Dimensional Barrier – #SDAZ-EN039
Declare 1 monster card type (Ritual, Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, or Pendulum); for the rest of this turn, neither player can Special Summon monsters of the declared type, also negate the effects of all monsters of that type while they are on the field. You can only activate 1 “Dimensional Barrier” per turn.
Date Reviewed: June 2nd, 2022
Rating: 4.04
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is awful. 3 is average. 5 is excellent.
Reviews Below:
King of
Lullaby
Hello Pojo Fans,
Dimensional Barrier is the Throwback Thursday choice this week and a card that would stun the Branded/Fallen of Albaz strategy for the turn pretty good.
Once a tremendous trap, Dimensional Barrier sees highs and lows now in play consistent with new strategies and releases. Normal Trap, activate it and declare any one of the Extra Deck options (except Link) or Ritual in the Main Deck, and you get to lock out any Special Summoning of it, as well as negating effects of that type on the field for the turn. Preventing any more of a certain kind of monster from hitting the field for the turn as well as negating any others that may already be on the field can cripple certain archetypes that depend on that kind of summoning to propel their plays. While this won’t do something against something like Sky Striker (maybe errata the card to include Link?), it will do something against Albaz and his Fusion forms, or Drytron and their Ritual Summoning, or PK Fire with Xyz Summoning. Even against the normal run-of-the-mill deck to act as a negation of an effect, functioning as an extra Impermanence would be a 1-for-1 at the worst.
Easy to play, cost-free, and effective. It can have an impact like Skill Drain, or as small as a Breakthrough Skill, or lock your opponent out entirely for the turn. Its lack of destruction may be the reason why we don’t see it more, but I don’t feel like it is a hindrance to its play.
Advanced-4/5 Art-4/5
Until Next Time
KingofLullaby
Crunch$G
Throwback Thursday this week brings us to an old anti summoning mechanic card that was near staple before Links, but still has a place at least: Dimensional Barrier.
D-Barrier is a Normal Trap that lets you declare a monster card type between Ritual, Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, or Pendulum so that for the rest of the turn, neither player can Special Summon monsters of the declared type and negates the effects of monsters on the field of the declared monster card type, with all this lasting until the end of the turn. I mean, it’s exceptional when those were the only summoning mechanics. It’s basically live in every matchup you can think up that uses the Extra Deck, Rituals, or Pendulums. It was only a very select few Decks that didn’t rely on any of the mechanics. Now, Links are a thing and probably one of the most common summoning mechanics, which this wasn’t really future proofed or errataed to handle, otherwise this probably would be a staple in the Main Deck again. The card still has its uses, though probably better in the side just in case you draw this against someone who doesn’t care what you call cause they’ll Link Summon anyway. It’ll hurt more if we ever get more summoning mechanics, but that does remain a mystery. Hard once per turn at least, so you aren’t shutting down Decks that use multiple mechanics at least. Still, it’s a great card that could probably be in the Main Deck in the right format, but seems better in the Side Deck in modern times.
Advanced Rating: 4.5/5
Art: 4/5 Poor Gagagigo.
Alex
Searcy
Dimensional Barrier, a Normal Trap, is a super fun choice for Throwback Thursday this week. It’s a simple card, definitely a protect/negate card, you may have Teched yourself or had against you in the past. Though I’m sure plenty of you have never used or encountered this before just the same. You choose 1 of 5 Card Types (XYZ, Synchro, Link, Fusion, or Pendulum) and neither player can Special Summon of the selected Type for the rest of the Turn. This can certainly be an offensive or defensive protection, as it negates the Effects of all Monsters of that Type as well for as long as they’re on the Field. So it can give you the protection you need for a push, or be the defense you need (even just for that Turn) to stop your opponent from pulling out an Extra Deck boss, or back from their Grave. Sometimes all you need is that one Turn. You can only activate one of these a Turn, and I super get that. There are similar and better cards that do this (usually more broad and/or with harsher restrictions) but this is by no means a bad card.
Rating: 3.5/5
Art: Ehhhhhh 3.5/5 too I guess. I love the color involved, but this just doesn’t quite show what I think I’d like to envision here.
Mighty
Vee
(Okay, okay, I’ll start capitalizing my key terms) Coincidentally, today’s Throwback Thursday is a card that’s been thrust into the spotlight thanks to its role in YCS Hartford, which occurred earlier this week! Dimensional Barrier (not to be confused with the completely different Trap Dimensional Prison) is a Normal Trap with a hard once per turn effect. Upon activation, you can declare a monster card type between Ritual, Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, and Pendulum; afterwards, neither you nor your opponent can summon monsters of that type, and the effects of monsters of that type are negated as well. As you might expect, this card cna be quite dangerous in the Side deck against decks that rely on one summoning mechanic, and can cripple decks that rely on multiple summoning mechanics as well; the effect negation helps a lot since it doesn’t make the card completely useless after turn 2 onwards where your opponent is likely to have already fielded their bosses. Of course, Dimensional Barrier is still useless against primarily Link summon or Tribute summon-oriented decks, so that’s still a risk you assume when running Dimensional Barrier. Still, the card gained quite a bit of attention in YCS Hartford, when the winning deck (a Sky Striker deck) opted to main deck 3 copies of Dimensional Barrier AND Trap Trick, giving them 6 effective copies of the card. Ultimately, this call paid off, since the event was dominated by Swordsoul and Branded Despia decks, both decks that focus almost entirely on Synchro and Fusion summons respectively, while Link decks were relatively rare. Overall, a format-dependent but very powerful tech card, being high-risk and high-reward if you get lucky with matchups.
Advanced: 3.75/5
Art: 3.25/5 Freed’s face is a little derp here but the art is fine overall.
Today’s card is a reprint from the Albaz Strike deck. It doesn’t really do anything for the Albaz player (except being a generically useful card) but, ironically, it’s a card that’s very devastating AGAINST Albaz players.
D-Barrier is a semi-floodgate that locks Players out of a particular Monster Type for the Turn (Fusion, Synchro, XYZ, or Pendulum – but NOT Link).
I hate Floodgates. They’re unhealthy for the game – but that’s a rant for another day. The fact of the matter is, D-Barrier is quite effective at what it does. If your Opponent doesn’t have an immediate response to you flipping this card up, they very well could be locked out of their Extra Deck for the Turn.
A One-Turn shut down of just 1 monster type may not sound that bad, but remember how speedy modern yugioh is. One turn is often all an opponent needs to seal the deal. When used against decks that specialize in only 1 type of summon, this is an absolute wash-out and quite unfair.
Advanced Rating – 4/5
Art – 3.5/5 (Bring back the Marauding Captain and Gagagigo storyline!)
Therion
“Captain”
Tav
Hey folks, for today’s Throwback Thursday review we have the one and only Dimensional Barrier, a trap card first released in 2016’s Invasion: Vengeance as a secret rare and most recently reprinted as an easily accessible common in the Albaz Strike precon. Let’s check it out!
Dimensional Barrier is a normal trap card that has you declare one monster card type from among Ritual, Fusion, Synchro, XYZ or Pendulum). Then, for the rest of that turn, neither player can special summon monsters of that type, and all monster effects from these types of monsters are negated while they are on the field. You can only activate one D-barrier per turn, which is not really a huge downside, since this card must really only go off once to do its thing.
Alright, so this card is clearly not designed for main deck play unless the meta has become super parasitic. The BIG omission from Dimensional Barrier’s rules text is obviously that it cannot be used to prevent link summoning, since that didn’t exist back in 2016, I guess. But nevertheless, this is super potent at stopping anything else and is a great option for any side deck. Right now, this is being used to prevent Branded Despia/Fluffal/Predaplant Hybrid strategies from gaining access to their fusions and Tenyi Swordsoul from Synchroing. These are probably two of the top five decks in the Advanced format right now, with the xyz strategy of the Splight deck joining them later this year, we can fully expect the barrier to do some very great things for quite some time now.
Why is it great, you may ask? Well, the speed of the game has increased so much that stunning your opponent with a situationally powerful hate trap like this for even one turn is enough to gain an insurmountable advantage over your opponent. Remember how I gushed about Branded Fusion’s crazy fusion summon chains, with one powerful extender feeding into the next one? This card, activated in response to a fusion spell, stops an entire such strategy dead in its tracks, even netting you a card in the process and preventing your opponent from doing too many powerful things. The same logic applies to synchro or xyz-focused decks, of course, although you need more knowledge about the enemy’s play patterns to understand when to best activate this to maximize its disruptive potential.
I think cards like Dimensional Barrier are great for the game, since it checks decks that are not diversifying enough and makes players wise up on how to break up opposing linear strategies. Used correctly, this can be an amazing tool to shore up specific matchups and since Link monsters are not stopped by it, having a diverse extra deck even gives you some room for counterplay if you happen to get D-barriered yourself!
Long story short: If Dimensional Barrier is good against commonly played meta decks, run three! If it’s good against your deck (which happens to be a commonly played meta deck), think about how you can out it when it comes in!
Rating: 4,5/5
props:
amazing side deck card, keeps decks honest that try to rely too heavily on one single summoning strategy (except link decks), both skill-intensive to use and play agains
slops:
misses link monsters and all additional summoning types that might get introduced in the future, skill-intensive to use (not always beginner-friendly), not a universal answer most of the time
Art: 5/5
Ah, yes, the old Freed VS Gagagigo saga, probably the first real story told purely through card art. It’s so nice to see that some things never change. This one seems to show Gagagigo the Risen stuck in a bind. Needless to say, I am a fan of everything this artwork conveys, as a huge XYZ monster stuck in a portal is indeed a great depiction of what this trap card is meant to do.
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