Say it ain't so!  It appears that the Trapper insanity has reached the Pojo's
pages.  I don't think that this deck will be as dominant a force in the
tournament environment as everyone is making it out to be.  For those
unfamiliar with the deck, it is designed to use Team Rocket's Trap (TRT) from
Heroes, along with Rocket's Sneak attack and Imposter Oak's Revenge to empty
or nearly empty the opponent's hand at the beginning of the game,leaving him
or her with very few options while you beat them down with big basic Pokémon.
 Sure its a viable deck type and it will win its share of games but I just
don't see the Book of Revelations opening on the Pokémon TCG as is foretold
elsewhere on the net.  First, the unofficial translation for TRT and TR's
Zapdos:(from Pojo Magazine 3/00):

Team Rocket's Trap
Flip a coin.  If heads, choose three cards from your opponent's hand, unseen,
and shuffle them into your opponent's deck.

Team Rocket's Zapdos
Basic, Lightning Pokémon    70HP
[L] Plasma (20) Choose 1 Lightning energy card in your discard pile and
attach it to Team Rocket's Zapdos.
[1LLL] Electroburn (70) This attack does 10 more damage and 10 damage to Team
Rocket's Zapdos for each Lightning energy card attached to Team Rocket's
Zapdos.
Weakness[None]  Resistance[Fighting]-30 Retreat Cost[2]

Now there are several reasons why I believe that this deck isn't the killer
that its made out to be...

1. There's too few Pokémon:
I don't know what every version of this deck looks like, but the one from
Shaun Rogers's article on July 4th only has 8 Pokémon in it.  Now we all know
that you can't even START a game if you don't have a basic Pokémon in your
hand.  So if a Trap player sees his or her hand of a Bill, an Oak, a CPU
Search, a TRT, an Impostor Oak's Revenge, and two Item Finders and thinks
that they are set for the game, they are wrong.  That hand gets shuffled back
and the opponent gets to draw two more cards.  With 8 Pokémon in the deck,
there's a very good chance that the Trap could mulligan as much as two,
three, or more times before drawing a Basic Pokémon, each time giving the
opponent two more cards.  Now, I was under the impression that this deck was
supposed to EMPTY the opponent's hand, not give them MORE cards.  The Trap,
once it gets a basic could be looking at a player with a hand of 9, 11, or 13
cards.  Since stall is almost nonexistant these days (with the exception of
the occasional Moltres Stall), most players will gladly accept one to three
mulligan draws.  Its going to be hard even for trap to eliminate a hand of
that size.  Overall, a deck like this with so few Pokémon will only give the
opponent more and more cards at the game's start, thus making the deck's goal
harder and harder to achieve.  Even with Impostor Oak's revenge to decrease
hand size, if the opponent goes first (50% of the time) or has some card
drawing in their hand they now have a clear edge over The Trap.

2. TRT is unreliable:
Usually, trainers that require a coin flip to be effective, such as Pokéball,
are dismissed as trash and end up as permanent residents in shoeboxes and
binders.  TRT, which requires the very same coin flip as the hated Pokéball,
is being praised as a great card.  What if you flip tails for TRT?  Then what
do you do?  Itemfinder for it and do it again, right?  But what if you flip
tails again?  The fact of the matter is that TRT is a very unreliable
trainer.  Its the same as Pokéball only in a different package.  Everybody
loves the effect of Pokéball, but the card is far too unreliable to play
since if you flip tails you're screwed.  The same goes for cards like Recycle
and...TRT!  You are also choosing cards at random from the opponent's hand. 
You could leave them ONE card and that ONE card could be the Oak or the
Energy or the Pokémon that he or she needs to make the game a living hell for
you.  There is also the problem of topdecking.  A deck with four Oaks, four
Bills, and four CPU searches is bound to topdeck some card drawing at some
point in the game.  Trap's entire gameplan goes down the tube when card
drawing engines are topdecked by the opponent.  Trap will have to win VERY
early if it wants to win at all.  This is also a very fragile deck.  If the
TRT is drawn before the Impostor Oak's Revenge, the Trap player will either
have to discard it with card drawers or use it then and miss getting to
reduce your hand to four.  Or what if, God forbid, the Trap player
draws...good amounts of energy?  The uncertainties go on and on.


3. Trainer Denial is abundant:
Lass and Rocket's Sneak Attack (RSA) are two great cards that are seeing a
lot of play right now because of the sheer power of trainers.  If Trap does
show up as a dominant force in the environment, it will just force everyone
else to play with more Lass and RSA.  Lass is one of my favorite cards and I
think it more effectively empties the hand than Trap.  By Lassing away all
their trainers or picking out the key ones with RSA on turn one, the Trap is
gone and its just a matter of getting rid of a 'Buzz and a TR Zapdos or two. 
Don't forget about good old Psyduck, though.  Yup, despite his Lightning
weakness (Trap is a yellow deck) his first attack which prevents the opponent
from playing trainer cards can buy you just enough time to get cards key to
your strategy into play by locking down the Trap for a turn or two.  If you
can get some of the Pokémon you need into play, its just a matter of
topdecking energy or card drawing after the Trap goes into action.  Confusion
Gym, if played early, could also be a good answer.  It makes the user of a
trainer card flip a coin and if tails, lets the other player use that card as
his or her own.  They'll be discarding their own hand if they're not careful.
 Since the Trap is so trainer reliant, there are plenty of ways to shut it
down or at least stall it until you can get your game set up.


4. Lightning Resistance will be a factor:
It appears that once Team Rocket's Zapdos is released Lightning will go from
arguably the weakest color to having the two fastest Pokémon in the game:
Base Set Electabuzz and TR's Zapdos.  It makes since that the Trap would
utilize these two Pokémon since it needs to achieve a quick victory.  That
means that the Trap will be temporarily deadlocked by Lightning resistant
Pokémon.  Rhyhorn in particular, being a high HP basic with L resistance,
will be able to give the trap a run for its money for a couple of turns,
letting you topdeck a few cards, asuming the Trap even got up and running. 
Just yet another way to foil this "foolproof" strategy.


5. There's so many other options:
Heroes is going to be bigger than the base set of cards.  That means that the
card pool of this relatively small game will dramatically increase this
August.  Maybe I'm naive but I think the reason people play card games is to
have fun.  There will be a lot more options out there when Heroes comes out
and Trap isn't exactly the most fun to play of those options.  Victreebell,
Vileplume, Fearow, Lickitung, Onix, Seadra, Exeggutor, Jolteon, Tentacruel,
Primeape, Psyduck, Ninetails, Sansdlash, and Raticate are all going to get
new cards that are PLAYABLE.  For the first time ever, just about everyone
can play with one of their favorite Pokémon and not get killed by the same
Chan/Buzz/Scy haymaker.  In the end, I think the desire to have fun and play
with some cool Pokémon will outweigh the "sure thing" of the monotonous Trap.
 Especially if the counter-trainer strategy ends up tripping up the Trap. 
Personally, I'll take an Erika's Victreebell or a Blaine's Arcanine over TRT
any day.

6. Hype is so often unjustified:
Remember when Fossil came out?  Remember how Muk was going to crush every
Power-dependent strategy?  Remember how Aerodactyl was going to eliminate
evolution decks all together?  Well guess what--people still use powers and
they still play evolutions.  Or what about how every deck would come
crumbling to the knees of a Dark Vileplume dominated environment?  None of
these things ever happened.  Players liked using Pokémon Powers because they
were cool so they didn't play Muk.  They liked evolutions too since they were
fun to play so Aerodactyl didn't go mainstream.  Dark Vileplume kept
everybody's favorite trainers out of play so they didn't play him.  And the
desire to play with some of the cool Pokémon in Heroes (of which there are
many) will eventually beat the Trap.  So put your Traps with your
anti-evolution and anti-power decks in a box someplace.

So you see, just like Haymaker, Raindance, and all the rest, the Trap Deck
has weaknessess which can be exploited and strategies that can be employed to
counter it.  This is not a super deck and it is far from unbeatable.  Also,
Heroes won't kill the game of Pokémon with TRT like many are predicting. 
Heroes will give the game, which is in the middle of a small recession, a
huge shot in the arm and bring its strategy and variety of gameplay up to a
higher level.

Have fun with Heroes!
-Jim T.
<A HREF="mailto:mrrk9@aol.com">MrRK9@aol.com</A>