Soul Drain
Continuous Trap
Activate by paying 1000 Life Points. Monster Cards that are banished, as well as monsters in the Graveyard, cannot activate their effects (that start a Chain).
September 2013 Status: Limited from Unlimited

Wrapping up our banned list look for this week is Soul Drain, part of the Drain series of continuous trap cards. Like all of these Drain cards it requires 1000 life points to activate and then it starts negating monster effects, in this case banished and graveyard effects. For some reason as much as Konami love to put the more powerful cards on the banned list, they also seem to like putting the counters on the list as well.

To be honest, I feel the main reason this has been limited is to hopefully reduce the ruling questions about what cards Soul Drain can and can’t negate. Still I have always found Skill Drain the better card and that isn’t on the list at all. Of course like all of the Drain cards, it is quite vulnerable due to it being a continuous trap.

Overall, a powerful card, but only really useful is your opponent plays a lot of monsters that have Graveyard or banished effects. Probably a handy one for the side deck.

Traditional: 3.5/5
Advanced:  3.5/5

For the second part of this CotD  we will be doing Soul Drain, I actually have a series on my YouTube channel were I made an in depth analysis on this card. Anyways Soul Drain is an amazing card in this (and last) meta. Provided that you use it preemptively and as early as possible it shuts out Mermails from gaining advantage from discarding & Dragons from using their effects from Graveyard or removed from play. There are other viable options that this card i good against but being limited to one this card has lost a lot of it's effectiveness.
 
Trad: 3/5
Adv: 3/5

We close off this week with a very popular Side Deck card, Soul Drain:
 
Continuous Trap Card
Activate by paying 1000 Life Points. Monsters that are banished, as well as monsters in the Graveyard, cannot activate their effects (that start a Chain).
 
This one is pretty nasty. There are so many Decks that rely on effects from the Graveyard (Mermail and Dragon Ruler being popular choices), and Soul Drain just completely shuts them down.
 
Now, I understand that these Decks are at the top of the game right now, but let’s face it; cards that completely shut down Decks on their own are just plain not fun to face. I feel that this card got hit for the same reason that Dimensional Fissure and Macro Cosmos this. And likewise, because Heavy Storm is gone, these cards become a lot stronger, so the Limits were justified.
 
Traditional: 5/5
Advanced: 5/5
 
Art: 4/5 (As per the norm of Drain Trap Cards, Dark Ruler Ha Des can’t seem to catch a break)