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ShineSoldier on YuGiOh
Deck Analysis:
The ‘Gearfried the Swordmaster’ Deck
April 18, 2006

After my Gearfried Deck was posted, I got a lot of mails about it. In one of them, I was asked to expand this strategy and create a Gearfried the Swordmaster Deck. Gearfried the Swordmaster is Gearfried the Iron Knight, only without its iron armor. The story goes that Gearfried’s true power is too great to be released, so that he has to wear an iron armor that would let his true power unreleased. However, a Spell was created, one that had the power to break Gearfried’s armor and unleash its true power. It made Gearfried walk the earth in its true form: the dreadful Swordmaster!

Anyway, the Swordmaster’s effect is as follows:

“This card cannot be Normal Summoned or Set. This card cannot be Special Summoned except by the effect of “Release Restraint”. When this card is equipped with an Equip Card, destroy 1 monster on your opponent’s side of the field.”

As you can see, it’s a Nomi, which isn’t a good thing. It can only be Special Summoned by the effect of Release Restraint, the Spell Card of which I was speaking in the introduction of this article. Release Restraint requires a Gearfried the Iron Knight on your side of the field to be offered as a tribute. Then you can summon the Swordmaster from your hand or deck.

Just like with Gearfried the Iron Knight, the Swordmaster has something with Equip Cards. But instead of destroying them (like the Iron Knight did), he can destroy a monster each time he’s equipped with one. Because of this, we will have to change the deck idea a bit.

The Swordmaster has an exellent 2600 ATK and an equally nice 2200 DEF, making him almost invincible to beat in battle. He’s a Light and a Warrior, which gives him some nice support. But his effect is the best part about him; taking out a monster every time he’s equipped with an Equip Card is just amazing. I truly believe he’s worth building a deck around.

Since the Swordmaster does not destroy the Equips that are equipped to him, we need to find other Equip Cards that work well in this deck. Two Equip Cards that work really well in this deck are Axe of Despair and Big Bang Shot. The first one increases the ATK of a monster by 1000 points, which is pretty nice. Big Bang Shot increases a monster’s ATK by 400 points and gives him trample (which means that when he attacks a Defense Position monster, the difference between the equipped monster’s ATK and the defending monster’s DEF is subtracted from your opponent’s Life Points).
 

And of course, Blast with Chain is in as well. Even though you might not be able to use it just as effectively as in the deck that involved Gearfried the Iron Knight, you can still pump a monster’s ATK by 500 all of the sudden, plus it’s just a nice tech card. And not to mention the advantages it can give you when you chain it to a Mystical Space Typhoon while you have a Gearfried the Swordmaster out!

The problem with a deck that focusses around Equip Cards is that it suffers bad draws quite often. With no monsters on your field, the Equip Cards are all dead draws. Besides that, they are cards that generate –1 disadvantages most of the time. But that’s something that this deck takes care of. Gearfried the Swordmaster will give you back that advantage you lost when he’s equipped with a card, so that’s not a problem anymore. The Equips can still be dead draws, though. To weaken this problem, we will have to add cards that can ensure that you will have less bad draws. Cards that can provide you with extra draws are examples of cards that’ll work well here. So just like I did in the Iron Knight’s Deck, I’m going to add an Airknight Parshath in this one as well. The synergy that it has with Blast with Chain is insane. Let’s say your opponent attacks your Airknight with his/her Cyber Dragon. You activate Blast with Chain, increasing the ATK of Airknight to 2400, which will take down the Cyber Dragon. The opponent then loses 300 Life Points as a result of battle with Airknight, and thus you get to draw one card. You’ve just got a 2-for-0 advantage, since the Blast with Chain still remains on the field!

Iron Blacksmith Kotetsu is another example of such a card, just like in the Iron Knight’s Deck. It gets you one Equip Spell when it’s flipped, meaning that you can’t draw it later on in the duel; another bad draw out of the way.

This deck’s main way to get the advantage should be through battle (with your monsters that are pumped up with Equips) or through the effect of the Swordmaster. Now you might think that it only covers the Field Advantage, but when you’re taking over the field, you will also force your opponent to put more and more resources on the board to defend himself/herself, and if you take those cards out as well, you’re pretty much destroying their hand too. That’s how you should duel with this deck in short. The Hand Management is extremely important here and if you duel the right way, you will be able to decrease your opponent’s hand size as well, so that your own hand size problems won’t be that bad anymore.

Anyway, back to the construction of the deck. In order to increase the utility (usefulness) of the Equip Cards, it would be wise to add more cards that can make good use out of them. Mataza the Zapper works great with them. He can do some massive damage when equipped with the right Equip Cards.

I want to add a Giant Trunade as well. By activating it, you can return all of your Equips back to your hand so that you can activate them again. And in case the Swordmaster is out, you can destroy more monsters, which makes up for the –1 disadvantage that Giant Trunade provides you with.

Let’s start with the construction of the deck now. As usual, I’ll begin with the monsters.

Monsters: 18x

2 Gearfried the Swordmaster

3 Gearfried the Iron Knight

3 Spirit Reaper

2 Chiron the Mage

1 D.D. Warrior Lady

1 Airknight Parshath

1 Mataza the Zapper

1 Iron Blacksmith Kotetsu

1 Morphing Jar

1 Sangan

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Magician of Faith

The monster line-up is focused on three points: Gearfried (both of them), hand management and defense. The three copies of Gearfried the Iron Knight are in to make good use out of the three copies of Blast with Chain, which I’m going to add later on. And of course, you’ll have to have the Iron Knight on your field in order to bring out the Swordmaster. Gearfried the Swordmaster itself can be summoned even if it’s still in your deck, so he only needs to be in twice. Three copies would clog up your hand too much anyway. The three copies of Spirit Reaper are absolutely necessary. This deck could have some awful hands (imagine holding three Iron Knights, two Big Bang Shots and two Axe of Despairs...). Spirit Reaper gives you some time to recover from bad hands. And alongside the Swordmaster, you could break down your opponent’s hand. Although Chiron the Mage isn’t a Warrior, it still fits in this deck pretty nice. When I was searching for ways to make good use out of your Equip Cards even when you don’t have the Swordmaster or Mataza out, I met this card. It basically turns every useless Equip Spell in your hand into a Mystical Space Typhoon, and even if you’ve got the Swordmaster out, you could still use this card to clear the field of S/T cards as well. D.D. Warrior Lady is Warrior-tech. It works well with the Reinforcement of the Army and provides solid monster removal. Airknight Parshath allows you to increase your amount of resources. It can get you Release Restraint quicker, so that the duel can get interested. Mataza the Zapper works well with Equip Cards. With an Axe of Despair, you’ll have a 2300 ATK monster on your field that can attack twice a turn! Iron Blacksmith Kotetsu is in to cure future bad draws by getting the Equip Cards right from your deck. Morphing Jar is the best hand replenisher in the entire game, and since this deck can use some hand replenishment, he’ll be in for sure. Sangan can get you a lot of monsters, so he can speed up the deck as well. Breaker the Magical Warrior gets rid of your opponent’s S/T threats so that your Swordmaster will hang around longer. And when he does, he can get you quite some advantages. The last monster is Magician of Faith, who helps getting back precious Equip Spells, as well as Release Restraint if you want it very badly. As in most decks, it’s a nice card.

Then we get to the Spells:

Spells: 15x

2 Axe of Despair

2 Big Bang Shot

1 Snatch Steal

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Graceful Charity

2 Release Restraint

1 Reinforcement of the Army

1 Scapegoat

1 Smashing Ground

1 Nobleman of Crossout

1 Giant Trunade

Only 4 Equip Spells as you can see (excluding Snatch Steal). That might seem like a low amount, but it takes some time and effort to bring the Swordmaster out, and by that time you will most likely have some of these Equips in your hand. And we’ve got three Blast with Chains coming with the Traps, so this is not too less at all. Anyway, the 4 Equips are 2 copies of Axe of Despair and 2 of Big Bang Shot. The Axe can power up your monsters a whole lot: 1000 additional ATK points is nothing to scoff at. Big Bang Shot is such a great card to use with Mataza or the Swordmaster. Even if your opponent manages to get some monsters out while the Swordmaster is out (and it is equipped with this card), you will still do some massive damage. A 3000 ATK trampler is just amazing! Snatch Steal works great in this deck. It can be searched by Iron Blacksmith Kotetsu when you need it and besides, it’s Snatch Steal, that should say enough. Stealing a monster is always great. Stealing a monster permanently is just sick. Heavy Storm is an all-time staple. It can clear the entire field of S/T cards to give your Mataza or Swordmaster a clear shot. And if you had some Equip Spells in your hand, that could be devastating! Just watch out that it won’t take out your own Equip Cards – or at least not the ones that aren’t named Blast with Chain. Mystical Space Typhoon is solid, chainable S/T removal that can, like Heavy Storm, clear the S/T cards from the field to set up for a clear shot. Graceful Charity is the best card in today’s format: Speed, Draw Power...Do I need to go on? Release Restraint is the main Spell Card in this deck. Without it, you would be unable to bring the Swordmaster out. Since three copies would lead to dead hands, I only included two of ‘em. It’s more than enough. If you feel it’s too less, though, feel free to add a third copy. Reinforcement of the Army is a must, since it helps you get the Iron Knight faster. But aside from that, it also thins your deck when searching other Warriors, like D.D. Warrior Lady for example. Scapegoat is once again for solid defense. It’s able to stall for a few turns, at least 2. That buys you some time to set up for an attack. Smashing Ground and Nobleman of Crossout are in for solid monster removal, and even though this deck already uses Gearfried the Swordmaster, it still needs some extra monster removal as...well, just see it as a back-up. And finally, Giant Trunade. It can return Equips to your hand to reuse them, and possibly the effect of the Swordmaster as well. One tip: Don’t use it when you’ve got Big Bang Shot equipped to someone, since the equipped monster will be removed from play then. A nice combo would be to equip Big Bang Shot to an opponent’s monster and then play Giant Trunade. Then you’ve turned Giant Trunade into a free Dark Core, basically, with the side-effect of returning all S/T from the field to the hands.

As you may have noticed: I left out Premature Burial. That is, because it doesn’t have a lot of worthy targets. None of the Gearfrieds could be brought back with this and most of the other monsters are Flip-Effects or low-ATK ones, except for Airknight Parshath.

And then we’ve come to the Traps already.

Traps: 9x

3 Blast with Chain

2 Dust Tornado

1 Bottomless Trap Hole

1 Mirror Force

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Call of the Haunted

Well, it’s pretty much a standard line-up, except for the Blast with Chains. There are three copies of it, since it’s just such a good card. You can use it with both the Iron Knight and the Swordmaster, but Airknight and Mataza form potential candidates as well. When you use this correctly, you could turn it into a Sakuretsu Armor with some Life Points damage as an extra, or a Raigeki Break without the card cost (when it is destroyed by a card effect). Dust Tornado is in twice, since S/T removal is extremely important in this deck. With the Swordmaster taking care of monsters, you will need some other cards to deal with the S/T that your opponent could throw at you. Bottomless Trap Hole is in to protect yourself, even when you don’t have any monsters out to defend you. Mirror Force is a life-safer. When you’re in a tough situation, this one can totally help you out. Torrential Tribute is, just like Mirror Force, a life-safer. It has the ability to turn the entire game into your favor by itself. Call of the Haunted is the only card that can bring back Gearfried the Iron Knight from the Graveyard to the field. But besides that, it’s just a great card. Chaining it to S/T removal by getting back Sangan is always a nifty thing to do.

Strengths of the Swordmaster Deck

The main strength of the Swordmaster deck lies in its capability of taking out a lot of monsters through the effect of Gearfried the Swordmaster. Turning every Equip Card into a free Tribute to the Doomed is certainly a nice effect. Along with Chiron the Mage, you could use your Equip Cards for a lot more purposes than just boosting a monster’s ATK. Use Chiron and the other S/T removers together with the unstopable Swordmaster and you’ll be in total control of the field.

Weaknesses of the Swordmaster Deck

Actually, this deck only has one weakness, but it’s a very big one. The dead hands you could get with this deck could be horrible. The Iron Knight can’t be equipped with the regular Equip Cards, so having those cards together in your hand with no other options is just horrible. Or having two copies of the Swordmaster in your hand, together with two copies of Release Restraint. I did my best to make the amount of dead cards in this deck as low as possible, but this is a weakness that’s very hard to cure. The main cards of this deck are the main cause of this problem, so you can’t take them out. The only thing left to do is add cards that can replenish your hand, which I did by adding Morphing Jar. But as you all know, one card can’t safe or destroy a deck on its own. It needs other cards to help him. With the inclusion of Chiron, this deck now has another thing to do with possibly dead Equip Cards or useless Release Restraints. Graceful Charity can also help dealing with this problem, since you can discard any cards you don’t need at the moment and hopefully, you draw three cards that are useful. But to make this story short: Keep this in mind and watch out for it. Make sure you have a back-up defense ready to go, ‘cause when you’re unprepared and your hand suddenly appears to be useless, you’ll most likely lose the duel.

Tips when playing with the Swordmaster Deck

What’s left to say? Most of what should be said here has already been said in the Strengths/Weaknesses Part, but I’ll try to write down something else for you.

In the early phase of the game, you shouldn’t do anything else than playing defensively. Use Spirit Reaper to defend yourself from opposing attacks so that you can buy yourself extra time. Use this time to build up a solid hand, one that contains the right cards to bring out the Swordmaster and when possible some Equip Cards as well. As soon as you think you’re ready for it, take the game to the mid-game and start with the summoning of the Swordmaster. But be aware of the fact that your opponent could have S/T cards face-down that could destroy your Swordmaster very easily. That’s where Chiron jumps in. Use him to take care of the face-down threats, while the Swordmaster deals with the monsters. That way, you’ll be in complete control of the field. Like said earlier, this’ll force your opponent to use more and more of his/her resources in order to keep defending himself/herself. If you were smart, you kept some Spells (1 or 2) in your hand to use in this phase of the game. You could call it the late-game already; both players are short of resources and the duel is about to be ended. The Spell Cards that you have left should be used to take out your opponent’s last walls of defense, so that both his/her field as his/her hand are in your control. When you’ve managed to achieve this, the only thing that you’ll need to do is maintain this control you have. Try to keep your opponent where he is: In a (near to) topdeck situation. If you can achieve that as well, then the duel is yours.

This deck is pretty hard to use, but it’s a lot of fun as well. I’ve never seen someone use a Swordmaster Deck, but it would be nice to.

That does it for this article.

If anyone wants to share his/her thoughts about this article with me, feel free to send me an e-mail at ShineSoldier@gmail.com.

‘Til next time,

~ShineSoldier~