I used to be into flashy, do-or-die OTK decks back when I played advanced format, but nowadays I'm more into the grindy decks, taking resources little by little and balancing your commital.
Let's go back to my roots with Machina Ancient Gear!
What if, instead, we went a bit more... extreme route?
This build has a lot of damage potential, and is very often able to close out games in the very first turns of the game. It can also, in theory, play the grind game with Fortress, but the lack of traps to support that playstyle means that more often than not you'll either run out of resources before the opponent does, since summoning Fortress has a relatively hefty cost.
But eh, enough of an intro, let's review the decklist piece-by-piece.
Duplication engine
Machine Duplication is a card that does a lot of heavy lifting for the deck in the early game. Cyber Valley+Duplication gives you 3 extra draws (I usually do 2xValley to draw 2 and the last Valley to block an attack and draw off that) letting you dig quite deep into the deck, while Peacekeeper lets you search Gearframe to get your offense started, but can also put up quite the wall in the mean time. If you don't suspect Cyber Dragon, equipping the ATK position Peacekeeper to one of the other two leaves you with 2 Peacekeepers in defense of which one is also protected. If you do suspect Cyber Dragon, you can equip the peacekeepers one to the other to forcefully destroy one and trigger it, so that you still get at least one search even in case Cyber Dragon comes up.
At first, I had 3 Duplications, but I eventually removed 1 because drawing into Peacekeeper or Valley without Dupe is fine (they are usually the only okay discards to summon Fortress from the hand), but drawing Duplication without the targets is one more brick in a deck fundamentally made of bricks.
Machina engine
This is the consistency engine of the deck. 3 Force is my stance on Machina decks in almost any build. Summoning Fortress from the hand sucks, so the best way around that is having an efficient way to summon it from GY. It's fine if your hand is swaped with normal summons (i.e., Valley and Peacekeeper), but even then I rarely ever summon Fortress from the hand unless it's for a lethal push.
The only "exception" to this rule is summoning Fortress by discarding Fortress. This sets up a Fortress in grave to summon by discarding Force or Gadjiltron, so it's generally fine.
Drawing into Force is great if you have already setted Fortress up, so it's only ever a problem if the opponent keeps banishing your Fortress or if you just don't draw Fortress (which basically means not finding any of 3 Fortress, 3 Gearframe or 3 Peacekeepers).
Geartown engine
The Geartown engine is relatively "standard". I went 3 Gadjiltron instead of the more common 2 for the same reasons why I play 3 Force (although the third Gadjiltron can often be sided out) and I'm playing 2 additional field spells instead of just one. Ancient Gear Beast is an awesome card that can deal with a lot of annoying threats, from Ryko to battle recruiters, and can be NS with no tributes under Geartown (although that requires actually activating Geartown, making you susceptible to MST).
The choice I'm the most content with is the 2 extra Fields. First of all, playing 8 total fields means that getting double Gadjiltron is actually relatively realistic. But, that aside, the two spells are also great on their own.
Mausoleum is more of an utility to get out of brick hands with multiple Gadjiltrons in hand, but can also NS Fortress in a pinch and set up a lot of goodies. Great card, but is often sided out G2 if playing against decks that can use it.
Gaia Power is part of a series of field spells for each attribute that increase that attribute's ATK by 500 and reduces the DEF by 400. I have always loved those cards (and, recently, I've been messing with a deck built around Mystic Plasma Zone), and having a deck in which one of them is finally really good is a win in my book. Gaia Power makes a lot of non-lethals into lethals, lets you run over opposing Tytannials with Fortress and lets you play around Gorz and Tragoedia in many occasions.
One of my pet peeves of the deck is that Gearframe+1 any machine+Limiter Removal is not an OTK through Gorz and Trag and doesn't let you play around them. 3600+5000=8600, so Limiter Removal should make it an OTK. However, dropping Gorz after the Gearframe attack means that you'll need to run over the token with Fortress and then in M2 equip Gearframe to Fortress to save it from destruction, leaving your Fortress against Gorz. However, if you wait for the Fortress attack to use Limiter, it's only 1800+5000=6800 damage. With Gaia Power, on the other hand, you can do 2300+6000=8300, and wait to see if the opponent drops gorz/trag to activate Limiter.
In G2, Zombie World often makes the cut into the deck. Zombie World makes your machines immune to Chimeratech Fortress Dragon, and very often can be super-annoying to opposing decks (fairies, frogs, etc...).
OTK support
Those cards enable your OTKs through opponent's backrow and, in general, "obstacles".
If you draw Limiter Removal, you more often than not have won the game. It's usually better to play a bit more conservatively with it, and figure out if you have a way to lethal without running into Gorz/Trag/Fader, but in general you can build your strategy around the card once you draw into it.
Trunade is the favourite cleaner, of course, but Heavy can also trigger your own Geartown in case you need it, although more often than not to effectively OTK the opponent you will need additional fields, so it might not be too useful (the notable exception is Gadjiltron+2 Fortress, which is not as unreasonable as it sounds).
Because of the sheer speed of this deck, it's not uncommon to setup an OTK on turn 2, so MST can often destroy the only S/T the opponent set to fully clear the road ahead. That aside, MST is often used to trigger a second (or third) Geartown for lethal pushes.
Brain Control is incredibly strong in this deck. Removing your opponent's (usually) only monster, makes it much easier to go for OTKs, often without even needing complex setups. Also, against BW, stealing your opponent's monster to turn off Icarus (or forcing it early, but to be honest you often have zero cards on field when activating Brain Control, so they might not have targets at all) is a great enabler, and with the tributes to support it you can get rid of threats for good (Catastor is one of the most relevant ones, but also Colossal Fighter and similar).
PWWB is a love of mine. As mentioned earlier, in this deck, costs that allow you to discard Fortress are pretty much free, and having chainable generic spot removal which also steals your opponent's draw phase in the deck is incredibly good both when playing offense and when playing defense.
Miscellaneous
- 2x Cyber Dragon: CyDra is great against the thousands of hero beat decks swarming DB recently, but can also provide the extra push to OTK sometimes (usually, CyDra takes care of an opponent monster, while the rest of the field actually pushes for the OTK). That aside, CyDra is also one more out to Catastor which usually completely shuts off the deck, since you can go into Chimeratech Fortress with it without even wasting your NS.
- Gorz: to prepare for OTK pushes it's very common to keep your field completely open, so Gorz acts both as defense and as offense.
As you can see, the deck is mostly 3 engines mashed together, and all 3 of them link with each other very well, so it's much more consistent than it actually looks.
Alternative card choices
One of the most common comments I get is "shouldn't you be playing more traps?". The answer is "probably? I don't wanna tho". Mirror Force and Torrential would definitely fit the deck to a T, but also Book of Moon for some protection. On the other hand, I wanted to go an all-in build, and chances are that the opponent is still going to play around Mirror and Torrential. Sure, this is the deck I'm bringing to locals, so this will definitely bite back in the near future, but eh, I didn't want to take anything away from the main engine and as you can see space is tight.
Ancient Gear Golem is, weirdly, a valid card to play. It's an additional LV8 for Fortress, but it also lets you get around annoying defense position monsters or tokens. I eventually preferred Beast because it's easier to summon and to have some way to win against a set ryko.
Future Fusion is a card I wanted to play here. Chimeratech Overdragon with Future Fusion lets you dump all 3 Fortress and extra cards you don't want to draw (generally, all Peacekeepers and Cyber Valley, often also Ancient Gear Beast and depending on what else you have the Gadjiltrons can also go), wildly improving the average deck quality. Another target is Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem, but it doesn't help your gameplan if not by just summoning a stupidly big beatstick in 2 turns. I found that in general, Future Fusion turned out to be a win-more card, so I didn't include it.
The Black Salvo engine fits the deck very well: having access to BRD to nuke the field (and, in a pinch, trigger Geartown) or AFD for field spells shenaningans is very strong. On the other hand, the only way this could possibly fit the deck without clashing too much with the NS is substituting the Dupe engine with 3 Dekoichi and 2 Salvo (and 3 more cards). However, the Dekoichi early game is not as good as the Dupe early game, and even with Future Fusion (which meshes very well with the Salvo engine, since you can send Dekoichi from deck to grave directly) it turned out to be less consistent.
Scrap Recycler is a card I always wanted to like, but never made it into the deck in a stable manner. Setting up Fortress instantly is strong, but you aren't realistically going to use the draw effect (unless you have Future Fusion, in which case you don't need Recycler), so it's functionally a -1, so that you'd be better off using Foolish Burial. The only build it made sense in was in the Black Salvo build to send Dekoichi setting up for Salvo, but even then it was quite low-power in general.
I eventually settled on this build, but if you are interested in trying the Salvo build you can go -2 Dupe, -3 Valley, -3 Peacekeeper, +1 Future Fusion, +2 Salvo, +3 Dekoichi, +2 Recycler.
