Ancient Gear VernNaturia

Hi all,

     This is an Ancient Gear deck looking to OTK on our first battle phase. We use the Vernusylph cards for consistency and the Naturia cards to provide some interraction going first. I'll provide a brief card-by-card of the important names, a short gameplay section, and a guide of how I think the deck should be played (side decking, etc.). Alright, before I get started, I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you find this list and description interesting!

     Ancient Gear Dark Golem, Ancient Gear Wyvern, and Ancient Gear Advance are the three most important main-deck cards in this archetype (for this deck). Dark Golem gets us two searches when it is summoned, and it is treated as 'Ancient Gear Golem' on the field or in the GY. Wyvern searches any 'Ancient Gear' card, and Ancient Gear Advance searches any 'Ancient Gear' spell or trap. We almost always want to get to Dark Golem, and we can do so by opening Wyvern or Advance in our starting hand. Urgent Schedule also gets us to Dark Golemn, as do a few other two-card combos, which I will detail below in the combo section.

     Ancient Gear Commander is very important for OTK lines, as it lets us place an 'Ancient Gear' continuous trap face-up from our hand onto the field. We use this to place Ancient Gear Duel face-up, and use it's effect to fusion summon either Chaos Ancient Gear Giant, or Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem, attacking three times with piercing damage (usually enough for lethal). We are playing Droll and Dominus Purge as our hand traps, and a small Naturia package. If we have to go first, we can send Molecricket to the GY by discarding it for cost or with Vernusylph of the Awakening Forests, then summon back Molecricket during the opponent's turn to summon Camellia and Sunflower, for two Monster negates (there are various lines with the Naturia monsters, and listing them all here would take too long. If you aren't sure how best to use these three monsters, please look into a guide on youtube, or the Naturia discord).

     Combos (and gameplay, yay!)! Okay, this deck can play through a few interruptions, but to do so, we need to know the ideal lines and the tools we have to bait out interraction. The ideal starters (going second) are Ancient Gear Wyvern, Ancient Gear Advance, or Urgent Schedule. With one of these cards we can get to Dark Golem.

   -Wyvern search Advance, Advance search Catapult, Advance tribute Wyvern, Catapult send Advance for Dark Golem

From this point, depending on our hand, we make a few different choices. If we have extension in hand (Ancient Gear Fusion, a Vernusylph, or if we haven't normal summoned this turn) we do the following:

   -Dark Golem search Box and Duel discarding a card in hand, Box search Commander, Vernusylph to summon Commander or Fusion/Link Commander into the Graveyard, use Commander in GY to place Duel face-up, Fusion summon Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem with Duel, Attack for (probably) lethal

If we do not have the afformentioned extension, we instead do this:

   -Dark Golem search Fusion and Fortress discarding a card in hand, activate Fortress, Fusion to summon Chaos Ancient Gear Giant and attack to clear the board


     Based on these lines, it may not seem like we have much to do to bait out interraction, but lets take the following hand: Ancient Gear Wyvern, Ancient Gear Dark Golem, Ancient Gear Advance, Vernusylph of the Misting Seedlings, and Naturia Molecricket. We start by normal summoning Wyvern, assuming it will be negated. Once it is negated, we activate Ancient Gear Advance to search for Catapult. If this, too, is negated, we then use the Vernusylph to pitch the Dark Golem, summon back the Dark Golem, and proceed with our combo line. Playing through two interractions isn't too shabby, but it definitely won't work against every deck.

     This is where the side deck comes in! We wan't as many going-second staples as we can get (feel free to improve this list, it isn't the end-all-be-all), and we want answers to common meta threats. If we have to option to go second, we will be siding out the Naturia package, as well as any main-deck cards that are inneffective in the matchup, but we can also side out 0-1 copies of Dark Golem and Wyvern, if need be. The Kaiju package is for sticky-boardstates, and Thrust can fetch us Catapult or Fusion, as well as non-engine.

     All things considered, I think this is a fun list that can get some surprising results if played carefully (though it is far from a meta challenger). I hope you enjoyed this breakdown, please let me know what you think down below!