Ancient Gear Golem
Generation 2: GX
Users: Vellian Crowler
Artwork:
In Duel Academy, a certain professor is in charge of testing students and newcomers. Vellian Crowler is the POS teacher that always tries to make you fail. Crowler faced Jaden Yuki himself in an attempt to prevent him from joining Duel Academy, as he arrived late to his examination, Crowler used his personal deck instead of a test deck, and Jaden still defeated him. Crowler was so humiliated that he pulled the strings to have Jaden be placed into the Slifer Red Rank, despite beating his exam was such a feat, it should've granted the rank Obelisk Blue instantly. Crowler and his real deck continue to to influence the events in Duel Academy. Despite losing to Jaden, Crowler is still a PhD in Duel Monsters, and will call fort his level 8, EARTH, Machine-Type Ace whenever a student is up to no good.
Ancient Gear Golem is one cool looking card, the artwork gives you everything this card is supposed to be. It's a golem, it looks ancient with a beautiful rust color all over it's body, and is filled with gears. The design is striking and to me at least, inspires a sense of wonder, this things look like remnants of an old failed civilization. The dark background with what appears to be charred land and gears makes me feel this is the case. One of my favorite machine monster designs.
This card's viability nosedives when you read it cannot be special summoned. No way around it, you need to waste 2 of your resources to summon it, and the effect preventing your opponent from activating spells or traps while it's attacking coupled with some nice piercing damage against defenses might seem worth it...But there's so much better cards to summon these days for 2 materials that this card doesn't seem to be worth it.
For this reason, the card received an update, a retrained version of the card was recently released alongside a lot of support.
Ultimate Pound can attack several times and when it gets destroyed, it will search for the fusion spell "Polymerization" in your deck as well as a fusion material. The newest expansion to support this card "Legendary Duelists: Ancient Millenium" kinda made this card redundant by giving Ancient Gears their own fusion spell among other toys.
A fusion spell that fuses cards in your deck will almost always be better than good old polymerization. Ah well, Ancient Gears also received support through a structure deck, which included a new boss monster and many good low level monster support.
These cards give the deck an identity and more oportunities to combo for sure....but they kinda make the OG Golem a bit unneeded. And they're not exactly AMAZING either...
Oh well, at least if you remember my Gen 5 reviews, you'll know the Obelisk Force from the Fusion Dimension used Ancient Gears as their standard warfare deck, and as such, Golem got some new friends from there too.
And look, many of these cards are great and can create a fun deck with viable win options on a casual level, but the thing is, the Golem is not the bread and butter of these decks. Not even it's new version is that, At best it's a card you'll use to get your Fusion Card to fuse from the deck. And that's not bad....But I just wish the first Ancient Gear card was the key to their strategies a bit more.
Sadly, this Golem's Gear are a bit to Ancient to keep working. And that sucks.
TRIVIA TIME
Several Ancient Gear Cards used to need Yugi's classic "Gadget" cards for some reason, "Ancient Gear Gadget" was created to avoid having to add what pretty much where dead draws in your deck to use them
Next up: Here's a hint.
