For some reason, every six months, some Yugioh players around the world are bound to get angry. That reason is the banlist. There's really no stopping the anger though, simply because everyone has their own version of the ideal banlist and if one person is happy another is angry. As well, every six months, a group of players will say "I quit Yugioh because of the !@#$% banlist", but they inevitably come back to the children's card game and stop complaining about the banlist. With that introduction, let's start the blog by looking at the new March 1st banlist.
Newly Forbidden: Breaker the Magical Warrior, Call of the Haunted, Magician of Faith
Breaker returns to the banned pile. It likely won't change the game as Breaker, although powerful, was not crucial to any one deck but rather just splashed into virtually any deck. The lost of Breaker means a loss of a spell / trap removal to a generic deck, but it won't have a lasting implication to the game.
Call of the Haunted joins the ban pile possibly because of Disk Commander, but then Monster Reborn has been unbanned. This change seems really retarded for many players but keep in mind how Monster Reborn can recur an opponent's Disk Commander and the Monster Reborn player will get to draw 2 cards. This means Perfect Circle gets a faster version of Call of the Haunted but now faces the danger of having the opponent randomly taking their own Disk Commander and thereby facing a +2 card advantage. The banning of Call of the Haunted conveniently takes away the Perfect Circle's saving grace to this move: chaining Call of the Haunted targeting Disk Commander to fizzle Monster Reborn. Perfect Circle now must either get rid of their own Disk Commander through D.D. Crow or The Transmigration Prophecy or else face the devastating +2.
Magician of Faith, like Breaker, does not have a huge effect on the game anyway. The popularity of Magician of Faith is even much less than Breaker, so the effects of its banning will go largely unnoticed. The Apprentice engine weakens a bit, but Magician of Faith's slot can simply be replaced of another Crystal Seer or Old Vincictive Magician so basically, who cares about Magician of Faith?
Newly Limited: Advanced Ritual Art, Monster Reborn, Nobleman of Crossout, Ojama Trio, Raiza the Storm Monarch
Limiting Advanced Ritual Art obviously weakens Demise OTK a bit, but also messes up a bunch of wannabe combo decks as well. I think a better option would be to limit Demise, King of Armageddon instead because Demise OTK would also lose some of its power in the form of a less consistent Trade-In. Limiting Demise would also weaken the Rainbow Dark OTK as a side effect, but since Rainbow Dark OTK sucks, I guess it doesn't matter. Advanced Ritual Art does open up possbilities like using it with Exodia, so I think restricting it instead of Demise is less ideal.
A discussion of Monster Reborn has already been written in the Call of the Haunted paragraph, but I want to add here that Monster Reborn owns with Dark Magician of Chaos. It's a cute combo that wins games, but it won't be unstoppable or anything so it'll simply serve as a new move to watch out for for the next six months. (Two consecutive "for"!)
Nobleman of Crossout being limited does not make much of a difference since little people ran more than 1 anyway and there's always Shield Crush for those who want to play more defense mode destruction.
The limiting Ojama Trio pretty much screws over Baboon Burn. Just Desserts becomes garbage and Secret Barrel losing 600 damage is a huge loss. The worst thing now is that the Baboon Burn player now faces a barrage of monsters compared to a lock field previously. The limiting of Ojama Trio makes Baboon Burn uncompetive at a tournament level. This could possbily make Green Baboon lose monetary and trade value. Any deck using a burn transition side deck also weakens as it's pretty hard to side into burn with only 1 Ojama Trio. If a deck wants to side into burn, it's going to have to be more of a lock down type, and those require a dedicated deck to install the necessary protection for the lock down pieces.
Raiza the Storm Monarch getting limited means no more back to back Raiza annoyances. Caius the Dark Monarch is getting released soon though so Raiza's loss is hardly devastating and there's always still Zaborg at the moment. A lot of players are happy about this, but it's not really the most radical change in the metagame, and instead of Raiza people will just complain about something else. Like Caius.
Newly Semi-limited: Book of Moon, Cyber Dragon, Foolish Burial, Light and Darkness Dragon, Mage Power, Magical Stone Excavation, Necroface
Book of Moon at 2 copies is a decent change. It opens up more fun comboes and Morphing Jar goodness. It is not very powerful by itself so having it as 2 copies is hardly dangerous. It's only broken with Cyber Jar, and I doubt Cyber Jar is coming back any time soon, since even its Dragon brother has been semi-limited.
Cyber Dragon at 2 doesn't matter since the difference between 2 and 3 copies is minimal. Many decks opt to not run the third copy anyway so the most of the damage is inflicted on Machine decks and Zane Trusdale wannabes. I find it weird that the Dragon is limited now instead of a few formats ago when people were screaming for the restriction of Cyber Dragon seeing as how it was "broken" and stuff.
Both Foolish Burial and Light and Darkness Dragon at 2 shares the same story with Cyber Dragon. Who runs 3 copies?
Mage Power at 2 is great news for people who are still loyal to Ben-Kei OTK, but will be of no significance to the rest of the world. Ben-Kei OTK is incredibly slow and hard to pull off meaning it won't be tournament worthy and if no one played even 1 copy of Mage Power before, why would anyone want to play 2 now?
The extra copy of Magic Stone of Excavation will have profound effects, at least for part of the next 6 months. It screams combo, and combo will be playable, if not dominant. Magical Explosion FTK is certainly getting some hype, but I am unsure of its power so I'll have to watch the next two SJCs. If it wins the next SJC, people will side deck to beat it, and it if it still wins another SJC, then it will be a force to be reckoned with. At worst, DDT gets a power boost. and D.D. Crow might be extremely important.
Necroface is so expensive that its semi-restriction will not affect many players. Although both the Necroface Turbo and the Necroface OTK deck are very powerful, the chance of them winning any tournament is very little simply because not a lot of people will play these decks. In an 8 round tournament, it is very likely that a deck will lose due to bad hands. Hence, Necroface decks will always be the victim of "genetic drift".
Newly Unlimited: Apprentice Magician, Creature Swap, Green Gadget, Jinzo, Pot of Avarice, Reckless Greed, Red Gadget, Yellow Gadget
Some players will opt to play Apprentice Magician in threes, but considering many decks only played a single copy when 2 were available means this unrestriction will go largely unnoticed in terms of tournament play. As well, the Apprentice Engine is horribly unpopular an is just very slow in the modern metagame. The banning of both Magician of Faith and Breaker is another incentive not to play Apprentice Engine.
Three copies of Creature Swap will give the Zombie player an edge, but I still think the deck is too graveyard reliant since D.D. Crow and Dimensional Fissure is too devstating to the deck. D.D. Crow is a hard to stop 1 for 1 trade that also destroys the deck's infrastructure. Dimensional Fissure means auto-lose if unanswered, and it is very difficult to answer considering the counter trap line up of decks that utilize Dimensional Fissure. Tomato and Rat Box both don't work very well as well so three copies of Creature Swap simply doesn't matter.
The Gadgets were hardly broken at 3 copies each so it will not be a problem. If anything, 9 Gadgets will give more opportunity for bad Gadget-flooded hands.
Three copies of Jinzo! Not a lot of people played 2 Jinzos when it was available though, so I don't think its impact will be that much. However, it's comforting to know that decks that really need to shutdown traps does have 2 Royal Decree and 3 Jinzo at their disposal. Jinzo does get weaker with Call of the Haunted gone. It won't warp the game, but Jinzo at three makes some people happy just knowing its there.
Anyone running Pot of Avarice in threes are just asking for dead hands. I don't believe there is a deck out at the moment that can possibly support 3 Pot of Avarice, so this is a nice unrestriction because if a card doesn't need to be restricted, then it shouldn't.
I think Reckless Greed at 3 copies will bethe most important change in the unrestricted department. It makes stacking Reckless Greeds together that much easier and gives combo decks a much easier time to draw their necessary pieces. I personally love Exodia Turbo just because winning with Exodia is at the top of fun things to do in Yugioh and Reckless Greed helps in that. Oh, did I mention that Reckless Greed gives combo a much easier time finding its pieces? I think I did but it can't hurt to emphasize that.
That wraps up the blog. Enjoy your card games!
Tags: Yugioh Banlist
Related to:
Yu-Gi-Oh!
