The Sanctuary of Light - Subclan Discussion

I've decided to start my humble little Cardfight!! Vanguard blog off with a comprehensive guide to what I feel is a fairly underrated new archetype in the English format. So without further ado, let's talk about....

 Sanctuary of Light

First of all, what is Sanctuary of Light? Booster Set 14 saw the release of the game's second 5th generation ride chain, consisting of 4 Royal Paladin cards with "Sanctuary of Light" (which I'll be abbreviating to SoL for brevity) in their card name. For those of you unfamiliar with ride chains, the basic idea is that the lower grade cards in the ride chain help search out the higher grades, and the higher grades get neat effects from riding on top of the lower grades. The bottom line is that you get a slight increase in ride consistency, as well as high base power vanguards, at the cost of having to run a lot of Grade 1s and 2s that are pretty much vanilla when placed in the rear guard circle. Let's take a look at what you're getting out of this specific ride chain:

The Ride Chain

A knight of heavens. Searching for the future he has to embark on.

Planet Lancer is the deck's starting vanguard, and he's fairly straightforward. If you ride Little Storm over him, you get a chance at grabbing Determinator (the SoL Grade 2) or Planetal Dragon (the SoL Grade 3), and if not, you get an extra 4k booster. The search is extremely useful, since you can either grab whichever grade you're missing in your hand or get an extra SoL unit for use as a rear guard. Even if your hand's already clogged with Grade 2 and 3 SoL units, you still get a chance at an extra 5k shield of some perfect guard fodder. The worst case scenario for this guy is that you ride Little Storm and don't find anything with his search, and even then Little Storm's and Determinator's skills more than make up for it.

A knight of heavens. A turbulent storm brews within his heart.

Speaking of Little Storm's skills, this guy is awesome. As is is standard for all ride chain Grade 1s, 2s and 3s, Little Storm gets +1000 if  the Grade 0 is in the soul. On top of that, he gives you a fallback skill if you ride a Grade 2 other than Determinator. Basically, between Planet Lancer and Little Storm, you have a very good chance to consistently get Determinator on the vanguard circle. He's even better as a rear guard, but I'll get to that when I talk about Planetal Dragon.

A knight of heavens. His heart is long prepared.

And now we get to Determinator. He has the standard +1000 from having Little Storm in the soul, and on top of that, if you successfully ride both Little Storm and Determinator, you get a free search for free. Don't have enough backrow? Grab a free Little Storm. Don't have any strong attackers? Grab a Determinator or even one of the SoL Grade 3s. This skill is fantastic, even though you won't activate it every game.

The knights bore witness. The passing down of the sanctuary, the legend of the light.

Finally we get to the big guy himself, Sanctuary of Light, Planetal Dragon. First, when you ride him, you get a SoL rear guard from the deck, although unlike with Determinator, this time it costs 2 CB. Where Planetal Dragon really shines, however, is his limit break, which gives +3000 power to all your SoL rear guards when he attacks. This may seem underwhelming at first, until you realize that you'll be swinging with absurdly powerful rear guard columns every turn, for literally no cost. Suddenly, all your Determinators are 12k attackers, all your rear guard Planetals are hitting for 13k, and your SoL Brightness Dragons are a whopping 14k each. And remember how I mentioned that Little Storm was better as a rear guard? Now it's a 10k booster. For free. Every turn. Even Planet Lancer becomes a decent 7k booster.

As a result, the playstyle of the deck becomes focused on setting up your field so that you're hitting for 21k with each of your columns. Ride Planetal, get at least one SoL unit in every column, and make sure whatever other units are in the columns can add up to 21k when combined with the SoL units.With Little Storm boosting, you can even hit 23k with your Grade 3s, letting you hit hard against those pesky crossrides.

The one major weakness of Planetal Dragon is its 10k base power. Riding it over Determinator negates this weakness, but the deck has pretty much no way to add to the soul outside of riding, so if by some chance you do miss riding Determinator, you're stuck with 10k base power all game.

It would be wise to leave our sanctuary, evil invaders!

Earlier, I mentioned a SoL card named Brightness Dragon. Unlike the other SoL units, it isn't part of the ride chain and it isn't in packs of Booster Set 14. Instead, it's available as one of a set of promo cards available in Set 14 display boxes. However, I've seen it sold online for as low as $2, so buying it as a single card is a far better idea than trying to pull it as a single.

Anyway, what does Brightness Dragon do? Well, one, it has Sanctuary of Light in its name and 11000 base power. This makes it the strongest rear guard attacker you can possibly have when Planetal Dragon's limit break is active. As a vanguard though, it let's you pay a somewhat hefty cost to add 5000 power to three rear guards. This lets you setup 21k columns with non-SoL units, or still keep strong pressure against your opponent when you don't draw into Planetal and are forced to ride this card. Brightness also makes it a bit easier to setup 23k columns for hitting crossrides. Unfortunately, you're only going to be able to use this skill once or twice the entire game, due to the 2 counter blast and 2 soul blast cost (As mentioned before, the deck lacks any way to reliably increase the number of cards in the soul), so you're going to have to ride Planetal eventually if you can't end the game with this skill.

Brightness Dragon's other ability is to pay 1 counter blast to unlock a card, giving the unit an additional role as a tech card against Link Jokers, especially Chaos Breaker Dragon. Given this deck's dependency on rear guard columns, this ability is pretty much crucial.


So now that we've gone over what the SoL cards do, what should a deck based on them look like?

Building Sanctuary of Light

Grade 3s

Let's start with the Grade 3s. The standard SoL build is fairly basic:

x4 Sanctuary of Light, Planetal Dragon
x4 Sanctuary of Light, Brightness Dragon

Four Planetal Dragons is pretty much necessary for the deck to work at all, and Brightness is fantastic as a rear guard or alternate ride. But can other Grade 3s work? 

One popular card is Sanctuary Guard Dragon, a card from the Rise to Royalty Mega Trial Deck. His limit break gives him 3000 power for every Grade 1 or less Royal Paladin rear guard, and his on-call skill let's you discard a card to superior call a Grade 1 or less Royal Paladin from the deck. This gives him some synergy with Planetal, benefiting from superior called Little Storms and being able to call Little Storm himself. On top of that, he can superior call a Grade 1 Royal Paladin called Sword of Hope, Richard, which can soul blast 1 to draw 1 card when called from the deck. What's more, none of his skills cost any counter or soul blasts, leaving you with plenty of food for your Planetals, Brightnesses, and Quintet Walls. Nevertheless, I personally am not a fan of Sanctuary Guard, since he's not a SoL card and doesn't boost your rear guards at all, thus ignoring the very reason why the SoL deck works. If you really don't like Brightness, I can see him being run at one or two, but even so, it's not worth it to put Richard in the deck, as he takes space that could be used for Grade 1s that can actually form 21k columns. 

The only other Grade 3 that I would even consider running in a SoL deck would be a break ride, but unfortunately, the only one Royal Paladins have is...bad. Pure Heart Jewel Knight, Ashlei gives +10,000 power and +1 crit to whatever rides over it. That's it. You get one scary attack that can be completely shut down by a perfect guard. Not worth it at all.

So now that we've got that out of the way, let's move on to...

Grade 2s

x4 Sanctuary of Light, Determinator

x4 Knight of Details, Claudin OR Battle Flag Knight, Constance 
Claudin has 8k base power and gets 3k when the vanguard has a LB4 skill, which is true for all Grade 3s in this deck. Constance, when he hits a vanguard, let's you pay 2 CB to superior call a grade 1 rear guard from the deck. 

Choosing Claudin or Constance basically comes down to whether you want more ways to assemble 21k columns or a way to use your extra counter blasts without using Brightness Dragon or riding a second copy of Planetal Dragon. Personally, I favor Claudin. 

As a note, Blaster Blade can fill the same role as Constance if you would rather have an on-call skill than an on-hit skill, but Blaster Blade's retire skill doesn't have as much synergy with the deck as Constance's superior call.
  
x3 Knight of Silence, Gallatin OR Knight of Determination, Lamorak OR Covenant Knight, Randolf
Gallatin and Lamorak are both vanilla 10k Grade 2s. They are effective alternate rides if you miss Determinator. Neither is a good long-term rear guard though, since they can't hit 21k naturally, even with a 10k Little Storm behind them. Ultimately, neither really works too well in the deck, but the only good alternative I've found is Covenant Knight, Randolf, which has 8k base power and gets 3k when you have a larger hand than your opponent. He fills the same role as Claudin, but is less consistent due to the requirements for his skill. On the bright side, he can sometimes hit for 11k as a vanguard or when you're gradestuck, unlike Claudin. Still, that 8k body hurts, so I tend to use the 10k vanillas. It is also possible to run 4 Claudin and 3 Constance, if you really want both.

Grade 1s

x4 Sanctuary of Light, Little Storm 

x2-4 Perfect Guards and x0-2 Quintet Walls
I recommend at least 1 Quintet Wall, since all of your counter blasts except the unlock skill cost 2 CB, giving you 1 unused CB every game you don't check a heal trigger. Also, because of how useful SoL Grade 3s are as rear guards, they aren't as expendable for use as perfect guard fodder as most other decks' Grade 3s.

x4 Little Sage, Marron
Royal Paladins' famous 8k vanilla. A solid alternate ride if you miss Little Storm and a good booster behind any of the Grade 3s, meaning that unlike Gallatin, Marron is actually very useful for forming 21k columns.
 
x2 Lake Maiden, Lien OR Toypugal
Lien can rest herself to discard 1 card and draw 1 card. Toypugal boosts for 9k when you have at least two Grade 3s on the field. Lien gives you a chance to dig for SoL units, while Toypugal forms good columns with any SoL front row rear guards, although only when its conditions are met.

Grade 0s

x1 Sanctuary of Light, Planet Lancer
x8 Critical Triggers
x4 Margal (Draw Trigger)
x4 Heal Triggers
Fortunately, Royal Paladins have enough different triggers for you to use however many draw or critical triggers you want, although 8 crit/4 draw is generally the preferred ratio. Stand triggers are absolutely useless, since Planetal's limit break only activates when it attacks.

Conclusion

Well that's it folks. I hope you enjoyed my explanation of what Sanctuary of Light's all about and how to build it. Feel free to forward this guide to anyone who wants to build Sanctuary of Light. Please comment if you want to ask questions about the deck or offer me ways to improve my guides.