Here’s a card I didn’t expect to consider a staple. In fact when I made my time leap deck profile I didn’t even mention this card. However since I got my hands on this card and messed around with it, it’s easily something I would call a definite inclusion in the deck.

For the sake of this article I will only be covering this cards uses in time leap, there are obviously some similarities between builds but I won’t be mentioning uses specific to builds like Fang.

First Stride

At this point it is not a controversial statement to say the game is often decided by first stride. All the best decks have amazing first stride options and often games between tier 1 decks are decided by who strides first. In some cases this is due to the power of the strides themselves but in the case of Gear chronicle it’s more down to the unlocking of generation break restrictions.

Essentially so long as the infamous combo is unlocked you can mount your offensive and gain advantage. I know this isn’t exactly new information, first striding warp drive was already a similar situation merely setting up the board rather than doing anything itself. So why am I bringing this up in an article about Altered? Well quite simply sometimes you just don’t have the cards to stride. Maybe you had to ride your fodder or will have to dump a Melem and History to stride. Both of these situations suck and are enough to lose you the game especially against similarly powerful decks. Altered helps get around this issue, including Altered in your deck turns every zodiac time beast in the deck into a psuedo stride fodder, this tends to be your triggers and 10k vanillas. Even beyond first stride this card can help you keep up tempo in the later game just in case you were unable to get a card to stride with in hand.

Mulligan

If I’m playing time leap and know the deck I’m about to fight against is a fast one, I don’t know about you but I want my Lishmas in hand as soon as possible.

Being able to get extra attacks early while removing troublesome units. Having Altered as a safety net lets you mulligan more aggresively to get that early game push while also dropping G3s for Lishmas discard cost.

Setting up

Another use of Altered takes advantage of its second skill.

By using its selective bind you can set up for a Haung/Groovy turn by putting something important into the bind zone for later, while also slightly increasing your chance to hit a trigger. While it’s a limited use, small advantages can add up and netting another guard stage, a PG or even extra attack on your Groovy turn can make a difference. You could even use it to mitigate Nextages discard cost.

Altered opinions

This card is something you really need to see to believe, I know it certainly was for me. Thanks in part to them having it for longer this has been in most Japanese time leap builds since its release, I mostly overlooked it but the utility of the card is far too much to pass up. I highly reccomend giving this card a shot and myself consider it a staple of the deck.

thanks for reading