Ipocrisia: Traptrix Antimeta

Monsters: [14]

2 Maxx "C"
1 Neo-Spacian Grand Mole

2 Summoner Monk

3 Traptrix Atrax

3 Traptrix Myrmeleo

3 Traptrix Nepenthes

Spells: [11]

2 Forbidden Dress

3 Forbidden Lance

3 Pot of Duality

2 Terraforming

1 Seal of Orichalcos

Traps: [15]

1 Bottomless Trap HOLE

1 Compulsory Escape Device

2 Dimensional Prison

1 Macro Cosmos

2 Mirror Force

1 Solemn Warning

2 Trap HOLE

2 Traptrix Trap HOLE Nightmare

3 Void Trap HOLE

I promised, didn't I? That I would post this after the meta defined down a bit. Well, this is it, full of meta calls.

First of all, let's start saying that the Extra matters little to nothing, but on a second though, I'd add 1 catastor in place, maybe, of Utopia Ray or something else. The side is there, not really studied and tested, but that's the concept and should, approximatively, work.

As of the main, if I weren't to play that kind of side, I would have rather played 1 Terraforming and 2 Orichalcos, but I'd have to side two terras each game in which I used those fields.

Well, let's start:
As I already said in the previous post, the Sisters' strenght relies on +1s whenever you use a card, mainly because when you use that card, your opponent already wasted a couple of resources in order to summon the monster you've destroyed. To this, you can add Nepenthes' and Myrmeleo's searches, resulting in some effective +1.
It has some great control, that's for sure, and the monsters are relatively big under Orichalcos. Sure, they don't compete with >2300 ATK monsters, but still, Dress and Lance help there respectively against 2900 or less and 3100 or less, when paired with orichalcos and Atrax.
The deck can effectively main Macro Cosmos, and, if willing, even Dimensional Fissure (probably in place of a Void Trap Hole).

Maxx "C" is there for EDs (predominant deck, most likely, of the format) and as draw power. They're, indeed, substituting CCDs. If you don't like it, you can freely go back to Cardcar D.
Grand Mole here tries to solve one of the two main problems this deck has: big monsters. If the opponent manages to summon a big monster like Maestroke (which isn't hard at all to summon and we have pretty much no way to counter with our traps) or Gachi (which is slightly easier because of Atrax+Orichalcos) or other stuff like that and they keep it in defense, we have no way to kill them and, thus, killing the opponent. Grand Mole bounces the monster and, if they attempt to summon it again (assuming it is one of those we can counter) even though they went through our traps the first time, they won't be able to do so a second time. If they succeed to, oh well, we can just bounce it again, hopefully.
Summoner Monk brings more Sisters for some more consistence. Summoning Nepenthes this way is even more awesome than drawing into it, too.
Atrax, Myrm and Nep deserve no explanation, aside from Nep being in three copies. I didn't really like it that way, but it happens often to draw into no monsters (Yeah, DN hates us, I know) and this tries to extablish a better field alongside Monk. Keep in mind that Nep+Trap Hole is generally a good or decent start. Even BTH is okay, but someone may dodge it. You never know. After Nep activates her effect once, she's gone for good most of the times. When she survives, though, she will give you many pluses. However, by no mean protect her unless you need to kill the opponent's monster or you didn't manage to use her effect yet and have no other monsters.

As for the spells, you may see alot of them, compared to how many you'd expect, but that's because most of them act as traps but are, at the same time, monk fodder.
Dress+Lance acts as main protection, alongside Mirror, Prison and so on for our Atrax. I managed to kill a couple of comboes, too, hitting a monster with Lance so that nothing could be equipped to it. I even saw one of the biggest suicides ever of a monster that had 5000 ATK and dropped to 1700, crushing against my 2300 Atrax. Dress is mainly protection against BRD, whom may be lots of troubles if you don't manage to have a void or a nightmare.
3 Dualities are for consistency, and most of the times I wished I could play more.
2 Terra and 1 Orichalcos. I would have liked the opposite, so that the Terra was pretty much always live, and to reduce the DDs. What's more, if you extremely needed to XYZ, you could set one orichalcos over the other, even though you couldn't use it. With my side, though, it's needed to main 2 Terras. If you won't play that kind of side, I'd say 2 Orichalcos and 1 Terra.

The Traps are quite a lot, uh? Still, sometimes you may lack them if you don't play accordingly to your hand. The deck isn't that skilled, but still, it isn't totally skilless. Just think before activating something and it's all good.
CED, Prison and Mirror act as main counter to monsters once they are on the field. If they maanged to summon something big before you could set your traps, without those and mole, you'd have lost. This way, instead, you have some kind of counter.
Warning is the only trap that activates on the summon that isn't a hole trap, and thus not searchable. Though, it is too awesome to not be played.
As for the Holes, I chose this exact set after a little meta breakdown. I think this is one of the best combinations. BTH is must at 1. Void Trap Hole should be the one with more copies of itself and Trap Hole and Nightmare are to be played accordingly to the player in a total of 3/4 copies.


Let's see the PROs and the CONs of the deck, instead:
PRO: has counters that vary from nice to awesome for pretty much every deck;
CON: there are a couple of DDs, expecially some Holes against some decks;
PRO: can summon some nice beater with ease;
CON: being nice beater doesn't mean good/awesome beater, and we can't drop stronger than 2300, usually:
PRO: has lots of monster removal;
CON: not always it is effective and sometimes the opponent may just summon the boss before we can drop our traps on them;
PRO: the monsters are usually well protected;
CON: when they aren't, them being killed is most of the times a great loss because of the lack of recycling and reviving power;
PRO: when you manage to effectively control the opponent, most of the times it results in a lock;
CON: when you don't, you are probably going to have your ass kicked;
PRO: it manages to destroy pretty much everything if you play it right;
CON: control cards from the opponent are game-killer for you.

Resuming the advantages and disadvantages of the deck, it has some great control over the opponent with crazily good match-ups against other decks, but it basically loses to traps and big undestroyable monsters.

I've had some nice results with it, against most meta decks. I won to some Antimeta, but surely I lost more than won against them. Being able to side Decree is awesome (Atrax lets your traps activate even if decree is on the field). The rest of the side is awesome when it comes to certain decks, but it may be totally useless against others. I already said, that's mostly the concept of the side, not the real side itself.

Try it, you won't be disappointed.

See Ya.

P.s. Usual Lore, "Ipocrisia" means "Hypocrisy". That's to point out how traptrix work with their traps, they say they're able to dodge them (they all dodge Hole trap cards) but in the end, they suffer from them, not being able to practice what they preach.

Traptrix and (Anti)Meta

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.