Initial Impression: Raging Folm Dragon

The effects of the supposed new Shadow Paladin Revenger boss card has been revealed recently:


Revenger Raging Folm Dragon

Grade 3/Shadow Paladin - Abyss Dragon/11000 Power

[AUTO] (V) LB4: Target 3 of your “Revenger” Rearguards, retire them. At the end of a Battle in which this Unit attacked, you can pay the cost, if you do, target up to 1 “Revenger, Raging Folm Dragon” in your hand, Ride it, target your Vanguard, and during this turn that unit gains [Power]+10000.

[AUTO] (V): [Counterblast 1]: When this unit attacks, you can pay the cost. If you do, this unit gains [Power]+3000 during this battle.

[CONT] (V/R): Lord

The very first thing that came to mind was something a long the lines of "omg -4 lololol terribad card would not use". But then again, Spectral Duke Dragon is kinda the same...

And since it IS Shadow Paladin and standing vanguards seem to be all the rage nowadays, lets take a better look at it ;D

First off, Raging Folm Dragon's LB has no Counter Blast cost. This is really important because even the previous Shadow Pala deck builds could fully maximize their Counter Blast very very easily, and if there were more available, Shadow Paladins generally could consume it all for various effects. I expect the Revenger's to be quite similar in this regard.
The next thing about its cost is that, essentially it has a cleverly disguised discard 4 card cost in the form of discarding 3 and riding 1. Yes, riding is a -1, even though it is necessary until Grade 3, because you don't gain any additional cards on the field and it costs you 1 from hand (but most people know this). Also, since we must ride another Raging Folm Dragon, it is basically a "Persona Ride" and has the same problems as a Persona Blast skill, which is requiring a second copy of itself in hand to use. 


On the other hand, a good thing about this standing skill is that it doesn't have a specific hit condition, similar to Spectral Duke Dragon. Additionally, the Raging Folm Dragon you ride gains +10k power AND keeps Twin Drive, which immediately makes it better than Spectral Duke because you don't have to rely on getting triggers so your second Vanguard attack will hit with a decent amount of power. However, because we are forced to ride a second copy, it is impossible to stack triggers, which is pretty bad compared to other self standing Vanguards, like The End, Dragonic Descendant and Spectral Duke all of which can possibly attack for 2+ damage multiple times. 


Both Raging Folm and Spectral Duke have a net card gain of 1 the turn their skills are used (not accounting for draw triggers and other skills). Raging Folm has a -4 cost but gets to Twin Drive twice while Spectral Duke has a cost of -3 but loses Twin Drive on the second attack (and obviously, the +1 comes from the Draw at the start of the turn).
While not all the cards have been revealed yet, the Revengers do seem to have more than enough ways to make up for the retire cost, just like Spectral Duke Dragon, so the main concern with Raging Folm in terms of cost would be having another copy in hand when we would want to use its skill. BUT since this skill is so similar to Spectral Duke it will also mainly be used as a finisher and it's very likely to have another copy in hand by that time in the game. 

The next concern would be what triggers to play with Raging Folm. Since Critical Triggers don't carry over to the second attack Raging Folm isn't quite as deadly as Spectral Duke or Dragonic Descendant. Going with a RG -> VG -> RG attack pattern  we can still give all Trigger effects to the second RG attack, or split Criticals to RG and power to Vanguard to attempt to get through 2 trigger guards. This would definitely be a good option, since Raging Folm's skill gets him additional 10k power on the second attack.

However, it might be better to play stand triggers instead. This is because unlike Spectral Duke, Raging Folm Dragon is a Revenger and has all the generic Archetype support which includes 12k attackers and other card effects have also been released and include a 11k attacker when we have less Rear Guards. With just 1 stand trigger, these cards can hit for 16k/17k  by themselves. Stand Triggers are also better in a 5 damage situation because you only need 1 damage to win, barring heal triggers, thus additional attacks are better than having additional damage on fewer attacks. 
Mordred, the Shadow Paladin break ride, also has an effect that calls 1 Grade 2 or lower unit and give it +5k for that turn, which makes it incredibly good with stands as a unit like Masquerade will be 17k on that turn without triggers. 
The attacking order for a final turn push would be RG -> RG -> VG, then retire all boosting units for Raging Folm's Limit Break. In the most ideal scenario, if we drive check double stands on both Twin Drive, we would get 8 attacks total (6 RG attacks and 2 VG attacks) of which all Rear Guard attack will force a minimum of 10k guard against an 11k or lower power Vanguard. 

Of course that's rarely/never going to happen. But in a situation where you don't get any triggers, it makes no difference in which order you attack or even what triggers you play (obviously). But even if you only get 1 trigger, 1 additional attack can make all the difference, especially since that attack would need at least 10k shield to guard. So for now it is something to consider, but definitely needs to be tested.

I didn't really talk about Raging Folm Dragon's second skill, which give him +3k for Counter Blast 1 on attack. It's a decent skill to have but not all that great either, much more important is the fact that it has an 11k base power.

Just my initial thoughts, after the initial over reaction haha.