National Championships are always interesting events, especially for smaller countries with less variety in the metagame. When you attend the National Championships for the United States, you enter a tournament very much like a Shonen Jump Championship, only harder. There are many people who come from different areas, many of whom have adopted different styles of play. As such, there will be a wide variety of decks and play styles, and anything could happen.

For more tightly knit metagames like those of the UK and most of Canada, a more defined tournament exists. Most competitors know what decks to look out for and can prepare theirs accordingly. Others will find that they have to switch to a more popular deck because their current one did poorly in local tournaments and the metagame at Nationals would yield a similar result. For a few extremely talented and courageous players, National Championships offer a chance to break out with an entirely new strategy: one that most players aren’t ready for, and which can beat a lot of popular decks. Joe Whitaker did just that using this twisted Gadget deck at UK Nats:

Monsters: 17

3 Cyber Dragon

3 Red Gadget

3 Yellow Gadget

3 Green Gadget

3 Hydrogeddon

2 Drillroid

Spells: 24

3 Smashing Ground

3 Fissure

3 Hammer Shot

3 Shrink

3 Rush Recklessly

1 Snatch Steal

1 Pot of Avarice

1 Limiter Removal

1 Nobleman of Crossout

2 Nobleman of Extermination

2 Enemy Controller

1 Heavy Storm

Traps: 4

3 Royal Decree

1 Ring of Destruction

Nobody saw this one coming. Most standard Gadget builds tend to play a lot of monster removal in the form of spell, trap, and monster cards to back up their Gadget attacks. The idea is that if you can keep on replacing Gadgets faster than your opponent can destroy them, then your opponent will soon be out of life points. To make this idea work, though, your opponents can’t be allowed to stomp through your Gadgets with higher-ATK monsters. If they do, they’ll be able to keep up with you and eventually overwhelm you. This is why most players run multiple copies of cards like Bottomless Trap Hole, Sakuretsu Armor, or Widespread Ruin when they play Gadgets.

JoeJoe has taken an entirely different approach. If you take a look at the metagame before Theeresak Poonsombat’s Destiny Hero beatdown deck became popular at SJC Minneapolis, there weren’t many monsters seeing heavy play that could attack freely. Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive and Gravekeeper’s Spy had to be set first (and don’t really have enough ATK power anyway), and though Card Trooper could attack through the Gadgets, its ATK drops immediately afterward, which makes it vulnerable to counterstrikes. The only really common threats in terms of ATK power were Cyber Dragon and Monarchs.

With so few monsters worthy of using a Sakuretsu Armor on, why waste space playing it? Although it may seem risky to simply allow your opponent to be as aggressive as he or she wants to be, unless the opponent can beat you in one turn, the chances of you losing aren’t very high. Most decks simply don’t have enough monsters to attack with. So instead of shutting down the opposing monster lineup defensively, why not try shutting it down offensively?

What this means is putting in a lot of spell-based monster removal. Three copies each of Smashing Ground, Fissure, and Hammer Shot provide excellent monster removal and a direct path to the opponent’s life points. This is another reason why this build excelled where other Gadget decks failed. Basing a deck entirely around self-replacing monsters and monster removal is only good if you can defeat the opponent by attacking with monsters. To back up this idea, JoeJoe plays three copies of Royal Decree and two copies of Nobleman of Extermination. These cards allow JoeJoe to punch through damage with his Gadgets.

          To give the deck some defensive capabilities, JoeJoe plays two copies of Enemy Controller and three each of Rush Recklessly and Shrink. While each of these cards can be used to destroy an opponent’s monster on JoeJoe’s turn with the help of an attack, they can also be used to block attacks or destroy attacking monsters outright. Shrink is especially useful, allowing each Gadget to destroy almost any attacking monster commonly played. Rush Recklessly is included to break monsters with high DEF. Gravekeeper’s Spy and Legendary Jujitsu Master have been plentiful in many Monarch builds due to their ability to prevent damage and slow down the game. Rush Recklessly allows JoeJoe to dispose of those monsters on the same turn in which they were attacked.

Two excellent card choices for this deck were Drillroid and Hydrogeddon. Big defenders like Gravekeeper’s Spy and Legendary Jujitsu Master can provide a lot of trouble for Gadget builds. Their high DEF values block attacks, and when combined with Book of Moon, they can shut down two or three turns for the Gadget player, allowing the opponent to rebuild and mount a comeback. Drillroid rids the field of those nasty defenders immediately, allowing JoeJoe to punch through more damage with his Gadgets and keep his opponents on their heels.

Hydrogeddon is a game winner. When you have your back against the wall, facing down Royal Decree and a constant stream of Gadgets, the last thing you want to see are multiple 1600 ATK monsters hit the field in one turn. Hydrogeddon takes a game that looks bad for the opponent and makes it look ten times worse. Late in the game, after all the Brain Control / Zaborg the Thunder Monarch combos have disappeared, it’s nearly impossible to take down a strong field with two or three monsters—especially if the player controlling those monsters has enough monster removal to eliminate all attackers in a single turn.

The strength of this deck is its ability to open strong and finish strong. At no point does the deck have to take a break because there’s something it can’t deal with. No other strategy has this kind of consistent pressure in game 1, and JoeJoe’s Gadgets should be a deck you’re prepared to deal with at your National Championships.