Deck Profile: Mark Garcia’s Rapid Gadget Deck
Paul McCann’s Machina Gearframe Deck showed us a Gadget build that focuses on card searching, plus responding to the opponent’s defensive moves. But not all Gadget Duelists are playing at a slow, controlling pace. Some are attempting to do the opposite, including 2005 World Championship competitor Mark Garcia!
Monsters:
3x Machina Gearframe
3x Red Gadget
3x Green Gadget
3x Yellow Gadget
2x Machina Peacekeeper
2x Machina Fortress
Spells:
3x Smashing Ground
3x Solidarity
3x Creature Swap
2x Nobleman of Crossout
1x Mystical Space Typhoon
1x Limiter Removal
Traps:
3x Dimensional Prison
2x Bottomless Trap Hole
2x Ultimate Offering
2x Royal Oppression
1x Solemn Judgment
1x Starlight Road
1x Mirror Force
1x Torrential Tribute
1x Trap Dustshoot
While McCann’s Deck was about slowly grinding down the opponent until they can’t fend off a steady stream of monsters, Garcia’s build is all about aggression and the fast win! McCann plays 18 monsters, but Garcia only runs 16, and doesn’t play Tragoedia, Machina’s Force, or Scrap Recycler. Instead, he plays 3 copies of each Gadget monster (vs. McCann’s total of 6 Gadgets), plus Machina Gearframe, 2 Machina Peacekeepers, and 2 Machina Fortresses. It’s a bare-bones monster lineup that’s optimized to make a Summon and some multiple attacks each turn.
In the face of big defenders like Gravekeeper’s Spy, and momentum-killing monsters like Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter, Garcia runs a pair of Noblemen of Crossout. Crossout eliminates the blocking monster so Garcia can make direct attacks, and stops the dangerous effects of those monsters – effects that could slow down his quick push for victory. Three Solidarities add 800 ATK to each of his Machine-type monsters, quickly racking up an additional 1600 or 2400 damage in a single turn. Royal Oppression helps ensure that big Synchro Monsters don’t get in the way, and 3 Creature Swaps let Garcia trade one of his underpowered Machines for a bigger monster his opponent controls. Swap clears away a defender so Garcia can deal damage, and adds a powerful new attacker to his side of the Duel.
Two Ultimate Offerings are the coup de grace for Garcia’s strategy, letting him pay Life Points to Summon as many as 5 Gadgets in a single turn. Combined with Solidarity and a single Gadget to start with, Ultimate Offering can end the Duel as early as Turn 2, with each Gadget dishing out more than 2000 damage on its own.
The cool part about this Deck is that while it plays really aggressively, it doesn’t suffer the drawbacks most other aggressive Decks have to try and play around. Traditionally, the penalty for playing too aggressively is losing a bunch of cards all at once. Lose too many cards, and your gamble might backfire, and you won’t be able to defend yourself if things go wrong. Garcia’s Deck is different: of the 16 monsters he plays, 12 get him another monster the moment they hit play. Two more (the Machina Peacekeepers) will get another monster when they’re destroyed in battle. Only the 2 copies of Machina Fortress fail to replace themselves at some time, and the Fortresses compensate for that by being fast and huge, ending Duels in a heartbeat.
Mark Garcia’s Deck is simple, fast, and brutal – a winning combination in the hands of an experienced pilot like himself. It’s far more aggressive than most Gadget Decks we’ve seen lately, and few competitors will expect to see a Gadget Duelist playing so quickly and aggressively. Garcia’s going to take a lot of competitors off guard this weekend, and his Deck makes a strong case for an aggressive direction for Gadgets.