Vanguard, Gear Groovy?

Gear Groovy

Anyone who knows me knows that i enjoy me some steam punk and Bushitroll has provided in spades with Gear Chronicle.

Unfortunately however because it’s so OP everyone has built it. So i found myself retreating to the Man Cave in order to diversify things a little whilst remaining both competitive but also not the same old-same old GC that keeps topping.

Now the idea is a little out there so bear with me. Shockingly it works whilst benefiting from the variations in some small but noticeable adaptations.

Before we delve in to things however i feel it worth pointing out that this is a pure Chronojet  deck so prepare for boredom in parts as this does suffer from being competitive and all that entails.

Lets jump straight in to it shall we?

To begin with i’ll start with the starting vanguard choice along with triggers as these are pretty much par for the course by now.

Surprise surprise! Our starter is the much hated Chrono Dran.

We can’t avoid it unfortunately. It’s just too much advantage to pass up on. That additional soul, a free G3 with 11K base and a booster or Steam Maiden, Melem is just too good not to take advantage of as not only does it re-fill your rear guard after the opponent Kageros it but also allows for mid battle faze shenanigans.

Guess who we see next?

That’s rite! Tick Tock Worker is hear. But don’t worry. It’s totally fair now you can’t use it as SVG rite?

Well not so much as somehow being this OP clan we can somehow bring it out once we hit Generation Break. Funny that. It’s like it was designed to troll players over and over again.

Any how we all know why we use this monstrosity. Melem +Ticktock is evil. Again an additional soul is nothing to complain at and a free Time Leap is nothing to complain about …. just saying.

Okay. So the next is just a guide line but just gunna point this out. Critical triggers at 6. MY personal choice is Chronovolley Rabbit because you can get it stamped and Pulsar, Rush Boar because piggy! But anything will do. You are aggressive so be aggressive.

That’s not all for critical triggers though. Heart Thump Worker  is essential. Not only does it provide an additional 4 triggers worth of critical but it also allows you to break down walls with the 5k power that it provides and that additional card you get to draw is sometimes needed. Especially on your Next age turns.

The next two are too good to pass up on for this build so with no hesitation and only a lot of shame i point you in the direction of Steam Battler, Ur-Watar. Yes it’s a stand and yes it’s limited to one copy per decks but who can turn down a trigger back in deck and additional cards purely for doing what you were doing in any case. Leap and go plus. Yes please.

Pulsar, Hypnosis Sheep will hopefully break the monotony of this build and so it should. This little fluffy guy allows you to stand a Zodiac Time Beast for an additional attack whilst providing you with more soul. Keep the hits coming is the name of the game.

Last but not least are the heal triggers. Love them or hate them they are an integral part of the game and so they should be. Nothing like 6th damage heal for the win after all. Nothing special hear but again, my preference is Chronotherapy Hamster. Again you can get it stamped but one thing. It’s a mouse. It has a tail.

Okay i think we’ve finished with the basic part. Your one of Dran, Ticktock, Ur-watar and Sheep, covered the 10 vanilla triggers and touched on the 4 ability triggers. Lets hit grade1.

To begin with we’ll stick the boring things. Steam Maiden, Arlim is the first on the chopping block. She’s your first generation GPG with her ability only to block the vanguard but providing a counter charge if you have a copy in the drop. Good card and very needed.

Next is a personal pick that works really rather well and that is our second generation GPG, this time the Timeleap PG in the form of Steam Keeper, La-ba‘shim. Once leaped on to the RC you can pitch a card to add this beauty to the hand. Very useful if you know the opponent is going to smash your head in on the next turn and you need to provide yourself with a relevant shield. Of course we only play the one copy.

Sentinals over?

Good. That brings on to our three copies of Steam Breath Dragon. This your strider and Chronojet searcher both. The utility of this card can’t be under estimated. Having said that i hear you bellow “but why not four!” That is going to be answered very soon.

Before that though hear’s Tick-away Dragon at 2 copies. So i hear you like to fill the deck with more cards. This is your go too dragon for that. You leap you return one card. Simple and elegant.

As are the next couple of cards. Two copies of Steam Maiden, Melem. We can search her with ease so we don’t need more and on top of that, she’s filling me with hate because of Ticktock. Not much to explain with this one though. She’s a 11k attacker on GB1 and she shuffles back in to search out a G0 from deck. The only restriction is that that unit is rested. You’re Timeleap though so its no issue.

Second to last is another tech pick. I don’t want to kill my soul so i don’t use Steam Scara, Gigi. Instead i use the relatively new Steam Maiden, Mesh-kia. When leaped you can rest her to give something +4k and draw a card. Utility in spades seeing as you can put her back in deck after your leap turn. Hence the single copy.

Last but not least however for G1 we have two copies of Chronoethos Jackal. People don’t like this one but hear me out. It’s another 11K attacker and it’s a ZTB. But you’ll see the true worth once we reach our strides. Spoilers horseys!

Now is the true differential from the classic GC builds.

Of course we play Upstream Dragon at 2 copies. Why wouldn’t we?

It’s a G2 version of Melem and fetches you a G1 for History-maker Dragon to take advantage of.

Speaking of History-maker Dragon, we play 2 copies of this guy also. Time leap means we can get away with lower numbers as we’re likely to see what we want when we need it. This guy just facilitates that.

As does Delayed Blazer Dragon. This guy we also play at 2 because we don’t always want him. When we do however we leap as many times as possible to grant him that additional 2K for each leap. Having the ability to Leap something himself is also great mechanics. This guy can hit some truly amazing numbers if left unchecked.

Now for the last 2 ability units we play. That is the new ZTB/CJ/gear dragon card Pulsar, Shiftbullet Dragon. This card gains 2K each time the vanguard attacks meaning that on successful Crossover turns and on Next age turns you will have him un-boosted for 13K. But that’s not all. His synergy with Sheep and his second ability are why we play him. You see, hear is the madness incarnate. By counter blasting 1 and retiring Bullet hear, we can search the deck for 2 CJs. These will be CJ and CJG. That means we are up 2 cards in hand, we have access to our new CJ G guard and we have discard fodder for any PGs we have in hand or strides. One goes to the drop sure but you get the other CJ and you will have filtered your deck. But as you will see, this madness soon pays off when you note that you have Takeaway and Uluru to shuffle things back in to the deck.

Last but not least, we play 3 10K vanilla units. I use Chronospin Serpent because it’s available as a stamped card but also because of strides.

Assuming you are reading this then it’s not a big step to assume you know how vanguard works and GC in particular. They don’t do so well before GB1. The vanilla units help with this, allowing you to guard early without loosing too much from the hand. In lemons terms, 10K no pass on G2.

So we’re nearly to the end of this build’s main deck and we only have the G3s. No guesses what they are. It’s not exactly as though i’ve been making a secret of it after all.

Chronojet Dragon  at three copies and Chronojet Dragon G at four copies.

The former allows you to rewind on stride and guard restrict on GB2. The latter allows you to call a unit from hand, Time leap a unit on stride and has a nice power gain on vanguard. No question why we play G over CJ though. G doesn’t cost a CB and also boosts the power of the rear guard ZTBs.

So that’s the main deck. All that remains is the G zone/strides and G guards. Honestly this is what you would usually see with a few minor changes because of the dependency on CJ.

To best illustrate this point i think it’s best said by Interdimensional Beast, Metallica Phoenix. This is your usual go to Stride for early game G4 shenanigans as the flip up something skill combined with cards like Pegasus or Groovy can’t be under stated. The card is a great enabler but with only sixteen spots open to us, we are only able to use one.

What we can use two of however is Metapulsar, Split Pegasus. We play two of this horsey for two very relevant reasons. The first is being able to put one of your unwanted ZTBs back in to the deck for further use whilst getting a +1 in economy from the replacements. The only caveat is that both have to be of a lower grade. That’s great for us though as we have Shift Bullet and Spin Serpent at G2 and we also have our good friend Jackal at G1. Also we have all but four of our triggers but lets not be bad guys okay?

The second reason we play this beauty of an underapresiated card is the power bonus it provides whilst luxuriating face up in the generation zone. That 1K can be useful as it makes your vanillas 11K, your Jackal’s 12K etc. Get two face up and you’re pretty much set for late game. Honestly i can’t see why people don’t use this more, especially with Cross over existing.

Speaking of that card, Interdimensional Dragon, Crossover Dragon is yet another in the long string of re-standing vanguards that R&D have decided to give us. This time when you stride it you can counter blast 2 in order to call both CJ and CJG (potentially more if we get additional CJs in the future) from the deck and subsequently giving you a front row if you had none. To pull off this guy’s ability though you’re forced to shove CJ and CJG in to the soul on hit so pay attention to that and only use Crossover if you know you’re gunna hit or if you need the pressure. He’s not GB restricted though so that’s important to take note of. Go to town. In this build however, we only play the one copy and yes, we play it over our friend Air Element, Sebreeze. Yes the Air elemental is good but if you’re stuck on G2 you have your vanillas to help and you can still play the smack face game if not anything fancy. I feel that this is an important point to make however as people will get on there high horses and try to say i’m bad for not playing the Air elemental. Let me ask you a question though. Will you put more than one copy of it in your generation zone?

Thought not. So you get generation break online but you still don’t have access to game winning levels of power.

Okay so no one didn’t see us playing four copies of Chronodragon Nextage did they?

Because you know ditch three for a re-stand that also flips a copy for the low low cost of CB1 is good things. The fact you then shift in to CJ or CJG is icing on the cake. Who doesn’t love five drive checks?

So we’ve seen one side of the Groovy combo, both if we include Crossover for ham plays but we need the second. Interdimensional Dragon, Ragnaclock Dragon is hear to help you out! Packing an ability to gain critical, power and guard restriction this was an automatic include for me. Then of course you could choose to stride with it if you’re bad.

Okay, okay we’ve mentioned this over and over again so lets actually point out that we play two copies of Chronodragon Gear Groovy. By now you all know what it does and that a lot of people don’t use it but hey lets just point out that its a good card. Copy two dragon abilities and also gain power and flip up dragons for just flipping a copy face up. Yep this card is useful. As before, you have the potential to use Crossover and Next age or Next age and Ragna. Both are powerful. One is just go ham or go home and the other is a more lucrative investment of damage. Your choice though. don’t let me force you in to anything.

Well that’s the end of the strides. Now all we have are the generation guards. This where things get tied together.

Only one each of these so be careful of which ones you use. This is just my choices from testing.

Interdimensional Dragon, Heteroround Dragon is your sudo retire via conditional rewind +call the top card of the deck. This is only 15K worth of guard but only costs a soul so quite well costed. Useful against decks that need certain units on the board to trigger anything they want to do.

The second we have is our old friend the ever so stupid Retroactive Time Maiden, Uluru. Send back one of your non trigger units so you can use it later?

Sure. That’s just another CJ you can use for ham. Also send back the heal trigger you used to play this card. Well, nothing to loose is there?

This one gives us our 20K shield.

To provide our 25K shield, we have Highbrow Steam, Raphanna. Return a G1 or less to the deck, call out a G0 … oh lets say Ticktock and we have a winner. That additional 10K shield is very useful as is the shuffle after we’re finished taking things in and out of our decks.

But last but not least we have our 30K guard. This time in Highbrow Steam, Arlim. This is where more of that CJ synergy comes in to play. You can return two different CJs from anywhere between your hand and your drop zone to gain that all important 15K shield. Nothing else but the shield but that’s all we need.

That however is the list. Now i’ve broken it down for you it only remains for me to explain what your aim is and that’s pretty simple.

Beet faces in until you manage G3/stride. Once you achieve this, get as many CJ cards in your hand or drop zone as possible and start to cycle them in too and out of your deck to activate abilities, pay for costs and thin the deck so that you will see as many triggers as possible.

Having the same basic skeleton as an average Gear Chronicle deck should keep people off guard and expecting usual plays such as Ticktock/Melem and sure, perpetuate that misinformation by just playing the game. Then your cycling happens and one of two things will take place. The first is that the opponent will be put off guard and will start to make miss plays. The second is that The opponent will assume you have no idea what it is that you are doing. In which case they will assuredly play more recklessly.

Then there is the final option of things that could happen. I don’t count this one though as it’s not as likely as the other two. That third option you ask?

That they are playing this deck after reading this article.

I hope you’ve all enjoyed this little read through and explanations of a deck that isn’t 100 percent the meta and i strongly encourage you to look at, read and enjoy the other articles presented hear at GHQ. Also feel free to come down and visit us, have a few games, buy some product. We strive to provide an environment of enjoyment and lighthearted fun so how about it?

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https://m.facebook.com/TeamGHQOfficial/?ref=bookmarks The Team GHQ page. Hear you’ll find links to the youtube page and a few snippets of information you might enjoy.

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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKvLMlPLXtSf9LwHgHcozFg. At the moment we’re just setting up for a few different things but keep your eyes pealed for things to come.

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