Skeleton Sea Navigator

We got a new reveal! Skeleton Sea Navigator is an interesting card, let’s cover him!

Skill:
[ACT](RC):COST [[Rest] two rear-guards], and put five cards from the top of your deck into your drop zone.

Pros

• Mills 5 cards!
• Can use as early as G1 turn.
• No CB nor SB cost associated with.
• Can rest itself as part of the cost.

Cons

• Rests 2 of your RGs.
• It’s a blind mill.
• 7k and RC only skill.
• Loses use in the late game due to being close to deck out.
• Loses use if your drop zone is already well setup.

It’s a somewhat fairly balanced skill to be honest. In Granblue, we usually see skills that mill 2 cards at a time as cost for a skill such as Ruin Shade, Greed Shade, etc. But because the skill itself is mill 5, the cost associated is different. Is this card a staple? Great question! I believe it does have its uses in some variants of Granblue, let’s cover some!

V Era Seven Seas Standard

I’m sure some of you already thought of that it can actually mesh well with the new V Era Seven Seas retrain cards.

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Currently, the set of cards that have been revealed for the retrains of Seven Seas, can play some non-Seven Seas cards to help further its strategy. Nightspinel is a great card; however, it needs to have some quality targets in the drop zone to really get the best benefit. So cards that help mill, would give more chances of resolving a Nightspinel with maximum benefit. Even seeing Nightcrow in the drop zone asap is well appreciated. Evan, in his prior post, had suggested a card like Norman because his skill’s cost involved milling 2 cards from deck.

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With Skeleton Sea Navigator, it can rest itself and another card, then with Nightcrow’s skill you can retire it or the other rested unit. This allows you to still have an effective field formation while setting up your drop zone. Also, if you’re at 6 Treasure Markers, you can restand any rested Seven Seas RGs, so if one or two were rested by Skeleton Sea Navigator, then those can still restand to attack at least once that turn.

Other Granblue Standard Variants

Could this card be used in a more generic sense? Glad you asked! Currently, we have Cocytus as the most competitive build.

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One aspect that is very useful from Cocytus’ skill, is that his cost mills 4 cards! It’s useful because we still play cards that require a 10+ drop zone card count. Not only that, by our G3 turn, we have the ability to revive units from the drop zone. So by then we have some choices to do a solid turn. It’s part of the reason that makes it the most competitive build at the moment.

But what about non-Cocytus decks?

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A card like Basskirk doesn’t have a mill associated to his skill. So choices can be limited. For the new Nightrose retrain, we’re not sure what the skill is yet. But it’s safe to assume that her skill involves some form of revival. However, both are limited to what’s available in the drop zone. So Skeleton Sea Navigator does have a use here where we can use it to make those revival calls more beneficial.

Obadiah? Zazan? Premium Thoughts

Premium is much different than Standard on this card’s utility. Skeleton Sea Navigator mills top 5 cards from deck, but we have Obadiah that can selectively mill 5 from deck.

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So to see any real benefit from Skeleton Sea Navigator, that would be more in the early game before Stride. One benefit is playing a few copies in a Zazan Granblue variant. With having access to excessive milling, we can use cards like Greed Shade or Captain Nightmist/Colombard to grab/call a card like Zazan. Zazan’s skill alone will draw us 2 new cards which can compensate for the 2 rested RG cost from Skeleton Sea Navigator. When you call 2 vanilla units from Zazan’s skill, you can call over the rested RGs too.

Other Key Highlights

• With Granblue potentially getting Sentinel Critical triggers, it makes more room in the G1 slots because most builds play Dolph PGs. So we can easily put in Skeleton Sea Navigators.
• Because we’re milling more cards at a time, Greed Shade’s value increases much faster since we can grab combo pieces, ultimate stride fodder, heals, Sentinel Critical triggers, etc.
• This card can be used in G Era Seven Seas to help get cards like Prisoner Dragon, Plegeton, Slash Shade, Nightcrow, etc. into the drop zone quicker. During the battle phase, you can also retire the rested RGs to call Prisoner Dragon/Slash Shade to still have more attacks.
• Decks that utilize OG Rough Seas Banshee and OG Dancing Cutlass, can be targets to rest. Rough Seas Banshee can go into soul after being rested to draw a new card. Dancing Cutlass draws you a card that you can further work with.
• A deck more focused on a 2nd stride Megiddo turn, like Nightrose Greed, would have an easier way to excessively mill to get to its winning turn consistently.

Final Thoughts

There are still more reveals to come that honestly can overshadow this card overall. Tommy the Ghostie is expected to be like the prior stride fodder retrains which has some value as well. Plus in Premium, we have a much bigger card pool. In fact, for Nightrose, there are some decent G1 G Era choices that we can potentially use such as Negrobone, Bale, and Fatal Shade.

Would I play this card? It’s worth trying out in V Era Seven Seas Standard. The deck still could use some more cards to help its overall game strategy. Everything else? I would wait to see some more reveals before trying it out. There’s potential that the new set can introduce some new interactions that will dictate our deck building. Thanks for reading amigos, til next time!