Think about it. What specifically is Royal Oppression stopping? Dimension Fusion, Escape from the Dark Dimension, Return from the Different Dimension, and Dark Armed Dragon. All four are extremely powerful, potentially fatal cards, but I submit that Royal Oppression doesn’t negate nearly as many copies of those cards as you want it to. Why? Because Oppression has an awful habit of being irrelevant. If your opponent has Dimension Fusion and you have Oppression face up, chances are your Oppression is going to be destroyed by Stratos, Heavy Storm, or Mystical Space Typhoon, or else negated by Jinzo.

"Balderdash!" you say. "How is the opponent going to have those cards in almost every game he or she plays?" It’s simple. The Dark Armed Return decks draw so many cards and thin the deck so fast that drawing into one or more of those cards is a simple task. It might take me a turn or two, but I will get what I need sooner rather than later as long as I have a reasonably average draw. Then, as soon as I get that Oppression off the table, I’ll win the game before you can draw into another one. While Gadget builds certainly have the deck-thinning aspect working for them, there’s no possible way to claim they have an element of speed. They don’t. They draw one card per turn and can summon a Gadget, and then they usually put down an irrelevant removal card before ending. That’s not countering anything, especially when the removal card is Dimensional Prison! It’s a difficult problem to solve.

Fortunately, I have a great deal of experience when it comes to countering things. If you’ve spent any time playing Counter Fairy, it’s hopefully taught you how to pinpoint the exact nature of the threats that each deck can produce in addition to prioritizing them in terms of threats you can let through sometimes and threats which absolutely must not be allowed to appear. Thus, I’ve revamped the Oppression Gadget strategy to truly achieve the goal of countering Dark Armed Return, and here is what I came up with.

Monsters: 17
2 Red Gadget
2 Yellow Gadget
2 Green Gadget
3 Bountiful Artemis
3 Harvest Angel of Wisdom
3 Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer
1 Sangan
1 Snipe Hunter

When you look at a Dark Armed Return deck, what do you think the biggest threat in the deck is? If you said "Dark Armed Dragon," then I’m going to have to most wholeheartedly disagree. Sure, the Dragon can wipe your field and remove three monsters from play at the same time, but think about it for a moment. How often does Dark Armed Dragon really hit the field? How often does it actually remove the cards that are doing you in once the Return hits? How are your opponents getting everything they need anyway? Dark Armed Dragon doesn’t draw through half of your deck every game. It also doesn’t remove any huge monsters you find while you’re in the process or set you up to play Limited spell cards multiple times in a single turn before unleashing a Dimension Fusion or Return from the Different Dimension for the win. In fact, I submit that if the Dark Return deck couldn’t roll through its cards with extreme efficiency while simultaneously setting up its win condition in the process, it would likely not be anywhere near as good as it appears to be after Costa Mesa. Go back and look at the match coverage from that event. How many of those Dark Return mirror matches consist of both players dropping one or more copies of Destiny Draw and Allure of Darkness in a single turn before laying down an Armageddon Knight to set up whatever they drew into? Seeing as I wrote a number of them, I’ll tell you: there’s an obscene amount of drawing going on. Oppression Gadget can’t stop that. It can’t stop Dark Armed Return from rolling through cards until it can summon Snipe Hunter and wipe the Oppression off the field. It can’t stop anything but special summons. That’s why Oppression Gadget was failing.

"Wait a minute, aren’t they playing Solemn Judgment?" you ask? Yes, they are. It’s not enough though. If you have three copies of Solemn Judgment as your only counter traps in the deck, it’s easy to overanalyze each play your opponent makes, asking yourself again and again if the card he or she just played is worth half of your life points. It makes you pass on negating some cards in favor of what you consider to be the biggest threat. In this case since you’re more or less bowing to the wishes of the Dark Return player, your opponent will set up combos to his or her heart’s content, and then you’ll spend your life points to negate Dark Armed Dragon or Jinzo. Then the opponent will beat you. What I’ve done is replace the excess removal cards like Bottomless Trap Hole and Dimensional Prison (which do little but set the Dark Return deck up for an even bigger win) with more counter traps. Specifically, I’m looking for as many cards that can negate spells and monster effects as possible. That means that Magic Drain is in, Divine Wrath is in, and a pair of Dark Bribe cards will join them. That brings me up to eight cards in the deck that can negate a spell, along with five that will negate traps if necessary. Magic Drain in particular is one of the harshest beatings you can deliver to a deck like Dark Return.

Let’s say the opponent plays Allure of Darkness while you have Magic Drain down. There’s no question here: you activate the Drain. There’s no reason not to considering that at worst the opponent has to lose another spell in hand to force that card through. Looking at Lazaro’s decklist, I see that all the spells in the deck either draw cards or make you win the game. There’s no way that making the deck lose one of those cards is a good thing, and if the spells the opponent has are of the "win the game" variety, there’s a good chance that the Dark Return player would rather let his or her draw be negated than pitch the win condition. If the opponent doesn’t pitch, the next move your opponent makes is probably going to move to the end phase.

That’s not the end of it, however. Oh no. I’m playing Drastic Drop Off as well. Classically, the purpose of the Gadget deck was to run your opponent out of cards while you always have a monster thanks to the Gadgets. Drastic Drop Off is the very embodiment of this tradition, forcing your opponent to pitch any card that he or she grabs from the deck, be it from the draw for the turn or from some sort of search effect like Reinforcement of the Army. Stripping the opponent of his or her draw in addition to negating spells and blocking the opponent from removing Dark monsters from the graveyard (via Kycoo) seem like excellent ways to paralyze the deck that’s currently terrorizing the format, but that’s not enough for me. When I’m out to bury a deck, I want to bury it as deep as I possibly can.

"Haven’t you done enough? Isn’t negating your opponent’s key cards and grinding his or her card presence down to nothing while you attack with Gadgets enough for you?" No it isn’t, but thanks for asking. Dominance isn’t enough—I demand absolute supremacy! Therefore, I’m going to play Bountiful Artemis and Harvest Angel of Wisdom as well. Armageddon Knight can’t beat Artemis, and an Artemis in defense mode holds off Strike Ninja and Dark Grepher while you sit there and draw a bonus card every time you interfere with your opponent thanks to a counter trap. A lot of those bonus draws are likely to be more counter traps, ensuring that you’ll continually be able to keep your opponent under wraps while you win the game. Even better, you can also run an 1800 ATK beater that your opponent won’t want to try to attack over. Even ignoring the fact that Dark Armed Return’s arsenal of level 4 monsters that can beat Harvest Angel consists of Elemental Hero Stratos and a pumped Prometheus, that doesn’t stop you from tricking your opponent into attacking a set one or making him or her not want to follow up on an Enemy Controller play for fear of giving you back a counter trap. It’s especially fun to use Harvest Angel in conjunction with Drastic Drop Off to instill true despair in your opponent. Harvest Angel also proves excellent in Gadget mirror matches, because if your opponent uses Shrink on the Angel, you’ll still get back a counter trap that can later be used to keep a different monster alive.

The toughest part of coming up with this build was deciding which cards from standard Gadget builds were unnecessary, or at least not as desirable as another counter trap. Feel free to experiment to see what works best for you, or perhaps just what works best, period. Or if you’re feeling truly adventurous, just try playing a Counter Fairy deck! Personally, I think that Counter Fairy is the answer to all the crazy stuff flying around the competitive scene, and if you think my opinion is heavily biased, go ahead and ask Jason what he thinks. For once, my glasses aren’t rose tinted. Keep on fighting the good fight, and until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!