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For flavor reasons, I am looking at making a blackguard who gains the combat advantage needed for their striker feature by as much invisibility as possible. Ideas I have had so far are going gnome (speed 4, small, but some nice invisibility tricks), multi-class warlock to leech some powers from the Fey pack, or gather a large number of other means (potions, items) that could do the trick. I'd like to go pure Blackguard if possible (as I do not have access to the Dragon article with the hybrid article for it.) Any suggestions?

Start at level 1, and its meant for a campaign-worth of play.

I saw this done with a hybrid Blackguard/Binder, of all things- I believe it's the Binder's Star Pact that says:

"free action-trigger: you reduce an enemy to 0 hit points, or an enemy adjacent to you drops to 0 hit points.  Effect: you become invisible until the end of your next turn"


EDIT: so Drow hybrid Blackguard/Binder (or Pixie with Streak of Light), put as much as you dare into CHA (20 is doable) and leave yourself some Int for riders of any Star Pact powers you end up with (Delban's Deadly Attention is rather nice at E3).  Pick Virtuous Strike for your At-Will, it's a Paladin power (so you get your striker damage) is a basic attack (always nice), and it's a weapon attack (so you can Dread Smite).  Spellscarred Harbinger Theme for Vanish.  You start off with two minor action encounter powers to guarantee CA, and anytime something dies around you, you become invisible for a round.  At U6, you can take another one round invisibility if you actually need it by this point.

The question of which Vice to take opens up some debate.  Angry Blackguards just get more up front damage, which is nice.  Domination Blackguards have the potential to do significantly more damage than that, but they need a reliable source of temp hit points to claim it (by hurting themselves).  I don't see any good way to get temps with this build, so I'd probably start by being angry.  If your leader becomes aggressive about handing out temp hp, or starts churning out a significant amount of them down the road, retrain if able.

I will add this caveat, since someone else is going to: other than for defense, is getting reliable combat advantage so difficult in your group?  In some groups, daze can become quite common, and melee characters with any sense of teamwork will flank- and if they don't, there's always Cunning Stalker (which should be a part of your build anyways). 

@Mengu Getting invisibility gives CA, giving the striker damage boost.
@Meta It is partially story reasons, but the rest of the group doesn't lean toward melee. Hunter, artificer, and a sorcerer is what it looks like. We aren't starting this group until next week, so something might change.

What does MC binder give, beyond pact choice?

With a Blackguard as a paladin, and binder as a warlock, are those the same base mechanics in terms of HP, defenses, and such for a hybrid version? Naturally some of the class features would have to change due to the differences from the O-classes.