Today, though, I find myself writing about a card that has neither of those assets. So I want to write another “rule” for evaluating single cards: if a card is low on utility and has next to no potential synergy, it’s either horrible or amazing. In the current North American metagame, Forced Back is the latter.

“Did You See That!?”

Forced Back has just a handful of uses in the current format, but the one that’s gotten it so much attention lately is its ability to negate the summoning of Light and Darkness Dragon. If you read the coverage from Shonen Jump Championship San Mateo you know what I’m talking about—if not, check out the Round 6 feature match that took place between Jesus Rico and Trent Kittle.

If you don’t have the time to read the entire match yourself, let me give you a rundown. Both duelists were playing Light and Darkness Dragon variants. Kittle made a big slipup in the first duel, playing cards in the wrong order when he had exactly what he needed to eliminate Rico’s Light and Darkness Dragon. A simple chaining error cost Kittle dearly, losing him the first game.

He fought back moments later in game 2. Aggressive play led Kittle to smash face with a pair of Cyber Dragon cards, and on the turn that followed, Rico pulled the move we’re all learning to dread: he special summoned Treeborn Frog, removed Destiny Hero - Malicious from his graveyard to bring out another, and summoned Light and Darkness Dragon. However, when Kittle responded with Forced Back, there was nothing Rico could do—he’d inadvertently cleared his own field, and Kittle attacked for game next turn! With that momentum behind him, Kittle won game 3 as well, making it to the Top 16 three rounds later.

When that Forced Back flipped, it was like watching a man getting punched in the back. Rico’s entire game busted open with a sickening crack, and he never seemed to recover. That’s what Forced Back does: it blows away the most feared card in this format.

Why It’s So Good

There are a lot of combos and plays that can stop Light and Darkness Dragon, but very few of them are one-card answers. Skill Drain can shut it down, but that requires a very specialized deck: you don’t want to negate your own effects. Solemn Judgment is another one-card option since it can negate the Dragon’s summon too, but where Solemn would destroy the Dragon and give it its graveyard effect, Forced Back ships it to its controller’s hand. That leaves your opponent without the two monsters he or she tributed and usually sticks him or her with a bare field that you can immediately exploit.

In a world of complicated answers, Forced Back is simple and easy. There’s no fancy chaining or combos required, no brutally specific timing requirements, and no discard cost. You flip it when the opponent thinks he or she is about to summon Light and Darkness Dragon, and it does its thing.

In addition, while anyone playing Forced Back outside of a Counter Fairy deck is likely playing it just to beat Light and Darkness Dragon, it does have a little more utility than meets the eye. One trend that wasn’t really represented in the Top 16 of San Mateo was a rise of trap counts in the average deck. While the Day 2 field was all over the place when it came to the number of traps being played, Day 1 saw plenty of decks with ten, twelve, or more trap cards. That makes Jinzo a threat, and Forced Back is one of the few traps the android just can’t deal with—his continuous effect never turns on if he’s technically never summoned.

Moving along, stopping Monarchs before their effects can activate or bouncing Dark Magician of Chaos before he can retrieve whatever spell made him worth tributing for will usually bring your opponent’s turn to a screeching halt. When someone plays a monster of that caliber and makes an investment by tributing, that player’s immediate game plan usually depends on that monster’s effect. When Forced Back negates the summon of a tribute monster, its own loss will be balanced by the monster tributed too, so it isn’t as costly and aggressive as it may first appear. In the case of the Monarchs and Magician of Chaos, you’re actually trading Forced Back for the card that would have been gained or lost due to that monster’s effect.

Terrorizing Tiny Town

Don’t get me wrong—there’s plenty of reasons to use Forced Back on smaller monsters too, and while most people don’t acknowledge it, tributes aren’t the only valid target for this card’s effect. Flip-effect monsters like Old Vindictive Magician and Magician of Faith can’t claim their effects if they were never actually flip summoned. Gravekeeper’s Spy? Forced Back will send her to your opponent’s hand and deny her the special summoning of her twin.

Even just stopping the normal summon of a lower-level monster can be worthwhile for a number of reasons. Defending your field from Snipe Hunter is totally worth it if all you need is one more turn to win. Activating Forced Back to negate the summon of Breaker the Magical Warrior can keep important strategic cards like Macro Cosmos or Level Limit - Area B intact. Keep one Gadget from turning into two, hold off Zombie Master craziness in a pinch, or stymie a suicidal recruiter: Forced Back stops a lot of strategically dangerous monsters.

Alternatively, just keeping your opponent off the field has a higher inherent value today than it did eight weeks ago. Sure, it was always great to clear the field and have a better chance at smashing your opponent’s life points, but with Light and Darkness Dragon comprising so much of the competitive field these days, the problems you create by keeping your opponent from gathering tribute fodder give you an additional advantage. While Forced Back used to be a tool of aggression, it can now fill that role and create dead cards in your opponent’s hand. You don’t need to wait around for Light and Darkness Dragon to try and hit the field—keep the pressure on your opponent and you can bounce the normal summoned tribute fodder instead, giving you more space to attack and build momentum.

I was shocked (and yet not surprised) to find that very few duelists played Forced Back at San Mateo. This card’s been haunted by the same stigma that smothered The Transmigration Prophecy—the general outcry of, “It can’t gain you card advantage!” and, “You lose a card to play it!” Players who believe this usually ignore how often those fears are invalid anyway, since (barring Treeborn Frog) tributing usually costs a monster.

I think another reason Forced Back didn’t see as much play as it could have was simply because people thought they could handle the Light and Darkness Dragon matchup. A lot of competitors believed they had main deck strategies that could beat the Dragon, and while that’s an admirable goal when building your deck, very few players actually accomplished it. Playing Forced Back against a Light and Darkness Dragon player is like taking a car to a donkey race: it’s practically cheating, and I’m hard pressed to think of a deck that shouldn’t be siding at least two copies.

It’s not often that a single card can completely wreck the number one competitive deck, and refusing to take advantage of that rare situation seems questionable. If you don’t have a 90% win ratio against Light and Darkness Dragon (and you don’t), side Forced Back and watch your win percentage skyrocket in this format’s hardest matchup.

See you next week!

—Jason Grabher-Meyer

Have a favorite card you’d like to tell me about? Drop me an e-mail at JDGMetagame@gmail.com. I want to hear all about it!