Blankets are for the Cold

Earlier this week, while reading posts on Duelistgroundz and a local Facebook ygo group, it became apparent that a number of players still believe that blanket effects are not bad for the game.  A blanket effect is something that manages to stop the majority or all of your opponent’s card effects from having a relevance to the current gamestate.  In short, your opponent cannot play yugioh.  The latest format marks the second format in a row where the most common blanket spell/traps have been limited to one, these cards being Dimensional Fissure, Macro Cosmos, and Soul Drain.  While I can admit, there are formats that I cannot even imagine going through without Macro Cosmos at three, namely the Wind-Ups/Inzektors/Dragons format for one, I realize that with the advent of more and more blanket spell/traps the more the metagame is able to overdose on them. 

Generally, the decks that play blanket cards are able to sustain themselves by not hindering their own plays due to the use of the card.  Hindering their own plays would simply defeat the purpose of playing the card in the first place.  When blanket spells were ran in threes in some sideboards, competing decks that were wrecked by these cards would typically side so that they played five or more ways to get rid of the problem.  Typically, I would play three Mystical Space Typhoon and two Dust Tornado to combat against them.  With the recent lists however, many decks have cut back on the amount of singular removal they have been playing simply due to less cards being out there.  While this is a solid argument, I believe it to be one that may be flawed.

Granted, nobody wants to have a hand full of removal when your opponent is dropping an aggressive board or did not happen to even draw into their outs.  For instance, drawing multiple Space Typhoons early game in Mermails is often incredibly frustrating, depending on the rest of the hand of course.  Nothing is more frustrating though, than your opponent having a card that shuts down the entirety of your plays and you having little to no way of fighting back against it unless you draw your out.  This past weekend at ARGCS Las Vegas, six Mermail decks made the top cut.  Of those six Mermail decks, four played five spell/trap outs to face-up backrow and the last two played seven outs.  Many of the decks maindecking three of them in the form of Mystical Space Typhoons. 

My personal theory behind this is because multiple decks play different forms of outs now besides just the standard Dimensional Fissure, Macro Cosmos, and Soul Drain that we had grown so accustom to.  While these are clearly still prevalent and remain humungous threats if left on the board for too long, others such as Skill Drain, Mistake, Kasier Colosseum, Vanity’s Emptiness, and more remain relevant and at three.  Thus, the successful players from this past weekend ensured themselves constantly and consistently having an out to these cards by playing a large number of cards that got rid of them.  In turn, by playing a larger number of cards that get rid of these outs, the opponent has to draw more of their outs, but also outdraw your backrow hate all at the same time.  This ultimately makes those frustrating times when the opponent has the out and you cannot draw a Typhoon, Twister, Dust Tornado, or backrow removal of some kind, few and far between. 

Speaking of Twister, this is another card that has received a lot of attention recently.  Twister has received attention due to the fact that you can just “draw it and play it”.  Everything that you will ever want to usually use a Mystical Space Typhoon or a Dust Torando on, is usually face-up.  For instance, Tenki, Fiendish Chain, Macro Cosmos, Dimensional Fissure, Soul Drain, Kaiser Colosseum, and Vanity’s Emptiness, just to name a few.  Sometimes having that card a turn earlier, has the potential to win you the game, especially in a deck like Mermails where pesky blankets prevent them from doing anything.  Not surprisingly, two out of the six Mermail decks in Las Vegas played at least two copies of Twister.  Another two opted on two copies of Dust Tornado among their spell/trap removal.  In short, regardless of the limitation of the most powerful blanket spell and traps, new ones arose to take their place in the spotlight and thus we must side accordingly.

I expect something very similar to happen next format with Light-Imprisoning Mirror.  Both Light-Imprisoning and Shadow-Imprisoning have formats where they shine especially bright.  Next format, will be no exception.  While Light-Imprisoning is a solid side deck card at the moment, against both Bujins and Hieratics, it will no doubt become more significant next format, when the highly anticipated Artifact monsters are released in Primal Origin.  

Ultimately, blanket cards create a paradox.  When a deck is extremely over-powered, having a card that stops it dead in its tracks seems a little bit fair.  That said, blanket cards remain not good for the game, if we continue to follow the theory of “cards that do not allow people to play are not good for the game”.  Therefore, a case by case basis seems the most fair to determine whether or not further action should be taken against the card, other than it just getting Space Typhooned.  As currently situated, I believe that the blankets that are limited are fine, however, in the coming months with new archetypes being released that could change drastically.