My FAVOURITE archetype of ALL TIME, has received its support in Masterduel with the release of the Selection Pack "Advance of the Great Forces," and that would be Ancient Gear! Welcome to my master class in PhD in dueling aspiring Ancient Gear soldier!
Ancient Gear Dark Golem, Ancient Gear Statue, Ancient Gear Advance, Ancient Gear Commander, Ancient Gear Tanker and Ancient Gear Duel all make it much easier to generate an entire army of Ancient Gear killer robots to obliterate all your opponent's board and lifepoints with! Now there is a heavy emphasis on Dr. Crowler's ace monster, Ancient Gear Golem, and now we're actually incentivized to summon it a lot and make fusion boss monsters like Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem and Megaton Golem!
Let's blind second and teach these lame SLIFER RED SLACKERS on Masterduel ladder what the true meaning of what it means to have a PhD in dueling, just like our beloved Dr. Vellian Crowler! Time to blind second, and MECHANIZED MELEE all opposition that we come across!
Want to see the deck in action? Scroll to the very bottom for the Youtube video!
ARCHETYPES AND DECKBUILDING
This is a pure ANCIENT GEAR deck, so most of the cards in this strategy are composed of these giant killer robots. The monsters are composed of x3 Statue, x1 Box, x3 Wyvern, x2 Frame, x2 Tanker, x1 Commander, x1 Golem, x2 Dark Golem and x1 Reactor Dragon. The spells are x3 Geartown, x3 Fortress, x3 Advance and x3 Catapult. The singular trap in this deck is x1 Duel. Due to the amazing consistency boosts that is granted by granted by the new Ancient Gear support, every Ancient Gear card is highly searchable. As a result, some cards that were 3-ofs are now 1-ofs.
SUPPORT cards that propel your army forward are x3 Urgent Schedule and x1 Gizmek Taniguku. The idea with Taniguku is to summon it and Dark Golem from deck with Urgent Schedule, then to link both monsters away into Ancient Gear Ballista, putting both in the GY. Then you banish Taniguku to summon Dark Golem from the GY so you can its full effects.
BOARDBREAKER cards that are used in this deck are x1 Dark Hole, x2 Raigeki, x1 Feather Duster, x2 Lightning Storm and x3 Forbidden Droplet. 9 boardbreakers are used in this 45 card deck, so there'll be a high chance you draw 1-2 boardbreakers along with 4 combo pieces in your opening hand. After you blow up your opponent's board and simplify their gamestate, your Ancient Gear combo pieces should carry you to victory! Instead of the Maxx "C" engine, that is all forgone in favour of boardbreakers, since you don't care if your opponent will draw a million cards - they won't matter anyway when their lifepoints reach 0!
43 cards are used in this deck since there are hard garnets that you don't want to draw since they're sometimes part of your combo - especially Ancient Gear Box and Ancient Gear Golem. Everything is highly searchable, so even though it's 43 cards you should be able to get the cards you need to summon an army capable to OTKing your opponent.
COMBOS AND GAMEPLAN
Since Ancient Gear's debut in "The Lost Millenium" 19 years ago back at 2005, the deck has had one gameplan - OBLITERATE YOUR OPPONENT IN 1 TURN! The question we ask as Ancient Gear pilots is, how do we get there?
First, the Ancient Gear Commander clears their opponent's monsters/backrow with boardbreakers and then combo up into a gigantic army.
Here is the combos with Ancient Gears:
Ancient Gear Advance = Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem (unaffected by card effects, can attack 3 times) + Ancient Gear Ballista (makes an opponent's monster ATK 0) + Tanker/Wyvern (3000 extra damage)
Activate Ancient Gear Advance to search for Ancient Gear Catapult.
Activate Ancient Gear Catapult targeting Advance to summon from deck Dark Golem.
Activate Dark Golem's effect to search for Wyvern + Box.
Activate Box's effect to earch for Commander from deck.
Normal summon Commander. Activate Commander's effect to send from deck to GY Ancient Gear Golem and get an additional normal summon.
Normal summon Box.
Link summon Ballista using Box + Commander.
Activate Ballista's effect to search for Geartown.
Activate Geartown.
Activate Ballista's effect to target Geartown and your opponent's monster to destroy your spell/trap and to make your opponent's monster attack 0.
Activate Geartown's effect to summon from deck Tanker.
Tanker summons from GY Ancient Gear Wyvern.
Activate Wyvern to search for Ancient Gear Duel.
Banish Commander in the GY to place Ancient Gear Duel on the field.
Activate Ancient Gear Duel to fuse Dark Golem + Ballista on the field + Box in the GY to summon Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem that is unaffected by card effects and can attack 3 times!
Enter Battle Phase and OTK with at least 16200 battle damage!
If your opponent somehow survives the turn you can make Wyvern + Tanker Bagooska or S:P Little Knight, so you can attempt an OTK again next turn.
Geartown + Ancient Gear Catapult = Chaos Ancient Gear Giant (Attacks every monster, 4500ATK, piercing) + Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem (unaffected by card effects, can attack 3 times) + Ancient Gear Ballista (makes an opponent's monster ATK 0)
Activate Geartown.
Activate Ancient Gear Catapult targeting Geartown to destroy it and summon Dark Golem from deck.
CL1 Dark Golem to search for Commander and Duel and discard Commander, CL2 Geartown to summon Wyvern from deck.
Activate Wyvern to search for Gear Box.
Gear Box searches for Frame.
Banish Commander in the GY to place Ancient Gear Duel on the field.
Normal summon Frame. Activate Frame's effect sending Box to the GY to search for Ancient Gear Advance.
Activate Ancient Gear Advance to search for Ancient Gear Fusion.
Link summon Ballista by using Wyvern + Frame.
Activate Ballista's effect to search for Geartown from deck.
Activate Geartown.
Activate Ballista's effect to target Geartown and your opponent's monster to destroy your spell/trap and to make your opponent's monster attack 0.
Activate Geartown's effect to summon from deck Tanker.
Tanker summons from GY Dark Golem.
Activate Ancient Gear Fusion using your Dark Golem + 3 other monsters in your maindeck to summon Chaos Ancient Gear Giant! Make sure 2 of those monsters are also Ancient Gear Golem/Dark Golem.
Activate Ancient Gear Duel's effect to fusion summon using Dark Golem + Golem/Dark Golem in GY to fusion summon Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem that is unaffected by card effects and can attack 3 times!
Enter Battle Phase and OTK with at least 19200 battle damage!
Ask yourself when playing Ancient Gear into your opponent's board - How do I simplify my opponent's gamestate so I can combo successfully? Which Ancient Gear boss monster is my win condition (Chaos Giant with opponent's full board/Megaton Golem with opponent's empty board)? Asnwer those questions successfully, and you will very quite well win the game!
Of course, when you go second, you'll find that your opponent will have a plethora of interactions and interruptions attempting to stop you from ever reaching your gigantic boss monsters and summoning an army. Thankfully, you can simplify their gamestate with a bunch of boardbreakers before you combo off. Ancient Gear has a ton of starters, consistency boosters and extenders with the new support, so you should be able to power through your opponent's stuff for an OTK! The combos listed above may be interrupted in any given time, so you must be able to pivot and maneuver around your opponent's plays - and that takes practice. Before you know it, you'll be OTKing through entire Snake-Eye, Branded and Dragon Link boards EASY!!!
There are more combo guides on Youtube, feel free to check those out! Some of them even feature going 1st combos as well. I've purposefully included only two combos in this article since it would be too long!
GENERAL TIPS
Try to access Ancient Gear Fortress before comboing with your deck. The card in INSANE for the strategy, turning your entire Ancient Gear arsenal into SPELL SPEED 4 meaning your opponent cannot even interact with you! Also, Ancient Gear monsters cannot be targeted or destroyed the turn they were summoned, so cards like Promethean Princess and S:P Little Knight cannot do anything to your monstrous juggernauts!
- Multiple Ancient Gear Fortresses are recommended to be deployed, so in case your opponent outs your first copy, you have a second as backup so you can continue your Ancient Gear deployments uninterrupted!
- This deck discards quite a lot with Ancient Gear Dark Golem's effect and with Forbidden Droplet. The best cards to discard are Gizmek Taniguku, Ancient Gear Commander and Ancient Gear Catapult since they have utility in the GY.
- If your opponent has a board full of monsters to smash through, Chaos Ancient Gear Giant is your win condition. If your opponent has an empty board, Ancient Gear Megaton Golem (that has been summoned with 3 Ancient Gear Golems) is your win condition.
- If your opponent forces you to go first, or they somehow survive your assault, the best play is to summon Bagooska and TY-Phon so you can delay them and you can get another shot of an OTK next turn.
- Remember, you don't care about Maxx "C." Just keep comboing through while your opponent draws a ton of cards - they cannot use it next turn if you OTK them anyways!
- Want to see the deck in action? Scroll to the very bottom for the Youtube video!
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Congratulations my esteemed student, you have successfully completed my lecture on Ancient Gear! Will you have what it takes to defeat those SLIFER SLACKERS on ladder? Will you be able to show them a masterclass in PhD dueling, just like Dr. Vellian Crowler?
Deploy your Ancient Gear Army on ladder and OBLITERATE all who stand before you! Snake-Eyes, Branded, Fire King, Labrynth, Voiceless Voice - they all fall to the unstoppable juggernaut that is Ancient Gear Golem!!! MECHANIZED MELEEEEEEEEEE!!!
GLHF Duelists!
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