Friday Stride: Interdimensional Dragon, Bind Time Dragon

After a long pause, the Friday Stride is back, and fittingly enough our first subject is from the time clan. Gear Chronicle have finally shifted away from focussing entirely on Chronojet Dragon, with Chronofang Tiger providing the core for a different battle plan, centred around using your own bind zone. Whilst there's obvious similarities to time leap, much of the new support binds the cards permanently to gain other effects. Chronofang himself is the key card for this, with his GB2 skill guaranteeing a stride every turn provided you have something to use.

Not having Chronojet means no Nextage, so the deck has a new ace, which interacts with the cards bound by these skills to provide a strong push at most points in the game.

Interdimensional Dragon, Bind Time Dragon

Time's stopped? Oh, wait, no, that's just my watch.

Bind Time has two functions, either as a mid-game power play to swing momentum in it's favour, or as a late-game finisher. It's GB2 costs two counter blasts, a soul blast and flipping a copy of itself, and that's just the up-front cost. The very first part of the effect also binds at least one of your rear-guards unless you don't have any at all, so the overall cost is quite hefty, but it gives a lot for that. Straight up, Bind Time gains 10000 power and a critical, and then for each card in your bind zone, regardless of how it went there, your opponent sends one of their rear-guards back to the deck. Finally, if there is a Gear Beast heart card, you can counter charge 2 and soul charge 2, refunding much of the cost and giving one extra soul. There's a lot here, so it's worth breaking it down.

The power and critical isn't a huge deal by itself - without guard restrictions it's liable to be met by a perfect guard, and with G guardians providing a further boost to defences there's a good chance your opponent can halt it. However, even G guardians will likely require further shield, and without any defensive cards the critical makes the attack threatening enough to drain the opponent's hand. Ultimately, however, this is a bonus which makes Bind Time useful against decks which clear their own field, and not what you run it for.

What really sells Bind Time is it's ability to remove the opponent's field. Whilst your opponent chooses which unit they send back, it's not overly difficult to put enough cards in the bind zone to clear the field, especially if they have anything that removes itself or they attempt to not over-commit to the rear-guard. Chronofang will bind at least 1 from it's on-ride skill, and one more if you put it to GB2 before you stride. Bind Time can bind more than one card, and with a few rear-guards able to call themselves from the bind zone with more power sending rested units out to recall them with more power next turn may be a viable play. Steam Scalar, Emellanna and Quiet Sleep-calling Gear Tapir both allow you to bind cards from the drop zone, nominally as a cost for their effects, whilst Steam Knight, Mudar binds himself as a cost for this own effect. Finally, there's time leap skills. Anything you send to the bind zone for a time leap on that turn will still be there when Bind Time attacks, and anything which got trapped in the bind zone due to the mechanics of time leap will also count. As a result, the deck as a whole works very well with the time leap support, both due to this and the fact that the cards which activate when bound from the rear-guard activate from both time leap skills and Bind Time Dragon.

Finally, the resource replenishment. Bind Time having a net 0 counter blast and soul charge 1 means the deck can do more than just swing with Bind Tine twice. Whilst some early planning may be needed to ensure the damage is open for Bind Time to activate, the deck can afford to actually use cards with counter blast costs. This does, however, rely on you having a Gear Beast grade 3, of which there are only two: Chronofang Tiger and Reform-calling Gear Eagle. Chronofang is a given - Bind Time is clearly the ace of his build, and it's Chronofang's continuous binding which helps make Bind Time the massive removal it can be. Gear Eagle is a nice back-up, given it's interaction with the Chronosocommand Dragon and Chronoscommand Revolution, who give a way to shift stubborn resist units that Bind Time can't get rid of. Interestingly, both of these cards are good backups to Chronojet Dragon, allowing those builds access to another G zone option.

There's another aspect to the resource replenishment, outside of his own skill - recovery of the bound units. Whilst most units bound are gone for the rest of the game, choosing units you no longer need can mitigate the impact. Even better are Steam Knight, Mudar mentioned above, and Parallel Barrel Dragon, both of whom can call themselves from the bind zone, and gain power boosts in the process - not only does binding one (or both) of these allow you to recover the minus next turn, but do so with more power. 

I won't go into the full time leap engine here, because it deserves it's own discussion, but in the context of mitigating the loss of your own units to Bind Time there's one card which really should be discussed - Steam Battler, Ur-Watar. If you've ever faced Gear Chronicle within the last 6 months you probably recognise this little thing. When bound from the rear-guard, this stand trigger returns itself to the deck to let you draw two and put a card from your hand back into the deck. Previously it was used with Steam Maiden, Melem - time leaping Ur-Watar into Melem allowed the latter to use her own skill to return her to the deck for another grade 0 without trapping the card bound to call her in the bind zone, and it's a similar interaction with Bind Time that makes Ur-Watar so useful. If bound through Bind Time Dragon's GB2, Ur-Watar is present whilst the skill resolves, adding to the count of cards to be sent back to your opponent's deck. Immediately afterwards, however, Ur-Watar's own skill gets it out of the bind zone in exchange for a net +1 to your hand, mitigating the -1 from binding it.

In conclusion, Bind Time Dragon does a lot, providing in one card both a momentum-shifting midgame card and a finisher for a clan to finally step away from Chronojet. Being the ace of the current main antagonist of the anime, you can be sure this won't be the last we see of this deck.