We’ve finally reached the end, the last part of the Lengthy Labrynth Primer, and the one that should hopefully be the most helpful if you’ve got a basic grasp on the deck and what it can do.
Plays When Going First
In almost every situation imaginable, you want to use cards like Pot of Prosperity, Duality, or Extravagance before playing Arianna (Extravagance forces it). If your opponent is one that drops Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring on the first search card played, it’s better for them to hit a generic draw effect over Arianna’s specific search that can grab the Labrynth card you need. Typically, the best card to grab off Arianna is going to be either Welcome or Big Welcome, if you happened to start with those, you can always grab a Lady or the Field Spell instead to help generate advantage or to further disrupt your opponent during their next turn. At minimum, it’s best to end on at least 2 different set cards. You want to always have 1 thing set so Lady’s protection effect remains live when you activate a trap.
Plays When Going Second
When going second, it’s important to note what you’re up against. Don’t just go slinging furniture into the grave if your opponent is going to have responses that can either destroy your set card or negate the search in the first place. You should also aim to not give away what you’re playing for as long as possible, since playing into a backrow-heavy deck like can completely alter the way someone plays. If you do want to make use of a Stovie Torbie or Chandraglier, the best time will be in the End Phase when your opponent can no longer double-back and try to destroy whatever card you set unless they have a quick effect.
Playing Around Evenly Matched
Truly the biggest bane of any backrow deck, Evenly Matched, forces all your cards into the removed area and puts them facedown, making them pretty much impossible to recover. Lightning Storm and Harpie's Feather Duster can be dodged with Lord of the Heavenly Prison, but not much short of a Solemn Judgment will halt Evenly Matched. Despite this, Labrynth does have a couple of outs depending on your board.
This first way stops them from even playing the card, but it typically comes at the cost of your monsters, and can also be baited or disrupted. All that’s required is a Lady and set Big Welcome that you can activate. When your opponent declares they’re moving into the end of Battle Phase, activate Big Welcome and then chain Lady’s effect to grab a new trap, you’ll want Eradicator Epidemic Virus. The card you’ll search off Big Welcome will be Cooclock, which will also be returned to hand. Once the chain resolves, activate Cooclock, and once that chain resolves activate Eradicator by tributing Lady and calling Trap. If your opponent was about to use Evenly on you, then it’s gone now, but the downside is you've lost your main wall to do so.
Protecting your backrow like this in Labrynth is really only recommended if you have multiple other disrupts available. If you want to keep your board in exchange for a potential loss of hand advantage instead, you can do a similar line with Mind Crush. You lose out on seeing what’s in your opponent’s hand, but get to keep Lady. If you’re wrong, you have to discard a card. Also note that in order to use Mind Crush, you must have a card in hand for the potential discard.
The other option here is to try and salvage your board as much as possible at the end of the Battle Phase by chaining what traps you can to Evenly that will help you recover. If you know your opponent is on a deck that can OTK you, if you don’t have the proper cards to disrupt them, then this might be a better option. Since this isn’t really a combo, I’m just going to talk about what to do, and what options can help.
First, determine what card is the most important to salvage here. Lady is the all-important boss monster, but she’s not worth much if there are no set cards to protect her. If you have a Lady out, try to get her back in your hand through either a Big Welcome effect on the field or in grave. Lady can be summoned back out after Evenly has resolved through her own effect later in the turn. Being able to return Lady (or honestly, any monster on your field), will also trigger the effects of any furniture or Welcome Labrynth cards in the grave, allowing for a tiny bit of recovery after Evenly has resolved. Next, if you have the Field Spell out and a Welcome trap, flip one and pop a different card in the backrow with the effect, primarily one you know can be reused and recovered by Lovely on your next turn. Alternatively, you can keep the field spell and use it to further disrupt your opponent after all your other effects have resolved.
Playing into Specific Matchups
Finally, let’s look at some specific plays and strategies to use against popular and upcoming decks in the format.
Branded: You want to hit Dimensional Barrier as soon as possible. If you’re able to grab it via the Evenly Counter combo, then do so. This is very easy to do if your opponent has to search out Branded Fusion with Aluber, since you can just do each part of the play after the search resolves. If they open with Branded Fusion you won’t be able to stop them reaching Mirrorjade, but you can make it so Mirrorjade is where their combo ends. When going second, you want to try and bait out MIrrorjade’s banish effect as it can hit Lady since it does not target.
Kashtira: An absolutely miserable matchup to play into, especially when going second. Kashtira Arise-Heart will disable Stovie Torbie and Chandraglier, since they say they must specifically be sent to the graveyard. If Kashtira ever see you set a specific trap card, they’ll just banish it. Super Poly, Lava Golem, Kaijus, or Nibiru are your main outs here. Clearing their board makes it a lot easier to slow them down and regain control with your trap lineup. The typical Kashtira board doesn’t end on a negate, but keep in mind how easily they can recur things with effects like Kashtira Birth and through Shangri-ira’s Standby effect. Eradicator is very helpful here when going first. If they summon Unicorn first, wait until after its search effect resolves to then combo and call “spell.” A smart Kashtira player will typically aim to play around this if they already have other useful spells in hand. If they can force you to use Eradicator before they search with Unicorn, then you’re probably going to see a Shangri-ira and 1-material Arise-heart, at the minimum.
Purrely: Destructive Daruma Karma Cannon punishes Ex Noir pretty hard, and getting an early Dimensional Barrier just about shuts their whole turn off. Eradicator can help as well, but a good Purrely can kind of play through it. Eradicator won’t hit cards searched by Purrely or Purrelyly, as they were searched, not drawn. Make sure you disrupt Purrely in the End Phase if possible, as neither of the light one's effects are once per-turn, letting them recover some of their board if you hit them in the Main or Battle Phase.
Rescue-Ace: This should be an easy win. Rescue Ace are terrible at interacting with other backrow decks, and all of their interruptions require being able to target a monster on the field. Lady and Chaos Angel can run over most of the deck, and a single Infinite Impermanence on Rescue-ACE Turbulence ends their main play. After game 1, side in Evenly and the deck crumples without a negate.
Spright: Spright matchups can be rather varied depending on the build you’re fighting. A well-timed Dimensional Barrier on Gigantic can straight up stop a turn if they’ve already gone into Sprind, and Karma Cannon can punish Evil Twin boards once both are on the field. Runick variants lose out to Eradicator, often forcing them to dump their whole hand just to sit on a single fountain with no Runick spells to use with it.
Dragon Link: This is another difficult matchup, as the deck can just continually generate resources. Different Dimension Ground can be rather helpful here, since it will force all their resources in the removed area, making it harder to extend with Bystials. Also, do keep in mind that you can interrupt Borreload Savage Dragon when it tries to equip a Link monster from grave by either bouncing the Borrel or shuffling back whatever link monsters they have access to with Mudora or Keldo.
Mannadium: Mannadium can be a hard deck to interrupt if played competently, but if you ever see them open with a normal summon of Mannadium Riumheart, get rid of him on resolution. If you see them normal summon one of the tuner monsters, wait for them to try triggering a destruction effect and then bounce the tuner back with either a Big Welcome from grave or a Compulsory. Avoid hitting them with your own destruction effects, as you'll just trigger their search abilities for them. The best way to halt Mannadium is to get them early before they can set up more than 1 monster on the field.
And that does it for the Lengthy Labrynth Primer. There’s still more to talk about with this deck as we didn’t touch on things like Transaction Rollback, which has given the deck new life in the OCG, and the recently released servant card Arias. For now, though, these three articles should give you the know-how to start building and playing one of the most enjoyable trap decks to exist in the game’s history. It’s a constantly evolving deck, with new techs showing up at every event it tops at, and who knows what other fun options and playstyles the deck will branch into as more normal trap cards continue to release.
