Trap Card Timing

A Faust Lab Production

Trap Card Timing and You.
When to properly use Trap cards

We have all been there haven't we? When your opponent won either because your trap card was ineffective or because you forgot you even had it. Hey, don't sweat it, it happens to the best of us. The trick is to be sure that you don't make the same mistake again.

The types of cards are varied and often have specific uses or conditions, some of them however are relatively broke *See: Starlight Road* and other cards should be a little stronger *See Call of the Haunted, it's currently only at 1*

I think Traps should be thought of as being divided into three categories:

1)Destroyer Class: These traps react to the summoning or attack of a monster, or the activation of a spell or trap, and their effect is specific to destroy it.
2)Reversal Class: These cards activate to the summoning of a monster, attack of a monster, or the activation of a spell/trap card and reverse it, for example Compulsory Evacuation Device
3)Special Class: These traps have a specific effect in mind, but may be made up of the previous two classes, or belong to none of these, these are cards such as Starlight Road or Forces of Darkness, which are designed for a specific archetype.

This article is about the timing of your traps to best counter your opponent's actions. Suppose for the sake of argument that your opponent summons a monster, for this exercise we shall use 7 Colored Fish (ATK: 1800 DEF: 800) as your opponent plays his card you can activate your face-down Bottomless Trap Hole (Or a similar card that reacts to your opponent summoning a monster with specific intent on destroying, you can still chain traps to the summoning of monster, but Bottomless will work for this.) As the effect of Bottomless Trap Hole is resolved, your opponent's 7 Colored Fish is removed from play, thus negating the summoning. And, to boot, your opponent would have already wasted his once per turn Summoning.

Another example would be your opponent activating Heavy Storm. This card would normally destroy all of the spell and trap cards on the field. However if you have a Counter Trap card, like Dark Bribe or Starlight Road, which responds to Heavy Storm nicely, as Heavy Storm does not target, and therefore would destroy two or more cards, which would fulfill the requirement of Starlight Road, allowing you to negate the activation and summon Stardust Dragon in one fell swoop.

So, while the types of Traps to have in your deck depend in part of what you are running, for example if you are running a swarm strategy you'll want to put Traps that can prevent your monsters from completing the swarm tactic. If you are using direct attackers you'll want to include cards that can stop your opponent's monsters from attacking yours and thus protecting your direct attackers.

So the most important thing I hope this article teaches you is to always -ALWAYS- be aware of both what your opponent's effects are capable of as well as your own face-down traps. It's not good to set a trap and forget about it until it is too late. 1 trap card can easily change the tide of battle. Mirror Force for example.

Here is a brief list of staples (Cards that work well in most strategies)
*Mirror Force
*Bottomless Trap Hole
*Starlight Road
*Dimensional Prison
*Compulsory Evacuation Device
*Dark Bribe

There are many others but it takes some time and effort to decide what works best with your deck. If you are using a strategy that has a high number of cards in your finishing combo, then maybe Defense Draw could help, alternatively if your finishing combo doesn't have so many cards in it, then you could probably get away using Sakuretsu Armor. The final choice is yours, so try a few of these, if that doesn't work, try a few more. This game is a process of discovering what works and what doesn't.

That's all for now, be sure to come back soon, the next lecture might be on Spell Staples, or it might not. It depends on my schedule.

Stay in the School. ;3

this is incredibly helpful. even for an experienced player its helpful. thank you

mind if i c&p to the facebook?

or actually just part of it

Promoting to teacher.

Mirror force is always an option but say someone is in a bind and they don't have a mirror force what do you do? Well I think that In the event that your unable to fight back or something use the traps the way that a knight would use his shield as a form of defense and counterattack.

But traps like threatening roar, torriential tribute are examples of a defensive property, but cards like magic cylinder, and doppleganger are the forms of counterattacking

Thank you for the feedback.

I give you my permission to C/P just be sure to credit it to me

Thanks Hex.

K,I only took a sample. Up to the Archetype explanations