Card Review: Prohibition

It’s weird gettin’ back into the swing of things. Haven’t made an article in about 3 weeks was it? That aside, it’s great to be back in America and Washington in specific where things are cold and smell of fresh pine. Today’s article is about one of the best side deck cards in the game right now: Prohibition.

People kinda hate this card because of how it works. No one wants to deal with someone else playing Prohibition on them and people always feel weird playing it in the first place since it effectively gives no physical advantage that you’ll see in card play. Despite that though this card can smash a lot of decks to pieces right now since they have such heavy reliance on singular cards due to the way Konami is designing archetypes.

For those who don’t know what this card does, Prohibition is a continuous spell card that when you play it, you call any card that exists in Yugioh. Then, neither player can use it as long as Prohibition remains on the field. The cards specifically says “cards with that name, and there effects cannot be used.” but there’s a few nuances that are important:

• If a monster is called a player is allowed to set that monster. Ex. if Prohibition is calling Inzektor Dragonfly, you can still set a Dragonfly face-down as your Normal Summon but you can’t Normal Summon it outright.
• A prohibited monster can’t be used as Fusion Material. This one really hurts HEROs. If you call Neos Alius a player can’t use Miracle Fusion using a Neos Alius. They’ll have to settle with Stratos + T-King or something bad like that.
• Similarly, you can’t use that monster as Synchro Material. Say Dragonfly is called, you set it and it’s attacked and isn’t destroyed. Then you summon a Tuner next turn, you can’t synchro with the Tuner and the Dragonfly if Dragonfly is Prohibited. In the same fashion you can’t XYZ with it.
• You can Special Summon a Prohibited monster with a card effect like Call of the Haunted or Monster Reborn. Which I find very random, but it’s allowed. After it’s summoned though you cannot use the monsters effect, attack with it or change its battle position. Even if the monster has a continuous effect the effect is not applied. Ex. Jinzo would not negate traps. This isn’t true for inherent summons though; you can not Special Summon a monster inherently if it is Prohibited. This means you can’t Special Summon a Cyber Dragon in its normal fashion if it’s Prohibited. Same goes for other cards like Dark Armed or Black Luster Soldier.
• Any monster or spell or trap on the field before (even if set) is completely unaffected by Prohibition.

Hope that clears anything up if there’s any confusion.

Onward and upward though! I thought it be nice the give examples of ways to use it against a lot of the top decks right now to explain what makes this a good card.

• Wind-Ups: Against this deck there’s a couple cards you’ll be good for calling depending on the game state; either Shark or Rat. If it’s early in the game you’ll want to call Wind-Up Shark since it’s the only card that allows them to make explosive plays. Without Shark the deck is limited to very slow Rabbit aggro or 1 XYZ a turn with Rat, which is very manageable for most decks. If it’s late in the game and they’ve blown through there Magicians and Zenmaity then it’d probably be better to call Rat, since it’s the only card they have left that can actually do anything.
• Geargia: This deck is actually quite deceptive, it seems like the deck revolves around Geargia Armor but it doesn’t, he’s just a means to an end. The real card the deck uses is Geargiaccelerator.  Without it the deck really has no plays except Machina Fortress, which is still a great card, but with only him the deck will peter out quickly since it’s not a dedicated Machina deck so they can’t churn out infinite Fortress, they probably only can get him out max 3 times a game. Calling the Accelerator also makes all the other Geargia cards pretty dead since their entire purpose is to search and swarm Geargiaccelerators.
• Machinas/Gadgets: When you find there’s no Geargia to worry about your best bet is to call Machina Fortress since he’s really the only monster that will give you any grief. The opposing player’s best bet is some rank 4’s and it’s likely they won’t get them out if you sided right other than Prohibition.
• Darkworlds: Against Darkworlds you always call Grapha. Aside from MST, the opponent can’t get rid of Prohibition without Grapha and they usually can’t win aside from summoning Grapha either. Prohibition is a real work horse here.
• Elemental HEROs: Like Darkworlds, this is one of the best uses for Prohibition. Against HEROs call Neo Alius. Pretty much the entire deck shuts down without it. They can’t use Gemini Spark, Hero Blast, Miracle Fusion and E-Calls become dead really quick. Also, a lot of HERO players don’t main MST and might not side it in depending on your deck, so Prohibition could literally win the game in some cases.
• Agents: This one’s a pretty easy call. Master Hyperion is probably the only card in the deck that’s going to allow any kind of super aggressive push. It doesn’t shut down the deck, but you’ll sure feel a lot safer if they don’t summon Hyperion ever. Without him the deck is pretty lack luster and depending on the build they may not have a whole lot of other things they can do without him. This is especially good if you’re running a deck with little to no traps because the opponent is likely to side out MSTs and then Prohibition is there to stay. Examples would be siding in Prohibition in Chaos Dragons, Hieratics or even Agents themselves.
• Chaos Dragon: Probably the worst deck in the format to use Prohibition against of the decks it’s not completely dead against, so I don’t exactly recommend it, but that’s not to say it can’t be used. If you’ve got a lot of dead main decked cards like MST etc. and you don’t have enough stuff to side in, you might as well side in your Prohibitions. What you call against this deck changes a lot depending on what you don’t want to see. If you really need to keep up a wall of Spells and Traps or prevent milling you can call Lyla. If you don’t want as big a push you’d probably call Lightpulsar. You can also call cards like Tragoedia or Gorz if you want to push for game and you think they have one or call Effect Veiler to assure your effect will go off. It really comes down to having experience using Prohibition rather in this case.
• Don’y side this against Dino Rabbit!
• Atlantean Mermail Genex: I always like saying the name of the deck all huge like that… this deck has a couple key cards to consider and is still quite new, so I’m not 100% confident in this one, but from my brief experience I’d say that you should Prohibit Atlantean Marksman. Marksman seems to be the end goal of all the deck’s search and destruction. Without it they won’t be destroying nearly as many cards and won’t be swarming any time soon. It’s the prime target the deck uses for Deep Sea Diva, so Diva will become less of an issue since it’ll most likely just make a Gachi Gachi Gantetsu if Marksman is prohibited. Marksman is also the card that destroys face-downs when discarded so if they don’t destroy face-down they’re forced to destroy face-ups with Atlantean Heavy Infantry, which they usually only run 2 of. The deck still has plays, but they’re severely limited.

If I’m missing any other decks, feel free to comment about any deck you want to here about and I’ll either edit it in or comment to directly depending on relevance.