Trap
CounterRetort
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When your opponent activates a Spell/Trap Card with the same name as one in your Graveyard: Negate the activation, and if you do, destroy that card. Then you can add 1 card with that name from your Graveyard to your hand.
Retort — Power Evaluation
Final Score: 40 ± 6 · Confidence: Medium
- Intrinsic: 48 · Deck: 42 · Meta: provisional
- Primary role: Negation/Interaction · Secondary: Recovery/Recursion
Why it scores here
Retort delivers hard negation and destruction when your opponent activates a Spell/Trap matching one in your Graveyard, with optional recovery to hand. However, the condition is extremely narrow—requiring a duplicate card both in your deck and milled to your GY, plus the opponent activating that exact card—making this a pure meta-tech. Quality negation interactions are overshadowed by near-zero accessibility in most games and zero combo utility; the card sits inactive unless both players run the same Spell/Trap, a rare scenario outside mirror matches.
Axis scores
| Axis | Score | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Accessibility | 30 | The trap requires a matching Spell/Trap to remain in your Graveyard when your opponent activates one with the identical name—a highly specific, unpredictable condition that rarely aligns outside mirror or identical-build matchups. (verified) |
| Combo & Conversion | 25 | Retort is purely reactive disruption incapable of driving combos or building boards; negation and destruction provide no tempo extension or resource generation. (verified) |
| Resource Economy | 50 | On activation, the card efficiently negates, destroys, and optionally recovers a duplicate for net advantage; however, the extreme condition rarity means this value almost never materializes. (inferred) |
| Effect & Interaction | 75 | Hard negation and guaranteed destruction provide strong, unambiguous interactions against opposing Spell/Trap activations, but only when the extremely specific condition—opponent activating a card matching one in your Graveyard—is met. (verified) |
| Material Utility | 5 | As a Counter Trap Card lacking level, attribute, or type synergy, Retort cannot serve as Synchro, Xyz, Fusion, or Link material, and no archetype context suggests alternative utility. (verified) |
| Resilience & Flexibility | 35 | Once set, the trap remains locked to a single narrow condition; if that condition never occurs, it becomes dead weight; no reuse, recovery, or fallback activations exist. (inferred) |
| Deck-Building Efficiency | 40 | Retort demands deck slots and requires you to run duplicate Spell/Trap cards solely to create the condition it monitors, making it a heavy meta-call with significant opportunity cost and low general utility. (verified) |
Calculation
Weight profile: 0.7·Negation/Interaction + 0.3·Recovery/Recursion. Intrinsic ≈ 48, Deck ≈ 42, Meta = provisional. Modifiers: Extreme condition narrowness (-4). Final formula: 0.40·Intrinsic + 0.60·Deck (decks present, no combos/guides/stats)
Strengths
- Hard negation and destruction when condition is met—strong, clean interaction.
- Recovery effect adds back a duplicate spell/trap for resource efficiency.
- Appears in three distinct archetypes (Chaos Phantom, Pendulum Magician, Dark Magician), indicating some cross-archetype awareness.
- Clear card text with no errata or ruling ambiguity.
Weaknesses
- Extremely narrow activation condition (opponent must activate a card matching one in your Graveyard).
- Completely meta-dependent; only relevant if your meta runs cards you also run.
- Dead weight in most games; condition may never be met.
- Trap card with no level, attribute, or race—zero material utility if negated or destroyed.
- No synergy with combo lines; purely reactive with no board-building capability.
- Singleton in all recorded decks suggests limited confidence even in homes that run it.
Counters / choke points
- Trap destruction effects (Heavy Storm, Cosmic Cyclone, Dust Tornado).
- Hand traps that negate Trap Card activations (Impermanence, Effect Veiler against certain triggers).
- Graveyard disruption (banishing or shuffling your cards before the condition can trigger).
- Decks that run few spell/trap cards limiting your recovery targets.
Best use
Narrow meta-tech counter to shared spell/trap activations in mirror matches. Decks: Dark Magician mirror/matchup.
Evidence & gaps
- Verified: Card text: negates opponent Spell/Trap activation matching one in your Graveyard, destroys it, optionally recovers a duplicate.; Appears in 3 decks, all as singleton in main deck.; Top partners are Dark Magician cards (Sorcerer of Dark Magic, Chaos Command Magician, Dark Magician Girl).; Counter Trap Card with no level, attribute, or race.; Legal in TCG, OCG, MasterDuel, and DuelLinks.
- Observed: All 3 decks run it as 1 copy.; 3 distinct archetypes use it (Dark Magician, Pendulum Magician, Chaos Phantom).; Zero appearances in recorded combo boards.; No guide mentions.
- Inferred: Negation + destruction provide high-quality interaction (≈75) when condition is met.; Extreme condition rarity (opponent runs same spell/trap) drastically limits accessibility (≈30).; Trap card has zero material utility when effect is negated or blanked.; Card is a pure meta-tech with no proactive combo value.; Success depends entirely on meta composition (both players running identical spell/trap cards).
- Data gaps: No combos supplied—combo conversion is text-only inference. No guides supplied—no human context on actual deck role or strategy. No banlist token—assumed legal at 3 copies in all formats. No usage statistics (StatisticsCard)—inclusion % inferred from 3-deck sample only; very small sample size. No metagame snapshot—evaluation cannot account for actual frequency of shared spell/trap usage in target meta. Deck evidence is from 2023 only (March 2023); meta may have shifted significantly.