Forum:Deck Guide/Gadget

by Gadjiltron

Intro
The Gadgets were a famous set of cards that were popular from the very moment they were introduced. On their own, they were a set of not-very-strong monsters which searched each other out when Summoned, but many players used this to their advantage to create Decks that made it to the tournaments from time to time.

Mechanics
The Gadget family consists of Green Gadget, Red Gadget, and Yellow Gadget. On successfully Normal or Special Summoning any one of them, they will search a different member from the Deck and add it to the hand. Green searches Red, Red searches Yellow, and Yellow searches Green. This allows for the Gadget Deck to have a constant flow of monsters as long as the right colours are still hiding in the Deck, along with thinning the Deck to increase the chances of getting what one needs next.

Of course, the Gadgets themselves are quite weak combat wise, with Green, Red, and Yellow being 1400/600, 1300/1500, and 1200/1200 respectively. Many Gadget Decks hence choose to defend the annoying three by use of cheap removal effects, like Fissure, Smashing Ground, and Dimensional Prison.

Analysis

 * Speed: Most Gadget Decks are control Decks, and thus are not very explosive. However, with the right cards, they can perform their own OTKs.
 * Power: As stated above, the Gadgets are not very powerful. However, they are backed up through use of destruction effects or use of other beatsticks.
 * Consistency: The search power of Gadget Decks allows the Deck to remain fairly consistent with its hand contents.
 * Risk: Not very high, since the Deck can still defend itself with all those removal effects despite not having a monster to Summon.
 * Meta Ranking: Oh, the Gadgets have been there alright. They come and go, with their latest meta Deck being a hybrid with the Machina archetype.

The Basics
First, the members of the Gadget archetype:
 * The Gadgets - Okay, we've probably already covered them a little earlier in the Mechanics section, but here's a brief recap. The reliance of the Gadgets on each other means that if you run one, you'll have to run all three, and you'd want to run at least 2 Gadget sets.
 * Green Gadget - 1400/600, searches Red Gadget on summon.
 * Red Gadget - 1300/1500, searches Yellow Gadget on summon.
 * Yellow Gadget - 1200/1200, searches Green Gadget on summon.
 * Gadget Arms, Gadget Driver, Gadget Hauler - Okay, these are just here because they have "Gadget" in their names and would technically fall under the Gadget archetype. However, their effects are more towards Morphtronic support and thus are out of place in the Gadget Deck.
 * Gadget Soldier - Uh... He's a high-level normal monster with abysmal stats... Yeah, no reason to run him either.

Well, as Structure Deck 10: Machine Re-Volt reprinted the Gadgets, it also introduced a bunch cards to support the Gadgets. Let's take a look:
 * Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Chimera - A LV6 with stats of 2300/1300. It has no innate effect, but gains effects depending on which Gadget you Tribute to Summon it. Normally, the requirement to Tribute to make it useful is not worth the trouble.
 * Green: AGGC gains 300 ATK, turning into a 2600/1300 beatstick.
 * Red: AGGC inflicts 500 damage when it attacks directly.
 * Yellow: AGGC inflicts 700 damage when it destroys a monster in battle.
 * Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Dragon - A more popular Gadget support monster, since it has greater stats (3000/2000), and an innate protection from S/Ts while attacking, making it a difficult-to-remove beatstick. Many choose to Special Summon it with Geartown, though it can gain additional effects when Gadgets are used to Tribute Summon it.
 * Green: AGGD can Trample.
 * Red: AGGD inflicts 400 damage when it deals Battle Damage.
 * Yellow: AGGD inflicts 600 damage when it destroys a monster in battle.
 * Boot-Up Soldier - Dread Dynamo - A monster with base stats of 0/2000, but if any Gadget monster is on the field, it buffs up to a respectable 2000/2000. However, considering that the Gadgets are easily squashed in battle by a fair number of monsters, it's not easy to keep Dynamo in its powered state.
 * Stronghold the Moving Fortress - A Trap Monster which summons itself in Defense Position the moment it is activated. At base stats of 0/2000, it is meant to serve as a wall until all 3 Gadgets are on the field, where it gets 3000 more ATK. The problem here is that the moment you're missing a single Gadget, Stronghold becomes powerless. Since the Gadgets are easily crushed in battle, using Stronghold as a beatstick is not worth the effort.

The Annoying Three
The classic Gadget Deck uses a large variety of 1-for-1 monster effects and S/Ts to clear the field. The Deck also makes use of cards to suppress Special Summons to give the opponent an even harder time. Builds tend to include these cards:
 * Banisher of the Radiance or Macro Cosmos - Lately we've been seeing a lot of Graveyard shenanigans. These two cards are capable of disrupting Grave-reliant strategies.
 * Breaker the Magical Warrior - On Normal Summon, Breaker stands at 1900 ATK, providing good muscle for the Deck. His counter can also be used to pick off any threatening S/Ts.
 * D.D. Warrior Lady and D.D. Assailant - These monsters are capable of banishing whatever monsters they battle, allowing for the Deck to clean out monsters which the Gadgets can't handle.
 * Koa'ki Meiru Powerhand - Powerhand has a brutal 2100 ATK for LV4, providing additional muscle while also piercing through annoying monsters like Spirit Reaper or Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter. Since the Gadget Deck uses a lot of 1-for-1 Traps, its maintenance cost of a Normal Trap is easy to fulfill.
 * Neo-Spacian Grand Mole - Many protection effects fend off against banishing or effect destruction, but protection from bouncing is next to non-existant. Furthermore, Grand Mole does its bouncing with no damage risk.
 * Snipe Hunter - Since Gadget Decks have large hand advantage, Snipe Hunter can discard excess Gadget copies to stand a chance in destroying any card on the field. There's a reason why he was Limited when Gadget Decks were at their prime.
 * Royal Oppression - Combined with the Gadget Deck's control strategy, locking out Special Summons will give the opponent a hard time.
 * Ultimate Offering - This allows for a Normal Summon swarm of Gadgets to either OTK the opponent by following up with a Limiter Removal, quickly summon multi-Tribute monsters, or to summon multiple Rank 4 Xyz Monsters.

An example Deck is as follows:

Under Construction

Chimera Explosion
As Gadgets can provide a means to constantly thin the Deck, they are often used as fodder to feed Chimeratech Overdragon such that the resulting Fusion will have an immense ATK score. This variant tends to use the following:


 * Cyber Dragon and Cyber Dragon Zwei - These are necessary to make Chimeratech Overdragon.
 * Future Fusion and Overload Fusion - The main means of summoning Chimeratech Overdragon. Future Fusion dumps almost all Machines to the Graveyard, and Overload removes all of them to create Chimeratech with an ATK reaching 10 000 or more.
 * Golden Sarcophagus - It helps search for the pieces of the combo that you'll need to pull off the OTK.
 * Power Bond - Sometimes, you can't quite pull off a Chimeratech OTK, and it would be better to stick with bringing out Cyber Twin Dragon to do massive damage.

An example Deck is as follows:

Under Construction

Deus Ex Machina
With the release of Structure Deck 18: Machiners Command, the Gadget Deck has meshed with the newly improved Machina archetype to create the Machina Gadget Deck. This variant tends to use the following:


 * Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Dragon - Being LV8, it can function solely to summon Machina Fortress. Though if the player so desires, he can Normal Summon it using Gadgets to grant it its effects.
 * Machina Gearframe - A beatstick that searches on Summon and can help in protecting other Machines. The addition to the search ability makes the Machina Gadget Deck even more consistent than before.
 * Machina Fortress - The star of the Deck is able to Special Summon itself from the hand or Graveyard, provided the player discards Machines of total level 8 or more. Since Gadgets do a lot of searching, they will be able to easily fulfill this criteria.
 * Scrap Recycler - While it is weak, on Summon it can mill a Machine to the Graveyard. Either dump Fortress so that you won't topdeck it if things go rough, or dump a LV4 EARTH Machine for its second effect, where it cycles 2 LV4 EARTH Machines into the Deck and lets you draw. This is often used to recycle scrapped Gadgets.
 * Geartown - Builds using AGGD employ this primarily to Special Summon AGGD after discarding it for Fortress. However, this also turns AGGD into a one-Tribute monster, making it particularly troublesome if a Gadget is Tributed for it.
 * Solidarity - If one chooses to play pure Machines, Solidarity gives all the monsters a solid 800 ATK boost, making Gadgets able to take down monsters they couldn't beat before.

An example Deck is as follows:

Under Construction

Other Tips
Try out some of the following if you need to tweak the Gadget Deck.
 * Meklord Army of Granel - Several things: It's LV4, it's EARTH, it's a Machine. This lets Scrap Recycler recycle it, and it doesn't clash with Solidarity builds. When Normal Summoned, it halves the ATK and DEF of one of your opponent's monsters. Sure, it wears off by the end of the turn, but this allows Gadgets to take down monsters that are originally larger than them.
 * Tragoedia - Gadget Decks tend to have large hand sizes, allowing Trag to reach respectable ATK/DEF scores. Trag even circumvents Oppression by Special Summoning during the Damage Step.
 * Burden of the Mighty - Gadgets are weak. However, this can partially remedy the problem by bringing most beatsticks to the size of the Gadgets, allowing the Deck's own beaters to crush them in battle.
 * Chain Summoning - A little combo to use with Gadgets is to summon one, use its effect, then Chain on an effect (like Emergency Teleport), following with this card. The result would grant you 3 free Normal Summons to use with your Gadgets. Psychic Gadget builds use this combo to create several Synchro monsters in one turn.
 * Pot of Duality - Gadgets don't Special Summon so much, so this can help look through the Deck for what is needed next.
 * Phoenix Wing Wind Blast - Spinning was quite the thing some time back, since it screws up the opponent's draws. The discard cost is easily managed with the Gadgets' large hand sizes.

And as usual, watch out for the following cards:
 * Ally of Justice Catastor - Most Gadget Decks don't have the means to bring out something that can defeat Catastor in combat without triggering its autokill ability. Fortunately, they still can blow it up with their removal cards.
 * Des Koala - Gadgets are small. They also make for large hand counts. Running into a set Des Koala with a Gadget on the first turn can make for immense damage.
 * Thunder King Rai-Oh - Gadget Decks, especially Machina Gadget hybrids, do a lot of searching from the Deck. This allows Rai-Oh to severely cripple the Deck's consistency while sporting both a decent ATK and an ability to fend off the Special Summon of anything that could kill it.
 * System Down - It's anti-Machine tech with little to no use otherwise, but because Machina Gadgets made it to the meta, System Down has become increasingly seen as Side Deck material. Gadgets have little ability to recover from being banished, so this can effectively cripple whatever the Deck has set up.