Utility Traps

There are 2 general types of traps:

The traps that specifically support an archetype, and traps that, by design, can fit in any deck.

Traps that support archetypes are their own individual discussion.

But cards that fit in any deck, this is where the real discussion is.


Take a look at your favorite deck.
Go on, pull it out.

Its trap line up probally contains some combination of the following general use cards:

Solemn Judgement
Compulsary Evacuation Device
Bottomless Trap Hole
Call of the Haunted
Torrential Tribute
Magic Cylinder
Mirror Force
Dust TornadoRoyal Decree
Raigeki Break
Sakuretsu Armor(In the past, no longer)
 Royal Oppression(Banned)








Dimension Prison
Pheonix Wing Wind Blast

Solemn Warning
Fiendish Chain
Trap Stun
Starlight Road

You may be thinking why I divided up the general use traps into these 3 categories.
Well, it was supposed to be 4 categories.

Well, its when they first came out, the season in which they first came out.
The first category is during the first anime, the second with GX, and 3rd is 5Ds.

Notice something about the 4 categories?
Thats right, The first list of traps that the majority of decks is entirely from the oldEST generation.

Unlike spells, when the regular lineup changes almost every season with quite a few additions, the traps have next to no change.
In fact, Dimension Prison and PWWB are complete upgrades of old cards, so if they were never released, we would all still be running Sakuretsu armor and Raigeki break to this day.

After the first season, there are a grand total of VERY FEW additions to the large category of "Regulars" for the trap lineup.

Why is this so?

Well, for starters, spells represent progressing your own game plan, while traps represent something to fall back on.

And, as such, people are unwilling to let that be changed.

Thus, instead of picking different cards, people go back to the same cards and tricks over and over again, instead of looking to different potential choices.

Every set, I can identify a few, not many, traps that were designed to potentially fit into this slot, but unfortunately, not all of them make it.

Cards like Safe Zone, Claymore Dud come to mind.
more recently, Magic Deflecter and Dimension Slice, Attention, etc.



As you can clearly see, there are other choices in the game.
In fact, in examples such as Safe Zone and Claymore Dud, from the 3rd Generation, they serve a dual purpose of both removal as well as preserving your monsters.
On the other hand, the newer generation 4 cards tend to be single use and less flexible, but also less reliant on specific conditions to be either effect as the first 2 were.