Stats                : Mask of Darkness is a small Level 2 Dark/Fiend.  Dark means it can be Chaos food, though this card isn’t common to Chaos decks and it’s usually too important to remove from its own.  Still, it’s always a good option.  Likewise it is a Fiend, so if you really wanted to, you could use it for Dark Necrofear, but the same concerns arise as using it for Chaos.

 

Mask of Darkness has a small 900 ATK and even smaller 400 DEF, so it won’t survive or take out much, but it is bigger than Magician of Faith.  Still, this card is played for its effect.

 

Effect(s)            : This is the counterpart to Magician of Faith: a Flip Effect that gets you a Trap from you graveyard.  Simple, but not as effective as Magician of Faith because a Trap must be Set a turn before it can be activated, and are generally rely on being a surprise to be effective.  You generally need another good Trap/Quick-Play Spell to Set with the revived one if you hope to get any significant use out of it.  Well, other than S/T removal bait.  Especially now that most people run Dust Tornado: it was a little bit rare to set an Mystical Space Typhoon since one didn’t want it to get nailed by Harpie’s Feather Duster or Heavy Storm back in the day, but since you have no choice with Dust Tornado, people have gotten quite good at chaining it in your End Phase to destroy any S/Ts you just set.

 

Uses and

Combinations  : This card has a long history, having first appeared in Metal Raiders, the second English set.  When it first came out, it was kinda handy for those of us who owned a Mirror Force and ran a decent amount of other Traps, but that was a select few.  When Spell Ruler (Magic Ruler when it was first released) came out and all the players with money, luck, or knowledge of the old pack marking trick made sure they had three Mystical Space Typhoon in their deck, Traps became a lot less useful, and what little time Mask of Darkness had to be popular faded.  After all, what good was reviving a Mirror Force if it was just going to get destroyed without its effect next turn?  Some combo intensive decks would still use Mask of Darkness, but not much.  A “lock” combo was available to Mask of Darkness, via Traps like Time Seal and Drop Off.  Tsukuyomi allowed you to constantly re-Set Mask of Darkness.  Of course, the trick was you had to more or less get them topdecking before it was safe to execute, and oh yeah, there was this other Spirit Monster, Yata-Garusa that you just needed to summon and attack for damage with to do the same thing.

 

Then Yata got banned.  Still, we had some very strong decks that made the lock undesirable.  It could be done, but it was very hard to pull off.  Time Seal was useful, since Drop Off might accidentally help them.  Well, the Tsukuyomi/Mask of Darkness/Time Seal lock finally started seeing enough play to be a concern.  Konami knows that the more cards it bans, the more it annoys all us players.  Yes, even I don’t like having to ban cards.  That doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary.

 

Now Mask of Darkness is at one per deck.  Why is that?  Because a true lock is a bad thing.  With the old list, you could leave someone sitting there with no cards in hand, no Monsters or S/Ts in play, just waiting for you to take out their LP in a few turns via direct attacks from Tsukuyomi.  Not as bad as waiting for Yata-Garusa to finish you off, but still, not fun.  Additionally, there are tutors for all the pieces of the combo.  They aren’t always the greatest of search cards, like A Cat of Ill Omen, but if the Trap I need is in the bottom half of my deck, it was worth it.  Basically, now that the combo requires you use Drop Off (which, due to assorted effects means you still have hope of breaking the lock) and has all the bits restricted, it will take some real skill to get going.  Or at least that is the hope.  Oh, and in Japan there is a trick to let you win the entire match in a single duel using this lock and a card we lack.

 

Ratings

 

Traditional       : 1/5 – Don’t run it here.  We have a better lock.

 

Advanced        : 2/5 – That’s a general score. It is okay in most decks, since getting a Mirror Force back is getting a Mirror Force back, even if the “surprise” factor is less.  In lock decks, it is vital.  In such a deck it is required, an automatic five out of five.

 

Limited            : 3/5 – As long as you manage to pull a worthwhile Trap with it, it’s good.

 

Summary

If you’re going for a lock, you need it.  Most other decks get by just fine without it.