Traps are how you catch the villains in Skylanders Trap Team. To use a trap you must match the element of the trap to the element of the villain. There are six different forms of traps within each element. Any of the traps can be used on any appropriate villain. Once captured the villains will be held in the Villain Vault in the middle of the Academy. Before playing any level, you can visit Villain Vault and load any villain into an appropriate trap. This way you only need to buy the number of traps that you want to bring into any level. For example if you have one trap for each of the main 8 elements, you could load up 8 villains (one in each trap) and play a level with those 8 villains available to you. If you want 16 villains available you’ll need to buy more traps. There are six different shapes of traps for each main element and three different shapes for each of the two new elements, but they are not the same shapes for each element. Some shapes do duplicate between a couple of the elements. Traps will be released throughout the year just like characters.