Usually, a Yu-Gi-Oh! deck has a roughly even mix of monster and non-monster cards. As a general rule, it’s a good idea to stick tightly to the 40 card minimum and run a rough balance between monsters and spell and trap cards. Occasionally, an experienced player may build a deck with as few as fourteen or fifteen monsters, depending on the theme of the deck, the metagame the deck is competing in, and the player’s skill level, but that’s the exception and not the rule.

Ric K. likes to take the concept of deck imbalance to major extremes, and here’s what he had to say.

I got the idea for this deck from a guy I met at the Mall Tour. He had a similar all-trap deck, but it had a lot of weaknesses. I built my deck to correct those problems. I’ve won a lot of games with this deck, believe it or not. Many players criticize me, saying, “Oh, when I get Jinzo out, you’re toast”. The looks on my opponents’ faces are priceless when they realize that they can’t play any cards! I was wondering if you had any suggestions for this deck.

Thanks!

Ric K.

I think I know the duelist Ric got his inspiration from—I had his decklist and meant to cover it in an Apotheosis column ages ago, but the list was unfortunately lost in my luggage. I haven’t seen many all-trap decks. There was an all-trap deck at the Columbus Shonen Jump Championship, and I’ve seen a few since the end of the Mall Tour, but I can probably count the number of all-trap decks I’ve seen on the fingers of one hand. With all the traveling I’ve done, this deck must be unique.

Here’s Ric’s build.

Ric’s All-Trap Deck

40 cards

Traps: 40
3 Ojama Trio
3 Spatial Collapse
3 Nightmare Wheel
2 Jar of Greed
1 Ring of Destruction
3 Secret Barrel
3 Solemn Judgment
3 Fake Trap
2 Sakuretsu Armor
3 Just Desserts
2 Dust Tornado
3 Bottomless Trap Hole
2 Compulsory Evacuation Device
2 Skill Drain
3 Waboku
2 Gravity Bind

Side Deck: 15
3 Torrential Tribute
3 Judgment of Anubis
2 Curse of Darkness
2 Magic Drain
2 Mask of Restrict
1 Dust Tornado
1 Tower of Babel
1 Jar of Greed

Ric’s deck looks pretty good! There are some tweaks that I can make so it’ll run a bit better, and we need to drop two copies of Torrential Tribute from the side deck to make the deck legal for the Advanced format. Overall, the deck looks solid and well thought out.

Essentially, Ric’s deck looks to wrestle an opponent into a hard lock—an inescapable field position in which an opponent can’t do anything for the rest of the game. Once the lock is set up, Ric is free to use direct-damage effects to claim the win. These same effects are used to control an opponent, keep up the pressure, and limit choices as Ric progresses towards the lock.

How does the lock work? It’s dependent on Spatial Collapse. If you can activate it and fill an opponent’s side of the field with five useless cards, or turn an opponent’s useful cards in play into useless ones, then the lock is in place, and you can take your time doing whatever you want. Naturally, the deck has a lot of cards that help you meet this goal. Nightmare Wheel nullifies one of an opponent’s monsters on the field, Gravity Bind can suppress several potential threats at once, and Ojama Trio fills three of the five spaces that you’re trying to occupy.

Beyond that, the plays an opponent makes can often lock him or her up. Your opponent can’t activate Sakuretsu Armor or Magic Cylinder if you don’t attack. Similarly, Magic Drain and Magic Jammer can’t be activated if you don’t use spells, and field spell cards won’t leave the field if you don’t remove them. The deck is very clever, and even though this lock strategy isn’t often attempted in an all-trap build, the idea does see play.

I think the deck can be improved upon a little. Because of the threat that Jinzo can pose for this deck, I do think it’s worth running another copy of Skill Drain. You’re never going to groan at seeing a copy of Skill Drain in your opening hand, and adding a third one to the deck only gives you about a one-in-twenty chance of seeing two copies in your first six cards. That’s definitely a risk you can afford to take when compared to the alternative. Virtually every monster seeing Constructed play right now has an important effect, so Skill Drain is going to be a great card in most matchups. Just watch out for Fusilier Dragon, the Dual-Mode Beast—it’s seeing a great deal of play in some metagames, so if it’s big in your area, make sure to play cautiously or you might find yourself being attacked by a 2800 ATK behemoth!

On that note, I also want to add a third copy of Sakuretsu Armor. To me, this one seems like a no-brainer, because Sakuretsu Armor is arguably the best defensive card in the Advanced format. Unlike Waboku and Hallowed Life Barrier, playing the Armor gives you a one-for-one trade in cards. Sakuretsu Armor is an invaluable opening play, so it’s important to run three copies in this deck.

I’m also going to recommend adding a copy of Ceasefire. Ceasefire fits into the deck’s strategy nicely, allowing for direct damage based on the opponent’s monster count. It often won’t do as much damage as Just Desserts will, but Ceasefire can negate the flip effects that a Lockdown Burn player might start churning out to defeat this deck. While the deck runs a lot of protection from attacks, it isn’t maindecked very well against Burn. There isn’t room for Barrel Behind the Door in the side deck, but we need to have at least a bit of Burn tech available. Ceasefire fits that role nicely while still being useful in other matchups.

Finally, I want to add a third copy of Gravity Bind. While Ojama Trio might be the celebrated star of Spatial Collapse Lockdown variants, it’s important to remember how effective Gravity Bind is. If you reach the mid-game and haven’t drawn into enough disruption, Gravity Bind is the only card that can save you from losing. The fact that Gravity Bind can also drive you close to a win at the same time is remarkably convenient, so for these reasons, I think it’s worth running three copies.

Now, we need to make some space. I’m going to start by removing both copies of Dust Tornado. Try as I might, I can’t think of many significant spells or traps I’d want to clear from an opponent’s side of the field. It seems like Dust Tornado is a relatively low-utility card in this particular instance, and though the trap might be side-deck worthy, I’m only going to leave the single copy that’s already there.

Next, despite how badly trap removal could hurt this deck, I’m going to remove one copy of Fake Trap. The deck doesn’t need it to win, and even though Heavy Storm could seriously hurt the deck, the spell is only one card out of many in an opponent’s repertoire. Ric is already packing three copies of Solemn Judgment, and because we have so many monster-management options, I don’t think Solemn Judgment will often be used to prevent summons (barring the summoning of Jinzo). It’s safe to run only two copies of Fake Trap instead of three.

We need to drop one more card to keep the deck running at 40 cards, so I’ll make the obvious drop of one copy of Jar of Greed. The rest of the deck is solid, and when in doubt, it’s always a good policy to drop unnecessary deck-thinning cards.

Here’s the list of changes that I made.

Main Deck

+1 Skill Drain

+1 Sakuretsu Armor

+1 Ceasefire

+1 Gravity Bind

-2 Dust Tornado

-1 Fake Trap

-1 Jar of Greed

Side Deck

-2 Torrential Tribute

+1 Curse of Darkness

+1 Magic Drain

Here’s the final decklist.

Ric’s All-Trap Deck: Jason’s Fix

40 cards

Traps: 40
3 Ojama Trio
3 Spatial Collapse
3 Nightmare Wheel
1 Jar of Greed
1 Ring of Destruction
3 Secret Barrel
3 Solemn Judgment
2 Fake Trap
3 Sakuretsu Armor
3 Just Desserts
3 Bottomless Trap Hole
2 Compulsory Evacuation Device
3 Skill Drain
3 Waboku
3 Gravity Bind

1 Ceasefire

Side Deck: 15
1 Torrential Tribute
3 Judgment of Anubis
3 Curse of Darkness
3 Magic Drain
2 Mask of Restrict
1 Dust Tornado
1 Tower of Babel
1 Jar of Greed

The deck plays with varying degrees of success depending on how it draws, but the goal is always to disrupt your opponent and work him or her into the Spatial Collapse lock. However, you don’t necessarily have to get the lock to claim a win. You’ll often be able to Gravity Bind an opponent, watch his or her field fill up to five monsters, and then Just Desserts your opponent to death. The important thing to remember is that you always need to keep the pressure going. Though the deck can be considered reactive, it’s going to do better if you play it proactively. After all, it’s always better for an opponent to react to your strategy rather than focusing on strengthening his or her own.

Overall, this is probably the most solid all-trap deck I’ve seen even before the fix. If you’ve been looking at trying an all-purple deck, this one is a great place to start. Thanks for sending it in, Ric!

-Jason Grabher-Meyer

Questions? Comments? Want to submit your deck for consideration in a future Apotheosis column? Email me at Jason@metagame.com