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Yugioh Reader Tips, Rants and Raves

‘Time Seal’ versus ‘Drop Off’, by Shine-Soldier

In this article, I will compare two cards that are in many ways the same. They have the same purpose: “Don’t let your opponent get the card that he/she would draw during his/her draw phase”, but they both do it on their own ways. I’m talking about ‘Time Seal’ and ‘Drop Off’.

Time Seal
PSV-007
Trap/Normal

“Your opponent skips the Draw Phase of his or her next turn.”

Common

That’s our first one. Let’s just take a look at it before we’re going to see what Drop Off does.
By activating this card, your opponent won’t be able to draw during his/her next turn, it’s that simple. This card will always be a 1-for-1 card, even if your opponent negates it, they still lost one card (unless their chaining Call of the Haunted to bring back Jinzo or play Royal Decree, since those two cards remain on the field).

Before we go any further on this one, we’ll first take a look at the second card of this article: Drop Off.

Drop Off
LOD-097
Trap/Normal

“This card can only be activated during your opponent's Draw Phase. Your opponent must discard the card he/she draws to the Graveyard from their hand immediately.”

Super Rare

As you can see, this card can only be activated in your opponent’s draw phase, so it isn’t chainable most of the time. Instead of preventing your opponent to draw a card, this card sends the card to the Graveyard right away.

Now, let’s compare these two cards.

Time Seal: Drop Off:
Chainable (+) Not Chainable (-)
Prevents the draw (+/-) Destroys the card (+/-)
Slows opponent’s deck (+) Thins the opponent’s deck (-)
No Destruction (-) Destruction (+)
Bad topdeck (-) Bad topdeck (-)

So far, Time Seal has a better score than Drop Off. Personally, I agree with this result. I’ll explain to you why:

Drop Off destroys the card, which sometimes would be a positive thing. But most of the time, a deck won’t be build around just 1 card and if they do, they would most likely run more copies of that card. So when you destroy ‘the 1 card’ with Drop Off, then it’s good. But when you destroy something like an Exiled Force, your opponent wouldn’t really bother, since you just thinned his/her deck by one card. Also, Chaos Decks’ purpose is to get cards in the Graveyard so they can be removed for the summoning of Chaos Sorcerer. Fiend Decks that run Dark Necrofear also want cards in their Graveyard. Strike Ninja and more decks want this to happen too. So with Drop Off, you will most likely help these kind of decks, unless you will destroy their Chaos Sorcerer/Dark Necrofear/Strike Ninja.
With Drop Off you will ‘decrease’ your opponent’s hand size by 1, but sometimes help them too by sending the card to the Graveyard.
And then we’ve got the unchainability. When your opponent destroys this with Breaker, MST, Dust Tornado or another S/T removal card, you will not be able to chain this card, which is a bad thing of course.

Time Seal will ‘decrease’ your opponent’s hand size by 1 AND slow their deck down. And above all that, when Time Seal is selected as the target for a S/T removal card, you could turn that situation into a 2-for-1 in your advantage by chaining Time Seal.

But don’t get me wrong here, ‘cause both of these cards are great cards in the right decks. But all in all, I think Time Seal is just a little bit better than Drop Off.

If you don’t agree with me or just want to respond to this article, you can always mail me at:


Shine-Soldier