Stats                : Mask of Darkness is a small Level 2 Dark/Fiend.  Level 3 means no Fusions (at all), so now that Metamorphosis can work its way into a few decks, it still won’t affect Mask of Darkness.  Dark decks don’t have a lot going for them now, at least that actually reflect the Attribute.  Fiends have a few things, but I haven’t heard of them doing too well.  Once, these would have been killer, but now are so-so.

 

Mask of Darkness has a small 900 ATK and even smaller 400 DEF, so it won’t survive or take much of anything.

 

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 most Traps require the element of surprise to be effective.  You generally need some sort of “bait” to Set with it: say a Jar of Greed or the like.  Even then, one can never be certain when you’ll find someone willing to risk their Mystical Space Typhoon by Setting it or still running Dust Tornado (or has the cycle already gone back to people running it being the norm?).  Then there is Royal Decree: you might need the second Trap to put the opponent in an uncomfortable position: if they Chain Decree to negate one Trap, you’ll be able to safely Chain your other to get at least one through.  All in all, Traps are really hurting in this game.

 

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, and in my case it’s more a “why keep making card that make even more bans necessary?”

 

Victory Dragon made the lock actually quite useful.  While no one ever cleared up the US rules, in the OCG you can only forfeit on your own turn.  In other words, you have to “know” you’re going down next turn and that it is better to forfeit.  Otherwise, this becomes better than Yata-Garasu in a way: with Yata, you’d count your deck and hey, maybe you had a victory so it might be worth stalling to force a sudden death match or whatever the rules called for.  Here, you know once the lock starts; if you can’t break it they’d eventually whip out Victory Dragon and attack for a Match win!

 

Now Mask of Darkness is back at two per deck.  Why is that?  Victory Dragon is banned.  Most Trap cards are considered pointless to play at the moment.  There are prominent exceptions, but if a worthwhile alternative pops up, you can bet they’d be dropped.  I am honestly surprised the metagame hasn’t shifted to the mainstream decks running one or two Royal Decree in the main deck and then another one or two in the side for the oddball player with more other Traps than Call of the Haunted, Mirror Force, Ring of Destruction, or Torrential Tribute.  Even Sakuretsu Armor might be worth replacing if that common Shrink becomes a reality.

 

That’s not how it is, though, and if are running a larger Trap count (say 8 to 10) then you actually should be running these, or if you’re running a Trap as your deck focus, of course (like Crush Card Virus).

 

Ratings

 

Traditional       : 1/5

Advanced        : 2/5

 

Summary

Thankfully, there aren’t enough broken Traps in most decks to warrant running one Mask of Darkness, let alone two in either format.  Sadly, the unbalance in the game means you can’t afford the turn wait of so many Traps, or the multiple turn wait for some less general use ones.

 

-Otaku