Onwards to Camelot | Trinityygo

Onwards to Camelot:
A Noble Knights Introduction

Written By: WideWalrus

Edited By: Iceberg

July 2nd, 2021

If you’ve followed Yugioh at any point over the past decade, odds are you’re already familiar with Noble Knights. Introduced in 2012, the once-stand-alone TCG premiere Noble Knight Artorigus has gone on to receive such a steadfast flow of support that he has long since amassed himself a formidable army. And to be sure, having this wide selection of archetypal support presents a great advantage in Trinity Format. Whereas the one-copy-per-deck restriction forces many other archetypes to hybridize in order to garner enough support to fill out a complete deck list, there are enough knights of the round table to comfortably compose a deck focused purely around their own theme.

Granted, not every knight from the TCG has made it here. The power ceiling is much lower in Trinity Format, and such mainstays as Infernoble Knight Oliver, Infernoble Knight Captain Roland and Isolde, Two Tales of the Noble Knights are too tall to ride. But how do Noble Knights function as a meta deck in absence of their most valuable player? While it’s true that Isolde is the glue that in the TCG has long since held Noble Knights (and indeed, near-every warrior deck) together, Noble Knights retain their status as a competent strategy in Trinity Format by relying instead on their myriad of other noble (and infernoble) extra-deck boss monsters.

In the following sections, I’ll break down the core combos and synergizes of the Noble Knight deck using my June 2021 YTC list as reference. In a doubtlessly futile attempt to insulate this article against the ever-fluctuating tides of the community ban list, I’ll focus on the merits and disadvantages of each card in broad strokes and shy away from deep dives into generic staples or strategies for spending trinities. Noble Knights are ultimately a flexible strategy reinforceable via a host of tech choices, from War Rock Skyler to Red-Eyes Slash Dragon. Nevertheless, this article is to serve as an introduction to the archetype’s core strategy in Trinity Format, and an introduction it will be.

Combos

Because of their plethora of GY effects, Noble Knights have a fantastic grind game and can defeat weaker decks merely by snowballing advantage gradually. Infernoble Knight Ogier, Infernoble Knight Maugis and Gwenhwyfar, Queen of Noble Arms continuously re-equip themselves from the GY to give grant the knights added protection, Heritage of the Chalice can recycle itself during the battle phase, and Noble Knight Brothers alongside the aforementioned Infernoble Knight Maugis can shuffle expended resources back into the deck for a draw. Still, while the deck enjoys long duels with lots of its resources in circulation, Noble Knights would be nothing without the combos that facilitate these game states in the first place.

True to the deck’s earliest TCG playstyle, all of the Noble Knight’s greatest combos stem from Noble Knight Medraut. This traitorous starter tutors any other knight from your deck, allowing you to begin snowballing advantage from the moment his effect resolves. And Medraut’s importance shows; Noble Knight decks devote significant space to searching their murderous catalyst. Between Merlin, Reinforcements of the Army, three Heritage of the Chalice, Until Noble Arms are Needed Once Again and of course Medraut himself, my YTC list includes seven main-deck cards to ensure that I see Medraut as quickly and as frequently as possible.

As with any theme featuring a multitude of cards that search from the deck, Noble Knight combos have extensive variety and a high skill ceiling. Nevertheless, the deck’s most common turn one combo is relatively straightforward and outlined here below. If I open with Noble Knight Medraut alongside any of the re-equippable Noble Arms, I more times than not will attempt to perform the following sequence:

In hand: Noble Knight Medraut + Any Re-equippable Noble Arms

Normal Summon Noble Knight Medraut.
Equip Noble Arms spell (we’ll say Noble Arms - Gallatin).
Activate Noble Knight Medraut’s effect to Special Summon Noble Knight Borz from the deck in defense position.
Re-equip Noble Arms - Gallatin from the GY to Noble Knight Borz.
Do a little dance because your opponent did not activate Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring (dance guide not included in this article).
Activate Noble Knight Borz’s effect, revealing Gwenhwyfar, Queen of Noble Arms, Until Noble Arms are Needed Once Again, and "Infernoble Arms - Durendal".
- If "Infernoble Arms - Durendal" is added, activate "Infernoble Arms - Durendal" and search Infernoble Knight Renaud from your deck.
Equip Gwenhwyfar, Queen of Noble Arms from your hand or GY to Noble Knight Medraut.
Overlay Noble Knight Medraut and Noble Knight Borz for Sacred Noble Knight of King Artorigus.
- If Noble Knight Medraut was summoned via the effect of Merlin, this Xyz summon can be delayed until the opponent’s turn and performed via the GY effect of Merlin.
Activate Sacred Noble Knight of King Artorigus’s effect to re-equip “Infernoble Arms - Durendal” and Noble Arms - Gallatin.
Set Until Noble Arms are Needed Once Again if added to hand by Noble Knight Borz.

Got all that? Great! This deck made my head hurt too, so don’t worry if such combos are overwhelming at a glance. Trust me, they take a few repetitions to get the hang of. And feel free to follow along in a dueling simulator’s solo mode; that might help make things a bit easier to wrap your head around. Next up, I’ll outline a similar combo that requires you to also have Infernoble Knight Renaud, demonstrating the deck’s “high roll” hand that ends on one of its best possible fields.

In hand: Noble Knight Medraut + Any Equip + Infernoble Knight Renaud

Normal Summon Noble Knight Medraut.
Equip Noble Arms spell (we’ll say Noble Arms - Excaliburn).
Activate Noble Knight Medraut’s effect to Special Summon Infernoble Knight Ogier from your deck in defense position.
Activate Infernoble Knight Ogier’s effect to send "Infernoble Arms - Durendal" to your GY.
Special Summon Infernoble Knight Renaud from your hand.
Activate Infernoble Knight Renaud’s effect to add "Infernoble Arms - Durendal" from your GY to your hand.
Synchro summon Infernoble Knight Emperor Charles using Noble Knight Medraut, Infernoble Knight Ogier and Infernoble Knight Renaud as materials.
- Note that because Noble Knight Medraut is not treated as an effect monster when summoned, his summon does not count towards Trinity Format’s three-summon limit.
Activate "Infernoble Arms - Durendal" and search Infernoble Knight Roland from your deck.
Equip Infernoble Knight Ogier from your GY to Infernoble Knight Emperor Charles.
In the end phase, activate Infernoble Knight Emperor Charles’s effect to equip Noble Arms - Excaliburn from your GY and Infernoble Knight Maugis from your deck.

By starting with Noble Arms - Excaliburn as the equip spell, this field finishes on a 3500 attack untargetable monster that cannot be destroyed by battle or card effects, and has access to a quick-effect pop on your opponent’s turn by equipping the searched Infernoble Knight Roland. If destroyed, the Infernoble Knight Roland will also search Premature Burial for reviving Infernoble Knight Emperor Charles on the next turn. Of course, not many hands open so well, and each of these combos is stopped in its tracks by practically any interaction from the opponent. Nevertheless, it’s good to know what your deck has access to in any given hand, and this is about as good as it gets.

Speaking of as good as it gets, the third and final combo outlined below once again gets you into Infernoble Knight Emperor Charles. However, this combo isn’t one performed on the first turn, and usually takes place after turn three. To go down this route, you’ll need your opponent to reach their end phase while you have an Until Noble Arms are Needed Once Again in your GY along with any level 4 monster in your hand.

In Hand: Any Level-4 Monster

In Graveyard: Until Noble Arms are Needed Once Again

In opponent’s end phase, banish Until Noble Arms are Needed Once Again to special summon Infernoble Knight Ogier
Activate Infernoble Knight Ogier’s effect to send Infernoble Knight Roland to your GY.
Activate Infernoble Knight Roland’s effect to search Infernoble Knight Renaud.
In your main phase, special summon Infernoble Knight Renaud.
Activate Infernoble Knight Renaud’s effect to add Infernoble Knight Roland from your GY to your hand.
Normal summon any level 4 monster.
Synchro summon Infernoble Knight Emperor Charles using any level 4 monster, Infernoble Knight Ogier and Infernoble Knight Renaud as materials.
Equip Infernoble Knight Ogier from your GY to Infernoble Knight Emperor Charles.

Card Analysis

Okay, so you’re familiar with Noble Knight’s main combos, but that only gets you so far in constructing a deck. The deck has two-dozen monsters and a whole armory’s worth of spells… Which ones are you supposed to run?

Every card included in the above combos (alongside all of Medraut’s dutiful searchers) are staples in a Noble Knight deck. To be sure, some Trinity Format lists featuring Noble Knight cards have opted to remove Medraut and Borz from their ranks in order to lessen the deck’s reliance on Noble Arms equip spells, but such lists are always hybridized and rely on an alternate engine for firepower. Indeed, any decklist that depends on Noble Knights as its foremost win condition includes the Noble Knights Medraut, Borz, Ogier, Maugis, Renaud and Roland without thinking twice.

The Noble Knights Drystan, Pellinore, Bedwyr, Brothers and Iyvanne, however, are less straightforward to assess. In spite of the deck's impressive ability to search from deck for whichever monster is needed most, it is unnecessary to run a surplus of secondary knights. Due to the nature of Trinity’s summon limit, alongside the deck’s immense reliance on the normal summon, monsters in the Noble Knight deck tend to clog your hand if drawn in multiples. In nearly every situation, a normal summon of Medraut, Ogier or Borz will take priority over your other knights, and because this trio is so searchable, you don’t need to load up on weaker monsters.

Still, a deck will require some knights with which to fill out its list, so which are the best? Noble Knights Drystan and Pellinore, although reliant on Noble Arms equip spells, are perhaps the best of the bunch and fulfill similar roles. Targeted monster removal is good to have in a pinch, and these two are great to have waiting in your deck for when you’ve got a Twin-Headed Thunder Dragon staring you down. However, because these monsters are so easily searched when you need them, and because their effects are so similar, it’s safe to say that the deck can get away with including just one of the two. Drystan’s main advantage lies in that he can be triggered reactively on the opponent’s turn via the effects of cards such as Armory Call, Noble Knight Bedwyr and the re-equip effects of your Noble Arms Equip spells. Pellinore, on the other hand, nets you a draw in addition to having a smidgen more attack. While my YTC list opted to run Pellinore for the added card advantage, both Drystan and Pellinore are valuable picks to fill out your monster lineup.

Other knights have applications which are still more niche. Bedwyr, in addition to readying the GY with Noble Arms equip spells for your bosses, is useful in the mirror match for his ability to equip the opposing player’s Noble Arms spells to himself (Medraut isn’t an effect monster anymore!). Still, he does little at advancing your game state, and is in all a sorry sight to see in an opening hand. Such pros and cons are present across all of the remaining options for filling out your monster lineup. Brothers, for instance, helps to unbrick hands with multiple knights and also recycles resources later in the game. However, his role overlaps with Maugis, who can already shuffle back the resources you want most to recycle, Medraut, who already accesses the Noble Knight Xyz monsters with ease, and Pellinore, who can net you that same draw as the pay off for an even better effect. You might also consider Iyvanne, who is useful insofar as his token can help to facilitate link 2 or synchro 9 plays when paired with a level 1 tuner, but without Isolde, the utility of such plays is fairly limited. Even knights who have historically seen little play have their own small merits. Peredur for instance, although his effect is useless and otherwise offers little utility, has a cool horse.

This pattern of niche utility is no less prevalent as we move to the Noble Knight spell and trap support. The Noble Arms equips spells, while not tremendously useful on their own, are necessary in order to ensure that Medraut and Borz can fulfill their requirements for becoming effect monsters. "Infernoble Arms - Durendal," Noble Arms - Arfeudutyr and Glory of the Noble Knights (which searches the previous two) are no-brainers, as they simply offer the most powerful effects. Gwenhwyfar, Queen of Noble Arms is also essential, as she enables Foolish Burial to pivot into either a Noble Arms card for your starters, or a search via Infernoble Knight - Roland. As for the remaining Noble Arms, I generally favor the re-equipable swords over their Infernoble cousins, as swords such as Destiny and especially Caliburn combo well when destroyed by the effects of Medraut and Pellinore.

But Noble Knights have more than just swords at their disposal. Until Noble Arms are Needed Again is one of the deck’s strongest cards, able to be sent directly from the deck to the GY via the effects of both Borz and Ogier where it will in turn banish itself to special summon any knight you need. The knights also have access to some powerful and often overlooked support from the FIRE Warrior structure deck in Cross Over and Gearbreed, which can help to remove threats and improve your grind game respectively. Unfortunately, while playable in a vacuum, the remaining in-theme spell and trap support cards—Last Chapter of the Noble Knights, Noble Knights of the Round Table and Avalon—are ultimately “win-more.” Noble Knights have a fantastic grind game; the deck is best filled out with cards that help get the ball rolling as quickly as possible, not with cards that are only relevant once you have amassed resources in the GY. If you have all of these knights in the GY in the first place, you’ve probably already resolved Medraut’s effect, and if you’ve already resolved Medraut’s effect, you’re probably in a good spot as is. In this way, generic spell and trap removal like Mystical Space Typhoon and protection like Forbidden Lance will get you more mileage than Last Chapter of the Noble Knights.

The extra-deck monsters, on the other hand, are all incredibly potent. Every one of them is worth running, and together they form a versatile toolbox that can answer nearly every threat in the format. Captain Oliver, King Custennin and Sacred Artorigus are all able to take out threatening boss monsters, while Artorigus, King of the Noble Knights helps to clear your opponent’s back row. Still, the most iconic monster of all is Infernoble Knight Emperor Charles, whose ability to snowball the game is unmatched. It can be worth playing multiple tuners to ensure the deck sees Emperor Charles as frequently as possible, including Instant Fusion for Sea Monster of Theseus, Mahaama the Fairy Dragon, and even Cyberse Synchron. Noble Knights have perhaps the strongest extra deck toolbox of any archetype, and learning which bosses are right for the job is a rewarding part of piloting the deck.

Conclusion

In many ways, Noble Knights embody the best parts of Trinity Format. Whereas in the TCG competitive Noble Knight decks have focused on a small set of Infernoble monsters in order to hand loop the opponent and build unbreakable boards, Trinity Format’s one-copy-per-deck restriction allows the overlooked knights to shine. Digging to find otherwise unexplored interactions for getting the most out of your knights—Amazement Horror House for triggering Infernoble Knight Emperor Charles or Summoner Monk for searching Blackwing - Decay the Ill Wind—rewards creativity and knowledge of the card pool in stylish fashion. And because of the summon limit, grind games that last longer than the first few turns are far more frequent here than in the TCG, allowing for extensive skill expression as the knight player is faced with dozens of meaningful decisions over the course of a game.

Even as the deck and format continue to change, Noble Knights are sure to stay relevant for long to come. In just a few months, Legendary Duelists: Synchro Storm will unleash yet another wave of Noble Knight support. And while I don’t expect this boost to significantly change how the deck plays, Noble Knights are sure to remain a versatile and interesting mainstay of Trinity Format for years to come. While the deck may change shape over the coming formats, so long as Medraut and Borz are at the table, Noble Knights are sure to remain a blast to play.

Onwards to Camelot: A Noble Knights Introduction

Onwards to Camelot:
A Noble Knights Introduction