Today we’re going to unveil one of the most anticipated cards in Shadow Specters – one of the five new Noble Knight cards making their World Premiere!  Every core booster release has ten World Premiere cards that have never been printed before, and Noble Knights take up half of those slots in Shadow Specters.  With no further ado, meet Noble Knight Borz!

Like many of the Noble Knights, Noble Knight Borz is treated as a Normal Monster when it’s face-up on the field.  But when it’s equipped with a Noble Arms, it becomes a Level 5 DARK monster with the following effect:

During your Main Phase: You can reveal 3 “Noble Arms” cards from your Deck, have your opponent randomly add 1 of them to your hand, and send the rest to the Graveyard. You can only use this effect of “Noble Knight Borz” once per turn.

Every turn Borz survives with a Noble Arms equipped, it gets you another Noble Arms from your Deck.  It works really well with Noble Knight Medraut…

Equip Noble Knight Medraut with a Noble Arms, then activate its effect to Special Summon Noble Knight Borz from your Deck.  Medraut destroys its Noble Arms when its effect resolves, so re-equip it to Borz.  That lets you use Borz’s ability to search a Noble Arms.

Make that combo and you’ll use Medraut and a Noble Arms to Summon Borz and search another Noble Arms for free.  If your Noble Arms of choice was Noble Arms of Destiny, you can just sit on Borz knowing that thanks to Destiny’s effect, your opponent will have to destroy it twice to get it off the field.  If your opponent can’t do that, you’ll empty your Deck of Noble Arms and rake in free searches.  Or you can overlay Medraut and Borz for a Rank 4 – since your combo only took two cards and you added a free Noble Arms to your hand, it’s like trading Medraut for a Rank 4 Xyz. And you can always equip ALL 3 of those Noble Arms from the Graveyard by Summoning Artorigus, King of the Noble Knights. But wait, how do you get Borz back to Level 4? You’ll find out later this week.

But the “Noble Arms” cards you add to your hand are just one part of the equation.  By loading two more Noble Arms to your Graveyard you set up combos with Artorigus, King of the Noble Knights along with… something we’re not quite ready to reveal yet!  Suffice to say, a new addition to the Noble Knight ranks will take advantage of Borz’s effect too, so look forward to that.  In the mean time, the new Spell Card Swords at Dawn gives you another way to use Noble Arms from your Graveyard.

Swords at Dawn is a Quick-Play Spell that targets an Equip Card in your Graveyard and a matching monster on the field.  When it resolves, you equip that Equip Spell to the targeted monster.  Then the Equip Spell’s destroyed in the End Phase.  If you activate Swords at Dawn you can’t Special Summon for the rest of the turn, but you can Special Summon up until that point.  And since Swords at Dawn’s a Quick-Play you can Set it, and activate it on your opponent’s turn.

It’s a really cool card for Noble Knights, because most Noble Arms Equip Spells have an effect that let you re-equip them when they’re destroyed.  So if you use Swords at Dawn to bring back a Noble Arms, Swords destroys it in the End Phase, but you can just re-attach it.  Swords at Dawn lets you do a lot of cool Chaining tricks to outplay your opponent, and it’s really great with Noble Knight Drystan.

Say it’s your opponent’s turn, and you have Noble Knight Drystan on the field with Swords at Dawn Set.  Your opponent Summons a monster to attack Drystan.  When they declare their attack you flip Swords, target Drystan and Noble Arms – Gallatin, and make your Equip play.

That accomplishes two things.  First, it equips Drystan and boosts it to 2800 ATK – enough to let it win almost any battle.  If that doesn’t do the trick, equipping Drystan also triggers its effect, letting you destroy a face-up card.  You can destroy the attacker before it ever gets to Drystan, or destroy another face-up card if 2800 ATK is enough to turn the tables on your opponent.  It’s a really surprising play, and your opponent will have a tough time stopping it; if they try to target your backrow with something like Mystical Space Typhoon before attacking, you can just Chain Swords at Dawn anyways.

Swords at Dawn works really well on your turn, too.  If you Summon a Noble Knight and your opponent flips something like Torrential Tribute or Bottomless Trap Hole to try and destroy your monster, Swords at Dawn lets you equip Noble Arms of Destiny on the Chain to dodge that threat. There are a lot of tricks here, and the more Noble Arms you have in your Graveyard the stronger this card becomes.  You can even use Swords at Dawn to equip Noble Knight Borz, then activate its effect to search another Noble Arms from your deck for free.

These two cards are just the beginning; there are still four more World Premieres for Noble Knights in Shadow Specters.  You can get yours at the Shadow Specters Sneak Preview on November 2^nd, but we’ll be previewing them all right here and over on the Noble Knight Showcase over the coming weeks.  Don’t miss it!