In the middle rounds of a YCS you can come up against anything. Any Deck with a reasonably solid strategy can make it to 4-0 or 3-1, but some powerful Decks have large weaknesses to 1 or more popular Decks, making it difficult for their pilots to finish the day with only 1 or 2 losses. That’s what makes the middle rounds of Day 1 so dangerous: you might take a day-ending loss to an extremely powerful Deck that you discounted due to its bad match-up with another popular Deck. For example, you might think that Infernity Decks won’t be popular due to their weakness to Gravekeeper Decks, but if you aren’t playing Gravekeeper’s yourself , thismight happen.

Gadget Decks packing Ultimate Offering are another such surprise Deck that can take you out in a flash if you aren’t careful. Gadgets are traditionally a slow Deck that grinds through Duels, but thanks to Xyz Monsters and Ultimate Offering, they can beat you at any time.

In case you’ve forgotten, Ultimate Offering is a Continuous Trap that lets you pay 500 Life Points to Normal Summon extra monsters during your Main Phase or your opponent’s Battle Phase.

By letting you Normal Summon or Set monsters in your opponent’s Battle Phase, UltimateOffering helps you protect your Life Points and ward off attacks.  Your opponent will have a hard time pressuring you, because they’ll have to make their Summons and move to their Battle Phase without knowing what your field is going to look like.  It’s a great defensive card.  On the other hand, the ability to Normal Summon over and over in your Main Phase is where things get really crazy.  You can use Ultimate Offering to put together a field of big attackers, or you can use your monsters for Xyz and Synchro Summons.

Here’s an example of the kind of play that a Gadget Deck with Ultimate Offering can pull off:

-Normal Summon any Gadget monster, like Green Gadget.  Its effect searches Red Gadget, adding it to your hand.

-Now pay 500 Life Points for another Normal Summon with Ultimate Offering.  Normal Summon Green Gadget to get Yellow Gadget.

-Pay another 500 Life Points to Normal Summon Yellow Gadget and search another GreenGadget.

-Pay 500 Life Points again to Normal Summon Green Gadget and get another Red Gadget.

-With four Gadgets on the field, pay another 500 Life Points to Normal Summon Glow-Up Bulb.

-Tune the Bulb to two Gadgets and Synchro Summon Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier.  Its effect banishes 3 cards: 1 from your opponent’s field; 1 from their hand; and another from their Graveyard.

-Then, you can either Summon back Glow-Up Bulb for another Synchro Summon, or just start Xyz Summoning. Eventually you’ll wind up with at least 8000 ATK worth of monsters and you’ll only pay slightly more Life Points than you would have to use Cyber-Stein back in the day.

Thanks to Xyz Monsters, you don’t even need Tuners anymore to pull off these combos.  All you need to Summon Number 39: Utopia is two Gadgets.  Since Ultimate Offering lets you Summon every Gadget in your Deck in a single turn, you can Summon 2 of them, Xyz Summon Utopia, and then keep Summoning Gadgets.  If you play at least eight Gadgets total, you can throw down three Utopias plus two more Gadgets in one turn which can be turned intoSteelswarm Roach.  If you do have a Level 1 Tuner to add, you can demolish your opponent with a mix of Trishula and Utopia.

Xyz Summoning 4 Rank 4 Xyz Monsters with nothing but a two-card combo is a nasty strategy that’s likely to knock unprepared Duelists out of contention early in tournaments, so now’s a good time to talk about how you can outplay Ultimate Offering and cut that combo short.

As awesome as Ultimate Offering is, you can outplay it if you have the right card at the right time.

-If you have a Mystical Space Typhoon, wait for your opponent to activate UltimateOffering’s effect. Then, Chain Typhoon: your opponent can still Chain Ultimate Offering’seffect again, but they’ll miss the timing to use their Gadget’s effect, shutting down the combo.

-Cards like Royal Decree and Jinzo can negate Ultimate Offering, along with the rest of your opponent’s Traps.

-You don’t have to go after Offering itself.  Cards like Trap Dustshoot and even Mind Crushcan be used to send away the monster your opponent was going to Summon, straight from their hand.

These counters fit will into a wide variety of Decks, so keep them in mind.  If you’re not prepared, you could find yourself staring down a field full of Xyz Monsters with little to no warning, so make sure you’re ready!