Pirate Swordsman, Colombard (V Series)

Just wow. This is an amazing new addition to Granblue! One of our favorite units from the G Era trial deck days has gotten an amazing retrain! Let’s cover him and his amazing impact to Granblue!

Skill:

Card Effect(s)
[AUTO](VC/RC):When placed, COST [Counter Blast (1)], search your deck for up to one card, put it into your drop zone, shuffle your deck, and call up to one card from your drop zone to (RC). This ability may only be used by a card with the same card name once a turn.

Pros

• Can grab any piece from deck and call it to RC.
• Works on both VC/RC.
• Can selectively mill a piece and call a different one to RC.
• Can be literally used in every Granblue variant.

Cons

• Ability can only be used 1/Turn.
• Cost a CB, so damage denial early on can stop this card.
• Cost a CB, can limit your CB for the following turn or current turn.

The Pros outweigh the Cons soooooooo much. There’s plenty to talk about today. So let’s dive into specific areas where he shines!

The Early Game

Yes, this card is phenomenal in the early game! Let’s cover some card interactions.

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We have the ability to put into drop zone and revive Ripple Banshee! We essentially can do a very similar play like Royal Paladin had with Benon and Richard. This play was very powerful in the Sanctuary Guard days in the meta game. Essentially, it’s a CB1 and SB1 to +2 cards on the field and still recover the hand from calling Benon thanks to Richard’s skill. G Era decks like Nightrose would deny CB in the early game to prevent this play to go off in that match-up. Now with Colombard V, it’s way better.

• Ripple becomes a 12k booster for the turn. (21k column with a 9k front row RG)
• The SB1 is useful because we’ll have access to the G1, we rode with prior turn, in the drop zone.
• Colombard works on VC too, where Benon was restricted to RC.
• Because we’re Granblue, we can reuse that same Ripple Banshee later on. (So we only need a few copies)

This gives Granblue some very solid early game aggression and keep advantage. It can help for fighting for 1st stride in Premium too.

Other early game interactions.

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In both formats, we have access to grab Ghost Ship and Greed Shade! Both of these can help promote more attacks and gaining/fixing hand advantage. Plus Ghost Ship becomes a 24k beater and removes itself from field. This can help with reducing the likelihood of getting damage denied after this turn.

Greed Shade can fix our hand in many ways! If we go second, we drop the Quick Shield ticket and grab a combo piece into our hand or better defensive shield. It also improves our G3 ride consistency, because we can grab the main G3 from the drop zone if milled early on. I believe this duo of cards, will be very good for Granblue overall.

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Cards like King Serpent and Rough Seas can be used to help fuel for resources! With King Serpent, we can CC1 and SC1. So we can use the same CB next turn without the fear of getting damage denied. Then use King Serpent to attack a G1 8k too and intercept with it next turn. Rough Seas gives us a draw! But wait, we can do the same with Ghost Ship? Right! But both cards SC1 and that can enable some strong Gouache plays on 1st stride as well!

V Era Seven Seas

Of course it helps the new Seven Seas retrains!

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Seven Seas got some awesome retrains but were still incomplete as a deck. We have room to put in generic units. One of the issues was getting quality cards in the drop zone for cards like Nightspinel to be used effectively. There are other plays that are more consistent and reliable thanks to Colombard.

• We can now grab Slash Shade from deck! (The deck needs Slash Shades to put on pressure)
• We can put Nightcrow into the drop zone too and revive something else. (Then Nightcrow can kill off Colombard)
• We can grab Nightrunner to add another Seven Seas card from drop zone to hand.
• We can grab Raistutor as a booster and later on to use as an 10k intercept from back row.

The Seven Seas deck struggled with maintaining both hand and field in certain match-ups like against Kagero, Narukami, etc. Now Colombard can help with that and works well with Nightspinel too.

Useful In Key Match-ups

Because we have access to cards like Ripple Banshee, Ghost Ship, etc. We can have better chances of winning against certain match-ups.

• Kagero: We can generate a +2 on field and apply pressure early on. If they retire those cards, great! Then they have to attack the VG and give us CB to work with next turn.
• Narukami: The annoyance of binding our cards is now less hurtful. We can grab anything we want by calling Colombard from hand or from drop zone if available.
• HYU-GA and Gear Chronicle: These decks/clans have access to cards that shuffle back some important units back to deck. Colombard fetches them back out! Back in G Era days, Chappie was very important against Time Leap since they had Kalibum and the Heteroround Dragon G Guard.

Cray Elemental Tutor

We can also fetch useful Cray Elementals!

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Both Honoly and Tear are great cards to grab from deck! Especially Honoly because early on we can immediately set it up against match-ups like Aqua Force, Gold Paladin, etc. Also, if you only have 1CB available, you can use it for just Colombard and then the Honoly 2nd skill will do as much as possible, so you don’t CB2.

Tear can be used if we’ve flipped Cycloneds with Zazan or the Tempest Sphere order so we can potentially CC 1-4 cards.

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Zazan instantly becomes available through Colombard! Holy crap! So Granblue can further abuse the Zazan engine at a more consistent basis. We can also get vanilla units if needed for Mowark too. Evan actually made an article about a variant that can use Ultima and Zoa thanks to the G3 Cray Elemental, Thunder Elemental, Barigiran.

Bad Bounty And Negrosonger Turns

One of the things that these strides lack is revival of RGs during the main phase. So to compensate, we have to call from hand.

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We do have units like Dancing Cutlass V Series that can call itself from drop, but it’s just a 6k booster. Colombard allows us to easily build a decent board to work with. Then the battle phase our strides can do their thing.

With Negrosonger in the past, it wasn’t a problem because G Era G3 Nightrose had the on stride skill to call something. As well as having leftover Negrobones from prior turns thanks to Goauche turns.

List of Variants

Remember I mentioned that Colombard can literally be used in ANY variant. So here’s a list of variants over the past few years to jog your memories ha.

• Cocytus (V Era)
• Basskirk (V Era)
• Nightrose (V Era and G Era)
• Seven Seas (V Era and G Era)
• Ghosties
• Legion (Pinot and Negrobolt)
• Older outdated ones

Nightrose

Two things to mention with both V Era and G Era Nightrose.

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G Era Nightrose’s GB2 skill can be used more consistently early on with Colombard. Basically, we can do the Pseudo Denial Griffin play by utilizing Colombard as the revived target from Nightrose’s GB2. With that play, we can literally grab Canonneer and use it!

Speculation on V Era Nightrose is that she may introduce battle phase revival! If that’s the case, then we can call Colombard during the battle phase and fetch another RG from deck/drop zone such as Skull Dragon/Ghost Ship. Other cards too in Premium that do battle phase revival can have access to this play as well. Card’s like G Era Colombard, Nightstorm, etc are solid examples.

These points are credited to Evan as well since he mentioned it to me!

Other Key Highlights

• Colombard into Greed Shade to drop the Quick Shield ticket is a great play. (Credit goes to Ian)
• We finally have a way to reliably grab King Serpent and use it right away! (Helps with Gouache plays, especially if Colombard can be used to search for ANYTHING we want repeatedly)
• We can fetch Heat Elemental, Huang as another option to force VG to VG attacks. (Credit goes to Evan)
• We can grab other G3s such as Skull Dragon, King Tentacle, Forbode Ship, etc for some power plays.
• Helps with the Pseudo Megiddo Turn too by having Skull Dragons and Breakride Nightmist in the drop zone.

Final Thoughts

Talk about VALUE! Colombard is a very welcomed addition!

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So how many should we play? Glad you asked! To be honest it seems worthy of 3-4 copies. I’m going to test out those ratios in Premium for sure. One can even have 3 V Era and 1 G Era ratios. The fact that it brings so much to the early game as well, it’s worth 3-4 copies to see it as early as possible.

Yes he may have a hard 1/Turn, but it’s NOT a big deal at all. Literally, resolving his skill once puts you in a very good position and helps you lead in the rest of the game.

Also, I’m considering SP rarities for myself, so if you know anyone or a shop that’s selling some when it releases, let me know ha!

I’m SUPER excited for this card and I can’t wait to test with it and the rest of the support that’s soon to be revealed! Thanks for reading amigos, til next time!