Seismic Shockwave takes a hit right off the bat: it’s a Continuous Trap.  That of course means it will be exposed to removal, lessening the likelihood of it successfully working.  Reading the effect, we see it has a very specific trigger: when a Dinosaur-Type Monster on your side of the field is destroyed and sent to the Graveyard.  Now, since it says “destroyed”, Tributes won’t do it: it’s realistically only going to happen when your opponent destroys your Dinosaurs or you blow your own up with Torrential Tribute.  As long as there isn’t some silly timing issue (so that that you can activate this when one of your Monsters is destroyed by an effect after the card that did the destroying resolves), then its quite likely you’ll encounter the trigger several times most games.

 

Now, for all that work, you get a two part effect.  The good news is the first part helps protect Seismic Shockwave from most S/T removal: you select three of your opponent’s unoccupied S/T Zones, and while this card remains in play, they can’t use them.  Unfortunately, I have no idea whether or not the Field Spell Zone is also a legitimate target.  This can matter for a few reasons, mainly you using two copies of Seismic Shockwave at once (since the card will not let you affect less than the full three or shut down a Zone already in use) to totally lock down the field.  The bad news is that the Seismic Shockwave then destroys itself as part of the second effect, which is getting a Dinosaur back from your Graveyard.  So in the end, this is the Dinosaur version of The Warrior Returning Alive.

 

The Warrior Returning Alive is a good, solid card for Warriors.  The reasons for this are that it is a Spell and there are so many wonderful Warrior monsters.  The Warrior Returning Alive might even be a tad over-powered, depending upon how you look at it: if you insist that Reinforcements of the Army and/or certain well known Warriors like Exiled Force are balanced, then The Warrior Returning Alive isn’t.  Even if you do agree with me that those cards are a bit too good, there’s still a surprising amount of versatility to The Warrior Returning Alive letting you grab a Warrior of your choice from the Graveyard on your turn, when it can likely be re-Summoned.  Early game it is dead weight but by the end it’s an amazing powerhouse (and of course Reinforcement of the Army means it doesn’t take long to get a worthwhile Warrior to revive, either).  I bring this all up to illustrate why the last part of Seismic Shockwave is almost… disappointing.  It is nice you’re getting some “card advantage” back: we’ve all lost games where getting back almost any Monster would have changed the loss into a win.  Given the apparent intent for Dinosaur decks to be “Tribute Heavy”, it is nice that this would stretch out your Tribute Monsters so that two to four copies of high Level Dinosaurs acted more like five to seven copies without having to clutter your deck up with said cards.  Since the revival card does have a fairly useful effect and a fairly common trigger, it’s not as much clutter in and of itself, either.  Still, I can’t really recommend this card.

 

Now most readers know me, at least if they’ve paid attention to what I write: I never was able to attend major tournaments when I cared about attending such things, and that was only for about the first year of the game.  I lost interest in most local tournaments because I can’t make the inexpensive ones, and either the prize support is lacking or the game needs to be more enjoyable so that I don’t mind paying $5.00 to participate in a tournament where there’s a good chance I won’t get any prizes.  Keep in mind I’d prefer the latter option: I wouldn’t have a problem paying for Pokémon tournaments, for example, because I consider that game to be fun.  The same goes for the now defunct MegaMan TCG.  Again, why get off on this seeming tangent?  Because its not a tangent: I am explaining exactly why even dreamers who want to play the game and enjoy winning or losing need to ignore this card.  Unless all the rulings work out to the advantage of the card, it’s a pretty straightforward thing to pass this card up.  The best rulings would be either a) you can select the Field Card Zone as a target (like they don’t constantly bugger up the wording in this game) or that you can select a Spell and Trap Card Zone twice if it’s by different copies of Seismic Shockwave so that two copies can achieve said lockdown, and then finally I’ll repeat my concern about timing issues: namely if the last thing that has to resolve is a Monster being sent to the Graveyard, then we’d have an issue since most of the time resolution occurs as such: card effect resolves and Monster is sent to the Graveyard, then the card that did the sending resolves and goes to the Graveyard (if we aren’t talking something like Skull Lair or Barrel Dragon.)

 

One should leave this out of most Dinosaur decks because space limitations and strategy conflicts.  Dinosaurs may not have Warrior or Machine level support, but they do have plenty while we have so many “near staples” vying for space in all decks.  Also, of that support, there are several Traps already to consider, including Fossil Excavation that are vying for a place in your deck.  I am focusing on that one because of their similar focus: would you rather get a card back eventually after maybe disrupting the opponent’s Spell/Trap options, or just get your biggest Dinosaur back (sans effects)?

 

Ratings (Dinosaur decks only, Best Case Rulings Scenario)

 

Traditional: 1/5

 

Advanced: 2/5