Final Duel Magic and Trap Cards: The Heavens Rain Down Ruin Upon the Titans
Yugi's deck in this duel has a ton of ways to regulate a monster's ATK, be it one of his monsters or one of his opponent's monsters!
You've already seen "Time Jump", which sort of functions in that capacity, but there's more where that came from.
Want to ruin an opponent's day? Deteriorate their weapons or wear down their attacks by giving them a little of the 'ole "Shattered Axe"!
This simply lowers a monster's ATK by 500 points for each turn it's face down. In a certain sense it's like an ATK-lowering counterpart to Yugi's Battle City card "Life Shaver", right down to the fact that both cards don't have an explicit activation condition. The manga's version is pretty strong, which is why Konami's version was made weaker by effectively making it slower and more vulnerable.
In the manga, Yugi activates this card (and soon after that, "Time Jump"!) before attacking Dark Yugi's "The God of Obelisk" with a souped-up "Silent Swordsman Lv. 0".
Most fans are confused when they read this sequence. After all, isn't it widely known that Trap Cards like "Shattered Axe" shouldn't work on a god card like Obelisk?
And I don't blame them; the English translation of the manga is pretty unclear about this. But anyone who's been following along with my posts should be able to piece this together.
After all, in Takahashi's original text it's clear that there is a type of Trap Card that can affect the god cards: Trap Cards with magical effects! Those cards can affect a god card for one turn, just like Magic Cards can.
So, keeping this piece of information in mind, we can safely infer that, since "Shattered Axe" is definitely a Trap Card, and definitely affects Obelisk, who can only be affected by Trap Cards that have magical effects... it holds up logically that "Shattered Axe" must be a Trap Card with magical effects! See, Takahashi is more consistent here than many suspect.
But that's not Yugi's only trick. To complement this debuff card, we'll also be looking at another one of Yugi's monster-buffing methods. Well, in a manner of speaking, as you'll see below.
