It’s been a good while since we had Granblue support revealed! Let’s get right into it!
Let’s start with the duo!
CONT VC During your turn, for every 3 trigger units in your drop, all your front units get +5k
AUTO VC 1/T: When your “Pirate Belle, Pinot Blanc” is placed on RC during your turn, [SB1] to discard top 2 of deck, and activate all trigger effects of the discarded cards.
Bottom: Pirate Belle, Pinot Blanc
AUTO Drop: When your “Young Pirate Noble, Pinot Noir” on VC attacks, [CB1, retire a RG] to draw a card and call this card to front
RC CONT RC/GC This unit cannot be attacked, and gets +5k shield for every 3 Trigger units in your drop.
Huh? Interesting. Reading the skills we see there’s some type of use with triggers being in the drop zone! Funny enough, for the longest time, Granblue players have felt not so great whenever we milled cards that were triggers. Now, we can actually benefit from it!? Neat.
Pros
- You can literally benefit for every card being milled due to the skills
- Pinot Noir’s VC power up skill is a “blanket skill”, which means new units introduced during the battle phase will get the power up
- Pinot Noir’s SB1 skill is like having 2 more additional drive checks in potentially activating triggers (great since we play a high Critical trigger ratio)
- Pinot Blanc is really useful being in the drop zone since it can call itself during the battle phase (you can use 2 to get 5 attacks as well)
- You also draw from its skill to help build up your hand size
- Pinot Blanc’s skill is great defensively since its shield value increases and cannot be attacked
- When we guard, we typically use triggers since they’re high in shield value, which synergizes with the theme
Cons
- Literally dependent on now having triggers in the drop zone
- Ideally we want to see at least 6 triggers in the drop zone asap to get at least +10k
- Remember Nightrose & Beatrice can easily give RG columns +10k very easily
- Potential deck out is possible since the VC skill mills 2 cards from deck
- Pinot Blanc doesn’t get additional power on its own, it’s just the shield value
We also got Sea Strolling Banshee and reprints revealed!
AUTO VC When placed, search deck for up to one card, discard it (put it into drop), and shuffle
AUTO RC At end of battle it attacked or boosted, you may discard top 2 of deck. If 1 or more trigger units were discarded, [retire this] to draw 1.
Bottom Heal: Sea Cruising Banshee
AUTO When this unit is put on (GC) from hand, if you have not ridden a grade 3 or greater unit this fight, perform one of the following.
•Choose one of your vanguards, and it gets [Power]+10000 until end of turn.
•Choose one of your opponent’s units, and it gets [Critical]-2 until end of that battle.
AUTO When this unit is placed on (RC) from hand, if your damage zone has 0 cards, put the top card of your deck into the damage zone.
As we can see with Sea Strolling Banshee, she’s going to be vital for the deck’s Winning Image! Literally, placed on VC, mill selectively anything from deck! Furthermore, as a RG it can mill the top 2. If 1 or more triggers were milled, it’ll remove itself and draw you a new card. Normally, you would want to mill key units, but perhaps milling a trigger wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Just like with every clan, we are getting the new Heals that have skills. They’re supposed to help with dealing early game aggression from certain decks. Furthermore, to help getting a CB to work with in case we were damage denied.
We got really good reprints and there are some other key cards that are recommended:
- Skull Dragon
- Beatrice
- Colombard
- Greed Shade
- Ghost Ship (draw power)
- Ripple Banshee (draw power and booster)
- Negrobone
- Navigator (100% effective now)
Both Skull Dragon and Navigator can play a big part. Skull Dragon can still serve as a reliable beater. Navigator actually gets 100% effective since you want to mill both key pieces and triggers!! Neat.
V Premium Impact
It’s tough to say if this will be a great deck to play in the metagame. The skills aren’t necessarily “broken” nor “very good”. It’s more of a slightly different playstyle.
It’s really like Nightrose in a sense because the Pinot Noir support can also generate 5 attacks.
Let’s think about it for a second. Nightrose’s Winning Image is literally 5 attacks with 4 of them being Skull Dragons. Skull Dragon scales significantly higher and easier since it counts any card in the drop zone.
Let’s assume we have only 12 triggers in the drop zone. With Pinot Noir, a pattern of attacks can look like:
- Skull Dragon #1 36k + 20k = 56k
- Skull Dragon #2 36k + 20k = 56k
- VG 12k + 20k = 32k (2 Pinot Blancs call themselves by retiring 2 existing RGs)
- Pinot Blanc #1 9k + 20k = 29k
- Pinot Blanc #2 9k + 20k = 29k
Did you notice a few things?
- Skull Dragon will always be bigger than Pinot Blanc
- Our 1st two Skull Dragons will be significantly bigger, it feels like our last attacks are “scaled down”
- In this scenario, we have to retire back row RGs in order to revive 2 Pinot Blancs
- Skull Dragon retires itself after it attacks, so you can’t retire it for Pinot Blanc
Practically, both Nightrose and Beatrice seem to have a consistent stronger 5+ attack turns. However, there is one difference that could make Pinot Noir turns more threatening. Its 1/Turn skill to SB1 to mill the top 2 cards and activate any triggers from it, can be the that difference. It’s almost seeing a total of 4 drive checks. Since we have a higher ratio of Critical triggers, we have a higher chance of making our turns scarier while the opponent is at 4 damage.
But there’s still that chance of not seeing ANY. If we already have a high amount of triggers in the drop zone, there are less in the deck! So if we do reach 12 triggers in the drop zone, that means we only have at most 4 triggers in the deck.
Early on though, we do have a better chance of seeing an early Critical trigger to push more damage faster potentially. There’s also the consideration of using Protect II to help push for stronger numbers and increase shield value. Just be mindful of the matchups that remove your units with skills.
I’m not saying one Winning Image is strictly better than the other, there’s just a lot factors to consider and game state too.
Premium Impact
We just discussed that the Winning Image in V Premium, but how does it impact in Premium? Glad you asked!
Remember our awesome unit Nightstorm? Well he can help with generating more attacks which all can benefit from Pinot Noir’s “blanket” power up!
With Pinot Noir being our Vanguard, we can bounce back between both Nightstorms and Beatrices per each CB1 + SB1.
If we have 12 triggers in the drop zone:
- Nighstorm will be 31k
- Beatrice will be 32k
This synergizes well during a Bad Bounty turn since we can get 2 VG attacks and reride a Pinot Noir. The combo does require 2 Nightstorms and 2 Beatrices to work with. Which is doable, especially with cards like Big Obadiah, Colombard, Damien (for Beatrice), and now Sea Strolling Banshee.
Here’s an example play with 13 attacks. Assume 5 CB on a Bad Bounty turn with 3-4 cards in the Soul. The front row is Nightstorm, Bad Bounty as VG, and an X unit.
- Bad Bounty VG 27k (CB1 to reride Pinot Noir)
- X Unit +20k
- Nightstorm 31k (CB1 revive Beatrice, Beatrice SB1 revives the 2nd Nightstorm)
- Beatrice 32k
- Nightstorm 31k (CB1 revive 2nd Beatrice, new Beatrice SB1 revives the old Nightstorm)
- Beatrice 32k
- Nightstorm 31k (CB1 revive Beatrice, Beatrice SB1 revives the 2nd Nightstorm)
- Beatrice 32k
- Nightstorm 31k (CB1 revive 2nd Beatrice, new Beatrice SB1 revives King Serpent CC1/SC1)
- King Serpent 28k
- Pinot Noir VG 32k (CB1 and retire a dummy RG, to revive Pinot Blanc, SB1 to mill 2 cards for a possible trigger effect)
- Pinot Blanc 29k + any triggers
- Beatrice 32k + any triggers
It’s actually impressive how easy it is to do this. The major factors are the key pieces and the 12 triggers in drop, so it’s a great late game play. Remember you can send triggers to your drop zone on purpose with cards like Big Obadiah, Colombard, Damien (Ghostie triggers), Sea Strolling Banshee, etc.
Final Thoughts & Sponsorship
Overall, I do welcome these new cards to our beloved clan. I’m sure there are more plays to explore. It’s cool to see the Pinot cards once more since they were from the Legion Era. Their skills are sort similar to their old ones.
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Thanks again for reading! Till next time amigos, see ya!