It’s no secret that the current Advanced format has been blazingly fast since it began back in March. The first speedy decks we got a glimpse of were the revised Diamond Dude Turbo and Bazoo-Trooper decks. This continued onward to include the Demise, King of Armageddon OTK, and has led to revisions in Monarch variants that allow them to remain controlling and reactive while also offering speedy aggression. The decks that can explode out of the gates with the best methods of bringing their opponents to 0 life points are the top picks right now.
As such, since the format is based on a group of decks that can end games in the first three or four turns, players are using cards that typically work best when found in the opening hand. Confiscation is still among the best turn 1 plays, and Trap Dustshoot has gained a huge following for its ability to stop a Destiny Hero deck dead in its tracks. This has been an important way to gain an edge in Destiny Hero beatdown mirror matches, since Trap Dustshoot takes away the speed of the opposing Destiny deck while the player using it can go off in a flurry of Destiny Draw cards and special summons of Destiny Hero - Malicious (followed up by Metamorphosis) to set up a field that is extremely difficult to disrupt.
One card in particular has seen play in certain decks that just need to get through the first few turns to set up a combo-oriented finish. Threatening Roar has been an underrated card since its release. This trap’s effect seems very similar to the long-recognized Waboku, but it can have a totally different impact on a duel. While Waboku allowed attacks to take place and could allow face-down monsters to flip face up for the purpose of Smashing Ground, Threatening Roar can eliminate the battle phase entirely. Your opponent can’t even declare a single attack.
The release of Threatening Roar came at a bad time for the underused trap card. Around the time of its release, the decks to beat in the Advanced format were slower control strategies based on gumming up the field with Sheep tokens and using Tsukuyomi with Thousand-Eyes Restrict and flip-effect monsters to draw an unfair amount of cards. The last thing that players cared about was negating one battle phase, since very little battling ever took place.
However, when cards became Limited and the Advanced format changed, so did the game. Yu-Gi-Oh! became less about drawing tons of cards and more about how to make effective use of your turn. Tempo became one of the defining factors of the game, and players worked to put more pressure on their opponents. In reality, not much has changed at the core of the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG since the Goat control format passed on. Only the decks have.
The first big break for Threatening Roar was the release of Cyberdark Impact back in late 2006, when the Chain Strike burn deck made its big debut at Shonen Jump Championship San Jose. It was the first example of a strategy that tried to set up a combo turn with no regard for the state of the field, meaning the Chain Strike burn duelist would often take too much damage from monster attacks. That made Threatening Roar very useful: it gave Chain Strike burn enough time to draw into its final few hundred points of burn damage.
The second, and probably more recognized, major use of Threatening Roar was in Kris Perovic’s revisions to Diamond Dude Turbo for the current Advanced format. When Elemental Hero Stratos was released and could be played at three copies per deck, DDT became so fast that it could knock opponents out in the first or second turn. The combo deck had so much speed through multiple copies of Stratos, Reasoning, and Monster Gate that it could typically filter through the entire deck in the first three turns in order to set up a win based around Dimension Fusion. However, when Stratos went to one copy per deck, Kris had to find a way to buy extra time. Threatening Roar did this for him very easily, since it not only got him into turn 3 and 4 (where he can do a lot of tricky card-filtering and win off of Dimension Fusion), but was also incredible against other decks that had similar plans.
Imagine playing against a deck like DDT, Demise OTK, or even Destiny Hero beatdown. These decks typically come out of nowhere with their wins after sculpting the perfect hand with a truckload of card cycling, deck searching, and card drawing. You have a Threatening Roar face down. DDT attempts to go through its massive card cycling turn in order to find and play the lethal Dimension Fusion. That player goes for a Monster Gate in hopes of finding a Jinzo, and you chain Threatening Roar. Just like that, your opponent’s turn is useless. Anything he or she does now can be dealt with during your next turn. The opponent’s game plan goes on hold for a turn, and that player has exposed him- or herself by wasting a few cards and putting liabilities on the field that you can take advantage of. Playing against Demise OTK and Destiny Hero beatdown can achieve the same sort of result; when the opponent leads with a Heavy Storm or Giant Trunade, you chain Threatening Roar, and then he or she passes the turn in frustration.
For a more visual example, picture a cartoon character walking merrily down the street of a city. Then he slips on a banana peel that was randomly in his way, flips and falls on his butt, and a few silly sound effects add to his embarrassment. Speed decks like Demise OTK and Destiny Hero beatdown are like the cartoon guy. Threatening Roar is the banana peel. It’s annoying, it gets in the way, and while it doesn’t destroy speed decks on its own, it does seriously trip them up. Usually, disrupting a speed deck in the middle of its big finish will be enough to turn a little stumble into a full-bore disaster, as a well timed Threatening Roar can mitigate the expenditure of important cards. The monsters placed on the field need to survive to the next battle phase, and your opponent is left wide open to your monster removal or game-winning combo.
Even newer decks just now appearing have the same issues with Threatening Roar. The aggressive Machine deck that made a big splash in the Top 8 of the Canadian National Championships is also bent on speed. The difference is that its monster lineup (with the exception of Card Trooper and Machine Duplication shenanigans) is meant solely to counter one of the big monkey wrenches in a speed deck’s plans: Sakuretsu Armor. Cyber Phoenix with Cyber Dragon rolls over that hindrance with ease, but Cyber Phoenix does absolutely nothing against a Threatening Roar. That fact can change what was supposed to be a big damaging turn for your opponent into an unexpected opening for your Brain Control / Monarch play, or a similar high-impact move.
Threatening Roar remains an underrated card today, despite seeing considerable play with good results from DDT decks piloted by Kris Perovic and Marc Glass. It’s still a solid option in the current format, and can be that one piece of tech that turns a Destiny Hero Monarch/beatdown or Machine aggro mirror match into a matchup that is heavily in your favor.