Card Review: Beyond Order Dragon

Hey, my fellow Sneks! After neglecting this place for awhile, decided to write about something.

And it so happens that Beyond Order was revealed, so here's my thoughts on him.

In a vacuum, Beyond Order is a great card. CB1 SB1 to restand him and have an extra main phase to build a fresh new board is really awesome. Lets you continue combos and is an overall great finisher.

The issues come to play with the rest of his cost: Bind the Top 8 cards of your deck.

While it seems like it's a very minor cost that can easily be paid, it has huge repercussions and can backfire like no other.

All Gear Chronicle decks thin through the deck very quickly. Chronojet has Time Leap abuse with Ur-Watar to continuously draw cards, Tiger soulcharges like crazy with has the same Time Leap abuse as Chronojet, and Demiurge is very reliant on Quintet Walls to fill both bind and drop to stack the deck. By the time GB8 is active for any of these decks, their deck counts are probably way too low for them to be able to use this safely.

Meta Time Leap builds also have another glaring issue: 1-ofs. A use of Beyond Order can send all your valuable 1-ofs into the bind, never to be seen again. Losing Ur-Watar for the rest of the game with no way of retrieving it is basically game over.

Speaking of game over, Beyond Order is also not a be-all end-all finisher. If he were on the same tier as, say, Lindrose Primer or Daiking in terms of finishing power he would be great even with the potential backfire, but looking at it he's basically a glorified Nextage unless you have a godly hand to work with on that extra main phase.

But how do you fix these issues?

The obvious answer is to recycle with the likes of Tickaway and Uluru. An early Tickaway or two can restock the deck to a healthy amount to allow for a good use of Beyond Order without any backfire. Carver and Retroactive Uluru can also send back cards to deck when you GGuard. Both of these are auto includes in Time Leap anyways, so there shouldn't be any issues with including those in.

Overall, Beyond Order is a great card that can do great things, but he's too much of a double-edged sword to be used consistently, despite being in the one clan that can potentially use him third stride the most consistently. It's great that he can be used in decks other than Chronojet as well, which is a major plus to him, so I do expect him to be included in most Gears GZones if space allots.

Expect to see him more than Crossover, at least.

Anyhow, see you in the next one!

-Robot