Neodragon

Neodragons are supposedly the dragons of the future, reborn through otherworldly technology and far more advanced than their brethren - besides, of course, still being dragons. It's hard to say how I feel about these guys in general solely because I'm scared what new dragons Bushiroad is going to flood Buddyfight with in the future. Sea Dragons? Time-traveling Dragons? It can really only get worse from here.

As far as Neodragons go, they're mostly concerned with Soulguard and having synergy with their brethren, the Dragonarms. Since Neodragon bosses have Soulguard, card quality becomes a very important consideration because they have a lot of staying power, so you need to get the most out of that stint as possible.

Will there be other Greisen
forms? ZX? XD?

We'll start with Cosmic Storm, Greisen ZK. This monster has Double Attack and top-Soulguard for only 3 gauge, which seems like a solid deal on a 9000/2/7000 body. But it gets better than that, because Greisen can actually choose which card to put into his soul from the top three cards of your deck (the others get milled). You can choose a Dragonarms that can give Greisen an extra effect that you want, which makes his advantage considerably higher than a normal top-Soulcharge.

Greisen is your best option for Size 3, but you have two viable options at Size 2. The first is Sixth Omni Storm Lord, Variable Cord. Unlike the other Omni Lords which have very splashable effects, Variable Cord's effect seems only be effective in Star Dragon World as other flags can't take advantage of the hand-Soulguard. While you don't actually gain advantage with Variable Cord, you can stack him pretty hard if you have the hand for it. Three Divisigators in his soul would pump him to 8000, and his Penetrate effect can get pretty gnarly once you add a few crits to that. Basically, you have full customization of how potent Variable Cord gets, which allows you to meet and match every situation. He works best in a hand-engine deck where you attempt to do nothing but draw cards.

Another day, another
evolution

So for now you turn to good ol' Jack. Star Guardian, Jackknife beats out Drum Bunker Dragon for most abusable Size 2 monster in the entire game. 1000 more defense than Drum, not even losing a crit, and getting a choice soul from the drop zone. That means you can discard any Dragonarms (cough cough Factory) and target that for Jack's soul, giving him the same customization that Variable Cord enjoys, to a degree. But the fact that Jack is just so damn cheap (only 1 gauge) and gets soul for free makes him the go-to option.

I said Greisen is the best option for Size 3, and I won't go back on those words. But it doesn't mean that Dragonic Armored Ship, Marshal Fortress isn't the most ridiculous Size 3 ever printed. 5 gauge might sound like an impossible commitment and Marshal Fortress doesn't even have Soulguard, but getting three free soul alongside Triple Attack has to be abusable somehow. It gets even crazier, but you actually have to Ultimate Buddy Marshal Fortress to convert all that soul into extra lives. So for 6 gauge and 2 cards from hand, you can get a 10000/1/10000 Triple Attacker with 4 soul that can also customize what the Triple Attacker does.

It sounds pretty good, actually.

Ultimate

Mathematically speaking, Ultimate Marshal is a -5 investment. You gain +4 from the soul alone, about +2 from stats, and an awkward +0.5 from Triple Attack (since it's with 1 crit). Without counting the Dragonarms in soul, Ultimate Marshal comes out to be pretty fair (+1.5 ish). But of course, the Dragonarms can completely break Marshal - each Elgar Cannon gets triple the damage output and Cavalier makes that damage nigh-unblockable. And giving Marshal Move sounds absolutely disgusting.

We'll quickly talk about the draw engine in Neodragons. Its a set of three Neodragon monsters that can only be called to certain locations on your field and gain the ability to draw a card if you have a named combo on the field. The Size 2 (center) links with the Size 1 (right) which links with the Size 0 (left) which loops. If you call them all, you can draw 3 cards on your very first turn (sounds amazing!). But of course, it's not likely that you'll open on the combo, especially since Buddyfight has no mulligan.

Vert Deus, Matrix, the Size 2, has an acceptable 7000 defense and seems lose no stats for having the combo ability, which is wild. The Size 0 might as well be run in every deck for great 3000/1/3000 stats when you have a Size 3 on field. And it's hard to turn down Size 1 beaters, so you'll likely have the three pieces in your deck anyways.

If you don't want to rely on the draw combo above, you can substitute Matrix for Geocorona who gives 1 gauge when he enters the field. Running both is dangerous since that takes away 2 of your Size 2 slots for support, and you honestly want to be running Jack as a main beater. So choose the line of support you want to go down (Deus or toolbox) and stick with it, unless you're building Ultimate Marshal (in which case you run both).

Why is Bushiroad so interested in punishment?

Radiant Punisher is better Gargantua because you only need 3 gauge. Also, no 4 or less life requirement, meaning you can use this for a midgame blow if you like (or even more than 1).

That about does it for Neodragons, but we can look at the PR cards already out. Mega Particle, Aero Soul also fights for Size 3 rights in your deck, and that built-in Move is pretty tempting. Unfortunately, 6000 defense is a bit on the weak side and he can't choose the soul he topcharges. You really want to get a Divisigator under this guy but Divisigator is a Size 1, leaving you with very few good options. You're probably more likely to topdeck into a Vogel with Greisen, so stick with that for now.

Buddy Recall makes your choice of buddy in Star Dragon World extremely important since you get basically 4 extra copies of it. You can only choose a Neodragon, and you want to choose one that can easily plus you on field immediately. Jack sounds like the most obvious choice for now, but maybe in the future there'll be other options. You can make a case for one of the Deus cards to make the combo easier to pull off, but that's a stretch. Running Jack also allows you to make the most of Buddy Lights, the only on-command gauge ramp available to Star Dragon World on a spell.

Tiny ball of evil

At this time I've held out on updating Star Dragon World long enough to see that this is basically Jack.world. There are infinite playable forms of Jack and they're all supported with really good cards. When you're looking at Neodragons and you think to yourself "Hey, I want to use this cool dude I've never seen him before" chances are the reason is "because there's a Jack that's literally the same thing but better". It's a sad time for diversity, but a great time to jump on the Jack bandwagon.

A great example of how heinous Jack decks are is Star Guardian, Jackknife "SD". This card actively fuels my hatred for chibi cards. It is a Size 1 that is actually a copy of any Size 2 Neodragon (read: Jack) in your drop zone. Oh it also gives that Neodragon a free soul because it calls it over SD. This card is an insane topdeck at lategame, it makes your Jack's recurring and very consistent, it gives your soul-game more soul. It does just about everything.

Obviously superior

There's one more Jack card from Buddy Allstars. "Superior Plasma" costs 2 gauge and has 5000/3/5000 which is on the lower end of Jack stats. When the card enters your field, however, you can call up to one Size 1 and one Size 0 Dragonarms from the drop zone to open areas (by paying their call cost, which is usually irrelevant). So for 2 gauge Jack is getting 2 Crossnize soul that's freely customizable from the drop zone. Not a bad late-game drop, but you're definitely going to want to call over this Jack with some kind of evolution to get rid of those bad stats.

To be fair, Bushiroad did try to make the Deus combo more relevant. All Deus, Sfellmion is a good card if you're running enough Neodragons to make it value. Sfellmion becomes playable when you have a Size 2 Neodragon on the field - you can discard it to gain 1 life. Then, if you have 2 Neodragons you can draw, and 3 Neodragons allow you to salvage any card from your drop zone - including Sfellmion, as long as it's not the one you just dropped. So it's easy to recurse and gives you very cheap advantage. Of course, in order to use this you're going to probably go for a full field with both Size 1 and Size 0 Neodragons (and probably no weapon). Definitely not something you can just casually drop in a Jack deck to good effect.

But in a deck with all the Deus draw dudes, you can draw 4 cards and salvage a card in the same turn. While gaining 1 life. Awesome stuff.

Speed of Light, Tri Elements was also meant to work with the lots-of-Neodragons deck but it doesn't add consistency, only cheap damage.

Genes...ect?

Mikado evolution introduces some very good Size 2 options...that aren't Jackknife. So they're actually not very good. I'm starting to really dislike Star Dragon World based on how much Jack support its getting.

I'll give Omega Big Bang some credit (it is a RRR, after all). 5000/2/5000 with Soulguard for 1 gauge is pretty par-for-the-course, but that Counter ability to destroy cards is highly relevant. Especially since SDW doesn't have much targetted removal for stuff like weapons and Set spells/Impacts. I like how you can do it once per turn, so you can use it on your turn and your opponent's turn. But it's probably more effective on your opponent's turn.

Mobius is pretty bad though, no joke.

INV Omni Lord, Catastrophe Cord is like the nightmare version of Variable Cord. And "nightmare" here refers to nightmare for YOU. Because man is this card gauge intensive! I understand how Variable Cord could fit into a Deus deck (especially with Sfellmion), but where are you going to get all that gauge for Catastrophe? And if you're already running a good deck with staples at 4, what kind of card is worth paying 2 gauge to stuff in this guy's soul? 

Okay, so he has Move. Nice. His name isn't Jack. We're moving on.

I mean maybe with Automatic Save giving 3 gauge every turn...but that means that his Move is useless...see, this isn't going to work.

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

All images were 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.