Solemn Strike – #RA02-EN079
When a monster(s) would be Special Summoned, OR a monster effect is activated: Pay 1500 LP; negate the Summon or activation, and if you do, destroy that card.
Date Reviewed: October 17th, 2024
Rating: 4.33
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,
Solemn Strike is our Throwback Thursday choice and one that still holds its place in the meta.
Standard Counter Trap that costs LP to negate effects and destroys. 1500LP is almost always affordable and to negate and destroy a monster that was summoned or an monster effect activation is next to nothing for cost. The worst part about the card is that it has to be set, but as a Counter Trap it won’t be getting countered by almost anything. Solemn Strike will ALWAYS be useful no matter how many different negation/destruction cards come into the game. Negating a Special Summon or a monster effect is always needed in the game and Solemn Strike can negate ANY monster effect. Hand Trap you don’t like? Boom! Gone. Special Summon that’s going to start combo? Gone. Just wanna keep a monster off field? You got it! The card is a solid staple even now eight years later.
Play it if you have the room, play it if you can’t afford higher-priced alternatives, play it in your Side Deck, just play the card because it is a great card and will always find use.
Advanced- 5/5 Art- 4.5/5
Until Next Time,
KingofLullaby
Crunch$G
With all the anti-Special Summon cards we looked at this week, Throwback Thursday was fitting to have another, so we look at the classic Solemn Strike this week.
Solemn Strike is a Counter Trap where when a monster effect is activated, or a monster(s) is Special Summoned, you can pay 1500 LP to negate the summon or effect and destroy the monster(s). Still a good card to this day. You get to negate basically any Synchro, Xyz, or Link that would come from the Extra Deck, along with some other Special Summons, and you also got the option to negate any monster effect in the game. 1500 LP is a pretty low cost as well for an effect this strong, plus it’s on a Counter Trap, making it hard to respond to unless you got Solemn Judgment. Solemn Strike is still a solid card to this very day for stopping most monster-related goods. It isn’t the staple it once was, but you’ll still see it pretty often. It aged pretty well, even when we do have 3 Solemn Judgment in the game now.
Advanced Rating: 4/5
Art: 4.5/5 Classic “No”
Mighty
Vee
Keeping up with this week’s theme of “controversial staples”, Solemn Strike is our Throwback Thursday card, a Counter Trap from the Solemn mini-archetype. While it’s technically searchable with Counter Fairy cards like Guiding Ariadne, for the most part it’s not feasible to search, relegating it to tech card territory in most decks. Solemn Strike has a single effect, responding to either a monster effect or when a monster WOULD be Special Summoned (big noob trap), paying 1500 of your own Life Points to negate that effect or summon, then destroy that monster. It’s a simple but powerful and versatile effect– it alone can crush many decks that are highly reliant on their Normal Summon effects or lynchpin monsters, like Link 1 combo pieces. It’s important to note Solemn Strike only works on Special Summons that aren’t part of an effect, so for cards that Fusion or Ritual Summon or monsters that Special Summon themselves innately, you’ll instead have to rely on its older cousin, Solemn Warning, or, topiclaly, Dominus Impulse! Speaking of Warning, Strike was also quite feared on launch, and in the OCG it was eventually semi-limited for a period of time before returning to 3. As long as your deck isn’t hurt too much by playing too many tech cards, Solemn Strike was always worthy of a deck slot– though only a select few decks, like Pepe and Counter Fairies, could actually integrate it into combos. While Strike has definitely fallen out of favor as a Main Deck staple, it’s still seeing Side Deck play to this very day; even modern decks can still get blasted by Strike. The current game simply rewards Hand Traps more over slower techs, but when it goes off, your opponent will wish it didn’t exist.
+Extremely powerful effect that can shut down combos by itself
+Counter Trap makes it difficult to negate
-Too slow to be favored as a Main Deck card
-”Would” wording limits its uses against decks that don’t rely on inherent summons
Advanced: 4/5
Art: 3.75/5 This is what happens when you touch his stuff!
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