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Pojo's Yu-Gi-Oh Card of the Day

Shadow Spell
Super Rare

Select 1 face-up monster on your opponent’s side of the field. Decrease the ATKof the selected monster by 700 points. The monster cannot attack or change its battle position. When the selected monster is destroyed or removed from the field, this card is also destroyed.

Type - Trap
Card Number - SYE-041

Card Ratings
Traditional: 1
Advanced: 1.5

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale 1 being the worst.
3 ... average. 5 is the highest rating.


Date Reviewed - 11.06.06

 

ExMinion OfDarkness
Shadow Spell
 
Many people may not know this, but I'm also the Yu-Gi-Oh Guru of allexperts.com, and do several deck fixes on mostly beginner's decks over there.  Why bring this up?  Shadow Spell is one of those cards I have to take out of almost every newbie deck I fix...fairly close to Swords of Revealing Light (which is in even MORE of the decks), but I digress...
 
To a new player, Shadow Spell would actually look like a good card, saving your monster from an attack, and then lowering its ATK next turn so your monster, that normally couldn't overrun it, can now do so.  The problem with that:  Why not just destroy the monster outright?  Sakuretsu Armor and Widespread Ruin are not limited at all, and automatically destroy a monster.  Shadow Spell, although it MAY end up with destroying a monster, usually won't, and that means the player just wasted their Shadow Spell for nothing.
 
There are better cards, plain and simple.
 
1/5 all

Rj
Shadow Spell

hmm...I was pretty sure this card was terrible, but can you activate it in the damage step? I would assume so.

If so, that's relatively hot :O. Worth considering in some respects. I don't know. Its cool in the sense that its a Rush Recklessly that's stopped by Decree/Jinzo/Mobius, and that if you use it to just stop an attack, they'll eventually just tribute the monster.

Wait.

1/5.

Tebezu
Super Great. We shut down one monster and make it 700 Points weaker. Rush Recklessly will kill the monster and keep ours bigger for the remaining turn. Sakuretsu Armor kills it. Enemy Controller and Book of Moon are quickplay spells with combo potential. Thus even they are better at shutting down an attack.

Simply negating is not good enough. We need to totally rid the field of it. Trap Hole is like 1000 times better than this.

1/5
 

DeathJester
Shadow Spell

Today’s card is Shadow Spell. It’s a continuous Trap Card that decreases the ATK of a monster on your opponent’s side of the field by 700. Very cut and dry card.

I don’t think you can activate it in the Damage Step since it’s a Continuous Trap Card. Not too sure this morning so forgive me…

Last Word: Shadow Spell is a decent card. It reduces ATK AND it keeps the monster there for a while. It’s not like Nightmare Wheel where it can target face-downs, but it’ll do for now. You guys might want to consider Mask of Weakness. It’s the Trap counter part to Rush Recklessly, but it reduces ATK. My brother and I used this card back in the day.

Traditional: 1/5
Advanced: 2/5
 

Rj
Shadow Spell

hmm...I was pretty sure this card was terrible, but can you activate it in the damage step? I would assume so.

If so, that's relatively hot :O. Worth considering in some respects. I don't know. Its cool in the sense that its a Rush Recklessly that's stopped by Decree/Jinzo/Mobius, and that if you use it to just stop an attack, they'll eventually just tribute the monster.

Wait.

1/5.
 

Otaku

I like Shadow Spell for some reason.  It has nothing to do with its game play value (which is rather low), but rather that it is an excellent representative of Yu-Gi-Oh “camp”.  First, its name has the obligatory “dark and ominous but not too dark and ominous” feel because of the “Shadow” part.  Next, it has the “Are you sure this was translated right?” perquisite meet by being named “Spell” when it’s a Trap.  At least in this case, that might be due to petty legality issues rather than the normal insanity that seems to go into some translations.  I believe this card did appear a few times in the animé and/or manga, and before they were forced to designate Yu-Gi-Oh’s Magic cards as Spell cards.  I also enjoy the art: simple, yet effective.

 

That’s correct: I can waste a paragraph discussing that because the actual card is pretty simple, and simply pretty weak.  Oh, I think the basic concept is sound, but the game so unbalanced that cards like this (and most of last week's picks) has little hope.  Wait for your opponent to attack, then stop their attack with this and get them stuck in a now weakened ATK position.  700 ATK points is quite a bit, making higher levels monsters weak enough that lower level beatsticks can easily mow them down, beatsticks weak enough that supporting effect Monsters can likely take them down and supporting effect Monsters are left so weak that it’s practically a direct attack when you kill them in battle.  Then this card blows itself up after they are destroyed so it isn’t eating up an S/T zone.

 

Of course, one would rather blow the Monster up with Sakurestu Armor or even use a Quick-Play spell like Shrink (then they can crash into your Monster in their weakened state and save you an attack).  At least this fixed a problem of a past version of this style of Trap: Spellbinding Circle would sit meaninglessly on the field after the Monster it was equipped to was removed from play other than by being destroyed (used as Tribute, bounced, etc).  Also, since Shadow Spell decreases the targeted Monster’s ATK, then it should be perfectly legal to use in the Damage Step.

 

Now, before I give the scores, let me add something: this card is better than Mask of the Accursed, Ekibyo Drakmord, and Flint Flint is the only one to actually do something during your turn, but it has that nasty tendency to backfire (and it doesn’t do that much).  Nightmare Wheel can at least be used to stop an attack.

 

“But that’s on the next turn!”

 

Okay, but they are all vulnerable in the above list, so I suppose Mask of the Accursed would get its 500 burn damage… oh well.  Some jobs, like this, are best left to Traps: surprise is part of the benefits package.  So I’ve said these last few things just to point out that while my score seems low, it’d be far lower for some of the recent cards.

 

Ratings

 

Traditional: 1/5

 

Advanced: 1.5/5


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