Reminds me of Mangara of Corondor, except with the activation cost... Cool card, great flavor; weird to see a spider without reach, but I guess it makes sense.
Ajani_is_da_man
★★★★☆ (4.7/5.0)(3 votes)
I love the name :P
metalevolence
★★★★☆ (4.2/5.0)(8 votes)
I lose more boots that way
Aaron_Forsythe
★★★★☆ (4.5/5.0)(18 votes)
Aaron’s Random Card Comment of the Day #38, 11/16/11
The first thing that jumps out at me about this card is its name. “Trapdoor” is a compound word, and the name of the real animal this card is flavored as is “trapdoor spider.” Yet there it is, “Trap Door” with a space in the middle.
I’m guessing this was just a miss by an editor way back in the day, but the fact that there was (is?) a New York City literary society called the Trap Door Spiders (Isaac Asimov was perhaps its most famous member) makes me wonder if this wasn’t some kind of in-joke or homage.
The card itself is pretty solid considering it was released in Ice Age, although if it were designed today it would certainly have white as one of its colors, as exiling an attacker is about as white as it gets? (White-green? But that combo wouldn’t be weak to flyers. White-red? Maybe, but then it wouldn’t be a Spider. Tough call.)
For low-powered formats, I like it when cards like these have mana costs on their abilities, as it creates “pants-down moments” when it suddenly becomes safe to attack into it. If the ability was always active, your opponent would be forced to feed it one of his creatures before he could start attacking profitably and that kind of on-board pressure, while powerful, can get frustrating. Removal is often more fun from the hand, as it lends itself to tells, reads, and bluffs. Cards like the Spider here just force you to deal with it.
Typically when cards like this cost three mana to use, they aren’t good enough for constructed. But Olle Råde won the Ice Age block constructed Pro Tour with four copies of this in his deck, mostly for its “efficient” body--an indictment of the power level of creatures at that time.
Giant Trap Door Spider was reprinted in Invasion with a different creature type as Hunting Kavu. In cases such as this one, the design team typically wants to reprint the original card name and all, and the creative team wants to reskin it to reinforce the world-building, in this case the introduction of the Kavu creature type. Were it up to me at the time, I’d take the opportunity that renaming the card gave me to tweak the ability and/or numbers. If you can’t have nostalgia, you might as well have a better card.
Gabriel422
★★★★☆ (4.0/5.0)(5 votes)
FOUR NOUNS.
The name almost reads like a wacky poem or something, one that is way too inscrutable for my understanding.
Icedragon769
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.5/5.0)(1 vote)
I love all the grammar mistakes in the ability text :P
The_Trendkill
★★★☆☆ (3.3/5.0)(3 votes)
I love this card. As a Timmy, it's one of the few 'tricks' out there that I find absolutely hilarious. I guess that's mostly because it isn't really a trick. In fact, it's more of a really obvious hole in the ground. Call me crazy/weird/whatever, but I find something novel about blatantly obvious on-board removal.
Also, the name. I started playing Magic with Eighth Edition, so when I started I had never seen any of these older cards before. Strangely, this was the first card I ever saw in an old frame, as well as the first multicolored card I saw. It looked ridiculous, even its name. Four words long? And the mana symbols didn't look quite the same. I thought it was fake.
Lauch
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(2 votes)
Ever since high school, "Giant Trap Door Spider" has become synonymous with "poorly worded card" between my cousin and I. You know you're doing something wrong when your awkward rules text is the source of an inside joke. Though it's certainly not the worst.
Tynansdtm
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.5/5.0)(1 vote)
It lies in wait in a hole, and then: SURPRISE! It... exiles itself...? I thought trapdoor spiders were about eating other things, not noble self-sacrifice. And how does it spring so high out of its trapdoor to hit flying things? I thought trap door spiders hid underground. Is it because of its size? Is its "trap" a really large hill that things have to fly over to get past? If so, it's a terrible hunter. Ugh. /rant
Blitz_Hammer
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
@Tynansdtm
The spider can only get rid of NON flying creatures.
07mak
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Fervor and Yeva plus this....awww man is he going to rage when I exile his dragon
Majinkajisan
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
This card was originally named Correct Horse Battery Staple.
Comments (14)
The first thing that jumps out at me about this card is its name. “Trapdoor” is a compound word, and the name of the real animal this card is flavored as is “trapdoor spider.” Yet there it is, “Trap Door” with a space in the middle.
I’m guessing this was just a miss by an editor way back in the day, but the fact that there was (is?) a New York City literary society called the Trap Door Spiders (Isaac Asimov was perhaps its most famous member) makes me wonder if this wasn’t some kind of in-joke or homage.
The card itself is pretty solid considering it was released in Ice Age, although if it were designed today it would certainly have white as one of its colors, as exiling an attacker is about as white as it gets? (White-green? But that combo wouldn’t be weak to flyers. White-red? Maybe, but then it wouldn’t be a Spider. Tough call.)
For low-powered formats, I like it when cards like these have mana costs on their abilities, as it creates “pants-down moments” when it suddenly becomes safe to attack into it. If the ability was always active, your opponent would be forced to feed it one of his creatures before he could start attacking profitably and that kind of on-board pressure, while powerful, can get frustrating. Removal is often more fun from the hand, as it lends itself to tells, reads, and bluffs. Cards like the Spider here just force you to deal with it.
Typically when cards like this cost three mana to use, they aren’t good enough for constructed. But Olle Råde won the Ice Age block constructed Pro Tour with four copies of this in his deck, mostly for its “efficient” body--an indictment of the power level of creatures at that time.
Giant Trap Door Spider was reprinted in Invasion with a different creature type as Hunting Kavu. In cases such as this one, the design team typically wants to reprint the original card name and all, and the creative team wants to reskin it to reinforce the world-building, in this case the introduction of the Kavu creature type. Were it up to me at the time, I’d take the opportunity that renaming the card gave me to tweak the ability and/or numbers. If you can’t have nostalgia, you might as well have a better card.
The name almost reads like a wacky poem or something, one that is way too inscrutable for my understanding.
Also, the name. I started playing Magic with Eighth Edition, so when I started I had never seen any of these older cards before. Strangely, this was the first card I ever saw in an old frame, as well as the first multicolored card I saw. It looked ridiculous, even its name. Four words long? And the mana symbols didn't look quite the same. I thought it was fake.
The spider can only get rid of NON flying creatures.