It’s no secret that—since the release of Gadgets in the United States—I’ve been a very large supporter of the archetype. Today we’ll be taking a look at a new version of the deck and abusing a new strategy, which proves to be similar but more aggressive than standard Oppression Gadgets. Because of their underpowered state, we’ve already accepted that the Gadget engine is simply used to maintain constant aggression. That means you must create a situation in which your stream of small, aggressive monsters is taking advantage of your opponent. Through this logic, most Gadget players have turned to playing anti-metagame or lockdown decks, attempting to throw a wrench into their opponents’ plans and taking advantage of the situation with Gadgets.
This means that a Gadget deck has three parts: Gadgets, monster removal, and the anti-metagame theme. It stands to reason that the more synergy between each of these sections of the deck, the smoother it will operate. What makes today’s deck so potent (besides its relatively cheap price) is how cards from one section of the deck bleed into the others. While Gadgets are easy to play, the construction of a Gadget deck is perhaps the most mechanical and math-driven system of deck construction. You have to find a way for almost every possible opening hand to operate in the same fashion.
The Monsters
The Barrier Statues are like having four copies of Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo’s little brothers in our deck. They have 200 less ATK, but because we’ve chosen to play the Earth and Fire ones, they stop all the important special summons you’ll run up against. From there we have Snipe Hunter and Tribe-Infecting Virus (which simply substitutes as a second Snipe Hunter to pitch extra Gadget monsters to for a powerful effect).
The three copies of Drillroid grant us answers to a variety of cards, but Drillroid’s real strength will come in its synergy with the spell lineup. We’ll be running three copies of Enemy Controller and two Book of Moon cards to take advantage of Drillroid’s ability to destroy any defense-position monster. You’ll also have an edge against the popular Gravekeeper’s Spy, Legendary Jujitsu Master, and even Gladiator Beast Hoplomus.
If you haven’t already noticed a trend in this deck yet, it’s important that you do so. While many players prefer to play a variety of different powerful cards, utilizing a search engine like Gladiator Beasts or a strong draw engine like Destiny Heroes, Gadgets want to play a deck that runs very similar cards. In a sense, we’re only running four different monsters: Gadgets, Dynas, Snipe Hunter, and the Drillroid cards. This trend of redundancy will continue in the spell and trap lineup. The point of doing this is to create strong consistency. While other decks have the potential to be explosive in a variety of ways, Gadgets are meant to do the exact same thing every duel.
We run six Gadgets, which makes one in every seven cards a Gadget monster. We run seven Dyna cards, which is about one in every six cards. The math here isn’t difficult: over time you can expect to draw about one of these in your six-card opening hand.
The Spells
The copies of Book of Moon and Enemy Controller make up one-eighth of our deck, and both have synergy with Drillroid. The Book of Moon is also an incredible card to use with Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo and allows you to make some pretty impressive plays. Notice that we’ve chosen to use mostly chainable spell cards. This way we can protect our monsters and clear the field, again weaving together the pieces of the deck.
The Traps
Unfortunately, this version of Gadgets has the same governing flaw as the builds that used to run Banisher of the Radiance and Drillroid when the most popular deck was Machine Beatdown. While you do have the ability to play a monster that locks your opponent and protect it from opposing forces, you have a conflicting deck archetype. The reason Gadget decks don’t (shouldn’t) play cards like Heavy Storm or Mystical Space Typhoon is because they are absolutely expendable. If our opponent plays Mirror Force on three Gadgets, we’ll just play another next turn. However, when playing anti-meta monsters, we need to protect them. Originally, this problem was solved by running three copies of Royal Decree. Later, anti-meta monsters were dropped for spells and traps. The first version was powerful, but Royal Decree has been semi-Limited since. The latter version is underpowered and lacks synergy (since instead of only needing a Barrier Statue and monster removal, you’ll instead need to draw a Gadget, an anti-meta spell or trap, and monster removal). However, this lack of synergy may be resolved simply by looking at our opponent’s decklists. Mirror Force has been abandoned by many players as non-chainable and slow, and all Sakuretsu Armor cards were abandoned for the Gladiator Beast punishing Bottomless Trap Hole. Luckily, the game has evolved in a way that benefits this build, and Gadgets are beginning to outgrow their weaknesses.
Good luck with the deck, and enjoy transferring it to the Advanced format. Hope to see you at the final tables with it!
—Ryan Murphy