| Armor Burst アーマーパージ Dragoncraft Spell (Armed) ドラゴン スペル (武装) |
 |
| Return an allied Armed follower to your hand and subtract 1 from its cost until the end of the turn. Put a Draconic Weapon into your hand. |
| 自分の武装・フォロワー1体を手札に戻す。ターン終了まで、そのコストを-1する。 『ドラゴウェポン』1枚を手札に加える。 |
Armor Burst is an interesting card. It was first introduced in the Shadowverse Flame anime, then printed as a physical copy in the Shadowverse Evolve: Flame of Laevateinn booster set, before finally appearing in the main Shadowverse game as an Academy of Ages mini expansion card. What makes it unique is that the effect of the card is different for each version. In the main game, Armor Burst is a 2PP spell card that will introduce the Bounce mechanic into Dragoncraft, which might create new possibilities for an Armed Dragon archetype.
Armed Dragon revolves around followers with Armed traits; it generally has an aggressive playstyle, since their payoffs are followers with the ability to either deal burn damage or gain Storm. All of their payoffs will become active after the “4 Armed Followers has left play” quest has been fulfilled, and thus, spamming a lot of cheap Armed followers and winning on early-game tempo is the signature of this archetype.At the beginning of the Academy of Ages expansion, Armed Dragon is considered one of the best aggressive archetypes in the meta. The deck was used by a lot of Grandmaster (GM) speedrunners: the first player to reach GM with the deck only took about 13 hours and 30 minutes.
However, everything changed when the emergency balance patch kicked in. The patch hit two core cards of this deck: Ironscale Serpent Drake and Hammer Dragonewt. The Serpent Drake nerf was brutal since the deck relied so much on early-game tempo. The nerf increased its cost by 1, and playing Serpent Drake on turn 4 is just too late: it gives your opponent the window to answer the Drake with evolution points. This caused Serpent Drake to disappear from the most Armed Dragon decklists post nerf.The Hammer Dragonewt change was not exactly a nerf, but it was a revert to its original effect that it had when first introduced in the Celestial Dragonblade expansion. The change was an effective reduction to the card’s damage output and the flexibility of its token, Draconic Smash. However, Hammer Dragonewt still remains an important card for this archetype, due to its low cost.These nerfs made Armed Dragon way weaker and unable to compete with the rest of the meta: its popularity dropped to a point where it is not even included in most tier lists anymore. Hence, support for this archetype will be very appreciated, as it might help this archetype find viability to compete once again.
In general, Armor Burst provides two major functionalities:
The early goal of Armed Dragon is to fulfill the “4 Armed followers have left play” quest. While you can reach this goal naturally, as your opponent will try to destroy your followers to deny your tempo, some of the decks in the meta have ways to intentionally leave your followers alive and delay your Armed followers progression. Cards like Enchanting Spell or Greater Will are used to ensure that you are unable to progress the quest.
Armor Burst provides a way to escape this kind of pseudo-boardlock situation. Returning a follower to your hand does count as having it leave play, which advances your quest progression. Moreover, if your bounce target is a 1PP follower like Hammer Dragonewt, you could play it again immediately without spending more play points, as it reduces the cost of the returning card.Since Armor Burst also generates a Draconic Weapon, you can always use it to buff non-Armed followers during early game. However, the biggest downside of playing this card during the early game is that this card costs you a lot of tempo. That feature is counterproductive for an aggressive deck like Armed Dragon; you don’t really want to do that. Hence why I think it is better to use this card for the mid to late game, after you completed the “4 Armed followers” quest.
The most obvious way to utilize this card is to treat it as another copy of an Armed follower, especially after your Armed count has reached 4. Having more copies of burn damage is a great addition to increase your lethal range. However, it does have limitations, as the 1PP cost reduction only lingers until the end of the turn. Hence why it is mostly effective on low-cost cards. You can treat this pseudo-copy as a card that costs 1PP more than the original card.
Primary Armed followers that you want to bounce with Armor Burst, though Lance Lizard might be too expensive for it to be played immediately.
One thing that we need to remember is that the Armed trait is not an exclusive trait. Any follower can be granted an Armed trait if they have been buffed by the Draconic Weapon amulet. In a standard Armed Dragon build, you might use it with Dragonbane Blader, Dragon Breeder, or Freyja to draw more cards in the same turn.Armor Burst can also be used with Forte, Darkwing Ruler, which allows you to play her back to back on the following turn while leaving your board empty. It might sound weird because Forte’s ability will protect her when she’s on the board, but there are some situations where leaving your board totally empty is way better. Forte will recover 2PP with a Draconic Weapon setup, so it does feel natural to play Armor Burst as the follow-up.Since this bounce mechanic can be applied for the entire Dragoncraft and Neutral pool of followers by giving them Draconic Weapon, a new kind of playstyle might be born because of it. For example, having a way to bounce Drazael, Ravening Enforcer to heal and clear while avoiding leaving any followers on field might be useful for a control archetype. Maybe it is not applicable at the moment, but it is possible that this functionality will become relevant in the future.
This card doesn’t feel like what the current Armed Dragon archetype needs to compete with the rest of the meta. Armed Dragon's biggest loss during the patch was the strong early tempo play that Serpent Drake provided. Conversely, Armor Burst is anything but tempo. It is the exact opposite: you will actually lose tempo when you play this card early.Armor Burst is more of a late-game card to increase the damage reach of the deck. But I don’t think the deck lacks in this aspect: it has various damage sources, ranging from burn from Swiftblade Dragonewt to Storm from Forte, Darkwing Ruler. These damage dealers should be more than enough to close out the game in this meta.Lastly, my biggest disappointment with this new card is that it doesn’t have any synergy with the most powerful Armed follower, Lævateinn Dragon, Blast Form. Lævateinn Dragon’s strongest effect activates at the end of the turn—but that won’t happen if the card is being bounced. This means that Armor Burst will mostly be useful in a scenario where we don’t draw any of our Lævateinn Dragons, which is the worse situation.
