Gold Paladin (i series)

This is a list of Gold Paladin cards pertaining to the Cray i storyline.

Background
Who are the Black Dragons?

The Black Dragons are an activist movement protesting the mistreatment of the shadow warrior clans that live in United Sanctuary, as well as the decadence of United Sanctuary's society. Many of its members are in active service in Gold Paladin.

In the main timeline, the are a small minority in the Sanctuary. They keep to themselves in secluded villages, the wilderness, or the dark alleyways of cities, anywhere that happens to be the outskirts of society. They have always been hated and feared by the rest of the citizens of the Sanctuary, especially since and his  rebellion. They are only barely recognized as legal citizens, and receive very little legal protection. Poverty and crime rates among the abyss dragon population are high. The life of an abyss dragon is generally constant quiet frustration and misery.

Despite its secrecy, the existence of Shadow Paladin is common knowledge among the abyss dragons, as most abyss dragons have been encouraged to join Shadow Paladin once in their lives. Opinions of the current Shadow Paladin have been mixed among the abyss dragons. Some of them believe that defending the Sanctuary as part of Shadow Paladin is the right thing to do, even if they may not receive recognition. Others look down on Shadow Paladin, believing its members to be foolish for fighting for a nation that doesn't care about them, and for atoning for unspecified sins in the distant past.

The United Sanctuary of the main timeline can afford to ignore these problems due to just how few abyss dragons there are living in the United Sanctuary, but in Cray i, where the abyss dragon population is much larger, these problems have blown up to considerable sizes.

Long ago, there were many clans of shadow warriors inhabiting United Sanctuary. Most of them opposed the Sanctuary, and they threatened to tear the nascent nation apart, which caused a group of to descend from the heavens and founded Guardian Force, the homeland defense army of United Sanctuary, and they hunted the dark warriors down. Some of them fled south to Dark Zone, where they founded Night Hunter. Some of them fled to the Dragon Empire, where they joined Murakumo's ninja clans. And some of them stayed, in the United Sanctuary, submitting to the cosmo dragons.

Out of the three, the ones who stayed have it the worst by far.

The shadow warrior clans, while not different to the rest of the humans, elves, and dragons of Sanctuary in ancestry, have a considerably different culture and moral code. Unlike the rest of the Sanctuary, which seeks to preserve and protect life and uphold honor, the shadow warriors reject honorable tactics and instead hold determination and sacrifice as the most important virtues. They will stop at nothing to do what needs to be done, including sacrificing allies and themselves, and they view it as an honor to sacrifice oneself for a greater cause.

Due to their powers over darkness, differing ideals, and being descended from groups that threatened the Sanctuary, "shadowclanners", as descendants of the shadow warrior clans are called, have been discriminated against by wider society for centuries. Violence against shadowclanners is frequent and overlooked. Shadowclanners are locked out of many aspects of society, are segregated against, and are barely represented in government. Like with abyss dragons in the main timeline, poverty and crime rates among the shadowclanners are high, and shadowclanners are often stereotyped as violent and ruthless criminals willing to sacrifice anyone in pursuit of their goals. Shadowclanners are also constantly told that they have to atone for the sins of their ancestors.

Members of the shadow warrior clans are encouraged to join Gold Paladin, as the Sanctuary offers benefits and an improved standing in society; to them, it's a pathway out of the poverty and discrimination that comes with being a shadowclanner. However, the shadow warriors are often isolated from the other soldiers of Gold Paladin and organized into segregated units, and still face discrimination from the rest of the knights. A few shadow warriors, the ones truly dedicated to the cause of protecting the Sanctuary from the shadows, join Guardian Force as members of Covert Ops, the CIA of the Sanctuary. However, their ruthlessness in advancing the realm's interests is often used by the government to persecute their kin, which they carry out despite their misgivings.

To counteract these things, activism for the civil rights of shadowclanners has been going on for centuries. While some gains have been made, in the majority of cases, these civil rights groups either petered out due to police violence and social pressure or had their leaders assassinated by Covert Ops. The Black Dragons, founded by the noble-raised shadowclanner Everia and the Gold Paladin knight Infinite Crime Dragon, were merely the latest of these organizations. However, in the wake of the Deep Thought invasion, the Sanctuary neglected its shadowclanner citizens in favor of helping its more established citizens, and the shadowclanners were forced to band together and help themselves. After the invasion, the Black Dragons, emboldened by the Jishin rebellion occurring in the, were inspired to campaign for their rights.

Playstyle
There are roughly three Gold Paladin playstyles in Cray i. The first is Royal Golds, which focuses on making large columns and filling their field. This playstyle is the one most heavily supported by canon, so I don't plan to make many cards for it. The second is Blue Steel, which heavily focuses on multi-attacking by repeatedly swapping cards in and out of the deck. Golds have always multi-attacked, but they only started to learn hard on it in the V series. The third is the Black Dragons, or "Shadow Golds," which is the one most relevant to this page.

The Black Dragon faction plays like, in that it revolves around retiring rear-guards to the vanguard. By exploiting the cheap superior calls of Gold Paladin, this playstyle can generate a truly massive amount of weak retire fodder, and this is only appropriate, as the bosses and Strides of the Black Dragons often require you to retire far more rear-guards than Shadow Paladin would ever ask. Many Black Dragon cards count as multiple rear-guards when being retired like, which is a necessity for effects that require you to retire upwards of six or more rear-guards at once in an environment where doesn't exist.

There are many Black Dragon cards that can be normal called during the attack step of your turn, allowing them to multi-attack.

Sub-clans and archetypes

 * Blue Steel