Yet another shortened review from me.  For those who read yesterday’s, I did miss the combo between Ectoplasmer and Malice Doll of Demise.  Ouch.  Fortunately, I didn’t see anything indicating it was that great a combination: at 1600 ATK, most decks relying on ATK strength will be able to attack and kill it: Sonic Duck is a Level 3 1700, and Injection Fairy Lily can slip under Gravity Bind, then be Tributed for Ectoplasmer’s effect to keep her from being a liability.  Not saying I wouldn’t run them together, just that ultimately, I don’t know if they would really mean much to my scores, since I keep thinking of ways for such a deck to backfire.

 

Okay, onto the actual review: Gearfried the Swordsmaster.  This Level  7 Monster can only be Special Summoned, and then only through the effect of the Spell Release Restraint, which requires you Tribute a Gearfried the Iron Knight, but then let’s you search your deck for this big bad boy.  Okay, so all in all, this sounds good to me: Lighten the Load can be used so that Gearfried the Swordsmaster is never wasting time in your hand.  The Warrior Returning Alive and A Feather of the Phoenix can both get around its apparent “nomi” status (going by the wording, I don’t think you can revive it from the Graveyard directly to the field)., returning it to hand or deck (recommend that latter for Release Restraint).  According to the FAQ, you can chain Serial Spell to Release Restraint to summon two Gearfried the Swordsmaster at once.  Okay, I am getting ahead of myself.  Why do you want to run this card?  Well, it is a Light/Warrior, and if it is a nomi Monster, you might as well use it for Chaos Food once it hits the Graveyard… but obviously that’s not the best use for it.  As a Light/Warrior, it does have plentiful support.  It has a 2600 ATK which means only a few commonly played Monsters like BLS can safely run over it, and solid 2200 DEF so someone can’t just Book of Moon it then run over it with a Berserk Gorilla.  On its own, this still wouldn’t be enough, so fortunately it has a very nasty effect: whenever you attach an Equip card (anything that call itself an Equip, be it Spell, Trap, or Monster), you get to nuke 1 Monster on your opponent’s side of the field.

 

While not a dominating effect on its own, the whole package is pretty stable.  How so?  Gearfried the Iron Knight is a Level 4 1800 attack solid Beatstick that is unaffected by Equip cards.  It can also be searched out by Reinforcements of the Army.  Hmmm… I think I understand why Butterfly Dagger-Elma was banned now.  We all know it could be abused with the old Gearfried, and there might have been some tricks with the new one… but I digress.  There is some support for Equip cards (Iron Blacksmith Kotetsu), as stated there is a bunch of support for Warriors, so building a deck around Gearfried the Swordsmaster seems reasonable enough, and in exchange for not being super sick, we get a reasonably big monster with a good effect who honestly seems fairly easy to summon.  I mean, in a 40 card deck, you could have 3 Gearfried the Iron Knight and two Reinforcements of the Army.  So having one or the other is pretty simple.  It’ll just be a matter of getting release restraint into hand.

 

Ratings

 

Traditional: 3/5-You can build a deck around this, and sometimes it will win.  It just won’t win that much against good Chaos builds, since they gain access to more goodies than you do compared with the Advanced format.

 

Advanced: 3.75/5-I honestly think this could be potent.  Equip cards can be very, very nasty when you know what you’re doing.  Your opponent think they’re hot because their Heavy Storm just left [this] Gearfried “naked”?  Chain a set “Blast with Chain”, equip it to [this] Gearfried, and nuke two of their cards.

 

Limited: 1/5-You can bluff with it, but with no Gearfried the Iron Knight in the set, it’s not like you can summon it.

 

*sigh* Leaving out my normal formatting doesn’t seem to decrease the length of my reviews, does it?