Fusion Earth Machine

Fusion Earth Machine has several problems preventing it from being meta relevant. Printing Presser is a very poor main deck boss, gaining a miniscule (albeit just enough occassionally) amount of attack, and doesn't have the base stats to back it up. 2.3k ATK makes it quite easy to run over especially for decks like Gate Order with their spamming of 2.5ks and Executie Order (or any deck with Multistrike Dragon Dragias really). A lack of strong support for the Earth Machines, save for some interesting options, certainly doesn't help either. Printing Presser being a Level 8 isn't ideal either, it makes it more difficult to run Ship of Seven Treasures and feel good about it. While Trade-In exists as an alternative, the Machine level 8s available aren't very good and delving into generic Level 8s like Yamiruler the Dark Delayer and Kimeluna the Lunar Dark Decider means you lose out on consistent access to Machine support, which at that point I'd rather just play a Fusion Warrior variant. And on top of that the main gimmick of the deck, getting benefits for finding Monster Cards in your opponent's deck, is negated by Gate Order, which runs mostly spells. Moving into KP10 format Gate Order might dip a bit in popularity and give Earth Machine a bit of breathing room, but that still doesn't negate the deck's own shortcomings. That being said, Lightning Speed, the fusion boss monster of the deck, is a giant GUN so we're going to try to make it work to the best of our abilities anyway.

Firstly, 3 Printing Presser and 3 Scoop Scooter. These are a no brainer; they're the fusion materials for our payoff: Lightning Speed, the Rumbling Report Warship (ran at 3 for lack of reason to do otherwise). It's very annoying to have to play either of these monsters (bad main deck boss + bad main deck tribute fodder) but if we're not playing them we're not playing this deck. Same goes for running the Fusion spell, we've chosen to run 3 copies of Fusion and 1 copy of Star Restart. We're not playing that many Normal Monster targets for Star Restart (though you could consider running more), so it's as bricky as Fusion early game, and only is the 4th copy of Fusion when there's a Fusion in grave. 

With the more rigid portions of the deck out of the way, it's time to find some spice to add to the recipe. 2 cards stood out here: Reprinter and Bascule the Moving Fortress. Reprinter would help to revive a copy of Printing Presser either to just have a beatstick on board or to fuse away into Lightning Speed, which will also remove the restriction of the special summoned monster not being able to attack directly. The problem is that you need a high level Earth Machine on board to activate it, and the selection isn't particularly good. I had considered Jointech Rex and Jointech Tossceratops for a bit but stumbled accross Bascule. Bascule is a very interesting selection for multiple reasons: firstly it can special summon Scoop Scooter from your grave. This makes the deck less reliant on Star Restart to recycle Scoop Scooter as fusion material. Secondly, it itself is an Earth Machine, which allows more consistent usage of Reprinter. Last but not least, it mill 3 cards off of your deck. This helps set up multiple things in the deck: Fusion for Star Restart and Printing Pressers and Scoop Scooters for Reprinter and Fusion Materials. The dream play would be to tribute summon Bascule, activate the effect to summon Scoop Scooter, then Reprinter to summon Printing Presser and immediately fuse them away into Lightning Speed. Bascule helps turbo out the boss monster of the deck, which is a very nice prospect to have, and being a defensive wall isn't bad for certain matchups either. We've also chosen a copy of Reporter Raccoon Miketan as another way to recur the fusion materials, and gives us a bit more payoffs for the mills. You could consider running another set of Earth Normals (ideally Machines since there is still Machine synergy in the deck), I've chosen not to because you only really want to be specialling Scoop Scooter most of the time and we're only running 2 Bascule anyway, so I decided to run something with more utility which I'll go over later on, though playing something like a Jointech Ace is a possible option both as a Bascule target but also as a Star Restart target. You can also consider running Soul of a Reporter for niche cases where you can add it off of Miketan, but that's building around a 1 of and we're going to be grabbing Scoop Scooter most of the time anyway.

We still have to fill out the deck with actual good cards, so firstly we're running 3 Steel Mech Lord Mirror Innovator, the best Machine 2 tribute available. Unfortunately it's not an Earth Machine for Reprinter, however it's a fair trade for the versatility and power Mirror Innovator provides. While there are a couple options for 2 tribute Earth Machines available, Mirror Innovator provides the deck both the ability to inflict piercing damage, but to also never deck out by shuffling copies of itself back into the deck. With the low kill pressure the deck has otherwise, Mirror Innovator is very important in order to actually have some semblance of pressure.

In terms of consistency, we've got 3 Amazing Dealer, 3 Crafter Drone and 3 The Strange Specter of Celestial Severance. All of these are here for the same purpose: to dig deeper and faster into the deck. Specter sending 1 of 3 cards from the top of the deck into grave sets up a variety of things, similar to Bascule but more targetted. Crafter Drone does need a decent number of Machines, so outside of the ones already in the deck, we're running 3 Cannon Soldier as well. This would be the slot where something like Jointech Ace could go, but I've chosen Cannon Soldier as it can get rid of itself at will. This allows the ability to free up your hand and board easier, allowing more draws on the next turn, while still being a Machine Monster if you need it to be that. 3 Sea Dragon Knight is here to check backrow. The deck has not many other ways of interacting with backrow so a monster form backrow interaction is nice to have.

As for spells, 1 Apocalypse - Beast Gear World is a good way to help your Printing Pressers win combat. While they're able to get extra ATK on their own, the amount of ATK it gains is miniscule. Beast Gear World not only gets your Printing Pressers to bigger numbers on your turn, they also let them get bigger on your opponent's turn, where the frail 2.3k body won't be as easily ran over by something like a Dragias or a Galactica Oblivion not boosted by Secret Order. This is even more important in the Gate Order matchup, where you can't reliably check enough monsters off the top of your opponent's deck to get a meaningful ATK boost. While it is irrelevant for Bascule, the ability to aid the Printing Pressers and Mirror Innovator (on the opponent's turn) is good enough to me. Monster Reborn is ran partly for consistency, but also as a strong power play. Since one of the fusion materials is a 2 tribute monster, it can be tough to get the materials together to fuse in the first place. While Graceful Charity is also adept at doing this, I feel that the ceiling of the deck isn't good enough to warrant running something that lets the deck do it's job more consistently as opposed to running something that can not only do that to an extent but also increase the power ceiling of the deck.

Lastly, the traps. 2 Battle Demotion and 1 Beast Gear Secret Art - Primal Fist are basically 3 copies of the same card. The difference is Battle Demotion pays 600 LP but can trigger off any Machine being attacked, while Primal Fist only triggers when your Level 7-9 Machine gets attacked and occassionally it's also backrow removal. The reason we're not immediately running 3 of either of them is as a precaution against Sea Dragon Knight, which decentivises duplicate pieces of backrow. 1 copy of Trap Lid as a strong catch-all against the meta strategies. You can consider running more of them (or any of the other generic traps for that matter) if you're intending to bring this to some level of competitive event, but since no one will be able to make me play this deck in such a setting I'm choosing to run more of the traps that are more generally good, even against less popular decks. 

Overall, this deck isn't particularly great. It's slow and clunky, and the power ceiling isn't particularly impressive, especially when Shock Dragon is in the format. However, you get to play with a big gun, and that's very funny. If you're looking for a slow and grindy casual level deck that's somewhat quirky and uses fusions, this deck is for you.