This will be slightly different as the Jewel Knights have some minor peculiarities about them.
But as every Vanguard Deck still revolves around the main Grade 3 of choice I'll still start with that.
[AUTO](VC) Limit Break 4 (This ability is active if you have four or more damage):
When this unit attacks, if the number of other rear-guards you have with "Jewel Knight" in its card name is four or more, this unit gets [Power]+2000/[Critical]+1 until end of that battle.
[ACT](VC):[Counter Blast (2) - Cards with "Jewel Knight" in their card name]
Search your deck for up to one card with "Jewel Knight" in its card name, call it to (RC), and shuffle your deck.
Good card, but not really amazing. A passive Limit Break ability means that once you're at four damage this card will keep up the pressure. The bad thing is the extra Critical only really benefits you when your opponent is at 4 or less damage, once both players are at 5 damage, extra Criticals don't really matter as much as just having a high power and only +2k doesn't really help much. Additionally the requirement is having four or more Jewel Knight Rear Guards that means careful planning is required for Rear Guard placement if you want to include higher power boosting units, as the highest power Grade 1 Jewel Knight is 7k.
It's regular ability is really good though, on par with, if not better than King of Knights Alfred and Great Silver Wolf Garmore. The Counter Blast limitation shouldn't really be an issue the bigger problem is the call restriction on Jewel Knights, but even then it's not really a problem as you'll always want to have 4 or more Jewel Knights in the Rear Guard circles. However it does mean you can't call cards like Gorden for extra shield, at least until Jewel Knights get their own. The great thing is also the fact that it's an Activate ability. Meaning you won't run into the problem of not having enough damage when you ride Grade 3 like Garmore.
[AUTO] Limit Break 4 (This ability is active if you have four or more damage):
When a «Royal Paladin» rides this unit, you may choose one of your vanguards, and that unit gets [Power]+10000/[Critical]+1 until end of turn.
[AUTO](VC):When this unit attacks a vanguard, this unit gets [Power]+2000 until end of that battle.
[CONT](VC/RC): Lord (If you have a unit that doesn't belong to the same clan as this unit, this unit cannot attack)
Standard Break Ride unit. 11k base power gives a good defense at the very least until you ride another unit over. Ashley gets +2k simply for attacking the Vanguard, meaning she can hit 11k and higher Vanguards by herself, which is always good. As for the Break Ride itself, it might seem a bit underwhelming and it certainly is. The standard +10k power to Vanguard is still there, but other than that the only thing it does different is giving the Vanguard an additional Critical for that turn. Compared to other Break Ride units it does very little and is about on par with Vowing Sword Dragon. Other Break Ride abilities give +5k to multiple units some still have effects on top of that, or giving all Rear Guards, +10k when they attack etc.
So definitely it's not that amazing. However, in my opinion, it really can't be too great, because Royals already have many awesome Grade 3s that would be really good when riding over this.
Important to note is that none of the Break Rides are actually limited to their Archetype. So you want something like Liberator Gancelot? Break Ride Soul Saviour Dragon, some overall effect +1 Critical. Want high Vanguard power and want to save cards? Ride King of Knights Alfred 28k and 2 Critical if you want to save 1 card in hand by not playing something behind Alfred and you can save another card by calling a Rear Guard from deck with the King of Knights. Even Pendragon might be a good option because on the next turn you have a chance of riding another Ashley from the top of your deck (instead of your hand), which sets up another Break Ride the following turn.
Combined with Salome, it doesn't matter as much if your opponent has way less damage than you because you gain Criticals relatively easily to quickly catch up.
Now the interesting thing about the rest of the Jewel Knights is that, unlike other Archetypes, they don't rely on having a Jewel Knight Vanguard. In fact most of the Jewel Knights' abilities require a certain amount of Jewel Knight Rear Guards instead, usually 3 or more other Jewel Knights Rear Guards. Like everything, this has good and bad points.
This means that there's more freedom with the Grade 3s and it's not necessary to play the Jewel Knight Grade 3s. However it does restrict your options for all the other Grades as you'll always want to have enough Jewel Knights on the field to be able to make use of their abilities, and sadly not all of their abilities are that great AND there aren't really that many Jewel Knights to choose from in the first place.
Dogmatize Jewel Knight, Sybill is the same as Akane and can call any Grade 1 or lower Jewel Knight from the deck for a cost of Counter Blast 2 when you have any Royal Paladin Vanguard.
Jewel Knight Prizme is the same as Oracles Think Tank's Emerald Witch Lala. Prizme lets you discard a card and draw one if you have 3 or more other Jewel Knight Rear Guards when Prizme gets called to the field.
Dreaming Jewel Knight Tiffany is the starter Vanguard and is quite good. Like all starter vanguards now, Tiffany has the Pioneer effect and has a respectable power for a Grade 0 at 5k power. Her effect is what makes her so good though; at no additional cost other then sending Tiffany to soul, you can give up to 2 Jewel Knights +3k power until the end of the turn. And a well timed +3k to two units can be devastating.
Other then the above mentioned, the only other Jewel Knights are the Triggers (one each of Critical, Stand, Draw and Heal) and Iseult. So it's not really viable to make a deck with only Jewel Knights. However the upside is they all have decent power for their effects, and their effects aren't really bad.
So without further ado, time for initial Deck List:
Grade 0: 17
6 Critical
6 Draw
4 Heal
(Play max amount of Jewel Knights and top up with trigger units of choice)
1 Dreaming Jewel Knight Tiffany (starter)
Grade 1: 10
4 Stinging Jewel Knight Sherrie
4 Flash Jewel Knight, Iseult
4 Jewel Knight Prizme
3 Toypugal (or Little Sage Marron / Pongal / Lake Maiden Lien)
Grade 2: 10
4 Fellowship Jewel Knight, Tracie
2 Dogmatize Jewel Knight Sybill
2 Blaster Blade
2 Knight of Determination Lamorak
Grade 3: 8
3 Pure Heart Jewel Knight Ashley
3 Leading Jewel Knight Salome
2 Soul Saviour Dragon / Swordsman of Explosive Flames Palamedes
Some explanations:
Grade 0
This deck doesn't actually need 8 Critical I feel but it definitely won't hurt it either. So just use whatever Critical oriented setup you're comfortable with. Without testing it's hard to say if stands would work well, on one hand you gain Criticals relatively easily but on the other hand Jewel Knights don't really have big Rear Guards. For draws you could max out on Margal instead for additional power adding and soul charging options. If you don't plan on using Salome then I'd recommend to max out on Margal, otherwise stick with 3 copies of the Jewel Knight draw trigger at the very least. For the specific deck above, 4 Margal is recommended due the addition of Soul Saviour Dragon.
Grade 1
Maxed out on the Jewel Knight Grade 1s and 3 other Grade 1s of choice. I'm leaning towards Toypugal to at least let Salome hit 21k with the perfect setup, but the other options I listed are also pretty good. Marron for 8k power, Pongal for more consistent usage of Soul Saviour Dragon and Lake Maiden Lien is a great turn 1 ride and can still be occasionally useful during the game. Depending on your Grade 3 lineup you'll want to change the none Jewel Knight card and you might also want to lower the number of Prizme and/or Iseult (although nowadays it's better to have extra negators) which give you additional options.
Talking about Iseult, it's not necessary to play the Jewel Knight version as most of the time you won't be calling negators anyway and if you're forced to ride Iseult for Grade 1, that also doesn't change anything if you ride regular Iseult.
Grade 2
Tracie at 4 because 12k attacker is good and Sybill only at 2 because I want to play Salome. Both of them have the same cost, the only difference is Salome has to Counter Blast 2 Jewel Knights which shouldn't be a problem. Salome also has the Advantage of being able to call any Jewel Knight, including Grade 3s, which helps Toypugal be a bit more consistent. Sybill is also only an 8k and having to ride it at Grade 2 opens you up for a lot of damage. On top of that if you don't have enough damage to even use her ability...
The other 4 are really up to preference, I want to limit the number of 8k Grade 2s so I decided to go with good old Blaster Blade and Lamorak. Blaster Blade is a good card to have around in case you really need to burn Rear Guards. The only thing to look out for is the cost since most of the Counter Blast costs in this deck is 2, so deciding when you want to call more units instead of burning is important. Lamorak because he looks cooler than Gallatin.
Alternatively, you can also play 4 Lamorak or go with the none Jewel Knight Grade 2s in BT10.
Uncompromising Knight Idell is a base 8k that can gain 4k when attacking for Counter Blast 1 Royal Paladin if you have a Royal Paladin Vanguard.
Delicate Knight Clowdine is also base 8k and gains +3k when attacking and your Vanguard or a Rear Guard has a Limit Break 4 ability (it's not quite clear if you need to be at 4 damage or higher or if a unit simply needs to have an LB4 skill).
Both are good units, but I don't want to have that many 8k base Grade 2s. If I had to choose one, I'd probably play Clowdine as the deck is already quite Counter Blast heavy. (assuming the deck in it's current state)
There are a lot of options with the Grade 2s as you can simply intercept to clear them and replace with Jewel Knights if you need to, unlike Grade 1s.
Grade 3
Play whatever you like really. (Besides Majesty Lord Blaster, but even that could be accommodated with some changes...) Even Grade 3 lineups from the beginning of Vanguard would work well I feel i.e. King of Knights Alfred and Palamedes based.
For this specific build above I decided on 3-3 Ashely and Salome respectively. I'm contemplating of changing it to 4-2 because Salome is only 10k and having to ride Ashley and then another card over just for Break ride seems like a terrible loss in card advantage.
Soul Saviour Dragon is there for alternate Break Ride option and also for when your initial Break Ride didn't quite work and you somehow haven't lost yet haha (and also the promo Soul Saviour Dragon looks cool and should be easy to get)
If you already have Palamedes, that's always a good option but keep in mind the number of Jewel Knights on your field. Other options are Dignified Silver Dragon, Twin Shine Swordsman Marhaus, Knight of Conviction Bors etc. any 10k Grade 3 that gains power as a Rear Guard. (because 9k Grade 3s are terrible when forced to ride.)
Overall:
One thing you may notice about the deck list above is that I included quite a few none Jewel Knights. Of course there is some concern about not having enough Jewel Knights for Counter Blast to use Salome's call skill. But as I have said in previous posts, I don't think it'll be a huge issue. Even if you can't use Salome's skill to call unit, Sybill doesn't have specific Counter Blast restriction and Blaster Blade is always a good use of Counter Blast. With careful management it shouldn't be an issue (but of course I might change my opinions after testing).
Jewel Knights seem to be quite flexible in terms of Grade 3 and are really only limited by their Rear Guards. But that is what makes them really fit the Royal Paladin theme: Getting stronger through allies. I doubt Jewel Knights will be a top top tier deck, but I'm pretty sure they have a good fighting chance :]
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