Skill Drain

Continuous Trap

Pay 1000 Life Points. The effects of all face-up Effect Monsters are negated.

Summary:

Skill drain is a great card to use against today’s top decks. Almost all of them rely on their monsters effects to fuel their engines, destroy your cards, and get out their best monsters. So, by using Skill Drain, you will be negating some of the deck’s most useful cards and hampering their engine. You will also turn the duel into a battle of attack power, and if you have the stronger monsters, you will come out on top.

Skill Drain only negates effects on the field, meaning that there are ways to get around it. You could run into some difficulty if your opponent is using monsters that get under Skill Drain. However, if you build you deck so that all of your monsters take advantage of Skill Drain, your deck will still over power you opponent.

Either way, your opponent will be looking for a way to get rid of this card as quickly as possible to free up their monsters

Effects:

Pay 1000 Life Points.

A 1000 life points is quite a lot to pay to activate a card. You won’t be able to use Skill Drain very easily at the end of a duel, and they could become dead draws. Also, if you are using multiple Solemn Judgments you may run you life points out to use more than one Skill Drain. Aside from that, it is a fare cost for a powerful card.

The effects of all face-up Effect Monsters are negated.

With this effect, you can make almost all of your opponent’s best monsters useless. Most decks nowadays use monsters to create combos and fuel their engines rather than just for attacking and defending. Using Skill Drain makes most of your opponent’s monsters do just that.

However, in order to truly understand Skill Drain, you need to know some of its rulings. It is there that we learn all of its limitations.

The most important thing to remember is that the effects of monsters still activate (even if they will be negated), and if the effect resolves any where besides the field, it will not be negated by Skill Drain. That means a card like Sangan will not be negated when it is destroyed by battle and goes to the graveyard. Also, if a monster has an effect with a cost that ends up sending that monster somewhere other than the field, that effect will not be negated. Stardust is such a card, it tributes itself as a cost, and its effect resolves while it lies in the grave. Gladiator Beasts will also still tag out since returning a Gladiator Beast to the deck is a cost, so the effect resolves while the beast is in the deck (the Gladiator coming from the deck will have its special summon effect still negated).

There are also monsters that would like to have their effect negated. For example, Goblin Attack Force has 2300 attack, but turns to defense mode after it attacks where it has 0 defense. However, while Skill Drain is on the field, Goblin Attack Force will not change position. There are many other monsters that can take advantage of Skill Drain this way. The best of them though, are Fusilier Dragon, the Dual-Mode Beast and Beast King Barbaros. Both are high level monsters with huge attack, and the option to summon them without tribute by giving up some of that attack. When Skill Drain is active, any change to attack and defense caused by a monster’s effect will be canceled out, and the attack and defense will return to normal. So Fusilier Dragon, the Dual-Mode Beast and Beast King Barbaros are 2800 attack and 3000 attack monsters that can be brought without tribute and still keep that high attack with Skill Drain out on the field.

Making a deck with monsters that either get around Skill Drain or benefit from it, and then using 3 Skill Drain is a very powerful strategy. In fact, something like this just won a Shonen Jump Championship recently.

Conclusion:

Skill Drain can dismantle so many decks that if your deck can handle playing under it, you should have it in your side deck at least. It is especially good against Lightsworn decks if you can get it out early. Skill Drain will stop all of the deck milling effects, preventing the Lightsworn player from getting cards to the grave where the need them.

Skill Drain is not so useful against Destiny Hero Synchro Decks since many of their cards like Destiny Hero Malicous will get around Skill Drain. Not to mention that Dark Armed Dragon is still awesome when Skill Drain is on the field. Blackwing decks won’t mind Skill Drain, since they are more involved in the hand, where Skill Drain can’t touch them (not to say it doesn’t affect them).

Skill Drain is a card you should seriously consider for you deck. Test it a bit and see if works in your deck.

-Valt