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The Return of the Holy Trinity
By Pook
August 28, 2006

                        Greetings all.  For my column this week, I decided to go a much more upbeat route than my past two entries.  This week, I’d like to discuss the return of what I have deemed the “Holy Trinity” of Trap cards – Mirror Force, Magical Cylinder, and Ring of Destruction. 

             Ever since the inception of the ban list, these three friends have been ruthlessly torn asunder.  Each trap in its own right is incredibly powerful, but combine the might of the three, and you get something special.  This, my friends, is chaos; not the kind most of you have been playing for the past few years.  This, is the ideal of chaos.  And I love it. 

            You all know my stance on the play of Jinzo, but the fact of the matter is that fewer people are worried about him hitting the field.  Cards like Smashing Ground and Enemy Controller can help to handle him, and because of that, more people have been running traps.  As reviewed in the Card of the Day section by my fellow Pojo writers, cards like Bottomless Trap Hole are finally stepping up to the big leagues, but there will never been a set of traps more revered (and feared) than this winning trio. 
 

            I took a moment to observe the nature of these three cards, and just what each one represents in the game of Yu-Gi-Oh, but something strange happened, and my mind immediately wandered into another popular property, The Legend of Zelda.  As you may or may not know (but how could you not?), The Legend of Zelda is one of Nintendo’s flagship franchises, spanning two decades and consuming countless hours of even the most casual video gamer.  The central focus of the games always revolved around saving the fictional land of Hyrule, by collecting pieces of the legendary treasure, The Tri-force.  Now as the games went on, there was more and more mythology established about the Tri-force, particularly about what each of the three components represents, and how each attribute is tied to one of the three main characters.  In a way, the Trap Trinity fits this mold.  The three sections of the Tri-force are Wisdom, Strength, and Courage.  If I were to assign a trap card to one of each of these affiliations, I would give Wisdom to Magical Cylinder, Strength to Mirror Force, and Courage to Ring of Destruction. 
 

            Magical Cylinder represents Wisdom because this is a card that may take a fair amount of patience to use properly, and a smart player can use this to their advantage.  Obviously, the most common choice is to use this against a single, strong attacking enemy, but this card can also help avoid the painful effects of cards such as Spirit Reaper or Kycoo.  Some may say it is a waste to use Magical Cylinder on Spirit Reaper, considering how low its attack is, but it is a great way to ensure that you will be able to keep all of the cards in your hand.  The wise player knows that it is not always the amount of damage that matters, but how to properly play your strategy, without it being disrupted. 
 

            Mirror Force is the Strength aspect because it really is just brute force.  We all know its effect, and how potentially detrimental it can be to either side of the field, especially if a monster has been Normal Summoned this turn.  You don’t mess around with Mirror Force – he’s the strong-arm of this group, and you don’t want to mess with him. 
 

            That leaves Ring of Destruction, the Courageous card who we have not seen in quite some time.  The reason I associate Ring of Destruction with Courage is because in playing it, you are taking a risk, albeit a calculated one.  We all know that this bad boy not only knocks out a monster, but also damages both players.  In a game where reaching zero life points means you lose, the last thing you might want to do is willingly take some of your own!  But that’s the risk you’ll have to be willing to take in order to achieve victory.  Courage is the attribute associated with Link, the hero of the Zelda games.  He puts his life on the line in order to save the world, time after time, so you shouldn’t be afraid to spend some of your life points, especially if it will eliminate a powerful monster you can’t go toe-to-toe with.  And worst case scenario, this card can at least bring you to a draw; it’s not a win, but at least it’s not a loss. 
 

            So that about sums it up.  Having this powerful arsenal under your control gives you seemingly limitless power on the playing field…that is, of course, if you can avoid spell and trap removal.  Like I said, calculated risks.  Happy dueling.