Card review: Golden Dragon, Spear Cross Dragon and role in GP

Today more details on a new GP stride, one showed in the anime. Here is spear cross dragon

http://cardfight.wikia.com/wiki/Golden_Dragon,_Spear_Cross_Dragon#comm-1081188

Stride (Released when both players' vanguards are grade 3 or greater!)-Stride Step-[Choose one or more cards with the sum of their grades being 3 or greater from your hand, and discard them] Stride this card on your (VC) from face down.
[AUTO]:[Counter Blast (2) & Choose a face down card named "Golden Dragon, Spear Cross Dragon" from your G zone, and turn it face up] When this unit is placed on (VC), if you have a face-up card in your G-Zone or more, you may pay the cost. If you do, look at five cards from the top of your deck, search for cards up to the number of face-up cards you have in your G-Zone, call them to separate open (RC), and shuffle your deck.

First thing many will relate this to is liberator Garmore for its ability to flood a field from absolutely nothing. However, unlike its predecessor, it works for all GP, but takes a little more setup than normal. You also get to cherry pick which unit you want and put the rest at the bottom, unlike Garmore who has to keep calling until you decide to stop, not letting you see what is available at the top 5 before deciding. Also important is that you can only call in open RC, like many other GP cards, so no replacing existing units.

The way this unit works is time sensitive to on stride, but you can chain this together with Gurguit, letting you decide the order. You can first let Spear Cross resolve first, pick the best possible units to call from top 5, then decide if you need to use Gurguit to try to fix any column.

The cost is quite unique to many of the strides we already know. It is like a mix between requiring 2 face-up strides to at least function, and rewards you for striding it later into the game. It is similar to existing game ending strides where you have persona flip, allowing this to be used maxed twice a game It synergies well with Blizza-type effects, assuming we see GP getting another one this set, but currently only existing one is Mithril Ezel. The setup with scissor or platina  being the heart allows you to have a game plan throughout, chaining RGs to spam the field while building to either LB4 or LB5.

So based on G-generation cards leaked, GP favors a heavy swarming strategy; calling non-triggers from deck for attacking and boosting, and then trading them later on defense to guard, therefore saving cards in hand to guard. They are also unique in allowing you to guard from the deck, which bypass Tom,Glory or Diablo effects to prevent guarding from hand. Slaymy lets you guard from the back row, while braygal is the GP's incarnation of Especial-intercept, providing a small quintet wall effect, and Gurguit helps you dig deeper for the guard that you might need if you have the resources to spare. Do note nowever that the new PGG does not work with these effects, as they have to placed from hand to GC, but it works fine with any normal PG.

With Coolgal, Farmgal, and Pwyll for easy pluses, and the consistency of all the "search top x cards", like Katchgal and lop ear, its easy to find the right guy for the job. In fact it becomes realistically easy to do what I dubbed as "pellinoire cheese".

People who played in second season remembered the nonsensical luck-sack that was Pellinoire. Back then the only real options were Viviane and Kahedin, and it usually involved immense amount of luck as they can only top call 1 card. Then came the legion era, which brought all the "call from top x cards", greatly increasing the rate you dig though your deck. Katchgal followed by Heli and Rud gave more combat calling, while making their way into the soul for more calling and paying for SB effects. Adding in G-era units, you can have easily 16-20 units in the deck that can call a unit during combat step along with Cambell to superior ride Pellinoire, gaining a further twin drive, and providing two set of 5k power to units while making space for more calling! With some luck, you might even be able to call 2-3 Pellinoire in a single turn! Show Thing Saver and DP who's the boss from superior riding from deck!

The last one I am going to at are liberators, particularly Blueish flame. With most of their bosses not using a lot of CB (max 2-3 a turn on heavy turns, it will be possible to use this in combination with Bruno to get some scary columns. However, I think one will rarely stride this unit, unless against heavy retire clans or effects.