YuGiOh! Some Deck Changes

Spoiler:

Made some changes to the deck, mainly just as experiments. The changes include:

MAIN DECK:
-1 Scrap Recycler
-1 Solidarity
-1 Pot of Avarice

+2 Machina Soldier
+1 Smashing Ground

Machina Soldier is not a popular (or advisable in most cases) choice for a Machina Gadgets deck. However, on paper, it seems like it would be a nice addition to the deck. Machina Gadgets' main strength is in its ability to attain very early field control through big monsters (Machina Fortress, Jinzo) and one-for-one monster destruction (Smashing Ground, Fissure) while retaining card advantage (Gadgets). Machina Soldier is similar to a Cyber Dragon. If you don't control any other monsters when you Normal Summon Machina Soldier, you can Special Summon a single Machina monster from your hand. In this case, you can make quick comebacks and dominate the field early with a first-turn Machina Fortress without the need to sacrifice hand-size. In fact, a little experimentation proved that this immediately becomes a difficult issue for the opponent to deal with. Aside from the fact that you get a free Fortress out on the field, Machina Soldier is relatively strong for a monster in Machina Gadgets. At 1600/1500, Machina Soldier is bigger than any of your Gadgets (although smaller than Gearframe). In addition to the above advantages, mid or late game, when you happen to have no monsters and have already got a Cyber Dragon rearing to get out, Machina Soldiers make for decent Fortress food- at this point, it has likely outlived its usefulness, and thusly, is more expendable than your Gadgets, which can still gain you card advantage through searching.

SIDE DECK:
-2 D.D. Crow
-2 Divine Wrath
-2 Pulling the Rug

+2 Forbidden Graveyard
+2 Thunder King Rai-Oh
+2 System Down

Last Saturday, I went to a tournament and placed 2nd. The deck that beat me? Infernities! The changes to my side deck are meant to give me a better advantage against the various decks I don't cover as well as I would previously have liked to. While D.D. Crow is useful, Forbidden Graveyard completely shuts down Infernity decks for the turn, essentially forcing a pass while you use Crevices to get rid of their Infernity Beetles, their only effective Tuners (Infernity decks are based around lots of Graveyard recursion through creature effects and mass special summoning of Synchro monsters). Thunder King Rai-Oh is useful against Infernities, but is mainly there for Gladiator Beasts and X-Sabers, which both have nasty habits of adding cards to their hand from the deck and the likes (something Thunder King tends to stop right away). He's also a nice beat stick at 1900! Finally, System Down is there for other Machina Gadget decks- particularly those running Jinzo.