My intent here is not to provoke a controversy by saying one of the most commonly used cards in Goat Format is bad. Obviously, this card does have a lot of potential. It’s an answer to powerful monsters like Airknight Parshath, Chaos Sorcerer, Black Luster Soldier and aggro Aggro/Zoo decks. However, I think, with every card, it’s important to not just blindly put it in your deck because it’s good. Rather, we want to examine what utility each card offers and whether it’s necessary for the deck. We’ve gone over this card’s strength a lot of times, so I’m going to go over weaknesses this card has, that not everyone has considered.
It has less utility than it did in 2005. During the early part of 2005 Goat Format, before the Tsukuyomi ruling, basic beatdown was prominent. People were playing a lot of LV4 beaters (i.e. Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer, D.D. Assailant) and Jinzo was used in every deck. These were great Snatch targets, but now they’re less common.
It’s useless against so many great monsters.
Let’s go over the list of commonly used cards in the format that aren’t good Snatch targets:
* Breaker the Magical Warrior and Dekoichi. Both floaters with semi-good stats that are useless once activated.
* Tsukuyomi and Asura Preist: Spirit monsters that return to the hand and can’t be targeted on your turn.
* Thousand-Eyes Restrict: Unless you have a Tribute monster to sacrifice it for, it will lock you down and prevent follow-up plays.
* Magician of Faith, Magical Merchant: Yes, Snatching them while face-up and using Tsukuyomi on it can be viable. However, most of the time (during your turn), they will be face-down and Snatch Steal doesn’t interact with them at all.
* Sangan: Why would you want to Snatch this card?
Can easily be countered. People play around it. Unlike many other staples, Snatch is not a normal spell so it has a harder time resolving. When players summon Airknight, they set Dust Tornado to stop Snatch. When players summon Chaos Sorcerer, they set Book of Moon to stop Snatch.
Dependence on other cards. In many cases, you need a tribute monster or Metamorphosis in order to maximize the value out of Snatch Steal. Not only that, but simply the opponent having Goat tokens face-up can make Snatch Steal bad for the situation.
Lack of consistency in performance. Some games, Snatch wins it for you. Other games, Snatch sits in your hand for several turns only end up as a one-for-one trade.
It tolerates the opponent having access to threats. First, in order to use Snatch Steal next turn against an Airknight, you’re accepting the fact that the opponent is being allowed to summon Airknight freely and attack freely in the first place, while a card like Sakuretsu Armor would have destroyed Airknight. Of course, Sakuretsu Armor isn’t good against Chaos Sorcerer decks like Snatch Steal is, so there’s definitely pros and cons. But secondly, if you Snatch an opponent’s Airknight (and don’t have a way to flip it down), you are basically accepting that the opponent will be able to regain control of Airknight, damage you and draw another card out of it whereas removal would’ve gotten rid of it.
Counter-intuitive to the purpose of some decks. If you’re using a stall, burn or auto-win deck, it may not help your deck achieve its win state at all. If you are using an aggro/zoo deck, you want to dominate the field and the goal is to preclude the opponent from having strong face-up monsters to begin with. It may be a card that aggro/zoo decks want to side in against certain matchups
Again, I’m not trying to say Snatch Steal is a bad card. Obviously, if you are winning games with Snatch Steal, leave it in your deck by all means. I’m not against the card. However, if you notice that Snatch Steal often doesn’t have a large impact for you, you could be misplaying it. However, it may also be the case that you’re running it against decks that may not be punished by it very much and maybe it should be sided out against certain matchups.