You know them, don't you?
Traptrix
a.k.a.
dem lolis
(IT'S A TRAP!)
Traptrix, Lolis or Traps, no matter how you want to call them, this is what they are: Trappers. They do whatever is possible to lure and trap you and your monsters in one of their many traps. They have a pretty nice lore, too, but I won't stop on it and focus on their utility. If you want to read the lore (I suggest you to do so), read it from this beautiful article on tcgplayer.
Staying on our topic, instead, you know I won't start a review without giving some proper explanations on why I'm trying them and on them themselves, and this time my reason for playing them is that I wanted to find some underdog antimeta that could flip tables. Traptrix (you may find discussion of them under the name of Kowakuma or Mesmerizing Maneater, too) are an unique archetype that works with the "Hole" normal traps. Let's see them singularly:
All of them have an effect that lets them dodge Hole cards, making those little things totally unaffected by them. They all are LV4 EARTH.
-Traptrix Nepenthes, the one on top left is the only Plant-type Traptrix. What it does is Special Summoning or Searching a Traptrix monster, excluding other copies of herself, from your deck, making her the recruiter of the archetype. When does this effect trigger? When a Hole normal trap is activated. Of course, it has the usual "you can only use the effect of "Traptrix Nepenthes" once per turn". Well, this was to be expected. With her 800/2000, she has the biggest defensive body among the Sisters (not that they really are sisters, but let's call them like this, as of now).
-Traptrix Atrax, the bottom one, is the Beater of the archetype, with 1800/1000. She is, like Myrmeleo, an Insect, and has two effects: one lets you activate Hole normal traps from your hand, this means that you can, theorically speaking, activate them on your first turn; the other effect gives all of your normal traps immunity from negation and makes their activation not prevent-able, basically, Decree and Trap Stun do nothing.
-Traptrix Myrmeleo, the one on the top right, is our official searcher for traps. It is usually summoned only to activate her effect or rarely to Xyz, because of her body not really special in anything, with 1600/1200. Still, this body means nothing compared to her effects: the first one activates upon Normal Summon, and lets you search a Hole normal trap from your deck; the second one activates upon Special Summon and (mandatory) makes you destroy a Spell or Trap on the field. Myrmeleo, for the first effect, is the most splashed one, creating a little engine that yet has to be well-defined.
Now that we have those, what do we do? Well, you probably noticed how they tend to be against the meta, because of their nice searching of Traps, but how can we use it?
In order to answer this, let's see what we can grab, mainly:
There are some others, but I didn't bother putting them here, because they are not relevant now and they won't, probably, for the near future.
Those are:
-Bottomless Trap Hole, the most known and generic one. Most likely, the best one, too. Triggers on normal and special summon and only needs the monster to be the opponent's one and to be 1500 ATK or more. As of the new banlist, you are only allowed to play one, sadly.
-Trap Hole, the oldest one. Only triggers on normal summons, and kills them if they are 1000 ATK or more, not that bad, at least. Given that we can search it and that it can potentially hit some meta decks coming, it deserves some spots.
-Void Trap Hole still follows the Bottomless and Trap Hole series, needing the monster to be special summoned and have 2000 ATK or more. What's good is that it negates the effect of the monster right before destroying it. Basically, if the opponent special summons Kuraz, even though that's a trigger effect upon special summon, you are able to kill it right away and avoid his effect.
-Deep Dark Hole is a little different. The "deep" part at the start of the name was to differentiate it from "Dark Trap Hole", but in Japan it had a different name, and with the Lolis being able to search them, they decided to change Dark Trap Hole's name to Darkfall to avoid ruling problems and not using the usual "except 'Dark Trap Hole'" part. What's good with Deep Dark Trap Hole is that it can stop all of the big Synchros from ED Plant, but has the ability to stop T.G. Wonder Magician against some T.G. decks and other options. However, what makes it good is that it doesn't neither target, nor destroy, it simply banishes. Stardust cannot negate it and all of the monsters which activate their effects upon destruction won't get anything from it.
-Traptrix Trap Hole Nightmare is the themed Trap Hole for Traptrix. What it does is hitting the monster when he thinks he is safe (basically what Franco Ferrara said). Let's say your opponent goes into Hyper Librarian, he then goes into Stardust with a Dragon and Spore, he attempts to draw with Librarian, but he won't be able to. Nightmare is on constant fight with Void Trap Hole, because the range of things they hit is pretty much the same, with few differences. Void can destroy the monster right upon summon, but it has the requirement of it having 2000 or more ATK, while nightmare doesn't have this last restriction, but needing the monster to effectively activate its effects. I consider Void better just because a skilled player would simply go into beatdown with the monster he summons and then wait the turn after to use the effect, unless it is mandatory. If the opponent knows we have Void he'll as simply avoid going into some bosses until he is sure he can drop two.
Yeah, you probably noticed: we theorically have answers to everything the meta may offer, that may be the main strenght of those Sisters.
This everything has a flaw, though, what is it? Consistency. Yeah, theorically speaking, they have lots of consistency, Nepenthes searches the Sisters and Myrmeleo searches the Traps, so where is the problem? Ya know, I tried them, 3 PoDs (which are, currently, staples for me) and even 3 CCDs, but it's not like I could fix the problem of having enough monsters in hand. Even if I did have those monsters in hand, I probably lacked the Traps to work with, I as simply, can't happen to balance them. The more I try to balance them, it changes build:
Most of the times it becomes a Rogue with Pachys and stuff with an engine made of 3 Myrms, 1 BTH, 2 Void Trap Hole and 2 Trap Holes;
Some other times it becomes a Ninja deck with some of the Sisters' engine which slows the deck down;
Other times it becomes a semi-lockdown which is way too inconsistent and has tons of negative match-ups.
However, those problems can all be solved with the right build, the real problem is defining the build itself. This is because the next meta yet has to form, and being this an Antimeta, you have to know what to counter while building. If you don't know that, you're building against something that won't see play.
This was a fast review of the principal cards, but I'll be explaining more when the meta settles down, with a couple of techs I already know.
See Ya
P.s. as you've seen, this is the first time I'm using those icons for the cards. I worked on them a little bit, and they'll be standards from now on. What I noticed before was that the posts were too plain. I don't like them to be too full of stuff which is not something of matters, but I guess this won't hurt. What's more, I developed them in a way that they are easy to work on and create, and I'll be slowly building a library with those cards so that I won't have to create an icon again of a card I already used.
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