Gear Chronicle is a relatively new Clan that was only debuted G-BT01. As a clan, its key characteristic at its onset revolved around rewinding (or just putting) opponent RGs into the bottom of the deck. It has been quite rightly termed a mini-Kagero for its ability to snipe key cards and disrupt the field.
One of this early "dark horses" is Upheaval Pegasus below, with the ability to completely reset your opponent's field. So if assuming your opponent has a pretty decent field with 2 16k RG columns, Pegasus basically forces your opponent to put all the cards on his field to the bottom of the deck, and then calls a card one by one from the top of his deck to the field.
Pros: Can wreck your opponent's nicely set up field, remove key or troublesome cards (Laurel, Charon etc), can combo with Chronojet's breakstride to rewind
Cons: Have the small chance to actually improve your opponent's field, Unadvisable against RP or GP.
In addition, there is also another aspect to Gear Chronicle that focuses on its guard restrict abilities. Guard Restrict is basically a mechanic that makes it harder for your opponent to guard an attack by "restricting" his guard options. This ability is manifested in units like Ragnaclock Dragon and Chronodragon Nextage.
Ragnaclock Dragon is a powerful unit undoubtedly. At the cost of 1 Counterblast and a flipping a copy of itself in the G-Zone, it basically gains Silent Tom's ability, whereby your opponent is unable to guard its attack unless they guard with Grade 1 or Grade 2 units onto the GC. At 26k power alone, it is virtually impossible for your opponent to guard this unit unless he has a perfect guard. And unless you are tempted to no-guard the attack, if there are two or more units in the G-Zone, Ragnaclock gains +1 Crit. At 3-4 damage, the opponent is forced is to PG it or he has a high chance to die if one of the drive checks is a critical.
Some people say that Ragnaclock Dragon is weak because most people perfect guard the Vanguard attack anyway, and if you do not have a perfect guard, you die anyway. However, I disagree. Ragnaclock Dragon rewards intelligent playing and keeping a close eye on your opponent's hand. Keeping two copies of it in your G-Zone to use at times when you are sure your opponent's hands are full of triggers/used a perfect guard earlier increases your likelihood of forcing either sub-optimal guarding or a high chance of netting the game.
Pros: 26k Silent Tom with 2 crits. You can win if you pull this off.
Cons: Eats Perfect Guards like a boss.
Chronodragon Nextage deserves honourary mention here as simply the most powerful G-unit in Gear Chronicle. This is Gear Chronicle's Pseudo-Restanding unit with a great effect. When this unit attacks the vanguard, at the end of the battle, you may pay the cost. Counterblast 1, unflip a copy of itself on the G-Zone, discard 3 cards, to re-stand its heart Chronojet Dragon. Since Chronojet Dragon has an built in GB2 guard restrict skill that prevents the opponent from guarding with G1 or higher units, your opponent is unable to perfect guard your second attack.
Pros: 5 drive checks, Restanding-Glory effect, can always meet the req of discarding 3 cards
Cons: Cannot pass triggers to itself, opponent can no-guard the Chronojet Dragon attack at 3-4 damage.
TLDR, Gear Chronicle's two main mechanics had previously revolved around "Rewind"-field disruption and sniping of key units, as well as "Guard Restrict", which gave Gear Chronicle the ability to mess with the opponent's guarding. But that is old if you have been keeping up with the latest developments.
Recently, the new season led to the release of a new mechanic for Gear Chronicle. It is called "Time Leap" and I'll quote the effect word for word here.
Time Leap: Choose one of your RGs, and bind it. Call a grade +1 card from your deck and shuffle your deck. At the end of the turn, put the called unit at the bottom of the deck and call the bound card.
Time Leap is an amazing effect. Basically, the ability allows you to pull off Aqua Force-esque combos with multiple attacks, resolving on-call effects on your RGs along the way to boost yourself/weaken your opponent, and setting your field at the same time. Previously, Gear Chronicle mechanics based on Rewind was not decisive enough in bringing advantage for GC because it was a primarily defensive mechanic (moderately hurting opponent's field) but did not provide enough damage/whittle down opponent's hand for Nextage. But Time Leap changes matters as providing the base for a GC deck.
Below is my current decklist (technically speaking, the working decklist, since some of those cards are not yet out in English).
Gearing Up for the Next Stage
G4
2x Chronodragon Nextage
2x Ragnaclock Dragon
1x Metallica
1x Fate Rider
1x Pegasus
1x Gear Colossus
G3
4x Chronojet Dragon
4x Steam Fighter Balih
G2
4x Upstream Dragon
3x Relic Master Dragon
4x History Maker Dragon
G1
4x Steam Maiden Arlim (Flip Guards)
4x Steam Breath Dragon (stride fodder)
2x Steam Scara, Gigi
3x Steam Worker, Etana
1x Steam Rider Burnham
G0
Crits of your choice
Heals
Chrono Dran
Main Focus: Purpose of the deck is geared towards pushing opponent to high damage, gaining advantage along the way, and finishing the game with Chronodragon Nextage.
Card Choices and Explanations
G4: A set of Chronodragon Nextage as finishers. Ragnaclock to play the information game. Pegasus, Metallica as first stride options. Sometimes it may be better to use Pegasus if your opponent's field is just too good. Fate Rider and gear colossus can be used as late game finishers.
G3: standard lineup. Balih is able to search for chronojet Dragon upon stride, and so is staple for this deck since chronojet Dragon is our ace. Chronojet Dragon is absolutely crucial since both Pegasus and Metallica requires a chronojet heart, as well as our finisher Nextage.
G2: Four of Upstream Dragon because it is a key card (see below). When Upstream Dragon attacks, with gb1 you can choose to add 4k power to it and at the end of the battle it goes to the bottom of the deck and you can search a G1 from the deck and call it to a RG circle as rest. Upstream enables GC players to run just a few copies of important G1 to mitigate the tight G1 lineup and reliably search out important pieces, such as a 10k booster to setup for nextage. History Maker Dragon is also important as our main time leap unit besides Metallica. One great thing about it is that it does not need to be boosted by a booster for his effect to activate. Relic master dragon is my personal preference since it allows you to rewind your opponent starter early game, abeit for 2 CB (more on this later)
G1: standard 4x perfect guards and 4 stride enablers. 2x Gigi to reliably +1 with chronodran's skill. Etana's skill is when you time leap it, it gives 5k to a chosen rg when it goes into the bind zone. This allows you to pump power to your units so that they can still force guard even if your opponent checks a Crit. Lastly, Burnham is run at 1 copy as a bonus 10k booster for nextage turn that can be searched by using Upstream Dragon.
Step by Step Guide
Turn 1: Ride and call starter to either Left or Right booster circle. Side lane starter is absolutely necessary to pull off a full Time Leap strategy (i.e. if your hand is horrible you can call it behind VG and play normally, but without an open booster behind the VG the Time Leap is awkward to say the least).
Turn 2: Ride Relic Master Dragon and if possible CB2 to burn opponent's starter. You can opt not to use it but situational...if your already at 3 damage at this stage, maybe there is no point in saving CB. Purpose is to equalise the situation with your opponent. Since your starter is on the sidelane, your opponent can 10k no pass the VG. Burn your opponent's starter so that you can do the same. CB2 may be abit heavy but it is ok for a Time Leap deck after testing.
1st Stride Turn: When you can stride. Ideal field setup belows. This is all you need to go.
Upstream Dragon Metallica Phoenix History Maker Dragon
ChronoDran
Chronojet's Breakstride skill CB1 rewind 1.
Upstream Dragon attacks with 13k power (opp to guard 5k).
Turns into a G1 Etana at the end of the battle.
History Maker Dragon attacks boosted by ChronoDran (opp to guard 5k).
CB1, time leap G1 Etana into a Upstream Dragon. When Etana is on the bind zone, choose Upstream and +5k to it.
Upstream Dragon attacks with 18k power (guard 10k).
Turns into G1 Burnham at the end of the battle. (Place it behind the VG, so that we free one column for ChronoDran. Burnham also sets up for Nextage next turn as a 10k booster).
Metallica Phoenix attacks, unflips a Pegasus.
Time Leap ChronoDran to call a G1 Gigi.
ChronoDran goes into the soul and call out a Chronojet Dragon in front of Gigi. Gigi's effect SB2 to draw 1 card.
Metallica attacks.
Chronojet Dragon lane attacks (guard 10k).
End Phase: Chronojet Dragon goes into your hand, Gigi goes back to the bottom of your deck.
So overall 5 attacks, 2 CB. If your opponent is lucky with triggers, he might guard less/-1 attack. Otherwise it is pretty decent.
Other Cases: If you are unable to setup the ideal field, you may still use Metallica and ChronoDran to setup one free column and get a stride fodder for your next turn. At this point it mostly depends on your opponent. If your opponent has a good field, you could be better off using Pegasus to wreck his field.
2nd Stride Turn: Below is the ideal 2nd Stride formation (or if your opponent got rid of your ChronoDran, can be a first stride setup)
Upstream Dragon Nextage History Maker Dragon
7k Booster Burnham 7k Booster
Upstream Attacks unboosted, calls a Etana.
History Maker attacks boosted.
Time Leap Etana into History Maker, give +5k to Etana.
Nextage attacks, pay cost to restand VG. Pass triggers to History Maker or Burnham (situational)
History Maker attacks boosted forcing potentially 15k shield or more.
Time Leap the other History Maker into a G3 for a final attack/pass triggers.
Chronojet Dragon attacks.
G3 attacks.
All these are the best-case scenarios, and you can simply do the things that can be done based on your field, hand and CB situations. The truth of it is that the Time Leap deck is not really very consistent, although very fun when you do get to pull it off. Sometimes I get to pull off either the first stride or the 2nd stride formation, but sometimes you might not get to even do so for either.Without the component pieces needed for time leap, this deck essentially returns to old GC relying on the special abilities of the stride to play, and a far weaker rewind engine.
In my opinion, this time leap build is still better than a rewind build. A rewind build is too slow to gain advantage and you are largely unable to have a strong first stride, which results in easy guarding of nextage. Time Leap build precisely addresses the weakness of the rewind build. Although it is less able to disrupt the field, the pros of time leap succeeding outweighs the pros of a pure rewind build.
No comments:
Post a Comment