Trapper (TCG)

Trapper
	The Rocket's Trap, Rocket's Sneak Attack and Imposter Oak's Revenge
Types used
Major cards	Rocket's Sneak Attack, Imposter Oak's Revenge; The Rocket's Trap
Era	1999-2001

The Trapper deck archetype is a widely popular playset from the Team Rocket and Gym Heroes expansion era.

Strategy

Trapper is an hyper-offensive decks that makes use of a large amount of Trainer cards to fill up the user's hands on turn 1, while sabotaging the opponent leaving their hand empty. This is done with a combo of Erika to draw up to 12 cards, followed by Imposter Oak's Revenge to reduce the opponent hand to 4 cards, Rocket's Sneak Attack to bring them down to 3 and finish it up with The Rocket's Trap leaving them empty handed.

For the offensive side of the deck, Trapper relied on powerful Pokémon of the era, with similar strategies to other common deck archetypes of the era, like Do the Wave and Haymaker. Scyther and Wigglytuff can start dishing massive amounts of damage by turn 2 with support from Double Colorless Energy to fill their energy needs and PlusPower.

Other support cards include Misty's Wrath and Bill for additional card drawing madness; Item Finder and Computer Search to find specific cards by sacrificing no longer needed drawers and a combo of Rattata and Mankey to peak at your prize cards and recover them in case there is something useful.

Key Cards

Imposter Oak's Revenge, Rocket's Sneak Attack and The Rocket's Trap - The main nasty combo of trapper, these 3 cards in sequence will drop the opponent's hand from 4 cards, then 3, and finally leave them empty-handed with The Rocket's Trap, mildly unreliable due to the coin flip, but it's mitigated with a large number of them and the use of several Item Finders.
Erika, Misty's Wrath and Bill - Multiple card drawers allow the user to fill their hand with all the necessary tools to enable the trapping and power up their own Pokémon.
Wigglytuff - Do The Wave has great potential to start hitting with 60 damage early in the game, enough to beat most common basic Pokémon with little investment.
Erika's Jigglypuff - As a Common, it can dish 40 damage in turn one with ease.
Scyther - Primarily valued for its combination of 70 HP with Fighting Resistance and a free Retreat Cost. With the addition of Double Colorless Energy, Scyther could deal a consistent 30 damage from turn 2 with its Slash attack, 60 with a turn 1 Sword Dance on top.
PlusPower - The additional damage allow the attackers to OHKO most of the remaining Basic Pokémon with 70HP.
Mankey and Rattata - Two basic bench fillers to power-up Wigglytuff's Do The Wave with great Pokémon Powers allowing the user to recover any useful tools from their Prize cards.

Typical deck list

The deck list appearing below is not official; it is meant to represent an average build of the archetype, not specifically constructed for any regional metagame. Being that this is merely an archetype, a player may wish to change any part of this deck when building their own version.

Quantity	Card	Type
2×	Erika's Jigglypuff
2×	Jigglypuff
3×	Wigglytuff
2×	Scyther
3×	Mankey
1×	Rattata
4×	Bill	T
4×	Computer Search	T
2×	Energy Removal	T
4×	Item Finder	T
2×	Professor Oak	T
4×	PlusPower	T
4×	Erika	T
3×	Misty's Wrath	T
1×	Nightly Garbage Run	T [R]
4×	The Rocket's Trap	T
4×	Rocket's Sneak Attack	T
3×	Imposter Oak's Revenge	T
1×	No Removal Gym	T [St]
4×	Double Colorless Energy	E
1×	Full Heal Energy	E
2×	Grass Energy	E

Possible tech cards

The following cards are often used in Haymaker in place of certain cards included in the above list.

Mewtwo - A solid choice with 70HP and the ability to deal 40 damage for . So long as there is Energy in the discard pile, its Energy Absorption attack allows Mewtwo to set up quickly allowing players to choose up to 2 Energy cards from there.
Electabuzz - The ability to Paralyze with Thundershock on turn 1 allowed Electabuzz to set up for Thunderpunch on turn 2, with the possibility of dealing 40 damage fast.
Hitmonchan - Hitmonchan could use its Jab attack on turn 1 for 20 damage. Its second attack, Special Punch, could deal 40 damage for three Energy. Important for hitting the Weakness of many Colorless and most Lightning Pokémon.

Restriction

Neo Genesis introduced Cleffa a card that counters Trapper with little effort thanks to, being able to recall a full hand after using the Trap combo with it's move Eeeeeeek, weakening the deck moving forward.

The Trapper deck, being comprised mostly of cards made in the first few sets of the TCG, was one of the first to be essentially, but not explicitly, banned from play as the cards were taken out of Pokémon Organized Play. Due to its loss, however, the TCG was allowed to grow, and new strategies were eventually able to take root.

This article is part of Project TCG, a Bulbapedia project that aims to report on every aspect of the Pokémon Trading Card Game.