Monsters that can be discarded from your hand to activate an effect during an opponent’s turn have been all the rage lately. All sorts of these monsters, including Effect Veiler, Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit, Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring, and Ghost Reaper & Winter Cherries, have been appearing in most of the top Decks in Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series events. There are a couple big reasons why these cards are so popular at the competitive level. First is that these cards give you a chance to interact with your opponent even when they win the die roll and get to go first, so you have a chance to stop their powerful combo that could be difficult on your game plan. Second is that these cards are hard to predict from the opposing side, so when your opponent goes all-in on a play thinking your defenses are down, you can potentially blow them out with a single card. Because of these trends, other choices that can be used to beat this type of card have risen in popularity, such as Amano-Iwato, Called by the Grave, Mythical Beast Jackal King, and PSY-Framegear Gamma. Flames of Destruction contains a new card that is immune to all the popular tools used to beat interaction from the hand. That’s because, unlike most of the commonly used cards before it, this new one is an actual Trap Card.

Infinite Impermanence is a cool new Trap Card that, like Evenly Matched, you can activate from your hand if you control no cards. When you do, Infinite Impermanence lets you target a face-up monster your opponent controls and negate its effect until the end of the turn.

While you control no cards, Infinite Impermanence functions exactly like Effect Veiler, but with a few advantages over it: (1.) it can be activated during any phase on any turn, instead of being restricted to an opponent’s Main Phase; and (2.) it’s harder to stop than Effect Veiler, since it’s not vulnerable to popular cards that are used in competitive tournament Decks, like Amano-Iwato and Mythical Beast Jackal King.

Infinite Impermanence can be useful for interrupting an opponent’s powerful turn 1 play involving cards like Heavymetalfoes Electrumite and Supreme King Dragon Starving Venom. Although Infinite Impermanence will most easily catch your opponent off guard if you activate it from your hand, once you have an opportunity to Set it, you’ll probably want to do so. That way you’ll be able to use it even if you control other cards. Plus, Infinite Impermanence also has another effect that’ll kick in if you activate it while it’s Set on your field.

If Infinite Impermanence was Set before it was activated and if it remains on the field during the resolution of its effect, for the rest of the turn, Infinite Impermanence negates all other Spell/Trap effects in the same column that it’s in. To take advantage of this effect, you can Set Infinite Impermanence in the same column as an opponent’s face-down Spell or Trap Card. Then, when the opponent springs that card, you can use Infinite Impermanence to negate the effect of an opponent’s monster and the effect of the card in the same column as Infinite Impermanence. A careless opponent may even activate or Set a card in the same column as an Infinite Impermanence that you already have face-down, immediately rendering that card vulnerable to your negation.

Infinite Impermanence is a versatile new card that is capable of negating lots of different effects before your first turn even begins! You can try it out in your Deck when Flames of Destruction releases on May 4th!