Well at long last Overlord once again steps into the spotlight, making an explosive return with not only a brand new RRR but yet again another GR. The power level of these cards are excellent and that’s not even saying anything of the stellar rearguard support received in ultimate stride.

So let’s start at the beginning with a brand new Overlord specific forerunner.

Lizard Attacker, Conroe

[AUTO]:Forerunner

[ACT](RC):[Counter Blast (1) & Put this unit into your soul & Choose a card with “Overlord” in its card name from your hand, and reveal it] Look at seven from the top of your deck, reveal up to one card with “Overlord” in its card name from among them, put it into your hand, and shuffle your deck. If you could not put a card, Soul Charge (1).

This card is solid, but it’s not Conr- oh wait…

Jokes aside this card is certainly interesting offering a somewhat decent search skill and an on fail SC. However, the CB cost for the potential to hit nothing is not great and the SC refund doesn’t exactly make up for it.

And obviously the elephant in the room being that its previous form (Being the legendary Lizard Soldier, Conroe) is close enough to perfect unfortunately leaves this card rather pointless.

Sure it’s nice but it’s not quite Conroe.

Doom Bringer Highflame

[AUTO]:When this unit is placed on (RC), choose up to two cards with “Overlord” in their card names from your drop zone, return them to your deck, and if you returned one or more cards, shuffle your deck. If you returned two cards, draw a card.

[AUTO](RC):[Retire this unit] At the beginning of your ride phase, you may pay the cost. If you do, until end of turn, if you Stride a G unit with “Overlord” in its card name, you may Stride without paying the cost the next time you Stride.

A new addition to Kagero’s aviary collection this time we have a stride fodder.

While not quite as versatile as some of the other new age stride fodder released recently Highflame offers an interesting draw skill to make up for it.

I really like the draw skill, it refunds the call and effectively creates a free stride for later. This is really nice especially in a deck where G3s are often used to fuel VG skills. The main drawback to this card is that it only pays for Overlord strides which while somewhat inconvenient as there are currently only 2. This however becomes less of an issue when you consider what the 2nd Overlord stride is (I’ll get onto that in a minute).

And hey, deck refresh is always nice.

Burning Horn Evolute

[AUTO]:[Soul Blast (1) & Choose a card with “Overlord” in its card name from your hand, and reveal it] When this unit is placed on (RC), you may pay the cost. If you do, choose one of your opponent’s rear-guards in the same column as this unit, and retire it.

[CONT](RC):If you have a grade 4 vanguard with “Overlord” in its original card name, this unit gets [Power]+2000 for each card in your opponent’s damage zone.

Better Nouvelleroman for Overlord yes please.

Early game this card is brilliant, offering the same utility as Burnout with a far easier setup. Into the later game this card is almost always going to hit 16k for free with the potential to push up to 19k. That said the main drawback here is the requirement for a vanguard with Overlord in its original card name. Unfortunately that means that using Ziegenburg or Blazing burst leaves this card vanilla on board.

That said its hard to argue against this cards inclusion, even as a vanilla 9k it still offers the excellent retire skill on call and free bonuses are always great even if they aren’t common.

Glow Heater Dragon

[AUTO]:When this unit is placed on (VC) or (RC), choose up to one card from your hand, reveal it, and if that card or your vanguard is not a card with “Overlord” in its card name, this unit gets [Power]-5000 until end of turn.

[CONT](RC):If you have a grade 4 vanguard with “Overlord” in its original card name, this unit gets [Power]+2000 for each card in your opponent’s damage zone.

Well what do we have here, a conditional 10k vanilla with an upside.

The condition is easy to meet and even if you fail you’re still a 10k body for the opponents turn.

The upside is exactly the same as Evolute’s so essentially the same deal. There isn’t all that many reason not to run this anyway, it’s just solid.

And now without further ado, let’s get to the really good bit.

Dragonic Overlord “The Destiny”

[AUTO](VC):[Soul Blast (1)] When this unit is placed on (VC) from hand, or at the beginning of your ride phase, you may pay the cost. If you do, choose one of any fighter’s circles other than (VC), and put all cards on that circle into the drop zone.

[AUTO](VC):[Counter Blast (1)] When your G unit Stride, you may pay the cost. If you do, choose one of your opponent’s rear-guards, retire it, look at seven cards from the top of your deck, reveal up to one card with “Overlord” in its card name from among them, put it into your hand, and shuffle your deck

Wow, just wow. This card is the closest to perfect I’ve ever seen.

Where to even begin…

SB1 for what I can only describe as “perfect retire” I’ve been wanting for a skill with this exact wording for a while, and you don’t even have to stride for it. Just in case you don’t know because of the wording on this skill it can kill literally anything. Locked cards, resist units, immortal pandas, even the un-killable Stamp Sea Otter isn’t safe. Like I said this skill is perfect retire.

Next up the stride bonus.

CB1 for another retire (the regular kind) and then a completely free bonus search for either skill fuel or stride for next turn. This is just so solid, the obvious comparison is Kouen, exchanging 3k for a search. I think both are fairly even in a vacuum but once you factor in how you can use the searched card and the other skill. Well this is basically just better…

Again this card is actually insane, literally my only issue is that it does nothing to an empty field, while this is relevant in the context of Kagero as a clan this isn’t anything new or even too much of an issue but it’s definitely still worth noting.

However I would caution you to take my opinion on this card with a grain of salt as this card is close enough to everything I ever wanted.

Supreme Heavenly Emperor Dragon, Dragonic Overlord “The Purge”

[ACT](VC)[1/Turn][Choose a face down card from your G zone, and turn it face up & Choose a card with “Overlord” in its card name from your hand, and put it into your soul] If the number of cards in your opponent’s damage zone is four or less, choose one of your opponent’s vanguards, and deal one damage. All trigger effects are nullified for that damage check.

[CONT](VC) Generation Break 3:This unit’s drive is equal to the number of cards in your opponent’s damage zone.

Yet again another amazing card, maybe not as brilliant as Destiny but to say this card isn’t incredible would be dishonest.

Once again lets break down the skills we have here.

First off we have a damage skill, and a good one at that. For the cost of an Overlord from hand and a generic flip you get to deal one damage with trigger effects denied.

Well can’t complain about that, there’s the obvious synergy with the new G2s but on top of that as a grindy deck being able to deal free damage is huge. If your opponent is at 5 damage all your attacks gain a lot more pressure forcing more cards from hand and making it all that easier to win. The only real downside thanks to Destiny’s search skill is that you can’t kill your opponent with the free damage. For me though the biggest kicker to this skill is that it can even be used first stride. Hitting your opponent to 3 before stride then burning them for one means you can threaten lethal right there and then once again upping your pressure.

Next up we have a drive check skill, this one is certainly more interesting than others as it is directly tied to the damage your opponent is at. Obviously you never use this card if the opponent is at less than 3 damage but seeing as you can push them up one with this cards other skill I don’t feel like this will too often be an issue. Drive checks alone aren’t particularly insane, but the fact that not only can this push in free damage there is no cost to the potential quin-drive so this skill honestly feels like an extra bonus on an already solid card.

While I don’t know if you always want to be striding this card I doubt your ever going to feel bad about doing so, drive checks are one of the best safety nets in the game and this card even has amazing comeback potential. This card alone can potentially take you from 0 cards in hand to 5.

And just as an aside, a lot of people are complaining that because this unit only attacks once its doesn’t feel much like an Overlord. To some extent yes I agree but on another it still attacks twice, but this time your opponent doesn’t even have the chance to respond.

Coming Out of Retirement

So with these cards in the pipeline I can definitely see Overlord making a return to the metagame, the deck retains the advantages Blademaster previously had while avoiding important weaknesses. On top of that the sheer versatility on offer here is incredible and I would go as far as to say the deck will once again return to T1. But as always

Thanks for reading