Card Destruction
Normal Spell
Each player discards their entire hand, then draws the same number of cards they discarded.
September 2013 Status: Forbidden (From Limited)

The next card in our September banned list week is annoyingly one of my favourite cards, Card Destruction. Ever since I got the first Yugi Starter Deck, I loved this card, the ability to wreck your opponent’s hand, the chance to get a better hand if your current hand was poor, set a Monster Reborn discard a high level monster and then use your monster reborn to bring it back, help speed up your opponent’s chances of decking out, the possibilities with this card were endless.

Sadly now Card Destruction is now banned and it isn’t hard to see why. As mentioned above the amount of plays you could do with this card were huge. Also it was a draw card, which as we all know Konami despises with a passion and of course this was very important for Dark World and Fabled decks, allowing them to activate multiple effects from just the one card.  Also Card Destruction had no cost or negative side effect since if you are going to activate it, you are clearly planning on discarding your hand.
Overall a great card, that is no longer with us, if you can still play it do. Still this has a better chance of getting back on the banned list, than my other favourite Cyber Jar.

Traditional: 5/5
Advanced: N/A (Forbidden)

Hey guys! Long time no see. Got caught up in a lot of work lately and then there's the YouTube channel & such so I kinda took a light vacation. :) But enough of that lets get to the facts. Card Destruction was recently banned in the wake of Elemental Dragons to stop them from powering through their deck and getting key monsters to grave in the process. It also, to a lesser extent hit Darkworlds disabling them from using a lot of crazy combos with this card. Me personally I believe this is just overall bad card design especially with the game heading towards abusing the Graveyard more with every new deck coming out.
 
Trad; 4/5 (Overpowered card)
Adv: 4/5 (Card is busted in the right decks)

Today’s card singlehandedly won the final round of this year’s World Championship for Taiwanese player Shin En Huang. I am, of course, talking about Card Destruction:

Normal Spell Card

Each player discards their entire hand, then draws the same number of cards they discarded.

The funny thing is that this card is inherently a -1. It’s the fact that it absolutely breaks the Decks that it is played in that got it the banhammer.

So what Decks does this card have broken plays in? The most notable one is Dark World. Imagine having a hand full of monsters like Snoww, Grapha, and Broww. That Card Destruction suddenly isn’t a -1 anymore; it’s more along the lines of a +2 to +5 (sound familiar? Two other cards this week were like that). Fabled, while not as powerful as Dark World, could also abuse it in such a manner.

But Card Destruction saw itself being played in yet another Deck that broke it; the ever popular Dragon Rulers. And this wasn’t because there were effects that activated when discard, like the former two Decks. The thing that made Card Destruction broken in that Deck was that all of the big Dragon Rulers can summon themselves FROM THE GRAVEYARD. If you discard a hand full of Dragon Rulers, you effectively just activated Pot of Greed on steroids, because all of those Dragons are STILL USABLE.

The previous two cards we reviewed were both cards that started out fine and slowly became too powerful. Card Destruction is another example of such a card; I don’t think anyone expected it to become the sacky card it is now, but that’s how games evolve.

Traditional: 5/5 (If I’m not mistaken, Dark World is more or less the anti-meta in Traditional Format, so it fits right in there)

Advanced: BANNED (5/5 when legal)

Art: 4/5 (He’s throwing cards away. Pretty much fits what the card does)

Tomorrow: Airman!

Wait a minute… another one of my classic, favorite cards was Banned?  Once more unto the breach then: today I’ll give you my recollections and analysis of Card Destruction!

Stats

Card Destruction is a Normal Spell; almost every piece of Spell “support” that works for Normal Spells applies to at least one other, and often all, while there are a few counters unique just to Normal Spells.  This means Spell Speed 1, and thus under normal circumstances Card Destruction isn’t being activated in response to anything.  Otherwise it is a good division of cards to be in Yu-Gi-Oh as on your own turn you may play as many as you wish, provided you can get them into hand and have at least one open Spell/Trap slot… and of course unless you choose to Set one, it will only briefly exist in your S/T Zone as it resolves.

Effect

Each player discards his or her hand and draws cards equal to the amount he or she discarded.  This means that without the aid of additional cards, Card Destruction is always a “-1”… and the fact that it is banned should remind us how raw card count can often be misleading.  The most obvious is that as the player controlling the card, you can choose to use it when you have a dead hand to get a new one; yes this requires having a hand to begin with, but getting out of a dead hand (especially a dead opening hand) is very valuable; a card in hand you can’t use now (especially in fast formats) isn’t really a “+1”, better represented as a fractional value or a zero as it is only useful for bluffing or use as discard fodder.

The mixed blessing is that you also apply this effect to your opponent.  If your opponent has a bad hand (or cards they want discarded) then you can be doing them a huge favor… but depending on the exact time in the game, this has varied between “unlikely” to “almost certain”.  Another of the aspects where the raw card advantage doesn’t tell the whole story is what you hit; your opponent has the same amount of cards before and after, and competent players don’t run useless cards, but we all know first hand that not all cards are equally useful in all situations, and some are much more important than others.

In both those cases, there is also the size of the deck; Card Destruction is one of the best milling cards we have, even though it hits you alongside your opponent (though skillful play can mitigate this).  There are some major combos built around this, and playing Card Destruction for a -1 can win you the game (often after giving your opponent as much “card advantage” as you could)!

Usage

Card Destruction was one of the precious, generic forms of draw power available in Yu-Gi-Oh, debuting in North America as part of Starter Deck: Yugi, which alongside Starter Deck: Kaiba preceded the release of the first North America set, Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon; barring some promos I don’t know about it doesn’t get any older than that for the TCG.  Its general usage varied, and I tended to favor it far more than the general player population and probably more than a competitive player (which I rarely would have qualified as) should.

Over the years of Yu-Gi-Oh, we have seen many cards, including multiple card families, with effects that trigger either in the discard, when cards are discarded, when your hand is empty, or that need cards in the discard to trigger or fuel effects.  Indeed, during the period where I knew what I was doing, it was rare for a deck to lack at least one such card and as far as I can tell, that remains true now.  Decks built around one or multiple of the above mechanics thus loved Card Destruction.  There are also effects that trigger when you draw, when you discard, when your opponent draws, or when your opponent discards and Card Destruction is one of the cards that does all four (hands permitting), and as an effect and not a “cost”; two old, easy examples are Appropriate and Forced Requisition.

Still, my favorite combo for it (and the fact that it wasn’t mentioned by the “real” reviewers) was the simple, deadly Card Destruction followed immediately by Serial Spell.  For those who don’t know and don’t care to look it up, Serial Spell is a Quick-Play Spell that can only be used after a Normal Spell with a cost of discarding your own hand and an effect of duplicating the effect of the Normal Spell used immediately prior to its activation.  As such, it must immediately follow up the Spell it is duplicating (thus this could be a fragile combo).  In a game where the main deck strives to remain as close to 40 cards as possible, forcing your opponent double discard their hand could be terribly disruptive early game, and lead to a game winning deck out mid-to-late game.

This trick was my preferred way of finishing someone off in “Empty Jar” decks; Cyber Jar was quite good for filling both players hands, so Serial Spell allowed you to safely use your own Card Destruction (to avoid decking yourself out) but cut the number of times you needed to successfully spam the effect of Cyber Jar; if you were very fortunate, two uses of Cyber Jar would balloon the opponent’s opening five card hand to 14 or 15, and Card Destruction followed by Serial Spell became an instant game winner.  Morphing Jar based variants weren’t as impressive (as they required cards other than Morphing Jar itself to increase the opponent’s hand size), but as the effect Morphing Jar was actual drawing (Cyber Jar technically didn’t), it provided a safer way of delivering your final push.  Plus both variants usually had cards that could reclaim Card Destruction from the discard pile, so even as a Limited card you could also just use it just to keep Empty Jar from stalling when it wasn’t for the win.

As if I hadn’t reminisced enough, I’ll add one last thing; I don’t think “Tag Duels”, “Team Duels”, “Battle Royal Duels”, or any similar variants involving more than two players being involved in the same duel were ever made official (seriously, if I missed that it had, my bad), but if the current wording of the card is still “Each player” (it was the last time I tried such alternate, fan rules) then Card Destruction was useful because of the chaos it caused by hitting all players at once.

Ratings

Traditional: Card Destruction is a part of some FTK and OTK decks, though it isn’t needed in every deck and in a few exceptions it wasn’t desirable, either due to “clashing” or simply space concerns.  I would still keep a copy in my Side Deck, so ultimately I rate it quite high… for what that is worth given that I haven’t even attempted to build a competitive Traditional deck in years. 4.25/5

Advanced: Being Banned makes scoring so easy.  Banned/5

Summary

Card Destruction is a potent card that can function adequately in almost any deck and was amazing in several specific archetypes.  Without proper set up and usage it will simply be a “-1”, but one of the reasons card advantage is subdivided into hand advantage, field advantage, etc. is because raw card advantage doesn’t tell the whole story.  I hope you enjoyed a nostalgic look as we bid farewell to this venerable card.