Spell
ContinuousCard Trader
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4077
Once per turn, during your Standby Phase: You can shuffle 1 card from your hand into the Deck; draw 1 card.
Card Trader — Power Evaluation
Final Score: 50 ± 6 · Confidence: Medium
- Intrinsic: 48 · Deck: 52 · Meta: provisional
- Primary role: Utility
Why it scores here
Card Trader is a card-neutral quality engine: once per turn during your Standby Phase it swaps one card from hand into the Deck and draws one, so it never adds card advantage but lets a dead hand card be cycled for a fresh one. It is a clean, cheap, low-slot staple that appears across 33 archetypes in the sample, which earns the generic-utility and deck-efficiency points. Its ATK/DEF, rarity and view count earn nothing; the score stays near the middle because it converts no board, makes no material and offers no interaction.
Axis scores
| Axis | Score | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Accessibility | 55 | Needs to be in hand and then survives to your next Standby Phase; it is live in 66 of 66 sampled decks, avg 1.33 copies, so it is reliably available (observed + verified). |
| Combo & Conversion | 30 | No recorded combo boards, and the text only cycles a card into a draw, so it builds nothing on its own (inferred from text; no combo evidence). |
| Resource Economy | 55 | Hand-size neutral: one card in, one card drawn, so it is quality rather than advantage, with a small refuel effect on dead cards (verified from text). |
| Effect & Interaction | 5 | No negation, removal or hand-trap reach; the card is purely a self-contained draw effect (verified from text). |
| Material Utility | 10 | It is a Continuous Spell, not a monster, so it provides no Level, Attribute or material value (verified from card type). |
| Resilience & Flexibility | 40 | Sits as a Continuous Spell and is vulnerable to spell removal, but it is redundant across 3 copies in some decks and needs no board to function (inferred). |
| Deck-Building Efficiency | 80 | Costs one slot, no garnets or locks, and is splashable and cheap to run in most of the 33 archetypes (observed from deck spread, 1-copy in 54 of 66 decks). |
Calculation
Weight profile: Utility default weights (no secondary role). Intrinsic ≈ 48, Deck ≈ 52, Meta = provisional. Modifiers: none. Final formula: 0.40*Intrinsic + 0.60*Deck
Strengths
- Clean, cheap, low-risk slot that fits many archetypes
- Improves hand quality each turn without spending a card
- Once-per-turn timing is simple to apply with no fiddly rulings
Weaknesses
- Card-neutral: no card advantage, so it does not win games on its own
- No interaction, board presence or material value
- Does nothing on the turn it is played; value only arrives on later Standby Phases
Counters / choke points
- Spell removal or Spell-targeting disruption while it sits face-up
- Opponent decks with little to cycle are unaffected by its selection
Best use
Utility hand-quality cycler in any deck that wants to refresh dead cards. Decks: Dark Magician, Runick (Mysterune), Blue-Eyes, Greed, Exodia, Guardragon. Suggested copies: 1.
Evidence & gaps
- Verified: Text: once per turn, Standby Phase, shuffle 1 card from hand into Deck and draw 1; Continuous Spell, not a monster; Present in 66 of 66 sampled decks across 33 archetypes; Copies per deck: 54 with 1 copy, 2 with 2, 10 with 3
- Observed: Gameplay spread: 36.4% (type 6), 34.8% (type 7), 28.8% (type 4); Top partners: Monster Reborn 51.5%, Polymerization 31.8%, Cosmic Cyclone 28.8%
- Inferred: Card is hand-size neutral, so its value is quality, not advantage; Standby Phase timing means value arrives only on later turns; Generic utility is high because the card spans many archetypes, not because it is strong
- Data gaps: no combos supplied: combo conversion is text-only inference no guides supplied no banlist token: assumed 3 copies (unlimited) no usage statistics (StatisticsCard): archetype inclusion % inferred from deck sample only