Gear Up

The success of Chris LeBlanc’s Geargia deck led me to rethink this archetype. As you can tell by the header of this blog, Geargias are near and dear to my heart.  I essentially abandoned them with the onslaught of the E Dragons. But now, the meta is a tad bit slower.  Maybe there is a place for them after all. 

First Gear

For those that are not familiar with the deck, the most basic play is to set Armor and protect it with a heavy trap line up.  When Armor is flipped, you add Accelerator to your hand.  From there, you can special summon Accelerator and go into GearGigant for a nice plus one. If you have access to Strategist, you can flip Armor back down, summon Strategist and use his ability to get a second Accelerator.  Special summon the race cars and then synchro for Burei and use Burei to bring out another Karakuri tuner. Before you know it, you can easily put three large monsters on the board in one turn.  

Variations on this spam theme are fairly frequent.  I can usually pull this off in about 60 to 70% of the games.  I am somewhat careful because you will get punished for overextending.  However, knowing when to go for it is the fun and skill of Yugioh. The deck’s penchant for OTKs is the reason I run Trap Stun and side Debunk. 

Second Gear

Bringing out large synchro monsters is intoxicating. So much so, you can easily forget about the other effects of the Geargia monsters.  For example, Accelerator lets you add a Geargia monster to your hand when it is sent to the graveyard.  Unfortunately, you can’t do this when you synchro summon, but you can do it when you bring it out with Call of the Haunted.  GearGigant lets you add a level three Geargia monster to your hand when it leaves the field. These minor effects can add to your hand advantage, so keep watching.  

Third Gear

The real change in Geargia play over the past several months has been the addition of GeargiaGear.  This trap card lets you summon two level three Geargiano monsters from your deck and increase their level by one.  It’s a one step Geargigant play.  Though I will be speaking against the common wisdom, it’s not a card I like. Here’s why:

·         If you play 1 GeargiaGear and 2 Geargianos, Geargiagear will be dead 67% of the time.

·         If you play 1 GeargiaGear and 3 Geargianos, Geargiagear will be dead 50% of the time.

·         If you play 1 GeargiaGear and 4 Geargianos, Geargiagear will be dead 40% of the time.

·         If you play 1 GeargiaGear and all 6  Geargianos, Geargiagear will be dead 17% of the time. 

You can do the permutations/combinations math for 2 and 3 copies of GeargiaGear, but it still has a significant possibility of being dead.  I would rather run a mini-Machina engine. 

However, testing with this card has led me to believe that little Geargiano is a better card than I first believed.  It can bring back tuners since it can target any machine monster.  More importantly, it is a target for GearGigant’s second effect.  I know that the Yugioh world favors MKII, but I hate having a 1000 point attack monster in attack position.  

I have a couple of other quirks.  I like to balance hand traps, spells, and traps.  This lowers the chance of running into problems with Decree.  I like the flexibility of Lance and I would rather run CardCar than Pot of Duality. CardCar is fodder for both Fortress and Redox. I’ve always felt the deck needs a few additional Karakuri monsters though I am never quite set on which ones.  Usually Saizan or Nishipachi can stop an attack when they are summoned with Nisamu.  In fact, you can see this is a pretty monster heavy deck.  Though I will take some hits, it tends to be very consistent.  

 Here’s my current list. I’ll be taking it to Charlotte this weekend!

Armor x 3

Accelerator x 3

Arsenal x 2

Geargiano x 2

Nisamu x 2

Nishipachi x 1

Saizan x 2

Redox x 2

Gearframe x 1

Fortress x 2

CardCar D x 2

Swift Scarecrow x 2

Maxx C x 2

Effect Veiler x 2

Forbidden Lance x 3

Shrink x 1

Dark Hole x 1

Compulse x 1

BTH x 1

Chain x 1

Trap Stun x 2

COTH x 2