Contents
Turn 1 Tips (Board Breakers, Special Mention, Hand Traps)
All credit goes to C.C. アヌビス!
Introduction
Ok, so, let’s talk a little, as people seem to struggle against stuff, and while you can tell them to just “run hand traps”, that won’t really solve the issue, and also Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring isn’t the only hand trap in the game, so if you don’t want to run her, you’re more than welcome to do so, as I’ll hopefully give you some suggestions. Not all decks run or need hand traps, certain combo decks can outright forgo them, same for going 2nd decks.
We won’t talk only hand traps tho, so if you really dislike them, you can run other cards talked bellow.
Disclaimer: we won’t talk flood gates, or strong going 1st traps, but I’ll make a short list bellow for people who do run certain decks that can abuse them:
- There Can Be Only One
- Inspector Boarder
- Skill Drain
- Rivarly of the Warlords
- Gozen Match
- Torrential Tribute
- Compulsory Evacuation Device
- Solemn Judgement/Warning/Strike
- Dogmatika Punishment + Elder Entity N’Tiss or Wind Pegasus @Ignister or PSY-Framelord Omega
- Summon Limit
Board Breakers
Lightning Storm and Raigeki
These two are basically self explanatory, nuke their board, and if your opponent can negate them, it will force a negate. Lightning Storm also has the benefit of blowing up all the backrow if needed, and you can get 1 guaranteed copy of it.
Evenly Matched
At the coat of your battle phase, This cute SR card will completely destroy your opponent, unaffected monsters and all. It forces the player to banish cards facedown from their field until they have the same number of cards as you, that being 1.
Forbidden Droplets, Forbidden Chalice and Dark Ruler No More
I’ll be honest, the only reason to run Forbidden Chalice over Forbidden Droplets is that you dont have the UR cps to make it. And yes, I know Forbidden Chalice has a good use when you want to negate your own monsters, but we’re talking board breakers here, so that use doesn’t matter for this topic.
Forbidden Droplets and Dark Ruler No More are your super solid “♥♥♥♥ your board” that your opponent can’t respond to, allowing you to not have to deal with their negates.
Forbidden Chalice still sees play IRL even today as a replacement for Forbidden Droplets so don’t feel bad for using it.
Mind Control, Super Polymerization and Instant Fusion + Millennium Eye Restrict
These 3 are more deck specific, but they pretty much have this cool feature where if your opponent has a monster they need, you just be like “that’s mine now”, and maybe even use it yourself, as keep in mind, that if a card says “You can only use this effect of [insert monster name here] once per turn”, while a HOPT restriction, it only applies to the player, so if you steal the monster via something, you also get to use it’s effect, even if your opponent did so already.
Winged Dragon of Ra – Sphere Mode, Lava Golem and Gamaciel, the Sea Turtle Kaiju
Now, I know Gamaciel, the Sea Turtle Kaiju isn’t the only Kaiju, all of them do the same thing, but this one has the lowest ATK of them all, making it the easiest to run over in battle after you give it to your opponent.
These 3 cards share a similar goal, getting rid of an opponent’s big boss monster that can’t be affected by anything or just a problematic card. By tributing 3/2/1 respectively of your opponent’s monsters, you can summon this card to your opponent’s field.
There are others, but these should be a good starting point. Feel free to suggest more in the comments.
Special Mention
Triple Tactics Talents
This card isn’t a specific board breaker, but it can be, along with being pseudo hand trap and Pot of Greed. Basically, if your opponent uses a monster effect during your turn, you can use 1 of the following 3 effects:
- Pot of Greed
- Forceful Sentry
- Change of Heart
Hand Traps
Now then, last topic, hand traps, and this part of the list will be long, as I’ll offer synergies with specific decks or cards whenever possible, and we’re starting with:
Maxx “C”
Nothing to be said here, this ♥♥♥♥ should be banned. Only card here that I’d say that if you can run it, you should.
Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring and Ghost Belle & Haunted Mansion
These two are the most popular of the Yokai Girls, and they both are a “no” if your opponent tries to interact with their deck or GY respectively. Always good to have, but not mandatory.
Tho, Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring have the extra use of countering Maxx “C”, which contributes to it’s popularity, meaning she would be less popular and not feel as mandatory if Maxx “C” was banned.
Skull Meister and D.D. Crow
The budget Ghost Belle & Haunted Mansion. While D.D. Crow has good uses by itself, Skull Meister is only ever used either as a replacement or as extra copies of Ghost Belle & Haunted Mansion.
D.D. Crow has the benefit of working really well in Bird Up decks as Lyrilusc- Recital Starling can search it.
Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit
The 3rd Yokai Girl on our list and the first one to be released. Shes very underrated, as her disruption is still very good, she also has the distinction of being able to activate from the field, so if your deck has the ability to reuse level 3 Psychic monsters, you will get a lot of milleage out of her, and Emergency Teleport can also grab her from the deck for a quick disruption.
If you’re a Sky Player, you really shouldn’t sleep on her, as she can be tagged to Sky Striker Air Space – Area Zero if needed to in order to bypass Imperial Order or as a last resort in order to grab a Sky Striker Ace – Raye.
Ghost Reaper & Winter Cherry
The 4th Yokai Girl and the most meta dependent of them all. You discard her, remove a monster from your Extra Deck and your opponent has to remove all copies they have of that monster from their Extra Deck.
Ghost Mourner & Moonlight Chill and Ghost Sister & Spooky Dogwood
I always get the names of our final two Yokai Girls mixed together.
Ghost Mourner & Moonlight Chill has the ability to allow you to discard a card and negate the effect of an opponent’s monster, and if that monster leaves the field, your opponent takes burn damage equal to the ATK of that monster. Ghost Sister & Spooky Dogwood on the other hand is the opposite, you gain life points equal to the ATK of the monster your opponent summons, so if you play burn or a Winged Dragon of Ra deck, give these two lovelies a try.
PSY-Framegear Gamma/Alpha/Beta
While PSY-Framegear Gamma is the best of the bunch, the other two aren’t bad either, just less versatile.
The following things apply mainly to PSY-Framegear Gamma, but the other two can be used similarly in other decks.
Combo decks such as Dragon Link or Scrap Dinos or decks that use a lot of level 8 Synchros can abuse this one much better, as if used during your turn, it’s a free level 8 Synchro, thus making the other copy live. Virtual World can also use it better than others, as Virtual World Hime – Nyannyan can recycle PSY-Frame Driver if banished, and the fact that PSY-Frame Driver is a level 6, which a key level for Virtual World allows them to keep the 2nd copy of PSY-Framegear Gamma live while by extending their own plays.
Droll & Lock Bird
This one stops your opponent from adding cards to their hand, very straightforward.
It does have an interaction with Trickstars as if chained to Trickstar Reincarnation, it will prevent your opponent from drawing cards, thus getting rid of all their hand.
Nibiru, the Primordial Being
Count to 5 and nuke the board. Your cards are also removed tho, if any, and do count towards the stats of the token.
There is a nifty interaction with Evenly Matched, as tokens can’t be banished facedown, so if you can remove the Nibiru, the Primordial Being from your side of the field before using Evenly Matched, your opponent will have to banish all their cards and only keep the token.
Being a Rock type, it can be used extremely well in Adamancipator decks, as even if it’s not used as a hand trap, it’s not a dead card.
Dimension Shifter and Artifact Lancea
These two are opposites, one banishes everything, the other prevents everything from being banished.
Do keep in mind that Artifact Lancea has priority over Dimension Shifter, so if both are used the same turn, no cards can be banished.
Dimension Shifter has a good interaction with Thunder Dragons or decks that want to banish everything such as Gren Maju da Aiza.
Effect Veiler and Infinite Impermanence
The final two hand traps on our list, the monster negates.
These two work as alternatives to eachother, but can be used together.
Infinite Impermanence has the ability to be used during either player’s turn, and of set, the ability to negate a whole column, allowing you to deal with problematic floodgates or monsters that can’t be targeted, while Effect Veiler, even tho being more limited in her negation, can allow players to Link climb into a Link 4 such as Accesscode Talker or Borrelsword Dragon via Crystron Halquifibrax and Selene, Queen of Master Magicians, or even a very cheeky Link 5 play into Underworld Goddess of the Closed World via Lyna the Light Charmer, Lustrous.
And that’s our list.
If there’s any hand traps you want mentioned, put them down in the comments.
Epilogue
So yea, just because a deck may need a bit of touch up via a hand trap or board breaker, doesn’t mean it’s mandatory to run Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring or Maxx “C”, there’s tons of cards you can choose from, and some may even be very good for your deck and help you more than the above 2 could.
Let’s be honest here, we both now unless you don’t have any UR scrap left you must run all 3 copies of Maxx C.
It’s the only one on the list that if you can run, you should, which is why it should be banned.
Gadarla is another notable Kaiju purely because Barrier Statue of the Stormwinds exists. There are some others that certain decks care about because they can search them (Bakura.dek can search level 8 fiends, for instance), but you’re right that the turtle is the default.
Thx! I just run old classic decks with monsters I think are the coolest, and I rlly just duel for fun, dc if I win or lose, occasionally getting a win. I use Frightfur, ABC, and Blue-Eyes (not chaos cause its too complicated for my simple brain, my “boss card” is twin burst), so I get pummeled quite easily by those gosh darn ygo millenials and their link summons!! All jokes aside this was very helpful to swap in some board breakers so I don’t lose in 4 turns cuz if I get a bad hand I’m doomed
Even if I still think it is borderline mandatory to run Maxx C if you are planning to run hand traps it’s a great guide, but there is one element that’s quite crucial that’s missing here, that’s the number of these special cards you want in your deck.
For example having a single hand trap means you might as well not have any because you will not see it often enough for it to be relevant (specially because they tend to be Ultra Rares),on the other hand have 20 Hand Traps/Board Breakers and you will draw on average 4 of these cards in your initial hand one every six duels, completely bricking your deck.
Is going to vary from deck to deck but having a number to work with would be helpful.
Might I suggest quaking mirror force? Yes it’s a trap, so a little slow, but it doesn’t target, doesn’t destroy, and forcing your opponent’s board into face down defense position is busted.
Fantastical Dragon Phantazmay is a good hand trap to unbrick your hand. it only works if your opponent link summons tho so be wary of that. Dinowrestler Pankratops is another good card going second to pop a card, and it has the Cyber Dragon Special Summon.
i appreciate you trying to help other people, i have no idea what im doing in this game but i still appreacite you
My personal advice is to run one of each staple hand trap, because Crossout Designator exists.
My decks run 1 Maxx C, 1 Ash, 1 Veiler, 1 Nibiru, etc., so not only can I draw into one of those and disrupt when going second – and generally most meta decks can be disrupted by all of those at some point during their board setup – but I can declare them with Crossout on my turn (unless the card in question is in my hand) to protect my combo line from my opponent’s Maxx C, Ash or whatever. That sort of broad protection and versatility is worth the trade-off of not being able to use that card.
On the other hand, typical going-first decks will want the board-breakers (Droplet, Dark Ruler, Lightning Storm) and hand traps to make up no more than a fifth of your overall deck list to avoid bricking your opening hand. That’s 8 spaces in a typical deck, which your main engine is hopefully small enough (and provides enough draw power) to accommodate.