Right in the middle of my gbt-11 articles a big spoiler from gbt-12 has come out and it’s a card I certainly feel is worth talking about and that card is none other than Gearnext –

[Stride]-Stride Step-[Choose one or more cards with the sum of their grades being 3 or greater from your hand, and discard them] Stride this card on your (VC) from face down.

[ACT](VC)[1/Turn]Generation Break 2:[Soul Blast (1) & Choose a face down card from your G zone with the same card name as this unit, and turn it face up] This unit gets “[AUTO](VC)[1/Turn]:At the end of the battle that this unit attacked, if you have a <Gear Dragon> heart card, reveal up to three <Zodiac Time Beast> from your hand or (RC) in total, and put them on the bottom of your deck in any order. If you put three cards, [Stand] this unit, and it gets drive-2.”

[CONT](VC) Generation Break 4:During this unit’s second battle, it gets [Power]+10000/Drive+1.

Well it goes without saying that it has quite a powerful skill with a lot going on and I’m amazed that gear chronicle would get a card that challenged Nextage for its slot.

So lets look at the pros and cons and compare this card to both Nextage and Gear Groovy.

As usual I will be covering this in the context of a timeleap build. Unfortunately I’m not well versed in ZTB although there are some interesting interactions Gearnext has in that deck.

Costs

Nextage costs an ever precious CB while Gearnext only asks for a soul. Time leap is a very counter blast intensive deck and the decks only real counter charge is Arlim (and Coatl come gbt11) which means you often end up low on CB with only just enough for the turn. So having a soul cost opens up a lot of potential options. That said soul has 2 very important units that consume soul that being Lishma and Heteroround however if you have Next in the G-zone you’re probably going to be more cognizant of how much soul you’re using. So in terms of the basic cost I think Gearnext certianly has the advantage, soul is a relatively easy resource to come by with gears (thanks to Melem being able to tutour out 0s suchs as hearthump and tick tock) whereas CB is incredibly valuable to the deck.

There is however a somewhat important caveat to gear nexts soul cost, the “discard” cost of Gearnext. While Nextage has a very clear and simple discard 3 Gearnext is a little more interesting.

Gearnext asks for 3 ZTBs, this is however helped by the fact that they may also be from field and they don’t even go to the drop zone, instead returning to the bottom of the deck. This is probably Gearnext’s biggest con for time leap builds. So what ratio of ZTBs are you running in time leap?

Well after gbt-11 the build is looking to contain-

9-10 time beast triggers

4 Revolver dracokid

0-4 Arka

0-3 Chronospin serpents

5-7 G3s

which gives us a total of around 18-28 ZTBs which is a fairly significant gap between builds so I’m going to operate with the basis of what is best for the build itself over what best facilitates Gearnext. Which personally I see as –

9 triggers

4 revolver

Arlim over Arka

Unsure currently but we’ll assume 3 Serpents

6 grade 3s

Which gives us a grand total of 22 now come Gearnext we can’t exactly expect none of them to be in damage, drop or bind zone. So come second stride at the earliest chance are we’ve burned through a few, tickaway can help to allieviate that though but nonetheless its very important to note the risk. That said because of the ability to pay from field timeleap can help circumvent it but then again you’re using your timeleaps Inefficiently to facilitate Gearnext (although not always). I wouldn’t say this is inconsistent but I can certainly see it causing issue unless set-12 offers more ZTBs that fit into the time leap deck.

The Restand

So this is interesting, Nextage’s restand is somewhat unique in that you aren’t totally restanding instead switching to your grade 3 for the second attack. While this grants you a new skill for the second swing it means you can’t stack trigger effects onto your vanguard for a more potent swing and time leap often won’t have anything to effectively stack the triggers onto if you’re going for a delayed blazer play.

Gearnext is a good old fashined restand meaning you can stack criticals power onto it for a higher pressure second swing. On top of the ZTB cost the catch on this is the loss of drive checks, however Gearnext easily circumvents that so long as you’re at GB4 (which is essentially any 2nd stride for gears) which not only restores one of your lost drive checks (Equaling Jets twin drive after Nextage) but giving 10k extra power. This makes it easily a far more potent restand second stride that Nextage which will usually be 21-26k on a Jet G. Jet G also has an associated field buff but this is rarely relevant for time leap. However after second stride the raw power of Jet Gs swing may be more desired but even then that would need 10 face up G-units to equal a Gearnext with no triggers (but the 5k to ZTBs is more relevant this time). Another relevant thing to note is that Gearnext means you are a grade 4 for both of your attacks which means you have more control over when you delayed blazer off of Lishma.

So with all that considered its pretty clear that Gearnext is the better restand offering much more efficient trigger use and easier power gain. However Nextage has one thing for sure over Gearnext.

Groovy

Well apart from having the best art of the trio what does Groovy have to offer to push Nextage over Gearnext?

If you read my previous article on Groovy which was made on release I said at the time Groovy was not viable as the best combo was too CB intensive and the card boiled down to being “win more”. Well one card has come out of gbt11 that changes things somewhat, that card being Pulsar Replenish Coatl which offers counter charge when you have no available CB which almost guarantees you will be able to use both of Groovys aquired skills. That said the extra skill offered by Haung is still win more and although I wouldn’t say its rare, it also isn’t often that Haung’s skill is relevant or more potent than a high power restand.

Unless another auto gear dragon comes out later that offers a more effective and powerful combo I don’t think it’s going to be Groovy keeping Nextage in the G-zone.

Gearing up

Well Gear Chronicle continues to introduce interesting and powerful cards that are hard to assess and Gearnext is certainly the most interesting for me so far. This probably won’t be the last time I look at this card and I’m interested to see the direction that time leap takes following the release of set-12. That said we still have a fair few gear reveals to go and Gearnext shows more than ever that anything can happen.

So that’s it for now, sorry for the slow content but I am working on both a Blademaster deck profile and updated Time leap deck profile following the English release of Demonic Advent. You can also expect an article with my thoughts on domination before content probably slows down again after that. As for now though…

Thanks for reading