Shadow Specters has five new cards for Noble Knights, and they’re all awesome!  Having so many strong options is great, but when you actually sit down to build a Deck, you now have so many choices that you might not know where to begin. Read on to get some tips on  how to start building your own Noble Knight Deck!

Building Noble Knights can be tricky.  Should you use Noble Knight Artorigus?  It makes Lady of the Lake more useful, but on its own Artorigus is just a Normal Monster.  If you do play Artorigus, should you run Rescue Rabbit and Foolish Burial to set up combos?  Do you want to play other Tuners as well?  Unknown Synchron can speed you towards Ignoble Knight of High Laundsallyn, but Effect Veiler can fend off powerful monster abilities.  Ignoble Knight of Black Laundsallyn?  Noble Knight Gwalchavad?  There are tons of options, but playing every single one of them quickly becomes impossible, if not undesirable.

And then there’s the Noble Arms!  Deciding how to build your arsenal and supply your Knights is one of the toughest questions you’ll face when assembling your Round Table.  It’s actually two questions in one.

First, how many Noble Arms should you play?  Skimp on Noble Arms and you won’t make your key combos quickly or consistently.  But play too many, and you could wind up with more dead draws.  Once you settle on the number of Noble Arms you want, there are five different Equip Spells to choose from.  Which ones should you play, and which ones should you play more of?  Those are the questions we want to help you with today.

First Up, The Numbers

It’s best to start by choosing the number of Noble Arms you want to play, and then filling in the blanks from there; it’s easier to choose your Noble Arms once you know how many you’re going for.  The answer usually lies somewhere between eight and ten Noble Arms, and the choice comes down to certain combos that drive your strategy.

With eight Noble Arms, you’ll generally have a 76.4% chance of drawing at least one in your first six cards – that’s a bit more than 3 out of every 4 Duels you play.  You’ll have a 35.5% chance of opening with Noble Knight Medraut and a Noble Arms, giving you a shot at Summoning Noble Knight Borz, and following up with the Rank 5 Sacred Noble Knight of King Artorigus play we described in this article. That’s a bit better than 1 in every 3 Duels – enough to tip a pivotal Match in your favor.  If you don’t draw Medraut or Reinforcement of the Army, you’ll also have a 28.2% chance of opening with Borz and a Noble Arms to set up plays for later.

With ten Noble Arms the odds go up a bit.  You’ll draw at least one Noble Arms in your opening hand 84.5% of the time; you’ll have a 39.8% chance of a Medraut combo; and a 31.7% chance of making your backup play with Borz.

So there’s a difference there, but it’s not huge.  What might be more important, is that playing a couple extra Noble Arms can keep you from running out of Noble Arms in your deck, as you search them out with Noble Knight Borz and Ignoble Knight of High Laundsallyn.  Both have powerful abilities, but if you don’t have anything in your Deck to play with them, they don’t really do much.  I’d recommend experimenting with eight, nine, and ten Noble Arms, and figuring out which arrangement works best for you.  How often you Summon High Laundsallyn combined with your unique Dueling style will impact your decision.  Personally, I’d start with eight Noble Arms and see how it goes from there.

Building Your Arsenal

Not all Noble Arms are created equal!  All five Noble Arms Equip Spells do different things, and that makes them all unique and useful.  But some roles are just more powerful than others, and your priorities will guide you to play multiples of certain Noble Arms.

These three are usually the most important, because they help keep your Noble Knights alive the longest.  When you’re aiming to make a massive Sacred Noble Knight of King Artorigus, or a giant-sized Artorigus, King of the Noble Knights, you really want it to stick around.  These Noble Arms make it happen.

Noble Arms of Destiny is generally seen as the most important of the bunch; you’ll want to run two, maybe even three copies.  It’s hugely powerful because it protects your Noble Knights from the widest range of threats; by keeping your Noble Knight safe through one destruction, Destiny shields it from battle and threatening effects.  It’s an absolute must.

Noble Arms – Excaliburn is almost as good, protecting your Knights from cards that Destiny can’t stop.  Without Excaliburn your opponent could bounce away your Knight with Compulsory Evacuation Device; flip it face-down with Book of Moon to rob you of your equips; or banish your Warrior with Dimensional Prison.  Excaliburn solves all those problems, while packing a powerful effect in the Graveyard that can get you to your destruction effects, or just refresh an Xyz Monster.

The only problem with Excaliburn is that when it’s destroyed, it doesn’t re-equip.  That means if you want to Summon Noble Knight Medraut, use its effect to Special Summon Noble Knight Borz, and then play Borz to set up an instant Rank 5 Artorigus, you need a Noble Arms that isn’t Excaliburn.  Otherwise you’ll Summon Borz, Medraut will destroy Excaliburn, and your combo suddenly becomes a nonbo.  Still, at least two Noble Arms – Excaliburn are a must, and many Duelists play three anyways.  Note that it’s the only Noble Arms you can control two, or even three copies of at the same time.  That’s useful for when you really need to protect your Knights from targeted effects.

Next up is Noble Arms – Gallatin.  It’s awesome because it turns Artorigus, King of the Noble Knights into a powerful 3000 ATK behemoth, and boosts Sacred Noble Knight of King Artorigus to a whopping 3200 ATK.  It helps you deal damage defeat big monsters, but it also protects Artorigus from attackers.  That lets you save Noble Arms of Destiny’s protection effect to deal with stuff like Dark Hole, Torrential Tribute, and other problems you can’t stop otherwise.  You should always run at least one Gallatin; two copies are often a good choice.

That leaves two more Noble Arms to discuss…

Noble Arms – Arfeudutyr can be a powerful addition to your arsenal… if your opponent plays enough face-downs to make it worthwhile.  Against a Deck that’s light on backrow it can be a tricky topdeck, but it’s awesome against strategies like Constellars, Evilswarm, and Bujin – anything with lots of Traps.

Arfeudutyr’s effect is once-per-turn, but you can get around that by sending it to the Graveyard and then re-equipping it.  If your opponent goes first and Sets a monster, then Sets a Spell or Trap, you can make some amazing plays!  Say you have Noble Knight Medraut and Noble Arms – Arfeudutyr.  You can Summon Medraut, equip Arfeudutyr, and activate its effect to destroy your opponent’s backrow card; you don’t care that Medraut’s ATK gets reduced, because you’re just going to Xyz Summon anyways.

Use Medraut’s effect to Special Summon Borz; activate its effect to grab another Noble Arms and load your Graveyard; then equip Medraut again.  Now Borz has Arfeudutyr, so you can activate its effect a second time, blowing away your opponent’s monster.  From there you’ll Xyz Summon Sacred Noble Knight of King Artorigus, arm it with as many as four Noble Arms, and make a direct attack for as much as 3700 Battle Damage.

You can get two uses a turn out of Noble Arms – Caliburn, too.  The same Medraut combo works with Caliburn to allow two activations of its effect – you can gain 500 Life Points twice, for a total of 1000 Life Points gained per turn.  But you can also use Artorigus, King of the Noble Knights to double up on once-per-turn Noble Arms effects.

How?  It’s as easy as detaching an Xyz Material and destroying Caliburn or Arfeudutyr yourself.  While you’ll usually play Artorigus to destroy your opponent’s Spells and Traps, you can destroy your own cards too.  Artorigus can destroy as many as five cards a turn, but your opponent usually won’t have that many.  So while you’re at it, just pop Caliburn; since it reequips once a turn it’ll come back immediately, ready to be activate again for another Life Point bonus.

While Caliburn and Arfeudutyr are both useful, they’re not as important to protecting your Noble Knights.  Since you can search them out with Noble Knight Borz and Ignoble Knight of High Laundsallyn, it’s usually best to play just one of each.  You may even want to skip one or the other – test them out and see what works best for you.

Now that you know how to choose your weapons, you’re ready to arm your Noble Knights and send them into battle!  These are some of the greatest heroes that legend has to offer, and with the right armaments they can devastate your opponent.  Try them out!