Yu-Gi-Oh! Ban List Discussion: A Wonderful Format (Part Three)

Thank you for taking the time to read this series. Part Three deals with the newly unlimited cards and ends this series on the new Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden List.

Newly Unlimited Cards

DDWL- Basically upon release, D.D Warrior Lady has always been an extremely well balanced card. The only possible objection I would have had to an unrestricted D.D Warrior Lady format is its potential interaction with multiple copies of Return from the Different Dimension. Since we’ve established that Return is an incredibly broken card, I think DDWL itself has always been fine.

Players will note that I have been arguing for D.D Warrior Lady (and D.D Assailant’s) unlimiting basically since they were released. With the way the game works, Warrior Lady will almost never generate a card’s worth of advantage in any format. The only possible exception is crashing into a Level 8 Synchro monster, but that was a recent development to the game.

Konami adjusted D.D Warrior Lady to its optimum ratio without looking at a number of other cards that should (based on Konami’s own logic) come off the list as well.

Green Baboon, Defender of the Forest- This card has never been a factor in any top metagame. Sadly enough, the game has sped up to the point where even 2400 attack normal summon monsters (which is basically what Baboon is) are barely on the fringe of playability. Would a mono Earth deck that normal summons 2400 attack beatdown monsters be able to win consistently versus Lightsworn or Blackwing decks? I highly doubt it.

I think Baboon is an extremely sharp example of how the speed of Yu-Gi-Oh! has become dangerously close to out of control. When a 2600 attack monster like Baboon (prior to its ruling modification) goes unplayed in any top tier or even second tier strategy, it’s time to reevaluate.

Raiza the Storm Monarch- This card, along with Breaker the Magical Warrior, Sangan, and Spirit Reaper illustrates the staggering inflation of card power levels and the devaluation of the normal summon. Breaker, Sangan, and Spirit Reaper have long been considered the “trinity”, or bread and butter, of proper deck building. Every deck from Chaos to Tele-DaD started with these three as the DARK base.

Yet in this past format, Sangan was the only card of the big three to see play. Lightsworn and Blackwing ignored all three cards. Cat Synchro played Sangan solely for access to Summoner Monk or Rescue Cat while 50% of successful Gladiator Beasts played a Sangan. Keep in mind that these three cards were, not too long ago, considered three of the best monsters in the game (if not the best).

You can assess most card’s power levels rather easily. Cards with “good” effects are generally good in any format. So a monster like Legendary Jujitsu Master doesn’t really lose much from one format to another; it’s good upon release and gets slightly better or slightly worse based on format.

Raiza the Storm Monarch is an example of a broken effect. It allows you to turn any floater on the field into a walking Time Seal that devalues your opponent’s tempo and generates 2400 attack points of damage. A card like Raiza can remove a Synchro monster from play as well. The net result isn’t very pretty for the opponent.

Konami’s current philosophy revolves around broken cards bouncing off each other. I agree with this philosophy because it makes for a faster-paced, more exciting game. While Raiza was definitely worthy of restriction, or even outright banning in previous formats (compare it to Granmarg or Zaborg), it’s power level has decreased considerably due to the warped speed and special summony nature of the game. 2400 attack is rather irrelevant when cards like Rescue Cat and Lonefire Blossom bring out 2800 attack monsters to a normal summon.

Fissure- There once was a time long, long ago (during the Sakuretsu Armor/Widespread Ruin format) when I felt design should veer away from one for one removal cards in favor of advantage through battle and destruction through synergies as opposed to generic monster destruction effects. I felt a card like Fissure or Smashing Ground was just lazy and should have been more theme-stamped or subtype-stamped such as Normal Spell: Reveal a Fire Monster in your hand. Destroy one monster on the field and deal 1000 life points of damage to your opponent.

Obviously the game has changed immensely from that time of even exchanges and far slower tempos where Flip-Flop control and other strategies shined. I would say that Konami’s design toward “broken” cards colliding since then has actually made the game better. Nobody wants to play a game where you have to take 5 straight attacks in a row before finally drawing a monster you can summon to kill the unbalanced 1400/1000 floating Dekoichi!

So really it’s just common sense to put non mass-removal cards like Fissure back to three copies. A card like Fissure rarely generates card advantage and often loses the player advantage as opposed to running a trap like Trap Hole instead. And with the difference between Fissure and Smashing Ground being mainly semantics (a chained Scapegoat to eat up a Fissure being the main distinguishing factor), it would have been perfectly acceptable to place Smashing Ground at 3 as well.

Destiny Draw- This card is an example of U.S. designers like Kevin Tewart and players both misunderstanding what drove the Tele-DaD engine. It’s a good thing for the game that Tewart began taking feedback from Jeff Jones about how to think correctly about Yu-Gi-Oh! competitively.

Tewart: “Even when he was at 2, Dark Armed Dragon was rarely even Summoned in so-called “TeleDAD” decks. “TeleDAD” was horrendously mis-named and was basically a DARK Synchro Deck, very similar to what was being played in Japan at the same time, except substituting Western favorites like the Destiny Hero draw engine instead of Brionac/CoSR and the like.

At 1, Dark Armed Dragon is Summoned less than ever. But some people still have a certain level of hysteria about it. Is it a strong card? Sure. So’s Mirror Force, which is also far easier to play. So’s Solemn Judgment.

I firmly believe that whether Dark Armed Dragon is Limited or Semi-Limited makes almost no difference to the TeleDAD deck. On the other hand, Limiting Emergency Teleport, along with Semi-Limiting Destiny Draw and Malicious, ripped the deck’s guts out. Because it can’t do what it was built to do: Summon Synchro Monsters with blinding speed.”

We can see that Konami/Tewart decided to limit Dark Armed Dragon, limit Reinforcement of the Army, semi-limit Destiny Hero Malicious, semi-limit Allure of Darkness, and semi-limit Destiny Draw to deal with the Tele-DaD engine. The important decisions that killed Tele-DaD are bolded. And while the semi-limit of Malicious turned out to be an important move, that’s more a result of the fact Plaguespreader Zombie (a recently released tuner at that time) could put out 6000 points worth of damage with 2 Malicious as opposed to 1.

It turns out that level 8 Synchro monsters, of course, do not affect the game nearly as much without a monster and spell/trap clearing behemoth like DaD paving the way. In fact, this property of DaD is so powerful that duelists like Jeff Jones are using Dark End Dragon instead of other level 8 synchros, effectively trying to replicate DaD’s effect instead of bringing out Colossal Fighter or Stardust Dragon (the monsters Tewart and others claim anchored Tele-DaD to begin with!).

I said a year ago that Stratos has been the centerpiece of every top tier Destiny engine, and will be until he is banned. Konami continued this experiment by making five adjustments to Tele-DaD, and yet DaD-based decks were STILL top tier in this format. Again, the deck revolved around floaters and advantage pushes.

Breaker the Magical Warrior- I absolutely hate this choice. Stay tuned to the future article discussing my issues with the ban list.

Wrapping it Up: Where Does this List Leave Us?

I think players may be underestimating the changes to the game Konami has made.

The game has evolved a long way from the old days, where defensive traps were not used frequently and Trap line-ups were centered on more techy picks such as PWB, Solemn Judgment, and Royal Oppression. As a direct result of March’s incredibly fast format (with OTK’s occurring regularly), players had to adapt by using more defensive traps and choosing more defensive strategies such as Armageddon Knight/Necro Gardna control or even Tragoedia.

The DSF haze is now removed but many of the strategies that duelists learned in March’s format will still apply here. So you can expect this combination of more defense and less explosion to create one of the slowest formats we have ever seen (barring future OTK combinations released in sets). Most of the mass special summoning and versatile monster and s/t removal has been limited (Return from the Different Dimension, Dark Armed Dragon, etc) so you’ll be able to actually formulate a coherent strategy and execute it!

My main gripe now is allowing Trap Dustshoot to remain. It is basically the only card remaining that allows for a “god hand” to start the match. However, players are now able to actually play the game for a few turns without worrying about losing in one turn. The rest of the format will be focused on figuring out how to stop the decks at the top tier. However, this will be a lot more manageable now because most of the broken strategies have been impacted by the new list.

Expect to see even the most explosive decks gradually morph into control variants that go for card advantage (a concept that has always mattered in Yu-Gi-Oh!). It’s very difficult at the moment to determine exactly what decks are the cream of the crop since it’s hard to tell deck power levels in relation to each other. However, I expect this to be a fun and diverse format.

My next post that will wrap up this series on the Forbidden List will feature a critique of changes Konami made (that I don’t like) and a discussion of this format compared to my ideal one.

Related posts:

1. Yu-Gi-Oh! Ban List Discussion: A Wonderful Format (Part Two)
2. Yu-Gi-Oh! Ban List Discussion: A Wonderful Format (Part One)
3. Yu-Gi-Oh! Ban List Discussion: What Does Konami Want?