Wild Dragon

When people ask about the saddest archetype in Buddyfight, please don't kid yourself and say something like "Water" or "Deep" or even "Olympus". All those archetypes have gotten major additions over the past few sets and can actually operate effectively within themselves. Yes, the saddest archetype in Buddyfight is most definitely Wild Dragons. It's not even that they're bad or anything. It's that they literally have one good card. One.

That doesn't mean that you can't play Wild Dragons. In fact, Wild Dragons can work as long as you play to their strengths. This means putting heavy emphasis into protecting your star player, similar to Dragon Lord Sieger builds. Wild Dragons have surprisingly better midgame reach if you don't hit your ace, with pretty decent spammable 3-crit monsters that don't have Lifelink. The trick to doing well with Wild Dragons is to know when to use which strats and to adapt as fast as possible.

Basically Palkia

Meet your Duel Sieger of Wild Dragons: Dimensional Demonic Dragon, Ladis the Tyrant. The truth is, Ladis is undeniably better than Duel Sieger if you simply compare their base forms. Ladis has the same cost but actually better stats (3 crit is much better than 2). And no Lifelink 5, which is huge. And while Ladis can't get soul, it has a self-contained way to protect itself at a minus which is pretty useful. On top of that, Ladis turns every Wild Dragon in your hand into unlimited spell negates. The only real flaw of Ladis is its pretty sad 6000 defense, which is PoFable and tragic indeed.

How would you play to Ladis's strengths? Well for starters, there's argument for not calling Ladis to your center. After all, Ladis isn't a very good wall and is a much more threatening pressure column. This allows you to complement Ladis with a weapon and give it more mileage than Sieger, since Sieger basically has to be called to center. Your weapon choices are all sadly Generic weapons only but you can figure stuff out.

The second synergy is Ultimate Buddy. Ultimate Ladis has access to Soulguard and a ridiculous 12000/3 Double Attack offensive. Ultimate Buddy is a pretty good way to get soul, and is cheaper than Ladis's innate ability. You can stack them under Ladis and make him into a pseudo-Sieger.

I know~ You're Gold~

And unlike Sieger, Ladis can utilize more of the quirky monster-spells that Ancient World has. Giving Ladis Penetrate with Azludea is a solid investment, something you wouldn't really do with Sieger. Since you don't have to run Demonicas, you can fit in these quirky tech options (and your Wild Dragon stuff too). And don't forget that Ladis is also a Dragon Lord, which means you have a total of 16 different Counterattack gifting cards you can use with Ladis. Really, keeping Ladis alive is easier than keeping Sieger alive.

Ladis is all about minimizing the risk-reward margins of Ancient World. Ladis doesn't punish you for letting it die and gives more options for keeping it alive, but you have to run a slightly suboptimal archetype with mediocre support in exchange.

What's with this Taoist Impact...alright, Dragon's Life and Death, Future and Past! is really terrible. You first -1 from casting the Impact (in Final Phase, mind you) and then you have to kill a Lifelink monster on your field (-1 again, and then the damage from Lifelink) in order to call a Size 3 Wild Dragon from your deck...while paying call cost still. So only +1. Not sure what Bushi was trying to do with this but...they pretty much failed.

Taaste the raaainbow

"Undestructible" is a pretty new effect for Buddyfight, the ability to prevent destruction or bouncing by effects. I hope it stays that way, because generally this just destroys the idea of counter-play in general. Sometimes your only removal option is spells or effects, so taking that away can absolutely swing matchups. Ancient World was the last world that deserved a card like this, yet they got Arc-en-ciel. Taste the Rainbow. Not only can Arc-en-ciel not be destroyed by not-battle, but when he does get destroyed you can salvage a Size 1 and Size 2 Ancient World card from your drop zone. He pays for himself in advantage easily. And he has Double Attack. What? Thank God it's a Wild Dragon only, otherwise just imagine how much more terrifying synergies it could get if it was Raging Spirit or Dragon Lord as well. I guess Bushiroad got the memo that Wild Dragons sucked, because this is a more than fitting answer to make Wild Dragons relevant again.

Oh whoa, Wild Dragons also get an exclusive weapon. Ringlet, Loop of Fire gives all Wild Dragons +1000/1000 and reduces the Lifelink by 1. Also has 2-crit, which is relevant if your center gets nuked on your own turn. This is cool, Bushiroad is actually trying to make Wild Dragons work.

Normally I wouldn't give Wild Dragon Size 3's a second look because they're not Arc-en-ciel, but Adamanquartz deserves some attention. Looking past his horrific name (Adamantine + Quartz killmyself) he has a neat synergy with a variety of Wild Dragons (Thunder Horn, Belmoss) and and stuff like Sorciere, all Size 1 monsters he can call to make them Size 0. I was surprised by how many good Size 1 monsters there were in Ancient World, and combined with Loop of Fire to negate their Lifelink, you can get some pretty powerful monsters for virtually no additional resource cost.

- updated to H-BT04, CP01, H-EB04, H-TD02, H-PP01 -

All images used obtained from the official Bushiroad website and used here solely for reference purposes. Future Card Buddyfight!, logos, and respective content belong to Bushiroad. Large images belong to the Buddyfight! Wikia.