A Guide to Hand Traps
What is a hand trap?
So if you’re new to the Yugioh TCG you’ve probably heard the term handtrap thrown around a lot. If you’re confused what a handtrap is, how to use handtraps. And which handtraps should you use.
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Hand traps refer to the concept of traps that activate from the hand. These cards activate during either players; turn or at least on the opponent’s turn, in order to disrupt the opponent’s plays. The disruption can come from an effect negate, card removal, or even turning of a mechanic.
We can Divide hand traps into five categories
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Powerful or blowout Hand traps
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Generic hand traps
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Situational Hand Traps
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Bad Hand traps
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And battle phase hand traps
we can also subdivide these hand traps into even more specific subcategories based on what they deal with.
Generic hand traps
Let's go over the most important category of generic hand traps. Infinite Impermanence, Effect Vieler, and Ash Blossom. These are very simple one for one, negate to the opponent. Ash blossom stops most cards that interact with the deck. Infinite Impermanence and Effect Veiler are a simple target 1 monster on your opponent's field and negate it.
An important thing to understand about the generic hand traps is that they will often not fully stop a combo. If we take a look at meta decks and strategies most of these decks have ways to play around them. However, these hand traps enable a player to turn off parts of an opponent’s strategy to let your deck push through and win. We can stop excessive value engines or we can make a call and try to completely shut down an opponent’s hand if we think they’ve bricked.
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If we’re playing against Depsia we can use ash blossom against the branded fusion to stop any shenanigans that fusion spell would pull out of the deck. Despia is a very easy deck to hand trap. let's look at a harder deck to hand trap.
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For this example, we’re playing against Floowandereze. There are three real points we could try to hand trap them at. we could either risk trying to stop a quick play spell searcher or a monster searcher relying on them not having a follow-up or a way to ignore the hand traps. we could also risk hitting a pot of prosperity and kill a bricked hand or stop an opponent from digging for blowout options like Harpies Feather Storm.
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Lastly, we can play defensively and hand trap the final end board on our turn with an Impermanence and not really gain a lot, but also not risk losing hand trap value.
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This dilemma calls on the poker side of card games and relies on you guessing what’s in the opponent’s hand through one way or the other. I will say in the previous example that one of the first two options are usually correct. But for against another deck like Shaddolls the best time to use an Imperm can be to just out the El Shaddol Winda on your turn.
Blowout hand traps
All right so if generic hand traps are not turn-ending enough than what is? That’s where blowout hand traps come into play. Let's just hard shut off our opponent’s mechanics are dramatically punish our opponent for trying to play the game a certain way.
Maxx “C” is on here for you OCG and Master Duel Players as it is banned in the TCG. It forces players to flat-out stop special summoning or pivot into a second-class line of play or else automatically lose to an insane hand size.
Dimensional Shifter prevents cards from going to the graveyard by banishing them instead. Maxx “c” and Dimensional Shifter are two cards I recommend every deck run if you have access to them. Of course, you can’t run dimensional shifter if you also need your graveyard to play the game, but for decks like Floowandereeze and Exosister. This card can’t be missed. Mostly this is due to a majority of Yugioh combos that actually see play require the use of the graveyard for extension. And some decks like Tearlarmanets require the graveyard to do anything.
The Other 3 power hand traps are a bit more nuanced. Droll and lock bird turns off searching after our opponent searches 1 card. It's excellent, but it is not for every meta.
Psy-Framegear Gamma is like an upgraded monster negates. Gamma destroys whatever it negates and it works with cards elsewhere than the field. The catch with Gamma is not only do you have to control no monsters you have to summon out a brick level 8 normal monster from hand, deck, or grave. This makes the hand trap not for every strategy despite its power. Gamma has a variety of uses. It can be used as an anti-hand trap card in decks that don’t set up monsters immediately. Negating an Ash Blossom and then making a level 8 synchro or link 2 is very powerful. Gamma is also just a good generic negate hand trap.
Lastly, we have Nibiru, the Primal Being. Originally created to slow down powerful combo decks, Nibiru has a weird role in modern Yugioh. It's supposed to board wipe an opponent if they summon 5 or more times ending their turn and getting rid of resources. However, due to Konami’s modern game design, meta decks can just be set up to play through Nibiru by either negating it or by just summoning more monsters. So while not a good card against the meta Nibiru is very good against rogue and older decks.
Every deck can run generic hand traps, but blowouts get more specific, deck and format dependent.
Situational hand traps
This brings us to the wacky world of situational hand traps. These hand traps aren’t bad, but fill very specific roles that aren’t going to stop a majority of decks.
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Some key roles to note are
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Focused Graveyard hate
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Specific monster negates
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Anti-banish cards
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Specific extra deck hate
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Specific card type hate
Graveyard hand traps
Let's start by breaking up the graveyard hate category. We have two main types of effects. Banishment from the graveyard and graveyard effect negation.
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D.D. Crow, Ally of Justice Cycle reader, and the Bystial package are our quick effect banish hand traps.
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D.D. Crow is a generic quick effect banish one from the grave. While it can simply stop a card that needs to be in the graveyard to activate its effect like a Mezuki or an Eldlich trap. This negates in the same way Mystical space Typhon negates a field spell. Whereby removing the card from its position, it messes with the activation requirements of a card. For a basic example if an opponent attempts to revive their own card with monster reborn you can banish the target and stop Monster reborn from reviving the monster. of course, this type of disruption isn’t applicable to everything.
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The Bystial package fills a similar role to D.D. Crow However they only work with light or dark monsters and require your opponent to control a monster. The benefit is they also summon themselves and get additional value. Magnamhut searches for another Bystial on the end phase and Druisworm send one special summoned monster our opponent controls to the graveyard.
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Cycle reader is dated and is a two-for-one banish. But only for lights. Retaliating C is harder to use dimensional shifter but it only works once our opponent uses a spell card and the disruption effect is tied to retaliating C being on the field. It's not bad and it can search for other fun hand traps which is unique. But it's too hard to set up and its one of the few hand traps vulnerable to removal forcing it out of consideration for most decks.
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Our two graveyard negates are Ghost Belle and Haunted Mansion and Skull Meister. Skull Meister negates any effect that activates in the graveyard. ghost belle negates most cards that move cards out of the graveyard in a similar manner to ash blossom. The graveyard negates are more generic that the banish options. but often times the generic banishes can be more powerful by completely forcing the card out of the graveyard. Especially with the new Bystial engine.
Specific monster negates
So there are two relevant situational monster negates. Herald of orange light is a costly power negate specifically for fairy decks. It's very strong but only a few decks like Drytron can use it effectively.
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Now for the big hand trap. Ghost mourner and moonlit chili. On its face, it’s a worse Infinite Impermanence that only works on special summoned monsters. But what makes this card so effective is it is the second part of the effect where our opponent takes damage if the monster leaves the field. Thanks to Yugioh’s time rules where games automatically end once time runs out a small difference in life points makes it a free game win. So a worse Imperm becomes a free game win in the right situation. Most decks have better options for stalling in time, but this is an option and shows up in topping lists from time to time. Also here's some advance warning to never mention in any form anything about time rules in an official event. despite it being one of the most important mechanics and factors in a match, Konami considers it a bannable offense to discuss it. Because mentioning its grounds for considering a player to be stalling for time.
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Miradora is bad because it's too restrictive in what it hits. Having a hand trap get negated is often not a problem worth considering for what options this card would replace.
Anti-banish options
Artifact Lancea and Chaos Hunter do the same thing but slightly differently. Lancea is a quick effect to send from hand to field to stop all banishing until the end of turn. Chaos hunter lets you discard 1 card to special summons itself when your opponent special summons a monster. then it has a static effect of preventing all cards from being banished. Lancea is better in almost all situations but chaos hunter can work in decks that want a discard as a quick effect..
Specific extra deck hate
These next cards specifically hate one type of extra deck option.
Flying C special summons itself to your opponent's field and stops them from XYZ summoning. Honestly Flying C is super dated and until a deck comes around that locks you into XYZs like Depsia locks you into fusion. This card isn’t going to see any play.
Contact C is a bit of a better version of flying C. It summons itself to the field and forces your opponent to use that card as a material if they would summon from the extra deck. against a deck like Rikka that’s only able to summon plants, contact C is a viable if very specific option.
Fantastical Dragon Phantazmay is an anti-Link monster option for free plus. Think of it as a retroactive Maxx C but only against link decks. Phatazmay also gives protection to your monsters on the field so this card has a lot of use in link-heavy formats.
Ghost reaper and winter cherries let us remove one card from our opponent’s extra deck if we have one of the same cards in our own extra deck. Cherries is in a weird spot. Most meta-relevant decks have other options to play their combos. but Cherries does still hurt. The decks this card hits are decks with only one good extra deck option. Think ABC buster Dragon or spiral double helix. Another requirement for this card is to have sufficient space in the extra deck to have a variety of options to hit with the card.
Specifc card hate
Psy-Framegear Eplison and Delta are Gamma but for trap and spell cards respectively. These have all the same strengths and weaknesses as gamma. Although epsilon can sometimes miss timing on a lot of traps.
A bigger hand trap option is Ghost ogre and snow rabbit. Ogre is the first ghost girl hand trap and Konami’s first real push into modern hand trap design. It’s got some interesting gimmicks. What this card does is destroy cards that activate an effect after they’re already on the field. Think of an activated effect like Raiden, Hand of the Lightsworn. What this card really does is stop effects that need to be on the field to resolve like Fields spells or continuous spells. In formats with powerful field spells like Dragonic diagram. This hand trap is extremely powerful. Ghost Oger can also be used as a disruption to get potential material off your opponent's board.
Sauravis is a target negate. It has uses but it’s mostly just for a few ritual decks that have access to search it.
Gizmek Uka, the Festive Fox of Fecundity is one of the weirdest yet still decent hand traps on this list. if a monster is special summoned from the main deck you can special summon this card from your hand. Then you can summon one monster from your deck with the same attribute as one monster your opponent controls, but the monster has to have the same attack and defense. Also, Uka burns for every one of our opponent's summons.
The most notable targets for Uka’s summons from decks are the barrier statues. Pre-ban list, the best option was for water decks to punish Crystron Halqifibrax’s summon with a free barrier statue. Now I don’t know what to do with this card. But it is a powerful enough effect to note. Someone will do something with this hand trap in the future. If you figure that out, DM me.
Bad & battle phase hand traps
All that leaves are the bad and battle phase hand traps. These are hand traps that don’t do anything relevant. Like Wattkinetic Puppeteer who can change a monster’s zone. This card can make Crusadia mildly confused.
Another fun mention is Engraver of the Mark. Which lets you change any effect that would name a card to something else.
The battle phase effects all do shenanigans in the battle phase. Honestly, this whole category of cards is just super dated. Although Kuriboh is technically the first hand trap. So Yugi ran hand traps in the first anime. Checkmate casuals.
While I did say battle phase a lot of these work for effect negating damage as well. It is still not useful but it’s a distinction to note.
How to use hand traps
So we now know what every hand trap does. Now how do we use them? that’s where this handy chart comes in play. We can split cards into main deck and side deck options as well as depending on how when we can play them.
Cards like Infinite Impermanence, Maxx C and Ash Blossom can always be ran. These cards hit a majority of all decks. Ash Blossom is debatable here with recent meta trends but honestly its still not a bad call. Gamma and the other Psy-Frames kinda do need to be in the main deck as the 4 cards they would take up in the side deck are just too heavy for such a valuable resource.
It gets a little more questionable without secondary main deck options. we can’t run Nibiru if popular decks aren’t actually hurt by Nibiru. For example, what does Nibiru do against a back-row heavy format?
A full Bystial package really needs to be committed to in the main deck. but its only super strong if the meta is playing decks with a ton of light and dark monsters. like against a Tearlarment meta.
The rest of the options here are forced to the side deck for being so situational. Of course, this could change depending on the format. Where a deck or engine is so powerful it's just best to main deck an answer.
Don’t roast me too hard on this section. It’s instead a general guide and it’s meant to start helping you think about where to put these cards. some placements are a bit generous to cards, but it’s to show y’all how free-thinking you can be with hand traps