There was even a stint where "Gaia" monsters took on a new thematic identity, joining forces with Kuriboh's to support Black Luster Soldier ritual monsters. This was a fun bit of lore, taken from Yugi's duel against Mai in the Duelist Kingdom quarter-finals, where Yugi summoned Black Luster Soldier for the first time, by unleashing the powers of chaos on Gaia the Fierce Knight himself. These chaos-themed, ritual-supporting Gaia's and company were released in Dimension of Chaos, Breakers of Shadow, and Raging Tempest. They focused on searching when tributes, and giving additional effects to "Black Luster Soldier" monsters. Today's theme, however, has little synergy with the bulk of these cards, although they provide three tools that I believe could be worth including in a post-ROTD "Gaia" deck.
Envoy of Chaos is a Honest-esque hand-trap that functions to help "Gaia the Fierce Knight" and "Black Luster Soldier" monsters. During battle, it changes the opponent's monsters's ATK to the original ATK of whatever "Gaia" or "Black Luster Soldier" monster you are using to battle, then increases your monster's ATK by 1500. This ensures that you'll win every battle by 1500! This is handy for getting the ball rolling with our new boss monster, Gaia the Magical Dragon Champion (more on him later!).
Gateway to Chaos has seen limited high-level play thanks to the spell Set Rotation. With the prevalence of field spells in many modern decks, Set Rotation frequently saw play as an extra copy of Terraforming that had a fringe benefit: by giving your opponent a copy of Gateway to Chaos, they were locked out of playing their own field spells. This is because Gateway can only be activated when there is a valid target in your deck for it to search. Given that few, if any, decks played "Gaia" or "Black Luster Soldier" ritual monsters, this meant that Gateway would remain facedown on the opponent's field, locking them out of any field spells, thanks to Set Rotation's effect. 
This strategy has fallen out of favor since the limitation of Set Rotation. Including a potentially-useless field spell in the hopes of drawing a lone copy of Set Rotation was not appealing. In a dedicated "Gaia the Fierce Knight" deck, however, Gateway to Chaos is an easy way to search out key parts of your strategy. By including the only-allowed copy of Set Rotation in our deck list, we're also able to lock down an opponent if the chance presents itself.
Finally, Beginning of Heaven and Earth is the trap search card for that also loads the GY for Chaos Summons. It functions as a more limited Painful Choice, limited to "Gaia" and "Black Luster Soldier" monsters. Our sample deck list will include a few copies of Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning, and this trap will help to load our GY with LIGHT attribute monsters in our DARK-heavy deck. It also helps us get to the lynchpin of the new "Gaia" strategy, Gaia the Magical Knight.
With these options in hand to support the new kids on the block, let's take a look at the new cards introduced by Rise of the Duelist. We'll start with the crux of the strategy: Gaia the Magical Knight, Cursed Dragon - Curse of Dragon, Spiral Fusion, and Gaia the Magical Dragon Champion.
It's clear that Gaia, the Magical Knight and Cursed Dragon - Curse of Dragon are meant to work in tandem to summon Gaia the Magical Dragon Champion in an economic, quick way. Anytime you summon Magical Gaia, he'll summon Cursed Dragon from your hand or GY, and Cursed Dragon will fetch you Spiral Fusion. Conveniently enough, you know have the required materials for Gaia the Magical Dragon Champion on the field, meaning you can go right into the fusion. The first time around, you'll probably summon Cursed Dragon from your hand, meaning you're losing two cards in return for a Magical Champion with 5200 ATK that can punch through two monsters, gain 2600 ATK for each one he does, and gives you up to 4 interruptions on your opponent's turn through destroying their monsters.
And make no mistake, Gaia the Magical Dragon Champion's quick effect is extremely good; it's the crux of the new Gaia strategy, preventing your opponent from forming an unbeatable board while you punch them really, really hard. This strategy is supported by new "Spiral" trap cards: Spiral Discharge and Spiral Reborn.
Spiral Reborn is a simple resurrection trap for Level 7 and higher Dragons - meaning Gaia the Magical Dragon Champion. If you do choose to bring him back, he becomes immune to targeting and destruction by card effects. This is a nice benefit, meaning your opponent will have to fight their way through him (or use a non-targeting removal option). This protection gives Gaia time to build his ATK up again, and prevents your opponent from taking the easy way out when staring down a Magical Dragon Champion with over 5000 ATK. Unfortunately, being a reactive trap card prevents this from really advancing the Gaia strategy. That said, the fact that it's searchable by Cursed Dragon - Curse of Dragon makes it a decent inclusion in our strategy. 
Our second "Spiral" trap card is Spiral Discharge. Discharge helps take care of Gaia the Magical Dragon Champions' inability to destroy spell/trap cards by letting you destroy one every time Gaia the Magical Dragon Champion is involved in battle - including when your opponent attacks. This is a nice deterrent and while it would've been nice if Gaia had the ability to take care of spell/traps on his own, overall this is a nice addition to the strategy.
Oh, and it prevents your opponent from attacking other monsters in case you're trying to build up a field or continue benefitting from a monster like Bombarding Catapult Turtle.
That's right! Thanks to Yugi's duel against Panik, Catapult Turtle is now intrinsically tied to Gaia the Fierce Knight. And while this Catapult Turtle probably won't be launching Gaia into any flotation rings, it sure does a lot to increase the consistency of the Gaia strategy.
Bombarding Catapult Turtle is Level 4, which is great news - no slow, clunky tribute summoning for this turtle. His effect lets you tribute a monster to summon a Gaia or one of your Cursed Dragons from your hand or Deck. The Turtle doesn't specify that you have to tribute another monster, which makes him an excellent summon; drop him, and summon your Magical Knight or your Cursed Dragon, depending on what you have in your hand. 
Bombarding Catapult Turtle's effect is even better when considered in conjunction with the new Field Spell, Charging Gaia.* Charging Gaia has two main effects: one prevents your opponent from thwarting Magical Gaia's attacks during the battle phase by locking your opponent out of activating any cards or effects during the Battle Phase.
*Because we don't care about Gateway to Chaos' second effect, once we've activated it and search a Gaia monster, we can then destroy it by activating a copy of Charging Gaia, and not have lost anything of value.
The second effect increases your consistency by allowing you to reveal a Gaia, the Fierce Knight or a Level 5 Dragon and fetching the other piece of the puzzle from your Deck. This ensures that your Gaia, the Magical Knight will never be dead, as you can just reveal it and add Cursed Dragon - Curse of Dragon from your Deck to your hand. It also ensures that you won't be left with Cursed Dragon, unable to make a play by making your Cursed Dragon search your Magical Knight.
There's one more new Gaia that acts as a sort of insurance plan for our whole strategy. Let's say you've activated Charging Gaia, but you've already got your Cursed Dragon and Magical Knight. Then you'll grab this guy:
Soldier Gaia the Fierce Knight! He has a nifty effect to switch a monster to defense, letting you beat over it with his 2600 ATK, but we're really here for his search effect. To summon Soldier Gaia, you tribute a Dragon-type Fusion monster - i.e. a Gaia the Magical Dragon Champion whose ATK we've used up. On summon, Soldier Gaia lets you add any Level 7 or higher Warrior from your Deck to your hand. If the armor Soldier Gaia is wearing wasn't clue enough, we'll be grabbing this guy, 99% of the time:
Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning isn't as ubiquitous as it used to be, but it still packs a punch, especially as a follow-up to Soldier Gaia. One fusion summon of Gaia the Magical Dragon Champion will load your GY for the summon of Black Luster Soldier, thanks to the attributes of Magical Knight and Cursed Dragon (LIGHT and DARK), and a single activation of Beginning of Heaven and Earth could do the same.
Better yet, Soldier Gaia breaks rank with the other Gaia's with his Level - 8. This makes him a perfect compliment for a Rank 8 Xyz summon. Ran out of gas in your Magical Dragon Champion? Tribute him to summon Soldier Gaia, search Black Luster Soldier, summon him, banish an opponent's monster, then if the situation calls for it, overlay for an Xyz! This summon will also, coincidentally, leave your GY with a LIGHT and DARK monster to fuel another copy of Black Luster Soldier later.
Before we look at a deck list, there's a final set of monsters to consider. In the Millennium Pack, Curse of Dragon, and Gaia the Dragon Champion received their first direct retrains, and their first support spell card.
Curse of Dragonfire is a simple but nice addition to the Gaia strategy, allowing you to fusion summon without a spell card, and being searchable off of Charging Gaia. At the time of the Millennium Pack this was to facilitate summoning Sky Galloping Gaia the Dragon Champion. Sky Galloping Gaia is also usable in our strategy thanks to its generic summoning requirements of a Gaia and Dragon-type monster. It lets you add Spiral Spear Strike from your GY or Deck to hand, and has a battle effect to change an opponent's monster to defense mode, so that you can profit off of the ability of Spiral Spear Strike. Spiral Spear Strike (searchable by Cursed Dragon - Curse of Dragon) allows Gaia the Dragon Champion (and our two fusions who take on his name) to inflict piercing battle damage; and when this happens, you can draw 2 then discard 1 card. This sort of hand filtering is helpful for loading the GY for Black Luster Soldier.
Finally, to round out our deck, we can add more LIGHT by including Charging Gaia the Fierce Knight. His effect likely won't come up very often, but we're looking primarily for his attribute and name. By including more Gaia monsters, we can use Charging Gaia more often, and he can be one half of a Dragon Champion. 
Lord Gaia the Fierce Knight fills a similar role, and has a simple summoning condition. He makes for a decent beatstick, and can block any opponent's monster with less than 3000 ATK from beating over him. So, in a worst case scenario we might be able to turtle with him for a bit. Otherwise he can fill out the deck, be used as fusion material, trigger Charging Gaia, and help us apply pressure to the opponent - just make sure to summon him before your big fusion plays, otherwise he'll be stuck in your hand!
Now, for a sample deck list. This deck is strictly for casual play; it doesn't have enough depth to play through multiple levels of interruption like most top tier decks. To upgrade this deck for more competitive play, I'd remove all 3 Envoy of Chaos and 3 of the Gaia's or Beginning of Heaven and Earth's to make space for 3 Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring and 3 Called by the Grave. Twin Twisters (or Lightning Storm, for the wealthy among us) might also be helpful in clearing your opponent's traps before fusion summoning. If more space is needed, the Spiral trap cards are honestly not the best. But I enjoy thematic unity, so here's a casual deck list for playing around with Gaia the Magical Dragon Champion:
Monsters: 21
2 Gaia the Magical Knight
2 Lord Gaia the Fierce Knight
3 Charging Gaia the Fierce Knight
2 Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning
3 Cursed Dragon - Curse of Dragon
1 Curse of Dragonfire
3 Envoy of Chaos
2 Soldier Gaia the Fierce Knight
3 Bombarding Catapult Turtle
Spells: 12
1 Terraforming
1 Set Rotation
1 Spiral Spear Strike
3 Spiral Fusion
3 Charging Gaia
3 Gateway to Chaos
Traps: 7
3 Beginning of Heaven and Earth
1 Spiral Discharge
3 Spiral Reborn
Extra Deck
2 Gaia the Magical Dragon Champion
1 Sky Galloping Gaia the Dragon Champion
13 of your favorite Rank 8 and Link monsters
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