Trap
ContinuousCastle of Dragon Souls
View:
3112
Once per turn: You can banish 1 Dragon monster from your GY, then target 1 monster you control; it gains 700 ATK until the end of this turn (even if this card leaves the field). When this face-up card on the field is sent to the GY: You can target 1 of your banished Dragon monsters; Special Summon that target. You can only control 1 "Castle of Dragon Souls".
Castle of Dragon Souls — Power Evaluation
Final Score: 51 ± 6 · Confidence: Medium
- Intrinsic: 50 · Deck: 51.4 · Meta: provisional
- Primary role: Recovery/Recursion · Secondary: Utility
Why it scores here
Castle of Dragon Souls converts a Dragon in the graveyard into a repeatable +700 ATK pump and, when destroyed, revives a banished Dragon, so its value depends on a Dragon engine already being in place. Its score comes from the recursion and the pump, not from any interaction, since it has no negation or removal. The card's 81-deck presence is driven mostly by Blue-Eyes (43%) and the 85% overlap with Blue-Eyes White Dragon; that confirms it is practical in that shell, but it does not raise the score by itself.
Axis scores
| Axis | Score | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Accessibility | 50 | A Continuous Trap that is set and activated with no searcher, and it is live in 81 decks across 26 archetypes, but it needs a Dragon in the GY or banished zone to do anything (verified: card text and deck data; no combo data). |
| Combo & Conversion | 45 | The text gives a +700 ATK pump and a revival, but there are no recorded boards to show how far it converts in practice (inferred: card text only, no combo data). |
| Resource Economy | 55 | It banishes a Dragon from the GY as a cost and revives a banished Dragon when destroyed, which is roughly card-neutral with some recursion (inferred: text rules). |
| Effect & Interaction | 15 | It has no negation, removal or hand-trap reach; the ATK pump is combat support, not interaction (verified: card text). |
| Material Utility | 10 | It is a Trap, so it provides no material body and cannot be used as material (verified: card text, card frame trap). |
| Resilience & Flexibility | 60 | The pump persists after the card leaves the field, and the revival is triggered by its destruction, so it keeps some value through backrow removal, though banish-based removal would stop the revival (inferred: card text). |
| Deck-Building Efficiency | 70 | It is a single trap slot, with a one-copy-on-field restriction and only 7 of 81 decks running two copies, so it is cheap to run but mildly restricts the deck to Dragons (observed: copies per deck, deck data). |
Calculation
Weight profile: 0.7 Recovery/Recursion + 0.3 Utility. Intrinsic ≈ 50, Deck ≈ 51.4, Meta = provisional. Modifiers: Dragon-only restriction (-2). Final formula: 0.40*Intrinsic + 0.60*Deck
Strengths
- Recurs a banished Dragon when destroyed, so it has a built-in recursion trigger
- The +700 ATK pump is once per turn and persists after the card leaves the field
- Cheap to run: one trap slot, with 74 of 81 decks running one copy
- Live across 26 archetypes, most strongly in Blue-Eyes (observed: deck data)
Weaknesses
- No interaction: no negation, removal or hand-trap reach
- Dead without Dragons in the GY or banished zone
- Its value needs a destruction or a Dragon already in place, so it depends on the rest of the deck
- No combo or guide evidence, so conversion is inferred from text only
Counters / choke points
- Banish-based backrow removal stops the revival trigger, since it relies on being sent to the GY
- Decks without Dragons get no value from it
- Opposing backrow removal or destruction can start the revival, which limits control of the trigger
Best use
Dragon recursion trap with a small ATK pump. Decks: Blue-Eyes, Dragonmaid, Red-Eyes, Azure-Eyes / Dragon-based shells. Suggested copies: 1.
Evidence & gaps
- Verified: Trap Card, Continuous, with the two effect clauses as written; Present in 81 decks, 74 of them at one copy and 7 at two; Blue-Eyes at 43.2% of decks and 85.2% co-occurrence with Blue-Eyes White Dragon
- Observed: Spread across 26 archetypes, and in 6 gameplay types; Dragon partners (Maiden with Eyes of Blue, Azure-Eyes Silver Dragon) recur across decks
- Inferred: The card is a Dragon-recursion engine whose value depends on a Dragon already being in the GY or banished zone; Banish-based backrow removal would stop the revival trigger, since it depends on the card being sent to the GY
- Data gaps: no combos supplied, so combo conversion is text-only inference no guides supplied no banlist token, so 3 copies (unlimited) assumed no usage statistics (StatisticsCard), so archetype inclusion % comes from the deck sample only