In theory, there is a difference between suppressing someone and oppressing them. After all, they’re two different words, right? Wikipedia claims that oppression is in fact a subset of suppression, suppression being a much broader term that can be applied to a number of nasty political techniques. Why then, do we play Oppression Gadgets? Surely, if we were to come up with a deck named Suppression Gadgets, it would be better because its name encompasses a much greater variety of un-pleasantry. The thing is, Royal Oppression can only do so much for us before we’re faced with the harsh reality that is everything except special summons. The most frightening monster in the entirety of U.S. Nationals was not Dark Armed Dragon or Gladiator Beast Gyzarus, and it sure wasn’t Judgment Dragon. It was Prime Material Dragon. What’s more frightening than a tribute monster that might as well have been printed with Gladiator Beast Heraklinos’s effect, plus the ability to negate monster effects too? How about having it summoned thanks to Soul Exchange on one of your important monsters? Prime Material Dragon is a successful counter measure to just about every single metagame trend except for the use of Legendary Jujitsu Master. Bottomless Trap Hole has that pesky word "destroy" in its text, Gladiator Beast monsters do nothing but destroy, and Prime Material Dragon is a Light attribute monster, making it a valid candidate for Honest. Seriously, good luck taking that thing down once it hits the field. The reliable ways to get rid of Prime Material Dragon are to remove it from play, negate it, tribute it off for something, force it back to the hand or deck, or beat it in battle. Everything else involves a "destroy" effect.
This brings me back to the idea of the Suppression Gadget deck. Sure, stopping the special summon is important, but a huge number of classic Gadget tricks are worthless in the face of Prime Material Dragon. Bottomless Trap Hole won’t work, Book of Moon isn’t very useful considering the Dragon has a whopping 2000 DEF, and stuff like Soul Taker and Lightning Vortex will simply be negated. With most builds, you’ll have to save Solemn Judgment for the Dragon or have a Shrink on hand when it hits. Considering that Adam Corn ran both Prime Material Dragon and Dark Armed Dragon, saving Solemn Judgment for one particular card seems like a tall task. Why bother, then? It seems to me that it’s a lot more effective to simply prohibit the play of specific classes of cards rather than try and save one of your three copies of Solemn Judgment for a specific card that might or might not come rather than use it for a more credible current threat. I was rather disenchanted with Gadget decks after they failed to show up in the Top 16 of Shonen Jump Championship St. Louis and didn’t have any particularly impressive showings in overseas Nationals. I was very impressed, however, by the performance of Jordan Nasser’s deck at U.S. Nationals. He may not be going to Worlds, but Nasser’s deck showed us that Gadgets can still be a force in the current metagame. (He’s also the first person I’ve ever seen make Doomcaliber Knight work in the deck that everybody thought it would work in.) With that said, here’s my effort toward making the Gadgets beat what could be the most difficult matchup they’ve ever had to deal with.
Let’s think about it for a moment. If you can’t tribute monsters and you can’t special summon, how exactly are you supposed to get Prime Material Dragon to the field? I’m not looking for smart-aleck responses like, "I’ll use Cost Down to make it a level 4 monster!" Is there any tournament-viable way to do it? None are apparent to me, and the fact that Adam Corn’s deck isn’t going to beat you with Gravekeeper’s Spy, Mask of Darkness, Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive, and Sangan makes the idea of locking down both tributes and special summons simultaneously seem very appealing. Mask of Restrict is the more difficult of the two to eliminate from the field without the monsters it specifically prohibits, and the only main-decked cards in Corn’s build that can deal with it once it has successfully resolved are Dark Armed Dragon and Heavy Storm. Theoretically, we’ll also be able to grab Fossil Dyna to stop the former, while the latter is a risk that any spell or trap has to take. With that said, without the threats of all the other stuff that you’d normally have to use Solemn Judgment against, Heavy Storm becomes something that you can negate without fearing a double Dark Armed Dragon beatdown immediately thereafter . . . as long as you can protect Fossil Dyna. The deck has plenty of tricks in that regard, but let me first explain that the deck is structured to draw into the Dyna and Mask of Restrict as quickly as it can. That’s why I’m using a 40-card build with two sets of Gadgets rather than modifying a 45-card Fifth Gadget deck for my particular needs.
The main point of a Gadget deck has always been to make a bunch of simple card trades leaving your Gadgets as the only monsters on the field or in the hand. Every monster your opponent plays should fall prey to something, be it Shrink or Mirror Force or (if he or she decides not to attack) removal spells on your turn. I’ve got plenty of all of the above with a full complement of Shrink, a pair of Soul Taker cards, the Mirror Force, and a few choices that demand further explanation. Book of Moon is truly excellent right now, with nearly all of the best monsters having terrible DEF scores that a Gadget deck can tear through with ease. This becomes most apparent in matchups against the Lightsworn, as the best DEF score that any of the readily playable Lightsworn monsters has is Garoth’s 1300 DEF. Even then, Green Gadget can best that, making boss monsters your only real concern . . . if the opponent can even force one to the field!
My personal favorite, however, is the full complement of Dimensional Prison cards. It’s a trap that removes an attacker from play without destroying it first like Bottomless Trap Hole does. That gives you the edge on Prime Material Dragon, something that the Gadget players at Nationals recognized as soon as they saw the Dragon hit the field. Finally, a full set of Shield Crush cards rounds out the removal lineup, taking advantage of the tendency for most players to attempt to "turtle" for fear of a counter or reactive removal card. Shield Crush punishes these players in addition to being thoroughly brutal in a number of matchups, especially those against any deck that runs Legendary Jujitsu Master or Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter.
Out of all the cards in the deck, Dimensional Prison and Shield Crush are the most portable to other strategies. I’ve been testing a pair of Shield Crush cards in just about every deck lately, and it’s vastly improved my matchups with everything. Fact is, monsters get set a lot more than many people claim. The game has slowed down significantly since duelists stopped winning on turns 1 and 2 with Dimension Fusion, and Shield Crush takes advantage of that trend with frightening efficiency. Dimensional Prison fills the same role as Bottomless Trap Hole in many cases, but it has an awful tendency to fall to Gladiator Beast Gyzarus as it can only be activated in response to an attack. That’s fine. Mirror Force can only be activated in response to an attack, but it still sees quite a lot of play. I tinkered with "no-Mirror Force, Torrential-only" decks for a while, but I find that I just don’t want to give up my field presence to my own Torrential Tribute when I could just use Mirror Force to erase my opponent’s instead. In fact, the opposite seems to be the way to go. You can actually see people starting to move toward main decking Mirror Force and siding Torrential if you take a look at the Top 16 decklists from American Nationals.
This brings me to the subject of Philadelphia. I’m writing this pre-Canadian Nationals, so I’m not sure what effect that event will have on the Philadelphia metagame, but if I were going to play in Philadelphia, I would be looking to make my deck as D.D. Crow-proof as possible while main decking ways to punish people who rely on tribute monsters. Perhaps those slots you reserved in your side deck for Light-Imprisoning Mirror should switch to Mask of Restrict instead. I’m not certain exactly how much damage those Mirrors are actually doing to Lightsworn players, but given that no one is showing up at events with Lightsworn decks that don’t actively try to beat themselves anyway, I don’t expect that particular Mirror would be necessary. Hopefully, the results of Canadian Nationals will give players a better idea of what to expect in the City of Brotherly Love, and until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!