It’s been a long time coming, but Shrink has finally made its way to North America in an easily accessible form. What does this mean for the North American metagame? That’s what we’re going to discuss today!

 

First let’s take a look at Shrinks effect.

 

Name: Shrink

Group: Spell Card

Type: Quick-Play Spell

Text: Select 1 face-up monster on the field. The original ATK of that monster is halved until the end of this turn.

 

I’m sure most of you already know what Shrink does, but for those who don’t, well, I’m glad you came from under that rock you’ve been living under!

 

Now that Shrink is here, we’ll definitely be seeing it in many decks, today I want to discuss my favorite, its an aggressive Gadget deck that’s once of my favorites!

 

The center of the deck is based on two or three sets of the Gadget cards from my last Metagame Shift article, three copies of Shrink, and three copies of Royal Decree. Of course, this deck could have been played without Shrink, with Rush Recklessly in its place, but Rush simply isn’t good enough of a replacement for this deck to be played as much as it should be – now it has Shrink.

 

Think about how nice it would be to have answers to any card your opponent plays. Generally, this deck will. First you’ll have Royal Decree, that’ll negate likely any defensive options your opponent has. Next we have the Gadget monsters – Once you play one, you’ll essentially always have another monster to attack with. Finally, we’ll have other effect monsters such as Drillroid for facedown monsters your opponent is going to set and Banisher of Radiance for similar purposes!

 

Now, assuming your opponent wants to get aggressive himself, with a big monster such as Cyber Dragon, and he attacks you with it, you’re probably out of luck since your Royal Decree negates any defense YOU have too, right? Not quite, with Shrink on your side, their Cyber Dragon is toast and you’re ready to pummel them next turn with the rest of your Gadgets! Let’s take a look at an example deck list for this type of deck.

 

[23] Monsters

 

[3] Cyber Dragon

[3] Green Gadget

[3] Red Gadget

[3] Yellow Gadget

[3] Snipe Hunter

[3] Hydrogeddon

[2] Banisher of Radiance

[2] Drillroid

[1] Spirit Reaper

 

[15] Spells

 

[3] Shrink

[3] Smashing Ground

[3] Enemy Controller

[1] Nobleman of Crossout

[1] Swords of Revealing Light

[1] Snatch Steal

[1] Heavy Storm

[1] Mystical Space Typhoon

[1] Rush Recklessly

 

[5] Traps

 

[3] Royal Decree

[1] Mirror Force

[1] Ring of Destruction

 

As you can see, the deck looks relatively solid. You could certainly tweak the build to your liking. Perhaps adding or subtracting Drillroids, Banisher of Radiances, or Hydrogeddons until you hit that perfect balance, maybe even completely switching things around and going with a two of each gadget setup that runs on forty cards – the possibilities are literally endless.

 

The deck is definitely a new type of Gadget deck for the players of North America. Now you’re not restricted to running traditional trap heavy Gadget builds, and you infact have a significant edge over those exact decks with your set of Royal Decree cards!

 

I hope you enjoyed today’s article, my look at how Shrink will changes the way we play and introduce new top tier decks. Perhaps I will make a follow up article on Shrink, in my “Metagame Shift” series. Who knows!

 

Thanks for reading.

 

-Ricky