We ended last week with a bang, showing off the contents of the Noble Knights of the Round Table Box Set in an exclusive video, which you can find here. Today I’m going to talk a little bit about two of the new cards from the Box Set that were shown last week: Last Chapter of the Noble Knights and Noble Knight Bedwyr.

Technically speaking, Last Chapter of the Noble Knights was introduced at the end of July on this very site, but a full image of the card didn’t appear until about 3 weeks ago on the official Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME Facebook page. Either way, it’s the card you’re probably already most familiar with, so I’ll be brief: Last Chapter of the Noble Knights is the comeback card that most Decks only wish they could have. You get to revive a Knight and equip him in one fell swoop, and you don’t lose Life Points, your ability to attack, or the capability to Special Summon anything else you want during the turn. Just when your opponent thinks they’ve turned the tables on you, Last Chapter of the Noble Knights flips the table and leaves your opponent scrambling to pick up the pieces. It’s not a card you can play on the very first turn of the Duel, unless things have gone impressively wrong, but any time after that, it’s going to be a welcome draw. The one nagging issue is this: how do you ensure you have a Noble Arms in the Graveyard? After all, you do need both to use the card.

There are two ways you’re going to wind up with a Noble Arms in your Graveyard. First, they could get there through the natural progression of your strategy. You could equip Noble Knight Borz with an Arms and send some more to the Grave, or make a play with Noble Knight Medraut, and so on and so forth. That requires you to already have a Noble Arms in hand, however, and depending on how much space in your Deck you’re carving out as an armory, that’s not always going to happen. The other way to get a Noble Arms in the Graveyard is to use an independent card effect to do it. Last Chapter requires an actual Equip Spell in your Graveyard, so using Foolish Burial on Gwenhwyfar, Queen of Noble Arms isn’t going to cut it. And that’s where Noble Knight Bedwyr comes in.

Bedwyr probably appears underwhelming at first, but including even one copy of him in your Deck opens up a huge number of potential plays and fixes a lot of possible opening hands that would otherwise be unplayable in today’s fast-paced game. For example, with all the incredibly powerful targeting cards and effects seeing play at the moment, Noble Arms – Excaliburn becomes an important card for keeping your Knights on the field. But unlike the rest of the “Noble Arms” Equip Spells, a Knight can’t just pick it back up from the Graveyard if its destroyed, which turns a normally good Medraut + Noble Arms hand into an uphill struggle. Unless you have Bedwyr in your Deck. With Bedwyr, you can send Noble Arms – Caliburn, Noble Arms – Gallatin, or Noble Arms of Destiny to your Graveyard, then Xyz Summon Arotrigus, King of the Noble Knights and pick up 2 Noble Arms instead of just one. That second Noble Arms makes all the difference. A 2000 ATK/DEF monster that simply can’t be targeted by cards or effects isn’t going to get you anywhere, but make it indestructible once per turn or bump up its ATK and now you’re talking.

On the subject of Last Chapter of the Noble Knights, simply Summoning Bedwyr will set you up to play it. Send the Noble Arms of your choice to the Graveyard, and as soon as Bedwyr winds up in the Graveyard, you’re ready to go. This is especially useful with Noble Knight Drystan, as Bedwyr can also take a Noble Arms on the field and equip it to a different Knight. So if you use Last Chapter to pull back Bedwyr and send another “Noble Arms” Equip Spell to the Graveyard, you can transfer the Equip Spell he pulled back to Drystan to destroy something and then Xyz Summon. These are a couple of the most prominent ways that Bedwyr can help you out. There are ton more, and some specific unique Noble Knight strategies that are made possible by the card, but I’ll leave it at that for now and let all you Noble Knight fans out there experiment to your hearts’ content!

The last thing I want to address is something that I haven’t really seen anyone talking about, which is a little surprising. Why does Last Chapter of the Noble Knights revive and equip a Knight? Why does Bedwyr send a card to the Graveyard and then cause a Noble Arms to change hands? Isn’t that kind of backwards? Not if you look at it from a certain perspective. Just something to think about while you wait for the Noble Knights of the Round Table Box Set, which releases this Friday!