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Yu-Gi-Oh! has been going on for years and with each year a ton of new trap cards enter into the game. As the meta has evolved and the game has become faster, trap cards have become weaker due to how slow they are. However, that doesn’t mean they aren’t still strong. There are many meta decks that take advantage of trap cards for hard control strategies to shut down all of the cards your opponent tries to use. The best trap cards are ones that can do a variety of things and leave a lasting impact on the game state for as long as it’s on the battlefield, and you will find many of them in Structure Decks. These are the 13 best trap cards in Yu-Gi-Oh!
Best Trap Cards in Yu Gi Oh!
Where Are The Banned Cards?
For this list, we will only be looking at cards that are legal to play in the current Yu-Gi-Oh! format. As such, cards like Royal Oppression and Vanity’s Emptiness, while being among the best trap cards of all time, will be excluded as they are banned and unable to be used.
13. Metaverse
Field spells are often among the best kinds of spell cards in the game. There are some field spells that act as floodgates that can stop the opponent in their tracks. Metaverse is a way to get one of those field spells on the battlefield during your opponent’s turn.
There are many decks that are built around their field spells, so the consistency of having a searcher for them is fantastic even if they are on a slower trap card. The effect is so good that the spell version of a field spell searcher is limited on the current banlist. If a deck needs its field spell to function, Metaverse is a must-run trap card.
12. Macro Cosmos
If a deck needs cards to go into the graveyard, Macro Cosmos shuts down their entire strategy. The effect to special summon Helios – The Primordial Sun is almost never going to come up, and you’re only playing it for the effect that banishes cards sent to the graveyard.
In Yu-Gi-Oh!, the graveyard is essentially a second hand, so cutting off your opponent’s access to it can prevent their deck from functioning. While it affects you as well, the decks you are playing Macro Cosmos in don’t care and in some cases want their cards to be banished in the first place.
11. Trap Trick
Generic trap cards are among the hardest to search for, but luckily Trap Trick has you covered. It lets you set a trap card directly from your deck and ignores the ruling that you have to wait a turn before you use it. This lets you fetch out any trap card from your deck to fit in with a specific game state to cut off whatever your opponent is trying to do.
Notably, Trap Trick only applies to normal trap cards, meaning you cannot set counter or continuous traps from the deck with Trap Trick’s effect. You also have to have two of the same trap cards in the deck in order to use the effect. Despite these restrictions, Trap Trick remains the best trap card searcher in Yu-Gi-Oh!
10. Lost Wind
Trap cards you can use more than once are rather rare, so Lost Wind is special in that regard. It permanently negates the effects of any special summoned monster and can re-set itself if your opponent special summons from the Extra Deck. In modern Yu-Gi-Oh!, special summoning is something almost every deck is doing, and monster effects are important pieces to just about every strategy in the game.
Lost Wind is so strong because of how much it does on its own. As if the effect negation wasn’t already great, it also halves the attack of whatever it negated, which in the cases of boss monsters can become relevant as giant attack stats can become pitiful with just the flip of Lost Wind.
9. Ice Dragon’s Prison
Effects that get around protection are fantastic and what makes Ice Dragon’s Prison so good. It lets you special summon a monster from your opponent’s graveyard to then have the option to banish two monsters, one from each field with the same type. Most Yu-Gi-Oh! archetypes have the same monster types, allowing you to get rid of a card from your opponent’s graveyard so it can’t be recycled and a card on the field.
The strength of Ice Dragon’s Prison is that it does not target for the banish effect. This means if your opponent wants to respond, they have to respond to the targeting of the monster in the graveyard. If they don’t, Ice Dragon’s Prison will fully resolve so the monster it banishes cannot be saved. Since it banishes, protection from destruction doesn’t save it and since it doesn’t target protection from that won’t help it either.
8. Dimension Barrier
Dimensional Barrier is a way to shut down the special summoning of a specific card type. It prevents all monsters that can appear in the Extra Deck (sans link monsters) and Ritual monsters. While this effect only lasts for the turn, if you know what deck your opponent is playing you can prevent it from functioning by shutting off its ability to summon any of their boss monsters.
This prevention is strong on its own, but as a bonus, all monsters of that type lose their effects. If you’re playing an Xyz-focused deck and your opponent is on a Synchro one, you can shut them down while keeping your monsters’ effects able to be activated.
7. Summon Limit
Summon Limit is one of the best floodgates in all of Yu-Gi-Oh! It prevents any more than two summons from happening a turn. While this does affect you, you can combo off and set your field up with monsters to then flip this on your opponent’s turn so they only have two summons to work with as long as Summon Limit is on the field.
If you negate a summon with a card like Solemn Judgment, this counts as an attempted summon so you can give your opponent even fewer monsters to work with. If you’re playing a deck that doesn’t need to summon many monsters like most Trap-based decks, Summon Limit will hardly affect you while drastically slowing your opponent down.
6. Skill Drain
Skill Drain is a way to shut off all the monster effects on the field. The effects can be activated, so if they have a cost that may want to be paid, they can still attempt to activate (but will negate the effects right after). It does cost 1000 life points to activate, but this is a small amount to pay for such a powerful effect.
Decks running Skill Drain rarely have to worry about their effects being negated (and in some cases want them to be). The most common backrow removal cards are attached to monsters like Knightmare Phoenix, so Skill Drain has this built-in protection that requires your opponent to have a spell or trap card that can remove it.
5. There Can Be Only One
If your deck is playing a lot of different creature types, There Can Be Only One should be included in your decklist. It makes it so each player can only control one type of monster. Most archetypes have monsters that share the same type, so this prevents almost any summoning unless your opponent is also on an archetype with a variety of monsters.
Rulings With Floodgates:
When a floodgate is preventing more than one specific kind of monster from being on the field like There Can Be Only One, it also prevents you from attempting to summon a monster of the same type. This means if you have a machine type monster on the field, you cannot attempt to summon a machine type link monster with that monster on the field even though they will never be on the field at the same time.
There Can Be Only One is the best floodgate trap card in Yu-Gi-Oh! With how commonly it prevents your opponent from playing the game. Most top decks can do little about it unless they have a way to easily remove it.
4. Eradicator Epidemic Virus
Eradicator Epidemic Virus has a very low floor with a very high ceiling. At the cost of tributing a dark monster, you can force your opponent to discard all spell or trap cards in their hand and any they draw for three straight turns. It will also destroy all cards of the declared type so it can get rid of any potential problem backrow cards.
While Eradicator Epidemic Virus does nothing against creature-heavy decks, in decks that play a lot of spell and trap cards this can be backbreaking. There have been recorded instances of Eradicator Epidemic Virus forcing an opponent to discard their entire hand, something that is almost impossible for any deck to come back from.
3. Solemn Judgment
Solemn Judgment is the ultimate card that lets you say “no” to anything your opponent is trying to do. At the cost of half your life points, it negates a summon or the activation of a spell or trap card. While this is a steep cost, it is always worth it as it can cut your opponent off from their game-winning card.
Since Solemn Judgment costs half your life points to use, you can always activate it no matter how low your life points are unlike other, similar Solemn counter trap cards. Since Solemn Judgment is a counter trap, only other counter traps can respond to it making negating it much harder to do.
2. Evenly Matched
The best trap cards are ones that can be activated from your hand, something Evenly Matched can do so long as you control no other cards. When you activate Evenly Matched, if it isn’t negated it’s not uncommon to win the game off of it resolving. It banishes all cards your opponent controls except one face-down which is the most permanent zone that’s almost impossible to get cards back from.
Evenly Matched is almost never going to be used traditionally and always going to be used from your hand. If you pair it with the spell card Dark Ruler No More, this prevents your opponent from using monster effects to then ensure you can use Evenly Matched without worry unless there are set spell and trap cards.
1. Infinite Impermanence
Infinite Impermanence is one of the best negates in all of Yu-Gi-Oh! It negates the effects of any face-up monster until the end of the turn. If you don’t have any cards on the field, you can use it directly from the hand. Since Infinite Impermanence is a trap card you can do this on both your turn and the opponent’s despite it never being set. It is also great at baiting negates out before you start to go for your main combos.
While you’re generally using Infinite Impermanence from the hand, it’s just as strong when it’s set. It shuts down all spell and trap cards being activated in the same column that Infinite Impermanence was used in. So if you’re opponent is being careful with where they are activating their backrow cards, you can even snipe some more negates out of Infinite Impermanence’s activation.
That’s the 13 best trap cards available in Yu-Gi-Oh! Despite how quick the game has become, many trap cards still find homes in many meta decks, with some like Infinite Impermanence being played in practically every deck and others like Skill Drain and Macro Cosmos being amazing in more niche strategies. Regardless, these trap cards are staples in the format and you should always be prepared to face them at any point. Some see play in the side deck as counters to popular strategies and when you know you’re able to go first. Even then, some trap cards are so strong that they’re worth running even if they might be a brick in your hand if you draw them going second.
