Yugi's Rite of the Duel monsters: The Gadget-type Trio!
Yugi has a ton of ingenious strategies up his sleeve in the final duel. One of his best moments involves these gear-sporting mechanoids!
Fun fact: during the final duel, after Yugi plays "Bonds of the Brethren", he calls for these monsters as 'Gadget-types'! That's right- in the manga, these monsters have their own special type all for themselves!
Yugi starts off with the dependable green gear fella, "Green Gadget"! Alone, it's a simple part. Together with its comrades, though, "Green Gadget" can become something more.
Speaking of which.
As you can guess, there are 3 known Gadget-type monsters in the manga. "Yellow Gadget" and "Red Gadget" exist as well. All three are part of a big moment in this duel, so I considered it necessary to have all three cards.
Big problem, though- this is what the only illustrations for the other two Gadget-types look like in the manga:
Uh-oh.
Hmm.
Unfortunately, these images are far too small to be used for card art. No amount of resizing would make these images suitable for my project.
For a long time, I was at a loss for what to do about these guys. How could I salvage these cards?
Thankfully, my dear friend @illuthra stepped in once more to rescue my project! They went above and beyond to create pretty much perfect recreations that are an incredibly close match to the source material!
The first time I saw these illustrations, I was simply blown away. In my opinion, the following images are some of Illuthra's finest work.
Take a look at their incredible handiwork below!
Here's "Yellow Gadget"! The most balanced member of the trio.
And, of course, "Red Gadget"! The strongest defender of the three.
I think you'll agree: these are pitch-perfect renditions of the manga's version of these cards. Be sure to check out @illuthra's other works as well. Thanks to them, "Green Gadget" will never have to fight alone!
Of course, there's one more element to throw in the mix before we see the full power of the gadgets. It's time for "Stronghold" to step onto the battlefield.
Behold the mighty combining guardian "Mobile Fortress Stronghold"! With all three Gadget-type monsters placed together into its chest, this card can even stand up to a "Blue-Eyes White Dragon"! (If only it could stand up to a certain blue god as well...)
(Quick note: this card has a minor revision with some text clean-up, including correcting the manga-inaccurate term "Effect Monster" with a more appropriate phrase.)
In the Japanese version of the manga, this card has a very unusual typeline. There, it's stated to be a "(Trap Field Monster)".
Now, Trap Monsters exist as a specific class in the manga. They're Trap Cards that become Monster Cards once their activation condition is met. Konami's game has a similar concept, but their version isn't formally acknowledged as its own subtype, for some reason. There are many Trap Monster Cards in the manga; they're present in both the Duelist Kingdom and Battle City arcs.
Field Magic Cards also exist in the manga. This card type originated in Konami's game and was brought over into the series during the Battle City arc. Kazuki Takahashi tried to put his own spin on the Field Magic Card concept: there are cards like "Black Magic Curtain" ("Dark Magic Curtain"), which have effects that both players can use, and "Slime-Generating Machine" ("Jam Breeding Machine"), with an effect that seems to provide "Slime" tokens at the cost of 'blocking' The Doll's field, in a sense (since it leaves him unable to summon more monsters).
But a Trap Field Monster Card? That debuted with this card. "Mobile Fortress Stronghold" is the only card of its type, likely due to its late debut in the series.
This typeline left me in a bit of a bind. I've said before I tried to make my cards both original manga-accurate and function accurate, and that sometimes those two aims contradict each other. This is a similar case, because when writing this card's function, I had to ask myself: how is this card a "Field" subtype card?
The "Trap Monster" functionality is clear; it Special Summons itself when its activation condition is met, just like all other Trap Monster Cards. But what part of its functionality is its "Field" aspect?
I can only assume it might have to do with the fact that it can combine with the three Gadget-types. But that's pretty iffy; there are other monsters that can combine and re-combine (think of the "Magnet Warriors", or Kaiba's "X-Y-Z" monsters), but those have different terms attached to them. If my assumption is right, I struggle to see how this relates to the field.
In the end, I decided that the "Field" aspect is pretty extraneous, so I cut it out.
Also, I couldn't fit one aspect of this card's effect into the text space: if "Mobile Fortress Stronghold" is destroyed while "Green Gadget", "Yellow Gadget", and "Red Gadget" are on-field with it ('combined' with it), all 'attached' Gadget-type monsters are destroyed as well.
There's simply too much text on this card as it is. But who knows? Maybe I'll figure out a way to squeeze it in some other day.
Well, that's all for now! Thanks for reading. Tomorrow we'll be looking at final duel Magic Cards, one from Yugi and one from Dark Yugi. 'Til then!
