Lord-Dragons

Lord-Dragon (ロード・ドラゴン) is an archetype first introduced in SD06. Due to the original Lord-Dragon being the key Spirit of Hajime Hinobori, the protagonist of Battle Spirits Heroes, Bandai released a large amount of "Lord-Dragon"-named Promo cards. In the card lore, the figure is simply referred as "Lord".
== Play Style ==
While there are a lot of "Lord-Dragon"-named cards, there were very little decks that were oriented around this name. Even after SD56 was released, having this name is still barely significant to the deck as a whole. However, being a protagonist's Spirit, it was constantly pushed to attention by the official during its time. So while there was not any decks that focused entirely on Lord-Dragon, there were a lot of variants that specifically had The ExplosionHero Lord-Dragon-Bazzel, The GlacialHero Lord-Dragon-Glazar, and The SuperHero Lord-Dragon-Saviour as the key cards. The deck relied on Bazzel activating Burst with the condition [After an opposing Spirit/Brave's (When Summoned) effect activates] on attack, gaining advantages that other decks normally cannot. One combo which players discovered was named the Bazzel Loop. When attacking with Bazzel, activate the Burst Burst Cross, and pay the cost to retrieve a second copy of Burst Cross from the trash. Bazzel itself will be refreshed by its own effect, and the player can set down another Burst through either Gunner-Dragon or The IceHero Mibrock-Baragan. The cost to activate the main effect of Burst Cross can also be ignored with the Lv2 effect of The Urtext of Creativity.
Another Lord-Dragon deck variant relied specifically on The GoldenHero Lord-Dragon-Inty, which on summon can summon at most five "Lord-Dragon"-named Spirit cards from the deck without cost, using the field presence to oppress the opponent. However, Inty itself is very high cost, so summoning it from hand by paying the cost is costly; but on the other hand, to activate the Burst requires the opponent to attack. So the result was that the deck became relatively passive.
Any kind of Lord-Dragon decks got weakened as Sword Eyes era introduced more Burst-counter effects. Meanwhile, the release of more Burst cards and supports in the Ultimate era, as well the introduction of Soul Burst in the Burning Soul era indirectly buffed these decks.
After eight years of almost no supports, SD56 was released in 2020, bringing back not only the archetype, but also the Red Burst deck in general. This deck relies on the continuous attacks and life burns from The ExplosionHero Lord-Dragon-Bazzel X. It was also given more Burst protection in order to avoid Burst counters. Unlike the original Bazzel, Bazzel X can activate any and every kind of Burst on attack, so the choices of Burst is greatly widened. However, the most optimal way is often pairing with The Dawn Temple Fortress Arun, which prevents the opponent from using Magic, or Grant-Benkei, which discards the opposing hand and also returns itself to the hand, helping the combo to avoid running out of Burst. With this deck, ending a game in three turns can be easily done. Unfortunately, even for this deck, the "Lord-Dragon" archetype is not greatly focused, and only matters for the Burst effect of The SuperHero Lord-Dragon-Saviour X.
== Trivia ==
* Despite being completely unrelated to the archetype, The ExplosiveSupremeDragon Explode-Dragon is included due to part of its Japanese name spelt exactly the same way as how the archetype name is spelt in Japanese.
** And because of this card, the fact that the archetype only contains cards of the Supreme Hero and Dragon Warrior families also becomes untrue.
* Lord-Dragon is the first archetype to receive a Rebirth card that also has a Burst effect.
==Also see==
*List of "Lord-Dragon"-named cards
*List of "Lord-Dragon" support cards
Category:Archetype