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Saikyo Cardfighter R

Dragheart, Luard Oh sweet, here we go. Luard's GB2 Ritual bounces 2 normal units in your drop-zone back to deck. If you do, you can Stride without paying the cost. His Stride skill is CB1 and costs 1 rear-guard, replacing it with 2 other Grade 1 or below RGs from the deck. And suddenly, we have a better Claret. The ability to recycle dead, useful on-calls like Swordbreaker is pretty baller, as is the ability to continue your plays despite a dead hand. I just wish the deck wasn't starving for finishers outside Phantom Blaster Diablo, although if you don't mind Spectral Blaster...and his GB2 plus Stride skill recycles a dead David anyway... Sod it. He's actually pretty good. I mean, you'd probably never centre a deck entirely around him, at least until we know how G-BT10 pans out, but as a backup to, say, Blaster Dark Diablo, he enables quite some consistency. 3/5

Winston Fairwinds

The keyword-bearing boss of Shadow Paladin, Luard is here. Like Chronofang and Blaster Dark Diablo, a Grade 3 that only exists to makes striding easy (damn near free) is only good as his stride pool. At the time of writing this review, the Shadow Paladin stride pool is full of good things like the Diablos and Aurageyser, so the future's looking bright. Naturally, Luard's gonna get more tools in the near future. His on-stride effect sacks one unit to call two, meaning you need at least one unit on the board when your Stride phase happens, but if your opponent's playing a retire deck that cleared your board, they already did you a slight favor and activated Ritual for you. In general, Luard aims to fix that one problem Shadows have in extended matches (ex. either you're playing against Angels or your opponent keeps checking their heals): you might end up decking out. Shoving units back in your deck with Luard's Ritual skill is great utility. He's no Dreaming Dragon, but at least it's something. To all you Shadow players, run this guy unless your boner for Raging Form Dragon is stronger. Claret might get some bones thrown at him in the future, but for now Luard trumps him. Luard will pair nicely with either of the Grade 3 Diablos unless the Ritual deck gets a better backup Grade 3. 3.5/5