For your viewing pleasure, here's an Imgur gallery with all the cards listed: https://imgur.com/a/GhAp9/all Each will be listed below with some commentary, though.

As a long-time Yu-Gi-Oh player, I've been often disappointed at the lack of giant mech themed cards. Sure, there are some notable giant robot cards, but nothing that really filled the void at all. So, with some ideas and with the fluke discovery of a Deviant Art account with a lot of great artwork; I got to work on creating this archetype.

The Mecha Armor archetype is split into two sub-archetypes: Divisions and Pilots. The focus of the deck is to summon strong main-deck beaters that work together with their own pilots; mimicking how a piloted mech would work in reality. The Division cards all follow a similar pattern: each cannot function without a pilot, while the Pilots each add their own spin on how the Division would handle. While each pilot can be matched up with its respective mech; the effect mechanics on the pilots allow for the mechs and pilots to be mixed and matched. After plenty of incarnations, I finally settled on versions that I'm happy with and am sure could function with minimal possibility for abuse. So below, here are the cards:



Reckless Mecha Armor Division
FIRE - Level 8 - Machine/Effect

If there is no "Mecha Armor Pilot" monster equipped to this card; this monster cannot attack, change battle position, and is destroyed when an attack is declared involving this card. Once per turn, during the damage step; if this attacking card destroys a monster by battle: it can attack again.

ATK: 2500   DEF: 2000


Steadfast Mecha Armor Division
EARTH - Level 8 - Machine/Effect

If there is no "Mecha Armor Pilot" monster equipped to this card; this monster cannot attack, change battle position, and is destroyed when an attack is declared involving this card. If your opponent declares an attack or activates an effect that targets a monster; you can change that target to this card.

ATK: 2000   DEF: 3000


Versatile Mecha Armor Division
WATER - Level 8 - Machine/Effect

If there is no "Mecha Armor Pilot" monster equipped to this card; this monster cannot attack, change battle position, and is destroyed when an attack is declared involving this card. Once per turn, you can target one monster your opponent controls. Banish that monster. During the End Phase of this turn, it returns to your opponent's side of the field, in the same battle position.

ATK: 2500   DEF: 2000


Swift Mecha Armor Division
WIND - Level 8 - Machine/Effect

If there is no "Mecha Armor Pilot" monster equipped to this card; this monster cannot attack, change battle position, and is destroyed when an attack is declared involving this card. Once per turn, you can pay 500 LP: this card can attack your opponent directly this turn.

ATK: 2000   DEF: 2000


Merciless Mecha Armor Division
DARK - Level 10 - Machine/Effect

You cannot Normal Summon this monster. You must first Special Summon this monster by the effect of "Merciless Mecha Armor Pilot." If there is no "Mecha Armor Pilot" monster equipped to this card; this monster cannot attack, change battle position, and is destroyed when an attack is declared involving this card. Once per turn: you can target 1 card you control and 1 card your opponent controls; destroy them.

ATK: 3000   DEF: 2500


Seasoned Mecha Armor Division
LIGHT - Level 10 - Machine/Effect

You cannot Normal Summon this monster. You must first Special Summon this monster by the effect of "Seasoned Mecha Armor Pilot." If there is no "Mecha Armor Pilot" monster equipped to this card; this monster cannot attack, change battle position, and is destroyed when an attack is declared involving this card. Once per turn: you can increase the ATK of all other "Mecha Armor Division" monsters by 500 x the amount of cards your opponent controls until the End Phase of your opponent's next turn.

ATK: 4000   DEF: 0


Assault Mecha Armor Division
EARTH - Level 5 - Machine/Effect

If there is no "Mecha Armor Pilot" monster equipped to this card; this monster cannot attack or change battle position. You can Special Summon this card, from your hand, if you control a face-up "Mecha Armor" monster. Once per turn, you can equip 1 face-up "Mecha Armor Pilot" monster you control to this card (max. 2).

ATK: 2000   DEF: 2000











Roll Call!
Normal Spell

Discard 1 card; add 1 "Mecha Armor Pilot" and 1 "Mecha Armor Division" from your Deck to your hand.


Field Repair
Normal Spell

Select 2 "Mecha Armor Division" monsters in your graveyard: Banish one, and return the other to your hand.


Heated Battle
Quick-Play Spell

Negate the effects of all face-up "Mecha Armor Division" monsters until the end of this turn. You cannot attack your opponent directly the turn you activate this card.


Emergency Maneuvers
Normal Trap

Target 1 equipped "Mecha Armor Pilot" monster you control: Special Summon that target to your side of the field.


Rapid Deployment
Normal Trap

From your hand; you can Special Summon 1 level 8 or lower "Mecha Armor Division" monster and equip it with 1 "Mecha Armor Pilot" monster, ignoring any "Mecha Armor Pilot" effects that have been activated previously this turn.


Commandeer
Normal Trap

Target 1 "Mecha Armor Pilot" monster on your side of the field or Graveyard: equip that target to a face-up "Mecha Armor Division" monster you control with no cards equipped to it.



Once again, all cards can be found in this gallery: https://imgur.com/a/GhAp9/all
All artwork (and more) can be found on Shimmering Sword's Deviant Art page here: http://shimmering-sword.deviantart.com/

For each pilot and mech, my thoughts went towards battle support or effect-protection, yet I had to rework each to make each useful in its own right. Steadfast Pilot, for instance, used to have battle protection as well effect protection, yet I felt that would make Swift obsolete. As well, Reckless' attack boost used to not be that much, to the point that as I looked at him I just thought "I wouldn't even use him!" So to accommodate builds that would like a more varied lineup, I modified each to have their own unique take on how each handles their boss.  As well, I'm also stoked that each pilot's artwork features the same uniform.

As per usual, I'm open to criticisms and ideas. If there are any criticisms towards balance, I would appreciate alternate ideas very much.
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Great minds think alike. I too noticed the lack of mech cards, to the point I even made my own archetype for them (hadn't coded them). The artwork was based off of mechs from the Armored Core video game series. However I decided that if the archetype was to be made, it would've been terrible, as it revolved around a field spell card that couldn't even be activated by its own effect, and needed counters on it to let a majority of the monsters do anything (and the cards that could do that were cards that would need to be run in 3s to get that field spell going, but not very good at doing anything else). Strong if you could get the counters on the card quickly, but until you got the field out and got counters on it, it was pretty bad.

TL;DR As for the cards, the light and dark XYZs could easily clog up your backrow, until they get removed from the field anyways. But I guess it's fine, they are boss monsters after all. Steadfast armor pilot makes Seasoned armor pilot useless most of the time; it's better protection for the first mecha armor division you would summon, not to mention it's easier to get on the field (LV4 vs LV5). Maybe you can make Seasoned and Merciless pilots able to be normal summoned with no tributes if you control no monsters. Finally, I don't know as I haven't seen them in action obviously, but assault mecha armor division seems like the otk setup card lol. Fun combo if you don't know of it. 3x Assault mecha armor division + Seasoned armor (maybe this is why it's level 5?) + equip Seasoned to just one assault mecha armor division + limiter removal= 12K and won't be destroyed in the end phase.

Good eye with that OTK setup. Actually, my reasoning for making Seasoned and Merciless level 5's was to make them just a little harder to search out; as most generic Warrior support cards (such as Reinforcement of the Army) rely on the Warriors being level 4. Coming up with an effect for Seasoned was actually rather difficult, as I had seemed to have the other bases covered with the other pilots; the only one not covered being pilot protection. In the end, Seasoned is more catered to the Boss mechs (such as the double-pilot Xyz monsters and the boss monsters), and makes Seasoned Division more suited as a support/leader mech.

As for the Assault Mecha Armor Division; making an OTK with them would be rather difficult. You can't special-summon them with pilots, and they can't attack without pilots. So if you managed to get 3 Assaults, you would need to get three pilots in order to turn that into an OTK (which you could do with two Commandeers or two Auto Pilots; but that's quite the OTK setup).

No; the combo I actually really like would be this:
- Normal-summon a pilot
- Special-summon 2 Assault Mecha Armor Divisions
- Xyz-Summon Carrier
- Special-summon a Division from the deck (using a pilot from the hand)
- Special-summon a second Division from your hand using another pilot

That would be a full six-card hand, but a pretty HAM play if you could pull it off. As for playing the cards in reality; I can't code worth anything so I haven't scripted them. It would be a really fun deck to play, though.

Would be interesting to see in action that's for sure.

Well that was a derp on my part. I was reading quickly so I thought assault division was a special pilot optional monster. The otk required 5 cards anyways, so to get them all equipped with pilots would take a longer time to setup.

I think this archetype might come down to luck though. How fast you can get different pilots in the graveyard and/or your hand and Xyz summoning one of the Xyz monsters, preferably the rank 10s and equipping it with all of the pilots (except maybe seasoned as steadfast would work better). You could possibly have a monster that cannot be destroyed by card effects, if it destroys an opp'smonsters, deals 1,000 damage to the opp, gains 1000 ATK (loses 500 DEF), up to twice per turn, can negate 2 attacks declared on it and can be flipped face-down if it is targeted in any way (but you'd lose all pilots except versatile). Possibly. Personally I'd forget about versatile and set a fiendish chain or something against 101 or big eye so you don't lose all other pilots. The only thing I could see taking something like that out would be d prison and if you choose to, you could probably opt to leave out swift to leave space for a forbidden lance or something.

Well, for the Xyz's I know going for the rank 10's would be the more difficult choice; as you would need to summon at least one level 10 Division and either use Galaxy Queen's Light or a card of that equivalent (Marshaling Field only goes to level 9). In terms of the playstyle, the more I look at it the more I find this deck to be a stronger contender in the main-deck aspect. The extra-deck cards I've made pretty good; but your mid-game muscle's going to be in the Divisions and keeping a control on the field.

As for the luck aspect; while in most cases I made it splash-able to have any pilot with almost any Division; the main way to remove luck as factor more would be to add another searcher or a main-deck equivalent to Carrier. If I were to play this archetype, I would focus on getting Carrier out early through Cyber Dragon and the Assault Divisions and using its ability to keep a stronger field presence.

Although I will say; if you go for the Rank 10 and opt to not use Seasoned, your opponent might just throw down a random MST on one of the pilots and ruin your day ;O