If you have followed the current decklists published by Bushiroad, there is one thing that stands out clear as day. Gold Paladin is dominating this format. Over half the qualifying decks that fought to victory were Gold Paladin. One reason is a fairly obvious one. They are from a completely different meta. Gold Paladins are a deck made to compete in the same stage as Dragonic Overlord the End, Majesty Lord Blaster, and Phantom Blaster Overlord. That means the strength of the deck is adjusted to compete against 12k and 13k vanguards.
However, this alone wouldn’t be enough to bring them to their current stage. There are plenty of cards and strategies out there with the exact same purpose. Which brings me to the second reason for their dominance. Volume. There are so many players playing Gold Paladin that they make up around a quarter of EACH of the tournaments. that means that 25% of each tournament is Gold Paladin. That’s alot of players and alot of chances to get to the top. The reasons behind players playing it are varied but mostly its the same thing. It’s a fun deck to play, and it’s consistent. Can’t really blame them.
There isn’t much players can do about this until the meta shifts in a different direction which honestly, is disappointing. Although I can understand Bushiroads rush to catch us up to the Japanese meta, this easily could have been done by releasing the sets in order, avoiding a single clans dominance.
I do understand that this would also mean that Dragonic Overlord the End would be released and he would have begun his conquest here, like he has in the East, however, if the East has shown us anything recently, its that there are still many strategies that can win, and not necessarily the ones you would most expect. Just because one card is strong, does not make the deck unbeatable.
In the end, Gold Paladins are a deck that we will just need to play around. They are strong but again, not unbeatable, as demonstrated many times over the Qualifiers. Many players have qualified with decks that were expected, and many more with decks not expected to have much presence. This just goes to show that as it stands, Vanguard still remains balanced.
EpicHippo's Cardfight Vanguard 
Nice little article. I play Gold Paladin, but can honestly say that the amount of Gold Paladin players is a little annoying. Now I can’t blame them because it is a good deck, but there are so many deck in our current meta that can be viable if more people would take the time to work with the deck. I’m currently working on Tachikaze, Great Nature, and Spike Brothers. Any decks your working on outside of GPs?
I actually have completed every deck the game has to offer at this point haha. I find the one I most enjoy right now is Tamer Beat Palemoon. It has strong attack lines and gives you alot of pluses with their different mechanics. Also has some nice consistency.