I don’t think I’m going too far when I say that Demise, King of Armageddon OTK is one of the most feared decks in the Advanced format right now. The existence of Demise OTK has caused the format to evolve around it, and the deck has set the standard for what’s good enough to see tournament play in the Advanced format. If your deck takes more than three turns to set up a solid draw engine or to stabilize your field, then it’s probably too slow to see serious play. After all, Demise OTK can win on turn 2 and not care about what you’re running. The same goes for Diamond Dude Turbo, which might have lost two copies of Magical Stone Excavation, but can still be incredibly explosive in the hands of a skilled player.

It was because of this mindset (and knowledge of Demise OTK), along with its previous victory in the hands of Michael Songloke at Shonen Jump Championship Anaheim, that many players started running main-deck tech in order to improve their matchups against the combo decks of the format. Players started running multiple copies of Pulling the Rug in their main decks, which not only stopped Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands and other Ritual search monsters in their tracks, but also had the bonus of being extremely good against Monarchs, Gadgets, and Elemental Hero Stratos.

One of the other popular tech choices for dealing with Demise OTK was a long-running favorite. Trap Dustshoot is not only one of Jae Kim’s favorite trap cards, but also one of the best and most powerful ways to disrupt the dreaded Ritual summoning of Demise, King of Armageddon.

Trap Dustshoot is a normal trap card, so it can be activated at any time you’d use a spell speed 2 card and as long as your opponent has four or more cards in hand. This activation requirement does not mean that the opponent has to have four cards or more in his or her hand when your trap resolves. The effect is a powerful hand disruptor, allowing you to shuffle a monster in your opponent’s hand back into his or her deck. This effect is very reminiscent of the long-Forbidden card The Forceful Sentry, which could shuffle anything back into an opponent’s deck from his or her hand. However, a copy of The Forceful Sentry, with restrictions at spell speed 2, is still a good method of hand control.

Trap Dustshoot has been an old favorite for some duelists for quite a while as a side-deck strategy. Jae Kim made the card (along with Mind Crush) famous in North America back in 2005, when he’d bring in multiple copies of Trap Dustshoot and Mind Crush against slower decks as a way of setting their game plans back while Jae continued to attack through their monsters. This was, at the time, an unexpected side-decking strategy, and in the Goat control format, it could seriously disrupt a number of different decks by completely dismantling their multiple card control combinations. Trap Dustshoot also shared excellent synergy with Mind Crush, since it allowed Jae to force some of the most powerful spell cards in the format to be discarded, while Trap Dustshoot quite often shuffled back Magician of Faith or Tsukuyomi.

In today’s format, the decks are a lot faster. However, Demise OTK relies heavily on assembling a hand that allows the deck to win after Demise, King of Armageddon clears the field of everything. This is where Trap Dustshoot can come in handy. If a Demise player attempts to go off with Advanced Ritual Art before clearing your spell and trap zone, you can respond to the Ritual spell with Trap Dustshoot, shuffling the opponent’s copy of Demise, King of Armageddon back into his or her deck. If the opponent doesn’t have a Ritual monster to summon when Advanced Ritual Art resolves, the Ritual spell will resolve with no effect. One of the only ways the Demise player can get around this is by lowering his or her hand size below four cards, but this goes against the deck’s strategy. Not only is the Demise player’s deck good at keeping five or more cards in hand (due to monsters like Sonic Bird and Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands), but if the opponent set any spare Megamorph cards or Metamorphosis spells, then he or she will be forced to blow them up with Demise! Trap Dustshoot will almost always keep the Demise player from winning the turn it resolves.

Trap Dustshoot is also very powerful against any Monarch variant. One of the strongest cards for a Monarch-based deck is Treeborn Frog, despite its small size. If your opponent relies on Sangan to bring his or her Frog online, then you can take the initiative by shuffling it back into the opponent’s deck before it causes too much trouble. Trap Dustshoot can also simply shuffle a Monarch away if the opponent has a specific Monarch you don’t want to deal with at a particular time, such as Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch or the new and brutal Raiza the Storm Monarch. This strategy can also be carried over against Destiny Monarchs, where disrupting the opponent’s Destiny Draw fodder and removing his or her discard outlets for Destiny Hero - Malicious can be the key to stealing those first few turns of action away from the Monarch player.

This strategy appeared in Jeff Jones’ Big City Elemental Hero deck at SJC Philly as well. Not only did Jones main-deck a full complement of Trap Dustshoot, but he supplemented them with a copy of Mind Crush and three copies of Pulling the Rug too! If the opponent was trying to summon a Monarch or go off with Demise, then there was a good chance that the opponent would never be able to do what he or she wanted to against Jeff’s card-searching, hand-refilling, combo-disrupting, anti-metagame strategy. Trap Dustshoot played a very valuable role in that deck not only by disrupting combo players and Monarch decks, but also by making sure that Jeff’s Elemental Hero Ocean monsters wouldn’t be trampled. The tactic allowed Ocean’s effect to trigger at least once unless the opponent wanted to waste a Smashing Ground on him (which would really be better saved for Elemental Hero Wildheart anyway).

Trap Dustshoot also saw main-deck play in Paul Levitin’s and Philip Anthony’s Monarch decks, where it was used primarily for its combo disruption. This was especially important for their specific Monarch builds, since Dustshoot would typically keep them alive during the first few turns of a duel until their Monarchs could come online and start to work over anything the opponent might try to muster.

Trap Dustshoot is an oldie, and it’s still good at what it does. It’s among the best tech cards you can use against the Demise OTK and DDT decks, and you’ll rarely have times when you can’t activate the card against those decks. In fact, most decks in the current format tend to maintain a big hand size, making it very easy for you to activate this hand-disrupting trap card. Expect to see it at the U.S. National Championships, because nobody is going to want to lose to a game-winning Ritual monster at a tournament like that!