In Yugioh, ‘hand trap’ is the unofficial term for a type of card that can be activated from the hand, without first playing it to the field. The best Yugioh hand traps let you negate effects; destroy monsters, traps, and spells; cancel deck searches; and generally disrupt an opponent’s game plan, all in the blink of an eye and without any warning. Nasty!
If you’re running into the same Yugioh decks again and again with only one result, or if you play Yugioh online and want to go toe-to-toe with the best combo-heavy Yugioh Master Duel meta decks, you’re going to need some of these Yugioh hand traps in your deck. Below, you’ll find the best hand trap Yugioh cards in the meta.
Kuriboh
This little furry fiend achieves an honorary place on the list because it’s historically known as the first ever Yugioh hand trap. You can discard Kuriboh from your hand to cancel combat damage, which is good for avoiding a lethal hit. However, while we thought this Yugioh mascot was worth a mention for curiosity’s sake, Kuriboh is pretty useless in an actual Yugioh game. That’s why it’s right at the bottom of this list.
Battle Fader
Battle Fader can come in clutch and bring you back from the brink. If your board’s been wiped, and you’re facing off against a legion of angry monsters, Special Summoning Battle Fader on your opponent’s turn will end the battle phase, buying you another crucial turn. Perhaps you can use it to Tribute Summon something on the next turn to flip things around.
However, often you’re just putting off the inevitable. Stall decks have better options than Battle Fader, and there are certainly better Yugioh hand traps available.
Effect Veiler
A very simple card, Effect Veiler exists to cancel effects on monsters your opponent is running. It’s an old card that has stood the test of time, and remains a key piece of disruption Yugioh fans have to play around. Effect Monsters keep getting stronger, so having Effect Veiler in your hand ready to discard at a moment’s notice remains a powerful play. The only trouble with this Yugioh hand trap is that it’s not so good against repeatable effects, and can be a bit low impact when it’s not shutting down a game-winning combo.
You’ll rarely want to summon this card to the field, since it has zero attack or defence. It is a Tuner however, so if there’s not a good Effect Monster around to block, you can always use it for a Synchro Summon.
Droll & Lock Bird
Droll & Lock Bird is a Yugioh hand trap that can be used as soon as your opponent adds a card from their main deck to their hand. Once you discard Droll & Lock Bird, neither player may add any further cards from deck to hand for the rest of the turn. If you’re coming up against a lot of combos where players search their deck to find each and every one of the cards they need, this Yugioh hand trap can throw a spanner in the works and slow things right down.
Certainly a strong side deck card, Droll & Lock Bird shuts down some good meta decks that rely on lots of deck searching, such as Mathmech and the blue cards from Spright. However, against a lot of decks it’s fairly useless – especially those which summon from the main deck, rather than adding cards to hand.
Red Reboot
Most Yugioh hand traps are creatures, but Red Reboot is an actual Trap. Forget Malfunction, forget Remove Trap, Red Reboot is the ultimate Yugioh card for shutting down Trap card strategies. Not only does it work on the field as a counter to oppressive Trap cards, it can even be activated from the hand. And it prevents Traps being used for the rest of the turn!
True, there are some substantial drawbacks. You have to pay half your Life Points to use Red Reboot as a hand trap, and the opponent does get to Set a second Trap from their hand. But overall, Red Reboot is incredibly hard to play around or counter – except with another Red Reboot, or ditching Trap cards from your deck altogether! Unfortunately for its fans, this card flew too close to the sun, getting added to the Yugioh banlist in September 2022.
Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit
An effective hand trap against Field Spells, or other cards with continuous or repeatable effects, the worst thing about Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit is it doesn’t negate any effects. However, it does do something equally strong. When a monster, spell, or trap card activates an ability, you can discard Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit to blow it up. As well as preventing your opponent getting repeatable value out of one card, this shuts down a surprising number of one-time-use effects which depend on their card staying on the field.
Nibiru the Primal Being
Hate seeing your opponent flood the board with tons of monsters? This is the Yugioh hand trap for you. If your opponent Normal or Special Summons five or more monsters, you should get revenge and smash ’em up with this giant meteorite.
Nibiru the Primal Being lets you tribute all the face-up monsters your opponent controls and replace them with a big rock token, which has high stats but can be handily dispatched. Unless they can find some way to protect themselves from tributing, Nibiru counters pretty much every monster combo strategy.
Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring
Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring is widely considered to be the best Yugioh hand trap available. Why? The key word is flexibility. Basically all the crazy things the best Yugioh decks try to do to win the game in a couple of turns are shut down by this card. Like Droll & Lock Bird it stops a card being added to your opponent’s hand from their deck, but it also prevents summons from the deck and stops monsters being placed in the graveyard for later revival.
Source: Wargamer
