pendragon for its LB but in the end, the chances of adding Blaster Blade into Soul without the use of barcgal is incredibly low. Not to mention that Exculpate shares the same weakness that all high powered units share, the existence of a Omni guard. Unlike MLB who needs to slot in 2 interceptor units during the battle phase, I believe Exculpate the Blaster's true terror is the ability to smite all other units which locks the opponent from intercepting (which can be devastating against clans or units like Aqua Force, Asura Kaiser, Perfect Raiser, Dragonic Overlord and other units that requires field presence). This has been 1 ability that RPs lacked since they existed. So in the end, its rather hard to create a deck that is utterly dedicated to Exculpate unless Barcgal is used (the 5 soul set up and the certainty of Blade being in Soul). So, I think he is most efficiently used as a 2nd finisher.
ReplyDeleteWell, your point is true too. After watching other people play him, it is actually not a problem on riding Exculpate over Majesty for a final turn. However, I do not like that idea. It would mean to just have Exculpate as a final turn card which is somewhat sad, it would mean to not have used him to the fullest potential. Besides, Majesty has decent amount of Blaster Blades for retiring power.
ReplyDeleteWell, I'll admit that I'm some sort of a fanatic of MLB, so I had played the deck in situations where it is impossible to get Blade and Dark into Soul (in damage or drop zone). Due to these experiences, I became somewhat obsessed into making a versatile MLB deck where even if MLB does not gain his unique ability, I want to prove that it still makes a powerful threat. As for my play style, I actually hardly spam Blade's CB, partially because I had insufficient damage to activate or I needed the CB for Star Call Trumpeter's ability instead.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, it is rather sad to see such a badass card to be treated only as a Final Turn card, I blame Bushiroad for that. IMO, I think that card was created to be in sync with Barkgal, just as SSD was made to compliment it too. So when the banlist appeared, there goes its epicness even WAY before it existed.