User blog comment:Leobwin/Thunder Reign/@comment-1755882-20141023131712/@comment-1755882-20141023233438

As I said, I've been testing the deck constantly for a number of weeks now. Even with 4 Gift, 4 Ritter, and 2 Braveheart, there will still be games where we'll miss Ritter completely, or miss him for a few turns too many. While 3 Ritter, or even 2 Ritter, will often be enough to get the job done, when the deck is dedicated to the card, we need to be able to ensure we get it as often as we can. In addition, even waiting 1 or 2 turns to get Ritter out can be fatal against decks like Armorknights, Adventurer-heavy Dungeon Mix, and Duel Dragons, as they can rush us down to dead VERY quickly.

The reason for 4 copies of Ritter is very similar to the reason for Saviour. No matter how hard we try, there are still going to be times where we're going to need to do something because we don't have Ritter or Gift yet, and Savior is easily the best evolution at buying us time.

On the subject of Shields or not though, Dragoenergy is very important since the Counterattack allows us to kill off anything that is actually managing to hit us for 10K by its lonesome, without us actually having to divert a turn to kill it off with Ritter. If you choose to keep the additional Shields though, prioritize White Shield. I tested Flying Shield for a while in my build, and the gauge cost hurt the deck a lot during the pre-Ritter stages.

Jaeger is simply here because its another evolution with 6k Defense. When we're unable to finish the Ritter play, we need to ensure that, unless its Savior, our evolution has decent defense so it won't be slaughtered and all our hard work along with it. The only other evolution with 6k Defense that isn't in the deck already is Beistand, and its gauge cost when called from hand is just too big of a risk.

With Jackknife 10000, the gauge cost really should not be a factor in running it or not. These 2 copies will on occasion be the difference between you being able to get Ritter out at all, or not. Also, as I mentioned, this is also an alternative way to dodge Hades Fall and Death Grip, if Dragobond isn't showing up.

Excalibur is definitely the most prominent match-up that Cavalry Academy fixes, but it helps every match-up in which the opponent is able to hit 10K without a Link Attack. There a bunch of decks that have the potential to do this, and its important