Card of the Week #22: Chow Chow Chan
This card of the week will most likely be one you have never heard of. However, if you look at it, it would appear to be a hand trap. How could a hand trap have evaded your view and come into the game without you knowing about it? Well, it's pretty new, and it's not exactly the greatest of cards. Despite this, in a trap heavy format, it's quite clear that it has a lot of uses.
Firstly, this thing is quite good against any decks that run a lot of Traps. Just having this card in your hand means you don't have to worry about any facedowns your opponent may have while you are attacking, and you won't have to simply pick what monster you want to keep when your opponent flips Mirror Force and all you have is a Forbidden Lance. Essentially, this card is a great way to keep on going with your high power monsters, and you won't need to take risks.
The obvious use of this is as a late MST. While with MST you have to select what to destroy out of a selection, this card can be chained to an opponent's defensive play in order to stop whatever they had planned. In many ways, this card is basically just a counter play to Mirror Force, but it stops other cards as well. It is also noteworthy that a majority of decks in the current format run Mirror Force at 2, and against decks with few traps it is quite simple to side this out.
The best place to use a card like this would be in a Raccoon deck. It's a Level 2 Beast Type monster, meaning it fits in with anything the deck may want to do, and since Raccoons specialise in summoning cards from the deck another target will never go amiss. Also, the card art really does look like it's another raccoon, so it's gotta go in there somewhere, right?
So let's leave this COTW a bit short, on the note that this card's uses are generally quite obvious. It's a hand trap that can surprise your opponent completely by stopping that devastating Mirror Force play. And with many specific decks running Normal Traps that they often use in response to your attacks, there is no reason why this can't be a valid card. It's not the best, but it definitely has uses.
