In theory, tomorrow should be the day that you can all rush your local gaming store to get your hands on the new Machine Re-Volt Structure Deck. Personally, I’m a huge fan of the new Ancient Gear Engineer, but for most folks out there I’d be willing to bet that the most exciting cards available in the deck are little Yugi’s Gadget monsters. Everyone familiar with overseas play is no doubt incredibly excited since they can now replicate more winning strategies from Japan, but for the most part, players in North America have probably never heard of the Gadgets outside of their appearance in the TV series. After all, a vast majority of players have never read the message boards and don’t keep up with the metagame anywhere except in their nation of residence. This week’s School of Duel is for those people and anyone else who hasn’t yet learned about the whole Gadget craze.
In general, it takes a lot to get a huge number of people really excited over a single release. Chimeratech Overdragon managed it for Power of the Duelist, just as Macro Cosmos and the Dark World monsters had for Enemy of Justice and Elemental Energy respectively. All of those cards were expected to have an immediate and massive effect on the way we play the game, so what is the immediate and massive effect that these new Gadget monsters will have? Not one of them has an ATK over 1400, and all they do is fetch other Gadgets. Green fetches Red, Red fetches Yellow, and Yellow fetches Green. How could such monsters reach legendary status in the eyes of so many duelists? Because it’s a nearly infinite supply of monsters for as long as you’re able to successfully summon them to the field. You’ll almost never run out, since every time a Gadget is run down in battle you’re guaranteed to have another one in hand that will take its place and fetch out yet another Gadget to be used down the road. Furthermore, ATK and DEF statistics are only really relevant when you’re dealing with monster-to-monster combat, which is something that Gadget decks are notoriously good at avoiding.
The biggest monster that most Gadget decks play is Cyber Dragon or (sometimes) Chiron the Mage. While I’m all for Chiron the Mage seeing play, I find that its effect has a nasty habit of backfiring: Chiron users always seem to find themselves paired up against someone who plays eleventy billion chainable traps. No, there’s no super-special-awesome monster here to bail the unending Gadget hordes out of actual combat situations, but there is something that most decks already pack: a big pile of removal cards. The Gadgets’ search powers give the deck a constant supply of monsters, so every time one is destroyed through battle or by a removal card, another one springs up to take its place. The same does not hold for your opponent’s monsters, assuming of course that he or she isn’t playing Gadgets as well. Thus, over the course of the game, the Gadget player will continue to drop monsters on the field and remove the opponent’s monsters, likely scoring a direct attack each time. Keep it up for long enough, and that’s a win.
Removal is very commonplace at this point in time, but choosing the correct cards to play can often prove tricky for those seeking to build the Gadget deck. For example, there are three main sources of free spell-based removal right now: Smashing Ground, Fissure, and Hammer Shot. While all three do basically the same thing, you should only actually use full compliments of two of them and leave the third one out of your deck entirely. The first question, then, is which of these cards should you not play and why? Take a moment to think about it, and then we’ll discuss.
Obviously, the answer isn’t Smashing Ground. Out of all of these cards it’s the only one guaranteed to always destroy a threatening monster (barring severe outside interference). It’s a simple card exchange that drops the overall number of cards in play on each side by one, thus simplifying the duel. In the end, that’s the basic goal of the Gadget deck. Smashing Ground stays in threes. Fissure, on the other hand, is not guaranteed to take out anything that’s really troubling you. If your opponent is only keeping one monster on the field at any given time, Fissure works exactly the same as Smashing Ground. Any more than one monster, though, and Fissure might hit something that isn’t exactly threatening to beat your face in. Treeborn Frog is likely to draw the fire of Fissure as are Sheep tokens that unexpectedly appear in response to your Fissure. Still, Fissure is also capable of going after various defensive walls such as Spirit Reaper or Gravekeeper’s Spy, and that definitely counts for something. Given the very conservative play styles we see these days, I’d say that Fissure is definitely a boon to the deck. Is it better than Hammer Shot? We’ll see.
Hammer Shot works something like a reverse Fissure. Rather than going after the opponent’s lowest ATK monster, it goes after the highest ATK monster on the field that’s in attack position. You absolutely must keep that “attack position” part in mind, since it’s possible to negate or even reverse a Hammer Shot with a timely use of Book of Moon or Enemy Controller. It’s also possible for an opponent to render Hammer Shot a dead card by simply playing monsters in defense position. Current Monarch builds are quite excellent at hiding from removal until they’re able to summon a Thestalos or Zaborg (they often have the Apprentice Magician engine to fall back on should anything go horribly wrong). In the case that they do fall back on Apprentice Magician or get to the point where they can flip a Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive and start attacking, you could potentially be in trouble. Thus, it is better to avoid having cards that you can’t use on defense position monsters. Yes, I’m aware that Fissure and Smashing Ground don’t work on face-down cards either, but they do work on face-up defense position monsters, which is something that Hammer Shot can never do. Therefore, I’d give Fissure and Smashing Ground the nod over Hammer Shot any day.
Scoring:
+10 points if you chose to exclude Hammer Shot due to its unreliability and the general superiority of Smashing Ground (and to a lesser extent, Fissure).
Max Score: 10
Now that we’ve decided not to play Hammer Shot, what other form of spell-based removal could we play? Theoretically, we could take advantage of the fact that we have a never-ending supply of monsters by using Share the Pain, but you don’t really want to lose any of your Gadget monsters despite the fact that it’s fairly unavoidable. If for some reason you have access to multiples of the particular replacement card I’m thinking of, good for you. Use them. They’ll help your Gadgets to actually defeat monsters in battle. If you don’t have any of them, then Rush Recklessly could be used as an alternative if you so desire. What card am I talking about? That would be Shrink, the Shonen Jump Championship promo that was given out for the last time a month ago in San Jose. I’m fairly certain that someone somewhere has sneakily acquired three copies of the coveted quick-play card for this very purpose. Make sure to keep the possibility of Shrink in mind if you play against Gadgets in Orlando. While it isn’t likely to happen to you, getting nailed by a surprise Shrink in the damage step is a good way to ruin your day.
In addition to all the spells, Gadget decks generally also pack a full compliment of trap-based removal in the form of Sakuretsu Armor, Widespread Ruin, Mirror Force, Torrential Tribute, Ring of Destruction, and in some cases, Bottomless Trap Hole. These can be a real pain to play around especially considering that your cards aren’t likely to be replacing themselves as well as the Gadget player’s. Gadgets can also turn their excess cards into removal if they choose to include Snipe Hunter as well. The lucky little Fiend from Cyberdark Impact sure seems to be popping up a lot lately, doesn’t it?
Before I close up for the day, let’s have a little quiz to see how much you know about these monsters.
Gadget Quiz
- The highest ATK strength of any Gadget is the Green Gadget with 1400 ATK. What is the highest DEF of the Gadget monsters and which one has it?
- There is a variant of the Gadget deck called “Fifth Gadget” that plays a full-compliment of each Gadget. Those cards comprise exactly one-fifth of the deck (hence the name). How many cards are in this Gadget variant?
- If your opponent has a Mystic Tomato and Royal Decree face up on the field and you don’t have any removal in hand, which Gadget do you not want to have on the field? Which one would you like on the field?
- In a mirror match between Gadget decks, which of these cards would you most want to side in against your opponent: Spell Canceller, Jinzo, or Different Dimension Dragon?
- The Gadget color search cycle represents (inversely) which common sight in the streets of any major city?
At 4 points for each correct answer, let’s start with the first question. The highest DEF strength of any Gadget is 1500, enough to avoid being taken down by recruiter monsters and enough to force D. D. Warrior Lady to remove the Gadget if the attacker really wants it gone. This defensive strength is unique to the Red Gadget, which incidentally sports the highest combined ATK and DEF of the group. Regarding the second question, simple mathematics tells us that a full complement of each Gadget is a total of 9 cards. That’s one-fifth of 45, so the Fifth Gadget deck plays 45 cards. Whoever said this game was good for teaching mathematics was clearly correct.
In question number three, the absolute worst thing that could happen to you is that Tomato going on a kamikaze strike into one of your Gadgets, allowing the Tomato’s controller to fetch Don Zaloog or Spirit Reaper to strip a card from your hand. The only Gadget you could summon that would let them do that is the 1400 ATK Green Gadget. You’d much rather have a Red Gadget and its lovely 1500 DEF to hold off that Tomato while you try to draw a Smashing Ground or Fissure. Of course, that game state could still degenerate very quickly but hey, that’s a concern regardless of which deck you play or play against.
The fourth question is an interesting one. If you side Jinzo, both sides’ traps are worthless while it’s out. You can also only have one of them. If you pick Spell Canceller, both sides’ spells are out, but Chiron and Cyber Dragon can take you out in battle. The correct answer is Different Dimension Dragon. It can’t be destroyed in battle by anything less than your opponent’s Cyber Dragon, and the only cards out of your opponent’s entire spell or trap line that can defeat it are Sakuretsu Armor and Ring of Destruction. I like those odds a lot better than the chance of survival with either of the other monsters. Of course, you’re not likely to side any of these cards in, but it’s a good practice to know everything you could potentially include in such a side deck before you start making any actual decisions. Finally, the answer to number five is a brilliant device that many drivers in my hometown of Pittsburgh seem quite adept at ignoring. That would be, of course, a traffic light. While a traffic light moves from red to green to yellow and back to red again, the Gadget search cycle works in the opposite direction. Easy. Of course, if you live in Pittsburgh or New York City or some other place where the traffic code is more a set of guidelines than anything else, that might have been a tricky question.
Scoring:
+4 points for each correct answer
Max Score: 20 points
Total Score: X/30
Now you know the basics of the Gadget deck and how it works. I’ll leave actual creation of the decklist to you. Personally, I’m much more excited about the Ancient Gear Engineer as I mentioned above, so look for my Dr. Crowler character deck in a few weeks once I trick it out with some cards from the new Structure Deck. If you were appalled by the lack of huge monsters mentioned in this article, then I would highly recommend you go visit my Almost There column for your weekly fix, and until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!
Jerome McHale
jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu
HOMEWORK: Next week we’re going to look at the other side of the coin and see how best to fight the Gadget deck. To aid in the discussion, here’s a question to think about until then:
We know that Gadget decks work off of a constant stream of monsters alongside a good amount of removal in order to quickly simplify a duel and win by running the opponent out of playable monsters to fight back with. What single card hurts the Gadget strategy the most? You can interpret the question as broadly or as narrowly as you wish, as long as you choose a single card (not a combo!) and explain exactly why you think it is the most detrimental to a Gadget player.