Nightmare's Steelcage
Normal Spell Card
SD6-EN031, Common

This card remains face-up on the field for 2 of your opponent's turns. No monsters can attack. Destroy this card during your opponent's 2nd End Phase after this card was activated.

After not-so-patiently waiting for literally years, we are finally given the lesser brother of Swords of Revealing Light. Though available for a long time in virtually every Yu-Gi-Oh! video game published, and though having been around in Japan for a literal eternity , Nightmare's Steelcage has only just been introduced to us in the new Spellcaster's Judgment structure deck.

Judging by the reviews this card has met on certain prominent Yu-Gi-Oh! sites which shall remain nameless, the wait was a bit too long and people have forgotten the potential usefulness of this card. Lambasted for its "short" duration of two of the opponent's turns as well as its restriction of your own attacks, the ratings thus far are ignoring the true application -- raw stall power. This card will mostly see play in Burn decks, which already have a ridiculous amount of stall power. If you hold this card in your hand until you've played Swords, you can slap it down immediately following and have a FIVE turn gap of uninterrupted dominance.

Another deck where this card will readily find a place is the high-defense Rock deck, like the one covered in the previous Advanced Deck Workshop. While my original build of the deck didn't include much staple stall power, I have since heavily revised it to use Level Limit - Area B and Gravity Bind in preference to less reliable defense support cards. Nightmare's Steelcage can easily add on top of the rest of these cards to make this Rock deck even more impenetrable. Of my three current decks, the Rock deck currently holds this card.

In my opinion, Nightmare's Steelcage absolutely belongs in any deck which must stall. Exodia, Last Turn, Burn, High-Defense, and hell, maybe even Chaos. While those two turns pass, you just might get a Light and a Dark into your Graveyard in time to beat your opponent to the punch with a BLS super slammie. The complete lack of originality, imagination, and flexibility in today's CC-spoiled, self-proclaimed expert duelists both shocks and appalls. This card gets an unconditional Great rating, and a 10/10 for decks that need MORE stall, because "card advantage" means NOTHING when your field is wide-open to attack.