Hunting Instinct
is a Trap. Unfortunately, the game has a lot of
Trap Hate: Royal Decree, Jinzo,
and then all the Spell/Trap removal. Still,
this one is interesting because it lets you turn
something most decks do a fair amount of into a
shortcut to get high level Dinosaurs into play.
If your opponent Special Summons a monster, then
you can activate this to Special Summon a
Dinosaur from your hand. Obviously, there are
some plain downsides to this: the Trap could be
nuked before you can activate it, and if you
don’t have a Level 5+ Dinosaur, you’re not
basically just shifting potential advantage (a
Monster in the hand) into actual advantage (a
Monster in play) over the cost of one card of
actual advantage (a Trap in play). If you do
have a Level 5 or 6 Dinosaur in hand, you “break
even” in a very real sense: the opponent has
added a Monster to the field, and so have you.
What’s nice is you got a Monster that normally
requires Tribute into play free of Tribute.
Vulnerable as they are, Traps are still easier
to get into play and use than Monsters, so it’s
a small gain, but its there. Now, if it’s a
Level 7 or 8 Dinosaur, it’s actually pretty
substantial: they bring out Cyber Dragon,
while you bring out Ultimate Tyranno.
Guess who wins if they go head to head? This
also means that the “discounted” Ultimate
Tyranno is a much lower potential “loss”
than if you’d have brought it out via Tribute
Summon (Monster removal happens): I know I’d
rather lose a Monster that merely costs patience
and a Trap over one that required me sacrificing
two Monsters.
Now, even with rampant Cyber Dragon,
Premature Burial, and Call of the Haunted
use, one might worry they won’t have an ample
opportunity to use this card. Fortunately,
Dinosaur’s have Gilasaurus. If the
opponent has a Monster in their Graveyard, they
are allowed to Special Summon it (and few people
wouldn’t do just that). Well, now you can use
Hunting Instinct to get out an even
bigger Dinosaur to eat whatever they Special
Summoned (or set up for Tail Swipe,
setting up for about 4000 damage from
attacking).
Of course one has to be careful: the card is
useless if the opponent can’t or won’t Special
Summon, or if your hand lacking a Summoning
candidate. Still, fear of this card might be
enough to keep the opponent from establishing
much in the way of field presence. Now, we all
know that with cards like Mirror Force
and Torrential Tribute, over-committing
Monsters to the field can lead to a big
advantage swing for your opponent. Well, when
your opponent can even lightly swarm the field
with big beat sticks, it’s dangerous to
under-commit as well. Let’s say you’re facing
Dark World. If your opponent doesn’t
have a Dark World Lightning handy to nuke
this card, then any Special Summon they get
could backfire, since most Dinosaurs a player
would strive to Special Summon with this would
dwarf even the biggest Dark World
Monsters. The timing may also mess things up
for Dark World, allowing you to “dodge”
the effects of the larger Dark World
Monsters like Goldd.
I wouldn’t run more than two of this in a
Dinosaur deck, and probably just one, but I can
see it being quite useful at one.
Ratings
(Dinosaur deck only)
Traditional:
1/5
Advanced:
3.25/5
