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It’s not always easy to get to the cards you need to win.
Some decks, like Exodia, need to stall for as long as possible while they draw all 5 pieces.
If you’re interested in playing a strategy that’s more of a slow burn than a one-turn knockout, then you’ll definitely need a few of these cards to move the game ahead at your own pace!
Stall cards are generally defined as any card that slows down the game. This can be by preventing your opponent from attacking you, or by stopping them for activating certain effects: if your opponent can’t do what they normally would, they’ve been stalled.
So let’s quit stalling and start… stalling, by diving into this list.
12. Messenger of Peace
Is your opponent steamrolling you with a Blue Eyes White Dragon?
Or digging into your life points with a Summoned Skull?
This guy puts a stop to that, and at the cost of 100 life points per turn, monsters with an attack greater than 1500 attack cannot declare an attack.
Although this sounds like there’s still a glaring hole left in your defenses, how many decks even bother to play monsters with less than 1500 attack? I can’t think of a single card in my decks with an attack low enough to get through this barrier.
As long as your opponent isn’t playing a deck of teeny tiny monsters (That includes you, Ojamas), then Messenger of Peace is a great way of buying you turns without being attacked.
11. Gravity Bind
It’s a pretty common trend in Yu-Gi-Oh! that the higher your level, the stronger you are.
A level 10 Obelisk the Tormentor is stronger than a level 1 Kuriboh. And that just makes sense!
Gravity Bind makes it so that level 4 or higher monsters can’t attack.
This generally means that you’ll be safe from high damage attacks, and it’ll force your opponent to dig through their deck and find their lower level monsters if they want to do damage (or they’ll have to remove Gravity Bind).
One thing to look out for with this card is XYZ monsters.
Reason being that XYZ monsters don’t have levels, they have ranks, and as such are completely unaffected by Gravity Bind.
10. Level Limit Area B
I know what you’re thinking:
I’ve pretty much listed the same card twice, how can Level Limit Area B work any better than Gravity bind when they do the same thing?!
Well the thing with big strong monsters is that they often compensate for their huge attack stats with a ridiculously weak defense.
Look at Summoned Skull: a huge attack stat of 2500 for a level 6 monster, but only 1200 defense.
Level Limit Area B allows you to put all of your opponent’s bigger monsters in a weaker position, meaning you can play your own XYZ monsters and get rid of those threats!
9. Waboku
Battle phase? What battle phase?
Waboku makes it so that if your opponent does decide to attack, nothing happens.
No damage, no monster destruction. It’s like the battle phase was never even declared.
This gives your monsters an extra turn on board, meaning you can retaliate with full force on the next turn.
8. Marshmallon
This soft, squishy boy provides a rock-hard brick wall of defense (maybe the Marshmallow’s gone off).
Not only is Marshmallon completely indestructible by battle, but if your opponent makes the mistake of attacking him face-down, then they’re going to take 1000 damage.
You can make repeated use of his burn ability by playing it alongside Savage Colosseum, which forces your opponent to attack, and Book of Moon to keep flipping your Marshmallon back down.
7. Battle Fader
This is the perfect stall card when the game isn’t quite going your way.
If you’re attacked directly, you can special summon Battle Fader from your hand to immediately end the battle phase.
Not only does this protect you from taking a huge amount of damage on that turn, but it also leaves you with material to potentially tribute summon with!
There are some seriously powerful monsters you can summon for one tribute. Namely any of the level 6 Monarchs.
Caius The Shadow Monarch is a personal favorite, but any of them will come with a brutal effect to help you gain an advantage.
This means you can completely change who’s in control of the game with this one card.
6. Majesty’s Fiend
It’s pretty hard to play Yu-Gi-Oh! when every monster you control has practically been turned into a normal monster.
And that’s exactly what Majesty’s Fiend does to your opponent.
Although this also prevents you from activating monster effects, the stalling effect that Majesty’s Fiend provides will buy you loads of time to dig out your good monsters.
When you finally have monsters with good effects, you can simply tribute Majesty’s Fiend for another monster and get to it.
5. Anti-Spell Fragrance
As a pendulum player, never has a single trap card made me so fearful.
This fantastic trap cards forces players to treat spells like they’re traps. Meaning they have to be set before they can be played.
This is especially potent against pendulum decks, as pendulum monsters literally can’t be set as spell cards.
Your opponent will have to destroy Anti-Spell Fragrance before they can do anything, leaving them useless and scrambling for answers.
This will also force you to set spells, too. But when you’ve caused this much disruption, you’ve got all the time in the world.
4. Swords of Revealing Light
I’m guessing this might be the most iconic stall card in Yu-Gi-Oh.
Swords of Revealing Light has saved more duelists from imminent destruction than I could count.
SoRL protects you from attacks for 3 turns, giving you 3 draws to get the right cards you need to turn the tide of battle.
The great thing about this spell card is that it only stalls your opponent, unlike many of the other stall cards in Yu-Gi-Oh.
This means you’ve got 3 whole turns to deliver some payback, and nothing can stop you from smashing their life points.
3. Vanity’s Fiend
Modern Yu-Gi-Oh is all about special summoning.
There are combo decks that are more like solitaire than Yu-Gi-Oh, with card after card after card.
Vanity’s Fiend puts a stop to this, preventing either player from special summoning.
Play this in a deck like Monarchs who can wreak havoc with 1 summon per turn, and you’ll have an opponent who’s been slowed down to a halt, while you continue playing like everything’s fine.
If the special summon restriction does limit you later on down the line, you can always tribute Vanity’s Fiend for another monster, or send it to the graveyard for a link summon.
2. Mystic Mine
Easily the most powerful field spell in the entirety of Yu-Gi-Oh, Mystic Mine will shut down any player who’s not prepared for it – and give a damn good challenge for those who are.
While you control less monsters than your opponent, they can’t attack or activate any monster effects.
Those cards that search on summon? Nope.
The really useful monsters than can destroy annoying spells or traps? Definite nope.
The only way to get around Mystic Mine is to draw some spell and trap destruction, which is not as common as it may sound. I mean, who runs Mystical Space Typhoon anymore?
If your opponent is unprepared, this stall can last for an entire game!
Mystic Mine gets exponentially better the less monsters you play; so if you run a deck that can work entirely on spells and traps, then this lockdown will last until the end.
1. Wall of Revealing Light
And the best card for putting up a defensive wall goes to a literal wall.
This is one of those classic Yu-Gi-Oh! cards that was made good, and will stay good for as long as the game is around. It’ll never get power crept out.
It’s been banned for most of its lifetime, being limited fairly recently.
You can pay life points in multiples of 1000, and unless your opponent has a monster with attack greater than the LP you lost, they can’t attack you.
Although you lose life initially, you get long term protection that’ll save your life overall.
If you paid 4000 life points then even Obelisk the Tormentor, a literal Egyptian God card wielded by the King of Games himself, won’t be able to touch you.
4000 attack is such a high barrier that your opponent will seriously struggle to overcome this. And you’ll be untouchable until they do.
Rob Myers is a physics student from England, who spends his time looking at space and turning it into numbers. In his free time he enjoys playing card games, reading the Discworld series, and working his way through his never ending video game library.
