Skill Drain—its greatness needed no further explanation. The entire Field fell silent; all Gods and Immortals alike became vanilla monsters. In the most brutal formats of its time, it had once been the nightmare players least wanted to see, as well as a high-risk card with one of the highest chances of triggering real-life duels.
Its oppressive power went without saying. Even today, it remained active on the front lines of the underworld, forever an essential tool for taking revenge on society.
Of course, a card's strength and practicality could not be generalized. If this card had truly been strong enough to dominate champion-level competition, it would have been banned for life. But since it had no place on the Forbidden/Limited List, that at least meant Konami had judged it not insane enough to destroy the environment.
Skill Drain was strong, but first of all, as a Continuous Trap without an archetype, it was difficult to search and lacked consistency. Its biggest issue was that it affected both sides. Once activated, even your own monsters became vanilla monsters, which naturally narrowed the range of Decks that could work with it.
Decks like Malefic Decks, which mainly relied on high ATK rather than Monster Effects, were a better fit. If both sides were vanilla monsters, few could outmuscle a Malefic Deck in an Axe Raider brawl. There was a certain beauty to "lowering the opponent's intelligence to your own level, then defeating them with your wealth of experience."
Besides that, effects like Stardust Dragon's were not afraid of being sealed by Skill Drain either. If most Monster Effects in a Deck followed the format of "Tribute this card; activate," then they also had excellent synergy with Skill Drain. Skill Drain could only negate Monster Effects On the Field. If a monster