Why Every Card is Banned in Yu-Gi-Oh

and at the top of the list we have chicken game this is a field spell card which has one of three effects the turn player is able to use so it's one of the few effects in the field that both players are allowed to activate once it's on the field where once returned you can pay 1 000 life points to choose one of three effects or you can either draw one card destroy this field spell card or Grant your opponent 1 000 life points and for some reason this effect is spell speed 4 so your opponent can't respond to it in order to try to negate or destroy the card before you can use the effect it also has the passive effect on the field where the player with the lowest life points no longer takes damage so why is this card banned well it's that draw one effect occasionally there's cards on the band list with a whole bunch of different effects and it's only one of their effects that puts them on the ban list which is definitely the case for chicken game if it didn't have the effect to draw one card it probably wouldn't be banned now here's what's so great about this card if you activate this card and then use the effect you get to draw one card which immediately replaces the chicken game you just put on the field which allows you to go hand neutral in card advantage there is currently a limited card in the game called upstart Goblin which also allows you to go hand neutral by drawing one card and giving your opponent 1 000 life points and that card is so good it's currently limited to one copy because it essentially allows you to play a smaller deck since you can always activate the card to replace it for another one from your deck which just increases the consistency of basically any deck that it's in chicken game is a little bit better than upstart Goblin because it can search out of the deck with a plethora of field spell card support which allows you to thin your deck even more and then play chicken game there's also another field spell card called pseudospace which allows you to copy the effects of a field spell card in your graveyard for a turn oh and also chicken game only has a soft once per turn for its effect which means if you get other copies of the card you can also use their effects on the same turn so with three terraformings and three pseudo spaces you essentially play with 9 less cards in your deck if you play chicken game which just added a whole bunch of consistency to any deck that tried to use the engine as long as they didn't mind paying a whole bunch of life points to do so there was also an fdk which you can game with all the draw Power where you would just use life equalizer magical explosion in order to beat your opponent as soon as their turn started so can chicken game be unbanned the answer is maybe currently the card is not banned in the ocg and only sees a moderate amount to play if any at all and part of the reason is because the ocg put restrictions on terraform in a metaverse pretty quickly whereas chicken game was banned before either of those cards are restrict on the ban list in the TCG so without good ways to search the card out it's not as hyper consistent as it was in the past and since the TCG also has terraform forming limited now they could probably safely unban the card if even only to one copy this card is definitely one of the tamest cards on the banned list update all of this is still true however now we also have Rainbow Bridge of Salvation as an additional way to search the card turning foolish burial Goods into more copies of terraforming however the power group of the game has gone to the point where this kind of investment for a draw 1 isn't that big of a deal so I wouldn't be surprised this car was unbanned to the TCG someday without an Errata and at number two on this list we have Mirage of nightmare this is a continuous spell card which has the effect that only activates during your opponent's standby phase where you draw cards until you have four cards in your hand then during your next standby phase you have to randomly discard the same number of cards from your hand that you drew or your entire hand if you have less so essentially this card would allow you to dump your entire hand during your turn like what most combo decks do anyway then draw four cards as soon as your opponents turn started which could mean getting four hand traps and allowing you to stop your opponent from doing anything one of the more popular ways to use this card when it was still available to play was to Simply destroy the car before your standby face started that way you got to keep the four cards in your hand in the modern game of Yu-Gi-Oh drawing four cards is kind of ridiculously good let me tell you about three other cards that exist in the game pod of desires pot of extravagance and card car D pot of desires requires you to banish 1 4 of your deck face down in order to draw two cards pot of extravagance requires you to banish almost half of your extra deck face down in order to draw two cards which also locks you out of other draw effects for the rest of the turn card car D cannot be special summon blocks you from special summoning other monsters requires the card to Tribute itself and only during the turn that it was normal summoned in which case it immediately ends your turn and then allows you to draw two cards all three of these cards share the common theme of being able to draw two cards and all three of them have heavy restrictions for drawing those two cards and and all three of them have seen competitive play and consistent competitive play throughout all the years at that the downsides of Mirage of nightmare are not even that bad even if you don't bypass the effect you can just refill your hand after dumping everything on your first turn maybe draw a few hand traps to block your opponent and there are so many different ways to get rid of mirage at Nightmare before your turn starts nowadays that if you wanted to go around the side effects you could do it pretty easily in fact you could probably get around the side effects while gaining advantage in some decks so can Mirage of nightmare be unbanned the answer is definitely no the card was strong in the early days of the game when you couldn't really bypass the effect very easily and be kind of straight broken in the modern meta game where there is a plethora of ways to bypass the side effects or not even care since the side effects could be a benefit for some decks the random discard also counts as a discard effect so that would activate the effects of Dark Worlds and dangers how can the card be fixed to be unbanned the only way would be to a router the card and the best way to do that would probably to put some sand Gan like restrictions on the cards drawn where you can't use them during the turn that they're added to your hand and then take a page from some of the pendulum effects where the downside still happen even if the card leaves the field and of course banish the cards face down instead of sending them to the graveyard this would keep the effect of being able to drop four cards but actually give it a harsh restrictions where you would probably still see competitive play update this card is still Bonkers they've released even more graveyard effects and cards that like to be discarded since I made the video originally three years ago it seems as if this card gets stronger and stronger as time goes on especially since it lets you potentially drawn to hand traps on your opponent's turn next up we have card of save return this card is another continuous spell which has a very simple effect that if a monster is special summoned from your graveyard you can draw one card there are quite a few Decks that can special someone from the graveyard very easily and even a couple that do it infinitely through Some Loops so that card can essentially allow you to draw every single card in your deck in one turn or just gain a ridiculous amount of advantage for combo decks and funny enough this card didn't actually see play when it first came out and it was an even weaker version than its anime counterpart which allowed you to draw three cards when a monster was summoned although Lenka explained in the chicken game segment being able to draw one card is already pretty good not having a limit on it is broken so can card of save return be unbanned the answer is also definitely no the card is more broken than Mirage of nightmare as it allows you to gain the advantage immediately during your turn without having to wait for your opponent's turn it would just add a level of consistency to combo Dax that would be way too strong for the game how can the card be fixed to be unbanned this one's pretty easy just slap a hard once per turn on the effect you already have cards like Supply Squad that allow you to draw one card per turn if a monster control is destroyed the activation requirement for that one is not even that much harder than card of save return and it doesn't really see that much play and at number four on this list we have graceful charity this card allows you to draw three cards than discard two unlike card of safe return this card basically saw play from the beginning and it didn't really stop so you can play until it got banned where it was then unbanned for one format and then banned again forever in 2007. out of all the cards that allow you to draw just in general graceful charity is probably the single strongest without setup and it technically doesn't give you card Advantage as you just go hand neutral with its effect similar to upstart Goblin the thing with graceful charity is it allows you to dig through your deck to get your combo pieces and then selectively set up your graveyard with any two cards from your hand while not losing any advantage in that exchange it's also a discard effect so it activates the effect of Dark World monsters and other cards that require specifically to be discarded and with how prevalent graveyard effects are in the game with a lot of decks using their graveyard as a second hand this would just allow you to basically go plus three with its card Advantage instead of the hand neutral like it's intended and an effortless plus three for a majority of Dax is pretty good especially since people jump through hoops to play cards like Pawn of extravagance which is only a plus one can graceful charity be unbanned this is another hard no it would probably be an auto include in just about every deck and allow already good meta decks to be even better without effort at least there's some counter play involved with the previous three cards and even a little bit of setup required in order to use them to their broken effects but not with graceful charity it's just good right out the gate and is even better in good decks so how could the car be fixed to be unbanned this one's pretty difficult I can't think of a good way to adjust this card while keeping true to the intended effect other than just adding a whole bunch of restrictions to it like the bot of greed retrains although I don't think that's a very creative way of fixing the effect but it's just so inherently good that it's kind of hard to allow to exist without slapping a whole bunch of restrictions onto this imagined errata next up on this list we have pot of greed this card was banned because no one could figure out what it actually does and was voted as the number one most confusing card in the game in the 2008 World Championship but in order to summarize this card's effect basically it lets you draw two cards without any restrictions pot of desires and pot of extravagance are basically two ways of Konami trying to fix this card by just creating more balanced versions of it where they basically did what I suggested for fixing graceful charity just slap a whole bunch of restrictions on it and also hard ones per turns because the ability to draw two cards without any restrictions is literally good in every single deck remember there's a card that's currently limited to one copy of the ban list called seka's light which allows you to draw two cards but only if you have no speller traps in your graveyard and also locks you out of using any other speller traps for the rest of the duel and also also is a hard ones per turn in addition it has a really good graveyard effect of Bowl again but the fact that a card that literally stops you from using any other speller traps is considered so good that it's currently limited to one copy should tell you something about an unrestricted version a pot of greed so can pot of greed be unbanned not at all there's already too many cards in the game that exists which try to fix its effect which also see Heavy competitive play so releasing the grand Danny of them all wouldn't really make sense unless they did it for fun because they wanted everyone to enjoy one copy of pot of greed in their deck for a format of something how could the card be fixed to be unbanned honestly I don't think they would because pot of greed has so many retrains and generally retrains are konami's way of trying to fix previously broken cards without having to change the original I can't think of any car that has had more retrains than pot of greed so I think it's just kind of stuck in bandless purgatory forever update they had no banless tournaments in Japan where people weren't really using pot of Grid at all because that saw the Jack was better spent on a hand trap to stop their opponents insane Turn 1 combos which means in a future where combo decks are so fast pot of greed might be unbannable because his Advantage is just too slow to wait to use during in your turn but as it is now it's still very good to be honest and it's a lesser the evolution version see immense amount of competitive Play Still and for the sixth card on this list we have the delinquent Duo this card has the simple effect where you can pay 1 000 light points to discard two cards from your opponent's hand one of them at random and the other one of their choice technically this card allows you to go plus one in card Advantage similar to pot of greed although it does require you to pay 1 000 life points and that plus one alone would probably get the card banned but that's only half of the problem of this card if there was a card in the game that only traded one for one instead of two for one and only let you go hand neutral that would be an excellent trade-off out of all the ways to go one for one doing it effortlessly by discarding from your opponent's hand is one of the strongest one for one trades you can make in the game because of the potential to Loop those effects in order to get rid of your opponent's entire hand before they have a chance to play the game that's why there's so many heavy restrictions and limitations to Karen's delighted discard from your opponent's hand where they usually require you to go minus one in those exchanges at the very least because that does a much better job of balancing it out and so delinquent Duo allowed you to go plus one is one of the best ways you can possibly exchange card Advantage which means it's incredibly strong and was part of one of the very first meta decks in the game which did not rely on just summoning a strong monster to beat down your opponent this version actually relied more on just getting rid of your opponent's cards in their hand while also having a few strong monsters actually deal damage to their opponent and getting rid of more cards from the hand with cards like Don's a Luke so can delinquent Duo be unbanned no of course not it's ridiculously powerful not even for fun like they could with pot of greed since that card just adds more consistency to Dex delinquent Duo would be kind of unfair to ever win second how can they fix the card to be unbanned even if you added on a cost to also discard from your hand in order to use it it would still be strong this one's also kind of tough like graceful charity because the effect itself is inherently strong even if you only use it once per turn although I would definitely slap a hard once burner on it anyway although I can't think of good ways to really restrict this card without just slapping a bunch of restrictions to it like after they use it no special summons or not using any other speller traps for the rest of the turn or etc etc update there's actually a lot of discussion in the community about whether a random discard 2 is even useful anymore since it's only useful going first and since you don't get to pick the cards you don't gain any hand knowledge to play around hand traps although personally I'd argue that while some metadex could probably play through two random cards get discarded it would still be killer to meta Decks that actually need to use cards in their hand and not from the graveyard and this is still a complete blowout to Rogue decks plus it's not useless going second either like most people will argue people still have hand traps in their hand even after an established a board of monsters most of the time next up on this list we have the forceful Sentry this card has the effect where it simply lets you look at your opponent's hand and then send any one card from your opponent's hand back into their deck and this card is probably stronger than delinquent Duo surprising enough considering it actually gets rid of one less card the difference between these two cards is that the forceful Sentry lets you pick whichever card you want to send back from your opponent's hand which gives you knowledge on your opponent's hand and allows you to play around whatever they might have left while also getting rid of whatever their best combo piece is or whatever the most dangerous hand trap is that might stop you from doing your plays there exist a card in the game called three tactical talents which can only be used during your turn when your opponent activates a monster effector in your turn so it's kind of hard to activate and what it does is when you use it it lets you choose one of three effects and the effect chosen the most out of those three is basically the one that lets you use forceful sentries effect the other two effects are also good one of them is literally just pot of greed and the other one is change of heart both of those are excellent effects to pick as well it's just the forceful centuries picked the most because it allows you to get rid of your opponent's other hand trap and gaining information what their plan is so that you can play around them and know which hand trap to use yourself and just all kinds of information that's super valuable and competitive decks and since it sends the card back to the deck you don't have to worry about setting up their graveyard like you would if you discarded it like with delinquent Duo it's still super valuable to trade one for one from your opponent's hand but the forceful century does it in probably the best possible way it straight up a one for one exchange you don't gain card Advantage but it's so strong that the effect is literally chosen over two other very strong effects that do give you card Advantage so could the forceful Sentry be unbanned this is another hard no considering the card is probably better than delinquent Duo the ability to gain information under protest hand and also control that hand at the same time while not losing any advantage is ridiculously good out of all the cards in the game that technically only trade one for one forceful Sentry is probably the best how could the card be fixed to be unbanned honestly they kind of already did it with three tactical talents just put crazy restrictions on the effect and even then it's still really strong this is another one where a hard once per turn wouldn't really solve the issue since there existing hard once per turn version of this card in the game that does already see competitive success and it's also kind of like pot of great where they already kind of have a retrain of the card so they wouldn't really need to bother with fixing the the card in order to unban it and at number 8 in this video we have confiscation this card is like the forceful Sentry it lets you look at your opponent's hand but it discards the card you pick instead of sending it back to the deck and requires you to pay 1 000 life points to use it and even though it's technically not as good as forceful Sentry and was the last of the three discard cards to be banned it's also still incredibly powerful and would absolutely see playing pretty much every meta deck if it was live so could confiscation be unbanned same as forceful Sentry probably not they've already introduced an incredibly nerfed version of this card as well called a pointer the Red Lotus which only gets rid of a card for one turn is a trap card which is inherently slower than a spell card and requires you to pay two times the amount of life points and it sees all kind of competitive success so obviously the better version would be too powerful for the current meta game maybe we'll get to a point where graveyard effects are just better than hand effects to the point where getting your hand discarded isn't a big deal anymore in which case it might come off the banned list how could the car be fixed to be unbanned well they already kind to fix it with the point of the Red Lotus slow it down by making it a trap making them only lose the card temporarily and of course requiring a harsher Life Point cost update a point of the Red Lotus is now limited to one copy because it was too good further cementing how good confiscation would still be in today's meta next up in this video we have snatch steel this is an equip spell card which has the effect to take control whichever monster opponent controls that you equip it to with the downside that during each of your opponent's standby phases they gain 1 000 life points now given your opponent life points isn't really a downside most of the time it's almost laughably bad as a detriment to a card since life points don't really matter very much and it's such a minor amount to give to your opponent for how powerful the effect is inherently the ability to take control of one of your opponent's monsters is a plus one and card advantage since you're simultaneously denying your opponent card and gaining a new card at the same time and snap steel doesn't really require you to lose any kind of advantage to accomplish this feat there's also no limitations on the monster you can steal which makes it additionally a very powerful form of removal since it technically doesn't destroy or banish it's able to steal a lot of monsters that usually would have protection although since the car does Target it needs to be equipped there is some counter play where they can just chain MST to the activation of snatched Steel in order to stop it or if a card has an effect that prevents targeting like Fantastical Dragon fantasmay you'll be able to stop it with those cards however also because it's an equipped spell card it enjoys a massive amount of very good support the card could be searched out from the deck directly with Armory call or hidden Armory and it could be recycled endlessly with gear breed equip spell cards enjoy a lot of really good support because they are inherently kind of bad and they can receive this good support because cards like snatchdail are banned so they don't to worry too much about it so could snatch still be unbanned funny thing is they did unban it for a single format Konami was trying this thing where they were unbanning Choice cards for one format just to allow players to play some of these long-standing band cards and snatch still was one of those very few cards that was unbanned in this process before they abandoned the idea and in that one format literally every single deck played the card and it was absolutely meta defining and could single-handedly win you some games it was almost hilarious how good it was even at a time when Dragon rulers were still running about there's even better equipped spell card support today to the point where cards like smoke Grenada the thief is considered a broken card where in the past it was considered a joke so I think the card would probably perform even better today how could the card be fixed to be unbanned the thing is there already are some equipped spell cards that allow you to steal your opponent's monsters and they're not considered broken most of them rely on another card being on the field as well like comic hand or falling down those ones have have additional counter play since your opponent can remove the other cards in the field which render their effects no longer working snap still isn't really part of an archetype though so that kind of fix wouldn't really work with it if they wanted to unban snatch still they would probably have to give it an actual cost to its negative effect like requiring the person who uses it to pay half your life points during each of the standby phase and also ban hidden Armory Armory call and gear breed although even if you ban those three cards infer Nobles would probably still be able to use it pretty easily and you can't really ban an entire archetype well they can they did do that with the dragon rollers but they probably don't want to do that again just to unban One Singular equipped spell card all that being said I'm not a hundred percent confident that they wouldn't just unban the card without a change because it would just be a strong staple like super polymerization and there's so many strong Staples in the game right now that it would just kind of fit in with the rest of them if it was simply given an actionable cost or downside since it's currently an effortless plus one and last up up on this first episode of all of the banned spell cards we have change of heart this is another spell card which allows you to take control of a monster that is banned and is definitely the premier strongest of all of them it allows you to take control of any monster without restrictions just like snatch deal although it doesn't have counterplay potential of them being able to chain an MST to stop the effect so it's strictly a stronger effect since just like snatch deal it allows you to go plus one with its ability to control one of your opponent's monsters and it's a very powerful form removal that has very few counters basically anything that can remove a monster without destroying it banishing it or targeting is pretty good change of heart does Target at the very least so there are some cards which can be immune to the effect and change of heart is the original card that allows you to steal one of your opponent's monsters and it has such a simple effect that it's super powerful where it would definitely see all kinds of play considering mind control is an extremely limited version of change of heart and sees is a healthy amount of competitive success even though it has a whole bunch of limitations on the card you can steal for a turn so could change of heart be unbanned probably like I said with snatch deal it would just be a very powerful staple that would kind of fit in with a whole bunch of other powerful Staples the card wouldn't have that much benefit over a car like mind control since it would basically just be taking the cart from one turn and using the stolen card in the exact same ways people use mind control today except for the fact that you can also attack with the monster or attribute it if it were to be released it would have to be to one copy just like mind control but even then I could still definitely still see it being a little bit too strong because generally they don't like effortless plus ones in the game and this is definitely an effortless plus one since it currently doesn't have any restrictions to it how could the card be fixed to be unbanned honestly they kind of already did this with brain control which was another mind control like card that was also banned and it was only a slightly more restrictive change of heart since it simply required you to pay life points in order to steal monster and all they did to bring control was give it a simple Errata where they gave it an actual restriction to the targets it could take control of where you can only take control of a monster that can be normal some intercept which means you can't use it to steal extra deck monsters if they simply gave change of heart the same restriction then they could easily take it off the ban list and no one would play it if they required you to discard one card in order to use it it would no longer be a plus one and still be a former removal but one which is kind of dubious if it would see play or not this one seems like it'd be pretty easy to fix since they already had success in the past with similar cards in the form of brain control although they over corrected with that card and now it doesn't see any play update this car is now Limited in the TCG and semi-limited in master dual and while it does see some competitor play it's not the PowerHouse car to be afraid of and it's not even omnipresent in every deck first up on this list we have the counter to Dragon rulers Spellbook of judgment if you watch my video on why main deck monsters are banned par part one you'd see that a half the Dragon Ruler archetype is currently banned and that's because they were incredibly powerful and one of the strongest archetypes in the game's history and even with all the advantages Dragon rulers had they never made tier zero status because of Spellbook of judgment coming out at the same time a single car that's able to hold back an entire powerful archetype is an excellent card to start off a video on singular powerful cards so what does public of judgment do well during the end phase of the turn this card is activated you get to add Spellbook spell cards from your deck to your hand up to the number of spell cards you activated this turn after using Spellbook of judgment so you'd want to use Spellbook of judgment immediately then start using as many spell cards as possible which do not need to be Spellbook spell cards as any spell card counted towards its effect then you could special summon any one spellcaster type monster from your deck who had a level less than or equal to the number of spell cards added to your hand by its effect and also this card had a hard once per turn so if you played this card correctly it would allow you to go plus seven in card advantage to in your end phase and generally a card is considered incredibly good if it allows you to go plus one so this is a Little Bit Stronger Than That by a smidge although gaining a whole bunch of Advantage doesn't mean anything if you can't use those cards as technically oja magic allows you to go plus two with its effect and that one doesn't see any play because the cards that it lets you add to your hand aren't good well spellbooks actually have two pretty good targets one of them is their field spell card the grand Spellbook Tower this card allows you to draw one extra card every turn as long as you return one Spellbook spell card from your graveyard to your deck and it floats into the special summon of a spellcaster type monster from your deck on its destruction with a grand Spellbook Tower you essentially got to draw two cards every turn once during your draw phase and another during your standby phase which is pretty good for a field spell card although it's pretty easy to search out field spell cards that's not really the power card of spellbooks it was definitely Spellbook of Fate this is a quick play spell card that allows you to banish number of Spellbook spell cards from your graveyard in order to activate one of its three effects if you banish three for its best effect you got to banish one card in the field without targeting it and non-target Vanishing is incredibly good but it also had the option to have a book of moon effect that could double as flipping a monster face up as well or if you only banished one spell card you could return one of your opponent's set speller traps in their hand which wasn't as useful Spellbook of Fate was definitely the power card for being able to non-target banish one of your opponent's cards then there was a whole bunch of other mediocre Spellbook spell cards which aren't super good on their own but if you're able to use them without worrying about losing Advantage then they actually get kind of bumped up in usefulness a little bit Spellbook of wisdom allowed you to protect your spell casters from speller trap effects Spellbook of Secrets was a great card to copy the effect of in order to search out your other spell books thanks to cards like Spellbook of the master and there was even a Spellbook card that allows you to special summon spellcasters from the graveyard Spellbook of Life although while the Spellbook cards were fine in everything the real no powers public judgment was the ability to special summon that monster from your deck the absolute best Target to choose was joujin the spiritualist this is a level 3 spec as a type monster which prevents both players from special summoning monsters were on the field and a lazy destroy all specials and monsters in the field if he uses affected discard a card from your hand and preventing your opponent from special summoning is super good most decks are trying to special summon as much as possible in order to do their thing so they have to try to destroy joujin before they could do any of their combos where you could then just control them with your set Spellbook spell cards I.E Spellbook of Fate so with Spellbook of judgment which was incredibly easy to search out in that deck I might add thanks to cards like Spellbook of Secrets and Spellbook Magician of Prophecy you were basically incentivized to play all the cards in your hand without needing to conserve anything because you would just get it all back anyway and then some the amount of Advantage the one card generated was just too strong which is why the cart was banned shortly after it came out in September of 2013. can't spell book of judgment be unbanned seven years after it came out probably still no while it is true most of the Spellbook cards have been power cropped already there is a variant of spell books that does see some Niche competitive success even today making use of a more control-oriented strategy with cards like Mystic mind combined with joujin the spiritualist they also released a new Spellbook spell card called Spellbook of knowledge which adds a little bit more consistency to the Spellbook engines or just any deck that uses spellcaster type monsters and there's a lot of good spellcaster type monsters in the game the fact is spillbook of judgment just allows you to gain too much advantage on its own and even though most of the cards you can search out aren't as powerful anymore it doesn't really matter if it's so many of them how could the car be fixed to be unbanned if they just straight up remove the ability to special summon a monster from the deck it might be okay at that point it would still give you a whole bunch of Advantage sure but it would be during the end phase and it wouldn't really be any hand traps that could be used immediately anyway and it's real easy to be need someone in one turn nowadays especially if you know they don't really have any hand traps in their hand but the ability to bring out jojin is what was really increasing the power level of Spellbook of judgment alternatively they could fix the card by just Banning the spiritualist although the ability to special someone monster from the deck is still super strong especially when it's such a variety of levels that eventually they would just find a new second best Target to pick anyway although Konami isn't super keen on just removing effects from cards when they are out of them so a more reasonable suggestion would be to probably just heavily restrict the monster you do bring out from the deck or find some way to limit the amount of cards you can add to your hand like maybe require any discard all cards from your hand that aren't Spellbook spell cards as well so you couldn't keep any of your hand traps so you'd still gain a whole bunch of Advantage from the card but at least it would have some weaknesses and you'd be left vulnerable to your opponent's play as it attacks and of course there's the inherent weakness where spell book of judgment can kind of just be stopped with a single hand trap anyway which wasn't really a thing when the card came out but just because a card can be stopped by a hand trap doesn't make the card bad nowadays this card is still a strong card but the rest of the spillbook archetype has a horribly in comparison with it though spell heavy decks like runic and Striker could play this card to get jaljin at the end of their turn it probably won't amount to anything more than a gimmick update turns out power creep is crazy Spellbook of judgment is now like OJ magic and that it gives you a bunch of advantage that doesn't do enough anymore being able to bring out John is still good but not good enough to muck up your deck with Spellbook cards to search out judgment especially since they banned Mystic mind too next up in this video we have mass driver Mass driver is a continuous spell card which simply has the effect that you contribute one monster side of the field in order to inflict 400 points of damage to your opponent's life points with the rules of the game only allowing you to normal summon one monster per turn this card is inherently balanced by the fact that you should only be able to use that effect once per turn and kind of bad at that since 400 LifePoint points is only five percent of your opponents starting life points you have to use the effect 20 times in order for it to win the duel although I'm sure the intended use of the card was to be used during the main Phase 2 in order to attribute all of your monsters in order to finish off your opponent with that last bit of effect damage or to be used in swarm Decks that can bring out a whole bunch of small monsters in order to maybe attribute them or something I don't know but the card was actually used for was first turn kill strategies you see in 2010 a second wave of frog support came out which included two toad cards called substitode in Ronin Toten substitute allowed you to Tribute one monster in order to special summon one frog monster from your deck Ronin toden allowed you to banish a frog monster from your graveyard in order to special summon itself from the graveyard neither of these cards have a once per turn on their effects so what they would do is bring out substitute as soon as possible and then just use its effect 20 times in order to get 20 frogs in the graveyard as well as Ronan Toten then use Ronin toten's effect 20 times in combination with mass driver her where they would bring out Ronin toden have attributed for 400 life points of damage and then just repeat until your opponent's life points reach zero and this fdk was so consistent and easy to pull off especially in an era before widespread use of hand traps that it actually won the World Championship in 2010 so shortly afterwards they banned substitute almost immediately after the event so that frogs couldn't fill the graveyard with 20 frogs in a turn and then a year later in March of 2011 they banned a mass driver as well since it allowed these kinds of combos to be a little bit too easy to pull off here's the thing though Mass driver is not the only card in the game with an effect like this there's actually a series of Monster cards that can kinda do the same thing where they let you tribute a monster in order to inflict damage to your opponent without having once per turns on their effects the reason Mass driver got banned over all these monsters though is because it's easier to get a spell card on the field than a monster even if the spell card inflicts slightly less damage Cannon Soldier inflicts 500 damage each time that uses its effect although it's at three copies right now and unlimited while Mass driver is banned and mass driver inflix 100 last Live points for the same effect and cost although honestly all of the Canon soldier-like cards should be banned too because they have been using ftks over the history of Yugioh as well which is why they are banned in the ocg just not in the TCG yet and part of the reason the 100 less life points thing doesn't matter for Mass driver is because you're only ever using the effect with basically an infinite amount of cards anyway or with so many like substito that it doesn't matter can Mass driver be unbanned probably not unless Konami is very smart about never introducing Loops to the game that allow you to Tribute an ungodly amount of monsters per turn which after the Fiasco the fireball dragon is probably asking a little bit too much from them because sometimes they'll accidentally print cards that can just kind of allow you to infinitely loop with Canon Soldier like cards and mass driver would give those loots a lot more consistency since they wouldn't have to spend resources trying to get a monster on the field in addition to pulling off the loop how can Mass driver be fixed to be unbanned simply give the card a once per turnence effect it doesn't even eat a hard once per turn just any kind of once per turn would fix the card since it's only broken when using infinite amount of times or 20 times at least in the case of substitute or if it limited the card to only be usable 10 times per turn that would probably work too although generally the highest a card goes to when it comes to the limited amount of times per turn is three so if it was limited to 3 times per turn that would solve the problem as well just as long as you can't use the card 20 times in a turn it's not really broken and kind of mediocre even this is an excellent case of how a lack of a once per turn completely destroys the card and makes it overpowered and at number three we have last will this is a spell card which allows you to special summon a monster from your deck just as long as it has less than 1500 attack and you send a monster from your side of the field to the graveyard this turn this card is not once per turn but that's not why this card is currently banned like I mentioned with Spellbook of judgment being able to special summon a monster from the deck is incredibly powerful and this card is super versatile with its Target it allows you to bring out joujin's spiritualist as well and here's the thing about last will this card kinda came out in the early days of the game so its wording is a little bit unconventional and because of its unconventional wording you can technically special some of the monster this card's effect whenever you want during your turn just as long as it's at a spell speed one which means you can technically activate the effect during your end phase in order to bring out joujin the spiritualist exactly like with Spellbook of Judgment of course it's a lot more useful we use the effect here in your main phase to bring out other cards in the early days of the game last wheel was used to bring up magical scientists in order to facilitate its ftk strategy with catapult Turtle as it could bring out either of those two combo pieces depending on which one you didn't draw into although Magical Scientist was banned as it was considered the problem part of that combo because in the early days of Yu-Gi-Oh it wasn't super useful to bring out low attack monsters from your deck outside of the lone Magical Scientist it wasn't until we got better low attack monsters like rescue cat that the problems of this card started to become more apparent the card was definitely not future proof and was already a problem even when there were so few targets for it nowadays there are tons and tons of really good monsters less than 1500 attack and the car that eventually got last will banned was rescue cat because that card allowed you to special summon two other cards from the deck so if you unrescue cat in your starting hand you could use this effect to send itself to the graveyard two special 7-2 beasts from your deck that would activate the conditions for last will which would allow you to bring out another rescue cat and then get two more cards on the field so a rusty cat in the hand as well as last will allowed you to end on a board of four monsters in the field directly from the deck which was a kind of a big deal in the early days of the game especially when Synchro monsters came out although last will got banned before Synchro monsters ever got a chance to come out as Laswell was banned in March of 2007 about a year before the first Synchro monsters released if last will existed in the game today it's kind of guaranteed that it would be played in pretty much every single deck as there aren't a lot of decks that do not have monsters of less than 1500 attack that they would love to special some into the field it's one of those cases where it seems like an incredibly simple effect but is actually kind of overpowered in the right circumstances and those circumstances are super easy to fulfill in a whole bunch of different kinds of decks can last will be unbanned no not at all we still have cards like one for one limited on the ban list which only allows you to special summon a level 1 monster from the deck and requires you to actually discard a card in order to use it a level 1 monster is way more limited than last will and one for one is definitely considered a good card which has basically seen competitive play ever since it came out last will is just too much of a power card to be unbanned in the current format and it just gets better and better as more cards are released it also has that weird wording that allows you to special some of the monster whenever you want which would allow you to do it during the battle phase as well although like I said a little bit earlier it's much more useful if you just use it during your main phase like normal anyway how can the card be fixed to be unbanned first stop probably fix the wording on the effect to limit it only during the main phases that way it doesn't cause any rulings confusions after that have the card negate the effects of the monster that it brings out including negating the effects of that monster's name for the rest of the turn similar to cards like peaceful burial where you can't activate the cards that share that card's name for the rest of the turn that you sent to the graveyard this would go a long way to fixing the card's problem with bringing out Power Cards that allow you to gain immediate Advantage from them like rescue cat or magical scientists if you can't use those effects when brought out immediately then there's a good chance they won't survive to the next turn anyway there's also a lot of cards that would gain Advantage when they're used as materials or sent to the graveyard so this would be a catch-all in order to make sure those effects don't happen either it would probably still be useful in some Decks that just want cards in the graveyard but don't particularly need them right away and would kind of stay true to the original effect and also give the card a hard once per turn because currently it doesn't have one it would still be kind of good getting three monsters out from your deck with this card without a meaningful cost since sending a monster from your field to the graveyard is super easy nowadays and that used to be a little bit more difficult in the early days of the game alright next up we have Painful choice this is a spell card that allows you to select five cards from your deck then show them to your opponent your opponent gets to select one of those cards and add to your hand while the other four gets sent to the graveyard everything about this card is just pure Advantage the intended use of this card was to maybe get one useful card from your deck while you had the negative of effect of sending the rest of them to the graveyard where you wouldn't be able to use them again however with how many daxis the graveyard as a resource and the amount of cards that gain advantage while in the graveyard painful choice just kind of becomes a plus four in card Advantage as the card itself is hand neutral already you get to add a car to your deck for playing one card from your hand and then the four cards in the graveyard could all have graveyard effects that allow you to gain Advantage from them as well there's lots of cards in the game that give you Advantage from the graveyard like mental foes Fusion Destiny Hero malicious Destiny Hero Celestial heroic Challenger thousand blades perform a trick clown World chalice guard Dragon the entire Phantom Knights archetype most of the burning Abyss cards the dragon rulers orcas zombies and so on and so on you get the picture there's lots of cards that love to be in the graveyard from many different archives even in the early days of the game when graveyard effects were rare this card was used in Exodia decks in order to send all the pieces to the graveyard in order to add them back with cards like backup Soldier there's also cards like chaos decks or Thunder Dragons that like to put cards in the graveyard to be used later on as a resource in order to potentially gain advantage painful Choice was eventually banned in April of 2005. can painful Choice be unbanned no it's like a foolish burial on steroids and foolish burial is still limited to one copy he is really good and only allows you to send one card from your deck to the graveyard with no other kinds of benefits there's also lots of strategies that only work when they're able to set up the graveyard which painful choice would make way better how can the card be fixed to be unbanned currently the big problem with this card is sending those cards to the graveyard where even if they had effects like peaceful burial where you couldn't use the card effects as turn it would still be too good as a setup tool so instead I would probably take a page out a pot of desires or the actual painful choice of the card is that the other four cards that aren't picked get banished face down the card would still be good to allow you to add a card for your deck to your hand without a real cause but at least you wouldn't be able to gain Advantage from the other four cards as well banishing cards face down is kind of an actual real cost nowadays even if there are ways to make use of those kinds of cards as well and lastly we have that grass looks greener a more powerful version of painful choice now what this car does is if you have more cards in your deck than your opponent does you get to send a number of cards at the top of your deck to the graveyard until you both control the same number of cards in your deck so the way to make the most use of this card was to Simply play a 60 card deck in Yu-Gi-Oh or at least in a competitive environment the optimal amount of cards to have in your deck is exactly 40. because you want your DAC to be as consistent as possible and the best way to increase your consistency is to play the minimum amount of cards you just have a higher chance of drawing the cards you need if you have less cards to pick through so if you played a 60 card deck which was the maximum deck size and the card came out that grass looks Greener would allow you to Mill at least 20 cards from the top of your deck and if you remember from the painful Choice segment there's a lot of cards that allow you to gain Advantage from the graveyard and also a lot of cards that can use the graveyard as a resource to gain Advantage so literally what some decks would do is just play a combination of light sworn Zombies plants and dinosaurs as well as a whole bunch of other staple graveyard cards in order to just gain a ridiculous amount of Advantage from a single resolution of that grasslex Greener if you were really lucky you could go plus 20 off of its effect although that was like a super best case scenario in a gimmicky deck and wasn't what happened realistically you got something like plus five or plus 10 off of the effect which is still ridiculously good the amount of advantage that grasslex Greener gave you was basically a one card win as it was actual good Advantage too that could be used during your turn unlike public of judgment where all the advantage was only during the end phase and most of the advantages that card gives you has been kind of power cut by now resolving grass was so much advantage in those kinds of decks that those decks were also happily playing three copies of left arm offering which was a spell card that required you to banish your entire hand as long as you had two or more other cards in your hand in order to add one spell card from your deck to your hand but also at the Restriction that you could not set other speller trap cards during this turn and left arm offering was supposed to be a huge detriment in order to Search out One spell card but that one spell card was so good that it was absolutely worth the insane cost to activate the effect and since that grass looks Greener was so successful at being a huge power card that other decks in The Meta that weren't even playing grass started using 60 card decks just to counter this one card because if your opponent had 60 cards in the deck as well then you couldn't actually get any Mill off of that grass looks Greener unless they performed a whole bunch of searches during their turn or something and if a single card in the metagame was causing other people to start to sub-optimally build their decks just to counter it you know you kind of have a strong card in the game so the card was eventually banned in May year 2018 and no one was really surprised by that funny enough this card was actually added to dual links as well where the maximum deck size in the game is 30 and the minimum is 20. so the most you could meal is 10 cards with the average stack for the effect and eventually that game got to the point where they had enough graveyard effects where that grass looks Greener was one of the first ever banned cards in duel links alongside cyberstein so even an incredibly restricted format with way less cards in the deck it was still too good so can that grass looks Greener be unbanned no in the video that's grouping all of the singular most powerful spells obviously none of these are going to get a yes it's basically a better painful choice and has the potential to give you some of the most amount of Advantage without looping or infinite combos at a basically any card in the game although it's easily countered by mirror matches and other people who decide to play 60 card decks having to play a 60 card deck in order to counter one card in the game isn't really a healthy game State how can the card be fixed to be unbanned I have no idea being able to Mill half of an average deck with one card is kinda strong and the whole point of the card is to Mill those cards to the graveyard so having the card banish them face down for example wouldn't really make sense as a fix with sticking to the theme of the card even if you gave it a peaceful burial-like effect so the cards can't be used that turn it would still provide a lot of resources in the graveyard to be used later on although that would probably go a long way to limiting the potential of the card and make it so left arm offering wasn't a be-all end-all search it out since if we leave you basically with nothing for a turn although if they were to make one fix of the card giving it a peaceful burial like restriction would kind of go a long way to giving it some counter play the very least even if it's not really enough to fix exactly what's wrong with the card this is a card that just kind of needs to stay banned unless they make some kind of ruling in the future where graveyards aren't as valuable as they are today update the card is still very good and bandworthy though I'd like to make a note that it's not a better painful Choice while it's true you could potentially go plus 20 with grass it requires you to play unruly Deck full of cards only usable in the graveyard and hoping your oppon doesn't Ash Blossom your grass or left arm offering while painful Choice can just be played in a normal 40 card more consistent deck and play much less but still good graveyard effects so while the potential highs of grass are bigger in theory in practice painful choice is the much more Superior card of the two first up we have heavy storm this is a spell card which simply has the effect to destroy all spawn trap cards on the field currently we have a card that's limited to one copy called a Harpy's feather duster which allows you to destroy all of your opponent's spelling trap cards without a cost we also have cards like lightning storm where if you control no cards allows you to destroy all your opponents spawn trap cards and lightning storm is currently unrestricted on the ban list so why do we have two cards which can destroy all of your opponent's spell and trap cards unbanned when we have a card like heavy storm which can do the same thing but also destroys your own spelling trap cards still be banned well on surface level heavy storm definitely seems like a worse version of Harvey's feather duster or lightning storm and historically that has always been kinda true that's why heavy storm was banned way later than Harpy's feather duster not editing the ban list until September 2013 but the reason Harpy's feather duster was released off the band list before heavy storm is because the metagame has kinda shifted to a point where there's a lot more spell and trap cards that have good floating effects now where that wasn't really the case back in the day outside of gear Town Shenanigans and also the ever Rising popularity of The Floodgate there are currently two really powerful floodgates that are banned called Vanity's emptiness and Royal Oppression where they both basically allow you to Revenge your opponent from so many monsters and the reason those two cards were banned was because they were too easy to remove during your own turn in order to just kind of ignore their downsides where they were supposed to Floodgate both players and not just your opponent so heavy storm would allow you to simultaneously remove your floodgates that you only activate during your opponent's turn and clear out your opponent's back row at the same time whereas a Harpy's feather duster only allows you to clear your opponent's back row now being able to clear out your opponent's back row without much of a cost is incredibly powerful just look at Twin Twisters it allows you to destroy two cards but requires a discard cost and still sees heavy competitive play so the effect is good it's just the Dual nature of being able to get rid of your own floodgates or activate your floating effects is just a little bit better nowadays true Kings have trap cards which all have floating effects that destroy a monster when they're sent from the field to the graveyard so if a true king deck uses heavy storm they basically gain the ability to clear out their opponent's entire field if you wanted to activate there can be only one or Mystic mind during your opponent's turn and then turn them off during your turn you could use heavy storm to get rid of those cards while also clearing your opponent's back row being able to gain two benefits from this card with one of those beneficial features being incredibly powerful I.E clearing out your opponent's entire back row it's no wonder the card has stayed on the ban list where they've slowly removed Harvey his feather duster from it a little bit can heavy storm be unbanned probably not for the reasons I just described and why it was originally banned funny enough the reason it was originally banned was because of its ability to clear your opponent's back row and was thought to be a little bit more balanced because it also cleared yours out so it was just a stable car that everyone played and they would try their best to only use it when they didn't have a back row to accidentally destroy the process then in the modern game the reason it wasn't unbanned over Harvey's feather duster was because that downside is actually kind of an upside now so just having two positive good effects instead of one really good effect although they're not really against having incredibly powerful singular cards that destroy in the game so who knows really how could they fix heavy storm to be unbanned it's funny that the card was kind of designed in a way so that it wouldn't be broken and already has negative side effects of destroying your own spawn trap cards as well one of the really good uses of heavy storm is the ability to turn off your floodgates so they also added a restriction to heavy storm when you used it in addition to its current effect like maybe a pawn of Duality restriction where you can't special summon during the turn you use the effect that would kind of fix the problem you would still have the Dual nature of being able to destroy your opponent's back row while also setting up your spell and trap cards in the graveyard or turning off a Floodgate but you would be floodgated a little bit until your next turn and preventing special summons is kind of a catch-all turn which affects a lot of decks so it would only be abusable in very specific types of control Decks that probably don't want to destroy their floodgates anyway update all the reasons I mentioned this video years ago are still true however I wanted to add more to this the reason heavy storm is so good is because you can sit on floodgates to stop your opponent from playing the game and since floodgates allow you to control the pace of the game you have the luxury of waiting to draw into both heavy storm and your one turn win combo and using heavy storm to clear away your board to pop off other strategies don't really allow you to just wait until you eventually draw to your combo you have to build your deck full of Surge and draw effects and play through your opponent's disruption to get off that combo but with floodgates there is no need to go through that effort you simply draw into one of your 20 floodgates stop your opponent from playing the game on your first turn and simply wait until you draw to heavy storm and your other combo pieces eventually your combo could simply be something like cyber style and mega Morpher 8000 piercing damage on a cyber and dragon it doesn't have to be something good because you get to control the pace of the game and just clear it when you feel like it along with anything your opponent might have sent like their own in perms next up we have Dimension Fusion this is a spell card that requires you to pay 2 000 life points to activate and then allows both players to special summon as many of their move from play monsters as possible when this card was first released there wasn't a lot of good ways to remove monsters from play they require a lot of life points to pay and also allowed your opponent to special summon cards too so it wasn't thought of as being that good it had its moment to shine with an ftk involving Dark Magician of Chaos Dark Magician of Chaos had the effect that when it was specialist summoned you could add a spell card from your graveyard to your hand and when it left the field it would banish itself Canon Soldier could tribute the card for 500 points of damage and Spell economics could allow you to activate spell cards without paying a Life Point cost so if you got Canon Soldier and Dark Magician of Chaos in the field and you use Cannon Soldier to Tribute Dark Magician and Chaos for 500 points of damage which would then banish the card then you can activate Dimension Fusion to bring it back which would allow you to activate the fact to add a dimension Fusion from your graveyard back to your hand in order to do it all over again this eventually got Dark Magician to chaos banned since Dimension Fusion wasn't thought of as the problem card in that combo and also Dark Magician of Chaos was only removed from the ban list because it got an Errata which changed it so it only adds spell cards to your hand during the end phase then when the air blade turbo deck came out involving elantoro Stratos and divine sword Phoenix blade they were able to banish a whole bunch of warrior type monsters and then bring them back with Dimension Fusion for a whole bunch of Advantage this is what eventually got the card banned in May of 2008 and today this card would be absolutely broken if it was live because it just how much better decks have gotten at banishing cards and gained an advantage from that and how good it would be to bring back five of them for the low low cost of only 2 000 life points and Noah hard once per turns on this card's effect being able to resolve a single Dimension Fusion could win you the game in a whole bunch of different kinds of meta decks which was proven true with cards like Soul charge which allows you to bring up to five cards from your graveyard paying up to 5000 life points giving up your battle phase and having a proper once per turn and soul charge was too strong to exist in the metagame it was eventually banned after hanging out in the ban list at one copy for a couple of years and dimension Fusion is basically a better version of Soul charge which is why it continues to stay banned to this day can Dimension Fusion be unbanned in its current form no there are decks like thunder dragon and orcus which banish their cards while gaining effects at the same time and being able to reset all the cards while gaining Advantage would generate even more advantage and already inherent plus four that the car already has the fact that it allows your opponent to summon Monsters 2 is kind of irrelevant since most decks can easily call their opponent's field anyway and orcas and Thunder Dragons could turn that plus 4 into a plus 10 with the amount of extra Advantage they could gain from those cards which is a little bit too broken and those are probably not even the best examples of decks I could take advantage of Dimension Fusion although they're pretty good ones anyway how could Dimension Fusion be fixed to be unbanned if they lock you out of summoning cards from the extra Deck the turn to use the effect that would definitely help lower the amount of potential Advantage you could gain although you would still have all of the effects that you just reset that were originally banished in order to pay cost and stuff you would still gain a whole bunch of advantage and would probably still be too strong even if it had the side effect so in order to fix it you'd probably need to slap on a whole bunch of restrictions if you didn't want to give up its original effect remember with this little segment we're trying to find out how to fix the card we're not trying to change the effect itself at all and instead looking for ways to keep the effect in tanked while also brainstorming how it could be unbanned for that effect to be balanced so if you brought all the cards back but then banish them face down when they left the field and also prevented you from special assembling for the rest of the turn that could be enough to unban the card if he also slapped on a hard once per turn and no battle phase just like Soul charge although the fact that I feel the need to slap on four extra restrictions to make it more balanced should show how powerful the original card is next up we have metamorphosis this is another old school spell card which has the effect where you contribute one monster to then special summon one Fusion Monster from your extra deck just as long as it has the same level of a monster you tributed this card was a Cornerstone in Goat format one of the most popular and iconic alternative formats in the game where they would use metamorphosis on a scapegoat token in order to bring out thousand eyes restrict although in those same formats it could also just be used on a magician of Faith or a Sinister Serpent and sometimes used on an air Knight par shaft in order to go reap around the nightmare metamorphosis was banned in September of 2007 and with its banding players could no longer properly summon Elemento hero Neo bubble man now in today's format metamorphosis still probably could not be removed from the ban list because it just how many stronger fusion monsters we've gotten over the years for a couple of examples we have Blaze Phoenix the burning bombardment bird which could potentially be used and abuse of metamorphosis to burn your opponent in some kind of ftk we have the last Warrior from another planet which could be used to lock down your opponent from summoning which is a much bigger deal now than it was when the combo existed back in the day and also nature exteriorio who can lock down your opponent's spawn trap cards and just straight up win you the game against certain decks being able to have easy access to the last toy from another planet or naturia exterior would be a benefit to a whole bunch of meta decks and this is only surf as a level stuff once Pro players actually get their hands on metamorphosis I'm sure they'd find out better ways to break the card and then the couple of examples I gave the ability to cheat fusion monsters out of the extra Deck with a somewhat easy to use spell card is kind of strong as proven by some of the shenanigans he can get into with cyberstein could metamorphosis be unbanned the answer is probably not we currently do have cyber sign in the game which allows you to cheat out any Fusion Monster by just paying 5000 life points and while it does see some success it's not an instant staple like Metamorphosis would be the difference between the two cards is you have to get cyberstein on the field and of course pay a substantial amount of life points to use the effect whereas metamorphosis would allow you to trade a monster and you probably brought out there for some kind of combo into just a better Floodgate like nature exterio the difference between a monster have it in effect and a speller trap card having the effect is like why Canon Soldier is not banned but Mass driver is banned despite them both having the same effect spells and traps with powerful effects are just sometimes easier to use and ease of use is a very important distinction in how broken a card might become and metamorphosis is a very easy to use card and has a lot of very good targets but if they banned all those very good targets or if the metagame got to a point where those very good targets weren't that big of a deal anymore in comparison to just generic Link monsters for example then it could probably come off the ban list in this imaginary future which is not today how could metamorphosis be fixed to be unbanned I think if they change the card to be more like instant Fusion where the monster brought out was destroyed there in the end phase and could not attack that could help instant Fusion is also really good but that card allows you to special summon a monster for only the cost of paying a thousand life points metamorphosis at least requires you to have a monster in the field of a high level if you want to make best use of it so if that high level monster was going to get destroyed during the end phase anyway that could help the Broken Age of the card that means you couldn't use it to easily get out the last Square from another planet or nature exterio but they wouldn't do anything to solve the potential Blaze Phoenix f2k problem so that probably wouldn't be a good enough fix so you could also just add on a little caveat where your opponent doesn't take any damage at all for the rest of the turn after you use the effect that would cover the basis of any kind of effect damage burn for an fdk in addition to the instant fusion-like restrictions next up we have cold wave another pretty old school card cold wave has the effect where you can only activate the start of your main phase one and until your next turn you and your opponent cannot set or play any spell or trap cards so it basically locks you and your opponent out of being able to use two-thirds of the cards in the game for an entire full turn and the best way to use this card was when you already had an established Board of monsters in order to basically push for a win or in a deck that didn't rely on spelling trap cards anyway it's just a very easy to use and Powerful Floodgate that allows you to instantly win against a lot of decks as most decks like to make use of their spell cards if not traps and funny enough cold wave wasn't really considered a good card when it first came out because of how slow the game was that one turn of locking your opponent of a cards wasn't that big a deal but with how easy it is for any deck to get more than 8 000 points of damage on the board lock in your opponent out of two-thirds of cards in the game for an entire turn is Paramount to winning this is why cards like number 16 shock Master are banned not allowing your opponent to use cards at all is kind of a powerful form of floodgating especially when it's real easy to play around its negative side effects despite coming out in 2002 cold wave was not banned until March 2011 almost 10 years after it came out because for almost 10 years the game was slow enough where it wasn't that big of a deal and if cold wave was unbanned today you can almost guarantee we'd become a staple card almost overnight could cold wave be unbanned this was another probably not we already have a lot of really good speller trap card removal in the game but there is a stark difference between removal and preventing your opponent from using them at all a Harper's feather duster isn't going to stop a player from using a hero's live to start up combos use super polymerization to get rid of a field or an evenly match to even the playing field whereas cold wave stops all of those things lockdown effects are pretty powerful and Konami has historically banned cards that completely lock down your opponent from playing cards at all except for maybe true king ball calamities as one of those lone exceptions and everyone is kind of clamorous for him to be banned anyway and true king of all calamities doesn't have an effect as powerful as cold wave only coming really close how could cold wave be fixed to be unbanned well they already have a retrained version of cold wave in the game called cold feet which is a quick play spell card that prevents the person using it from activating any speller trap cards during their turn so if you simply activate cold feet with a mystical ref panel you could use the effect of cold wave on your opponent during their turn but it turns a one card combo into a two card combo which makes it completely unviable but you can't really apply this to cold wave because that's not really a fix on the effect it more like just a joke on konami's part instead what you could actually do with cold wave to make it less powerful is to just layer on more restrictions for the turn player give the card an actual cost like requiring you to discard a card locking you out of being able special summon or attack with monsters or it may be giving your opponent advantage in addition to all that like drawing a card or you know just maybe all of the above I actually don't know of a good way to fix cold wave I'm really interested in some ideas in the comments on how you could fix cold wave to make it more balanced without changing its base effect because currently it just locks your opponent of two-thirds of all cards and it's kind of hard to find a way to make that more balanced where it already locks you out of them for a turn as well and lastly we have brilliant Fusion this is definitely the most modern card in this video and it simply has the effect where you could Fusion summon a Gemini Fusion Monster by using materials from your deck but at a cost where the Fusion Monster you bring out has its attacking defense set to zero and also it's attached to brilliant Fusion in a similar way to equipped spell card where if it leaves the field you destroy the Fusion Monster it's attached to but if you wish to gain that Monster's attack and defense back you can discard one spell card from your hand and you can only activate one brilliant Fusion per turn so it's a hard once per turn now the way this card was used was generally as a staple card in just any meta deck in order to bring out gym night's araphanite while sending Gemini garnet and perform a trick clown from redact to the graveyard as two of its materials then trick Clan would bring itself back from the graveyard and Gem Knight's a rough night basically has a Double Summon effect where you gain one additional normal summon for the turn so with a single brilliant Fusion in hand you could get two monsters on the field and an additional normal summon in a game where the normal summon is so powerful that a normal summon of a single neospacing connector can end on a full Board of negates so getting two of them is even more valuable in addition to just the plus two nature building Fusion has on its own there's a reason this card was played so heavily in all kinds of decks and why Gemini Garnet became the turn people use for cards that you want to stay in your deck although I should probably add the only reason people use gem Knight Garnet was because it was the highest attack gem Knight main Deck monster that could probably be played from your hand if you happen to have it you didn't have to use Gemini Garnet now brilliant Fusion was also useful in its own archetype as well as it just to help make the gem Knight ftk more consistent where what they had to do was get out a different Gemini Fusion Monster called gemnight lady lapis lazuli who has the effect to inflict 500 points of damage to your opponent for each special summoned monster on the field now she has a hard once per turn on being summoned but only a soft ones per turn on her effect so if you simply copied her effect from the graveyard with gem Knight Master Diamond twice you could easily pull out over 8 000 points of damage and since brilliant Fusion was both a really good Staple in non-gema decks and helped increase the consistency of the gemnite ftk inside of Gemini decks it was just a little bit too good at everything it was eventually banned in January of 2020. usually a card is only good at one thing but brilliant Fusion was able to generate a whole bunch of advantage and a whole bunch of different kinds of really good meta decks while also making an ftk more consistent and they generally try to get rid of cards that allow ftks to become too consistent could brilliant Fusion be unbanned now it was banned very recently and is still just as strong as it was when it was originally banned even if they finally banned gem Knight lady lapis lazuli they still probably wouldn't unban brilliant Fusion because of the massive amount of Advantage it generates how could they fix brilliant Fusion to be unbanned seeing as is supposed to be an archetype specific card if they made it so you could only special summon gem Knight monsters for the rest of the turn they could totally unban the card if they also ban Gemini lady lapis lazuli I don't know why they don't just ban that one card when it's the problem they do have Gemini Master Diamond limited to one copy because of the Gemini ftk even though it's Gemini lady lapis lazuli who's the whole Center focus of that ftk if she's gone then you literally can't do it as long as she's in the game then brilliant Fusion just makes it a lot easier to do even if they didn't add the Restriction where you can only special summon Gemini monsters for the rest of the turn so alternatively if you also added the claws where your opponent can't take effect damage for the rest of the turn that would fix both of its problems although that seems a little out of place in gem Knight Fusion card so this is another one where I would love some brainstormed ideas because it's not super obvious how to fix the card since it's currently broken in two separate ways as an ftk enabler and as a super Advantage generator first let's take a look at Soul charge Soul charge was released in 2014 and immediately saw a ton of competitive success and was met with a lot of head scratching because it was pretty obvious this card was overpowered from inception what it does is allow you to Target any number of monsters in your graveyard and special summon them but if you do this you lose 1 000 life points for each Monster's special summon by its effect and you cannot conduct your battle phase that turn plus it's a hard once per turn so you can't spam multiple copies so what was such a head scratcher about this is that at the same time monster reborn was still limited to one copy per deck a distinction it still holds to this day because being able to special summoned one monster from your graveyard without any restrictions to the card is kind of really good in just about every deck of course not every deck wants to special summon monsters from the graveyard but a vast majority of them do which is why if there's any car that allows you to special summon monsters from the graveyard too easily they usually have a whole bunch of heavy restrictions to them like rekindling as a a pretty classic example rekindling also allows you to special summon as many monsters from your graveyard as you want except only targets that are of the fire attribute and have exactly 200 defense granted a lot of fire monsters have exactly 200 defense but it is a restriction to that crazy effect and it's why even rekindling saw some time on the ban list and at the same time Soul charge came out we did have two other Mass summoning cards banned that being returned from a different dimension and dimension Fusion Dimension Fusion allowed both players a special summon as many of their move and play monsters as possible at only a 2000 LifePoint cost and is an incredibly powerful card return for the different dimension was a little bit weaker it requires you to pay half your life points in order to special summon as many of your bandage cards as possible but all of those cards are banished here in the end phase and it's a trap card so you have to wait a turn before you could use it and again all of these cards existed before Soul charge came out and some of them were even banned at the time that it came out so it's pretty easy to see see why everyone was so surprised to see a card like Soul charge being released in 2014. it was obviously good and saw all kinds of competitive play so what exactly is so obviously overpowered About Soul charge well being able to special summon a monster from the graveyard on a spell card is inherently powerful which is why cards like monster reborn and World Legacy secession constantly see competitive play and are both Limited in being either limited on the ban list or just a hard once per turn there are some monsters which gain effects when they're special summoned and don't have once per turn on their effects like Elemental Hero Stratos so cards like Stratos gain all kinds of Advantage if they're able to be special summoned as many times as you can per turn although there aren't a lot of cards like Stratos in the game and usually special summary from the graveyard is just a way to extend combats since most cards that have really good effects do not have the ability to special some of themselves for example let's use predaplant orphea Scorpio this is a card which has the effect where you can send one monster from your hand to the graveyard to special summon a predator plant monster from your deck this is almost always used in order to special summon predo planted darling Tonya Cobra which when special summoned allows you to add a fusion spell card from your deck to your hand so if you just add a card like instant Fusion use that immediately get a Fusion Monster in the field you basically get three monsters on the field for one summon of a predo planned Orpheus Scorpio however Predator plant Orpheus Scorpio cannot special summon itself so bringing this card out would either require your normal summon or using other cards to special summon it from somewhere else if this card was simply ditched to the graveyard through some kind of discard effect like just Dark World dealings to keep it simple then being able to special something from the graveyard could be Paramount to getting three extra cards in the field thanks to its combo getting in extra Stratos on the field is always Paramount to a plus one in card advantage and that's kind of the power of cards that allow you to special summon other other carts a lot of cards are kind of balanced around requiring your normal summon or requiring specific Niche resources in order to bring it out multiple times purely generic support that allows you to special summon cards is pretty rare and the really good ones are always bad like last will or summon sorceress so being able to special summon a single card from a location is quite good it becomes a huge problem once you add multiples into it for example say you're behind in card Advantage your opponent managed to destroy your entire field and even looped all the cards out of your hand you draw one card at its Soul charge and you can immediately come back pretty easily because you just recur all of your lost Advantage assuming you had the required life points to get those cards out example two you're in the middle of a combo and your opponent active it's a hand trap to stop you maybe something like Nibiru the Primal bean and destroys all your cards you just Soul charge in order to bring them all back and continue the combos like nothing happened example three you're going through a Goki extra link to run out of cards in order to finish the full u-link and you only have a measly one negate on the field you still charge to bring all of your extenders back and complete your unbreakable board example four you're trying to set up an unbreakable Board Of Monsters And you just mess something up because you miscounted how many cards you had in the graveyard or how many had on the field for a specific link summon you just use Soul charge to bring all your cards back and it doesn't matter basically there isn't really an example in which this card isn't super useful it's a one card win essentially that's great as a comeback card or just something that helps you extend your combos like crazy there's almost no downside to it giving up your battle phase is kind of laughable for the amount of Advantage it generates and life points don't really mean anything as shown by how popular the solemn cards are as having low life points does it mean anything if you win the game anyway and there isn't really a specific deck that this card breaks it's just good and majority of them and even better with certain cards that have excellent effects on special summons so it was kind of surprising that the card stayed unbanned all the way until January 2019 where it was finally placed on the ban list and no one was surprised so can Soul charge be unbanned anytime soon seeing as it was banned two years ago probably not also seen as the effect was kind of broken as soon as it came out still probably Dot now there are super powerful cards in the game that allow you to win in one turn essentially like resolving into beer the Primal Bean or even an evenly matched against certain decks but those cards aren't also used as extenders to create unbreakable boards it's basically a one card win condition that isn't really conditional and how it wins you in one turn if you're drawn to a soul charge it's really hard to lose at that point unless your opponent is able to successfully negate it or something how could Soul charge be fixed to be unbanned well a big problem with this card is just using it to go into a whole bunch of extra deck plays so if it had the Restriction where you can't special summon from the extract during the turn to use its effect it would still be very powerful but not ridiculously broken like it is currently it would still probably see play even if it had all the other restrictions in it in addition to the extra deck lockout but I think that would probably be good enough a lot of cards that allow you to special summon more than one card in one turn are almost always broken because of going into extract monsters but if given this restriction it would just be a really good comeback tool which is fine in my opinion next let's go over giant drunade this is a normal spell card which simply has the effect to return all spell and trap cards on the field to the hand so the obvious best use of this card is to return all of your opponent's spelling traps to the hand in order to push for game that way you don't have to worry about negating your summons or something with a solid morning or destroying all your cards in the battle phase of something like mirror force and since its effect doesn't destroy it allows you to bypass a lot of normal fail safes that a lot of protections have for back row because there's almost nothing that protects your spell and trap cards from being bounced however funny enough the big reason why this card is banned is because of its ability to return your cards as well more specifically your face up cards they do have another card in the game called a hey trunade which simply returns all set spell and trap cards to the hand it's basically the same exact effect except it doesn't affect any face up cards and hey true Knight is currently Unlimited in the game with no restrictions and only occasionally sees competitive play it is however semi-limited over dual links because that effect is actually pretty strong in that version of the game so let's go over why the ability to return face up spelling traps to your hand is considered overpowered enough to ban this card as this card has been banned for a long time first hitting its band status in September of 2011. so one of its more famous examples is its interaction with premature burial premature burial is a banned equipped spell card which allows you to special summon any monster from your grave Air at the cost of 800 life points and then attaches this card to that monster you can then use giant true nade in order to return that card to your hand in order to use it again to special summon a second card seen as this combo was considered really good you can kind of see extra why Soul charge is banned as well however in the act of returning this car to your hand you're also getting rid of all of your opponent's spawn trap cards so you get a nice little benefit on top of it a probably better example say you have a Floodgate out like skill drain Vanity's emptiness or there can be only one and you want to be actually able to use your cards during your turn giant turnade will allow you to return those cards to your hand that way you can just use them again as soon as you're done with your combos while also getting rid of your opponent's back row in the process you see with other banned cards like a heavy storm you'd be able to turn off your floodgates for a turn as well while getting rid of your opponent's macro but you would lose those floodgates in the process and that's strong enough where heavy storm is kind of banned for that reason but with giant trunade you get those cards back and then you can just use them again you get the excellent effect of turning off your floodgates for a turn while not losing them like you would with heavy storm and that's kind of the real power of giant true nade being able to turn off your floodgates for one turn and then just have them again it is also super useful for face up effects that are soft ones per turns that you can return to your hand like code a ancient ruins or predaponics or just return continuous bell cards to your hand that you would normally only use once but have a hard ones per turns like World Legacy guard dragon or fire formation 10K or even the plethora of field spell cars that allow you to search an activation like trickstar light stage or Union hanger there's just a lot of really good cards that you would love to be able to reuse those effects because you either place them during a previous turn and the card was balanced under the notion that you wouldn't be able to activate it again or it just has a soft once per turn like code a ancient ruins and can special summon cards in the graveyard and one last thing I forgot to mention probably the biggest reason is that it allows you to return pendulum scales Union cards and even Crystal bees monsters to your hand one of the reason pendulum decks love to destroy their own scale so much is to clear up their pendulum zones to use more of their effects but giant trunade would allow you to clear him up easier and reuse certain effects immediately like luster pendulum the Draco Slayer and of course using it with a full field of unions or Crystal beasts is like adding four monsters to your hand well you know also clearing your opponent's back row so for giant runaid it is all kinds of powerful with its bouncing that it's kind of hard to tell which one of them is the most broken is it more broken to turn off your floodgates for a turn or to return pendulum scales to your hand or one of the many other uses I talked about so could giant trunade be unbanned currently that's still probably a no floodgates are still strong even if a lot of the really strong ones are banned like Vanity's emptiness but even with the ones we still have access to like skill drain or there can be only one or even Mystic mind to an extent it would still be a huge benefit to be able to return those cards to your hand for return while also getting rid of your opponent's macro and since they released a retrain in the form of hey trude they have less reason to actually unban the card because they already released a fairer version of it which kind of accomplishes the same goal as the original originally it was supposed to be bounds by the fact that it also returned your own cards to your hand and was generally thought as being the worst version of Harpy's feather duster although nowadays Harpy's feather duster is off the ban list at one and hey trunade was given a weaker version so they wouldn't have to release it so how can they fix the card in order to unban it while ignoring its retrain that already did this if we were trying to fix this card while also allowing it to affect face up spelling traps it would have to have a restriction like Vulcan the Divine which is a level 6 Synchro monster that has the effect to return one face up card on both players feel to the hand however it adds a restriction to those cards returned to your hand where you can't activate that card or effects of the card with the same name as those cards for the rest of the turn but this wouldn't be enough because it wouldn't solve the problem of resetting floodgates so it would need to have some other restriction like you couldn't set the card the turn you returned to your hand either this would stop you from reusing sloth once per turn card effects like code a ancient ruins or luster pendulum the Draco Slayer and it would stop you from setting a Floodgate to be used as soon as your opponent's turn starts like skill drain and since giant true date is spell speed one this isn't really a problem because you'll just be using it during your turn anyway and your opponent will be able to use their cards as soon as their turn starts but this would still make the ability to return your floodgates to your hand good because it doesn't solve the problem of turning off your floodgates after using them so instead of making it so you can't set cards that were returned to your hand during the turn you could just say it doesn't return face up trap cards at all and still give it the claws where you can't activate any cards returned to your hand in this way for the rest of the turn with a restriction of not being able to use the cards that were returned to your hand or being able to set them that would probably help the card no longer being super good but would still allow you to use non-destruction removal of all your opponent's face of cards as well which is still pretty strong it still allows you to turn off your floodgates so unless you get super restricted with what you can return to your hand the best fix is just to not fix it at all and allow hey trunade to just be its replacement update all this info is still valid however I just want to repeat what I said of the heavy storm update the ability to turn off your floodgates for a turn is still very good because you can just play 20 flood gates and stop your opponent from playing anything on your first turn then just simply wait until you draw your combo and giant true Nate and pop off currently this isn't viable because both heavy storm and giantronate are the only one card spell cards with no cost that can accomplish this then you have to jump through other ways to turn off your floodgates where Floodgate decks today just only use strategies that can win under floodgates instead of bothering away for a combo turn to turn them off additionally one of the best archetypes that works with floodgates runic which didn't exist when I first made this video can also benefit from giant trunade because its field spell is a soft once per turn and would allow you to draw three more cards if return to the hand first up we have Sky Striker mobilize engage this card is part of the sky Striker archetype which is a series of cards all revolving around one main Deck monster and a whole bunch of Link one monsters as well as a series of spell cards that have a gimmick where you need to have no monsters in your main monster Zone in order to use them and they gain extra effects if you have three more spell cards in your graveyard although this is just the basics to Sky Strikers eventually they did get one extra main Deck monster and even a link to monster and what sky Striker mobilize engage does is simply if you have the conditions where you control no monsters in your main monster Zone you can add any one skystriker card from your deck to your hand except another copy of this card then you've made the conditions where you have three or more spell cards in your graveyard you can draw one card so normally spell cards which allow you to search any card from the archetype from your deck are some of the most played cards within those archetypes like e emergency call or horatic seal of convocation although most of the time they'll have restrictions to them like xi'an's smoke signal that only allows you to Target level 3 or lower 6 Samurai monsters and sometimes it'll have benefits on top of the searches like tune table of contents having the benefit of searching out other copies of itself to fill up your graveyard and deck then and charge the Light Brigade which allows you to Mill three cards while also searching Sky Striker mobilize engage falls into the latter category where it not only allows you to search out any card from the archetype essentially but it also has bonuses on top of the excellent effect to search a card out and the bonus effect is to simply draw one card so it's a reinforcement of the army and an upstart goblet now normally the spell card Searcher is so widely played in any deck that is lucky enough to have one because it's a straight up one for one trading in Advantage if you have an e-emergency call for example that card in your hand is basically any hero monster you want and the ability to just become whatever card you want in your hand just adds all kinds of consistency to the deck especially since you don't lose any advantage for using the card Sky Striker mobilizing gauge has the utility while also allowing you to go plus one the pretty Infamous spell card pot of greed is banned because it's a simple plus one and card advantage that's usable in any deck engage has the benefits of being any Sky Striker card you want and also be in a pot of grid on top of it it gets to replace itself with anything you want at the current moment and give you Advantage which is kind of ridiculous Charge of the Light Brigade has actually been on and off the ban list a lot because it's a Searcher that has benefits on top of searching but Charge of the Light Brigade itself doesn't generate immediate advantage you kind of need a DAC that can gain Advantage from sending cards to the top of your deck to the graveyard which a lot of decks can do although engage is just pure Advantage but only to the sky Striker archetype which does balance it out somewhat or you'd think because actually the sky Strikers worked incredibly well as a small engine thanks to skystriker Mecha Hornet drones and skystriker Ace kagari Hornet drones is a skysharker card which requires you to have no monsters in your main monster Zone in order to activate it and then simply summons one sky Striker Ace token it has an extra effect if there's three or more spell cards in your graveyard but that's largely Irrelevant for its main purposes as all it does is give that token extra stats and then you would immediately use that token in order to link some in skystriker A's kagare which simply requires any one non-fire sky Striker Ace monster which the token is as it's a dark warrior token which has the name Sky Striker Ace in it skystriker Ace kagari allows you to add a skystriker spell card from your graveyard to your hand on its summon but you can use to add add back Hornet drones and then you can activate it again to get a second token since the card does not have once per turn and so with a single Hornet drones you can get out two monsters on the field for link materials without using up your normal summon and with only using a single card in your hand and what was the best way to search out this incredibly useful plus wooden card Advantage combo how about the plus one and card Advantage Sky Striker mobilize engage so as an engine in other decks in order to get two extra monsters in the field to help further your combos you could just play three copies of Sky Striker mobilize engage in order to search out that one combo piece and if you happen to have other spells in the graveyard you would just draw an extra card on top of that the Mini Engine was already a plus one in card Advantage being able to activate the extra effect of engage turns it into a plus two which is why it was a very popular engine to use in its time because generally many engines that just make other decks better don't allow you to unintentionally go an extra plus one in card advantage while setting up a combo in fact fact most decks don't have an unintentional plus one and card Advantage at all and there's also the fact that Sky Striker mobilize engage is also not a hard once per turn or you know once per turn at all so if you have multiple copies of the card in your hand you just get to draw extra cards and the sky Strikers themselves have really good cards in their archetype like the aforementioned kagari and Hornet drones Sky Strikers also had skystriker Mecha Widow anchor which is a quick play spell card that allows you to negate and steal one of your ponce's monsters which even earned itself a place on the ban list for a while and skystriker Mecha modules multi-role which basically allows you to a plus four in a card Advantage base the number of Sky Striker cards you use that turn which is just really good in its recoverability potential as basically what the effect did was it was a continuous spell card in the field and once per turn during the end phase you were able to set a number of Sky Striker spells of different names from your graveyard on the field up to the number of skystriker spell cards you activated this turn but they would get banished when they leave the field so if you used at least four Sky Striker cards you then get to set up your other 4 empty spawn trap card zones with Sky Striker spell cards from your graveyard which could include a copy of skystrike mobilizing gauge to use on your next turn multi-roll also has an additional effect where it can send one another card you control to the graveyard in order to give all of your spell cards spell speed 4 protection which means your opponent essentially can't respond to or negate your spell cards for the rest of the turn so on top of being one of the best spell card Searchers in the game it also had really good targets to search out and could also be played in all kinds of different decks as a Mini Engine and was already really good as part of its main deck which was a competitive meta deck that saw all kinds of success and most of that success was definitely facilitated by how strong their Searcher was with mobilize engage to the point where people were kind of surprised the card stayed unbanned for as long as it did as it wasn't banned until a year and a half after it came out in January of 2020. now I will say sky Striker mobilizing gauge is not the strongest spell card Searcher in the game's history that distinction definitely goes to Spellbook of judgment which allows you to go plus seven in card Advantage but engage was definitely an overpowered Searcher on a smaller scale Spellbook of judgment is just broken whereas skystalker mobilizing gauge was simply overpowered which is probably why it avoided the banlist for so long because being merely overpowered doesn't mean a card will be banned ironically enough it's just engages kind of on the higher end of overpowered bordering unbroken with how useful it was so can Sky Striker mobilize engage be unbanned this one is probably a yes you see it is a very good Searcher that has a no downside upstart Goblin effect stamped on top of it but it's not completely broken it's just like super good currently it's still really good and will probably stay in the banned list in the immediate future but the power group of the game does get stronger and stronger every year and we might just get to the point where eventually this overpowered Card is only slightly overpowered and it could be fine to be unbanned but it's not a definite yes because Yu-Gi-Oh is very afraid of plus ones and card Advantage when it comes to drawing cards other card games make fun of Yu-Gi-Oh for being afraid to print cards like pot of greed because card advantage and Yu-Gi-Oh when it's generic draw is just so much stronger than other card games that have resource systems in Yu-Gi-Oh since you can just use cards you have as long as you beat the activation requirements it is possible to use every single card in your deck if you build for it and since the kind of Advantage this card gives you on top of its excellence search is that ever important plus one in a standard draw that means it'll probably stay in the banned list a little bit longer because as the power level the game advances that standard draw effect actually gets more and more valuable there might be a time where the standard draw is not a big deal but it's definitely not now I should also mention it's only semi-limited in the ocg although they also have Maxi unlimited over there so they have kind of a different game when it comes to drawing cards because of it how could they fix Sky Striker mobilizing gauge to be unbanned if they were to fix this card to make it less overpowered while kind of keeping the same benefits and theme of the original I think if they changed a second effect from Simply allowing you to draw one card if you have three more spells in your graveyard to instead allow you to search out a specific Sky Striker card that might be enough to take it off the banned list currently the biggest problem with the card is definitely that plus one after the search if you were to change it into a non-generic plus one we where you had to search out a different name Sky Striker card for example it would still be super crazy strong in Sky Striker decks but it wouldn't be an auto Advantage generator for other kinds of decks outside of removing that draw one effect I can't think of too many other ways to change this card without completely neutering it although it should probably have a hard once per turn slapped on it as well update this card is no longer banned and then immediately skystalker saw competitive play again and even won first place at two major events in 2022 after being unbanned next card we'll be going over is Kaiser Coliseum a continuous card Floodgate which is banned because it causes all kinds of really nightmares and is just a pretty powerful Floodgate Kaiser Coliseum has the effect where if you control one or more monsters your opponent is not allowed to play monsters on their side of the field if they would exceed the amount of monsters you control so if you control one monster your opponent can only play one monster and not a second and that's usually how the card was used you would just end your board of one monster and then your opponent wouldn't be able to combo because it's really hard to combo while only being restricted to a single Monster Zone and one of the great things about Kaiser Coliseum is a Floodgate is that it only restricted your opponent during your turn you can play as many monsters as you wanted because Kaiser Coliseum would only lock your opponent based on the amount of monsters you controlled that means you can just kind of ignore the card during your turn as long as you entered your turn with a small number of monsters in order to make it a somewhat useful Floodgate which goes kind of counter-intuitive to all the other floodgates which affect both players if you want to use skill drain for example you have to build your deck around skill drain because having all of your monsters effects negated is pretty bad for a lot of decks and doesn't allow you to use a lot of your combos if you want to use there can be only one you have to make sure your deck is built around being able to play a bunch of different types of monsters for Kaiser Coliseum you don't have around the card at all and it doesn't restrict you at all during your turn it purely has beneficial effects it's just you can make it more beneficial if you end your turn with only one monster but you don't have to this in and itself makes it a pretty powerful Floodgate but there's also the ruling confusions and an easy lockdown you can accomplish with this card basically what Kaiser Coliseum is doing is preventing your opponent from even playing monsters in the field regardless of how they would be summoned because it counts number of monsters versus your number of monsters so if we were to hypothetically remove a monster with a card Effect which at the same time would bring out another monster Kaiser Coliseum would only care about a monster coming on the field and not the cards leaving the field from your opponent except when it doesn't so to give a more concrete examples say you the player with Kaiser Coliseum only has a single Monster in your side of the field and your opponent also has a single Monster on their side of the field your opponent activates the Monarch stormforth which gives them the ability to trigger your card in order to summon a monster on their side of the field however if they were to summon a monster that would mean they would have two monsters on their side of the field which is a no-go because you have one monster out and Kaiser Coliseum doesn't allow them to summon another monster although when that monster comes out it would be doing so by tributing your monster leaving you the player with Kaiser Coliseum having no monsters at the end of that exchange which means they should be able to bring out that tribute summon monster but that's not the case because Kaiser Coliseum doesn't care about the potential of the game State when it involves interacting with your opponent's monsters instead only cares about the potential game State based on the interactions of your monsters only except when it doesn't so if they want to bring out the attributes of a monster they would have to instead just tribute their monster and not their opponents in another example say you're in the same game State you have Kaiser Coliseum and one monster your opponent has one monster and they want to special summon out a Kaiju from their hand using its effective tribute in opponent's monster under opponent side of the field they can do this no problem and true but your opponent's monster for the Kaiju this situation is almost exactly the same as the Monarch storm fourth but one is allowed and the other isn't and it's probably because the same number monsters will be on both fields in the Kaiju example but I'm not 100 sure why that's the case and since Konami was about to release a whole bunch of support for monarchs they banned Kaiser Coliseum in August of 2016. that way all of these new monarch players wouldn't have to deal with the ruling nightmares that are involved with Kaiser Coliseum in the Monarch storm fourth because in addition to the ruling nightmares with tribute in your opponent's monsters it was also just a really strong Floodgate with no downsides there was also a complete lockdown you could perform with Kaiser Coliseum and two other cards Destiny Hero Dark Angel is a card which prevents you from using spell cards while you control it it also has a hand effect that allows it to discard itself and then special summon a Destiny Hero monster from your graveyard to your opponent side of the field as long as you had at least three Destiny hero monsters in your graveyard so you could just discard this card with its effect then special summoned itself to your opponent's side of the field activate Kaiser Coliseum and set any monster in defense position this would lock your opponent out of summoning any monsters and lock them out of using any spell cards making it harder to destroy Kaiser Coliseum as common backroad destruction is usually in the form of spell guards and you could take this one step further and use World decree to lock your opponent out of all trap cards too or maybe even mask a restrict if you don't care about traps because the only way to break the combo was to Tribute the dark angel to get it off the field and since Destiny heroes are actually fairly competent at getting themselves in the graveyard very quickly and searching each other out it was a fairly easy lockdown to set up the hardest part was probably just searching out the Coliseum so could Kaiser Coliseum be unbanned the answer to that question is yeah probably the card is Unlimited in the ocg and isn't really a big deal although the ocg also has skill drain unlimited and Mystic mine add one where the TCG has Mystic mine at three so I'm not really sure what the philosophy on floodgates is over in the ocg they seem to be fine and not fine with them at the same time either way looking at the lcg isn't really a good indication of if a card is okay in the TCG so to repeat the question could Kaiser Coliseum be unbanned in the TCG yeah probably it would absolutely be a powerful Floodgate don't get me wrong but we already have really powerful floodgates it would kind of just add one more to the pile generally allowing more powerful floodgates to exist in the game isn't a good idea because they are kind of annoying to play against and only make control deck stronger but if you just completely disregard your personal feelings on floodgates and think of it as a powered leveled card compared to other cards in the game Kaiser Coliseum isn't stronger than Mystic mine and Summit limit also does a good job of restricting your opponent's summons so it would just kind of fit in and the ruling confusions are only with a couple of cards that don't really matter basically you just can't use the Monarch storm fourth or Soul exchange while Kaiser Coliseum is out and that's it so based on the power level of the card it could probably be unbanned but based on not wanting more strong floodgates in the game I think it's totally fine leaving it banned forever how could they fix the card to make an unban well first it'd be great if they could fix the rulings on the card but they should also fix its Floodgate to no longer just be beneficial to the person that uses it it should also have the restrictions where you can't play cards if it would exceed the number of cards your opponent controls as well that way if you're playing this card you'd have to be really dedicated to only having a single Monster in your side of the field pretty much all of the floodgates that are unbanned affect both players equally and Kaiser Coliseum should get a change that makes it affect both players negatively like all other floodgates do normally people who play floodgates do so in Decks that don't really mind the downsides so it would still probably be just as strong as it is now but it would at least have a downside incentive compared to the one it doesn't have currently first up we have butterfly dagger Elma this is an equipped spell card which grants whichever monster it's equipped to 300 attack points and simply has the effect that if it's destroyed and sent to the graveyard while equipped you can then return this card to your hand so in the past you could equip this card to gear feed the Iron Knight in order for that monster to immediately destroy with its effect which would then allow you to return it to your hand and then just repeat infinitely so if you had a way to take advantage of being able to activate a spell card an infinite amount of times per turn then you could use this to all kinds of Advantage like if you have a royal magical library on the field each time you activate a spell card you get to place one spell counter on it and then you get to draw a card by removing three Spell Counters so with gear freed and Elma you'd be able to have enough Spell Counters to draw every single card in your deck as soon as you have the combo set up or as I'll show on screen if you have gear freed and fire princess on the field as well as more owl boost morale boost has the ability to increase your life points by 1000 every time an equipped spell card is activated fire princess allows you to inflict 500 damage to your opponent each time you gain life points so you could just infinitely equip gear for the Iron Knight with butterfly dagger Elma in order to infinitely increase and deal damage to your opponent until you deal the 8 000 points of damage required for an ftk basically the big problem with butterfly dagger Elma is its lack of a once per turn on its ability to return to your hand which causes all kinds of problems even if the card does have the ability to miss timing it doesn't really matter in a controlled situation where you just infinitely repeat a combo to activate a spell card as much as you want the card was banned in April 2005 and is one of the longest cards on the ban list so can butterfly dagger Elma be unbanned no because it still allows you to infinitely activate a spell card granted it's not something you could do very easily in all meta Decks that currently exist but I'm sure someone could think of a way to take advantage of it in the modern era even if its old uses are kind of outdated you just really don't want to mess with cards I can infinitely return themselves to your hand that's why Sinister serpent got an Errata in order to give it some restrictions on returning to your hand and that card only ever returned itself to your hand once per turn how could butterfly dagger Elma be fixed to be unbanned well if they give it a hard once per turn that would do it update out of all of the abusable infinite Loop cards Elma is probably the weakest by far but it's even easier to search out a quest file cards now than it's ever been Thanks to cards like toolbox and power tool braver Dragon if you simply bring up braver dragon you can use effect to equip chaos and Elma to add Elma to your hand after it gets destroyed the first time turning any availability of a level 9 generic Synchro Summon into a free element in hand now next up we'll be going over premature burial this is an equipped spell card which can be activated by paying 800 life points and targeting one card in your graveyard in order to special summon that Target and equip it with this card where this card is then destroyed when that equipped monster is destroyed as well so it's kind of like a call of the Haunted but in spell card form and this card is probably one of the strongest eqo spell cards ever printed which is kinda saying something because technically it's a weaker version of monster reborn a card that's currently limited to one copy in the game Monster reborn is a normal spell card that allows you to special summon one monster from either graveyard to your side of the field with no restrictions on its Target premature burial requires you to pay life points only targets a card from your graveyard and even destroys the card if it's destroyed on the field but premature burial is infinitely more useful than monster reborn and the reason it's more useful is because it's an equipped spell card it spell cards are generally pretty terrible and because most of them are not very useful they receive a whole bunch of really good support now the reason equipped spell cards are not very useful is because they're very easy to counter play Let's Take acts of Despair for example this card simply gives a monster equipped a 1000 attack and has some Niche ability that allows it to return to the top of your deck whatever the important thing about AXA despair is the ability to equip itself to a monster and granted extra attack points so if the monster it's equipped to is destroyed then this card leaves the field and you lose two cards in the exchange of your one monster being destroyed so if your opponent uses something like fissure which would normally trait one for one they actually get a two-for-one trade because of the equip spell card also getting destroyed in the process however AXA despair would also be destroyed if your monster was simply flipped face down with something like book of moon or temporarily removed from the field through the effect of something like number 17 malevolent sin or if AXA despair was simply destroyed with any kind of spell or trap card removal or if you just use your monster for any kind of extra deck play basically any and all forms of disruption stop equipped spell cards whereas other kinds of cards don't really have to worry about constantly being attached to a monster Eco spell cards are doubly vulnerable to any form of monster or spelling trap card removal which is why they're usually not very good they have to be ridiculously broken to see play and even then that doesn't guarantee they'll see play as seen by grid rod and UA power Jersey these are two Eco spell cards that are borderline broken and they don't see any competitive play at all because they don't Grant you immediate advantage and instead just Mega buff the monster they're equipped to the kinds of equip cards that do see play are ones that give you Advantage immediately which premature burial squarely falls under there are two other Eco spell cards in the game called DDR different dimension reincarnation and the living fossil both of which have the ability to special summon a monster when activated and both absolutely see competitive play because of it although DDR different dimension reincarnation is just a straight up downgraded version of premature burial it requires you to discard a card in order to activate it which is a much harsher restriction than just paying 800 life points and it only allows you to Target a monster that's banished instead of in the graveyard and it's seen all kinds of competitive play in the past and present living fossil is also a more restricted card it only allows you to Target a level 4 or lower monster it has all kinds of restrictions on banishing the card after it leaves the field it sets the monster's attacking defense to 1000 and it even negates the monster's effects on the field and it sees all kinds of competitive play that's because equipped spell cards generally enjoy a whole bunch of support because they're mostly terrible like hidden Armory which allows you to search out any equipped spell card from your deck or graveyard at the cost of giving up your normal summon vylon Cube which allows you to search out any Echo spell card if it's used as a Synchro material for a light monster power tool Dragon a generic level 7 Synchro monster which allows you to search out any equip spell card from your deck as long as you have three copies of it and for Noble Knight Captain Roland which allows you to send an equal spell card from your deck to the graveyard and it's Synchro Summon armor recall a trap card that allows you to search out any ecosystem spell card from your deck and even equip it to a monster immediately if you want to and gear breed a continuous spell card which allows you to add an equal spell card you want from your Deco graveyard to your hand during your draw phase there isn't really this kind of generic support for any other kind of spell cards in the game or even trap cards for that matter none of the other types of spell or trap cards enjoy as much generic search ability as the equip spell card and the reason it's fine is because of how inherently bad most Eco spell cards are because of just how their Mechanics Work and premature burial is easily one of the best it's a generic special summon of any one monster from your graveyard that's not a once per turn which means it's usable in pretty much every deck and some of those decks have ways to even take advantage of some of the generic support like a vylon cube or power tool dragon and since premature burial doesn't actually do anything to the monster that it's equipped to if it's bounced it could be reused with cards like Blackwing zephross the elite a card that special summons itself from the graveyard by returning a card you control to your hand which is already used in dark warrior combos to return DDR due Dimension reincarnation premature burial was good back in the days when using premature burial where the giant trunade was considered a big brain combo it would be absolutely broken in the modern era where they already take advantage of weaker versions of itself in fact part of the reason they can make so much really good generic support for equipped spell cards is because all of the really good equip spell cards are banned and there's not very many of them premature burial was banned in September of 2008. could premature burial be unbanned no it's ridiculously strong in the modern meta it's like an easier to search out monster reborn which can be reused how could they fix premature burial so that it could be unbanned well considering the fact that premature burial has had a handful of retrains with DDR driven Dimension reincarnation and overdone burial being the two I know about it seems as if they can fix the card because they've kind of already done it DDR different dimension reincarnation is already a more limited version of the original card and enjoys a healthy amount of competitive success but isn't quite broken because of its discard cost and more restrictive pool work and special summon from overdone burial is an even more restricted version you have to discard a monster in order to activate this card which does allow you to special summon a monster from your graveyard but only a Monster who has a level lower than the monster you discarded in order to activate the effect it also negates the monster's effects on the field and has a hard once per turn on its activation and what do you know overdone burial has also enjoyed a lot of competitive success so if two of its worse versions still see competitive play it really shows just how strong the original was and how difficult it would be to properly Errata the card without it still being broken however here's my take on it give the original a hard once per turn have it negate the effects of the monster at special summons and then banish the monster when it leaves the field in this form it would still be way too strong in competitive play and actually just be a better version of overdone burial so I don't know if that's enough it's hard to think of a good way to balance the card without completely neutering it or making it worse than overdone burial that's kind of the threshold I'm aiming for still usable but not worse than overdone burial but I think overdone burial kinda does a good job already so they can just kind of leave it banned and just let overdone burial be its nerfed version or just take heavy inspiration from it giving it restricted discard costs in addition to a hard ones per turn or maybe even have it just discard two cards to use it as is with a hard ones per turn as well and lastly we have spoke grenade of the thief the newest EQ spell card to be added to the ban list this is an equipped spell card which doesn't actually have an effect until it's destroyed on the field where you can equip this card to anything and then after this card is destroyed by a card Effect while equipped to a monster you get to look at your opponent's hand and then discard one card of your choice from it so kind of like the effects of the banned spell card confiscation just with extra steps and for the most part this card was completely fine for most of its life in the game it only saw Niche play here and there and it was never consistent enough where it was a problem or even worth consideration even it was always kind of one of those joke of a cards that always had the potential to be strong but was just too difficult to make use of then an archetype was released which allowed to make use of the effect almost immediately every turn no problem the noble Knight archetype received a level 9 Synchro monster called infernobyl Knight Emperor Charles which has the effect that during the end phase you can equip any one spell card from your hand or graveyard to this card to then equip a fire warrior monster from be deck to this card as an equipped spell card which grants it 500 attack and then it has another effect where if an eclipse fail card is equipped to a monster on the field even during the damage step you then get to destroy one card on the field so if you simply found a way to get smoke grenade of the thief into the graveyard or your hand then Emperor Charles can equip it and then destroy it during the end phase in order to use the confiscation-like effect on your opponent's hand which procked during both players and phases so you got the effect an additional time during your opponent's end face and that discard effect is super good in competitive Yu-Gi-Oh it can kind of win you the game on its own sometimes and what do you know noble knights had two in Arc Type ways of getting smoke grenade of the thief into the graveyard thanks to their excellent link 2 monster he solde Two Tales of noble knights which can send a number of equipped spell cards from your deck to the graveyard to special summon a warrior monster from your deck whose level is equal to the amount of cards you sent to the graveyard so he solve it could get a whole bunch of equipped spell cards in the graveyard including smoke Grenada the thief they also have their level 5 Synchro monster infernobyl Knight Captain Roland which when singles summoned during your end phase allows you to send a spell card for your deck to the graveyard in order to add a warrior monster from your deck to your hand so with being able to get smoke grenade into the graveyard very easily consistently on your first turn no problem and then equip it to trials during the end phase and then destroy it immediately with its own effect basically allow the deck to just rip one card from your opponent's hand every turn by just doing their plays like normal and in for noble knights were a competitive meta deck so giving a competitive meta deck a consistent way to use confiscation every turn was a little bit powerful in fact smoke grenade was a big reason why they saw play and Link cross to be honest link cross heavily contributed to the success of their deck as well which is why they were hit so hard when both of these cards were band together in December of 2020. although funny enough it wasn't just infernobyl Knights that could take advantage of it in dragonlink they can very easily make use of vylon cube for Synchro place which allows him to search out any Eco spell card from their deck normally they'll just use it on something like living fossil to extend their combos however they also have the option to search out smoke grenade of the thief thanks to one of their combo cards called Rocket Tracer rocket Tracer has the effect where you can destroy one facelip card you control in order to special summon a rocket monster from your deck at the expense of not being able to summon other non-dark monsters from the extra deck for the rest of the turn so Dragon link could also use the effect of smoke grenade as a thief in order to rip a card from their opponent's hand mid combo to maybe get rid of a hand trap that might stop their future plays or to just get rid of a starter car so their opponent can't do anything on their next turn and since two competitive decks could make easy use of smoke grenade of the thief at around the same time when competitive meta decks weren't really able to make use of it before then was just too much for the card to stay off the ban list could smoke grenade of the thief be unbanned yeah probably if they ever banned in for a noble Knight Emperor Charles and Rocket Tracer which I guess kind of means now it probably won't be unbanned anytime soon when people use the effects of triple tactics Talent which allows him to choose one of three very powerful effects the effect to look at your opponent's hand and get rid of one card is often the most chosen effect because of just how much more powerful that is so as long as easy access to activating the effect of smoke grenade exists it's probably messages leave smoke grenade on the ban list how could smoke Grenada the thief be fixed to be unbanned honestly the card seems like it's already fine as is I don't think they ever intended for this card to be consistently popped in order to activate its effect it's already really hard to get the effect off there just happens to be metadex that are able to consistently use it while doing their combos like normal so without completely changing the effector condition of the card we could just add one extra condition to the activation requirement where in addition to being destroyed while equipped to a monster it has to be during your opponent's Turn Only similar to how artifact cards work so you only gain the effect during your opponent's turn it could still be used with rocket Tracer and infernobyl Knight Emperor Charles but not during your turn so it'd kind of be balanced like a point of the Red Lotus where that card is fine in order to rip one card from upon a tan because you can't use it during your first turn although granted they only lose the card temporarily with the point of the Red Lotus I think smoke grenaded the thief already has a whole bunch of restrictions where if you just made it so it can only be usable during your opponent's turn that might be enough to make it not as broken it would still probably be good though maybe even overpowered but not broken update they release a new generic level 9 Synchro monster called power tool braver Dragon which can equip Rod of Silence KS and smoke grenade on itself to proc the effect immediately and anyone who's been playing master or smoke grenade is legal can attest to how annoying this card is the second and last man card is Mystic mind this is a field spell which makes it so the player who controls more monsters than the other cannot activate monster facts or declare attacks however during the end phase if both players control the same amount of monsters it destroys itself mine is easily one of the most controversial cards in the game's history being even more hated within the Western Community than the also highly controversial Maxi Miss dick mine is Simply the Best Floodgate we've had available since Vanity's emptiness and it warped The Meta just as much as that car did when mine first came out it initially found a home in Sky Striker decks which can comfortably play and a cure Advantage until you lose the game but there were also them much more infuriating pure mind decks which aim to activate mine to lock you out making sure it couldn't be rebooted by using defensive cards and giving your opponents monsters and then slowly burning you to death but mine was not only played in these decks as with time it only picked up more and more traction as a great going second card by bringing in mind against a boar that had no spell trap in the gates or which had already used theirs you could just activate it and then just pass back to your opponent until they decked out the existence of mine and the very real possibility of a deck out loss led to numerous decks having to Splash in random pieces of background removal such as Cosmic cyclone the main deck just so they wouldn't instantly loosen this card being activated this card promoted extremely toxic game States but even more so in real life events as even if you did have an out all the turns it might take you to draw into it might force you to go into time later on this card was very often played as a one-off in decks of field spells to turn terraforming and set rotation into going second options the most successful mine decks throughout time ended up being Sky Striker and alter guys both control strategies which could poke your opponent under mine and then remove their own monsters within engine options to ensure you'd always have less cards this card being around change how people built both their decks and their boards and while they did fall off the meta at some points it'd always come back feeling stronger than ever before in the past few metas this card has been a staple in flu decks as well as Decks that tend to perform board Breakers over hand traps that aren't dimensional shifter it was also popular in some Sprite variants which could play around one of Al's domain such as Galaxy Cyclone by protecting their mind with beat Cod of the underworld another notable example of deck that could use mine as a win con is pure runic which goes for the deck out better than any other mine deck before as it they can thin your opponent's deck and get rid of the removal with their runic spells Mystic mind was actually hit fairly quickly in the ocg going to one not long after its release over there where it stayed for a couple years until eventually it got banned before Master wolf 5 even came into effect the fact that this card spent as long as it did unrestricted that TCG made many players think it'd be a staple of our format forever as time and time again people would ask for it to get banned only for it to stay unscathed again year after year most people have probably lost all hope as it went through September's list at three once again even though many tournament winners were playing in their decks in a recent ycs winner was even on a pure mind strategy however to everyone's surprise once again this list switch came out of nowhere also addressed one of the longest lasting problems in modern Yu-Gi-Oh mine wasn't that much of an issue at the moment as the best deck of the format is Shizu tier doesn't really struggle with it due to having access to perlereno's pop as well as an in-arc type backward removal however it would just be a matter of time until it came back into the meta again but thankfully that's not the case anymore as it went straight from three to zero and one Fell Swoop if there's one card which both competitive and Casual communities won't ever Miss it's certainly Mystic mine first up we have last turn this was one of the first trap cards banned in the game and has an effect which is kind of unique where this card can only be activated during your opponent's turn when you have 1 000 or less life points then you select one monster on your side of the field and your opponent gets to select any one monster from their deck all cards in the field and both players hands are sent to the graveyard and then your opponent gets to special summon that monster from their deck in attack position and then immediately attacks your monster after this pseudo battle there was no battle Damage Done to either player and whoever has a monster made on the field at the end of the turn wins The Duel with all other cases resulting in a draw now at first glance this card seems somewhat balanced already you have to pick one monster but your opponent gets to pick any monster from their deck and then they just do battle whoever wins wins The Duel but you can only use this card when you're already super low on life points anyway however there is a way to cheat this card and that's by Simply Having a card which prevents your opponent from special summoning a monster like joujin the spiritualist or the last Warrior from another planet and since the way this card removes cards from the field is by sending them and not destroying them it bypasses all kinds of protections and immunities so it's very hard to actually influence the outcome of that battle during the turn and players found ways to kind of cheese their own life points by simply using the wall of rebellion light to pay 7 000 life points or using pre-arada inspection in order to just pay 500 life points 14 times during their opponent's standby faces so that they were down below one thousand and the strategy was consistent enough in the early days of the game where they still had really good draw power in the form of not yet banned cards like pot of greed or graceful charity that it was actually pretty consistent and even won a World Championship although since the card wasn't really being played in its intended use and ended up just being an easy way to get an automatic Victory if you're able to bring out joujin the card was eventually just and in 2006. so can last turn be unbanned probably not ever since the banding of last turn they released even more monsters of Adventure upon it from special summoning and they've released even more support for normal trap cards where searching out last turn would be a breeze the hardest part of the combo would be get your life points below 1 000 but with decks like magical explosion ftk being able to consistently get their life points below 1000 pretty easily that wouldn't be too much of a concern either remember when your whole win condition is just to activate and resolve one card that means your entire deck can be played around just making sure that one card activates and goes off properly which means you can display a whole bunch of disruption in the gates to make sure this one card goes off how can last turn be fixed in order to be unbanned well the simple answer seems like it would be to just make it so the card won't activate unless your opponent does summon a monster from the deck that way you can't choose the rulings with jouge in the spiritualist however that's not quite the easy fix because most main Dag monsters that can special summon from the deck are not very strong in the modern meta most decks only play monsters as combo pieces to go into extra deck monsters and there's lots of extract monsters that are pretty much unkillable by any main Deck monster like raid Raptor Ultimate Falcon or number s39 Utopia the lightning or just more usable gigantic beat sticks like axis code talker so there would be ways to use this card anyway even if you couldn't lock your opponent out of special summoned monsters plus there's a whole fact that this card causes ties if a monster isn't destroyed so you could just use this card like how self-destruct button was used in order to just force ties with using cards like marshmallow on so your opponent couldn't destroy your monster by battle the card just seems too tough to fix with an Errata because of the inherent strength of being able to instantly win as the main payoff of the card's effect but even so Megan until your opponent at least got a special summon a monster from the deck and changing it so that if you're not able to destroy your opponent's monster then you you lose the Dual rather than causing a tie those two changes might go a long way to fixing this card's inherent unfair Advantage update power level of the car decide another big reason they probably wouldn't want to advance this card nowadays is because of all the ruling nightmares to cause it I'll show you five examples of them from shorts I made on this subject last turn is a band card that might have the most amount of ruling confusions with how incredibly weirdly it's worded as it sends all of the cards in the field to the graveyard summons a monster from your opponent's deck forces a Special Second Battle phase then forces you to enter the end phase where a lingering effect resolves to check the board state it makes sure there's only one monster in the field to announce a win or a draw however with so much happening all at once it's hard to know if effects are able to resolve during any point to this and actually when you can do things so what happens if elephant's tattoo disaster is sent to the graveyard during the first phase of this effect this is a car that activates when it's discarded to inflect 2000 points of damage to your opponent and you need to have less than 1 000 life points to activate last turn so if it's hit by an opponent's last turn then you'll win right there and based on some ocg rulings there's actually a a little bit of pause before you enter the special battle phase which allows effects to resolve like that of elephant statue being sent to the graveyard or on some of the facts like armageddonite so elephant statue can actually win you the game however there's many other interesting rules of this card which we'll cover in the next part in the series what happens if there's an immune monster in the field Well normally in Yu-Gi-Oh you're not allowed to activate cards if you can't resolve their effects last turn kind of ignores this to an extent because you don't have to send all cards in the field ahead of the graveyard you simply have to attempt to so if your opponent has raid Raptor Ultimate Falcon which is a mutual card effects it will not be sent to the graveyard however everything else about the card will still resolve like normal your opponent will have to special some of the monster from the deck and you'll have to enter the special battle phase but since there will be two monsters on the field it brings up another question of how does this special battle phase work well there's another obscure unofficial ruling that states only the two monsters summed by the effect can battle each other even if there's another card on the field so the two monsters will find out and ignore Ultimate Falcon and then you'll have the end of face check to see who wins the game where the winners Whoever has a lone monster in the field so a Volcan but Falcons on the field and your monster is still in the field the game will result in a draw last turn has unique effect reproduces an additional battle phase although while it's not technically called a battle phase it is basically treated as one if the card Frozen soul is activated on you where you won't be able to enter the battle phase then you actually can activate the effect of last turn because you need to be able to enter the battle phase to resolve the effect although this also brings up a couple of other interesting rulings about the special battle phase it applies if a monster has the ability to attack multiple times it is able to attack all those multiple times since the phase is treated as a real battle phase where the only conditions applied were the monsters summoned by the effect has to attack and in fact it's because of last turned a weather report and an unfortunate report that every card which mentions attacking multiple times in the battle phase has to specify that it works in the battle phases emphasis on the plural even though there's only three cards in the whole game which produce additional battle phases however funnily enough you don't need to do the battle phase for the win condition check to apply but you do need to be able to enter the battle phase to use the card for example if you activate last turn during the standby phase and you for some reason use Thunder of ruler which skips that battle phase you simply resolve as much of the effect as possible skipping the battle phase and going straight to the end phase to check who wins the game however if your opponent uses something like frozen soul on you before you use last turn which makes it so you can't enter the battle phase then you can't use last turn even though there's a ruling stating you can try to resolve as much of the effect as possible and it's this little distinction the rulings that allows the challenge and trick to work part of the effect of last turn special summons a monster from your opponent's death which a joujin prevents because it stops specials helmets although you can still use last term while jaljin is on the field and just apply as much of the effect as possible and you'll win during the end phase for having the only monster on the field however part of the rules for this special battle phase is that it immediately leaves whatever current phase you're on then comes back to that phase before advancing to the end phase so due to this little distinction in rulings it's technically possible to enter the same phase twice during the same turn which means if you have an effect like white or Cosmo Forerunner which have effects activator in the standby phase but not once per turn so you'll be able to trigger their effects a second time if you activate last turn during the standby phase and return to it although it only applies as long as the effect does not specified once per turn which none of these two cards do next up we have time zeal this is another one of the first trap cards banned in the game and was used in some of the very first non-beat down strategies that won events now what this card does is simply skip your opponent's next draw phase and that's it essentially it makes it so your opponent doesn't draw one card for the turn which doesn't seem very strong we already have two trap cards in the game which are not banned or Limited in any way and also don't see any kind of competitive play called drop off and drastic drop off both of these cards get rid of the car that your opponent draws for their draw phase so why are these two cards allowed in the game whereas time sealed has been banned for over 15 years well it's more of the game mechanics of skipping your opponent to draw phase it creates a situation where if you're able to resolve time seal and get rid of your opponent's board and hand or just lock them out with some kind of Floodgate your opponent doesn't get any new materials to try to change the game State and if you're able to Loop time seal to use its effect every turn then your opponent just simply never has a chance to come back whereas with drop off and drastic drop-off that card will at least go to the graveyard which gives them a chance to come back if they have a good graveyard effect and that's really the distinction here time steel is a complete stop on any comeback ability whereas the drop-off cards do not have a 100 stop even if not every deck can actually come back with a graveyard effects the fact that it is possible is what's the difference now time seal itself isn't very good and this kind of situation is kind of difficult to pull off where even if you do pull it off it's probably because you're already in a winning position anyway and it doesn't really matter so a single time seal in your deck isn't gonna really help you win the game because its power level is kind of low for a banned card although just because a singular card isn't very powerful doesn't necessarily mean it won't be banned for some other reason and the main reason the time seal is because it just creates an unfair game state where your opponent can't possibly come back if you're able to use it which isn't really the case for any other floodgates in the game time seal was banned in April 2006 alongside last turn can time seal be unbanned this one's kind of a tricky question to answer if they did unban time seal it probably wouldn't see any play the reason it's banned is more for the potential of the car to create an unfair game State rather than the actual power of the card so if they did unban it then it wouldn't really break any meta it would most likely just be forgotten about so it probably could be unbanned until there's a super new trap heavy support archetype that comes out which allows you to Loop time seal super easily in which case it would get banned again because of the unfair game state it can cause how can time still be fixed to be unbanned if they gave it a once per duel on its effect that would basically fix the problem the main problem with this card is its potential to be used every turn with loops so if you're only allowed to use it a single time per duel then it wouldn't be a big deal although there isn't really a precedent set with once per dual effects on trap cards so instead they could probably give it a three times per dual limit although we could just look for alternative ways to fix the card rather than creating a new precedent they could also give an effect kind of like how they fix Sinister serpent where once the card is used it can't be used realistically again on the next turn which would also kind of solve the problem of it being loot but still allowed it to be used at least one time in its intended way or just make it work like drastic drop off or drop off where it sends the car to the graveyard instead of preventing the draw at all update this card was eventually unbanned and see Zero competitive play now let's go over self-destruct button this is a trap card which can only be active innovated when your life points are seven thousand lower than your opponents in which case both players lie points become zero so basically this card causes a tie and that's the only function of the card and there are currently no cards in the game that exist which allow you to circumvent this tie and turn it into a win for yourself although there are a couple of cards in the anime which do allow that to happen but currently none of them exist in the actual card game so why is a card that only causes ties banned well because of ruling problems and promoting unsportsmanlike conduct you see with the rulings if you go into overtime Whoever has won the most amount of games is declared a winner and there's a whole bunch of other things to it but basically what you could do with self-destruct button is just win game one and then just repeatedly cause ties until the game went into overtime in which case he'd be declared the winner because he had one win over your opponent and it's much easier to just cause ties Forever Until time Runs Out than it is to try to win a game too because of how the whole side decking mechanic Works in competitive play generally winning game one with an unconventional but consistent strategy is possible against a lot of meta decks however with proper side decking they can pretty much counter whatever it is you're trying to do and then when the next two games pretty easily especially if your entire strategy is fragile and can be stopped with a floodgator too or a few choice in the gates here or there but if you then side deck into a deck whose sole purpose is to try to cause ties as soon as possible that's actually pretty easy to do and can be pulled off much more efficiently than a win condition thanks to self-destruct button now in competitive play it is against the rules to slow play so that you run out time through normal gameplay but it's not against the rule to ties many times as you want it's generally considered a pretty scummy thing to do so since some players were using self-destruct line in order to cheese the time rules self-destruct man was banned in January of 2014. can self-destruct button be unbanned the card is currently not banned in the ocg and doesn't really cause any problems so the card could be unbanned but not before they added a couple of rule changes to the game itself in order to prevent the card being used in order to win by causing a whole bunch of ties and going into overtime for some reason they just don't do this in the ocg Apparently or maybe the rules are overtime just worked differently over there how could the card be changed to be unbanned well if they just change the rules on how overtime worked they could probably unban this card without any changes to the card itself however it's much easier to just ban a card rather than change the rules of the game which is why I think the card is still currently banned however if they were too A Rod of the card I'm not really sure how they could change it to function differently other than maybe increasing the amount of lie points required in order to activate the effect from 7000 to maybe 10 000 or something since making a seven thousand light Point difference is pretty easy by just lowering your life points by seven thousand whereas if the difference was ten thousand then you'd also have to increase your opponent's life points at the same time and it would give your opponent more time to try to circumvent the effect by trying to like pay half their life points or something next up we have trap dust shoot this is a trap card which can only be activated if your opponent has four or more cards in their hand and it allows you to look at your opponent's hand in order to send one Monster card from their hand back to their deck so on the surface it seems kind of balanced already you can only use it when your opponent has a big hand it's a one for one in card advantage that doesn't actually gain you any advantage and it only works on monsters so if your opponent only has spell or traps then you wasted the effect here's the thing though most decks are very monster heavy and being able to gain knowledge on your opponent's hand can be the same as winning the duel in some cases as if you know exactly what your opponent's hand is and even get to interact with it by getting rid of key combo pieces then you know when to save your negates or hand traps in order to shut down your opponent's plays at Key combo points so knowledge on your opponent's hand is incredibly valuable in the current meta game and being able to effortlessly gain that knowledge while also getting a nice benefit is a little bit too strong as shown by the fact that a pointer of the red load is sees competitive play the point of the Red Lotus is also a trap card that lets you look at your opponent's hand however with a few differences you have to pay 2 000 life points to use it and also reveal your own hand in order to activate the effect then the card you choose is only banished from one turn instead of permanently losing the card so a point of the Red Lotus is still good in the fact that it allows you to look at your opponent's hand but since it also makes you reveal your own hand to your opponent it's not a one-sided information more and even with all those limitations added onto it it still sees competitive play which should show you something about trap death shoot which is just a much better version of this card trap does shoot was banned in March of 2012. can trap dust shoot be unbanned no this one's pretty simple unlike the previous three cards where there's a whole bunch of wiggle room trap dust shoot is pretty straightforward in the fact that it's just a really powerful singular card and you don't really need to play a particularly difficult strategy in order to take advantage of it as it's just useful on a whole bunch of meta decks and would make a lot of decks better if they just played one copy of it how could they fix the card to be unbanned well they kind of already did this with the pointer of the Red Lotus so if they change the card to have a discard cost and also reveal your own hand in addition to its other requirements then they could probably remove it from the ban list and no one would play it although having a discard cost might be a little bit too much that could go the route of giving it a tribute requirement like spiritual water art ioi while also requiring you to still have four cards in your opponent's hand and revealing your own hand in the process for some decks it's easier to Tribute a monster than it is a discard one for other decks it's easier to discard a card than it is to Tribute the point of it is to lose advantage in order to gain the powerful effect I think that would go a long way to fix the problems with trap dust shoot although lose an advantage in order to interact with your opponent's hand doesn't guarantee that it's not going to be overpowered like we saw with topologic gumbler dragon which I'll probably talk about in a future video when I go over why extra deck monsters are banned update a few years or so after this video was made they limited a point of the Red Lotus to one copy but what's funny is that there is now discussion the community that leans in the camp that Red Lotus is actually better than trap dust shoot and the reason for that is because it can Target spell and trap cards whereas dust shoot can only target Monsters And since they're trap cards their only release will go in first and the best going second cards are all spell and trap cards like evenly match in Dark World or no more and Red Lotus can let you snipe them from your opponent's hand before they can use them to break your board where does she would only hit their monsters which is not as useful as knocking off their op board Breakers so if that shoot was unbanned tomorrow people would still prefer to play Red Lotus over it like they do now and lastly we have Vanity's emptiness this is a continuous trap card which simply has the effect that neither player can special summon monsters while it's face up on the field and also it has a negative side effect where if a card is sent from your deck or feel to the graveyard this card will destroy itself so the intended use of this card is to have a very strong effect but given your opponent alternative way of getting rid of it or hindering your plays while using it as activating a single search card like terraforming requires you to send that card to the graveyard after its activation which would destroy Vanity's emptiness here's the thing though just like looking at your opponent's hand the ability to lock out your opponent's special summons is just an incredibly powerful fact in the game not all effects are created equal some are just much better than others like being able to skip your opponent's phases getting information on your opponent's hand while being able to interact with it and of course the ability to prevent special summons like we saw with last turn in joujin the spiritualist now Vanity's emptiness does seem kind of balanced on the surface since it does prevent both players and special summoning monsters as well as having that downside where it can be destroyed pretty easily however this card is very easy to play around if you simply just activate this card during your opponent's turn as soon as they start so many monsters in order to lock them out of combos there's not much they can do to the card during their turn unless they have some kind of back roll removal in their hand already like a twin twister and then when it goes over to your turn you can easily destroy the card Yourself by just activating terraforming or some other spell card that way you can special summon no problem and get to use its negative side effects as an easy way to get rid of the car during your turn there was also other ways to circumvent this card's destruction by simply comboing it with cards like macro Cosmos another incredibly strong Floodgate that vanishes all cars that would have been sent to the graveyard since Vanity's emptiness specifically requires cards to hit the graveyard to destroy itself if all cards are banished then it can never activate its negative effect and just becomes a permanent Floodgate alongside another really strong Floodgate that's currently limited to one copy and also some other decks could get around its effects like the DDD archetype they could use a card called DDD curse King Siegfried which allows you to selectively negate the effects of one face up spell trap car in the field until the end of the next standby phase so you could just use Vanity's emptiness during your opponent's turn and then just negate the effect for your turn where it would then turn turned back on again during your opponent's start of the turn basically making it a one-sided Floodgate and there were a couple of other ways archetypes could play around this card but suffice to say even if you weren't playing around the card you could be on the field as long as possible having the effect for one turn was very powerful on its own that's why they don't really print new speller trap cards that prevent special summons and also why they rarely release monsters that prevent special summons either the effect of preventing special summons is just too powerful to the point where basically all monsters that have the effect have seen competitive play Vanity's emptiness was banned in March of 2017. could Vanity's emptiness be unbanned honestly it might be able to I know I just explained how powerful this card is and why it's a problem but currently as of writing this video anyway we have a card in the game called Mystic mine which locks out all monster effects and prevents your opponent from attacking and is incredibly easy to play around and just using a whole bunch of different kinds of decks and Mystic mine is not that much weaker than Vanity's emptiness in fact some cases can be made about whether one of them is better than the other and a Mystic mine is running around at three copies then Vanity's emptiness could probably come back to one as well and just be another powerful Floodgate option although one of the advantages Vanity's emptiness has a realistic mind is that it's much easier to use Vanity's emptiness during your opponent's turn in order to only have a one-sided Floodgate whereas Mystic mine requires other cards in order to make use of it in the same way this is why I say only maybe with it being unbanned rather than an enthusiastic guess because Mystic mine might also get band in the future or at least hit on the ban list in some other way as it's currently limited to one copy in the ocg how could they fix Vanity's emptiness to be unbanned honestly if they just removed its current negative effect that might go a long way towards balancing the card of course obviously giving it another negative effect as well because currently it's very effortless car to use only during your opponent's turn and since it's so easy to destroy during your turn with its current negative effect so if they just removed its negative effect or altered to something else then you would also have to deal the negative effect of not allowing special summons during your turn or have to take up resources in order to destroy the card yourself if you wanted to use it like before this system was successful with the unbanning of Imperial order so it might also work with Vanity's emptiness If instead of it destroying itself when you send cars to the graveyard they could have the negative effect where you can't normal summon monsters either while the card is out and only to the person who controls it or keep locking you onto special summons for the rest of the turn after the card is sent to the graveyard but not your opponent or just required to pay a whole bunch of life points each turn like mirror wall and have a maintenance cost of 2 000 life points which isn't optional it would still be powerful but part of the problem with it is being able to get rid of it too easily during your turn and like I already mentioned in the could it be on band category it could probably unband without any changes and just limited to one and just be a very powerful staple that fits in with everything else so just giving it a harsher maintenance cost while also removing its old negative effect could be all that's needed in order to fix its effect update Mystic mine is banned and Vanity's emptiness got banned really quickly Master after launch people would use prime math Mac albertian and at ignister dexa search outfandez emptiness then some of their unbeatable Towers monster and use Vanity's emptiness so it couldn't be kind June safe to say this card should stay banned as it gets even stronger with more easier ways to search it being released first up we'll go with 6 cents a trap card which has a very simple effect where you get to roll a six-sided Dice and then call two of the possible numbers if the dice lands on one of those results that you called then you get to draw that many cards if not then you instead Mill the amount of cards in the top of your deck to the graveyard and one of the best ways to use this card was just to call five and six so with a 33 chance of calling the number correctly if you did manage to call five or six that would allow you to draw five or six cards which is incredibly broken for one card to give you with no cost if you didn't it would instead be able to meal one to four cards which is also a good effect so Sixth Sense basically gave you a 33 chance to instantly win with the amount of card Advantage you get or a 66 chance to also just have a regular decent effect in Yu-Gi-Oh there aren't a lot of gamble cards in the games that have two benefits generally gamble cards have incredibly terrible downsides if you lose the gamble or pretty minor upsides if you manage to succeed Sixth Sense is like one of the outliers where it has two good effects to it but one of them is so strong that it easily earns its spot on the band list even though this chance isn't that high 33 means you can use this card every game and never get the result correctly but the fact that one card can completely swing the game in your favor so hard and in itself a problem and in a way that just generates way more Advantage than anything else and also a really good case with this card being banned is just think that whenever your opponent uses this card they're guaranteed to get five or six it feels really bad to see your opponent get lucky all the time even if you yourself will never resolve the effect correctly and I'm glad Yu-Gi-Oh doesn't really have competitive gamble cards as that's one of the reasons I don't play constructed Hearthstone because gamble cards is kind of the core design philosophy of that game Sixth Sense was banned in January 2014 shortly after being released to the TCG and only was around for one format could Sixth Sense be unbanned no even being a trap card which requires you to wait a turn and only having a gambling chance to give you the advantage the upsides are just too big the downsides are also a net positive which is just too much potential to swing the game from one card how can six cents be fixed to be unbanned currently the big problem with the card is the fact that it can allow you to draw five or six cards even if you're playing a deck that loves to Mill and calls three or four instead being able to draw three or four cards is also still super good for one card with no cost if they wanted to fix the card whose main problem is the amount of Advantage it grants they could start off by completely limiting your ability to play the game after the effect resolves where if you do manage to draw cards from the effect you can't actually use any of the cards until your following turn and lock you out of so many monsters or something similar this would incentivize people to use it only when you've already established a board of monsters which would turn it into a win more kind of strategy and generally win more cards don't see play since if you're in a winning position you don't need cards in order to further that winning position with more Advantage generally if you're in winning position what you want are more lockdowns or flood gates and if you're using it from a disadvantageous position you wouldn't be able to use all that Advantage it just gave you for a turn which would only be useful in some certain kinds of decks adding a delay to the advantage is a good way to circumvent cards that Grant you a lot of Advantage just look at the card Ledger of the ledgermane it potentially allows ago plus two and card Advantage but it makes you wait three turns before you're able to get that Advantage so it doesn't see any play so instead if Sixth Sense made you banish the cards face down and then added them back after a turn or two like Ledger of the ledgerman then they could probably come back and no one would play it because it would still be tied to a gamble effect and without the upside of being able to draw a whole bunch of cards only using the Trap card to meal isn't that good update people have actually metagained this card even more in no manless tournaments The Meta for this card now is to call three and four instead of five and six the reason for that is that drawing three or four cards is still very very good but Milling five or six cards is also in incredibly favorable so by calling three and four you now have a two-thirds chance of having a positive in fact instead of only a one in three chance from calling five and six the card is still very much good even after paracrape when the video was first released next up we have return from the different dimension this card has the effect where you could pay half your life points a special summon as many of your banished monsters as possible but they were all banished during the end phase this is a trap card that's been in the game for quite a while and wasn't really banned until Dragon rulers came out where cards that could banish themselves for cost started to become way way more commonplace although it started seeing success as early as 2004 thanks to the card strike ninja strike ninja had the spell Speed 2 effect where it could banished itself from the field for return at the cost of banishing two dark monsters from the graveyard so they would just use a whole bunch of floating effect dark monsters to fill up the graveyard quickly with stuff like sangan and Mystic tomato and then bring them all back with return from the different dimension in order to get more Advantage from them or just push for game back when being able to otk your opponent wasn't so commonplace it started seeing even more success and was actually restrict on the banlist for the first time when dark armed Dragon came out and created an even better way to banish a whole bunch of dark monsters from the graveyard where you could then return them with return from the different dimension and use them for Synchro summons since tuner monsters finally became available and allowed easy access to get rid of monsters in the field before they got banished here at the end phase because Return of the different dimension did kind of have a downside to it which was kind of hard to circumvent before Synchro monsters came out and then it just became even more Advantage once you could use those monsters to go to extra deck plays although that still wasn't enough to get the card banned it wasn't until Dragon rollers came out that they could use the graveyard and bandage Zone even better than dark arm dragon that return of the different dimension just proved to be too broken and then they finally just banned the card in January of 2014. can return from a different dimension be unbanned in its current state no there's even more cards I can make use of the bandage Zone than ever since 2014 and even though it's too slow for being a trap card the power of the card is enough to basically win you the game on its own in the same way as Soul charge another band card the potential to special summon up to five monsters with one card with a downside that's kind of outdated is just a plus and card Advantage essentially like instead of all kinds of gain staves and recycle the effects to get even more advantage on those cards since banishing monsters is supposed to be a really harsh cause and this card just kind of turned that into an advantage has even deck that love to banish their cards still love to have those cards brought back from the Bandit Zone like Thunder Dragons or orcas how could the card be fixed to be unbanned well a pretty easy fix would be to disallow special assembling from the extra deck during the turn you use the card as it would kind of have to be used in the same way it was used during the strike ninja format where you would just bring those cards out in order to use them for their actual Monster card Advantage rather than being used as materials to go in extra deck plates it would still be strong in some decks but the real problem of this card is just how much better the extra deck has gotten over the years and this car was already kind of broken when we only had Synchro on xc's Monsters with the introduction of Link monsters an even easier summoning method to use the card would just be abused even more than it already was so just locking you out of the extra deck for the turn is a real simple fix alternatively they can also have another effect where it gives a different lingering effect to all the monsters it brings out where if the cards leave the field after being brought out with the effect it instead banishes them again face down that way a lot of cards that do gain effects for being banished or have some other kind of floating effect that you'd want to reuse don't get to use those effects at that point the card would be kind of unplayable if it both restricted you from extra Dax and didn't allow to use the floating effects of the monsters you brought out although even then I'm sure someone would find a way to use the car to some kind of great Advantage but it would be relegated to gimmick decks most likely and be completely fine in the meta just like how you can technically ftk with Eva gishki mind August but it's so cumbersome to use and fragile to disruption that no one really does it next we have ultimate offering this is a continuous trap card which can be used during your main phase or the battle phase of your opponent's turn where you can pay 500 life points normal summon one monster from your hand this is in addition to your one normal Summoner set per turn and can be used an unlimited amount of times as long as you have lie points to pay for its costs now here's the thing about this card the one normal summon you get per turn is incredibly powerful in the current meta game because of how limited it is a single neospacing connector normal seven is able to set up a full Board of unbeatable monsters thanks to its normal summon effect same with cards like Soul eating oviraptor the normal summon is just much more precious today than it was when the card first came about in the early days of the game but even in the early days of the game the card was still used and abused as the whole Gadget monsters had an effect where they could search out another one of the gadgets every time they were normal summoned so a single Gadget in hand with ultimate offering on the build meant you can get out a number 16 shock Master with 1 000 Life Point costs and then just keep going for bore extra deck plays which would be even better with Link monsters that can make better use of those cards in madolche Decks at the time if they had their field spell card out as well as madolce ticket each time one of their adultery monsters would be destroyed it would just return to the hand where they could then immediately normal summon it with ultimate offering allowing you to have an endless supply of monsters in the field that could not be gotten rid of while gained Advantage from some of their summoning effects now these are just some of the uses it had before the card got banned today there is much better ways to take advantage of it just with how much power creep the game has gone through we even have cards like brilliant Fusion currently banned because it offered too easy access to one additional normal summon an unlimited amount of normal summons is just straight broken and completely messes with the balance of the game ultimate offering was banned in September of 2013. can ultimate offering be unbanned no the card is way too strong it would definitely need an Errata to come back especially since normal summons have just gotten stronger and stronger over time how can ultimate offering be fixed to be unbanned well if they just gave it a once per turn that would kinda do it there are cards in the game that give additional normal summons that no one uses because it's just not really useful unless you gain some other kind of Advantage from it or are able to just normal summon a whole bunch of times we have cards like Double Summon which almost never sees competitive play because the only thing the card does is give you one extra normal summon there's also cards like chain summoning which have the potential to give you three normal summons for the turn that saw a little bit of competitive play getting three normal summons is a really good effect but if you have to jump through hoops to get that effect that kind of kills a lot of the viability of the card it still saw some play anyway despite the Hoops you had to jump through to activate the effect as you can only use the card as a chain link three or higher because those extra normal summons are just that valuable however it's not broken and there's a limit to it so if they just gave ultimate offering at once per turn it would be completely fine and probably not even see play even if it does allow normal summons during your opponent's turn but then again so does arrival Rivals although an extra normal sum in every turn might still be kinda strong so who knows update in March of 2023 they released a retrained weaker version of this card in the ocg called terminal offering which allows you to conduct three normal summons if it's used during your turn or one normal summative views during your opponent's battle phase and with a weaker version de-evolution of the card release that makes it much less likely the original would be released anytime soon and finally we have Royal Oppression this is another continuous trap card which has the effect that when a monster is special summon the opposing player can choose to pay 800 life points and negate and destroy the card that tried to special summon a monster so think of it like a solemn warning except with less than half the Life Point cost and also usable as many times per turn as you want and solid warning is such a good car that it has seen pretty consistent play for a very long time in the TCG although real oppression is supposed to be balanced by the downside that it can also be used by your opponent so kind of like a field spell card in that regard however it's really easy to circumvent this by just using the card after you've already established a board of monsters that way you don't have to worry about your opponent negating all of your summons when using your card and it just makes it even harder for your opponent to try to do anything afterwards or alternatively you can just use it during your opponent's Turn Only since it's a trap card that can be activated mid combo and then just destroy it yourself during your turn with a plethora of spell and trap card removal or just by using a car that allows you to destroy your own cards to gain effects Royal Oppression is such a strong singular card that can easily win you games against a lot of decks by itself because the ability to restrict your opponent's special summons on a spell or trap card is just so much more valuable than if it's attached to a monster because at least monsters always have the inherent downside where they can be destroyed by battle whereas spell and traps can only be removed by card effects and also monsters require resources to put them on the field whereas spill and traps can be placed directly from the hand without spending extra resources although even if its effect was attached to a monster it would still be a really strong monster which makes it even better that it's attached to a trap card that can be used at the right moment Royal Oppression was banned in September of 2011. almost eight years after the card came out it was somewhat fine in the early days of the game when people weren't special summoning like crazy but now the name of the game is special summoned as many monsters in the extract as possible so it just gives a huge advantage to Dax that don't rely on special summons and just a normal big advantage to Decks that do and can just play around the effect anyway can Royal Oppression be unbanned probably not there are some really powerful floodgates in the game already like Mystic mine or even there can be only one but those ones have a lot of leeway with how you can play around them at least well kind of Mystic mind is kinda broken as well but if we were to compare the card to Mystic mine you at least need to use a second card in order to activate Mystic mind during your opponent's turn whereas you gain the same level disruption from one card with world of impression since it's a trap card although that's really it Mystic mine also does an incredible job of just shutting down your opponent even if your opponent can still summon monsters under Mystic mine no problem the fact that they can't activate any monster effects is still a huge hit to most decks and most decks can't get rid of Mystic mind game 1 unless they have some form of spell or trap card removal which is the same case as World oppression and if Mystic mine is able to exist in the game at three copies then they're fine with some powerful floodgates being in the game so even though Royal Oppression is probably one of the strongest floodgates I'm not sure its power is that much better than Mystic mine it is better don't get me wrong I wouldn't say that its power level is just that much higher though how can Royal Oppression be fixed to be unbanned well if they give it a clause where you can only activate the effect when you control no special summon monsters similar to lose one turn another more balanced Floodgate that would kind of go a long way to making the two-sided nature of this card more balanced if they also gave you the effect where during the turn this card is destroyed you can't special summon monsters that would remove its other downside where the card is easy to play around if you have a way to destroy it and then just do your plays like normal they would add both of those downsides where you can only activate if you control those special monsters and it also locked in the Special Assembly in the tournament was destroyed then it could probably come off the ban list no problem even if its effect is still really strong where it's basically a solemn warning on steroids but it would be much harder to play around its effect in order to take full advantage of it and it would still keep the same benefits that it had before where you could use it during your opponent's turn to disrupt plays kind of like how Mystic mine and metaverse are used it would just be another option as a very powerful Floodgate but one that couldn't just be used in any deck no problem as in its current form whoever draws into World oppression first basically has a very high chance of winning alright next up in the video I'm gonna go over two cards that are banned in the ocg Life equalizer and magical explosion life equalizer is one of the best life point conversion cards in the game where if you're able to manipulate yours and your opponent's life points correctly it's able to deal around 6 000 points of damage to your opponent assuming a starting life point value of a thousand and being able to set your opponent's life points to 3000 is incredibly valuable in a whole bunch of certain kinds of burn decks like magical explosion burn decks magical explosion is a car that can only be used when you have no cards in your hand and inflicts 200 damage to your opponent for eat spell card in your graveyard if you manage to get 15 spell cards in your graveyard that's 3 000 points of damage with one card which is exactly the threshold of Life equalizer so with a single life equalizer and a magical explosion and playing a deck that's able to draw into a whole bunch of spell cards instead of the graveyard while manipulating your opponent's life points which is definitely possible a chicken game and also unbanned in the ocg then perform in an ftk with life equalizer magical explosion is just too easy in the TCG life equalizer is not restricted at all a magical explosion is only limited to one copy so technically the combo is viable in the TCG it's just not easy to accomplish without chicken game although magical explosion is limited to one copy at least in the TCG because if you're able to get 15 spell cards in the graveyard and then just activate three copies of magical explosion that's nine thousand points of damage with magical explosion only had one copy it's a lot harder to use it in order to win with an ftk but not impossible thanks to cards like life equalizer now there is no real need to go over how the cards could be unbanned or how that could be fixed in order to be unbanned because we already know the answer to that just keep chicken game banned and they're not really a problem and therein concludes the band trap cards in the game as of early 2021 when this portion of the video was completed and the last card being forbidden is a counter trap red reboot going from limited to zero copies this card can be active in response to your opponent activating a trap card it indicates a trap card's activation and then sets it face down while also allowing your opponent to set a trap directly from their deck however for the rest of his turn after the card resolves your opponent cannot activate any more trap cards as a bonus you can also activate this from your hand by paying half your life points while not nearly as format warping as this card was when it was at three red reboot was still one of the sackiest one-ups you could draw into in a match this card just completely shuts down back road decks when activated with very little counter play outside of drawing a solemn judgment due to it being the spell Speed 3 and trap it saw play in tons of side decks throughout the years due to being the best one card answer to trap heavy decks while also not being bad versus combo decks which use trap cards as interruptions heard reboot's downsides didn't matter because with no more Interruption to deal with it's very easy to clear your opponent's board anyways or just straight up have lethal that turn this card being van has a small downside of leaving decks with even less counter play decided floodgates and games two and three but it does make life better for Back Road decks which no longer have to gamble with your opponent having a single card which says I win the game post side first up let's go over firewall dragon as this card probably won't stay banned for very long firewall dragon is a link for Monster who has completely generic materials for its requirements as it can use any two plus monsters as materials and simply has two effects while on the field one of them is a quick effect where it can Target a number of monsters on either player's field or in the graveyards up to the number of monsters it's co-linked to and return them to the hand so it could be used to bounce your opponent's monsters or return some monsters from your graveyard back to your hand to gain advantage and alternatively it could be used as disruption during your opponent's turn so very versatile first effect its second effect was if a monster this card points to is destroyed by battle or sent to the graveyard in some other way you get to special summon one monster from your hand now this card was meant as a way to help transition people into the new link era of Master rule 4 with a heavily restricted extra Deck monster Zone where monsters could be summoned to during Master before you could only special summon an extra Deck monster to the extra monster zone or to a zone that a link monster is pointing to and this slow down basically every single deck in the game that was in pure control so firewall Dragon need to be a little bit generic and strong in order to help that along as it was meant to be the link monster to go on pretty much every deck so it was easy to bring out had two decent effects that allowed you to gain advantage and get more cards on the field while doing link plays and it was meant to be a little bit stronger than normal in order to fulfill this goal however there is one little problem with this card and that was the lack of a once per turn on its second effect its first effect could be used a single time while the card was on the field similar to a wind-up monster so they didn't miss the ball in that one but since its second effect to special summon a monster from the hand lacked a once per turn and was very easy to activate it could be used if just any monster was pointing to was sent to the graveyard in basically anyway this allowed a whole bunch of loops and combos in order to fdk your opponent very easily with two of the more common ones involving a assault core and graph a dragon lord of Dark World with a assault core it has an effect where this card is sent from the field to the graveyard you get to add one other Union monster from your graveyard to your hand it's a fact laxa once returned and works on other copies of itself so if you simply had a second copy of a assault Corner graveyard and then use Cannon Soldier to Tribute a assault court on the field it would allow you to inflict 500 points of damage to your opponent and then add the second copy back to your hand and if it was in a zone that firewall Dragon was pointing to you could then just special summon that new ASL core in your hand and then just do it again or if you have the Dark World monsters grapha and beige you could tribute grapha with Canon soldier in order to inflict 500 damage to your opponent which would then proc the effect of fire while dragging to special summon a card from your hand which really could be any Dark World monster and then you could use a grapha to just return that Dark World monster back to your hand to special somebody from the graveyard and then just do it again there was even a liquid trickstar monsters where they could infinitely summon trickstar Lily Bell on attack for game it allowed gokhi decks to climb like crazy since basically all Goku monsters could search out another Goku when they were Ascend to the graveyard but you could then immediately summon those new monsters due to firewall dragon and all of these ftks and crazy Loops were incredibly consistent because firewall Dragon allowed you to add key combo pieces to your hand and then special summon with its second effect so people would easily search out Canon Soldier by just sending it from the deck to the graveyard with curious and then firewall dragon's first effect rely to add it to its hand and then special summon it with its second effect and then finish off with an ftk and since its first effect was very similar to a wind-up monster if you were able to bring firewall dragon out again or just return it to the extra deck to summon it for a second time which it could do with its own effect then you could just use its recursion again so what they did with firewall Dragon instead of fixing the problem of just Banning firewall Dragon because it was obviously broken was they tried to limit a assault chord of one and of course limit firewall Dragon to one copy as well which did all of nothing to stop firewall Dragon since that left the Dark World Loop completely unhindered So eventually since firewall Dragon was just causing too much problems by being too good at everything Konami finally relented and banned the card in December of 2018 and then put a assault core back to unlimited could firewall Dragon be unbanned yeah and probably soon the original card itself was completely broken but in the ocg they did a rather the card very recently as of making this video where it can no longer specialize them in any monster from your hand and only a cybers type monster and they also give it the ever so important to hard ones per turn if all they did was give it a hard once per turn then it would have been fine but they went the extra mile in order to limit which cards it could actually bring out from the hand which really fixes all the problems the card had the first effect was good and definitely helped it be as degenerate as it was but it was a hundred percent the second effect of not having a once per turn that made the card broken next we have Elder entity Norden this is a level 4 Fusion Monster which requires 82 sync real work sees monsters as materials and has the effect that when it's special summoned you can special summon any level 4 Lord monster from your graveyard but its effects are negated and it's banished if Norton leads the field so the most common way to use Norton was with instant Fusion that way it turned instant fusion into a one card rank forexes or if you had a Tuner monster under graveyard a one card Synchro Summon it was a very powerful tool but for the most part Elder entity Norden was just a strong staple that everyone used but wasn't really that big of a deal then when zodiac monsters came out it showed just how much of a problem Norton could be if you recycled the card over and over and actually brought it out with its proper summoning method Zodiacs would use zodiac broadbowl in order to search out luna light black sheep to their hand and they would use Black Sheep In order to search out Fusion substitute Fusion substitute is a spell card that treats its name as polymerization and has the effect where you confusion Summit monsters by only using materials that you control instead of allowing you to also use monsters from your hand like polymerization and for this restrictive condition that it places on itself it goes on to have a graveyard effect where you can banish this card from the graveyard in order to return a Fusion Monster from your graveyard to the extra deck and then draw one card so since zodiaks were super good at getting axes monsters on the field that might even be an understatement with how good they are at just abusing the xc's mechanic and could search out black sheep which would then search out Fusion substitute immediately they could just defuse their Zodiacs into Norton and then bring back rat pure who had a broken effect that if it was used as an xc's material you could special summon another copy of itself from the deck then they would just reset Norden with a fusion substitute bring it out again and then reset it with Rapier and digesto emerald in order to do it all over again Zodiacs were already hyper consistent at this point being one of the few tier zero decks in the game's history and Norden allowed them to draw five cards in one turn on top of everything else they were able to do which is why eventually in June of 2017 Norton was banned and will probably stay banned since it's even better now that link monsters have come out and made its effect all the more valuable it's funny that Norton was abused with instant Fusion for so long and everybody expected it to get banned someday because it was very powerful with instant Fusion or at the very least to get instant Fusion finally banned but I don't think anyone really expected it to finally get banned because it was being brought out properly with Fusion substitute can Elder entity Norden be unbanned the quick answer is no and that's because Link monsters can make better use of it than xc's monsters could Norton was already good with just xc's and Synchro monsters and Link monsters are a much easier summoning method to use it with and could turn a single instant fusion into a full link climb due to Norton's ability to effortlessly bring out cards from the graveyard its special summon effect is also not a hard once per turn so you can just recycle the card with a refusion in order to keep using its effect and even if they banned instant Fusion the card is good enough to be brought out normally as shown with Zodiacs where that wouldn't really stop the power of the card how could Elder entity Norden be fixed in order to be unbanned well if they gave its effect a hard once per turn that would definitely help if they also changed it where it can only be special summoned by a fusion summon that would go a long way to fixing its problem as well after Jordan was released and it was constantly abused with instant Fusion they released another Elder entity card called elder entity notice who has the effects where it can only be special summoned by sending its materials you control to the graveyard and cannot be brought out with polymerization it can only special summon a card from the hand and not the graveyard and has a floating effect to destroy one card in the field when it's sent to the graveyard and it even goes on to have extra restrictions where you can only special summon this card once per turn and funny enough Elder entity natis sees a lot of Play Because of its floating effect so after everything they went through to make this card a more balanced version of Norden it still ended up seeing a lot of play because it's one of the few cards that's able to impact the field if it's sent directly from the extra deck to the graveyard so if they just did everything they did to Elder entertain a test to Elder entity norded they could probably unban the card make it so going to be special summoned once per turn and put harsher restrictions on how you can bring the card out next up we have a Synchro monster IB the world challenge just tishier for this first video on all the band extra deck monsters I decided to choose one monster of each extra deck type so IB is the Synchro monster I chose for this video IB like a firewall Dragon was created as a way to kind of help Link monsters along so they made it real easy to bring out as it's a level 5 monster who's able to use a world chalice normal monster is one of its materials even if it's not a tuner then when this card is summoned you can add one world Legacy card from your deck to your hand and if this card is sent to the graveyard you can special summon a real chalice monster from your deck so Dragon link Dex would most commonly use this card it's just a really good combo piece which could start off with a single card from your hand most of the time and since it was brought up most of the time with one card it was basically a plus to in card Advantage when used as a link climbing tool and was incredibly valuable in any deck that could play its Small Engine as generally The Carter brought out would allow you to further your plays as well World Legacy guard Dragon could allow you to special summon a dragon monster from your hand or graveyard and World chalice guard Dragon could special summon itself from the graveyard which furthered the potential amount of advantage that IB generated and IB herself was considered a Tuner monster which would make her even more valuable after the masterable revisions it was just too good of a combo climbing machine which generated too much Advantage by bringing out cards which themselves could generate extra advantage that it was actually banned at the end of Master rule 4 in January of 2020. a couple of months before the master War Visions could go through because it was already strong during the restricted format and was the most played Synchro monster in the game at the time and would be straight broken after the restrictions were lifted as we we saw with a plethora of Synchro monsters that saw plague after the master War revisions like borrowload Savage dragon and Marshall metal martyr could IB the world challenge just tishier be unbanned no definitely not it was banned specifically because the master revisions were going to go through and it was already strong before they lifted all the restrictions on Synchro monsters IB herself is an inherent plus one in card advantage and if you played her correctly you could easily go plus three directly from the advantage that she generated it's too good as a combo piece to come back anytime soon how could they fix IB the world challenge just this year to be unbanned well she already has a hard once per turn all of her effects so that's not the problem her big problem is the fact that she's just too good at generating Advantage if played correctly even if you don't use her to her full potential and just use her normally as she was probably intended she at least goes card neutral in card Advantage so what they could do is just make her harder to Synchro Summon really if they made it so she could only be summoned with a real chalice monster as one of its materials that would make it so it's not as usable in other decks and if they also made it share a hard once per turn between both of its search effects that would inherently limit how much potential it had turned one it would have to be like the Goyo Guardian fix where they fixed the card by just making it harder to summon but also they would need to rein into search effect a little bit as well since it's a little bit too easy to get both of them off in the same turn although even then I'm not sure if that would do very much as there were already some variants of decks that would just use a world challenge monster as one with materials anyway although removing this card from being generic would go a long way nonetheless next up we have an xc's monster levolvel chain this is a generic Rank 4 monster that came out with one of the earliest waves of exes monsters and has a very simple effect you can detach one of its materials in order to activate one of its two effects where you can either send one card from your deck to the graveyard or choose one monster from your deck and place it on top of your deck and of course the broken effect from this card is one that's not immediately obvious you see this card is banned because of its ability to send any monster spell or trap card from your deck to the graveyard the ability to send cards to the graveyard is just super valuable because it's needed for a whole bunch of different kinds of plays like the ones that would set up the fire while Dragon ftks remember in those combos they would go through the trouble to bring out curious to light sword Dominion who also has an effect to send any card from be back to the graveyard but is not easy to summon as it requires three monsters that have to be the same attribute but different types the Volvo chain only requires two level four monsters which is literally one of the easiest requirements for an xc's monster to have and the effect is up your graveyard with any one card from your deck is just incredibly powerful for a generic Rank 4 monster we already have cards like armageddonite dark grapher foolish burial and Beatrice lady the Eternal who are all limited to one copy on the ban list because of their ability to send a card from the deck to the graveyard and none of them are as easy to use as Laval chain who also has no restrictions on what Target it can choose there wasn't just one deck that could take advantage of it it was a stable addition to pretty much every meta deck it would be a staple addition to a whole bunch of Combos and ftks even today eventually we got the card banned was its interaction with necros decks surprisingly enough where they would use the Volvo chain in order to send a Jin releaser rituals of the graveyard that way they could use it as a ritual material to lock their opponent special summons so the card was banned in July of 2015 and dejin released served rituals was banned shortly after can levolvel chain be unbanned when lavaval chain was first banned dark grapher and armageddonite were still unlimited to three copies because they didn't think they were that big of a problem then dark warrior Ling combos came about and the ability to send cards from the graveyard just became even better than it was when love will chain was unbanned so due to how powerful graveyard effects are today and just getting cards in the graveyard for combos the Volvo chain is still too strong to come back in the current format how could levolvel chain be fixed to be unbanned well currently we have a perfect example of what's required in the form of curious a light sworn Dominion just make it really hard to summon and its ability to sub the graveyard isn't that big of a deal so if they really wanted to kill the lavoval chain they could just make its requirement to level 4 pyrotype monsters and they could unban the car tomorrow and no one would play it alternatively they could change it so the card you sent from the deck to the Great graveyard could not be used during that turn like the Trap card peaceful burial as part of the advantage of sending the cards to the graveyard is the ability to use them immediately for combo plays having to wait a turn really slows them down to the point where LOL chain probably wouldn't see that much play update they banned curious in 2022 showing again how powerful being it will send any card from your deck to the graveyard was curious was used to send a point of the Red Lotus to the graveyard to set it to the field with nightmare Griffin so they could handle their opponent to board Breakers and long combo decks the awful chain would allow these same combo decks to do this combo even easier and last up for this video we'll go over wind-up carriers and matey another exes monster that they banned mainly because there's a lot of bandexes monsters and it's better to double up on them one of the other types of extract monsters what wind up carriers inmate he does is it's a rank 3 monster that simply requires 82 level 3 monsters materials and has the effect to detach one of its materials to special summon any wind-up monster from your hand or deck it goes on to have an additional effect or if a wind-up monster in the field is destroyed and sent to the graveyard you can detach one of its materials to return that card to your hand now the reason this card is banned is because its ability to special summon a wind-up monster from your deck as that's one of the strongest places to special summon a card from and it's even better if you're able to do it on an extra Deck monster and wind-up carers in matey was generally used as a combo piece in order to get rid of all cards in your opponent's start in hand or in order to go into number 16 shock master and just lock your opponent at a plane now the way he was able to accomplish the hand Loop was through a combination of wind-up magician shark rat and Hunter wind-up magician can summon a wind-up monster from your deck if the effect of a wind-up monster is activated wind up shark can special summon itself from your hand when a wind-up monster is summoned and has the effect where it can increase its level or decrease it by one so you just bring out wind at Magician activate wind up shark's effect a special summon itself from the hand which would then proc the effect of magician in order to special summon another wind-up magician from your deck then you'd use wind dipshark to lower its level to 3 to process second magician's effect to bring out windup Hunter where you may then go into your first wind-up carriers in Mighty then Zen Mady would be used in order to bring out windup rat from your deck wind up rat allows you to special summon a wind-up monster from your graveyard by simply changing it to defense position and is coincidentally level 3 and helped further the combo as you can then do a loop with wind up rat and wind up Hunter where windup Hunter would allow you to Tribute a wind-up monster to send one random card from your opponent's hand to the graveyard and wind a brat allowed you to special someone to wind up monster from your graveyard Hansen's wind a punter and wind up rat were both level three they could then be used to go into another Zen maidi in order to do it all over again it was kind of a complicated combo but it was very easy to accomplish with wind-up decks and since wind-up care is in matey was crucial to all these Loops the card was eventually banned in March of 2013. could wind up carries and maybe be unbanned the answer is probably yeah but only if they banned windup Hunter which is exactly what they did in the ocg without wind-up Hunter wind-up decks lose the ability to snipe every card from your opponent's hand during their first turn and they already banned number 16 shock Masters that's not really a big deal anymore and there are more floodgates I could go into besides shock master and wind appears in matey would help that happen but not enough for it to be a competitive against other current meta decks how could wind up carriers and matey be fixed to be unbanned well if they really don't want to ban wind up Hunter to bring it back they could just give wind-up carriers and matey a hard once per turn that would also kind of fix the problem the ability to special summon a Winder from the deck is really good but what's broke about the card is being able to use it multiple times per turn and currently even without Zen matey there are some gimmick windup Decks that are still able to use wind-up Hunter Loops although Zid matey just makes them more consistent so it can't really exist in its current way unless windup Hunter is banned without some kind of hard ones per turn its ability to special summon a wind up from the deck although having a hard ones per turn on a wind-up kind of goes against the whole gimmick of the archetype starting off we'll go over thunder dragon Colossus one of the newer banned extract monsters and one of the few banned fusion monsters in the game's history there is a surprisingly little amount of banned fusion monsters in comparison to the other extra deck types thunder dragon Colossus is a level 8 Fusion Monster whose simply requires one thunder dragon plus any one Thunder monster it's its Fusion materials it also has an alternative summoning condition where if you meet the condition that a thunder monster effect was activating your hand this turn then you contribute one non-fusion Thunder effect monster you control to special summon this card from the extra deck and it allows you to choose either of its owning conditions rather than restricting you into one of them Thunder Dragons also have access to one of the best archetype specific Fusion cards a thunder dragon Fusion which allows you to use cards from your field graveyard or your face up Zone that are banished as materials for a fusion summon and also has a graveyard effect where you can add a thunder monster from your deck to your hand so thunder dragon decks would bring out thunder dragon Colossus in both ways because it was one of the best so many conditions that a Fusion Monster had I.E bringing itself out like a link one monster and also has an excellent archetype specific Fusion card and what does this card do when it actually hits the field well it has a one-sided Miss stake lockdown where your opponent cannot add cards to their deck to their hand except by drawing them and it also has protection where if this card would be destroyed you can banish one Thunder monster from your graveyard instead and since like most of the thunder dragon archetype gains effects when they're banished its protection effect actually allows Thunder Dragons to go plus and that is an excellent lockdown to have which is only one-sided has basically all meta decks love to search on cards like crazy in fact that's kind of a requirement of a deck to be meta is how good they are at accessing cards from the deck so to list off the many advantages of thunder dragon Colossus it's one of the easiest fusion monsters to bring out it fulfills the conditions almost by accident in its own archetype it has access to an excellent archetype-specific Fusion spell card as well it has an excellent one-sided lockdown it has an excellent protection effect the protection effect allows you to go plus and card Advantage when used in its archetype and it has a decently High attack at 2600 plus it can be used as a material to go into the other other thunder dragon boss monster thunder dragon Titan which surprisingly has a slightly worse protection effect than thunderdragon Colossus where thunder dragon Titan can only protect itself from card effects and not battle destruction and requires you to banish two cards instead of one so because of how ridiculously good thunderdragon Colossus is and the fact that it has a really good lockdown on top of that it was eventually banned in January of 2020 since thunderdragon decks were a little bit too good and thunder dragon Colossus was a huge contributing factor to that Ken thunder dragon Colossus be unbanned probably it is a singular powerful card but it's not broken either it just has like a really high power level there are a couple of cards on the ban lists that are there not because they're necessarily broken but because they just have a slightly higher power level than everything else in the meta at the time and there's a good chance they might be unbanned in the future kind of like how El Shadel construct was this was a fusion boss monster who was way ahead of its time in terms of power level and eventually got taken off the ban list once the power creeper the game got to a point where it wasn't stronger than everything else in the game anymore that's kind of the situation thunder dragon Colossus is in it was incredibly strong for its time is still incredibly strong as of making this video but was never unbeatable even in its Heyday and could probably be removed from the ban list in the future as it's already only limited into one copy over in the ocg and it's not a huge problem how could they fix thunder dragon Colossus to be unbanned one of the big problems of this card is how easy it is to summon for how good of a boss monster it is it basically has the same requirements as a link one monster and honestly one of the biggest problems with Link monsters is link one monsters being able to go into extract monsters with only one material from the field is kinda strong especially if the car they bring out is incredibly powerful like thunder dragon Colossus so I could think of two possible changes in order to make thunder dragon Colossus a little bit more fair one of them would be to Simply make it cost two Thunder monsters instead of one as its materials or to change its Floodgate to affect both players instead of just your opponent as thunder dragon players also do not like to have their surges restricted next up we have ancient fairy dragon this is a Synchro monster that came out kind of in the early days of the Synchro format and was kind of considered the weakest of all the boss monsters from the anime which is funny because it's the only Synchro monster that was a boss monster in its anime which is currently banned and the reason that happened was because of how the metagame shifted since then what ancient fairy dragon does is this is a generic level 7 Synchro monster and has two effects one of them allows you to special summon a level 4 lower monster from your hand and the other one allows you to destroy all field spell cards then add one field spell card from your deck to your hand while also gain a thousand light points both of these effects are soft once per turns so you can reuse them if you summon multiple copies of ancient fairy dragon now the ability to summon a monster from your hand was always kind of the only decent effect of this card but since it locked you out of the battle phase for the turn it wasn't a very popular choice if you wanted to do that and the meta shift that happened since this card first came out over to why it's considered overpowered today is really the field spell card Effect when this card first came out field spell cards were kind of bad outside of maybe a few outliers generally field spell cards for an archetype were always the worst card and kind of just there for flavor it wasn't until the modern era that they started printing field spell cards which are often times the best card of the archetype la like Spiral Resort or Union Hangar and a lot of these newer better Fields about cards allow you to search on their activation and don't have hard ones per turns on their search effects or like to search on their destruction like three of the fa field spell cards and because ancient very Dragon allows you to get rid of your opponent's strong field spell cards while also allowing you to add extra ones to your hands on top of the ability to further combo place by special summon a monster from your hand made it a little bit too much of a card Advantage machine in decks like Spirals and Fa ancient fairy dragon could align ago plus 2 while furthering combo plays with its hand special summon and that was for each copy of ancient fairy dragon you brought out it would allow you to search out a field spell card and then that field spell card would allow you to search out another card and then you can bring out another ancient fairy dragon and do it again which was helped Along by ancient fairy dragon's other effect of special summoning another card from your hand combine this with Destro the Lost Dragon of frisen who could allow you to bring out ancient fairy dragon with any level 6 or lower monster it was all a little bit too easy to go into ancient fairy dragon so ancient very Dragon was banded Maya 2018 and field spell cards are just as strong as they were back when ancient fairy dragon was in its prime so it's kind of funny how this card retroactively became overpowered because when he came out it was absolutely fine and even a little bit bad because of how bad the average field spell card was and then once field spell cards actually started to become good then this card became straight broken overnight could ancient fairy dragon be unbanned not currently field spell cards are still pretty good even if they haven't been printing powerhouses like Spiral Resort anymore Konami kind of learned their lesson after how strong that card became and have been slapping hard once per turns on all of their search effects even though distrito is currently banned syngro monsters are seeing more and more play today than ever an ancient very Dragon still generates a little bit too much Advantage for how easy it is to bring out while also kind of accidentally destroying your opponent's field spell cards as well how could ancient fairy dragon be fixed to be unbanned well given it a hard once per turn on its field spell card Effect would definitely help but even resolving the effect a single time is pretty good although without giving it a whole bunch of other restrictions a simple once per turn on its search effect would probably do the job it would still be powerful but not abusable like it is now took a one step further they could add a clause where it can't use the card it adds during the turn it activates its effect which would kind of fix the problem of the card still being able to generate a plus two in card Advantage by delaying that card Advantage for a turn update they gave this card an Errata and it's unbanned now it now has a hard once per turn on both of its effects and it can only search out a different name field spell than the one it destroys instead of being able to search out the same one again next up we have MX saber invoker this is a generic rank 3xes monster who has the effect where you can detach one of its materials to special summon a level 4 Earth Warrior or beast warrior monster from your deck in defense position but it's destroyed during the end phase this card has pretty much seen competitive play ever since it first came out but it was never really broken because of how restrictive its targets were despite the fact that special 70 monsters from the deck on an action Deck monster has historically been pretty powerful in 2017 when zodiaks were running about being the best stack in the game they had a whole bunch of level 4 Earth Beast Warrior type monsters and we're an archetype dedicated to XC summoning and MX saber invoker was definitely used in those decks in order to start plays use the MX saber invoker was commonly brought out with a speedroid engine where they would use speedroid territop to go into speed Roy talk at tomborg which allowed them to go into MX saber invoker without using a normal summon and only one card from the hand this would allow invoker to search out zodiaks from the deck which could start all of their insane Combos and funny enough it wasn't Zodiacs that got the card ban eventually Konami did hit a whole bunch of cards around Zodiacs including three of the main zodiac problem cards but left MX saber invoker alone completely it wasn't until the link error and Goki Monster's release that MX saber invoker finally got banned you see Link monsters added a couple of new support cards for archetypes and types of monsters and the warrior type got a huge boost of their power level with cards like esolde Two Tales of noble knights who only requires two Warrior launches of materials such as a warrior on its summon and allows you to special summon a Warrior from the deck and the gokhi deck is an archetype full of Earth Warrior type monsters of various levels and they all float into a search of another Gogi monster when they're sent to the graveyard and gokhidex use a lot of level 3 monsters as starters like junk forward and Murad and Captain so they could easily make MX saber invoker and MX saber invoker could allow them to easily further their place when they were already super consistent as is so rather than ban the newer cards they went and hit a whole bunch of the older cards around those combos and MX saber and voker got hit because it was already a problem card in the previous year with Zodiacs and then was seen even more play with gokidex and the Banning of MX saber invoker was kind of the start of them just getting rid of extra deck monsters that could special summon monsters from the deck especially since the warrior type is just a lot stronger now than it was back then and it was already historically pretty powerful Warrior is one of the most plentiful types of monsters in the game with a mountain of support an MX silver invoker was one of those really powerful support cards MX sabrian voker was banned in September of 2018. can MX saber invoker be unbanned currently the warrior type is still very powerful as they went even further and started restricting dark warrior combos with dark grefer and armageddonite being limited to one copy so it probably could not be unbanned yet the ability for extract monsters to summon non-arcissistic monsters in the deck is always pretty strong especially when it's attached to a monster that has generic materials it makes saber invoker wasn't that big of a deal when it first came out because of how restrictive its targets were and because of how restrictive extra deck summoning was when it came to monsters at specific levels it wasn't until Link monsters were introduced where the levels didn't matter as much anymore that b being able to bring up monsters from the deck just became a lot better and the card was banned in the middle of Master rule 4. so after the restrictions were lifted it would be even better if it was released today how can MX saber and voger be fixed to be unbanned well a good way to fix broken extract monsters is to just not make them generic so if MX saber and voker required two level 3 x saber monsters as its materials then it could probably be unbanned tomorrow unless they introduce a whole bunch of new really good x-saver monsters it wouldn't be that big of a deal outside of just making it harder to summon if you wanted to fix the effect itself you could just make it so it's incredibly inconvenient for yourself after you summon the monster from the deck where you can't special summon or use that card as a link material that would kind of overly fix the problem though because the targets are already kind of restrictive as is and there'd be no reason to use the card at all if you couldn't use the card it brings out for extract plays which is why only limited it from Link monsters would probably be a good fix as to restrict friction of the card it brings out because remember even in full powered Zodiacs one of the few tier zero decks in the game's history its ability to be used with axis plays wasn't considered the problem part of the deck it was just zodiaks themselves being broken next up we have another xc's monster outer entity as a thought this is a rank 5 exes monster which requires three level five monsters as materials or can be brought out on top of an outer entity exes monster you control and its effects were twofold when this card was actually summoned your opponent cannot activate monster effects for the rest of the turn and also if it had a convoluted amount of xc's materials it could destroy all of your opponent's cards which was almost never used the powerful thing about this card was its ability to lock airplane out of monster effects for a turn so with a card called The Phantom Knights of Rusty bardish was released people started playing around with a lot of phantom Knight support cards since Rusty bardush allowed dark monsters to get a whole bunch of Advantage if they use them and one of the Phantom Knight support cards is called the Phantom Knights rank up magic launch which is a quick play spell card that allows you to rank up a dark xc's monstery control with no materials into a monster that's one rank higher and treat that as an XC Summit so this gave it the ability to XC summon deer in your opponent's turn so if you just got out a level 4 dark axes monster then ranked it up during your opponent's turn to go into Alder into diazathot you could lock your bone out of monster effects for the entire turn which was so good that it eventually got the Phantom Knights of rank of launch band and the random Knights of Rusty bardouche was banned sometime later too although that card is kind of Mega broken in the amount of Advantage it generates and I'm surprised it's only limited to one copy now as they eventually removed it from the ban list although even after its broken ability to be used during your opponent's turn was kind of removed outer entity as a thought still saw a ton of play by just bringing it out normally during your turn you see there's another card called outer entity narla who is a Rank 4 outer entity monster that only requires two level 4 monsters as materials which are completely generic its effect doesn't matter because you basically only bring the card out in order to rank it up into outer entity as a thought in order to shut down your opponent's hand traps so a lot of combo heavy decks more specifically cards that use the orcus engine would go into outer entity as a thought in order to turn off their opponent's hand traps so they could do all of their plays uninterrupted and it was such an effective counter to hand traps that they eventually banned outer entity asathod in January of 2020 before the masterful revisions were going to go through to make playing xc's monsters even easier and they also eventually just removed the Phantom Knights of rank up launch from the band list since the reason it was banned was because of outer entity as a thought and since people were using azathot to a great effect no matter which turn it was brought out on it was obvious that the problem card was the exes monster itself could outer entity as a thought be unbanned as long as the Phantom Knights rank up magic launches in the game as well as the Phantom Knights of Rusty bardish now his original overpowered combos are currently live if they unban outer and a diazathot they'd have to probably go back and re-ban those two cards if they wanted to remove it from the banned list because being able to easily shut down your oppon's monster effects for the turn is a Paramount to winning the game against most decks although I don't think turning off hand traps near your turn is really that much of a problem but Konami really hates cards that are anti-hand trap as they have cards like hauled by the grave limited to one copy when its number one interaction is stopping hand traps during your turn how could they fix outer entity as a thought to be unbanned one of the main problems of this card is how easy does it bring out for how good of an effect that lockdown is so we could look into its second effect that is rarely used in order to find a way to fix it if this card has at least three exes materials and those include a fusion Synchro and exes monster then you could detach one of its materials to destroy all of your opponent's cards this requirement is kind of hard to pull off but not impossible in outer entity decks and is kind of the boss monster that deck so if they instead changed its rank of effect to only allow you to use it in a monster that already had all of those materials then it could probably be taken off the band list so if you can only rank this card on top of outer entity narla when it had a Synchro and Fusion Monster as its materials that would make it hard enough to summon where it wouldn't be used generically although you would still have to add an extra restriction so it can't be brought out with the Phantom Knights of rank up magic launch so you could also add the Restriction where this card can only be brought out with its listed requirements of three level 5 monsters or by bringing it out on top of an outer entity xc's monster who has a fusion and Synchro monster as its materials and cannot be read out in other ways this would allow it to be used within its archetype like intended while still having its powerful effect but no longer being used in other non-outer entity decks is just a way to Floodgate your opponent lastly we have topologic gumbler dragon this is a link 4 monster which was banned 6 months after it came out being one of the fastest a-release Monsters has been banned since his introduction only being out by Nightmare Goblin who was banned four months after its introduction and would be talked about in a future video so why was topologic gumbler Dragon banned so quickly well because it allowed you to discard four cards from your opponent's hand before they got to start their first main phase and we have cards in the ban list like delinquent Duo because they're too overpowered for being a discard two cards on your opponent's hand so more specifically topologic gumbler dragon is a link for monster that requires any two plus effect monsters as materials and has two effects where if this card is extra linked for you people who don't understand Link monsters very well that means when two Link monsters are pointing directly to each other with their arrows anyways then while it's extra linked during your main phase you get to make your opponent discard one to two cards from their hand whichever is higher and if there's no more cards in their hand they take three thousand points of damage its other effect is if a monster is special summoned to a Zone unlike monster points to you can discard one to two random cards from your hand to make your opponent discard the same number of cards thankfully this card has a hard once per turn shared amongst both of these effects so you can't use both of these discard effects during one turn so here's how people were able to use two of its effects before your opponent's first main phase it was usually with the ability to just discard two cards from your hand in order to make your opponent his cartoon cards and was rarely used with the extra link effect gokhi decks are an archetype where almost every single main Deck monster has the effect that when it's sent to the graveyard you get to add another Goki monster from your deck to your hand so when gokhi decks made link plays they're able to constantly refill their hand with other copies of Goku monsters so they always have pretty high card counts when it comes to their hand and they regularly use a card called Divine sword Phoenix blade in their combos thanks to his soul they sending it to the graveyard to special summon more gokis from the deck Divine sword Phoenix blade is an Eco spell card that can add itself from your graveyard to your hand by banishing two Warrior monsters from your graveyard it's almost never actually used to equip a monster since it's on film the fact is kinda terrible but does technically count as one card in your hand so thanks to Divine sword Phoenix blade allowing you to have at least one extra card in your hand they could use topologic gumbler Dragon discard two cards very easily get rid of two cards of your opponent's start in hand then during their opponent's draw phase they would activate the effect of Link rubbo who has a quick effect that allows it to special summon itself from the graveyard by attributing a level 1 monster and what do you know gokeys have a level 1 Goki monster which is a perfect Target for this card and can be special summoned from the deck with the soul detail of two noble knights by sending a Divine sword Phoenix blade from your deck to the graveyard you can kind of see the inherent strategy all of these combos had so they would bring out link kuribo during their opponent's draw phase and summon it to a Zona League monster pointed to that way they can activate topologic gumbler Dragon again during their opponent's draw phase and since it only has a hard once per turn that gets reset as soon as your opponent's turn starts and that's how they were able to get the other two cards for the four car discard most Decks that go even further and get rid of a fifth card with neospacey and aqua dolphin while just doing their combos like normal but really once you discard four cards from your opponent's starting hand while setting up a full Board of monsters you don't really need to use dolphin and I was getting rid of four cards was already kind of broken the fact that they could get rid of all of their cards just made it extra spicy the reason hand discard effects are so powerful is because it kind of stops your opponent from having a chance to play the game unless they're really lucky in all the cards you discard just happened to be really good graveyard effects which was definitely possible they were going against an orca stack so topologic gumbler Dragon was banned in January of 2019. six months after it was introduced can topologic gumbler Dragon be unbanned no not at all it's way too powerful and kind of broken being able to interact with your opponent's hand is always very dangerous and one of the most powerful effects in the game how could topologic gumbler Dragon be fixed to be unbanned it's funny how they already try to Future proof the card by giving it a hard once per turn shared between both of its effects so you already have to choose one of the effects per turn to use and they tried to balance it by required to discard the same number of cards that you discard from your opponent's hand so it's really funny to say that that didn't work and it was still ridiculously broken anyway so without changing how many cards you discard or even the cost on how to discard if we were to propose a fixed with a card to make it unbanned it could be fixed by giving it the chaos Emperor Dragon Envoy the yandarata where you can't use its discard effect during the same turn that you've activated other card effects this would make it so you'd have to wait a full turn before able to use the discard effect or only be able to do the link kuribo thing during your your opponent's turn although even discarding two cards from your opponent's hand before their turn starts and the main phase is still pretty good but that would heavily restrict how you could use the card while still making it pretty good although even then discarding from your opponent's hand is still really good even if you only do it in your bones turn so I can't think of a better way to fix it rather than also restricting it to only being usable during your turn this would force you to have to wait a full turn of the card being on the field before you could start discarding and would completely remove the link kuribo cheats at that point you have to jump through so many Hoops in order to use the effect that would be kind of worthless but the inherent effect itself is just so strong that I can't really think of a good fix besides making it incredibly hard to use this is one of those where it might be interesting to see viewer suggestions on how the card could be fixed starting off with the very fun Dragon also known as true king of all calamities this is a generic rank Knight monster which requires any two plus level 9 monsters as its materials and has the effect where on a quick effect you can detach one of its materials to declare an attribute then I'll face up monsters in the field become that attribute and all monsters your opponent controls what that attribute cannot activate their facts or attack it also has an additional effect where if you would use one of your true king or true dracos to destroy cards and activate their summoning costs you can choose monsters on your opponent's side of the field that have the appropriate attributes but that's not why people use this card it's definitely for its first effect which basically locks your opponent of playing the game for return most decks in the competitive meta game are very monster effect heavy to the point where even hand traps are actually Monster cards most of the time despite the fact that they're ironically called traps and this card applies a continuous effect to the field for a whole turn which doesn't need this card to stay on the field in order to keep that effect in place so if you just activate this card's effect during your opponent's draw phase and your opponent's not able to immediately negate the activation of the effect then there's nothing they can do about the effect on the field for the entire turn they'll just be locked out of being able to use monster effects and attacking so they can't even try to get rid of true king of all calamities unless they have a spell or trap card removal at the ready or some kind of negate they can use during their draw phase like forbidden droplet and since it's so hard to play around this card once the effect actually is activated it was basically a one card win condition if you had a way to go into level 9 monsters easily and that was kind of the limiting factor of this card for the longest time because of how unpopular level 9 monsters were in the past it did see play in The Meta but never saw enough play where it was that big of a deal that was until the virtual world archetype came out they are an archetype of monsters who consist of nothing but level 3 and 6 main deck monsters and also specialize into going to synchros and XC summons which made them the perfect archetype for going into true king of all calamities very easily during their first turn and in fact most virtual world decks go into two copies of it what they could do is just their normal plays in order to special some of themselves from the hand in order to go into a whole bunch of Synchro plays and then maybe use their trap card from the graveyard in order to reduce the level of their archetype specific level 9 monster to level 6. that way they could use with one of their level 3 Synchro monsters to go into cloud castle in order to bring back that single Monster and have two level 9 monsters in the field for a true king of all calamities that was one of the main ways to bring this card out but there were others although a lot of them did involve using cloud castle in order to bring back a level 9 monster from the graveyard if anything cloud castle was a huge contributing factor to true king of all calamities being easy to bring out as well and since this card became easier to bring out and already had a pretty busted effect anyway it was banned in March of 2021 could true king of all calamities be unbanned seeing as this card was recently banned that's probably a no I honestly would have expected them to ban cloud castle before true can go all calamities since Konami likes to ban combo pieces rather than the actual problem cards themselves although actually hitting the main problem card turned out to be a good decision because its effect is a little bit too strong you don't even need to call the appropriate attribute that your opponent is playing you can just call Divine and still lock down your opponent's field the only benefits to trying to call a specific type of attributes is being able to negate the monster effects in your opponent's hand as well how could true king of all calamities be fixed to be unbanned I think if they made its effect tied to truncig of all calamities being on the field that would give it enough of an out where your opponent could reasonably try to counter play its effect like a skill drain for example it's a trap card that allows you to negate the monster effects of all monsters of the field but you can get rid of it if you destroy that card and get rid of the effect immediately plus the card doesn't prevent you from attacking and affects both players skill drain is limited to one copy and is a really strong card but there is some counter of measure play around it that true king of all Calamity just doesn't really have so if they were to fix the car they could probably do it like skill drain where it only negates your opponent's card effects while this card is face up on the field so if it is flipped face down or sent to the graveyard then its lockdown effect stops this could be helped further along if they didn't also stop your opponent from attacking because if it keeps its effect as is it's still kind of hard for your opponent to actually get rid of the card in order to stop its effect although that would also open up the option of counter play of just negating the card's effect for a turn was something like infinite impermanence or effect veiler basically it can keep its effect just to have some way to play around it next up we have number s0 utopic zaxel this is a rank one monster which can be brought out using three number exes monsters with the same rank as materials or by ranking this on top of a Utopia monster you control by discarding any rank up magic normal spell card then while this card is on the field it has a quick effect where you can detach one of its materials in order to make it so your opponent can't activate card effects this turn so it's kind of like true king of all calamities except better because it locks down everything instead of just monsters although better might be a little bit too hard of a term sure the effect itself is better but it was always balanced around the fact that it's a lot harder to bring out and also its attack and defense are dependent on the amount of xc's materials it has as its attacking defense are equal to one thousand times the number of xc's materials so if you detach two midi in order to activate it's a fact it will get weaker and weaker and easier to attack over especially since it doesn't stop your opponent from attacking like true king of all calamities does now over the years there were some Decks that could turbo this card out but generally they were able to stop a lot of them by by just Banning rank up magic Argent chaos force and it only occasionally stopped playing the metagame then for some reason they released a card called numeron calling which has the effect that if you have numero Network field spell card out and no monsters you can special summon up to four numeron gate xc's Monsters of different names from your extra deck but they're banished during the end phase and also you can only normal or special summoned once for the rest of the turn and what do you know numerons have four exes monsters who are all number monsters and of the same rank numbers 1 through 4 numeron Gates although this is restricted by the fact that you need the field spell card numeron Network however numeron networks only affect us basically to search out numer on calling as its effect allows you to use its effect from the deck as long as you meet the conditions for that card on the field and so all of this allowed you to bring out utopic's Axel pretty easily with three materials and then you can just lock down to your opponent for a turn and do your plays on your next turn with two more full lockdowns ready to go and funny enough this one card combo that brought out number as there 0 utopic Zexal is not the full reason why this card was banned it was actually banned as a preemptive measure in the TCG because two new cards were going to be released namely Zs ascendsage and zaxel construction Ascent stage has the effect that allows it to special summon itself from your hand if you control no cards and if it's used as an xc's material for a Utopia monster it gains the effect to search out a rank up magic normal spell card from your deck so with zss and Sage it basically turned any other level 4 monster into an instant number as zero utope exact Soul because normally they didn't have convenient Searchers for rank up magic normal spell cards which they could Now search out by just going into a Utopia monster and then searched it out with its inherited effect further helped along with zaxel construction which basically allows you to search out any rank up magic normal spell card or Zs ascended sage and being able to bring out utopic zaxel with two level 4 monsters with 4 material serials is way more convenient and useful than the numeron calling method and it's kind of crazy that two Avenues exist to bring out this broken card easily which is why number as zero utopia's Axel was banned in March of 2021 right before zss and Sage or Zexal construction would come out with them also unbanning rank up magic Argent chaos Force at the same time can number as zero utopic's Axel be unbanned I'm surprised it took them this long to get a band in the first place seeing as it was banned over in the ocg already but this card somewhat easy summoning condition for how good its lockdown effect is it was only a matter of time before they released something that made this card coming out a little bit too easy I kind of like what they did with gossip Shadow and rongo mini ad how could they fix number s0 utopic Zexal to be unbanned usually my go-to for fixing extract monsters is just to make them harder to summon but this one is already somewhat difficult Konami just for some reason decided to make it much easier to come out with numeron calling in zss and Sage so that probably wouldn't help in this situation instead what they could do is probably fix its broken effect locking out your opponent from activating card effects for an entire turn is a tad bit too powerful if they instead made it an omni negate or required detaching three materials instead of one it would definitely be a lot less powerful but still useful if you can only detach one in order to negate an effect that would still be super good and if you detach all three materials in order to lock out your opponent for one turn it would still be really good and probably not slow it down enough to stop it from being overpowered generally I'm not a huge advocate for changing the function of cards when I suggest changes so I'm kind of stumped on how to make this one less broken besides just Banning the brand new support that came out so that it's not easy to bring out next up we have Union carrier this is a link to monster which can be brought out with any two Monsters the same type or attribute so very generous requirements for its Summit and has the effect where once per turn you can Target one face up monster control in order to equip any monster from your hand or deck to that monster who shares the same original type or attribute then it goes on to give that card the effect where the monster will gain 1000 attack and has a couple of restrictions where if you equip a monster from your deck you can't special summon a monster with that card's name for the rest of the turn and Union carrier itself cannot be used as a link material to turn it summoned so to simplify this card's effect a little bit further this card basically allows you to get any cards in your deck in the graveyard and also situationally can be used to kind of cheese the activation requirement of some cards that have effects and activate when they're sent from the field to the graveyard like Dawn Knight Dragon Buster destruction sword and Earthbound Immortal ASLA Pisco Dawn Knight has the effect that if it's sent from the field to the graveyard you can send any one light monster from your deck to the graveyard and since Union carrier can just equip Dawn Knight to itself from the deck since it itself is a light monster and since sending Dawn knight from the equip Zone to the graveyard technically counts as sending it from the field to the graveyard Union carrier basically turns into a foolish burial for any light attribute monster which was very useful in dry Tron since pretty much all their main deck monsters are light attribute and can special some of themselves from the graveyard they can also be used in order to equip Dragon Buster destruction sword to a dark attribute monster in order to very easily lock your opponent of summoning from their extra deck which was not supposed to be that easy since Dragon Buster destruction sword was supposed to be balanced around the fact that was part of an archetype that almost never used it and earthbounder Mortal Oslo Pisco has the effect that if it's sent from the field to the graveyard it destroys all of your opponent's face at monsters and inflicts 800 points of damage to your opponent for each monster destroyed so if your opponent had a full Board of monsters you could basically deal half of your opponent's life points as damage and it was even used in a couple of fdk strategies with dragon links although Union carrier was intended to be used with the ABC Dragon Buster archetype which is an archetype all-around Union monsters and attaching other cards to stuff but they ended up making Union carrier a little bit too strong by making it completely generic and not limiting it to only work with actual Union monsters and because of all the unintended really good effects this card caused at first got Dragon Buster destruction sword band and then when it was still super useful drytron decks they eventually just banned the card itself and then took Dragon bus destruction sword off the ban list Union carrier was banned in March of 2021. can Union carrier be taken off the ban list if they went ahead and just banned Dawn Knight Earthbound Immortal Oslo piscu and then re-band Dragon Buster destruction sword then again they could probably remove Union carrier from the banned list until someone found a new way to break the card the card itself is just a little bit too good for how versatile it is with being able to equip basically any monster from your deck to a card you control who simply matches either its type or attribute even if they banned the known problem cards there are probably new ones in the future or just someone will find another old car that unintentionally Works super well with this like they did with dragon Buster destruction sword how could they fix Union carrier to unban it if they made it so it only worked with Union monsters that would fix everything three of the biggest problem cards with it are not Union monsters and it was intended to be support for a deck that has almost nothing but Union monsters and its whole theme is Union monsters anyway it's even called Union carrier so if the monster could equip was simply restricted to a union in Monsters only they could unban the card tomorrow and only ABC players would use it and lastly we have link cross this is a link one monster which requires a link to our higher link monster as its material and has the effect where it can special summon a number of tokens equal to the link rating of the monster used for this card's material which is usually up to two tokens and then the card goes on to have the Restriction where the tokens cannot be used as link materials for the rest of the turn now this card's original intended use was to help out Synchro Dax by immediately giving you a downward pointing Arrow from pretty much any link monster and then giving you a couple of tokens and be more flexible with Synchro plays but then after the master will revisions in 2020 where Synchro monsters were no longer restricted to only link zones or the extra monster Zone linkross kinda became overpowered overnight it was just an incredibly versatile combo climbing tool that could further along existing combo plays without losing any advantage and in fact giving you a plus two in card Advantage with the extra tokens which could be used after a Christian Alki fibracks in order to have a level 3 tuner to interact with those tokens in provided in order to all kinds of combos one of the most common was using it with Marshall men or marcher I'll be showing a few of those combos on screen but suffice to say if he had a deck that liked to go into Synchro monsters then link cross was going to make them 10 times better there wasn't really one combo or card that made this card broken because it was just so versatile and how it could be combo with tuners and synchros in order to bring out Heavy Hitters like borlope Savage dragon Crystal link Synchro dragon or even Herald of the Arc Light being able to convert a combo piece into another combo piece that basically gives you plus two and card Advantage all while using a card from your extract that you don't need to search out is pretty strong link cross was banned in December of 2020 after the masterboard Visions were put through and Konami saw just how widely used link cross was in a whole bunch of different kinds of decks could link cross be unbanned not currently not unless they reintroduce the restrictions of Master rule 4 or just ban a whole bunch of Synchro monsters even if they banned one of its best friends Christian halki fibrex link cross is still incredibly valuable generally this segment for banned cards and whether they should be unbanned or not is a lot more useful for older cards and not ones that were just banned just a side note so how could they fix link cross to be unbanned if they made it so the tokens cannot be used as Synchro materials it would completely kill the intended use of the card but that would do it the ability to bring out two tokens very easily mid combo and then use them to go into Synchro summons is why this card is currently banned alternatively they could make this card just slightly harder to use when link cross was still running around it was almost always used with a link 2 monster so if they simply made this card require a link 3 or higher monster that would limit its combo potential a little bit where it would still definitely see play but wouldn't be as over powered as it is currently link one monsters are kind of inherently broken because being able to go into an extract monster with only one card on the field has the potential to create cards like link cross where you can just further a combo play without losing any advantage so making you give up a tiny bit more Advantage towards effect and maybe only giving you a single token instead of multiple tokens would probably be enough for the card to still be used in its intended way but not be broken postmaster rule 4. first up let's go over Zodiac broadball Zodiac Broadwell simply has the effect which is shared amongst all zodiac exes monsters where once per turn you can forego this card's normal summoning condition in order to exceed some of this card on top of any one zodiac monster you control with a different name in which case if it has like these materials they get transferred to this card then it has a different effect where once per turn to detach one of its materials in order to search out any Beast Warrior type monster from your deck as long as that monster has the ability to be normal Summoner set and what's funny about broad bull is that its first effect where it has an alternative summoning condition is a hard once per turn but its second effect to search a card from your deck is not and is only a soft once per turn which is what causes the big problems with zodiac broadball extrader cards that allow you to search other cards from your deck have to be real careful about not being broken there's only a handful of them in the game and generally they only search out incredibly specific things like Striker dragon and Salomon great Veil links only searching out their archetype field spell card although both of those have a hard once per turn on even that search there are other cards which can search out of the deck which are not hard ones per turns like King of the feral imps and gear giant X which only have soft ones per turns on their ability to search out any reptile or any level 4 lower machine type monster and while those two cards only have a soft ones per turn in their search and technically king of fair limbs can search out a wider range of targets the reason these cards are not banned is because they're not super easy to bring out like zodiac broadbowl in addition to the card being able to be brought out on top of any one zodiac monster it can also just be brought out normally with just two level four monsters so you could get off one search by just using its special ability to bring itself out easier and then if you manage to get more monsters on the field you could just hard some in the card with its normal summoning procedure to use the effect again and Zodiacs were able to do this very well on screen I'll be showing the footage of a full powered zodiac deck using zodiac broadbull to its full potential with only a single card in the opening hand although zodiac broadball was only part of the problem with that they were able to accomplish the other part of it was Zodiac rat Pier which allowed you to special summon other copies of it directly from the deck on a soft ones per turn as well which was reset every time a zodiac axes monster was summoned on top of it basically broadbull could be used in order to search out lunalight black sheep which could be used to search out Fusion substitute Fusion substitute could be used to bring out Elder entity Norden who simply required any two axes monsters as his Fusion materials which coincidentally all the Zodiac cards are so after using zodiac tiger mortar in order to get two copies of zodiac Rapier from the deck you could then use your XC monsters to go into Norden in order to bring back a level 4 monster from the graveyard which will allow you to hard summon broadball then broadbull could be used to search out coach Captain bear man who could change a rat peers in the field to level 8 to allow you to go into coach King giant trainer which then allowed you to draw three cards then you could draw One More by using Fusion substitute to reset Norton and then you could just kind of go off from there using dagusto Emerald to reset the zodiacs back into the deck and then extend with whatever cards you had as I ended up resolving the effect of zodiac Broadwell three times in the example I'm showing the board ends off with four cards on the field and five cards in the hand which is a plus eight in card Advantage with only one card from the starting hand however most of the cards involved in this ridiculous advantageous board state are banned so if zodiac broadbull was released with the ban list today you wouldn't be able to do this but even then the lack of once per turn and how easy it is to summon and how good a lot of the targets it can search out are it would still be strong today by the fact that Zodiacs still see play even without zodiac broadbull so if they're ridiculously good Searcher isn't even needed for the dacta function then it just kind of shows how broken one card XC summons are Konami made a big mistake with the Zodiac archetype their whole gimmick was being able to bring out any other extra deck monsters with a single card on the field and it ended off with one of the few tier zero formats where there was even an event where every single top 32 deck was a variant of zodiac it was probably the only time I tier zero format had 100 representation at an event which should go to show how strong one card extra deck summons are and that has kind of held true even after Zodiacs where they didn't stop experimenting with this as I'll talk about later zodiac broadball was banned in September of 2017. seven months after is released one of the fastest a card was banned after its initial release could zodiac broadbull be unbanned seen as they recently unbanned and then banned a different Duty act monster probably not as zodiac Broadway is the hyper-consistent king of the zodiac deck even with Zodiac rat Pierre limited to one copy I can't see zodiac Broadwell being unbanned anytime soon unless they are at its effect or the power creep of the game just gets to the point where it's no longer that big of a deal and they never put zodiac back to three or ever unbanned Elder entity Norden how could zodiac Broadwell be fixed to be unbanned if they slapped a hard once per turn on its search effect that might do it I would still be strong though but the current problem with the card is its ability to be able to reuse that effect although the effect is still kind of strong even if you slap a hard once per turn on it so additionally I would also change it to only search out zodiac monsters instead of any Beast Warrior type monster because that just kind of adds all kinds of unintended combos to a card which was obviously meant to search out its archetype if it could only search out zodiac monsters it's still might be too strong which I think is kind of funny next up we have zodiac Dryden this card was also banned at the same time of zodiac broad Bowl but then it was unbanned in the April 2020 band list because the power of the game got to the point where zodiac Dryden wasn't that big of a deal anymore which was true for about six months zodiac Dryden has the effect where it can XC summon itself on top of any one zodiac card like all of the zodiac xc's monsters and then it has an additional effect for once per turning can detach one of its materials to destroy one face of card in the field and this effect is a quick effect which means you can use it during either player's turn and use it to disrupt plays and zodiak Dryden was the boss monster the Zodiac archetype there is no point in gain a whole bunch of Advantage if you can't use it for anything so you would use zodiac broadbold to build up a huge board and then use zodiac Dryden in order to sit on that board and stop your opponent from doing anything or just destroy whatever you wanted Zodiac Dragon was also a sought once per turn with its destruction effect so if you manage to get out three zodak drydens then you would have three pops each turn and because because of just how good Zodiacs were in an effort to stop their tier zero dominance of zodiacs in 2017 they banned zodiac broadbull and dried it while also limiting Zodiac rat Pier to one which definitely did the job as those were the three problem cards of the deck although without a boss monster zodiaks couldn't really do anything anymore so they kind of fell Into Obscurity so after three years on the ban list Konami decided to unban zudag Dryden at the cost of putting zodiac barrage to one copy which is a continuous spell card that allows you to special summon a zodiac monster from your deck so they lower the consistency of zodiacs a little bit so they could bring back the boss monster the archetype to one copy so that maybe they could do something again and it did zodiac did see competitive play when zoodag Dryden was brought out but it wasn't a dominant meta strategy like it was in the past because zodiac red Pier was still at one copy and zodiac broadbull was still banned then six months later in November 2020 Divine Arsenal a a zoo Sky Thunder was a release this is a ranked 12xz monster which either requires two level 12 monsters as materials or has an alternative summoning condition in order to ignore its normal procedure where if you control next season's monster that has battled this turn Zeus will then have its effect live where it can actually summon itself on top of any axes monster you control which does not have to be the exes monster that battle where it then gains the materials that that card had and Zeus itself also has a quick effect where you can detach two with materials to send every other card in the field to the graveyard without destruction or targeting anything so it's a full board wipe in one of the best possible ways of removal and what's really great about Zeus is that its effect is not once per turn at all its ability to bring itself out with its alternative summoning condition is once per turn but not its quick effect which means if you have enough materials attached to Zeus you can just chain its effect on top of itself and Zodiacs were really good at getting out a whole bunch of exes materials onto a single Monster with only a single summon so what zodiacs will do is was actually use one of their lesser known zodiac exes monster called zodiac borbo which can bring itself on top of any zodiac monster like all the other zodiak xc's monsters and also has the effect where it can attack directly so thanks to zodiak borbo you could pretty much always guarantee that you're going to have an exes monster attacking then during the main Phase 2 you could simply bring out Dryden on top of boerbo in order to destroy a card or just ignore that and go straight into Zeus then just use Zeus to wipe the field if your opponent tries to negate the effect of Zeus it would have 6 xc's materials attached to it thanks to the five zodiac xc's monster plus the one zodiac monster on the field to start the whole thing so you can activate Zeus's effect three times in sequence which means your opponent would have to negate Zeus three times if they wanted to stop the full board wipe which basically meant if Zeus came out it was going to remove everything it was very hard for your opponent to stop it however thanks to zodiac Dryden it also gave the deck a whole bunch of Versatility being able to create a board state in the first place where you could then eventually bring out Zoo in order to be a big boss monster the ability to just destroy any one card on the field by detaching one of its materials is actually super good especially on its quick effect so it could be used in response to something else or you can just sit on a copy of zodiac dried it during your opponent's turn to destroy something if you weren't able to bring out Zeus zodiac Dryden was just the ultimate middleman into Zeus and just opened up all kinds of control options so you can bring out Zeus and even if you didn't use this effect provided one more additional material so that Zeus would have six materials for its three activations and Dryden Zeus combos were just a monster in the game again as you can go into an unbeatable Zeus with just one card in the field thanks to how the zodiacs work so Dryden was eventually banned in the June 2021 band list in order to lower the power level of zoo Stacks a bit because it was making them too versatile and consistent they can still bring out Zeus pretty easily thanks to zodiak borbo still beating the game but they definitely lost their Control Card which allowed them to be more versatile in how they played could zodiac Dryden be unbanned if they were to ban Zeus they could probably unban the card without too much problems the ability to have an easy to use raigeki break always has the ability to be a little bit too strong part of the reason masterpieces band is also because it has an easy to use right gecki break and there's a reason they stop adding this ability to boss monsters after zodek dried into Masterpiece were ban with spiral sleeper being one of the last meta archetype boss monsters that could do something like that until they added Zeus which kind of broke all the rules of course and the reason a regecki break on a boss monster is so strong is because you can just use it to stop your opponent plays before they can start them or use it to pop a back row that might be devastating you destroy a Floodgate or just push for game if you're able to destroy one of your opponent's boss monsters there isn't really a bad downside to being able to destroy one of your opponent's cards whenever you want which is why reggae break has the inherent -1 cost to it so if you're able to use where gecki break-like effect without going minus one in the process like Dryden who's able to use one of its infinite Supply vaccines materials then you're just gaining all kinds of advantage over the course of the card's time being on the field even then if Zeus was ever banned they could probably bring back zodiac right into one copy Zodiacs currently in 2021 are more restrictive on the banlist than they were back in 2017 because they left a zodiac barrage on The Limited list after they re-band dried it how could they fix zodiak Dryden to be unbanned well seeing as it has an incredibly easy to use for a gecki break if they wanted it to be less easy to use I would say make it require detaching two materials instead of just one at one material it's too easy to use add two materials it's still possible to use in zodiac decks as their whole gimmick is being able to get a whole bunch of materials onto one xe's monster but would no longer allow single card Zodiac Dragon pops before going into something else I'm not sure if a hard once per turn would really help so just making the quick effect harder to use is probably the best way to go update zodiac barrage was banned shortly after two zodiac Dryden is abandoned in every format Master duel and finally we have guard Dragon LP this is a link one monster which just requires a level 4 lower dragon type monster as its material and then has the effect were once per turned during your main phase you can spousal summon any one Dragon monster from your hand or deck to a zone that two of your Link monsters are pointing to and it also has the downside where you cannot special summon monsters except dragon monsters while it's on the field now the existence of Link 1 monsters proves that Konami didn't really learn a lesson from Zodiacs which was kinda driven home by how powerful Zeus is although link one monsters always have the potential to be a really big problem which is why one third of all band Link monsters are link one monsters you see the problem with link one monsters is that you don't lose Advantage for going into them so say for example you bring out a Monster who has a great effect on the field or whatever it does its thing and basically spent his existence on the field and now just kind of sits there taking up space you can give that card a second life if it happens to be a material for a link one monster so even though the car are probably already made you go plus one if it starts something out or destroyed something special something something else whatever it did in order to make itself usable on the field you could now use it as a material to go into something like guard Dragon LP in order to be useful again without losing any advantage and then guard Dragon LP is just pure Advantage it allows you to special summon any dragon type monster from your deck which in itself is one of the strongest effects you can have on a monster being able to special some monsters from your deck is even stronger when it's attached to an extra Deck monster because you don't have to search those cards out and you just bring them out as long as you have a game state which facilitates them which is even more broken when it's a link one monster which already has the potential to be too strong because of the advantages I described earlier it's able to use a car that has already been useful in the field in order to gain even more useful effects as special summon any one Dragon monster from your deck and there are tons of ways to make use of this especially since it's versatile and allows you to choose a Target in your hand as well one of its best targets before Narada was red eyes darkness metal dragon since that card can also special summon a dragon from your hand or graveyard which turned guard Dragon LP into a plus two that brought that card out which it could still do because even after the arada you could still use the effect once before it went on its hard once per turn in dragonling decks I'll be showing an example on screen they could use guard Dragon LP to search out whatever they needed for their current combo in order to continue that combo without losing any advantage guard Dragon LP was kind of release broken on purpose and the reason it took so long to get banned as it wasn't actually banned until two years after it was released was because it was released alongside guard dragon agapade and guard Dragon piste guard Dragon piste isn't that big of a deal but guard Dragon Agger pain was so overpowered that it definitely overshowered guard Dragon LP guard dragon agropane has the effect where it can special summon any dragon monster from your extra deck to a zone that two Link monsters are pointing to or to just an extra monster Zone and being able to cheat out any dragon type monster from your extra Deck is definitely way more powerful than being able to cheat out one from your main deck but they're both strong that's like saying an 11 out of 10 is stronger than a 10 out of 10. because sure it is more powerful but that doesn't mean a 10 out of 10 isn't still the top so aggro pane was eventually banned pretty quickly because I'm not sure what they were thinking without effect but then guard Dragon LP just kind of stayed untindered for two years it absolutely saw non-stop competitive play and contributed to some of the strongest decks but other decks were still able to compete so I guess it didn't seem as overpowered alongside other overpowered decks and as the other decks started getting hit one by one and guard Dragon LP's power level just kind of stood out where it was eventually banned as well alongside them there's no one combo or one deck in which LP was super powerful it was a Cornerstone of dragon link where they used a whole bunch of cards the card itself is just overpowered especially being a link one monster which just made it effortless to use in pretty much any dragon deck and also a fun fact 7 of the 29 nine band extra deck monsters are cards I can special summon a monster from the deck with seven more of them being able to special summon a monster in other ways which means about half of the band extra deck monsters are banned because they allow you to summon more monsters guard Dragon lb was banned in July of 2021. could guard Dragon LP be unbanned I'm surprised it was unbanned for two years to be honest generally the effect of specials summoned on an extra Deck monster has historically been very strong unless and has a lot of restrictions and guard Dragon LP does not have enough restrictions for how wide range of targets it could bring out how could they fix guard Dragon LP to be unbanned I think probably one of the best ways would be to make it not a link one monster even guard Dragon auger pain was a link too a link one just means guard Dragon LP loses no Advantage for coming out at all and is purely beneficial to strong effect so we required at least one more resource that would go a long way to help also they just added onto his restrictions to special summons where it gave you an effect for the entire turn where you cannot special summon except dragons that would definitely help to lower its power level because you can too easily bypass its downside by just linking the card away with some kind of dragon link 2 or higher which I guess could also be solved by just not allowing the card to be used as a linked material instead like the Phantom Knights of Rusty bardish alternatively you could restrict the targets at special summons at least to level 4 and lower dragons would be a nice start or if it was restricted to only guard dragon monsters that would probably be good enough as well starting off with guard Dragon Agger paint guard dragon agapane is a link to monster that requires two dragon monsters as materials and has the effect where you can special summon a dragon monster from the extra deck to an extra monster zone or a main monster Zone that two Link monsters are pointing to you also can't special summon other monsters as like dragon monsters while it's on the field its effect is a hard one's per turn and it can only be special summoned once per turn so lots of restrictions on a summoning Edition and how to actually bring the card out but basically the ability to cheat a mod monster out of the extra deck is incredibly powerful pretty much every car that can cheat monsters out of the extra deck has seen competitive play but they usually have incredibly harsh restrictions on them or only allow you to bring out limited targets like how cyberstein requires you to pay 5 000 light points to bring out a Fusion Monster and it's so good that it's currently limited on the ban list or Waking the dragon which allows you to special summon any monster from your extra deck as a floating effect and it's the only effect it has and it's in competitive play precisely because of that ability although agropane is limited in which cards can bring out as it's only dragon monsters so one of the best monsters to bring out is hot red dragon Arch V in Abyss this is a Synchro monster which doesn't have any stipulations on its summoning conditions which is excellent for cards that like to cheat monsters out of the extra deck and has the quick effect where once per turned you can just straight up Target one card in the field and get its effect until the end of the turn which does work on cards which only appear on the field for a short time like normal spell cards so if your opponent activated something like monster reborn for example you could chain hot red dragon Arch fiend's Abyss effect on that card in order to negate it even though the card only exists face up on the field long enough to activate its effect it counts as a face up card on the field so basically hot red dragon Arch fiend Abyss could allow you to negate any card Effect that wasn't spell Speed 3 or higher and with the Baseline attack of 3200 it was going to be hard to get rid of on top of that so going into agropane was equivalent to being able to get out an easy negate in the form of hot red dragon or Crystal wing single Dragon which also has a negate and doesn't have any pesky summoning restrictions on its effects so it's fully usable of cheetah the extra Deck with guard Dragon Agger paint and these are just to the negate monsters there's other targets you can pick since it's any dragon monster from extra deck which is incredibly powerful guard Dragon agropane was banned in October of 2019 about nine months after it was released and honestly it's a surprise it lasted that long because it was immediately broken upon arrival and constantly saw competitive play until it was banned since being able to cheat monsters out of the extra is one of the strongest effects in the game period could guard Dragon agropane be unbanned if they banned every single good Dragon extra Deck monster then yeah probably which is like saying no it probably won't be unbanned anytime soon unless they erot its effect how can the car be fixed to be unbanned if they limited its targets to only non-effect dragon monsters that would probably fix it that would then make its best Target blue eyes Ultimate Dragon which is a nice 4500 attack beat stick but not overpowered like being able to negate any card or Monster effect like with hot red dragon archwan Abyss or Crystal wing single dragon or if they really wanted to keep the effect of special summon any dragon from your extra deck they could instead just give it way more triggers or restrictions like the monster brings out can't activate its effect on the field or locking out a special summoning any monsters at all while the target's on the field just something more restrictive than the nothing it currently has next up we have Supreme King Dragon starving Venom this is a level 8 Fusion Monster which requires two dark pendulum monsters as its materials and can be Fusion summoned normally or alternatively you can spousle some of this card from your extra deck by true beating its Fusion materials on your side of the field and then this card has the effect where once per turn you can Target another monster in the field or in your graveyard in order for this card to gain that Monster's effect in addition it gains the effect to inflict piercing battle damage this turn so the reason this card is banned is because of Lyric's independent Nightingale this is a level 1 Fusion Monster which is immune to card effects gains 500 attack times its level and once per turn allows you to inflict burn damage to your opponent equal to 500 times its level so if Supreme King Dragon starving Venom simply copies nightingale's effect its attack will go up to 6800 and it will be able to inflict 4 000 points of burn damage to your opponent while being immune to Cardiff X and the way you can instantly win with this effect during your first turn was to Simply bring out two copies of this card and then use its effect twice for 8 000 points of burn damage since it's not a hard once per turn and this was possible in regular competitive meta decks so if the combo was stopped you could literally just continue your plays like normal without losing very much an advantage so it's kind of a very overpowered effect that is definitely not future-proofed as if the card was still unbanned in the game future cards would need to be designed under the notion that it might have its effect copied by Supreme King Dragon starving Venom as even outside their literalist independent Nightingale combo it was also really useful for being able to reuse the effects of other monsters you had that might have been Limited at the time like heavy metal foe's electromite Supreme King Dragon starving Venom was banned in May of 2018 about eight months after it came out not even existing a full year before it was on the ban list similar to guard dragon agropane could Supreme King Dragon starving Venom be unbanned no not at all not in the TCG anyway it is unbanned in the ocg for some unknown reason the ability to copy monster effects in the graveyard is so powerful that you can bet they won't make future cards that have this effect considering how broken Supreme King Dragon starving Venom and the Tyrant Neptune ended up being when they released lyrical's independent Nightingale it just limits Future Card design because they have to worry about the unintended consequences of effects interacting with copy and card effects if they were to make cards I can copy effects less broken they'd have to only be able to copy very specific targets instead of anything like what Supreme King Dragon starving venom does how could Supreme King Dragon starving Venom be fixed to be unbanned if they change his effects to only be able to copy the effects of a singular pendulum archetype or just a much more smaller range of targets that might be good enough the card is meant as a generic dark pendulum support so if they only limit it to copying dark pendulum monster effects for a turn then it might still have a couple of strong interactions but I can't think of any off the top of my head and it would be much easier to design around that card's effect since Konami doesn't really like making a new pendulum monsters anyway next up we have tempa's magician tempa's magician is a level 6 Synchro monster which requires a spellcaster monster as one of its non-tuner materials and simply has the effect where when it's Synchro summoned you get to place one spell counter on it it also has the effect where once per turn you can send any number of cards in your hand to the graveyard to place an equal number of spell counter cards amongst cards you control then it has another effect where you can remove all the Spell Counters on the field in order to inflict 500 points of damage to your opponent for each one so if you're able to get 16 spell counters on the field then you can fdk your opponent with temp as magician's effect and for the longest time outside of incredibly inconsistent combos this wasn't very likely there were some Decks that could absolutely pull off the fdk but they weren't consistent enough where Tampa's magician was a problem kinda like how evgishki mind August is involved in all kinds of ftks but they're all very inconsistent so the card is unlimited on the ban list and no one really plays it however the problem with potential ftk cards comes when a new card is introduced that allows activating the effect easier which came with the link monster Celine Queen of the master magicians this is a link 3 monster which requires at least one spellcaster monster as one of its materials and when it's linked summoned you get to place a number of Spell Counters on this card equal to the number of spells in the field and in the graveyard so if you're able to get 15 spell cards in the graveyard then this card will have the 15 extra Spell Counters required for tempa's magician to perform the ftk since tempa's magician provides one immediately on its summon and getting 15 spell Cards into the graveyard is actually pretty easy thanks to the bamboo engine and a couple of other cards that allow you to cycle through your deck and get spells in the graveyard like tuned table of contents or foolish burial Goods so the hardest part of pulling off fdk would be just getting Celine and temba's Magician on the field so Tempest magician was actually banned preemptively before Celine queen of Master magicians was added to the TCG in January of 2020. with the link monster releasing three months later however funny enough in the ocg the tembis magician wasn't banned until recently and Celine Queen and master magicians was released four months earlier than the TCG so the ocg had both of the cards in the game at the same time for over a year and what do you know temba's magician was 100 used in fdk Decks that was incredibly consistent thanks to Danger cards and eventually the card was banned a year later and it's funny because the TCG obviously saw that it was going to be a problem immediately and preemptively banned him his magician but the ocg did not and the card was a problem and then eventually got banned a year after it already topped a bunch of events although I guess since it didn't take a whole bunch of top spots they were able to take their time on banding it could tempa's magician be unbanned this one's a little bit more open to discussion than the previous two cards because Timber's magician did exist in the game for a long time without being broken before sealing queen of mass magician was added as long as there isn't a card which can just add a crap ton of Spell Counters on the field very easily when it's summoned then temba's magician isn't that big of a deal it still has a potential ftk sure but so does Eve gishki mind August and spell counters are always kind of a joke mechanic until modern endemium cards were released in which case Santa's magician was played with them and occasionally would win the game for them but it wasn't as easy as just summoning a single link monster with 15 Spell Counters which coincidentally is also into me on support the biggest problem with Timber's magician is Celine Queen of the master magicians so they just banned that card timba's magician could probably be unbanned as well and would probably be using fdk combos but they wouldn't be consistent ones how could they fix temba's magician to be unbanned currently the biggest prompt Emma's magician is the unlimited potential its burn damage if you're able to get a whole bunch of Spell Counters on the field then you can instantly win with his burn effect however adding a cap to the amount of burn damage doesn't seem necessary as what you can instead do is just delay the effect If instead it had a clause where it can't use its burn effect on the same turn that it summoned then you would no longer be able to ftk with the card and it would be almost completely useless if you want to use this card for any of its other effects to play Spell Counters on itself then that would still be possible if you wanted to instantly win on your first turn before opponent had a chance to play the game then you wouldn't be able to do that anymore but you could still win with the card if you protect it for a full turn and then did the combo like normal although instead of making the card unplayable by delaying its effect for a turn adding a cap on the amount of damage it can inflict would probably work too by simply saying this card can remove up to five Spell Counters to inflict damage to your opponent and set it just all Spell Counters and of course make it a hard ones per turn next up we have number 16 shock Master this is a rank 4xes monster which was released early on in the xc's introduction era requires three level 4 monsters as his materials and simply has the effect where once per turned you can detach one of its materials in order to declare one of the three card types then your opponent cannot activate any cards of the declare type until the end of their next turn so if you simply declared Monster cards your opponent would essentially be locked out of hand traps for the rest of this turn and then out of all Monster effects on their turn so it's basically a shutdown of one-third of cards of the game for two turns with a single effect and a single detach of one of its three materials the effect is also only a soft once per turn so if you wanted to get extra spicy you could bring out three copies of this card and lock your opponent out of being able to play anything for those two turns and the problem with being able to lock your opponent out of one third of the cards for two turns is the fact that your opponent can't do anything about it unless they're able to stop the effect during their opponent's turn as the effect activation happens during your turn so your opponent needs to have a pre-established nugget on the board in order to try to stop it or a hand trap ready to go in their opening hand if you're doing it on your first turn and disregarding the no counter play part of its effect just the power of being able to shut down your opponent's monster effects for a turn in of itself is already super strong as seen by outer entity azathot which is banned for having the same effect except a harder to use version of it they even recently banned true king of all calamities for the same thing they could shut down all of your opponent's monster effects for a turn and those two cards only worked on Monster effects shock Master could choose that as just one of its three options shockmaster is a beast of a shutdown card which has a devilishly simple effect that doesn't seem very broken on the surface until you really understand the gravity of what being able to turn off your opponent's card effects for two turns really entails so the card was banned pretty quickly after introduction being banned in September 2013 one year after it was added to the TCG being banned in the middle of the Dragon Ruler format which didn't make use of level 4 monsters at all and was probably the reason it stayed unbanned for over a year the ability to lockout monster effects has gotten even stronger in the modern era and shockmaster was considered a problem in the early xc's ERA with much less negates and hand traps could number 16 shock Master be unbanned the answer to that question is a pretty easy no it's an easier to bring out and easier to use true king of all calamities and outer entity as I thought two other band extra deck monsters as getting three level 4 monsters in the field is a cake and walk to a whole bunch of decks it's basically a win condition to just get out 30 level 4 monsters how could they fix number 16 shock Master to be unbanned the effect of the card is just too powerful to really add restrictions to its summoning basically resolving the effect as a win condition so you'd have to add a whole bunch of restrictions to keep the effect intact so if you wanted to fix this card without changing its effect at all you could probably change it so it requires five level four monsters as materials cannot be cheated out with a spell card and requires it to detach 3 monsters instead of one then you could keep its old effect and it would probably be restrictive enough where it might not see competitive play alternatively it's much easier just change the effect of the card to be less broken instead of preventing all effects of one third of the cards in the game it could instead be more specific with only working during your turn and not carrying over to your opponent's turn as it would be a way to shut down your opponent's negate that currently exists on the field and that's about it and last up we have number 86 heroic Champion rongo mini ad this is a Rank 4 monster which requires two to five level four monsters as its materials and gains a number of effects equal to the amount of xc's materials it has where if it has five plus materials it has the effects where it can't destroy by battle it's immune to cardifax gains 1500 attacking defense once per turn destroy all three opponents monsters and also it has a Floodgate where your opponent cannot normal or special summon monsters and it's really that Floodgate effect on top of being indestructible that makes this card completely broken the fact that you can also destroy all of your opponent's cards once per turn is just salt in the wounds if that effect wasn't there it would still be broken but the fact that it has that on top of everything else is just extra nasty and for the longest time this car did see competitive play occasionally but its materials were restrictive enough where it wasn't consistently coming out with five materials or if it did come out with the four plus materials and had The Floodgate and indestructible effects it would eventually lose those materials because we had to detach one of its materials during each of your opponent's end phases as its maintenance cost so it was a hard to bring out boss monster that occasionally would wreck the field for a couple of turns and might even win you the game where this card started to become a real problem was when they released a new exes monster called number 75 bamboozling gossip Shadow this is a rank 3 monster that just requires two plus level 3 monsters as materials and has the effect where if your opponent activates a monster effect you can detach to its materials to change the effect to where both players draw one card instead so it's a form of effect negation the real broken part of this card is its second effect where if you control a number xc's monster you can attach this card and all of its materials to that monster and since bamboozling gossip Shadow allows you to use two plus level 3 monsters you could simply bring out Rango midiad with just two level 4 Warrior monsters and then just fill up gossip Shadow with a whole bunch of level 3 monsters and then use gossip Shadow to attach itself to rongo maniad to give it way more than five materials but just using the minimum amount with gossip Shadow would give rongo mini add 3 extra materials which could allow you to get all the way to the 5 plus effect with the minimum amount required on both monsters and so with a much easier to bring out rongo mini ad that had more than five materials there wasn't really anything your opponent could do to stop it as it would eventually just win you the Duel By destroying all your opponents cards once per turn locking your opponent out of doing anything with monsters while just Baseline being into all card effects of course it was kind of anime levels of broken with gossip Shadow and it was never meant to get to the full material so easily so this card was banned in January 2019 and gossip Shadow was left completely unrestricted and has occasionally seen competitive play since but was really broken with rongo midiand and not really worth Banning for its interactions with any other cards could number 86 heroic Champion rongo mini add be unbanned this one seems like it's Up For Debate since it was fine until bamboozling gossip Shadow was released but the power creep of the game has gotten to the point where you could probably get rongo minion out with five materials without gossip Shadow and just do the same things it was doing modern metadex were able to spam out way more cards than they ever could so the card will probably stay banned because it's just not future proofed as proven by how broken gossip Shadow made it how could number 86 heroic Champion brongo maniad be fixed to be unbanned if they removed its Floodgate effect the four plus condition then the card would be fine it's literally just that flood game that makes it overpowered because there isn't really a way to out the card if you can't summon monsters as it's unaffected by card effects as not even the winged dragon of raw sphere mode or a Kaiju can out the guard which is usually the go-to case or indestructible boss monsters as I can't really think of a way to change the card by just adding restrictions to it because it already has pretty heavy restrictions which are completely circumvent by gossip Shadow but even if they did add some kind of effect where you can't add extracts these materials to this card it still has the problem of power creep making the card broken in the future again so I can't really think of a way to fix this card without just removing its four plus effect and change it to something else or at the very least it's three plus effect that makes it immune to card effects that way there's some measure of counter play Summit sorceress is a link 3 monster which simply requires two more monsters at the exact same type as its materials except tokens although if you had tokens you could convert them into link spiders and Link repos in order to get the same type of effect monsters on the field in order to go into summon sorceress so this was a very easy restriction to get around if you wanted to abuse tokens and summon Sorcerers has the effect where when it's linked summoned you can special summon a card from your hand to your opponent's side of the field and also once per turn you can Target a face-up monster this card points to in order to special summon a monster from your deck with the same type as that monster to a different Zone this card points to but its effects are negated so with its ability to special summon a card from your hand to your opponent side of the field you could just put it onto the field where summon sorceress points to on your opponent's side of the field in order to more easily set up its ability to special summon a monster from your deck now the ability to special summon monsters in the deck is pretty strong and normally there's a whole bunch of restrictions on this because of just how game breaking it is to an extent where you're both able to search out the monster you need from the deck as well as getting it onto the field which is like accomplishing two effects in one so we have main deck cards like a hero lips which has a whole bunch of restrictions where you need to have no face up monsters on your side of the field you have to pay half your life points and you can only special summon a level 4 or lower monster which is specifically from the Elementor hero archetype which is just like one of six different kinds of hero cards so it doesn't even let you bring out the destiny heroes or Vision Heroes for example just the Elemental Heroes and a hero lives is so good it's currently limited to one copy even with all of these restrictions we have wind-up care years in MIDI which can only special summon a wind-up monster from your deck it makes saber invoker which only allows you to special summon a level 4 Earth Warrior or beast warrior monster from your deck and only exactly level 4 monsters it's not even level 4 or lower like a hero lips guard Dragon LP only allows you to special summon dragons from the deck and then Union carrier only allows you to equip a monster from your deck to a monster it doesn't even special summon it and all four of these cards are banned because of just how good it is at doing those things either within their respective archetypes or because it just allows a whole bunch of other combos which weren't really intended summon Sorcerers has none of these restrictions there's literally no restrictions on the monster I can summon from the deck except that it has to be the same type as a monster it points to there's no level 4 or lower being part of a specific archetype or even restrictions on what you can do for the rest of the turn when you summon summon sorceress it does at least negate the effects of the monster it summons but that's not really going to stop the card from being absolutely Bonkers some of and sorceress effect to spell summon monster from the deck is so good that it kinda blows all the other much more specific special summons from the deck out of the water and the fact that summon sorceress is also almost completely generic means the card absolutely saw tons of competitive play and was included in pretty much any deck that can use it because obviously it was it is one of the most powerful effects in the game without any restrictions there are seven other extra Deck cards on the banned list currently which accomplish a similar thing except with way more restrictions and that effect is good enough to be banned seven other times so you can kind of see why summon sorceress who is a more powerful version of those cards is also banned summon Sorcerers is kind of like the pot of greed of extra deck monsters its effect is good in pretty much every deck and is also really strong and easy to use its materials might as well be generic with how easy they are to get around Summit sorceress was banned in April 2019 about a year after it came out could summon sorceress be unbanned no it's too generic good even when the card first came out everyone knew would be banned eventually and it was kind of an Open Secret to use the card as long as you could before it was eventually banned and then when it was banned no one was surprised the card was most likely created overpowered on purpose though in order to push the link mechanic as it was introduced very early on in the ocg but about a six-month delay before it was released in the TCG because you see when the X sees monsters first came out the first wave of them were pretty mediocre and no one really took advantage of xc's monsters as much as Konami probably hoped they would and just kept playing synchros that was until they banned a whole bunch of really good Synchro cards in support and then released some overpowered exes monsters to finally complete the transition and get people to use the new mechanic so nowadays whenever they release a new type of summity method they usually print a couple of overpowered cards like summon Sorceress in order to coerce people into actually using them which is why no one is really surprised when cards like summon sorceress or firewall Dragon get banned and also why no one is surprised when they are obviously least broken because otherwise it would be another repeat of the xc's scenario and people would just be upset at the new 70 method and just kind of stick to what they already know how could summon sorceress be fixed to be unbanned well two things really give it a restriction on level 4 Allure monsters only I'm not sure what they were thinking allowing any level of monsters to be special someone from the deck as most cards are kind of balanced around the fact that level 5 and higher monsters are much more difficult to search or special summon than level four lower monsters in addition Mega so the Carter brings out his banish when it leaves the field instead of going to the graveyard and that would probably be enough it would still be strong getting a name to level 4 lore monster in the field but would get rid of a lot of the floating effects or graveyard effects that are facilitated by summon sorceress next up we have danglong first to the Yang Zing this is a level 5 Synchro Tuner monster which has completely generic materials and has three separate effects the first is when this card is special summoned you get to add a Yang Zing card from your deck to your hand second once per turned you can send a worm type monster from your back to the graveyard in order to make this card's level equal to that monsters so it Mills the card from your DAC as a cost lastly if this card leaves the field you can special summon a yangzing monster from your deck and it also has a restriction where you can only special some of this card once per turn which means its other effects are only soft ones per turns now what's good about this card is that there is a negate within the yangzing archetype called Nine pillars of the yank Zing which has the effect where if a card Effect is being activated and you control a yangzin card you can negate the activation and then Shuffle that card back into your deck then you have to destroy one gangs in card you control so it's a full Omni negate which spins the card back to the deck which is one of the best forms removable by the way because cards can't activate floating effects in the deck and also it allows you to destroy dangalong although negate is only part of the reason dangling is good there's also a single Monster called a Herald of the Arc Light this card has a Floodgate effect on the field where any monsters sent from the hand or deck to the graveyard is banished instead in addition it has an omni to gate where the card is activated you contribute this card in order to negate and destroy that card and additionally it can search out a ritual card when it's sent to the graveyard which is irrelevant for how danglong used it the yangzing archetype has a card called chiwin a light to the Yang Xing which is a level 1 tuner that has the effect where if a yangs and cardio control is destroyed while this card is in your graveyard you can special summon it but it's banished when it leaves the field there's another Yang Xing called bien Earth of the yangzing which has the ability that if it's used as a Synchro material the Synchro monster that comes out is immune to being destroyed by battle additionally it can also Synchro Summon as a quick effect during the main or battle phase so if you activate the Omni negate 9 pillars of the yank Zing then use the cost of nine pillars in order to destroy dangling on your side of the field this will proc the effect of chewwood in your graveyard to special summon itself where you can then use dangling's floating effect in order to bring out being and if done during your opponent's turn you can simply have be unused Synchro Summon a factor in your opponent's turn in order to go into Herald of the Ark light where you then have a Floodgate with an optional Omni negative can use once that can't be destroyed by battle whereas usually Herald of the Arc Light is very easy to beat over because it only has 1000 defense this combo overcomes the biggest drawback where you can just destroy the card by battle without having to deal with its Omni negate not with denglong though denglong was basically a way to convert any deck that can get out materials for a level 5 Synchro monster into two negates on the field thanks to nine pillars of the Yang zing and its easy access of Herald of the Arc Light with its qiwind and BN combo and dinosaur decks are able to accomplish this pretty easily thanks to a soul eating oviraptor so lady noviraptor is a level 4 monster which on summon allows you to take a dinosaur monster from your deck and either add it to your hand or send it to the graveyard so if you simply choose miscellaneousaurus and send it to the graveyard you can then use miscellaneous sources effect of the graveyard to banish itself in order to special summon a drag a Leo from your deck which is a level 1 tuner which allows you to go into a level 5 Synchro monster and if you're just going to danglong you have two negates so pretty much any deck that was able to supplement having three kinds of Yang Zing cards in their deck while accomplishing their goals like normal could easily play the denglong engine and just gain an immense amount of value from one Synchro Summon and that's only one way the card was used it was also used in some combos in other decks like metal foes or zephrons and also the fact that this car just has a better floating effect than its archetype normal Yang Zing cards only proc floating effects when they're destroyed by battle are card effects and use a win effect whereas denglong's effect procs if it's just removed from the field in any way and has an if Clause instead of when so the card activates its floating effect if it's sent to the graveyard for a Synchro or a link summon so you could use the fact that it's a Tuner monster in order to go into another yangzin card from your deck base basically turning the card into a plus to a card Advantage if it just hits the field and card Advantage which could be turned into negates which is even more important danglong was banned in September of 2017 after being used in a lot of topping decks with the new dinosaur structure deck could denglong first of the yangzing be unbanned probably this card is currently unbanned in the ocg with a little problem although the ocg has a different metagame than we do so that's not the biggest case we made for cards and unbanned Status however ever since 2017 the game has gotten way more easier to use negates that don't require you to play a whole bunch of garnets in your deck because denglong is really good but you have to set up your deck for it and with quite a lot of cards too the deck side could facilitate his combos are definitely getting a lot of Advantage out of it but not every deck can make use of its Advantage because they just can't play a whole bunch of Yang Zing cards in their main deck or they probably wouldn't want to if they could just use something like Appaloosa Beau the goddess or borrowload Savage dragon instead although just because it wouldn't be useful in every deck doesn't mean it's not still really good Advantage it's kind of like a less advantageous IB the world challenge just this year who is able to go plus two on a generic level 5 Synchro Summon as well although it was also really overpowered so just because it's not as good as IB does it mean it's not good that's why it only a probably they might be able to unban the card and it would not be completely broken but it would still be very strong how could they fix denglong first of the Yang zings to be unbanned if they gave the Restriction where it could only be single summoned with yangzing monsters that would fix the card overnight you literally wouldn't have to change anything else about its plus two status or the fact that it can foolish burial as a cost if you just made its requirements non-generic the fact that it has generic requirements means it can be used in a whole bunch of different kinds of decks if the requirements were specifically gangzing it could definitely be played to Great advantage in Yang xingdex but that would so heavily limit its potential that it would no longer just be very strong and just be a strong option in a specific type of deck or engine because there are cards in the game which are very strong that are not problems in the meta like magical musketeer Max which is a link one monster that can allow you to go plus five in card advantage and I'm sure most of you've never even heard of this card and that's because that Advantage is only relevant within its archetype which only occasionally sees competitive play because it's not generic next up we have number 95 Galaxy eyes Dark Matter Dragon this is a rank 9 monster which can be special summon by I bring it out on top of a galaxy Isaac sees monster control and has the effect where when it's summoned you can send three dragon type monsters from your deck to the graveyard with different names in order to make your opponent banish three cards from their deck and since it sends the monsters to the graveyard as a cost your opponent can't actually negate the effect which is the good part about this card it also has the effect where it can be used as an xc's material and also you can detach one of its materials in order to allow to attack two monsters during the battle phase now what's really good about this card is definitely that meal effect as there are a ton of really good dragon type graveyard effects in the game and Galaxy eyes metal dragon does not have a once per turn on its effect so I'll show you a quick little example of what it was capable of when the card first came out with just two cards from your opening hand you could easily get a full Board of monsters thanks to the dragon rulers in all other graveyard special summoning shenanigans although there are modern Dragon cards which can special some of themselves in the graveyard too although not to as great Advantage as the dragon rollers could Galaxy as dark matter dragon is kind of what finally got the dragon rulers banned as it was just too much advantage of sending three of them to the graveyard on a card which was not once per turn if you just brought out a Galaxy eyes monster like normal like number 107 Galaxy eyes tachyon Dragon for example and you were able to special some of the card again later on you could just rank up the other copies of Dark Matter dragon on top of it in order to get its effect three times or even more if you're able to reset the card basically Galaxy eyes Dark Matter dragon is really strong if you're able to use its effect a single time per turn the fact that it's not once per turn is kind of broken as only using the effect a single time is equivalent to going plus three and card advantage and even though this thing is a crazy Advantage machine on summon it's also a 4000 attack beat stick that can attack twice which is not the reason why this card is banned but it is a definitely benefit to the card nonetheless and what finally got Galaxy eyes Dark Matter Dragon band was when they released the gar Dragon support which made dragons even better as you can see if you watched on my previous videos on why guard Dragon LP or guard Dragon Agger painter band number 95 Galaxy eyes Dark Matter Dragon was banned in April of 2019. could number 95 Galaxy eyes Dark Matter Dragon be unbanned the answer to this question is probably no it's basically a plus three on summon and doesn't have a once per turn on its effect and it's real easy to summon so you could theoretically go plus nine if you brought it out three times although even if the card is limited to one copy and you can only use the effect a single time it's still really good and too easy to bring out with one of the most supported types of cards in the game as Konami loves to print new dragon support every chance they get even if they have already banned 5 dragon monsters as good graveyard effects there are still a lot of others how could number 95 Galaxy eyes Dark Matter Dragon be fixed to be unbanned if it simply banished the cards face down as its costs instead of sending them to the graveyard that would do it they wouldn't have to give it a once per turn if they did that alternatively it could be changed to just have a hard once per turn on its middle effect and also add restrictions to the dragon that's into the graveyard where they don't activate any effects the turn they're sent to the graveyard and you can't use the effects of cards with the same name until the end of the turn and also probably not make it a cost and part of the effect so it can be negated this would allow you to set up the graveyard with specific dragons you want just not ones with graveyard effects that you could use immediately and lastly we have heavy metal foe's electromite this is a link to monster which just requires 82 pendulum monsters as its materials and has the effect that when it's link summoned you can add any pendulum monster from your deck to your extra deck face up once per turned you can destroy a face of card you control in order to add a pendulum monster that's face up or in your extra deck to your hand and its third effect is if a card in your pendulum Zone leaves the field you get to draw one card so basically electromite can allow you to add any pendulum card from your deck to your extra deck and then immediately add it to your hand while drawing a card so it's a plus two and card advantage or it's supposed to be only a plus one since you do have to destroy one of your pendulum cards in order to add that pendulum card to your hand unless you use this as one of the plethora of pendulum on sisters that activate their effects on their destruction like double Iris magician although let's just assume you're not getting an advantage off the card you destroy it is only a plus one in card Advantage with all of its effects however the way it goes plus one is by allowing you to basically have any pendulum card in your hand that you want and also allowing you to draw another card and setting up your extra Deck with another pendulum card when you destroy it with its effect and its first two effects are only a soft once per turn so if you bring out the other copies of heavy metal foes electromite you can search out more pendulum cards so on screen I'll be showing the card being used a great effect with astrograph sorcerer which is another pendulum card that is currently banned because it just allows you to get too much advantage and was definitely abused with heavy metal foes electromite electromite was kind of the car that was released in order to help pendulums and Link monsters are added to the game with the master rule 4 restrictions for those who don't know how pendulums work basically you look at the number on the card located in the bottom left and right then if you have have two pendulum cards in the left and right spell and trap card zones once per turn you can perform a pendulum summon similar to how once per turn you get a normal summon for free then with this pendulum summoned you can special summon any monster from your hand or face a pendulum monsters in your extra deck to your monster zones just as long as the targets you choose from your extra deck go to zones at either a link monsters pointing to or is the extra monster zone now I'm sure current Yu-Gi-Oh fans already know this but there are surprising amount of people who watch these videos that don't actually play the game and one of the number one confusions I get in the comments is how pendulums work and knowing how pendulums work is kind of important for explaining why heavy metal fills electromyte is so good because you see pendulums also go to your extra deck face up when they're destroyed on the field instead of going to the graveyard so the cost of activating its effect to destroy card you control in order to add a pendulum card to your hand isn't really a negative effect at all and in fact is a huge plus to most pendulum decks especially since the card allows you to draw a card if you decide to destroy one of the cards in your pendulum zones to activate its plus one effect and with two downward pointing arrows it allows you to bring out two pendulum monsters from your extra Deck with a pendulum summoned by itself without any other kind of cards which is usually enough to perform a lot of pendulum plays so heavy metal foe's electromide is kind of like a Band-Aid which fixes all of the problems pendulum cards have after Master rule 4 kinda restricted them as before Master rule 4 and League monsters you could special summon as many pendulum monsters from your extra deck to any of the zones you wanted now they can only go to zones that link monsters are pointing to or the extra monster Zone an electromike definitely helps that out except it was too good at its job because it was basically a plus to and card Advantage with extra steps and those extra steps were just plain competitive pendulum decks like normal so originally they tried to rein in the effect of the card by Banning astrograph sorcerer so you can no longer gain huge pluses off its effect then limiting heavy metal fails to one copy so you couldn't double up on its first two effects which were not once per turn until eventually the endemium archetype came out and were just a really good pendulum archetype which didn't necessarily take advantage of heavy metal foe's electromytes effects as much as an astrograph sorcerer did but were just so good on their own that giving them a plus two of heavy metaphors electromite does make them even better to the point where they just decided to ban the card rather than allow pendulum decks to just have a really good support guard because the ability to just search out any card from your archetype on summon and also facilitating all of the plays they like to do like normal while drawing an additional card is good in pretty much any archetype and being able to accomplish this with every single pendulum archetype is just a little bit too strong which is why the card was banned in January of 2020 very shortly after most of the endemium cards were released in the TCG could heavy metal foe's electromite be unbanned the answer to this question is probably yes and I wouldn't be surprised if it was unbanned sometime soon because you see the card is really good and is basically a plus two to every pendulum deck however pendulums were hit very hard by the master rule 4 restrictions and they were the only extra deck type which was not unrestricted when they updated the rulings with the master role revisions so they're still playing by the original Master rule 4 restrictions and heavy metal foe's electromite was released in order to help alleviate some of those heavy burdens and because they still have those heavy restrictions pendulum decks don't really see as much competitive play and one of the best ways they could support every pendulum archetype at once would be just to release heavy metal foe's electromite to one copy heavy metal foe's electromite is a very strong card but it's not overpowered at one copy and Konami is definitely fine with allowing very strong cards to exist in the game at one copy just take a look at sky Striker mobilize engage and the card is already at one copy in the ocg although like I said earlier the ocg is a lot different from the TCG but even then they still have the same restrictions on pendulum summoning how could they fix heavy metal foe's electromag to be unbanned well firstly they should slap the hard ones per turn on all of its effects instead of just as effect to draw a card alternatively if they just change its materials to heavy metal foes monsters instead of any pendulum monsters they could probably unban the card without too much difficulties the heavy metal foe's pendulum cards are actually pretty good within other pendulum Arc types so it still might see play but having basically generic materials in a pendulum deck just makes it too strong so it could be like a dang long situation where they could easily fix the card by just making it restricted to the archetype it actually belongs to as heavy metal files electromide is supposed to be a heavy metal foes card but it's also just the best pendulum support card in the game update with the power creep of the game ever getting more powerful pendulum decks are falling further and further behind in relevancy they do still see play in the form of dragoslayers but that's really it if they ever do unband this car in the future after this video goes live it's because they want to throw pendulums above teller Knight tomius is a Rank 4 monster which can be brought out with two or more level 4 monsters which is important because it has three effects where its first effect allows it to on spell speed 2. detach 3 of its materials in order to rank this card up with a rank 5 monster from your extra deck just as long as it's not a number monster its second effect allows you to detach seven axes materials in order to skip your opponent's next turn and its final effect is during each player's end phase you can to attach a stellar Knight card from your extra deck to this as one of its xc's materials now the effect that got this card banned is its first effect and more specifically the card Cyber Dragon Infinity Cyber Dragon Infinity is a rank 6 monster which can be brought out on top of sniper Dragon Nova instead of its normal procedure and has the effect where it gains 200 attack for each material it has once per turn it can absorb an attack position monster and also at once per turn it has an omni negate which allows you to detach one of its materials to stop any effect and destroy that card and Cyber Dragon Nova is just a rank 5 monster who has some effects that aren't really relevant and basically just exists as a middleman to get into Cyber Dragon Infinity and Teller Knight Thomas was a middleman in order to get into Cyber Dragon Nova as it basically allowed any deck that could spam out level 4 monsters easy access to Cyber Dragon Infinity and its negei so in 2016 right after the release of Draco Pals thanks to cards like performage plushfire being ridiculously broken they could easily get out a whole bunch of level 4 monsters on the field which allowed them to end on Cyber Dragon Infinity pretty comfortably this was also the time when ending on in a gate wasn't super common so having easy access to Cyber Dragon Infinity in addition to just the massive amount of advantage that Draco pals are able to generate being one of the few tier zero decks in the game's history it was seen as kind of a problem in addition teller Knight tolmias was also just easy access to Stellar Knight constellar diamond diamond could rank its up on top of an xc's teller Knight monster and tolmias was one of the only Rank 4 color Knight monsters that could be brought out with only two materials instead of three or more and Diamond has The Floodgate effect where neither player can send cards from the deck to the graveyard cards that would be returned from the graveyard to the hand are banished instead and it has a negate that only works on dark monsters and with dark being the most prevalent attribute in the game being able to go into diamond with only two materials was just a pretty easy way to shut down any dark deck whereas normally diamond is kind of difficult to bring out because it requires three or more level 5 monsters as materials or one of the rank 4 telenites that requires three or more level 4 monsters as material being able to go into with only two materials was just really strong in addition to the fact that tomias could also just be used to go into Cyber Dragon Infinity instead so tellinitomias got an emergency band alongside performance plush fire in April 2016. shortly after Cyber Dragon Infinity came out it did have some nice uses with its other effects but its main use was definitely going into Cyber Dragon Infinity or being a two monster way to go into constellar Diamond could tell a night till Mayas be unbanned the answer to this question is a tentative maybe you see back in early 2016 being able to easily go into one negate like Cyber Dragon Infinity was really good in fact it's still good even today however this same amount of materials can be used to bring out Apollos that Bo the goddess which grants you three monster negates and there's also a lot of other one card ways to go into stuff like borlut's Savage dragon or even red eyes dark Dragoon which are arguably better negates basically modern decks do have access to better negates and and they can go into them easier than getting three level 4 monsters in the field for tomias into an Infinity combo although just because other negates are easier to go into doesn't mean we should really give more decks the options to go into another one there's also the fact that tomayas kind of limits Future Card design to an extent because it's basically a rank of Magic on legs which is really easy to access although only kind of because it just gives you access to the rank 5 pull which isn't very popular anyway so Tyler Knight told minus could probably be unbanned it would be strong but we have stronger cards that are already unbanned and it would just kind of thin with all the other overpowered negates how could they fix teller Knight tomias to be unbanned if the card only allowed you to rank up into teller Knight monsters it wouldn't really be a problem the fact that has access to Cyber Dragon Infinity in addition to constellar Diamond plays is kind of why the card was banned if it no longer has access to Infinity it could probably be unbanned tomorrow without anyone ever playing it even if it could still be used for constellar diamond update this card was unbanned and doesn't really see any competitive play so my original guess this card could probably be unbanned without much issue was spot on next up we have nightmare Goblin this is a generic link 2 monster which requires two monsters with different names as materials like most of the nightmare cards and this card only has two effects one of them is when this card is link summoned you can discard one card in order normal summon one additional time to a Zone this card points to and also if it was co-linked when you use this effect you get to draw a card as well additionally while this card is on the field neither player can Target co-linked monsters you control with card effects and co-link for those you might not know link rulings very well is just when two Link monsters have their arrows pointing directly at each other now the reason this card is banned is actually kind of unique for a lot of these band cards and the fact that both of its effects contributed to its band status usually it's just one or the other rarely is it both of them obviously though first effect is way stronger of the two being able to gain normal summon is kind of broken the car Double Summon which is a normal spell card that simply gives you one extra normal summon has kind of seen constant competitive play ever since it came out and it's not even a good card because it requires you to use one resource from your hand and takes up a spot in your deck in order to just allow you to summon one additional monster from your hand which is inherently a minus one in card Advantage but the normal summon is incredibly valuable in modern Yu-Gi-Oh just take Alistar the invoker for example one of the strongest normal summons you can perform if you normal summon Alistar the invoker it allows you to add invocation from your deck to your hand which is a plus one and card Advantage then you can use Alistair the invoker to go into a link monster or some other combo extender which puts the car to the graveyard while not losing Advantage you can then use invocation to fuse Alistar in the graveyard with one of your opponent's monsters in their graveyard preferably a light attribute monster in order to go into invoke Macaba which gives you a strong boss monster with an omni negate then you can use invocation from from the graveyard to end Alistar back to your hand which is technically only a plus two in card advantage since using invocation to bring out Macaba is card neutral so you're getting an omni negate on the field using Alistair as a material for two cards removing a resource from your opponent's graveyard and then just ending with Alistair in your hand so you can do it all over again on your next turn and all of this is balance around the fact that it can only do this with its normal summon and a lot of combo decks start off their combos with a single normal summon which can completely stop them the tracks if that one normal summon is interrupted and a nightmare Goblin short reign of being unbanned as it was only in the game for around four months it was mainly used in Goki and spiral decks to put out unbreakable u-locks which leads into its next effect the card also made its co-linked monsters you controlled so they could not be targeted by card effects and with other nightmare cards Grand in protection from destruction by card effects in battle this could make putting up a u-link of monsters almost impossible to get rid of without a direct counter since there are actually Lots to voice removed cards without destroying them usually you have to Target in order to do those things though being Target immune is way better than being destruction or battle immune but nightmare ulinks also had destruction immunity thanks to nightmare Cerberus and most non-targeting effects in the game destroy things so they were extra hard to counter their target and destruction immunity and it's very rare for there to be non-targeting removal that isn't destruction it definitely exists it's just not very common so unless you had an anti-goblin card in your hand like the winged dragon or raw sphere mode chances are you just wouldn't be able to get past your opponent's lock with nightmare Goblin because they'd also have it locked with stuff like trigate wizard to just negate one of your outs and this was before Dark Ruler no more Nibiru the Primal being or forbidden droplets were in the game so unless you're main decking the wing Dragon Ross fear mode it was almost impossible for the average DAC to get past a goblin protected trigate Wizard and it was able to accomplish his protection while also just being one of the best combo extenders in the game and being completely generic so it was usable in pretty much every deck at the time nightmare Goblin was out brilliant Fusion was still in the game as well which is another car that's banned brilliant Fusion allows you to have an additional normal summon while going plus one in card Advantage but it requires you to play bad cards in the deck so nightmare Goblin was thought of as the better brilliant Fusion because he didn't have to play garnets in order to accomplish the same thing sure brilliant Fusion was a more card Advantage but if all you cared about was that extra normal summon it was better to not have to worry about using a garnet and it's kind of funny that this card has two really strong effects and they thought it might be balanced by the fact that it's not a starter card because both of its arrows Point sideways so you can't even use this card if it's the first link monster you go into and it can only ever be a second one where its effect is only live while it's in the main monster zones which was never really restriction to the card at all and just made it an excellent extender tool instead so nightmare Goblin is one of the strongest Link monsters ever printed and was banned only four months after it came out in September of 2018. could nightmare Goblin be unbanned probably not its effect is still strong even today even if the ability to Grant a blanketed targeted protection isn't as game-changing as it was in 2018. now that so many going second cards have been created which could allow you to stop a nightmare's goblin protection much easier like dark roller no more for example although having a generic Double Summon that doesn't require card from your deck which can be accomplished while just extending your plays like normal is even stronger than ever considering brilliant Fusion was banned shortly after nightmare Goblin and it was considered a worse nightmare Goblin how could they fix nightmare Goblin to be unbanned the big problem with the card is definitely that extra normal summon one of the ways to balance it would be to make it not generic to summon however the whole point of most of the nightmare cards is in the fact that they are generic a link to summons so instead we could take a book from Nightmare mermaid and just make it so that its normal summon can only be used on a nightmare monster there are only three main deck nightmare monsters in the game and only one of them is below level 4 where you would actually be able to extend with it a nightmare corrupter ebley actually has a pretty decent strong normal summon effect so it would still be kind of useful but the most important thing is that it doesn't have generic normal summon potential so you wouldn't be able to use it on something like Alistair the invoker or Goki suprex and this might be enough to fix the card even though it still has the really good targeting protection for co-linked Monsters next up we have number 42 Galaxy Tomahawk this is a generic rank 7 monster which has the effect to wear you can detach two of its materials to special summon as many battle Eagle tokens as possible to your side of the field however they're destroyed during the end phase and your opponent takes no further damage this turn so the intended use of this card was to summon out a whole bunch of 2000 attack tokens in order to maybe destroy your opponent's cards by battle I guess or maybe use them as secret materials with a Tuner monster on the field this card originally came out in 2014 and saw absolutely zero competitive play until Link monsters came out Link monsters were the king of making past token generator cards broken like scapegoat and grinder Golem and of course Galaxy Tomahawk you see Link monsters like link spider can just convert one of those tokens into an effect monster in the field which could then be used for all kinds of other link plates you could even just convert one token into a link spider and then use the other token plus the link spider to go into a nightmare card or you can could convert the tokens into proxy dragon or just anything else that just requires generic materials to the point where Galaxy Tomahawk being summoned was basically equivalent to going plus five and card Advantage if you were able to get all five tokens out and of course there were other ways to use the tokens as well since synchros and Tuners go hand in hand with Link monsters in the modern meta which having access to a full field of level 6 tokens could definitely provide some combo potential although Tomahawk was mainly used as just a way to generate tokens for link fodder generally in decks I could get out level 7 monsters pretty easily like spirals dangerous and dark warrior combos the other reason Galaxy Tomahawk wasn't banned immediately as soon as Link monsters came out was because going into level 7 xe's monsters is not easy for a vast majority of decks although dangers definitely made it a lot easier thanks to Danger Dogman and danger Nessie both being level 7. and with danger Nessie being one of the best danger cards so when Galaxy Tomahawk was eventually banned in January of 2019 literally no one was surprised in fact it was hardly even talked about when I do research for these videos I go back and watch a whole bunch of videos on people reacting to ban lists in addition to a bunch of other things and pretty much everyone was just like hey they finally banned Tomahawk neat and then they just talked about everything else since the January 2019 ban list got rid of a whole bunch of really popular cards that were much more played like fairy tale snow grinder Golem number 86 Rogue Champion rongo midiad topologic gumbler Dragon and soul charge in fact the January 2019 ban list was pretty big on its hits to the point where Galaxy Tomahawk was definitely worthy of being ban but it's kind of funny that I got overlooked because it was banned alongside a bunch of other more meta-defining cards and in fact it was most likely banned because they were also Banning grinder Golem finally as it was definitely a much more problem car to the meta which was also a token generating machine could number 42 Galaxy Tomahawk be unbanned the answer to this question is definitely no its ability is still basically a plus five and card Advantage even today and tokens have not gotten any weaker and are just as strong today as they were back in 2019 and if anything there's probably more ways to go into Galaxy Tomahawk now which would incentivize it not being unbanned even more how could they fix number 42 Galaxy Tomahawk to be unbanned if they made it so the tokens can't be used as link materials that would do it additionally if they just allowed you to summon a finite amount of tokens instead of filling up your board with them they might be able to limit the potential of the card like maybe only one token per Detachment of an xc's material or they could just limit it to three like mecho phantombe so robredon and then also have the same restriction where you can't link summon for the rest of the turn rather than limiting the token said never being usable as linked materials and next up we have nightmare mermaid this is a link one monster which simply requires any nightmare monsters as materials except another copy of itself and has the effect that when it's link summoned you can discard one card to special someone a nightmare monster from your deck and then if this card was co-lingual uses the fact you get to draw a card additionally all monsters on the field lose a thousand attack in defense unless they're co-linked so nightmare mermaid is basically a one card setup combo play since the ability to special summon a monster from your deck is super strong especially when it's attached to a link one monster although one of the caveats of nightmare mermaid is that there's only three main deck nightmares in the game so most of the time you're bringing this card out on top of a link to nightmare card and of the three targets you can bring out from the deck there are only two of note nightmare corrupter ebley was an option where it has a passive effect that the owner of this card cannot special summon except Link monsters and it had the ability to special some itself to your opponent side of the field if it was sent to the graveyard so if you special summon it with nightmare mermaid you could then use it for a link summon in order to give it to your opponent in order to have a soft lock on your opponent's special summons where they'd be forced to use ebly in some kind of Link summoned before doing any of their other plays however the real power of nightmare mermaid was definitely orcas nightmare to the point where when nightmare mermaid was running around the meta a lot of people theorized that orca's nightmare would probably get banned because it just worked way too well with mermaid now what orca's nightmare does is while it's on the field it can't be destroyed by battle with a link monster and it's a real effect is its graveyard effect where you can banish this card from your graveyard in order to Target one monster control then send one dark machine monster from your deck to the graveyard except another copy of itself in order to increase that Monster's attack by the level the monster sent times 100 but you can't special summon monsters for the rest of the turn except for dark monsters and most of the main Deck orgas cards are all dark machine type monsters so the best Target to send to the graveyard with this effect was usually orchest harp horror this card is actually banned because it has a super good graveyard effect where you can just bandage itself from the graveyard to special someone in work this card from your neck which you can use to special summon Orca symbol skeleton from the deck in order to get another card in the field it then once orca's symbol skeleton was used as material for a card usually to go into galatea the orcas automaton he could then use his graveyard effect as special summon any orcas monster from your graveyard and commonly this was just used to bring galatea back to the field which is a link to Orcas monster that allows you to reset your orcas monsters that are banished in order to set an orca's spell or trap card from your deck which was usually used on Orcas Crescendo orcas Crescendo is a counter trap Omni negate that also has a graveyard effect to recycle one of your orcus monsters that are banished by either adding it to your hand or just adding another orcas monster from your deck to your hand instead which has got to be one of the best graveyard search effects in the game and galate can also be used as the full material to go into dingersu the orchest of the evening star which was their boss monster that could non-target non-destroy remove one of your opponent's cards on and summon or attach one of your banished machine type monsters to it as a material which could allow you to reuse something like orcased harpour if it was attached because it also has the effect that while it's on the field if any card or cards you controlled would be destroyed you can detach one of its materials instead so it provided blanket protection to your entire field and all six of these cards are worth mentioning alongside nightmare mermaid because simply going into Nightmare mermaid with any cards in your hand allowed you to end on dengursu pretty easily while also having the game set up so you can reuse those orcas monsters again on your next turn the amount of advantage that all of this provided is kind of hard to calculate because specific decks could get even more Advantage out of it if they were going into things like Phantom Knight to the Rusty bardouche but suffice to say it was at least a plus three and card Advantage even if it took a few turns in order to see the full potential of that card advantage and on screen I'll be showing an example of this with Phantom Knights and not abusing any other engines which might allow the combos to extend even further it's pretty easy to end your first turn going plus three immediately not even counting how the graveyard is set up for the next turn to be used to get even more Advantage just by the very nature that a lot of the cards involved have hard ones Returns on their effects although Rusty bardish is kind of overpowered which is why that card was banned shortly after it came out and was only released from the ban list after nightmare mermaid was banned and didn't allowed to be the middleman to all their combos anymore and as you can probably see mermaid itself is not the full problem with this combo it's just the thing that allows orca's combos to start from pretty much any deck using any two monsters kind of like how preda planned Verte Anaconda allows you to turn any two monsters into red eyes dark Dragoon nightmare mermaid was just a little bit better because it gave you more Advantage than just getting a single or strong boss monster on the field because it also sets you up for later turns because of just how much recursion the whole engine had if you were able to count the additional advantage of just the orcas cards in the mermaid combo from only getting a single nightmare mermaid on the field you're looking at a plus 5 in potential card advantage over the course of a few turns from that first single summon of mermaid because of how the orcas cards just reuse their effects thanks to Orcas Crescendo ningersu orcus of the evening star so the deck that took advantage of it the most were dark Warriors Luna lights and of course pure orchest X although it was also just used a whole bunch of other things like Grand maju Cyber Dragons spirals Thunder Dragons dinosaurs Goki and even Sky Strikers the orcas engine was just very good and worked a whole bunch of decks that didn't even use dark monsters and because they could start all of these combos was just getting two monsters on the board thanks to mermaid it was kind of obvious which card need to be hit in all of those combos so after nightmare mermaid was hit the orcus engine which was able to accomplish all that Advantage was still seeing heavy competitive play so they eventually banned orcas tarpor as well and that finally stopped orcas engines from reigning Supreme in every deck as an engine they had to ban two of the best article cards in the orcas engine in order to finally stop everyone from using it all the time nightmare mermaid was banned in October of 2019. four months after the Phantom night of Rusty bar dish was banned with orcas harp horror being banned in January 2020 only a short three months later could nightmare mermaid be unbanned probably not as long as orca's nightmare exists and allows it to be a pseudo orcas card hey they were to ever ban orca's nightmare then nightmare mermaid might be okay to be unbanned although it would still be a very strong card even with only nightmare corrupter ebley being its best Target the big problem with nightmare mermaid was just how it allowed pretty much every deck access to the orcus engine even with orcas harp Horus still currently banned it's still probably too much generic access to the rest of the engine the way they were finally able to occur tail orcas dominant as one of the best engines in the game was by eliminating the two cards that allowed you to special some of the combo pieces from the deck and of the two pieces that could special some of the combo pieces from the deck nightmare mermaid was definitely the bigger problem of the two although they were both really strong it's kind of crazy to think nightmare mermaid and orcased harpor were both legal in the game at the same time and it makes perfect sense why every deck tried to include the engine if they could even skystriker decks who don't like to play main deck monsters used it as I didn't even mention all all the fact that nightmare mermaid was also used as just part of u-link lockdowns because reducing all your opponent's monsters attack by 1000 was actually pretty good as was the placement of its arrow and used this with the other nightmare Monsters the nightmare archetype has got to be one of the strongest archetypes ever added to the game how could they fix nightmare mermaid to be unbanned what's funny about every mermaid in comparison to nightmare Goblin is that its effect is special summon a monster from the deck is already tied to its archetype and its archetype is incredibly small there are only three main deck monsters remember and one of those main deck monsters is also an orcas card which is what caused all of its problems so if they just excluded its ability to summon orca's nightmare that would probably be enough but that's not really a thing that cards get with erratas so if you wanted to just restrict it from not being able to bring out orca's nightmare at all it could have the Restriction where it only works with special summon a cybers or fairy nightmare monster from your deck that way you could exclude orca's nightmare without actually having to name it specifically in the context although even bringing out ibly was pretty good but nowhere near as strong as orca's nightmare generally special 70 monsters from the deck on an extra Deck monster has always proven to be strong so even if they did just exclude orcas Nightmares on one of its targets it might still eventually become a problem in the future but I think that's definitely the best way to fix this card would be just to exclude that one card as one of its targets although another change that could be made if not to make the card so convoluted is to only allow the card to special summon an orcas monster from your hand the the card would still be useful for its link potential and its on Field Effect to reduce attack and defense your opponent's monsters but would no longer be broken by giving you access to the orcus engine from the deck as it would just be a mediocre way to get a card from your hand on the field instead as we'll be starting off with Blaster Dragon Ruler of the infernos Dragon rulers have got to be the strongest deck in the history of the game that never made tier zero status it's also technically not an archetype because the cards never refer to the Dragon Ruler tag and is more of a series of dragon type support that is then divided evenly into support for four different attributes as well as all of the Dragon rulers share the same three basic rules they're all level 7 monsters and have high stats they're all Dragon type and they all share a variation of these three effects where each one has a hand effect where you can discard the Dragon Ruler from your hand in addition to a monster that shares its attribute in order to perform some special function for Blaster its hand effect allowed you to discard itself and another fire monster in order to destroy one card on the field then all the dragon rulers had graveyard effects which doubled as hand effects where you could special some of the Dragon Ruler from your hand or graveyard by banishing two other monsters who were either dragon type or a monster that shared that Dragon Roller's attribute so for Blaster you could banish two dragon type monsters Two Fire attribute monsters or any combination of those two in order to special summon itself from your hand or graveyard with the downside that would return to your hand during your opponent's end phase then they all had a banish effect where if the card was banished you could add 1 dragon type monster that share the dragon Roller's attribute from your deck to your hand so in blaster's case if it was banished you could add a fire dragon type monster from your deck to your hand and all three of these effects shared a hard once per turn so you couldn't discard this card from your hand to the graveyard in order to destroy a card in the field then special summoned from the graveyard then have it banish later on to get a search so they were supposed to be inherently limited by that hard once per turn shared amongst all three of the effects so only one of those effects per turn however this ended up being even then a little bit of an oversight generally cards that allow you to special some themselves from the graveyard are pretty strong or that allow you to gain Advantage from the graveyard in some way because it almost turns the graveyard into a second hand where the dragon rollers literally use the graveyard as a resource in order to gain advantage on the field and since they allowed you to banish other Dragon rulers to activate their effects you were using the resource in your graveyard to generate more resource sources by getting searches off of those Dragon roller banishes and because they all had two hand effects the deck was impossible to Brick with even though it was full of high-level monsters because they could just impact the field in some way with their hand effect or just break themselves out thanks to the baby rulers a series of support for the main deck monsters they could also be brought up the deck while putting resources into the graveyard Blaster has a baby ruler known as burner Dragon Ruler of Sparks which is a level 3 dragon type monster who has the effect in the hand where you can discard this card in addition to one dragon type or fire monster in order to special summon Blaster Dragon roller infernos from your deck the only downside was that monster could not attack the turn and the baby ruler has a hard one per turn on its effect so with the baby rulers also adding a way to get the dragon rulers out quicker as all four dragon rollers had their own baby roller with the exact same effect there was almost no way to draw badly with the deck every opening hand would allow get a dragon ball on the field or the graveyard and then setting up your advantage from there at the time the dragon rollers came out they also had two really good rank 7 xc's monsters known as Mecca phantombeast Draco sack and number 11 big eye Mecha Phantom B streak osak allowed you to use any two dragon rollers to create a monster in the field who could generate two tokens and then tribute one of those tokens to destroy Khan in the field and also while tokens existed on the field the card could not be destroyed by battle or card effects and number 11 big eye allowed you to use any two dragon rollers in order to basically steal one of your opponent's monsters with its mind control effect that did not return the card at the end of the turn like most mind control effects do you just got to steal one of your opponent's monsters permanently with the only downside that big eye could not attack that turn and being able to take control of one of your opponent's monsters is inherently a plus two and card Advantage the dragon rollers also had access to Synchro monsters and easy access to cards like light and darkness Dragon who could come out and start negating things and then float into a dragon roller on its death they also had cards like super Rejuvenation which allowed them to refill their hand at the end of their turn when they just use their Dragon Ruler effects like normal from the hand they could also use sacred sword of the Seven Stars in order to banish a Dragon Ruler from their hand in order to go plus one while searching out a card and the card returned from the different dimension was still legal at this time so they could just recover all the dragon rulers on their next turn you see the biggest problem with the Dragon Ruler archetype was you couldn't really cause them to lose Advantage if you destroyed the monster it would just come back on the next turn or it would just become a resource for the dragon roller to use on the next turn if you banish the card it would just search if you returned it to the hand it was basically the same as being in the graveyard or even better since some of them had really good hand effects the only way to deny Dragon rulers of Advantage was to literally return them to the deck and even that wasn't much of a hindrance because of the baby rulers allowing you to bring them out of the deck very efficiently it's almost like the orcas deck to an extent they're an archeted monsters who all have effects that allow them to banish themselves in the graveyard in order to gain some kind of Advantage but they all have the big downside where each of them have a hard once per turn on their effects and also restricts you to a summon that turn so you're locked into only dark after it monsters being allowed to special summon for the rest of the turn after you use any of their effects and the orcas deck is really good it's all tons of competitive play and it only got slowed down when they had their power card orcased harp horror band The Dragon rollers are kind of like the orchest Arc Type except imagine if every orcus also had a hand effect and then could also gain Advantage when they were banished while also removing the restrictions on special summons of other monsters in the turn so if a watered-down version of dragon rulers saw a ton of competitive success you can imagine dragon rulers in their Prime although funny thing is despite how completely broken the archetype is it never made it to tier zero status in the exact same set which released Dragon rulers they also released the Spellbook archetype including Spellbook of judgment which I will be talking about in a future explaining the bandless video Spellbook of judgment was such a powerful car that it single-handedly stopped Dragon rulers from making tier zero status because tier zero requires 65 representation or higher at top events and because there was another brokenly overpowered archetype in the game at the time Dragon rulers never got that high representation instead most of the high representation was split between Spellbook and Dragon Ruler players with a smaller piece of the pie taken up by the evil swarms because they could kind of counter both of those archetypes in September of 2013 Konami banned all of the baby rulers as well as banding Spellbook of judgment as a way to try to reign in the power of the Dragon rulers without having to ban their entire archetype with the baby rulers banned they no longer had easy access to all the dragon rollers from the deck and they also hit a couple of the other choice cards around the dragon rollers to try to limit their insane recoverability although this didn't really stop them the hitch of the baby rulers was not as bad as the hit to spell books and dragon rulers appeared in about 50 percent of all top spots after this hit and was definitely the best deck in the game at the time but still never made it to tier zero status funny enough so with dragon rollers never slowing down and seen consistent success Konami tried again and limited all four of the Dragon rulers to one copy per deck in January of 2014. you would think such heavy limitations to their archetype the dragon rulers would finally stop seeing play but no all of the Dragon rollers saw consistent play in various decks as an excellent engine because the way the dragon rollers were designed allowed them to support other Decks that share their attribute if there is the deck that primarily used Earth monsters it was guaranteed to have a copy of Redux Dragon Ruler of the boulders in it if it used water monsters it was guaranteed to have title Dragon rule of the waterfalls and etc etc because the advantage it could give the deck even at one copy was just worth including it because of how easy it was to use eventually in April 2015 after consistent play with the dragon rollers never dropping out of the meta they finally banned all four dragon rulers but the reason they finally got them all banned was because number 95 of Galaxy eyes Dark Matter Dragon was released this is an exes monster that allows you to send three dragons from your deck to the graveyard on its summon which would have made it too good with dragon rollers in the game and everyone was kind of tired of seeing Dragon Villas everywhere anyway eventually number 95 Dark Matter Dragon got banned as well and I'll be talking about that card in a future explaining the band list video as well then four years later in July of 2019 Konami unbanned a single Dragon Ruler Tempest Dragon Ruler of Storms and only to one copy per deck has kind of a way to test the waters to see if maybe they were okay in the current meta and we're still kind of in the air on that verdict so can Blaster Dragon Ruler of infernos be unbanned probably not currently Tempest is unbanned but it had one of the weakest effects and attributes of the Dragon rollers and even then it still then joins some Niche success Blaster had one of the best hand effects allowing it to actually destroy cards in the field and also the highest attack points at 2800. there is currently a meta Deck full of fire attribute monsters who also love to be in the graveyard which Blaster could totally help out they've only released to one copy it would probably just be a powerful staple card as the dragon rollers are kind of broken when played together so it would probably have to come back by itself or without any of the other Dragon rulers being limited as well how could the card fix to be unbanned the real problem with the card is it doesn't really have any downsides it's able to gain Advantage from everywhere and use everything as materials for its summon if they simply removed its ability to special summon itself that would kinda fix all of its problems although just removing one of its effects isn't really good for fixing a card I probably add restrictions to it where you could probably only special some in dragon type monsters during the turn it uses any of its effects give it a hard once per turn that's shared amongst Dragon Ruler archetype and not just the card itself or maybe pull what they did with dotscaper and give it a once per dual invitation on all of its effects instead of a hard ones per turn while still having a limitation where you can only use one of the effects per turn because if you remove that then they would be even more broken than they were before since most players only care about their first turn plays anyways so restrictions on the summons when it brings itself out similar to the orcus and once per dual restrictions on their effects similar to dotscaper update this card is still banned in the ocg and TCG but it's actually limited to one copy in master duel and is seeing some success in Galaxy Tomahawk turbo decks alongside tempus there but it's not really taking the meta by storm either the community at large is of the opinion it might also be unbanned in either the TCG or ocg sometime soon as well but probably not redox or title as they're both still kinda bonkers next up in this video we have redox Dragon Ruler of Boulders this is the earth attribute Dragon Ruler who was banned for the same reasons I discussed in the Blaster segments and has all of the same effects as Blaster where it can special summon itself from your hand or graveyard by banishing a combination of Earth or dragon type monsters from your hand or graveyard it has a hand effect to send an earth monster from your hand to the graveyard and it has a banish effect which allows you to add an Earth Dragon type monster from your deck to your hand when it's banished now redox's hand effect the one thing which is different for all the dragon rulers was this card could discard itself in one Earth monster to then Target any one monster in your graveyard and special summon that Target not just Earth monsters not just dragon monsters but literally any monster in your graveyard was the target for this card to bring out with its hand effect do you want to know which decks use redox Dragon roller Boulders when it was still live if a deck had Earth monsters in it then they ran this card if they didn't have Earth monsters but had the options to use Earth monsters they would run those options so they could use this card this was kind of one of the things with dragon rulers there was really no reason not to run them because they had such good effects especially one like redox which allowed you to literally monster reborn while putting itself in the graveyard to be used later for more advantage there is no downside to the special Summit you could just bring it out an attack or defense position it didn't negate the card's effects it stayed out forever and could Target anything it's probably the strongest of all the dragon roller hand effects even though Blaster also has a really good one as well you can see why they didn't choose blaster or redox as one of the Dragon rollers to limit to one in order to test the waters because they are both kind of really good can redox Dragon roller Boulders be unbanned same with Blaster probably not unless it was the only dragon ruler unbanned as their kind of broken when played along with each other although redox has a ridiculous hand effect as well which might extra put him on the band list if they were to limit Dragon rulers individually redox would probably be at the bottom of the list of priority targets because if it's a really strong hand effect how could they fix this card so it could be unbanned in addition to the parameters I set with Blaster giving it actual downsides during the turn it brings itself out and maybe slapping once per dual effects on all three of its effects I would also propose some kind of limitation on its ability to monster reborn a card from the graveyard at least negating the effect of the monster brings out like almost all of the monsters that can bring out monsters or having the monster banish itself if it leaves the field because currently it doesn't really have any restrictions on such a powerful effect which is on top of everything else that's broken about the card next up we have title Dragon Ruler of waterfalls this is the water attribute Dragon Ruler who has all the same effects as the previous two except it's allowed to use water monsters as well as dragon type monsters and its hand effect is they can discard itself in one water monster from your hand to the graveyard in order to send any one monster from your deck to the graveyard now there's a card on the ban list called Laval chain which is a rank 4xes monster who has an effect that allows a detach one of its materials to send one card from your deck to the graveyard it is currently banned for this effect there is a card limit on the ban list known as foolish burial which is simply a spell card that makes you go minus one in order to send one monster from your deck to the graveyard this card is currently limited to one copy per deck because this effect is too strong title is literally foolish burial except one that allows you to gain Advantage from the card later on because of all of its other effects I'm sure you can see why title was not the Dragon Ruler pick to be unbanned because Tempest is the least broken of the four can title Dragon Ruler waterfalls be unbanned probably not its foolish burial effect is pretty strong how can the card be fixed to be unbanned I would also propose the same limitations on this card as the other two restrictions on the special summon in a once per dual effect in all three of its effects although I would also add restrictions where you can't use the monster you send to the graveyard during the turn it use the tanned effect similar to the Trap card peaceful burial being able to send monsters from your deck to the graveyard without a real downside is too powerful next up in this video we have orchest harp horror a non-dragon ruler card although to round off this video I decided to add in a couple of band cards which also have graveyard effects since that totally fits in the theme with all the dragon rulers orcas harporter has a graveyard effect where you can banish this card from the graveyard to special summon any one orcas monster from your deck except another copy of this card also for the rest of the turn you connect special summon monsters except dark monsters and the card has a hard once per turn on this effect now being able to special summon monsters from the deck is one of the strongest effects in the game being able to do this from your graveyard is a kinda broken especially since the targets you can bring out also have graveyard effects that allow them to gain even more Advantage the York is deck is also able to recycle harp horror back into the graveyard so they could realistically use the effect of harp horror every single turn assuming their opponent didn't just completely shut them down with a Floodgate and since orcas decks had access to cards like dengursu the orchest of the evening star a powerful boss monster that can non-target move cards on the field and provide protection to your entire field and also easy access to the Omni negate card orcas Crescendo and endless recoverability with their Link monsters the Dorcas archetype was a very powerful deck which was bordering on tier zero status in a couple of events turns out gaining Advantage from cards from your graveyard always works out pretty well for decks As proved with the dragon rollers even if the cards have heavy restrictions attached to them like the orcas do head on top the orcas field spell card orchestrated Babel they could use orcas harp horror during their opponent's turn to double up on its effect where they could use the effect effectively two times before your next turn happened as the field spell card would turn all of your orcased effects into Quick effects including the ones from your graveyard so orcas hark horror provided a lot of advantage and was very easy to use recycle and its limitations weren't that big a deal because the dark attribute is the best attribute in the game so there are a lot of good targets you can bring out even under the restrictions like borosaur Dragon for easy otks in fact it was such not a big deal that the orcas engine was using a whole bunch of different non-pure orchest decks so almost every meta deck of the time was just some variation of the orcus engine with something else on top of it orcas harporer was banded January of 2020. can orgas harp horror be unbanned probably but not at three copies the effect is powerful and it allows the orcas decks and engines a little bit too much consistency where a single orc is hard part in the graveyard can set up all of your combos having the card banned was a good way of stopping the orcas engine even after cards like nightmare mermaid and Phantom Knights of the rusty bar dish were banned but recently Rusty bardish was unbanned and they don't really need better ways of getting that broken card out so while I think it could probably be unbanned in the future I wouldn't say the immediate future how could the card be fixed to be unbanned if they gave this card a once per duel it would still probably be good and once per dual effects don't fix every card I saw a lot of comment in the last video about just slapping once per duels on everything and while I did suggest that myself for the dragon rulers I'm not even sure if that would limit them that much orcas harp horror at once per duel would still give you immediate Advantage from the graveyard and allow you to set up all of your combos which is what most combo decks care about anyway there are cards on the ban lists which have once per dual effects so that's proof enough that it doesn't fix everything for orcas harp horror I'd probably just add more restrictions on its effect to special summon a card from the deck because currently it's too good with the kind of Advantage it gives you so if you had a tribute a monster on the field or discard a card from your hand in addition to the card Vanishing itself from the graveyard I think that would kind of bounce it out a little bit even though you're still getting targeted special summons from the deck update this card is still banned in the TCG but unbanned in the ocg and master duel and doesn't really see any competitive play due to power creep finally catching up to the card and due to the fact that nightmare mermaid is still banned so as long as they leave mermaid band they can probably unban this card in the TCG too and for the next monster in the video we're going to be talking about fairy tale snow this is a level 4 monster which has the effect that when it's summoned you basically get a book of a moon effect where you get to flip one face at monster opponent controls face down and remember when a monster is Flip Face Down it can't be used as material for extra deck plays outside of fusion summons or very specific types of alternative summoning conditions so it's a really good way to interrupt plays if used during your opponent's turn which goes into this card's second effect if this card is in your graveyard as a quick effect you can banish seven other cards on the field hand or graveyard in order to special some in this card which then allows you to use its first effect to flip one of your opponent's cards face down and just a note none of these effects are once per turn or once per chain for that matter if your opponent tries to negate the effect of fairy tale snow in your graveyard you can just use its effect again during the same chain to bring it out the only way to stop fairy tale snow from coming out is to stop it from having resources to banish to bring itself out which is supposed to be a lot at seven cards that was originally how this card was supposed to be balanced you really shouldn't have seven cards to bandage in order to bring this card out multiple times however this card was played in a couple of strong decks over the years including being a staple addition and that grass look screener decks which could meal about 20 cards from the deck during your first turn and of course the light sworn decks which are all about Milling cards although it wasn't until Thunder Dragons came out of the card finally got banned the card was always good it always allowed you to convert resources in your graveyard into a monster on the field who also doubled his disruption during your opponent's turn so you could use it for extract plays and then use it to interrupt your opponent during your next turn however Thunder Dragons were able to double dip on its effect as they have four monsters in their archetype who gain advantage or effects from being banished so using fairy tale snow and Thunder Dragons allows me to go plus foreign card advantage while also being able to reset their hand and Mulligan if they wanted even more Advantage if you played copies of dotscape or a giant Rex it was also easy to get fairy tales now in the graveyard thanks to brilliant Fusion which could send fairy tale snow directly from the deck to the graveyard while going plus one at card advantage and setting up an extra normal summon which is why fairy tale snow eventually got banned in January of 2019. Thunder Dragons were taking advantage of it a little bit too hard and it was already very good before then can fairy tale snow be unbanned currently brilliant Fusion is banned that grass looks Greener is banned thunder dragon colossus's band and you would think with all three of these cards banned it would be fine to unban fairy tale snow since all the problem cards have already gone from the game that allowed you to kind of take advantage of it the most except even with the good boss monster Thunder Dragons being banned they could still make use of the effect and gain a whole bunch of advantage in other ways there's also currently El shadal construct who is unbanned who was still banned when fairy tale snuggles running around and she has a deck that can use l-shadowl Fusion which can send fairy tale snow directly from the deck to the graveyard who allows you to easily get in the graveyard in a deck that also fills up your graveyard with cards pretty easily the card was also strong ever since it came out and more and more meta decks are dumping cards in the graveyard like crazy and fairy tale snow allows you to convert all those cards sitting in the graveyard and doing nothing into Advantage without downsides and with the added option to disrupt your opponent so the card probably still can't be unbanned even today how could they fix the card to be unbanned well if it banished the cards face down and had a hard once per turn on its effect that might be good enough currently the big problem with the card is a lack of a once per turn so if you just dump half your deck into the graveyard on your first turn because of a whole bunch of combos you can turn all those cards into Advantage thanks to a single fairy tale snow although if he had a hard once per turn you'd still gain Advantage but nowhere near as much and if the cards were banished face down then you couldn't gain Advantage from the thunder dragon cards which would kind of solve the problem so this one seems like kind of an easy fix update this card actually did get unbanned then got banned again in an attempt to hit tier limits but when it was out and about again Thunder Dragons could not use it to Great benefits like they did when they were meta all those years ago so as long as there isn't a super mil heavy deck around or a deck that can sense no to the graveyard very easily it's really not that big of a deal anymore seating your graveyard with on banished effects takes too much work for Snow's payoff when you can just play your Mainline engine instead which usually with modern metadex gives you more Advantage anyway however the reason the car got banned again was because they keep making easy ways to send this car to the graveyard and they keep making really good graveyard focused decks and for the next monster in this list we have Eclipse wyvern this is a level 4 dragon type monster who has an effect that if this card is sent to the graveyard you can banish a level 7 or higher light or dark dragon type monster from your deck then if this card in your graveyard is banished you can add the monster banished by this card's effect to your hand so at first glance it doesn't seem that powerful it has to be sent to the graveyard and that it has to be moved from the graveyard somewhere else with something else in order to perform the search and that used to be enough of a limitation where the card did see competitive play but not like a broken amount that's mainly because it's only good Targets in the past were red eyes darkness metal dragon and dark arm Dragon they were good cards but you couldn't really take advantage of the effect that easily either then guard dragons came onto the scene cards like a guard Dragon LP allow you to bring the card out of the deck very easily and cards like chaos Dragon leviadir became the best targets for Eclipse to search out from the deck chaos dragon levineer has a combination of effects that allow to either Shuffle one card from your opponent's hand back into their deck or to non-target destroy 2 cards in the field so it's a very good card to search out from the deck especially if you're able to do an effortlessly through Eclipse wyvern Eclipse wavering could also be recycled thanks to the new chaos Emperor the dark dragon of Armageddon who was both a Target to be searched out by the card can add the card back to your hand after it does its search and can even banish the card from the graveyard to allow it to search again and of course there's still the targets of red eyes darkness metal dragon but really the main reason this card was banned was because of its easy availability to search out chaos Dragon levia near a card which is still currently seen competitive success even with the lack of a proper search Target and since one of the best decks in the current meta as of making this video is Dragon link a deck all about dragon type monsters the nice combination of chaos monsters and Chaos Dragon levianir I don't see this card being unbanned anytime soon the eclipse wave Rune was banned in July of 2019. can the card be unbanned not right now but maybe after there are some hits to the dragonling deck and if chaos dragon levian ear or guard Dragon LP ever get banned then it could probably come off without too much difficulty the card has always seemed play in the past but it's currently banned because it's a little bit too good with some of the newer support that was released over the last couple of years namely the whole guard Dragon archetype in livionir how can the card be chained to be unbanned the card should really have a hard once per turn on its effect part of the reason the card is banned is because it's not once per turn you can get multiple searches off of multiple copies of this card or even recycling the effects thanks to cards like dark dragon of Armageddon that's not really why the card is banned though but it definitely contributed to its band status so if they did that the card could probably come off the list for just being a Searcher that can't be abused that badly update they did eventually ban guard Dragon LP but now we have a thing known as Bastille Dragon Link in the meadow which would love to play this card so it would probably be stronger than ever than it was first banned and last up with this video we have samsara Lotus this is a level 1 monster who has the effect that during your end phase if you control no spell or trap cards you can special summon this card from your graveyard in Phase up attack position then this card controller takes 1 000 damage during each other's standby faces basically a punishment if you happen to have the card around during your next turn the card was always just a worse version of trueborn frog which has a similar effect except special summons itself during your standby phase so you're able to get the card immediately as your turn starts in order to use it as tribute fodder for cards like kaius the shadow Monarch samsara Lotus could not be used in the same way since it brought itself out during the end phase and with zero attack It could only bring itself out in attack position and then if it managed to survive until your next turn so that you could use it as a tribute you would be punished by taking a thousand points of damage so the card didn't really see any competitive play until Link monsters came out and a combination of three cards allowed you to use samsara lotus in order to abuse its lack of a once per turn the three cards are trickstar black cat bat nightmare Cerberus and topologic bomber Dragon topologic bomber dragon has the effect that if a monster is special summon to a zone that a link monster points to this card will automatically destroy all cards in the main monster zones trickstar black catband has the effect that if the card this monster is pointing to Ascent to the graveyard you can inflict 200 points of effect damage to your opponent and Nightmare Cerberus simply has the effect that co-linked monsters cannot be destroyed by card effects so if you simply have these three cards in the field with nightmare Cerberus and trickstar black Cat-Back co-linked with each other then during the end phase you could just bring samsara Lotus out of the graveyard to the spot where trickstar black cat man was pointing to causing topologic bomber Dragon to destroy all the main monster zones which would only destroy samsar Lotus since both Cerberus and Cat bat would be immune to destruction effects this would cause samsara Lotus to go to the graveyard and Flake 200 damage to your opponent then since there was no once per turn on samsar lotus's effect it could just come back and do it again because there's also no once per turn on trickstar black catback's effect or topologic bomber dragons effect so you could do this as many times as he needed in order to reduce your opponent's life points to zero which could be set up on your first turn pretty easily and with the starting life points of 8 000 you simply need to perform this little Loop 40 times in a row so rather than ban any of the Link monsters involved in this combo they just banned samsara Lotus because the Link monsters were kind of new when this combo was introduced and they generally like to ban older cards rather than the newer ones if there's a problem with their interactions and no one was using samsara Lotus and anything besides this ftk when it was introduced to the game other than maybe some gimmick deck that would use two copies of them during the end phase with Arcana Force the world to skip their opponent's turn endlessly and they had already given a rod to treborn frog in the past to slap up once per turn on its effect although they didn't do that to samsar Lotus as well because no one was really using it so since it kind of slipped under the aurata radar they just banned the card instead samsara Lotus was banned in September of 2018. can samsar lotus be unbanned in its current form no as the game progresses old cards that don't have once per turns on special summon effects are generally ripe for future abuse and even if they banned one of the Three Link monsters in the current ftk combo some would probably just figure out something else later on anyway how could the card fix to be unbanned simply give it a hard once per turn same thing they did to the tree born frog and that would kind of fix everything about it the card is broken because it doesn't have a once per turn so simply giving it one would allow you to unban the card without incident first up we have destroodo the Lost dragon's prison distrito is a level 7 Tuner monster which has the effect that if it's in your hand or graveyard and you control a level 6 or lower monster you can pay half your life points a special summon this card from either of those two places and also this card's level will be reduced by the level the monster you selected and also the card will place itself at the bottom of the deck if it leaves the field and all of this with a hard ones per turn so basically the card can bring itself out very easily even at the cost of half your life points and has a couple of other restrictions in order to make it so you can't reuse the card over and over I.E hard ones per turn and returning to the deck instead of getting banished or something else the card was always pretty good it basically allows you to bring out a level 17 grow monster no problem since its level will always adjust to the monster you Target in order to bring the card out so if you have a level 4 monster on the field its level would lower by four and it would become a level 3 monster on the field allowing you to go into level 7 Synchro monsters and that was the main use of Destro the fact that you could bring it out of the graveyard meant it was an excellent combo piece for Monsters or cards that had foolish burial type effects to send it to the graveyard and since it was dark and dragon it was very easy to send to the graveyard with stuff like armageddonite or Dragon Ravine so it technically wasn't a one card level 7 Synchro but there were some cards I could allowed to use destroyo in order to essentially become a one card level 7 Syncro if you could send it directly to the graveyard and even if it was in your hand the fact that it was so versatile and alleged a special assuming itself from the hand as well meant it wasn't a brick and was basically always useful then an event happened on March 19th of 2020 where a little old card called Chris drawn how kui fibracks was going to be released which was an excellent combo tool that only needed a Tuner monster on the field plus another card in order to bring itself out and since destruto was real easy at getting itself on the field especially from the graveyard which is much more important than from the hand meant it would be too easy for the car to be used in how queeferbacks combos since it was always good even without how queefer racks in the game so the card was banned in April 2020 in anticipation for the release of questron alquiferbacks since they knew it would be too strong with the addition of that excellent tuner support and the ability to turn destriato into a full Board of negates in any deck that had the extra deck and Garnet space for the combo pieces so can destroodo the Lost dragon's risen Beyond banned not really another reason it was too strong was because of the changes of Master Rule 5 or Mass to rule 4 revisions which allowed Synchro monsters to come out a lot easier without Link monsters since they changed the rules to lie to special summon monsters on the extra deck to zones other than the extra monster zones or ones that link monsters are pointing to except for pendulums and since estruda was already seen a whole bunch of play in master rule 4 it would be way stronger in the new unrestricted format so it was probably due for a band anyway how can the card be fixed to be unbanned well if they banned christrawn halcui fibracks it could probably come off the banless but only probably another one of the contributing factors to its band status was just how many good Link monsters combo with the card itself which wasn't really a big deal before the master will revisions even without fibracks destroodo would still be strong and there's a lot of really good synchros to go into like Boral load Savage dragon or strictly speaking of just level 7 Synchro monsters fa Don dragster who allows you to negate speller trap cards destroodo already has a lot of restrictions on it to try to balance it out so if you were to fix the card so it could be unbanned without Banning a whole bunch of other cards including Chris drawn how Qui for Brax what you could do is make it so you can only Synchro Summon after using its effect because currently it's kinda strong when combined with Link monsters and I think that would kind of restrict it enough to only be used in its intended way currently destroodo is just all kinds of strong because he he has like the perfect attribute in type as well as a whole bunch of restrictions already where it's kind of hard to just put more of them on him other than just restricting his interactions with Link monsters update they did eventually unban this card after they banned Hulk also forgive the mispronunciations on how can this section of the video a little context is that at the time of helk's release no one knew how to say its name correctly even Konami avoided a direct question on how to pronounce his English name properly eventually the community collectively decided to call it hockey fibrex but if you go back and watch videos from the time period when it was first released from other YouTubers you'll notice most of them saying it weirdly too anyways as soon as destroodo got unbanned it immediately started seeing play again but funnily enough it was mainly used to go into Baron a level 10 Synchro monster despite it being intended to be a level 7 synral support next up we have black Wing steam the cloak this card has the effect that when it leaves the field you get to special summon a level 1 token to your side of the field this effect is not once per turn so if you have a way to con constantly remove them from the field and bring it back you can theoretically summon an infinite amount of tokens it goes on to have another effect that allows it to bring itself back to the field where if this card is in your graveyard you contribute a monster to special summon this card from the graveyard although this effect will be applied once per duel and if it's brought out in this way it can't be used as a Synchro material monster unless all the other synchron materials are Black Wing monsters which doesn't matter if you just use it for halcui 5 racks to go into other Combos and then just use the tokens which have no restrictions on them to go into more Link monsters this card was already strong before how Queen fibrox was in the game because of its ability to leave an endless amount of tokens behind when you bring it out and due to its ability to bring itself back a single normal summon a Blackwing steam the cloak then send it to the graveyard with a link summon would bring out a token and that token would allow you to bring it back and then go into another link summon and bring out another token this one card could net you a plus one in card economy if used for link summons the card was obviously balanced around synchros which is why it existed in the game for so long without too much issue kind of in the same way as Blackwing go through the vague Shadow the card was obviously balanced around Synchro summons and became broken once a new extra Dex summoning method was added to the game although steam the cloak wasn't as strong as gofu not into halki 5 racks came in and allowed you to open up its original only a plus one in card Advantage into way more depending on how you use the card in combo pieces which could easily end on a board of full negates like I showed you the beginner this video because on its own a single blackwings team the club can allow you to end on a link 3 monster if you add on Chris drawn halcui fibracks into the middle of that combo you get way more advantage that it's kind of ridiculous blackwing's team the cloak was banned in April 2020 alongside Destro in preparation for Chris Tron how queeferbacks being added to the game and of course the do masterful revisions tuner monsters that can special some of themselves in the graveyard are just too good alongside Link monsters especially one specific link monster can blackwig steam the cloak be unbanned assuming they also ban kristron how Qui for Brax probably not again the other reason the card was banned was because of the masterful revisions and the fact this card can summon an infinite amount of tokens and the tokens can be used as Link monsters very easily as part of the reason why cards like link cross are considered overpowered all it does is bring out two token monsters that can't be used for link materials even if they banned halcui fibracks they still probably wouldn't be able to unban steam the cloak how can the card be fixed to be unbanned probably slapping a hard once per turn on its token summoning effect never go a long way to fix its problems but I don't think even that would be enough since just being able to bring out one token is more than good enough for its combo setup so instead probably update the restrictions on how it can be used like with the distrudo suggested fix only a line you do Synchro summons after this card brings itself out from the graveyard which would ruin its interaction with Link monsters completely and kind of make it usable in the way it was intended update this cart eventually got unbanned and is that one copy now and it sees almost zero competitive play and the reason for that is that modern meta decks just don't really link climb that much so there's no reason to use this card especially since Hulk is banned now too and the feud next it manages the competitive play in after its banding were actually just Blackwing decks next up we have glow up bulb this card simply has the effect that if it's in your graveyard you can send the top card of your deck to the graveyard in order to special summon it and it also has a once per dual restriction on this effect glow a bulb in Blackwing steam the cloak are good indications that not even once per dual restrictions can stop a card from being overpowered now global bulb was actually first banned in March of 2012 as it was always a really strong single enabler and they really wanted to stop people from using Synchro decks in the new xc's monsters came out so they banned a whole bunch of really good tuner and plant support in order to kind of force people to use the new axes monsters then as new axes monsters came out and they became much better than their first initial release they finally took glowbulb off the band list in October of 2015. about three years later and it really didn't do much in the meta by this point we had very strong exes monsters and even the new pendulums coming out so glowbulb only saw Niche success even though it had a really strong graveyard effect then when Link monsters came out Global bulb did see some new success in a couple of plant-based link decks but not really in the TCG more of an ocg thing where they got how Qui 5 racks early as well as Aroma sarafi Jasmine so the car got banned way earlier in the ocg than in the TCG although this video is about TCG banned list stuff for now anyway then in April of 2020 alongside destroodo and Blackwing Sting the cloak glow up bulb got banned in preparation for Chris drawn how queeferbacks being added to the game as with a single glow of bulb you could start all of the combos Associated to how queeferbacks is shown at the beginning of the video in order to easily end on a board of red eyes dark Dragoon Boral load Savage dragon Herald of the Arc Light true king of all calamities or even a nice combo of Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon equipped with dragon Buster destruction sword which gives you the double whammy of negating your opponent's monster effects while also locking them out of special summons from the extra deck of course you can't go into all of these monsters at the same time but you could kind of go into a combination of two of them pretty easily which all started with a single glow up bulb in your hand while also allowing you to add extra cards to the graveyard with its excellent Mill effect the conditions for bringing this card out of the graveyard are kind of a plus to a lot of decks that use the card currently you're able to gain too much Advantage from a single glow up bulb because tuners that can special some of themselves in the graveyard are incredibly strong in the current metagame that has the masterable revisions in place alongside powerful Link monsters like Chris drawn how quiferbacks link cross Union carrier and mecho Phantom Beast aurorodon can glow ball be unbanned if they banned Chris drawn halcui for Brax probably not if they also banned link cross and mecho Phantom Beast aurorodon in addition to halcui fibracks then maybe yeah I think it's still probably strong as long as there was excellent Synchro monsters to make use of its effect but currently its interactions are broken because of Link monsters and the master revisions how can the card be fixed to be unbanned well kind of like the other two suggestions just make it so you can only Synchro Summon after the card uses its effect that would limit its potential to be used with Link monsters and of course allow it to be used in its intended way or at the very least only be able to special summon Synchro monsters from the extra deck for the rest of the turn that way they can still be used in other combo pieces that don't involve Link monsters update they did ban link cross Hulk and Aurora Don and most people large in the competitive Community still think this car would be too strong the modern metagame a level 1 tuner with a beneficial cost for bringing itself out of the graveyard would just be amazing with how much people use Synchro monsters to end on next up in this video we have jet synchron this card is kind of like glow up bulb a level one tuner that can special summon itself from the graveyard only this card requires you to discard a card from your hand in order to perform the special summon so it's not an inherent plus one like lower bulb and instead a hand neutral effect since you can give up one card in your hand you control in order to bring out a card from the graveyard back to the field and the card doesn't have a once per dual restriction on this but the car does bandage itself when it leaves the field and does have a hard once per turn so while you may not be able to use it more than once per turn you can actually use the effect multiple times during the duel although the fact the card has a much harsher restriction on special summon than glow up bulb always just kind of made the card a worse glow of bulb that's why the card avoid the band list when how quick five racks is added to the game after the April 2020 ban lists and how could 5x was released jet synchron kinda shot up as one of the most used tuners in the game because they could just use the card in place of gloat bulb for all of the excellent Christian how queeferbacks combos it even had the added benefit of having a search in the form of tuning and some specific Synchro monsters that worked exclusively with synchron monsters so after a couple of months of dominating the spawn to the most used Tuner monster in the game the card eventually got banned in September of 2020 about five months after Chris Tron how Qui for box was added to the game so can jet synchron be unbanned if they banned Chris drawn hawkui fibracks maybe it already has better restrictions than all the other tuner monsters I've talked about so far however the fact that it can special some itself from the graveyard is still kind of a problem currently there is another card called plague spreader zombie which can also special summon itself from the graveyard and is a Tuner monster and kind of has the same restrictions as jet synchron where it requires you to lose Advantage from your hand in order to bring it out from the graveyard and even banishes itself when it leaves the field however it doesn't really see play because it's not as easy to set up as halcui fibrox combos since you can't use Link Ruba with it but you can use salamand great Al Mirage to basically do the same thing only without as much Freedom as you can't then use Link cribble later on to convert tokens into effect monsters from the graveyard how can jet synchron be fixed to be unbanned if they banned Chris drawn halcui fibrox that might be enough jet synchron isn't as much as Advantage as the previous three spots it's just his interactions with how quickly fibrox allowed to generate so much advantage that its little downside isn't even really a downside in fact some decks like the fact that it allows you to discard in order to set up the graveyards further which is another reason why plague spreader zombie isn't really used because that card requires you to send the card back to your deck which is strictly worse although outside of just Banning one link monster which probably wouldn't solve all of its problems anyway probably also have to hit a roar done if you could only special summon Synchro monsters from the extra deck after you use its graveyard effect it wouldn't be that bad in fact they probably wouldn't see play at all if it had that effect update this card is unbanned in Playboy 3 copies and sees no current competitive play turns out without halc the card is just not strong enough with its discard cost it was briefly unbanned when halc was still legal and did see competitive play with it but then immediately stop seeing competitive play once helgi fibracks was banned and finally last off on this video we have Mecca a phantombeast0 lion the final monster on the ban list because of how Quay fibrex well kind of as you can probably figure out from the rest of the video it's not only how Qui fibrox that makes this card strong it's just a big contributing factor to it now Mecca phantombe's o-line is definitely used with Chris drawn Hawkeye fibrox combos but not in the same way as the previous four cards you see this one was one of the best targets to bring out of the deck with the effect of halcy fiberacks that allows it to special summon a level 3 or lower Tuner monster from your hand or deck bringing out o-line would give you a machine type Tuner monster on the field which match the type of halcy fibracks who is also machine type and could then allow you to go into Mecha Phantom Beast auradon however even outside of that o-line has the effect that when it's sent to the graveyard no matter how it's sent to the graveyard you can special summon a Mecca phantombe's token to your side of the field which is a level 3 token with no stats in his awesome machine type the fact that it's a level 3 token means it's much more useful for Synchro plays in the usual level 1 tokens that are normally summoned in fact it's such a big deal that the card was commonly used even without ever touching Aurora Don although Mecca phantombe's auradon is a huge contributing factor to Mega Phantom be so lion being banned since it was released in the exact same set in the TCG that brought us halcy five rocks and the car just comboed a little bit to do well together where even after o-line got banned mecho phantombeast auradon is still seeing tons of competitive success what the card does is it's a link 3 monster that requires two plus machine type monsters materials and when it's linked summoned you get to special summon three Mega phantombe's tokens now remember how I said these tokens are better than normal tokens because of their high level well Aurora Don facilitates all kinds of Synchro plays thanks to the ridiculous Advantage it gets when it comes out and the only restriction is you can't summon more Link monsters for the rest of the turn that almost does nothing to slow down the combos of the roar done as the card also has a couple of other effects where you contribute up to three monsters in order to use one of its three of effects generally you use its tribute 2 monster effect that allows you to special summon a mecho Phantom Beast monster from your deck namely Mega Phantom beats o lion funny enough most of the combos with o lion are done with halcui fibracks not even bringing it out first the combo was as follows first they would use 5 racks to bring out deskbot 001 which is a level 1 machine type tuner that has the effect that if two or more machine type monsters are special summoned at the same time while this card is in the graveyard you can special summon it so they would just use despot and how quick five racks to go into Mecha Phantom piece of roodon which would special summon 3 tokens at once which would proc the effect of death spot 001 in the graveyard to bring itself out and then aurorodon would bring out o-line from the deck and he'd have two tuner monsters on the field as well as two other tokens assuming you use aurorodon as one of the tributes for its effect and then once o-line was used for a Synchro Summon it would summon another eye level token which could then just be used for more plays for olion it's a really strong with how quick fibracks but it's even better with Mecha Phantom Beast aurorodon in the game at the same time Mega vandabee's o-line was banned in September 2020 alongside jet sync run can Mecca phantombe's o-line be unbanned currently not at all even after o-line got banned Aurora Don is still seeing tons of play alongside how quick five Rex losing one of their best targets only slowed them down a little bit so it wouldn't really make sense bringing it back in the current format with those two little cards still running around in the game how can the card be fixed to be unbanned this one is kind of a tough one because it's not really used in the same way as the previous four tuner monsters this one is almost exclusively used when it's brought out from the deck instead of a starting combo like the other four although since it can be brought out with two of the problem League monsters it makes sense that it was hit while the other problem cards like despot 001 avoided the ban list for the time being the card already has a hard once per turn on the token it summons and it doesn't really do anything on its own it's more the fact that it's just an excellent Target for two other strong cards that kind of make it strong because it can also summon a token when it leaves the field and just happens to be a tuner if they wanted to fix the card just removing the fact that it's a tuner would probably make the card completely unplayable while not changing anything else about its effect although outside of just Banning the other cards I take advantage of it I can't really think of anything to fix the card in his little thought experiment and I don't seriously suggest removing the fact that it's a tuner from the monster more of a case is described that some cars are just kind of broken because of other cards in the game and there's not much you can do about the card itself to fix it since it already has a reasonable enough restrictions on it the car did also see play before those Link cards were introduced anyway it just wasn't broken until those two Link monsters are added to the game as well as the masterable revisions so I don't have a very good answer in how to fix this card for divion band other than just calling for the ban of two other Link monsters or slapping some crazy restrictions to the Token Summit like not being able to special summon non-mecco phantombe's monsters afterwards update both a Hulk and a robot on are now banned so they unbanned a lion and it currently sees zero competitive play at three copies first up we have performage plush fire now perform h plus fire is a pretty good pendulum monster to start off with as it's probably the most broken out of all of them you see its pendulum effect is as follows if a performage monster you control is destroyed you can spell to some of this card from the pendulum Zone and then take 500 points of damage but this effect is a hard once per turn now pendulum monsters that can special some of themselves from the pendulum zone are pretty good and they generally see play if they're able to do it pretty generically like Abyss act or curtain razor now performage plush fire isn't as generic as the bis actor curtain Razer but a lot of performage cards are pretty good and have seen a bunch of competitive play so this is a pretty good first effect now its monster effect is as follows if this card on the field is destroyed you get to special summoned one performage monster from your hand or deck except another copy of this card now this effect is why the card is banned because it's not once per turn and is incredibly easy to activate there's this little distinction about pendulum monsters where they can place themselves on the field as a spell card in the pendulum Zone and if they're destroyed while treated as a spell card on the field they're able to gain their monster effect floating effects since they turn into a monster as soon as they leave the field so if you had a luster pendulum the Drago Slayer in the other scale that card could use this effect where it destroys your other pendulum's own scale in order to add one card from your deck to your hand with the same name as that card so luster pendulum could destroy performage plush fire to add another copy of it which could allow you to special summon a card from your deck and then set this card in your extra deck to be summoned later with the pendulum summon and since performage plush fire does not have a once per turn on its effect a special summon from the deck which I might add is the absolute best place to summon a monster from then you could use the other performance closed captioning not available is like a Super Saiyan version of a hero lives which is why performage plush fire was banned in an emergency band list in April 2016. can performage plush fire be unbanned God no this is probably one of the strongest cards on the ban list because of how abusable that effect is you just bring out so many cards in the deck good cards too like performance trick clown performance damage jungler and performage hat tricker all of these cards see competitive play in decks on their own and performage plus fire allows easy access to them I would be surprised if they never unban this card without an Errata and I can't see the game getting to a point where it's no longer overpowered even after Master rule 4. how could they fix performage plush fire to be unbanned slap a hard once per turn on its monster effect and that kind of fix it that's pretty easy it's broken because it's not once per turn and if it's once per turn it's still strong but not broken update this card is still banned but honestly with the current power group of the game and how much investment is required to proc plus Fire's effect I don't think it's as broken as it once was the card is still one of the most broken pendulum monsters ever made but the targets at summons aren't that big of a deal anymore and modern meta decks and put up more impressive boards for Less investment I wouldn't be surprised to see this card unbanned without a rata someday as long as they do not release any better targets for it to summon from the deck next up we have the Tyrant Neptune this card has appeared in so many of my top 10 lists that I banned it from taking spots in future videos just because I got tired about talking about it all the time now let's go over this card's effect it's a level 10 reptile type monster with no stats and cannot be special summoned and has the effect that when this card distributes summoned it gains the original attack and defense of the monster use for its tribute summon you can also choose to only attribute some of this card with one monster to bring it out too then afterwards you can Target one of the monsters used in its tribute summon from the graveyard in order to change this card's name to that Target's name and and permanently gain that Monster's effects so basically if you get a monster on the field the Tyrant Neptune can allow you to copy its effects from the graveyard now for the longest time in the game this was not very good card at all and it's actually never seen competitive play in a topping event in the TCG there were a couple of Niche uses with it by using cards like hardened arm Dragon to give the Tyrant Neptune some destruction protection if you wanted to have a different really good effect on the side but it wasn't super good and was always kind of a gimmick then lyrics independent Nightingale was released this is a level 1 Fusion Monster who has the effect where it gains attack equal to its level times 500 is unaffected by other card effects and once per turn allows you to inflict damage to your opponent equal to its level times 500. and lureless independent Nightingale can be brought out with instant Fusion so what you would do is just bring out independent Nightingale with instant Fusion then tribute it with the Tyrant Neptune and allowed to copy its effect from the graveyard this would change the tower Neptune to be a 6 000 attack beat stick who is immune to all other card effects like ultimate found Falcon and can inflict 5 000 points of effect damage to your opponent once per turn all because the Tyrant Neptune is level 10 Baseline and lyric Nightingale supposed to increase its level by how its Fusion summoned as when it's Fusion summoned with its normal procedure it's supposed to gain levels equal to the amount of xc's materials attached to his Fusion materials so you weren't really supposed to get literalist independent Nightingale to level 10. at best you would get her up to around level 6 or 7 by expending a whole bunch of resources to the point where it'd be kind of worth the payoff the Tyrant Neptune allows you to ignore all those resource requirements and just go straight into it with a two card combo and a lyricless independent Nightingale buffed Tyrant Neptune is kind of unbeatable there are very few meta decks in the game who would even be able to out the card let alone survive two turns of it being able to inflict 5 000 points of damage if you didn't win immediately when you brought the card out since it could attack over basically anything with 6000 attack remember Ultimate Falcon can win you the game by itself against a lot of decks and that card is usually cheated out of the extra Deck with none of its materials so the only effect it has is being immune to card effects and having 3500 attack and the tower Neptune would have around double the amount of attack while also having a super good burn damage effect and this kind of brought up a design flaw with the Tyrant Neptune where if it's this broken because they released a card that unintentionally worked very well with it they would have to design future cards around the notion that it might be broken with a tyrant Neptune as well so they eventually just banned the turret Neptune rather than banding the fusion card that way they wouldn't have to design cards around a graveyard copying effect although they didn't learn this lesson fast enough as they did release a Fusion Monster who could do the same thing and then was banned for the same reasons as the tire Neptune but I'll talk about that when I get to that card in a future video the Tyrant Neptune was banned in March of 2017. coincidentally the same year that lyricless and and the Nightingale was released can the Tyrant Neptune be unbanned not as long as Lira less independent Nightingale is in the game or instant Fusion although with the potential to just be broken again later on in the future it's probably safe to just leave it on the band list forever or change its effect to something else how could they fix the Tyrant Neptune to be unbanned well they do have a card in the game that can copy effects in the graveyard and is not banned called The Phantom of chaos this is a level 4 monster who can banish a card from the graveyard in order to gain that card's effects and attacks for the turn but it's only until the end phase and it can't inflict any battle damage to your opponent so if they just made the Tyrant Neptune's effect only last for one turn and also lowered its level down to like seven and also also make it so it can't inflict any damage to your opponent at all during the turn then they could probably release it from the ban list it would be almost useless but it would no longer be banned although even in this date I'm sure there would still be a car in the future that would be really broken with the suggest tested fixes and next up in this video we have Masterpiece the true Draco slain King this is a level 8 monster who has three effects and also an odd attack and defense power value if you wish to Tribute someone this card you can also use faceup continuous spell or trap cards as tribute materials in addition to monsters when this card distributes summoned it gains immunity to the types of cards that were used for its tribute summon and once per turn it has a quick effect where you can banish any one continuous spell or trap card in your graveyard to Target and Destroy one other card in the field so basically with this card you got to choose any two types of cards you wanted it to be immune to out of monsters spells or traps generally this was used with monsters and traps during your opponent's turn as the true king trap cards all have floating effects where they destroy a monster when they're sent from the field to the graveyard so they would distribute some in Masterpiece during their opponent's turn in order to destroy two cards one with the Trap card floating effect and then the other one with masterpieces effect and then of course have their nearly immune to everything beat stick on the field who also had protection from the field card that would prevent it from being destroyed by battle once per turn so Masterpiece was kind of hard to get rid of and was a really good effect on the field that had the ever important spell Speed 2 destruction effect where it could destroy your opponent's cards during their turn in order to interrupt combo plays at Key moments or to stop a bigger monster from trying to attack over it or just destroy something before that big monster could ever come out or destroy a Floodgate or just pop back row being able to destroy any other card in the field whenever you want during both players turns is pretty valuable and there's a reason they stop giving this effect to so many boss monsters after Masterpiece and also if you did manage to destroy the card it was so easy to bring back that it was almost not even worth going through the effort to try to get rid of it the true Draco archetype is able to almost infinitely recycle their cards from the graveyard and search them out as their entire archetype kind of revolves around searching cards from the deck very easily and The Disciples of the true Draco Phoenix could allow you to send the cards back to the deck and they could just bring Masterpiece out of the graveyard with true King's return and the effect Masterpiece has was not a hard once per turn so having multiple copies of Masterpiece out meant you could pop multiple cards during multiplayer's turns so it was only limited by how many continuous film traps you can get into the graveyard to feed their effects Masterpiece was a pretty oppressive boss monster as it kind of got a mark on the checklist for everything that goes into a good boss monster it was easy to search out in its deck it was easy to bring out it was hard to take out by your opponent and it could immediately impact the field as well as disrupt your opponent's plays during their turn Masterpiece the true draco's Lane King was banned in May of 2018. could Masterpiece the true Draco slain King be unbanned the answer is probably it was like a huge asterisk you see the thing is meta decks have evolved a lot since 2018 to the point where Masterpiece would just kind of fit in rather than be oppressive if true Deco decks were able to bring up Masterpiece at all with the metagame being all about getting a huge Board of monsters that can negate your opponent from even playing the game Masterpiece is still good don't get me wrong it's an excellent boss monster but it would still probably lose to something like red eyes dark Dragoon or get destroyed by a lightning storm or forbidden droplets if it was brought out with monsters and traps like it was in the past although it would do pretty well against most other boss monsters and it could adjust by just making itself immune to monsters and spells instead of traps and that's where the huge asterisks comes in because I'm not 100 sure this card would be broken in the current metagame which is why I think it could probably come off the banless even though the card is so good it really just goes to show how powerful decks are today where a card which can be immune to two-thirds of card effects and Destroy cards during both players turns would just kind of fit in with all the other boss monsters that are running around so how could they fix Masterpiece the true Draco slain King to be unbanned if they made the card not have the availability of being immune to monster effects then it would probably be fine but it's also probably fine as is as well I wouldn't be surprised if it's lifted off the ban list in the future so I don't really think it needs too many changes but being immune to cardifax is generally really good so who knows I might be completely off base on this assessment update I was very wrong about this card in the years after I made the video there were some no bandless tournaments and some players metagame this card and figured out the real reason this card is banned and that's because it's The Floodgate boss monster it can use floodgates to bring itself out it can use floodgates in the graveyard to remove cards from the field and it's immune to its own floodgates due to its blanket immunity and as it turns out floodgates get better the faster the game gets and the game is pretty darn fast nowadays there is no other boss monster who dominates as hard as Masterpiece while under a miasma of floodgates it lives and breathes and floods Gates made even better that it doesn't need to be special summoned and it's a tribute summoned monster so you get to play even more good specific floodgates with it plus its overpowered field spell that lets you search it out easily also protects it from Battle one time which means if you want to add this boss monster throw the floodgates immunity to card effects and 2950 attack you have to do it twice in one turn most decks can accomplish getting more than 3 000 attack once but not twice especially not under floodgates and disruption this card needs to be locked in bandless prison forever unless they ban all floodgates or the game just gets to stay refledged or just not that powerful anymore the stronger floodgates get the stronger this card gets and flood gates are still pretty good right now next up we have Phoenician cluster amaryllis this is a level 8 plant monster which cannot be special summoned except with its own effect or by the effect of Phoenix ENC and during the end phase you can special some of this card from your graveyard by banishing one other plant type monster from the graveyard and if this card is destroyed you get to inflict 800 points of damage to your opponent so once topologic bomber Dragon was added to the game this card's effect immediately kinda became broken overnight topologic bomber Dragon allows you to destroy all cards in the main monster zones when a monster is summoned to a Zone that'll link monster points to and is not once per turn and none of phoenixing cluster amaryllis's effects are once per turn either so as long as you're able to get 10 plant type monsters in the graveyard as well as phoenixian cluster amaryllis then that's enough to use the effect 10 times during the end phase thanks to topologic Bamber dragon's destruction effect in order to burn your opponent over 8 000 points of damage which is really easy with plant monsters like lone fire Blossom and evilthorn the hardest part of the plant fdk was getting topologic bomber dragon on the field in addition to getting 10 plants in the graveyard but still proved easy enough that the planned ftk became a competitive meta deck in the ocg when topologic bomber Dragon was added to the game and since the link mechanic was the new hotness at the time they just banned this old card Phoenix amaryllis instead of the card which was allowing it to be broken in the first place so in the TCG phonicsing cluster amaryllis was banned in May of 2018 before topologic bomber Dragon came out could Phoenix cluster amaryllis be unbanned as long as topologic bomber dragon is in the game no it cannot if they ever banned topologic bomber Dragon then maybe since that's kind of the only reason this card is banned is because of that easy combo how could they fix phonic skin cluster amaryllis to be unbanned if they just gave any of its effects a hard once per turn that would do it the fact that it can special summon itself endlessly during the end phase as well has inflict 800 points of damage each time it's destroyed is why the card is currently broken they only need to give both of these effects a hard ones per turn and then it would be okay enough to not see any play like it did before topologic bomber Dragon was added to the game and lastly we have grinder Golem this is another card which sawed no competitive play before Link monsters were introduced then kinda became broken overnight you see what grinder Golem does is it cannot be normal Summoner set and can only be special summoned from your hand to your opponent's side of the field by summoning two grinder tokens to your side of the field and face up attack position each one of them being a level 1 token with no stats and then it goes on to have the Restriction where during the turn you use this effect you cannot normal summon or set monsters so it was super restrictive in how you could use it you basically give your opponent a 3000 attack beat stick in exchange for two tokens that also lock you out of normal summoning so you couldn't immediately use them for Synchro plays or something as Synchro monsters were the only real benefit of using tokens before Link monsters came out then once Link monsters did come out the fact that grinder Golem lacked a once per turn on its effect became immediately abusable specifically thanks to akashic magician security dragon and firewall Dragon these three Link monsters could all be summoned with either the token's grinder Golem brought out or by converting the tokens into Link monsters with link spider and linkaribo and these three Link monsters had effects that allowed them to bounce Grindr Golem back to your hand so with the first two tokens you can convert them into Link monsters in order to have the materials go into a caustic magician and as long as you summon grinder Golem to the zone that akashic magician would eventually point to you could just return it back to your hand then bring out geiner Golem for a second time in order to use its two new tokens for security Dragon which would allow you to return grinder Golem to your hand for a second time then you could bring out Grindr Golem for a third time in order to use its brand new tokens to go into firewall Dragon to bounce grinder Golem for a third time then you would have a link 4 and Link two monster on the field while having grinder Golem in your hand essentially being a plus two and card advantage or a plus six if you're counting the individual link ratings of the monsters as you could still bring our grinder Golem 4 a fourth time and all you have to do was give up your normal summon for all of this Advantage which was generally worth it in a whole bunch of decks rinder Golem immediately became a staple card in pretty much every deck once Link monsters came out despite the fact that it only ever saw play in gimmick decks before for this it was really good but Konami thought it was balanced Enough by the Restriction of no normal summons for the turn so in their initial bid to restrict the card they only limited it to one copy and what do you know everybody played one copy of grinder Golem with a deck because it was so good and it could basically win you the game with the amount of advantage that one card would get you so they eventually just banned the card in January of 2019. could Grindr Golem be unbanned after the master rule 4 revisions no it's even better now than it was back then even after firewall Dragon was banned it's still good if you're only able to bounce it twice with the cossic magician and security dragon and there's probably other better cars that have been released since then that I'm just not remembering which could make better use of it how could grinder Golem be fixed to be unbanned if they gave it a hard once per turn that would probably do it this is another one that's kind of broken by its lack of a once per turn as it already kind of has a lot of restrictions to it it would still probably be good and hard ones per turn just not infinitely abusable like it is now dandelion is a level 3 plant monster which simply has the effect that if it's sent to the graveyard you can special summon two fluff tokens in defense position the tokens have zero attack and defense and are Level 1 and have the effect where they cannot be attributed for a tribute summoned during the turn that they are special summon and dandelion activates its floating effect no matter how it's sent to the graveyard and it's not once per turn so dandelion has actually had a history of constantly seeing competitive play because being able to special summon two tokens as easily as dandelion can has just always been somewhat useful back in the day with debris Dragon they would commonly combo debris dragon with dandelion in order to go into Black Rose dragon and destroy the field where after Black Rose Dragon blew up the field you would get to special summon two tokens with dandelion's effect essentially allowed you to destroy all of your opponent's cards while ending on two tokens so you weren't completely vulnerable to your opponent's Monster's attacks or to just use those tokens to go into more syngro summons then in 2017 with the release of Link monsters dandelion became a little bit more of a problem thanks to Link monsters dandelion was no longer just a monster but rather Three Monsters as far as Link monsters were concerned getting a dandelion in the field was equivalent to getting three bodies for link climbing and it became incredibly apparent how broken this was when Aroma sarafi Jasmine was released in the ocg this is a link to monster which requires two plant monsters as materials and has the effect where you contribute one monster this card points to in order to special summon any one plant monster from your deck so going into Jasmine could allow you to get dandelion straight out of the deck and then that dandelion was basically a plus to in card Advantage all by itself with how you were able to use it with other Link monsters and it had an incredibly good ftk deck that it definitely helped become hyper consistent basically plant ftk would try to get phoenixing cluster amaryllis in the graveyard along with 10 other plant type monsters and topologic bomber dragon on the field topologic bomber Dragon would constantly destroy amaryllis when its battle summoned itself from the graveyard during the end phase which would allow you to inflict 800 points of damage to your opponent and then bring it back and do it again as long as you had other plans to banish repeat 10 times and you win since none of these effects were once per turn and this strategy of just getting 10 plants in the grave along with topologic bomber dragon on the field was pretty easy with the three bodies that dandelion provided so in the very next banned list in the TCG they preemptively threw dandelion the ban list so that it could never be abused even though aroma sarafi Jasmine wasn't actually released in the TCG until two years later probably because how afraid they were planned ftk even though they battled the card that allowed it to happen although even without planned ftk Aroma sarafi Jasmine still allowed easy access to a plus two from the deck which would definitely have been used and abused of dandelion was still in the game so it was banned in February of 2018. in the very next banless cycle after Jasmine was released in the ocg despite the fact it wasn't released into TCG until two years later could dandelion be unbanned the answer to this question is a maybe the card is basically Three Monsters as far as Link monsters are concerned but it's not able to special summon itself like some of the other monsters that are broken with Link monsters like Blackwing go for the vague Shadow or grinder Golem for example you do have to expend resources to get dandelion in the field and then it's able to start doing stuff as long as you're able to use other resources to reuse its effect Aroma sarafi Jasmine allows you to do this pretty easily which is probably why it will stay banned because it's too easy to access this really good card thanks to this one link monster but itself it's not as good as cards like gokufu but it's still really strong nonetheless as its normal summon can provide you with enough materials for Three Links worth of monsters or if you're able to achieve the card in the field then you have access to Three Links worth of materials how can dandelion be fixed to be unbanned the simple answer to this question is to give it a hard once per turn but it was mostly only used once per turn anyway and is still a three for one type deal the only thing going for dandelion is favor of not being completely broken is the fact that it's not a Tuner monster like gophu or mecho phantombe's o-lion two other token generated cards that are also banned mainly because they're tuners and have synergies with questron healthy fine bracks but it is still two tokens when it goes to the Grave which can be used to start all kinds of combo plays two tokens on the field can turn into two link rebos which can be converted into Predator plan for Diana under and give you access to red eyes dark Dragoon or Destiny Hero Phoenix enforcer so if you were to fix this card and make it future proof you would have to do something about the tokens at summons one of the easiest things you can do is just make it so they can't be used as linked materials this would still allow to be used with Synchro summons but it wouldn't be as versatile as it is currently or just an unlimited non once per turn plus two on its removal the tokens that are summoned already have restrictions on them where they can't be used as tribute summoned material for that turn they could just go ahead and add link summons to that as well and that would kind of make the card good to go because it could probably come off the ban list and just be really strong but not overpowered similar to The Phantom Knights of Rusty bardish the fact that the Phantom Knights of Rusty bardish and skystriker mobilize engage are unbanned shows that Konami is not afraid of very powerful cards existing in the game next up we have yatagarasu this is a spirit Monster that has the effect where if this card inflicts battle damage to your opponent they skip their next draw phase it only has 200 attack has all the downsides of spirit monsters where it can't be special summoned and returns to your hand of the turn that's normal summature flip face up so the card is kind of bad to an extent because it is very cumbersome to actually be used to any kind of advantage and simply skipping your opponent's draw phase is basically just a minus one to your opponent in card advantage and there's lots of stronger cards in the game that can accomplish something similar in fact there's even a couple of trap cards that allow you to get rid of the card your opponent draws like drop off and drastic drop off however yanagarasu is one of the longest banned cards in the game being one of the first ever cards banned alongside other cards like delinquent Duo graceful charity and of course chaos Ember Dragon Envoy of the End plus a few others which have since come off the ban list and when you compare yanagarasu to something like graceful charity or delinquent Duo it doesn't really measure up in powerfulness because if delinquent duo or graceful charity was released from the ban list tomorrow they would instantly see playing all kinds of competitive decks but not yantagarasu in fact it would probably not see any competitive play if it was a release from the band list but its effect is degenerate enough where it comfortably stays on the ban list and they probably won't ever take it off without some kind of Errata as shown by the new card they released called yaoi which has the effect that when it's summoned you get to skip your opponent's next draw phase however it locks you out a special so many other monsters for the rest of the turn and its effect is a once per duel which is one of the harshest conditions placed on any effects and yowie is such a new car that it's not even released in the TCG yet so why exactly is skipping your opponent's draw face so powerful that they had to restrict a new card with the effect so much well the effect itself is actually not that powerful on its own it's more of the situations in which the effect can be a complete Game Winner without actually being a game-winning effect like Exodia just ask her what happens when your opponent plays yantagarasu it means if you don't have an answer to it right now this very second with the cards in your hand graveyard or bandage Zone then that's it it's game over your opponent needs an answer to the effect immediately with whatever they have at their disposal whenever yadagarasu hits the field otherwise they cannot ever have an answer to it if you put up an unbeatable Board of a whole bunch of big boss negate monsters it is possible to draw into a Dark Ruler no more in order to completely turn off their effects for a turn it's not a completely unwinnable game state but it is a very powerful one if yada garasu attacks for 200 points of damage and you don't have a way to stop it already then you'll never get an answer to it and have no choice but to just give up that's why a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh games are programmed where if you perform a successful gotta lock on your opponent they'll instantly give up whereas normally the AI never surrenders the card itself won't win you the game single-handedly it's just a very good card at removing your opponent's ability to come back in any way shape or form and since it's a pseudo instant win condition your opponent really has no choice but to Just Surrender otherwise waste time as you slowly pack away at your opponent's life points in 200 increments it's like the slowest instant win condition there is since you don't win in one turn and over the course of a whole bunch of turns in which your opponent can't possibly do anything to change the game state yadagarasi was banned in August of 2004. on one of the very first ban lists they actually put cards to zero copies because before the August 2004 ban list they only ever limited cards to one could yadagarasu be unbanned the answer to this question is probably yes and nobody would ever play it the original yada lock which allowed you to create a game state where your opponent had no cards on their field or hand and you could attack and win with the underground suit is no longer possible because all the other cards in that combo'd have been a rotted although just because the original combo was no longer usable doesn't mean someone can't come up with a new creative way to use it to basically accomplish the same thing the effect itself is incredibly powerful as a way to just assure that you win if you're able to attack with it a single time and your opponent doesn't have a way to come back with whatever they have in their possession especially since it's a spirit condition kind of protects the card a little bit as it returns to your hand you're in the end phase so that you can normal summon it and do it again on your next turn although generally the wind or more cards don't see too much competitive play and yada garasu requires the rest of your deck to be super good and just have yanagarasu be the closer as it is probably one of the ultimate closing card effects so I can't give a definite answer to whether this car can be unbanned or not because the card itself is not very good but the effect is super powerful as a closer so there could be some Combos and some Decks that allow you to use it very easily that I can't just think about the moment where he would immediately just be broken all over again or it would be completely ignored at no no one would use it kind of like what happened when they removed tribe infecting virus from the band list without an Errata how could they fix yanagarasu to make it unbanned if they limited its effect to once per duel that would probably fix it immediately it would still be powerful enough in skipping your opponent's next draw phase so if they couldn't possibly respond to your current board in one turn but at least it wouldn't be a pseudo-win condition and if its effect was once per duel it would just be a slightly stronger yowie since it doesn't restrict you from other special summons for the rest of the turn or maybe it would just be a slightly weaker one who knows just giving a hard limit on how many times you can gain this super powerful effect would probably be enough to fix it update this card was unbanned and see Zero competitive play it's even at three copies right now win more cards are just not good in modern Yugio at the moment and no one plays them anymore next up we have level eater this is a level 1 monster that has a graveyard effect where if you control a level 5 or higher monster you can reduce that Monster's level by one permanently and then special some of this card from the graveyard and and while this card is on the field it cannot be attributed except for a tribute summon what's interesting to note about this card is that its effect is not once per turn and when they designed the card they immediately knew it could be busted if comboed with something like Canon Soldier which is why it has that built-in limitation where it can't be attributed for those kinds of effects but it could be used for pretty much anything else that required an effect monster on the field with a level so it's all kinds of play in the past with Synchro decks as most Synchro monsters are a high level monsters and getting extra bodies on the field for single plays is only a benefit to a lot of those decks like if you combined level eater with labradorite Dragon which is a level 6 tuner Dragon monster you can reduce its level by one in order to bring out level eater and then you can go into any level 6 Synchro monster you want so as long as you have ways to recycle elaborate right Dragon then you can always just bring out level leader later as well to go into another singer monster or you just always get two materials on the field for just one labradorite dragon and even though level eater did see competitive play it was surprisingly not broken even though this card could special some itself from the graveyard as many times as he wanted with its own effect there just wasn't really a way to take advantage of that because the tribute Clause actually did a good job preventing it and being used in Loops then in 2018 less than a year after Link monsters had been out Konami announced a new card called link karibo so in preparation for linkery will come into the game they preemptively banned level eater because they would be way too broken in the game at the same time on screen I'll be showing a very generic example of the kind of Advantage you can gain with just link kuribo enabling link plays link aribo is a link one monster that just requires a level 1 monster as its full material the effects of the card are kind of irrelevant as what it does is allow you to convert level eater into a monster on the field and a lot of Link monsters require two or more effect monsters in the field in order to come out so being able to use Link repo alongside its own body by just coming out again allows you to link climate like crazy so if you just have a high level monster in the field you could continuously lower the level that monster to bring out level leader and then just use it with link kuribo to go into all kinds of plays and without the once per turn a single level eater with a high level monster in the field could turn to a potential plus five and Link materials real fast even without linkaribo it's possible to just have level eater extend with an already pre-established field of a whole bunch of high-level monsters thanks to the power of Link monsters link Reba was just kind of a cheat way for using it without a pre-established board already and Link monsters love effect monsters as materials more than anything level leader which is way too good for all kinds of decks which is why it was banned in February 2018 alongside dandelion in preparation for New Link monsters coming out that would be incredibly broken if they existed in the game at the same time could level eater be unbanned the answer to this question is probably no Link monsters allow you to gain too much advantage of level later and there are just way too many Link monsters out nowadays where it would probably will be broken with some other link monster that I don't even know about even if they also banned Link karibo in the process it's just one of those few cards which was not intended to be usable with how links work and would most likely need a rod in order to come off the ban list lake monsters are just too strong of an extra dexcomony mechanic as there are only a handful of cards in the ban list specifically there because they're just broken with how Link monsters work and level eater is kind of one of the poster boys for that alongside grinder Golem go for the big Shadow and of course dandelion how could they fix level eater to be unbanned if they gave the card a hard once per turn that would probably do it all of the current problems of the card are specifically how easy it is to reuse the effect multiple times per turn with Link monsters so if you can only use the effect one time it might still see competitive play but not be banworthy which should probably say something about how good the card is if I still think it will see competitive play even if it was limited to just once per turn next up we have Magical Scientist this is a level 1 monster which has the effect where you can pay 1 000 light points to special summon a level 6 or lower Fusion Monster from your extra deck however that monster cannot attack your opponent's life points directly and has to return to the extractor at the end of the turn an interesting to note about this card's effect is that it's not once per turn so you can use the effects seven times in your first turn before you run out of your starting life points in order to resolve the effect so as long as you just set up your extra deck for this Magical Scientist is basically a free plus seven and card Advantage which I don't think I need to explain how powerful that is in competitive Yu-Gi-Oh or even just casual Yu-Gi-Oh there's this trend with a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh YouTubers where they play sealed formats and only use cards from earlier days of the game and pretty much all of these closed formats where you're not allowed to use every single card in the game and only would you get lucky in being able to draw magical scientists has kind of been a problem in every single one of those formats even with an incredibly restrictive card pull of not even being able to use Link monsters sometimes Magical Scientist was broken before they had other extra deck monsters besides fusions and is obviously way more broken once you include the other types of extra deck monsters that can actually use the Fusions for more permanence on the field on screen I've been showing the magical scientists in a sealed format I played with another Yu-Gi-Oh YouTuber where I managed to pull out a single copy of Magical Scientist and a whole bunch of random actress monsters and I was able to create combos with those plays to create pretty oppressive boards in that closed format and I got to the point where every time I drew magical scientists I basically just won that duel and that's also kind of how it was used in early Yu-Gi-Oh 2. in addition there was also a combo with catapult turtle and Magical Scientist which was kind of one of the first ftks in the game where the pre-erotic cannibal Turtle could allow you to Tribute a monster in order to inflict damage to opponent's life points equal to half of that Monster's attack and was not once per turn so as long as you just brought out enough High attack level 6 fusion monsters with magical scientists you could distribute them all in order to inflict enough damage to your opponent to win on your first turn magical scientist was banned in April of 2005. about one year after they finally started Banning cards and only because there were just other more broken cards in the game where it was kind of overlooked for a bit could magical scientists be unbanned the answer to this question is a hard no the card is way too strong of the modern game and I can't imagine it being unbanned without an Errata it's just one of those singular powerful cars that is way too easy to take advantage of in all kinds of formats especially the modern format how could they fix magical scientists to be unbanned if they give a card a hard once per turn that would probably fix it this gets me wondering how many cards exist in the banned list that can be fixed with just a simple once per turn because Magical Scientist is definitely one of those it's basically a worst instant Fusion if it's a hard once per turn because it would require to get a monster on the field before being able to special someone at level 6 at lower Fusion Monster with its effect and finally we have substitute substitute is a level one water monster which provides battle immunity to all your other frog monsters on the field and has the ability to attribute one monster to special summon any frog monster from your deck so you could tribute substitode himself in order to special someone something like Des frog from your deck which is a level 5 frog monster in 1900 attack or you could even attribute it to go into something like swap frog in order to set up all your other frog plagues or you could distribute one of your other frogs in order to get every single frog in your deck in the graveyard because its effect is not once per turn and that's kind of why the card is banned it can allow you to get 20 frogs in the ground Brave you see there's this other card in the game called Ronan toden which surprise surprise is another frog monster that doesn't have a once per turn on its effect where if it's in the graveyard you can banish another frog monster from your graveyard in order to spottle some of this card then if you use something like Canon Soldier or back when substitute was still around the continuous spell card Mass driver you could distribute Ronan toad in order to inflict damage to your opponent and again since his effect is not once per turn and substitute could allow to get 20 frogs in your grave you could just simply use the effect 20 times in order to have attributed 20 times off of mass driver in order to inflict 8 000 life points of damage to your opponent on your first turn and swap frog allows you to set all these plays up by itself as it could special summon itself from your hand get Ronin Toten in the graveyard and provide a body for a normal summoned substito to start its combo of getting all the frogs in the graveyard it's probably one of the most consistent ftks in the game that has seen competitive success as it even won the World Tournament into 2010 there have been other consistent fdks in the game too but most of those were banned before they gimmick it all the way to Worlds and of all the non once per turn cards that were involved in the combo only two of them were banned substitute in Mass driver and both of those cards remain on the ban list to this day substitute was banned in September of 2010. shortly after winning the 2010 World Championship could substitute be unbanned the answer to this question is another pretty hard no frog decks have continued to see competitive play even after substitute was banned mainly because they were given an overpowered boss monster called totally awesome in substito would allow you to fuel bringing out a whole bunch of totally Awesomes to negate everything your opponent might try to do frog decks are kind of limited in how they aren't able to get a million frogs in the graveyard in one turn so their potential of ronin totem plays are inherently limited by how much they can Mill with what swap frog is able to do alone and substitute would just add to that exponentially plus there's a fact that they could use Canon Soldier instead of mass driver to perform the same ftk they used back in 2010 and substitute is one of the few band monsters that received a weaker retrain in the form of trade toad which has the same stat line as substitute and even a similar artwork but just has a much weaker effect than substitute where once per turned you contribute an aqua type monster in order to special summon a frog monster from your graveyard so absolutely no looping potential at all with trade Toad and it doesn't see any play Modern frog decks whereas substitute might how could they fix substito to be unbanned if they give it a hard once per turn on its effect that would probably do it it might even see competitive play if it was just once per turn because of how powerful the Frog boss monster is but it also might not the reason I gave this card a definite no on its unbanned status is because of its ability to put a million frogs in the grave if it's only able to special summon one frog from the deck I don't think it would actually be strong enough to see play in frog decks even it would still have a technically good effect so just a simple once per turn would probably fix the card same as Magical Scientist and level eater update they actually unbanned this card of the Tuesday G to one copy however they did this at the same time as Banning Ronin Toten turns out without rodentone existing to use the frogs in the graveyard to Summit a bunch subsito doesn't really do anything by itself as it currently doesn't see any competitive play after is lived into one copy but swap frog still does funnily enough even without Ron and Tony descent to the graveyard anymore then we have rodent toden going from unlimited to ban this is a level 2 water Aqua monster which cannot be treated as a secret material and whose name becomes Des frog while on the field it's actually relevant effect though is that it can banish another frog monster from your graveyard to special summon itself and this is not a once per turn Ronin toden was banned because revived a really easy way for decks to go into totally awesome which is a rank 2xes which can negate in stone upon its card with a floating effect that puts back any water monster from the graveyard back to your hand but needs to be made with aqua monsters its materials totally has been an incredibly powerful card which has only somewhat balanced due to how it was kind of awkward to bring out most of the time many decks like paleos prank kids and really anything that can make Bahama with shark had play toad in the past but it finally became a huge issue with the new Sprite cards Sprite gigantic is a generic rank too which can summon out any level 2 monster from your deck and Sprite elf is a link to which can revive any level 2 as a quick effect from your graveyard or even a rank or link to if your opponent controls a monster the way this was usually used is that gigantic would bring out swap frog from the deck which sends rodent toad into the graveyard then gigantic and swap get linked off an elf to bring back swamp frog and then it's not once per turn effect to send another frog to the graveyard to give you fodder to bring back Rona toden then rodent toading and swap frog on the field you can go into totally awesome you're in your opponent's turn you could use totally to negate and still twice because Alf could bring it back as long as your opponent puts a body on the field all while totally's graveyard effect gives you fall up for the next turn this engine was one of the main reasons why Sprite was so successful but her element X also sometimes played a frog engine because of Tyrell momentum early their archetypal level 2 which it allows for easy access to elf and even totally awesome itself because it's also an aqua monster this hit drastically lowers the ceiling of sprite one of the current Tier 1 strategies since most parents relied on how well Sprite Alf went with totally awesome to stop your opponent from playing first up let's go over performer pal monkey board this is a pendulum monster with a scale of one and the only thing that really matters about this card is its pendulum effect which allows you to add a level 4 or lower pendulum monster from your deck to your hand you can only use this effect during the turn that it's activated and it's also a hard once per turn in addition this card scale becomes 4 if you do not have a performer pal monster in your other pendulum zone now what's really important about this card is that it basically allows you to set up your scales with a single card and doesn't archetype lock you for doing so you see one of the things that kind of balances pendulum monsters to an extent as they can allow you to basically special summon every card from your hand and some from your extra deck if you have the zones available is that you need to have two cards on the field that have opposite scales so if you start off with five cards in your opening hand the most you can summon from your hand is Three Monsters if you need to use two of the monsters from your hands that have opposite scales and the important thing is is that opposite scales part because pendulum monsters all have predetermined scales on their card so there's a chance you could just draw a whole bunch of scale 1 pendulum monsters and not be able to use any of them to actually pendulum some of the others so cards which are able to change their scales to a different number are very valuable like that you'll send you pendulum monsters for example and cards that allow you to search out other pendulum monsters unconditionally are also pretty powerful because it allows you to search out the opposite scale to a scale that you might already have in your hand or already set up on the field which is part of the reason why heavy metal foe's electromide is banned because it allows pretty much any pendulum deck the ability to search out any pendulum monster they want so that you can much more readily set up your scales and there's even a card called pendulum call which requires you to discard one card in order to activate it but you're able to add any two pendulum magician monsters from your deck to your hand with different names which allows you to set your opposite scales with one card from your hand and a discard and pendulum call was so good it was actually limited on the band list for a while so you might be seeing in a pattern here with all of these really good pendulum support cards being able to set up scales is a balancing factor of pendulum monsters so perform monkey board by itself allows you to set up both of your scales without bothering with any of those other support cards if you have a starting hand of five cards and one of them is performer pal monkey board then you can special some of those other four cards by just searching out an appropriate opposite skill when you activate monkey board since there are a ton of pendulum per four pound monsters before 5 rainbow magician has an opposite scale of 12. although only allows you depend on some of monsters from the extra deck for four pal Audi's unicorn has an opposite scale of 8 which allows you to special summon monsters between the levels of 2 and 7 which is a majority of the monsters in the game or if you're just playing a whole bunch of level 4 monsters which is even more common you have the option to perform pal lizard draw which has an opposite scale of six and has the effect where can destroy itself in order to draw one card just as long as you have another performer pal monster in the other pendulum zone so monkey board could search out loser draw loser draw could be used with monkey board in order to pendulum summon your monsters then afterwards lizard draw could destroy itself to allow you to draw one card alternatively her four pal guitar could be used to the same effect so perform how monkey board could be used in order to search out a pendulum scale in any deck which is another distinction that matters because there are other pendulum cards which can set up their own scales as well if we take a look at Clifford's count or Abyss actor mellow Madonna these are two pendulum monsters that are able to search out an opposite scale from their own archetype however they both have a restriction where you can only special summon monsters from their archetype whereas monkey board has no such restriction and has a ton of search targets that also have no such restrictions so they can be played with pretty much any deck and was especially useful in Decks that made use of performer pal monsters and even had some other support cards which allow you to plus even further which I might stress were not necessary to make before without monkey board strong monkey board exists as kind of a lone pendulum monster who allows you to set up both of its scales by itself fall also being one of the skills and not restricting your special summoning to its archetype and as a bonus without having to have any kind of special summon condition or a card on the field it doesn't even have a cost whereas Madonna and Scout both require you to at least pay life points to activate their searches the fact that a lot of the cards monkey board can search out can also search out other cards or even gain more Advantage which is kind of icing on the cake without the availability of going into lizard draw guitar skulker bat Joker Windows of My Magician or sorcerer it would still be good if all those other five cards didn't exist in the game the fact that it can search out five other cards allow you to gain more Advantage is kind of the reason why this card has stayed banned for so long before Pound Monkey board came out in 2016 was limit on the ban list very shortly after it came out then banned in August of 2016 where it has stayed banned to this day the fact that there was a deck that had both monkey board and perform h plus firing at the same time both of which were legal at three copies is kind of insane as these are two of the straw strongest pendulum monsters ever made and I'd argue perform H plush fire is just one of the strongest cards ever made and it's no wonder that perform H performer Pals were a tier zero deck could perform how monkey board be unbanned with the changes of Master rule 4 where you no longer summon pendulum monsters from the extract to a Zone unless it's the extra monster zone or a Zone a link monster is pointing to they are definitely heavily limited compared to how they were pre-master rule 4 and after the master rule 4 revisions they kept their restrictions while the syncros XCS and fusion monsters have their restrictions lifted set with a more stringent summoning restriction on pendulum monsters monkey board is still too strong because it allows you to set up your own scales generically it doesn't even matter that pendulums are still limited because monkey board is still as strong on turn one as it was back in the day it's just no longer strong in The Grind game nothing about the restrictions really stopped monkey board from being powerful other than lowering the power level of pendulums on a whole so it will probably stay banned unless Konami starts printing out a whole bunch of other cards that are able to sell their own scale as well without locking you out of so many other types of monsters where monkey board might just fit in with this new overpowered meta how could perform how monkey board be fixed to be unbanned if they gave monkey board a restriction where you could only special summon per form of how monsters for the rest of the turn after you activate its effect that might be enough to fix the car it would still be powerful support within the performer pal archetype but you wouldn't be able to play a whole bunch of other pendulum monsters and only the before Pals now there are a ton of perform monsters in the game so even this might not be enough to fix it because there's probably some broken combo I'm not even thinking of but the main reason this card is banned is because of its generic availability of setting of its own scales and not locking you into its archetype while doing so update this car got unbanned it is now limited to one copy of the TCG but still banned in the ocg and it does see play in Draco Slayers which is currently the only real competitive pendulum deck but funny enough it's not to set scales it's to be a one card level 8 Synchro Summon because it can search Up Performance synchron synchron can summon monkey board from your pendulum Zone after it's been searched and immediately gone to a level 8 Synchro of your choice usually ignister prominence the blasting Draco Slayer to further pendulum combos next up we have another pendulum monster this time we have luna light tiger just like with monkey board the reason Tiger's banned is because of its pendulum effect where while this car is on the field and treated as a spell card it has the effect for once per turn you can special summon any lunalite monster from your graveyard but its effects are negated and it can't attack it's destroyed during the end phase which doesn't matter because you can just use that monster as a material and a lot of lunal-like monsters have effects and activate when they're sent to the graveyard anyway and what's really important about luna light tiger is the fact that its effect is only a soft once per turn and within its own archetype it has a card called lunoli Dela Martin which can special some itself from your hand or graveyard by returning a lunalight card you control from the field to your hand but the card then banishes itself and it leaves the field so you could use lunalite tiger to special summon a monster from the graveyard which by itself is already a plus one in card Advantage then return it to your hand with yellow Martin in order to fulfill its cost of special summoning itself where you can then just activate luna light tiger again and immediately uses effect for another plus one in card advantage and what do you know since the effect is only a soft once per turn if you're also playing a card like maybe Blackwing zephros the elite and then just activate that card for another plus one and card Advantage for another special Summit since the good effect of this card is on its pendulum effect and you can activate spell cards as many times as you want per turn which includes just activating a pendulum monster into one of your pendulum zones the more you can return this card to your hand the more you gain the plus one and card advantage and the fact that its archetype has a card that allows you to reuse the effect this is just asking for all kinds of abuse there are actually a lot of archetype specific cards that allow you to special summon monsters from the graveyard like dark lord contract for example but some of those cards have hard ones per turns on them and most of them are spell cards that go to the graveyard immediately after you use them so they don't require hard ones per turns because it's infinitely harder to reuse a spell card which does not stay on the field and Luna white tiger gives you all of the advantages of those archetype specific monster Reborn cards while being usable every turn and even loopable on the same turn there is other continuous spell cards that allow you to special Summit monsters from the graveyard just like little light tiger as you can see with pretaponics for example this is a continuous spell card which allows you to special summon a level 4 lower Predator plant monster from your hand or graveyard but its effects are negated it only has a soft ones per turn and has a maintenance cost and is currently Unlimited in the game without any problems the difference between little light tiger and pretaponics is one Luna lights are a better archetype than pure Prada plants and two if lunalite Tigers destroyed before it's able to use its pendulum effect it activates its monster effect where if it's on the field and destroyed by battle or card Effect you get to special summon a lunalite monster from your graveyard but without any restrictions in that monster so you can stop a pretaponics with a mystical space typhoon if you chain it to the activation of the use of the card but if you try to do the same thing to lunalite Tiger it then activates its monster floating effect where it will still special summon a monster anyway so it has a livable effect and a floating effect and could use both of them on the same turn and you could even proc both of them yourself but funny enough its floating effect is a hard once per turn unlike its more abusable pendulum effect which is kinda backwards lunalight tiger was banned in April of 2020. could lunalite tiger be unbanned the answer to this question is maybe despite how good the card is the effect is tied specifically to an archetype and it's not a generic Advantage like monkey board for example lunalight tiger will only ever benefit luna light decks so its power level is entirely dependent on how strong those little light decks are so if lunalight ever got power crept into uselessness then lunalai tiger could definitely come off the ban list and might not even make the deck good enough to compete with whatever is currently running around the meta cards can kind of be stronger than normal when they're restricted to an archetype and in fact there are a lot of very strong cards in the game currently that probably should be banned but are not because they're only really good within a specific archetype like Sky Striker mobilizing Gage or the Phantom Knights of Rusty bardish both of these cards allow you to gain way more advances a normal card really should be able to and both of them were even and at one point but they eventually came out the ban list and weren't too big of a problem because that Advantage is tied to a specific archetype how could they fix lunalite tiger to be unbanned if they simply gave its pendulum effect a hard once per turn rather than a soft once per turn that would do it update this car got unbanned it is now limited to one copy in the TCG and it's Unlimited in the ocg and it actually saw some really good success in danger telegram builds taking some really high top spots in competitive events before tyr got hit hard by the ban list next up we have the Jin releaser of rituals this is a level 3 dark fiend monster so it can be searched out of the deck with tour guide from the underworld and has the effect that if you ritual Summit a monster you can banish this card from your graveyard as one of the materials additionally if this card is used as materials with a ritual summon of a monster your opponent cannot special summon monsters while you control that ritual summon monster face up so it basically grants a lingering effect to any ritual monster that is equivalent to Vanity's ruler which is a very strong Floodgate monster that has seen a lot of competitive play in the past precisely because of its effect to disallow your opponent from special so many monsters even though the card itself has a restriction where it can't be special summoned at all and you have to waste two tributes in order to bring this card out normally there's also a trap card called Vanity's emptiness which has the continuous effect where neither player can special summon any monsters but it's also incredibly fragile and the fact that if any card is sent from your field or deck to the graveyard it will destroy itself immediately shutting down your opponent's special summons is a very powerful Effect one of the best floodgates you can have or even something that has a whole bunch of built-in restrictions to that Floodgate effect and affects both players is considered too strong to be in the game however Jin release her rituals was fine for a really long time as this card came out in 2009 and it wasn't banned until 2015. and the reason the super powerful Floodgate was allowed to exist in the game for six years uninterrupted is because it only applied its effect to Ritual monsters and ritual monsters are kinda garbage rituals have to be one of the most failed type of monsters they've ever added to the game and is so inherently clunky and unplayable that they could kind of print any kind of support they wanted for ritual monsters and it wouldn't matter because they just weren't very good but then in 2015 the necros archetype was released this is an archetype of ritual monsters that finally solved the problem of how to make ritual archetypes not useless and the way they solved the problem was by giving all of the ritual monsters hand effects in addition to just basing their effects on the field on really strong Synchro Monsters of the past and in fact necross were such a successful ritual deck that they even managed to attain tier zero status for like one event and just normal Tier 1 status across the board when they were at full power and one of their main Playmakers was a level 3 ritual monster necros of Colossus is a level 3 ritual monster which has the effect where you can discard this card from your hand in order to add a necross spell a trap card from your deck to your hand and necros also have a card called necros embryonic which you could discard itself from your hand in order to add any necros monster from your deck to your hand and neck cross also had a card called necros Kaleidoscope which allowed you to special summon a necrons monster from your hand by trubity monsters from your hand field or extra deck so if you use Kaleidoscope in order to bring out necrons of unicore which is a level 4 sending a Herald of Arc Light to the graveyard at its Target that allows you to search out any ritual monster or ritual spell card so thanks to the trifecta of Colossus giving you access to all other spell cards Kaleidoscope into a unicorn giving you access to all other spells or monsters and brionic giving you access to everything it was incredibly easy to get whatever you wanted for necros and since one of those main plane makers was a level 3 monster you could instead just choose the ritual summon it normally with a Jin release or rituals as its full materials as it even had an impressive 2300 defense for a level 3 monster so unless your opponent was able to beat over necroza Colossus without special summative monster they were pretty much locked out of the game and there was even protection for necrons of Colossus as necrons of trishula could be used from the hand in order to negate any card Effect that would Target it and necrons of decisive armor could be used to increase his defense by additional 1000 with its hand effect if they did manage something with more than 2300 attack but less than 3 300 attack and net Cross of unicorn had a passive effect to negate the effects of all monsters that were special 7 from the extra deck anyway so if your opponent already had an answer on the board they probably wouldn't be able to use its effect and one last thing that made release of rituals effect so strong was the fact that it applied its effect as a lingering effect which can't be negated so if your opponent had something like Dark Ruler no more or forbidden droplets trying to shut down all of your monster effects so they could summon it actually would not negate the effect of Jin rules or rituals if it was affecting one of your ritual Monsters the only way to stop it was to remove the monster from the field or flip it face down so because a new ritual monster octo was released that was actually good they had to retroactively think about all the broken ritual support they've released over the years and Jin release the rituals definitely got hit in that adjustment could Jin release their rituals be unbanned probably not ritual decks still pop up the meta every now and then and giving them access to a super powerful Floodgate that can't be negated is probably not a good idea as floodgates themselves are just inherently unfun to play against doubly so when you can't actually do anything about it how could they fix Jin release or rituals to be unmanned well if they made the effect affect both players that would definitely go a long way from not making it completely overpowered and just simply very powerful as it would still allow you to use the two kind of the same effect if you bring out Herald of ultimateness with gin release of rituals it probably wouldn't matter if you couldn't special summon anymore because you would just be able to negate anything your opponent might try to do and you could probably win by just attacking with a vanilla beat stick so they would probably have to just change the effect on a hole or at least make it more restrictive in what it disallows your opponent from special summoning like maybe it only locks your opponent out of their extra deck or only from special zombie monsters from the hand maybe not from the graveyard just something other than a full lockdown on all of your opponent's special summons at number 4 we have cyberjar this is an old flip monster from the early days of the game which has has a very weirdly overpowered effect considering the time period this card was released where when this car slid face up it destroys all monsters of the field then it allows both players to reveal the top 5 cards of the deck where you then special summon all level 4 lore monsters ever revealed and either face up attack position or face down defense position and then you just add the other cards to those players hands so the fact that this card destroyed all the monsters on the field on its summon is pretty strong on its own there aren't a lot of flip monsters that can just unconditionally destroy everything on the field when flipped face up it also allows you to potentially summon 5 monsters from your deck which is pretty generically super powerful and even if you don't spell somebody to them you just get to add five cards to your hand which is also a super powerfully strong effect and it's just in addition to whatever cards in your hand so you don't have to empty your hand like with morphing jar another really strong Flip monster that allows you to draw 5 cards if you get Cyber jar in the field and Flip It Up immediately with something like a and d changer you get to just add five extra cards to your hand while also potentially destroying all of your opponent's monsters if you're doing it going second so you'll have up to 10 cards and everybody can hand it with your opponent's board instead of only five while also being able to special summon monsters which in itself is also a really good effect sure your opponent also gets 5 cards and also gets the special summon but you're adding five cards to your hand on your own terms which is just ridiculous card advantage in Yu-Gi-Oh even though this card is a slow full defect monster it's easily the most powerful of all the very powerful jar cards in the game morphing jar for example is a potential plus 5 in card Advantage is limited to one copy and is a baby card compared to cyberjar which can blow up the field and gain you the same amount of advantage or not worry for cards that are already in your hand cyberjar was banned in April 2006 shortly after they created the forbidden list could cyberjar be unbanned probably not even though it's a very slow flip effect monster the card is just a pure five extra cards in your hand if you don't summon the monsters with its effect which could allow you to start the duel with 10 cards in your hand and there aren't really other cards in the game that allow you to get that same kind of setup the way this card moves cards around is so extreme that it really stands out from other Yu-Gi-Oh cards where being able to draw one card unconditionally is considered a powerful effect remember there's a card in the game called seka's light which is only a plus one in card Advantage as it just lets you draw two cards and allows you to Mulligan one card in your hand afterwards but it has a side effect where you can't activate any other speller traps for the rest of the duel except other copies of this card and this card is considered so good that it's currently limited to one copy how could they fix cyberjar to make it unbanned well they could adjust its effect to be more like morphing jar number two which was another jar card that was banned and eventually taken off the ban list because it wasn't as powerful as the others and was mainly used in inconsistent Loops morphing jar number two can shuffle all cards in the field back into the deck then you have the potential to summon cards equal to the amount that were shuffled back so with cyber jar instead only allowed both players to summon cards on top of their deck equal to the amount of cards that were actually destroyed on both players fields and also didn't allow you to keep any of the other cards then it could probably be unbanned with no problem there's also the fact that this card could probably be unbanned as is and wouldn't see competitive play just because it's a flip monster which should show you something a little bit about how unviable flip monsters are but the potential this card is just way too strong for that so it would need an Errata update this car got unbanned it is now limited to one copy in the TCG but still banned in the ocg it has seen zero competitive play since it's unbanning lastly we have fiber jar the other jar card which is currently banned this card has the full effect where both players have to shuffle all cards in their hand field and graveyard back into their deck then both players draw five cards so the card basically resets the duel as losing all of your graveyard setup is completely detrimental to a lot of decks as is losing all the cards in their field which is bad for most decks and of course losing all the cards in your hand which is bad for every deck except for infernities probably you do get to draw 5 cards afterward which kind of puts the game back into the original state that you probably would start it off with which is a huge problem if you're just playing fiber jar in any kind of stall deck one of the ways to beat a stall Duncan is just to outgrind their card Advantage if you're using typical stall cards like threatening roar or wabaku which both have the ability to stall at an entire turn they are inherently limited by the fact that both of these cards are minus ones in card Advantage so while you may be able to style out for a number of turns using these kinds of cards eventually some of them will be destroyed before they're used some of them might even be negated and you need to win before you run out of card Advantage for whatever kind of game set you're trying to achieve whether you're trying to survive 20 turns to resolve Final Countdown or just long enough to draw 5 pieces of Exodia maybe whatever the case being able to reset card advantage to both players is just incredibly powerful it doesn't matter how well your opponent was playing the game and out resourcing you if you're able to resolve fiber jar it just resets everything back to square one and if you're playing something like Final Countdown where all you do is just survive for 20 turns that reset and card Advantage can be the same thing as winning the game fiber jar is another one of those where the potential the card is just too powerful even if the effect of the card itself is not that big a deal if fiber jar was unbanned tomorrow it probably wouldn't see any competitive play they kind of like yanagar rasu but the kind of effect that it has should just not exist in the game which is why it stays banned and was even banned before cyberjar as this card was banned in April of 2005. one full year before cyberjar even though both of those cards came out in the early days of the game before the banned list was created it really goes to show that resetting the card advantage of the game is more bandworthy than gaining the ridiculous effects of cyberjar could fiber jar ever be unbanned it probably could be unbanned and nobody would ever play it but it also probably should never be unbanned without an Aranda because if there is ever a deck that's able to make it viable that would be a very annoying deck to play against how could they fix this car to be unbanned if they remove the effect of resetting the hands in graveyards and just left in the effect of resetting the field but also allow you to draw Cards into F5 in your hand that would probably do it the really powerful thing about this card is resetting your opponent's graveyard in hand as the graveyard is basically a second hand to most decks and the hand is the most valuable place you can hit with any kind of card Effect which is why a lot of cards discarding Beyond a tan generically are straight up banned and the only cards is that do interact with your opponent's hand usually have a bunch of requirements on how they're able to do that and some of them only do it temporarily while only targeting one card at a time however if the card was able to only shovel all cards on the field back into the deck it would still be a powerful effect even if it also allowed both players to draw until they had five cards in their hand but it wouldn't be as broken as it is currently where it's able to Target the hand and the graveyard and get rid of them block dragon is a rock monster despite its name which was released in 2016 and banded September of 2020. why was this card able to be in the game for four years before finally getting hit well black dragon is another one of those cases where cards were released later on that made it retroactively kind of broken however this card was always ripe for future abuse anyway because it was made broken right out of the gate kind of on purpose this card has the effect where can special summon itself from your hand or graveyard by banishing any three Earth monsters from your hand or graveyard it has a passive effect on the field where walk monsters can't be destroyed by card effects it also has decent stats and it has an effect where if this card is sent from the field to the graveyard in any way you can add up to three rock monsters from your deck to your hand just as long as their combined levels equals exactly eight and it's a fact to search out three Monsters has a hard once per turn so it's one of the very few monsters that's able to summon itself from the graveyard and now be banished afterwards and it's supposed to be bounds by the fact that it requires three resources in order to do this but its ability to Summit itself is not once per turn so you can just keep doing it as long as you have Earth monsters to banish this alone makes the card pretty valuable especially since it works with any Earth monsters and not just rock types it also has a decent body on the board with some decent protection too which probably would have pushed this card into scene play as is but the reason this card is broken because it has these two effects on top of a broken search because it literally goes plus to in card Advantage if you're able to search out all three cards the reason this card was fine for so long before it eventually got banned was because Rock was one of those very undersupported types that had a whole bunch of garbage cards kind of like how the pyrotype is currently so this card was meant in order to try to boost the power level of that type of card by giving them a really powerful Searcher and boss monster that could be added to any Rock based deck because at least you could use this effect to search out to level 4 rock monsters if it was sent to the graveyard and it only really searched out three monsters if you built your deck specifically around being able to get out three searches by maybe playing some sub-optimal cards at lower levels but there are two very meta Decks that were able to search out the full three cards every time it was sent to the graveyard and turn that plus to and card Advantage into a real threat the first of the Decks that actually made use of black dragon was the geminite ftk which became viable once their link monster gem Knight Phantom quartz was released in 2018. the way Knight ftk worked was they would bring out the Fusion Monster gem Knight lady lapis lazuli who had the effect to inflict 500 points of damage to your opponent for each special summon monster on the field but could only be special summoned once per turn so what you would do is get six special summon monsters on your side of the field then activate lapis lazuli's effects three times for a win and even though the card can only be summoned once you could use its effect two other times thanks to the effect of gem Knight Master Diamond being able to copy the effect in the graveyard and not having a hard once per turn on its summon or effect and some of the key cards in order to get the combo going were Jeb Knight lapis a level 3 neural monster needed in order to bring out the gem Knight lady lapis lazuli gem Knight obsidian a level 3 monster that could get more special summon monsters on the field and Crystal Rose a level 2 rock monster that could get another material in the field for plays and what do you know the levels of these three monsters equals exactly eight and are all crucial parts of the combo so getting black dragon in the field as soon as possible in order to send it to the graveyard was kind of the first step in performing their ftk so they would usually turbo into curious in order to send black dragon to the graveyard so they could come out and perform at search Konami did try to stop geminite ftk by banding brilliant fusion and limiting gem Knight Master Diamond so black dragon was able to avoid the ban list for this interaction but not the next one Konami then released an archetype called and emancipaters which is a full Rock archetype that has a whole bunch of level 2 and level 4 monsters that can special some of themselves from the hand or the top of the deck and since the whole archetype is only level 2 and level 4 main deck rock monsters they could easily search out the full three rock monsters on black dragon go into the graveyard and Adam emancipaters were so powerful especially with black dragon them giving them just a free plus to every turn that's what finally tipped the scales of Konami thinking okay this card's too much and it was finally banned in 2020 coincidentally shortly after edamance appears were released in the TCG can block Dragon be unbanned anyone who's played mastodil can kind of see the full power block Dragon because as of making this video black dragon is Unlimited in that game alongside a nearly full power gem Knight ftk and an emancipaters so I guess I should say No it should definitely not be on banned and they should hurry up and ban it in master do already it's an effortless plus two for anything that makes use of rock monsters and there are a couple of decks that are actually able to make use of it to great effect how can they fix block Dragon to unban the card if they change the activation requirement for how to perform the search where you can only do the search if the card is sent to the graveyard if it's destroyed by an attacking monster that might actually be enough to fix the card while leaving everything else intact currently it is incredibly easy to meet the conditions of Performing the search because you can just send it to the graveyard for a link summon and then go plus two off of its effect or plus three depending on how you count the card for that link Summit if you only get the search if it's destroyed by an attacking monster similar to how Divine serpent get activates then it wouldn't be usable at all in the combos that it's currently used in but would still have a place in Dex is just an easy to bring out rock monster anyway and could probably use more for its intended purpose as a boss monster type next up we have Victory Dragon this is a level 8 Dragon monster which has the effect where it can't be special summoned and you have to attribute three dragon type monsters in order to attribute some of this card and its effect is that if this card attacks directly and reduces your opponent's life points to zero you win the match which means you don't have to do a game two or three so it automatically wins another duel outside of the current one in a way this effect could be applied to a great Advantage is if you're playing some really unconventional deck that's able to steal a game from your opponent on turn one stall out long enough to bring out Victory dragon and then beat them before they're able to go into their side deck to try to counter your unconventional strategy similar to how self-destruct button was used in the past because in competitive Yu-Gi-Oh it's actually not that hard to steal the first victory in a game but it is very hard to win the next two because of the side deck mechanic of competitive Yu-Gi-Oh just allows you to completely counter a lot of unconventional strategies so Victory Dragon kind of allows you to take advantage of trying to make best use of your first game so that you can entirely avoid the sign deck however unlike self-destruct button which was actually used to competitive effectiveness of taking advantage of these rulings Victory dragon is kind of the opposite where it could technically be used in this way but was mostly banned because it caused its own set of ruined confusions and unsportsmanlike conduct you see the way to counter Victory dragon is to just simply surrender The Duel before Victory dragon can resolve its effect and technically you're allowed to surrender whenever you want so if you know for a fact Victory dragon's effect is going to go off you can just surrender as soon as about to declare an attack and completely avoid the effect however this might cause some arguments between players which might get judges called to their table and just waste a whole bunch of everybody's time so in order to just completely remove unsportsmanlike conduct from the game there are a couple of cards that are banned for that purpose and victory dragon is definitely one of them Victory Dragon was banned in March of 2007. could Victory Dragon be unbanned the answer to this question is yes absolutely and nobody would play it it doesn't really need to be banned it's just there to not waste anyone's time in an event in case someone does try to use it and be annoying how can they fix Victory Dragon to be unbanned they don't really need to do anything because the fact is already fine as is or it's incredibly mediocre and not really worth trying to build around because of how easy it is to dodge the effect by just simply surrendering next up we have spiral master plan this is a level 7 monster which has the effect where once per turn it can add a spiral Mission card from your deck to your hand additionally has the effect where if this card is sent from the field to the graveyard in any way you can add two cards from your deck to your hand one of them being their field spell card spiral Resort and the other being any spiral monster except another copy of itself and its floating effect is a hard once per turn but it's on Field Effect is only a soft once per turn so the card basically searches out three cards which is a plus two and card advantage since one of those searches does require it to go to the graveyard but it replaces itself with two other cards plus searches once while it's on the field so the same card Advantage as block Dragon basically and spirals are a deck that have a lot of ways to make used cars that are searched out and we're part of a tier zero strategy when spiral Quick Fix is unlimited and firewall dragon and Nightmare Goblin were unbanned and unarot it so with all of those cards being hit on the banless there was really no reason to restrict master plan because she was kind of hard to bring out the best way to use her was with spiral double helix special summoning the card directly from the deck that way they could use it for a link summon in order to get the full three searches then Konami released a piece of dark magician's support which unintentionally works so well with spiral master plan that it was eventually banned as well in order to reign in just the absolute power of the searches those two cards provided together magician's Souls is a level 1 monster which has the effect where if this card is in your hand you can send a level 6 or higher spell Caster type monster from your deck to the graveyard in order to special summon this card from your hand and while it's on the field it has another effect where you can send two speller trap cards from your hand or field to the graveyard in order to draw an equal number of cards so you could specialize summon magician's Souls from your hand by sending spiral master plan from your deck to the graveyard since it's a level 7 spellcaster type monster and also some of the cards at spiral master plan search out are not immediately useful the turn you get them but do have useful graveyard effects like Spiral Mission rescue which can banish itself in the graveyard in order to special summon a spiral monster from the graveyard or spiral Mission recapture which can banish itself from the graveyard to prevent destruction of your spiral monsters or even spiral Mission assault which allows you to special summon Aspire a monster from your hand with its graveyard effect and spirals could get spiral master plan out of the graveyard easily with spiral gear big red or of course spiral Mission rescue in order to use spiral master plan in order to do all of its searches and then turn some of those cards at search into more card draw with magician's Souls effect where it was just a match made in consistency Heaven that spiraled spiral Cards into Tier 1 status again even after Konami had tried so hard to hit all of their combo pieces on the banned list so people would stop using them so because spiral master plan was all already a machine that generated advantage and they printed a card which accidentally worked to turn its Advantage into even better Advantage spiral master plan was banned in April 2020 a few months after magician's Souls was released could spiral master plan be unbanned spirals are way too good at searching and recurring the resources to the point where they don't really need their archetype version of black dragon back in the game especially when they have magician Souls it just enables their plays even harder as long as magician souls in the game and spirals have their current ban list of cards spiral Master planche is a little bit too much advantage or if you're able to pull off the full combo it puts you at such an advanced game State it's really hard for your opponent to come back from the amount of Advantage so it probably can't be unbanned anytime soon how could they fix spiral master plan to be unbanned the card kind of exists just to search a whole bunch so the way to fix it would be to probably just restrict how it could do all of its searches with a suggested fix to where it just shares a hard once per turn between both of its effects so with spiral master plan could only use his effect to start of the field or search on floating once per turn then either way that would lower the amount you could search from the card each turn by at least one which would make it a lot more reasonable and not the same kind of card Advantage as a black dragon I'm not sure if that would be enough to fix the problem but it would definitely lower the power level without changing the card too much next up we have black Wing go through the vague Shadow this is a level 5 Tuner monster which can special summon itself from your hand if you control No Monsters then when this card is special summoned you can special summon two vague Shadow tokens which are Level 1 and have no stats that have the lingering effects where they can't be tributed or use as Synchro materials and vague Shadow has the other effect where it can banish itself in one or more face up non-tuner monsters you control in order to special somebody Blackwing Synchro monster from your graveyard whose level is the same as the monster's banish for the effect and that Synchro monster is also treated as a tuner so the intended use of gofu was a way to special summon your Blackwing Synchro monsters from the graveyard and it was definitely not meant to be used in any other kinds of decks besides black wings and for this intended purpose they added the usual restrictions to the Token so they couldn't be taken advantage of so this card was definitely made before Link monsters are added to the game because Link monsters immediately made this effect really powerful the card doesn't use your normal summon nor does it lock you out of any other summons for the turn as long as you have a clear field it's a straight plus two and board presence card economy which can immediately be used for a link 3 monster and one of the monsters it summons is a tuner which means you can go into Christian halki fibrox and still have one token left over for use in other combos so because the car is a straight plus 2 and card Advantage for any deck that uses Link monsters it was a pretty no-brainer Auto inclusion in pretty much every deck Under the Sun unless you just did not like to use Link monsters at all for whatever your strategy was using so in an effort for Konami to curtail a lot of cards that were unintended to work with Link monsters gofu was banned in February of 2018 alongside cards like dandelion and level eater could Blackwing go through the vague Shadow be unbanned and probably not because Link monsters are even more powerful than it was banned in 2018. after they lifted a lot of the restrictions on Master wolf 4 in 2020. if it was unbanned it would just be another very easy combo extender that would be included in pretty much every deck that could afford to run it how could they fix Blackwing go for the vague Shadow to be unbanned if they added restrictions to the tokens where you can't link summon from the extra deck while they're on the field similar to the restrictions on the tokens from the card Soul sword of Taya that would probably do it it's 100 Link monsters that made this card broken and it would only be useful in Blackwing decks if they actually made it less generic and lastly we have magispector unicorn Kirin this is a level 6 pendulum monster which has the effect where it can't be targeted or destroyed by your opponent's artifacts and as a quick effect where it can bounce one pendulum monster you control in one monster your opponent controls to the hand now a few things about this card this card belongs to the magic Specter archetype which is a pendulum archive that has the gimmick where their main deck Monsters can't be targeted or destroyed by your opponent's card effects and Kirin was meant as the boss monster of that archetype but funnily enough can't be pendulum summoned natively by its own archetype because their scales only go up to five and Kirin is a level 6 monster so the intended way to use this card was basically to distribute some of it using your other magic Specter monsters in the field after they've used their effects to search out other magic Specter cards as most of the smaller magisfactor monsters have effects of surge when they're summoned and then just bounce it back to your hand every turn to keep doing this the way it was actually used was just in other Decks that could special summon it every turn with their pendulum summons by having scales that actually went higher than six most commonly in metal foe's decks so they would only play magistspector raccoon bunbuku in order to start Jack Kirin and then just have a free bounce every turn as they could infinitely recur magistspector unit Kirin so unicorn basically became a compulsory evacuation device on legs that came back every turn and also attacked for 2000 points damage while being very hard to get rid of because it couldn't be targeted or destroyed by your opponent's card effects and if your opponent did did finally have a way to actually get rid of the card it could just dodge the effect by returning itself to the hand and bouncing one of your opponent's cards so Kieran was a lot like Destiny Hero Destroyer Phoenix enforcer which is a car that's also able to disrupt your opponent's plays while dodging pretty much any form of removal because his effect requires it destroy itself and with how much competitive play Destroyer Phoenix enforcer sees specifically because of its ability to disrupt and Dodge effects at the same time you could imagine how good Kieran was at his time being able to do the exact same thing and was even harder to actually destroy so just kind of think of Magis Specter unicorn Kirin as the early version of Destiny Hero Destroyer Phoenix enforcer or maybe an even Superior version Taylor Made for pendulum Dax that could afford to bring out a level 6 monster every turn so magic Specter unicorn Kirin was banned in March of 2017 about a year and a half after his release which is actually a pretty fast time for a car to be banned and stay banned as it's still in the forbidden list to this day could magic Specter unicorn Kirin be unbanned this one is is kind of a tough question because masterful 4 did heavily restrict the power level of pendulum decks but the way Kirin uses his effect kind of gets around the master rule 4 restrictions because its effect returns itself to the hand not the extra deck and pendulum summoning monsters from the hand has no restrictions like the extra deck does so because pendulums as a whole are kind of underpowered to do to masterful restrictions they might be able to unrestrict Kirin in order to give all pendulum decks their own Phoenix enforcer but also Kirin is still just as useful today as it was back in 2017 but also the meta today is way stronger than it was in 2017. so I'm kind of up in the air whether this card could come back or not it's obviously a very strong pendulum support card which can be used in pretty much any pendulum deck to great effect just as long as they have the skill that lets them summon their level 6 monster from the hand and they have a strategy that allows them to play the card in the first place so I would say tentatively it probably could be unbanned and it probably wouldn't cause any more problems than what happened when they unban other powerful cards like the Phantom Knights of Rusty bardish how could they fix magic Specter unicorn Kirin so it could be unbanned if they restricted as the fact of the magic Specter archetype more that would make it so it's not a generic boss monster for pendulum decks so if it had the effect where it simply cannot be pendulum summoned except by having Magis Specter cards in your pendulum zones or some other similar restriction they could probably unban the card because it literally wouldn't be summonable without some kind of support that changes the scales of your pendulum monsters it'd be a lot more balanced of not coming back every turn for free as you'd have to actually perform the tribute summon as it was probably intended fishburg Blaster is a level one Tuner monster which has the effect that if you control a level 3 or lower water monster in the field you can discard one card to special some of this card from the graveyard but if this card is used as a Zinger material all the other singer materials must be water and the reason why this card is banned is it's not once per turn and its cost and restrictions are kind of easy to get around since Fitchburg Blaster is a fish type monster it has excellent support with another really strong card called super agent deep sea coelacanth which is a level 7 monster that has the effect to discard in one card to special summon as many level 4 Allure fish monsters as possible from your deck but their effects are negated and they can't attack so if you just find some way to cheat out silicanth easy you can use his affected order to set up all kinds of combos with fish pork Blaster however you do have to discard every time you want to bring back fishboard blaster for Synchro summons which is hilariously easy to offset by just bringing out TG hyper librarian first since this is a level 5 Synchro monster which has the effect where if a monster is Synchro summoned you get to draw one card and the effect is not once per turn so every time you bring back fishboard blaster in order to go into another Synchro Summon you basically get to draw a card which fuels its next discard effect so with coelacanth and the TG hybrid librarian combos it was really easy to go into shooting Quasar Dragon shooting star dragon or even red Nova Dragon while ending your turn with 5 cards in your hand because of all the advantage you generated on the way there through TG hybrid librarian and formula synchron and this was just car cards pre-2011 if fish were glasts are alive nowadays it would be used in a whole bunch of Link combos to much better Effectiveness because it has no restrictions on link summons at all and currently we have cards like jet synchron band because they're able to bring themselves back from the graveyard a single time while being a level one tuner and fishboard Blaster is basically a much stronger version of jet synchron who would absolutely be busted in the modern meta if it was already busted in a much lower power level version of the game in 2011. although funny enough even with all of its combo potential it saw almost all of its success in Monarch decks where they would play an engine of level 2 or lower water monsters in order to facilitate their high level tributes and fishboard Blaster just gave them access to a Synchro pool fisborg Laster was banned in September of 2011. could fishboard Blaster be unbanned not without an erato there's a whole bunch of other band tuner monsters who were banned for less reasons than Fitchburg Blaster and most of those are once per turn or once per duel in the case of glow bulb how can they fix fishboard Blaster to be unbanned fishboy Blaster is one of those old banned cards which had a retrain made of it in order to fix its effect that being fischberg launcher this is a level one tutor monster that has the effect where if this card is in your graveyard and all other monsters in your graveyard water you can special some of this card from your graveyard but then banish it when it leaves the field and also you can only use this card as a singer material for a water single Monster and it even has a hard once per turn on its effect so it doesn't require a discard like the original fish Port Blaster but it does lock you pretty squarely into only water monsters since it can only be used for the Synchro Summon of water monsters instead of only uses materials with other water monsters for any Synchro monster and also checks your graveyard to make sure you have other water monsters there further disincentivizing it using other kinds of monsters like TG hyper librarian or formula synchron and then they even gave it a hard once per turn on top of that so if they were to try to fix the original fish pork Blaster they would have to give it a hard once per turn and then also give it a whole bunch of these water only Sinker restrictions and then it would probably be fine just like the other fishboard monsters next up we have mind master this is a level one tuner which has the effect where you can pay 800 Live points to Tribute one psychotype monster except mine master in order to special summon any level for a lower psychic type monster from your deck and attack position and just like fishboard Blaster this effect is not once per turn now being able to pay life points in order to shuffle a whole bunch of psychotype monsters into your graveyard is valuable for certain kinds of combos even more valuable if you're able to equip it with telekinetic charging Snell to make the effect infinite so you don't have to pay life points for it but in its day you can actually just ignore the gimmick of equipping it with tele charging sale or having brain research lab out and use a single mind master in order to end on a board with naturia Beast barkyon and a level 8 Synchro monster of your choice so completely locking out all of your opponent's spell and trap effects while maybe also having a Stardust Dragon to protect from anything else and the way you could accomplish this was by having any psychotype monster in your hand plus either emergency teleport or one for one in order to bring out my master from the deck or just some way to get my master and another psychotype monster in the field in order to start the combo where you then use mine Master's effect two times in order to get two copies of Asperger on the graveyard then get out two copies of hush psychic cleric you would use hashtag eclair to fact in order to discard one card and banish esper girl from the graveyard which would allow you to special some of the esper Girls when they were eventually attributed with mindmaster in order to bring out two other cards instead of your Synchro summons such like a cleric and sputtle summon a card banish with its effect when it leaves the field as per girl let's go plus one if he was special summoned while banished and then sent to the graveyard and since it's an earth Tuner monster easily sets up naturia beast and nature of archion then you could go into psychic live transfer to recover some life points to bring back more Sidekicks and then do other combos based on the extenders you have in your hand or that you would get through espa girl's effect and this was just a 2011 combo nowadays you could probably do way more than that especially adding Link monsters into the mix just like with fishboy Blaster and having a two card combo that ends on a board of negates which is kind of unheard of at the time which is definitely why the card was banned in September of 2011 alongside fishport blaster for kind of similar reasons these are both very early tuner monsters and having access to an extra deck toolbox with the Synchro monsters was still very new so it kind of makes sense why they accidentally created two fairy broken cards and added all kinds of restrictions to tuner monsters that can special some of themselves or other cards in the future could mind master be unbanned not without an Errata its effect is still pretty strong even today due to the potential just summoning an infinite amount of monsters from your deck the effect is just Mega broken even if it does have a semblance of restrictions with that life Point cost how could they fix mind master to be unbanned this one's pretty easy to fix if you just give it a hard once per turn its 2011 combos heavily rely on being able to bring out at least six other monsters so we can't really do those combos if it's limited to one spare turn and at once per turn it might just be a neat option that's not gonna break the game arch nemesis protoss is a level 11 worm type monster which has the effect where it can only be special summoned from your hand by banishing three monsters with different attributes from your graveyard or face up on the field and it has two effects in the field one of them makes it immune to destruction effects and the other one allows you to declare one attribute of monster that's currently on the field in order to destroy all monsters on the field with an attribute and then activate a short lingering Floodgate where neither player can special Summit monsters of that attribute until the end of the next turn so if you're able to get out arch nemesis protoss and Destroy any attribute of monster that your opponent really needs in order to do their plays like maybe a light attribute against a blue eyes deck then you can essentially win the game by shutting them down for an entire turn in a way that they can't possibly react to outside of negating protons effect immediately as soon as it's summoned and because it provides a floodgate-like effect that can't be negated retroactively and needs to be stopped as soon as it happens it creates a pretty unfair game State unless you're lucky enough to have the out immediately rather than being able to play around it during your turn like you can with a traditional negate that can be shut down with something like Dark Ruler no more or forbidden droplet if you negate the effect of arch nemesis protest in the field the lingering Floodgate is still applied just like true king of all calamities and when arch nemesis protons first came out in 2020 it was perfectly fine because there wasn't really a meta deck that could easily search or bring the card out it didn't really become a problem until the sword Soul archetype was released in 2021 which is a series of pretty good worm type monsters that have easy access to Synchro monsters combo world the 10y engine and have an archetype specific card that can be used to search out arch nemesis protons from the deck if they use the card sword Soul emergence it allows them to add a sword Soul monster from the deck to their hand or if they control a Synchro monster you can just add any worm type monster instead and sword souls excel at going into Synchro monsters it's really easy to activate the second condition of this effect in order to just have arch nemesis protons on the field after you set up your other combos the tenu cards also have a search with Heavenly Dragon Circle and the tennies themselves as well as the sort Soul monsters are all of various different attributes which easily allows you to meet the conditions of summoning protoss from your hand which kind of creates the perfect combination of cards that were already strong on their own and could just add Arch names as protons to the mix in order to make themselves even stronger with an uninteractive Floodgate that was randomly immune to destruction defects as well to make it even harder to get rid of and since artemis's protoss was closing out so many games of the sort Soul engine it was banned in February of 2022 alongside a couple of other small hits to reign in the archetype arch nemesis protoss was one of those cards that had a potentially broken effect but didn't really have an archetype that could take advantage of it until sword Soul came out kind of like phoenixian cluster Amaryllis or spiral master plan or Tempest magician a lot of other cards that are currently banned could Arts Nemesis protoss be unbanned probably not the actual power level the card is not super high especially since it's a main Deck monster you have to search out first and then activate a spell speed 1 effect in order to resolve The Floodgate in the first place unlike true king of all calamities which has a better effect can be brought out right out of the extra deck and has a spell Speed 2 lockdown but even with having a weaker version of true king of all calamities is a fact a lingering effect that stops you from playing the game which you can't do anything about really shouldn't be on cards that are easy to bring out at least with a Floodgate you can play around it by destroying the card in the field with a Harpy's feather duster but if you're not able to stop archem's protons as effective immediately then the best you can do is just wait for it to run out on its own which is not really a good thing to do when your opponent also has a whole bunch of other super strong Synchro monsters on the field with a full established board while you have nothing how could they fix arch nemesis protoss's effect in order to be unbanned if they lower the duration on its Floodgate to just the turn it activates it instead of allowed it to Ling over into the next turn that could probably do it in fact it probably wouldn't even be played if it didn't linger over into your opponent's turn the ability to just lock down your opponent outside of their turn in a way they can't possibly react to during their turn really shouldn't be an effect in the game especially not attached to a Floodgate but if it's only for one turn on a spell speed one effect that's probably fine especially since you can't cheat the effect like you could outer entity as a thought who had a pretty similar effect of locking down for only one turn but could do it technically during your opponent's turn with the Phantom Knights rank up magic launch Eva is a level 1 fairy monster which has the effect that if this card is sent to the graveyard you can banish two other light fairy monsters from your graveyard or field in order to add the same number of level 2 Allure fairy monsters with different names from your deck to your hand so basically if you get this card into the graveyard directly from your deck you go plus two in card Advantage with two fairy monsters to your hand which was incredibly powerful in drytron decks thanks to the effect of Herald of ultimateness Herod of ultimatist can be brought out very easily in dry trons thanks to them kind of skirting around its 70 conditions with their ritual card methionus drytron and it has an effect where if a card would be activated or a monster would be summoned you can discard one fairy monster from your hand to the graveyard in order to negate that card or summon and destroy that card the effect is not once per turn or even once per chain so as long as you have enough fairy monsters in your hand to fuel the effect you can kind of just negate everything your opponent tries to do and if one of the cards you have in your hand is Eva then you can negate three effects with heritable toughness by sending one Eva to the graveyard and then two more with the other two cards it adds to your hands afterwards or you could just send Eva directly from the deck to the graveyard with foolish burial or Beatrice in order to get two cards to fuel Herald of ultimate this is negates and a level 1 fairy monster is pretty easy to search out so it was just way too strong for how easy it is to bring out hair out of ultimateness and dry Tron and contributed heavily to basically unbreakable board states where unless you had forbidden droplets super polymerization or Dark Ruler no more or some kind of kaiju-like card to Tribute the card there was no way you were going to play through the amount of negates and dry trons generated through just a single copy of Eva because of course a car that lets you go plus two with its floating effect would be strong on its own the fact that it's usable with an already very strong deck just makes the card extra broken so after a series of unsuccessful hits to try to reign in dreytron's power they eventually just banned Eva in February 20 22 finally lowering the power level of dry Tron to a point where they can't put up a massive amount of negates anymore could Eva be unbanned the answer to this question is no not as long as dry trons have access to Herald of ultimateness or Herald of perfection it gives them two extra negates and it's very hard for any deck to play through two negates in fact modern Yu-Gi-Oh is all about having at least two different hand traps in your hand in order to stop your opponent's place since the metagame has gotten to a point where if you can't play through at least one negate then your deck is not competitive however two negates is kind of the threshold for stopping a meta deck tritron does still have access to more than two negates just nowhere near as easy without Eva to take advantage of how could they fix Eva in order to unban the card considering the card was already limited to one copy and was still too powerful and it already has a hard once return on its effect the big problem with the card is just the effect itself it's too easy to activate since it triggers off of any weight sent to the graveyard so you can just send it during your opponent's turn with Beatrice in order to trigger the effect for two extra cards in your your hand so if you were to change the activation a little bit where maybe the card only activates its effective it's sent from the feel to the graveyard that would definitely lower the power level of the card as it was almost never summoned in order to use the effect anyway and either sent from the hand or deck to the graveyard require me to hit the field first could be just enough in order to slow the effect down where it wouldn't be as powerful as it once was it might be unbannable samorg bird of sovereignty is a link 3 monster that requires two plus monsters including at least one Wing Beast monsters as materials and it itself cannot be used as a link material it has some effects which provide some protection to itself and Wing Beast monsters it points to where they can be targeted and if this card would be destroyed by battle you can destroy another similar card you control instead and the real power of this car is its last effect where during the end vase you can special summon a wing Beast monster from your hand or deck just as long as its level is equal to or lower than the total number of unused spell trap card zones on the field and with the default 10 this means on your first turn you could potentially summon a level 10 or lower wing Beast mods from your deck and the magic level for this effect is either seven or four as you can special summon missed Valley Apex avian or bear your statue of the stormwinds Mist Valley Apex avian is a level 7 monster with 2700 attack which has an omni negate where you can just return itself from the field to the hand in order to negate and destroy your card and to Bear your stat to the Stormwind prevents both players from special summoning monsters except for wind monsters so with samorg you could just choose to either get out an omni negate with a pretty big body of 2700 attack which you could make untargetable thanks to simworks protection or a Floodgate which also has targeting protection both of these are excellent options to go into and provide so much value to some more who can just keep bringing up monsters during the end phase as the effect happens during both players and phases so if you successfully lock your opponent out for a turn thanks to either of the two cards it can summon you can just bring out another one during the end of your opponent's turn and what made samorg even more broken was just how easy it was to summon a try Brigade decks pretty much all of the main deck try Brigade monsters have an effect on the field or they can banish any number of beast-centric cards from your graveyard I.E beast beast Warrior or Wing Beast monsters in order to special summon a link monster from yakshadek that has a link rating equal to the amount of cards banished so if you banish three b-centric cards from your graveyard with a try Brigade you can bring out some Borg without having to go through the effort of getting two plus materials on the field for its normal procedure and since try Brigade we're all about bringing out some other good cards in addition to just having the option of bringing out an easy simorg this created an incredibly powerful extra option to their deck which allowed them to end on an effortless Floodgate or an extra negate so in order to restrict tribergate from having such easy access to two wonderful things by only banishing three monsters from the graveyard they banned some morgue bird of sovereignty in February of 2022. could some moric bird of sovereignty be unbanned if the try Brigade monsters ever fall out of favor in the metagame then they could probably unban the card because the main problem with it is how the card was obviously balanced around its own archetype using it and not being cheated out of the extra decks super easily bringing the card out under its normal procedure kind of justifies the power level of the card being able to bring it out as a plus one and try brigades is a little bit too strong how can they fix the morgue bird of sovereignty to be unbanned if they added an extra effect to the card which basically stages only Gage's effect if its link summoned just like with the extra effects of Mech Knight crusadia avermax then that could probably do it bringing the Carter under its normal procedure would probably justify the very strong effect it has and they already have a lot of Link monsters who have this extra restriction on it because they know those cards will be cheated out with other cards that preceded them although when they made samorg they probably didn't force a tribergate being able to cheat them out as a plus one so it wasn't future proof like avermax was and lastly we have a trap card called Imperial order seeing as this is the last video in the series I thought I would cover the last car that was banned after I finished doing all the other band trap cards already Imperial order is a continuous trap card which used to have the effect that it would negate the effects of all spells on the field field and once returned during your standby phase you could pay 700 life points in order to keep this card in the field otherwise it would destroy itself although the maintenance cost for how powerful this effect is was not properly balanced being able to negate one third of the cards in the game especially one of the most used types of cards is incredibly powerful especially since you can just activate the card in response to your opponent using it in order to get a free negate and then also you could just choose to turn the effect off during your turn by not paying the maintenance costs where the card would destroy itself but you'd be free to use your spell cards unimped it and the original version of this card was very powerful being put on their version of the ban list as early as 2001 and then when they finally created an actual forbidden list it was straight up banned in March of 2004 where it stayed banned for 13 years until January of 2017 where the card got an Errata that changed it so you can no longer choose to pay the maintenance costs and had to pay 700 life points during each player standby phases instead of just your own and the main difference between being able to choose to pay the maintenance costs and not being able to choose is that you have to find some other way to get Imperial order off the field if you want to be able to cast spells during your turn so you could still gain the great benefits of changing it to one of your opponent's spell cards to get a free negate but you could no longer easily get rid of it on your own it was also limited to one copy when is removed from the banned list of the erata as this is something they do a lot with newly eroded cards that were previously forbidden and the card immediately started seeing competitive play again because after all it's a free shutdown of your opponent's spell cards for a full turn which was great if you didn't really use any spell cards yourself anyway which there were a couple of meta Decks that could easily get away with never using spell cards considering how most modern meta decks are all about using monster effects for everything and because there were some Decks that were completely reliant on spell cards like Sky Striker for example if you would slide in an imperial order against those matchups it was basically an instant win if your opponent didn't have an out for it immediately and another big problem with Imperial order even with its a routed version is that it coincidentally also countered the out you see the main way to out floodgates is sighting in cards like lightning storm Harpy's feather duster Twin Twisters or Cosmic Cyclone you may have noticed something about all these four cards I listed all four of them are spell cards the most common way to destroy floodgates is to use a whole bunch of different kinds of spell cards in your side deck so if you're playing a back row heavy deck that was mainly trap focused Imperial order could basically protect you from all of your opponent's anti-back row cards while also locking out your opponent of their other stuff so if you wanted to get rid of Imperial order you'd have to decide in trap destruction effects like maybe heavy storm Duster or more realistically just go into a monster that could easily destroy the card like nightmare Phoenix and since most people would usually opt for Monster destruction it was pretty easy to just focus all your negates on those nightmare phoenixes or tornado dragons that way they couldn't possibly out impure your order which would just win you the game against certain matchups and because Imperial order was just being an instant win against certain decks while also being a complete counter without it was banned again in February of 2022 being the only card which was taken off the ban list with an Errata and then placed back on it later on because the agrada wasn't enough of a Nerf could Imperial order be unbanned probably not seeing as it was banned rather recently it's a pretty unique Floodgate as it's an instant win against certain decks and very hard to out once it's actually live there are similar cards which Floodgate spell cards but most of those all have ways to help them whereas secret Village of the spellcasters can be shut down if you just get rid of your opponent's spellcaster monsters and spell counselor can be beaten over by battle pretty easily but the only way to get rid of Imperial order is to destroy the card so there's no alternative way of getting rid of it like with the other spell negate floodgates and a Floodgate which also stops common answers to floodgates is extra devious because it also protects your other floodgates how could Imperial order be fixed to be unbanned this one's kind of funny because it's the only card in the series which was fixed and then unbanned but it wasn't fixed well enough if you simply played in Decks that don't really need spell cards then its initial fix isn't really that big of a deal so if they were to fix this card to unban it the next time what they could do is add a zero to the end of its life Point cost where it now cost 7 000 light points during the standby phase otherwise the card is destroyed that would probably go a long way to fixing it install slash control decks however realistically only be able to pay the Litecoin costs a single time before the car destroys itself might be better as part of the problem with Imperial order is how it's very hard to actually get rid of it once it hits the field so if there was a huge Litecoin cost to this that might also create the unintended side effects of making it really good and just self burn Decks that are trying to resolve life equalizer otks and also just make it really usable in combo Decks that only wanting to get your opponent's floodgates for a single turn anyways as the card would be easier to get rid of during your turn since you wouldn't be able to pay the Litecoin cost so the best way to deal with this card to negate would be to add a harsher restriction on the person using it like maybe disallowing you to special social Summoner activate monster effects odds on the field which means it could still be taken advantage of in either anti-metadax or Outlets or maybe even alternate when its effect is actually live like in the effect of Underdog so that it only negates cards during your opponent's turn and then it only negates spell cards during your turn so your opponent is free to use Quick Play spell cards although even this seems really powerful so really I I can't think of a good way to fix this card where it still wouldn't be taken advantage of as the ability to just unconditionally negate all of your opponent's spell effects it seems like a little bit too strong of a Floodgate because the common answer to this card is spell effects starting out with the band cards we have Chris John halky five rocks going from limited to forbidden this card is a water machine link 2 which takes 82 monsters including a tuner it brings out a level 3 lower tuner straight from your deck when link summon but its effects are negate on the field that turn also during your opponent's main or battle phase it can banish itself to tag out into a tuner Synchro monster from your extra deck and that is treated as a proper Synchro Summit it's been a long time coming but halc has finally been put on the ban list the this card combines an extremely generic summon condition with a really powerful effect for extension its restrictions on the monster brought out did it matter if you just brought out a monster with a graveyard effect or even something you could use on your opponent's turn this made halc into a must include in any deck that ran tuners as a way to keep playing as long as they had bodies out even slower decks such as outlets and Sky Strikers ran it though as in simplified game States you could normal summon a hand trap tuner and then use it to go into Celine and then access code talker to close out a game its second effect was quite relevant in artifact site setups especially during the last format artifact dagda can be used to set a size directly from your deck which can be popped with hockey fibracks tagging out into Wonder magician during your opponent's turn to summon scythe and lock your opponent of their extra deck for a turn either way these are just the ways that halc had been used recently but this card had made a huge impact on the game ever since it came out many tuners got banned as soon as how it got released and minimore would follow soon after for a really long while it seemed like a similar situation to firewall Dragon where Konami also banned every card surrounding it instead of hitting the actual album card at last it's finally been forbidden it will most likely never come back there were a few things more broken in Yu-Gi-Oh than being able to submit monsters from the deck little restrictions which cards like how can summon sources before have shown us even if it wasn't as big of a promise it once was because of Sprite and tier elements being the best decks right now the metagame will still change quite a bit due to this not being usable anymore Sprite often ran out because when com with swap frog you could use it to bounce hand traps that Hal could bring out from the deck the punk engine was sometimes seen alongside either deck and much of those card strength was because of Hulk many Adventure decks from last format used Hulk plus dagda combos as their main wincon to protect their Adventure cards however this is just scratching the surface of all the reasons why hauxhall play as there hasn't been a format since the release where it hasn't seen at least some play overall it's good to see this card finally on the list even if it didn't feel particularly broken at the moment it's been a huge problem for the game from the get-go then from unlimited forbidden we have chaos ruler the chaotic magical dragon a level 8 dark dragon Synchro monster on the this card Synchro Summon the card excavates the top five cards of your deck and you can add one light or dark monster and then send the rest of them to the graveyard it also has a graveyard effect where you can banish a lighted dark monster from your hand or graveyard disposals on itself back but then it gets banished when it leaves the field chaos ruler was one of if not the strongest level 8 Synchro available in the game it can be made with generic materials and its effect would often let you at least plus two in card Advantage Dragon link dexa this is a central part of their combo as it was really easy to make with their rocket engine and let you excavate to either extenders or hand traps while also being reusable body to use for the deck's strongest interruptions chaos ruler together with Christian hockey fibracks was the main reason why Punk engines ever saw any play since they made resolving a single Noah pungazia Min into one of the highest amounts of card Advantage you can get off of a single card while also putting a negate on the board with Baron de Floor in the current meta while Punk engines can be run on either the top deck it was mostly popular into realm Index this is a no small part because of chaos ruler since its mil effect will also trigger the graveyard effects of all the derailments you've excavated on top of their everything else with this card leaving the format Dragon link becomes a tad bit worse and punk becomes almost entirely unusable outside of dedicated Punk strategies at least at first glance this is a link 3 light warrior monster and takes three Monsters of the same attribute with different types as its materials this card's first effect is that when it's linked Summit you get to send any card from your deck to the graveyard additionally when a card is sent from your deck to the gravey by a card Effect it Mills the top three cards of your deck and lastly it also has a floating effect where if it's destroyed by battle or leaves the feel because of an opponent's card Effect you get to Target a card in your graveyard and add it back to your hand now curious is one of the strongest Link monsters to be printed ever being able to send any card from reductor the graveyard can be overwhelmingly powerful for a number of decks and it's something that has landed many other cards on the band list before such as levolvel chain the only thing that held this card back was its awkward summary requirement needing Three Monsters of the same attribute but different types to be brought out this kept curious from being splashed in most decks and it was mostly related to 60 card grass decks which had an easier time going into it however all of this change when the danger archetype came out the dangers are a series of monsters which can special some of themselves for free most of the time and also help you dig deeper into the deck by making you draw a card when they come out but the part that really mattered for Curious was that they were all dark attribute with each having a different type since dark is the most plentiful attribute in the game with plenty of powerful play starters by itself and the fact that the danger archetype actually packed quite some uncommon types LED curious to being splashable into way more decks than ever before this card became a staple in many strategies which used dangers and was more often than not paired with its biggest partner in crime nightmare Griffin this is a generic link 4 monster which can be made with two or more monsters of different names so you can just make with curious and one other material it prevents non-link specials when monsters from activating their effects and when it's linked Summit you can pitch a card from your hand to set a spell trap from your graveyard to your field but it can't be activated this turn so what people often did with these two cards was sent really broken floodgates to the Grave with curious such as Imperial order when it was legal and then use Griffin to set it to your field this was enough to get people rallying for this card's banding during several formats as whenever cures into the meta it was always to do some degenerate combo like this still it was a limitation of several dangers which kept this kind of thing in check in the end the latest instance of a tier 1 deck using curious was in danger tier limit strategy the tier lament cards fit extremely well with curious as the monsters trigger their effects diffusion summon using Mitchells from the graveyard hand or field and the back row lets you add cards to your hand when sent to the graveyard the release of the tcg exclusive Fusion Monster gurua wings of Resident Life also played quite a big role since it's quite easy to make within the archetype you only need guruba a tear limits monster and a danger to go into curious to top it all off by making curious with guruba you chain block curious mil effect with guru's floating effect protecting you from hand traps such as Ash Blossom enjoy spring this card was particularly vicious in tear because he didn't even have to link into Griffin for to provide interaction as its effective Mill 3 could also be triggered during your opponent's turn when paired with other tier cards the last iterations of danger tier took a significant amount of top cut slots during the September 2022 format due to their explosiveness and resilience to hand traps with all that said by the time the ban list dropped curious had completely fallen out of the meta the release of more tier limit support as well as other generic action deck options had pushed the danger variant out of the meta for the most part already the release of the new ishizu support which ushered the game into a tier zero format made it completely extinct though there's no reason to play a tear variant other than ishiza tier at the moment which doesn't really need any help-million cards in the first place it's a bit puzzling why Konami would end up choosing now of all times the band curious since they could have done it back during the September 22 ban list but it was actually being played this band doesn't really affect the current meta but since curious is pretty much always being used in the most degenerate strategies available at any given time it's not a bad hit at all starting out with the bands we have artifact Scythe this is a level 5 light fairy monster with an effect that allows you to set it from your hand into the spell trap card Zone during your opponent's turn if this card is destroyed and sent to the graveyard you can special summon it and if it's Special Assembly in your opponent's turn it activates its effect to lock your opponent out of the extra deck for the entire turn signs have been a problem for many years on end and even if it hadn't seen that much play recently I think we brought it from the deck for free with artifact sanctum which made the Trap into a great going first option many times before when the artifacts had first come out their biggest problem was moral touch which can pop a card in the field to the point where the card once got itself on The Limited list back in the day locking it out of the extra deck for a turn wasn't such a big deal as it wasn't a plus one like moral touch however this much has changed as the game became faster and there's more and more ways to punish your opponent for skipping out of their turn pretty much Indie deck has an easy way to end the game now through either their own engine cards or generic extra cards like axis code talker making sanctum an instant win if it resolves this wouldn't be the only way to abuse site though as this car would end up becoming easily searchable a few years back artifact dagda can be used to set Scythe straight from the deck for free on a generic link to body which gave many decks access to a scythlock on turn one with dagda all you do is just pop your own sight during your opponent's turn and you can pretty much just win the game as long as they're an extra deck Reliant strategy which is almost all decks some of the most common ways to do this though were through howkey fibracks into TG Wonder magician or Verte and to Destroyer Phoenix enforcer these two ways to abuse Scyther and rampant in the early 2022 format where a lot of decks that were despy our swords so were trying to cyclop your boat out of the game but even if Halk and Verte are banned now there isn't a shortage of ways to abuse this card even if they're a bit harder you can still bring it back from the graveyard with bear on the floor if you manage to get it there or pop it with an in-engine card like evil twin Leela overall even if this card wasn't a problem the current format it would only be a matter of time before it came to matter again this card is still searchable through sanctum and the upcoming Striker link 2 would give players get another easy way to pop Scythe during your opponent's turn make this into a pretty nice preemptive band for the next format next up on the chopping block we have barrier statue of the stormwinds this is a level 4 wind wing Beast monster which prevents both players and special 70 monsters except for wind Monsters the statue was a very important car for flu as they're the main feature on pretty much every single one of the decks and Boards due to how little The Meta is comprised of wind monsters various statue effectively locks out every single deck from Special Assembly on the field due to this card's typing it can be easily searched out through flounder reason Robina too making it very easy to get to flue's main goal is to put down a statue and protect it which they do so either through their field spell or trap if your opponent normal someone's a monster to try and go into the battle phase to beat over it they can simply activate either to Tribute out rise of the mega Monarch to remove the monster from the battlefield winning the game on the spot if your opponent doesn't have any sort of hate for the Statue this card as well as Dimension shifter were the main reasons why a huge part of the player base detested florinda Reeves and it's the kind of Floodgate turbo deck where you either draw your outs or you just lose stormwinds had already been a problem in some other decks before back when some more bird of sovereignty was still legal as it can be summoned out from the deck and it could possibly once again be used in cached era as they can make a raid Raptor rank 7 to Turbo it out the Banning of this card reads the format of one of the nastiest floodgates around it makes Wanderers much weaker than it once was this was a band that was somewhat expected as the same had also been applied to both the ocg and master do already where in both cases flundery's remains somewhat playable but not a meta threat as it is for the TCG now for the third band and there's tier limits kit callus this is a level 5 Fusion Monster which can be made with tier limit monster and an aqua monster when it's special summoned you can either add to your hand or send to the graveyard any tier limit card from your deck during the main phase they can Target a monster control and its puzzle summon a tilament monster either from your hand or graveyard then send the targeted card to the graveyard and last if this card is sent to the gravey by a card Effect you can Mill the top five cards of your deck kit Kalos is one of if not the strongest Fusion Monster ever printed in the game one important thing to note is that due to the way the tilament's main deck girls work this card is easily summable whenever one of them is sent to the gravey by a card Effect since that triggers their effective Fusion summon using materials from the hand field or graveyard not only that but since this card is a level 5 it can also be summoned out with instant Fusion which has become the sackiest card of the format due to Kit's existence however being easily made is just one of the reasons why kid is so good this card is also capable of searching its entire archetype and the tilament archetype is very strong this card can search out extenders hand traps ways to build more cards and even powerful hand traps as if this Plus plus one wasn't enough kid callous also enables one of the strongest plays in chilaments with its other effect by targeting itself with its effect while also having a tier limits merely in your hand or graveyard he can send caccals to the graveyard to add that merely to the field this then triggers merely's unsummoned effect as well as kitkel's graveyard effect Milling eight cards from your deck tilament's Milling 8 can make the deck plus like crazy as all the aforementioned cards are also plus ones when they hit the graveyard this is without even getting to the ishizu cards which aren't part of the engine but are even better Mills with half of them Milling even more cards and the other being quick effect interruptions during either player's turn with this many good hits the chance of an 8 mil not making you go into at least plus two were extremely low this card was a very big part of the reason why tears were tier zero and the main way to play against the deck was to either prevent kid callous to the best deals which were president almost every deck or negate its effects within perm though either of those would fall short if kit Kalos was brought out with instant Fusion as even if you need that one through in perm it's still getting destroyed during the end phase due to instant Fusion's effect making you Mill five cards anyway instant Fusion was about to become way more annoying than a saggy one of two due to the newly released triple tactics thrusts which you can use to fetch it straight from the neck though with kitkal's band it's no longer as big of an issue as before the deck takes a pretty big hit from this ban but it's by no means unplayable with just this hit as we can see in the ocg the tier cards can still make other fusions such as garura and kaleido heart using the tier's graveyard effects and you still have access to the card which required kidkalos Rue Kalos through King of the swamp this definitely makes tears have to work more harder for their pluses though as the impact of every single tier name resolving is much lesser than before though though some would say this is not enough to make the deck stop being tier zero as it still sees a lot of play in Japan even after this card was banned this is just the first of the direct hits to tear on this list so far though finally the last band card is Sprite elf this is a link to mods with 1400 attack which can be made with any two monsters including at least a single rank link or level 2. it cannot be as a link material to turn its link summon and protects the monster its arrows are pointed to from being targeted during either player's main phase it can as a quick effect bring back a level 2 monster from a graveyard but if your opponent controls a monster it can be a link or Rank 2 instead power the elements prod as one of the most powerful fusions in the game as kit Kalos as well as one of the strongest Link monsters in Sprite elf though its effect may seem much weaker at first glance there's a very good reason why most decks in The Meta would come to adopt this card in one way or another Sprite elf is most powerful in its own deck of course Sprite as every single member of the archetype is a legible Target you can choose between Sprite Jet and blue which pluses you on summon or Sprite red or carrot which are negates however the main reason why this card is scary is due to how it interacted with the Frog engine swap frog is easily searchable from the deck with gigantic Sprite and when it's summoned you can dump another swamp frog to the graveyard that second swap can be brought back with Sprite elf during your turn so that you can overlay for totally awesome totally can on a soft once per turn tribute in aqua monster and opponent's card Effect and steal it to your side of the field this means that you can use totally awesome attribute itself during your opponent's turn and then if your opponent has a monster you can bring it back with L for it to be able to negate again while this interaction was the main reason why Sprites were such a powerful strategy in recent metas they were by no means the only deck which played elf tier limits also had Alpha as part of their end board and gave them interaction about as powerful as the double toad play as you might recall two elements have merely a level 2 monster which meals three cards in a deck on its Summit it would also often be the monster you're bringing out with kid callous effect this means that you'd often be able to go into Sprite elf in order to bring back merely during your opponent's turn million three cards in your opponent's turn could give you access to some very powerful interactions like making fusions with interrupts your opponent's turn if you meal to your names or sending the whole game into disarray if you hit one of the right of Shizu cards the way elf works is that it would at least plus one every single turn while it stuck around the field but was often much more impactful than that if you're barely hit anything Sprite elf is not only very powerful than its archetype but it also has a potential to be broken in pretty much every single Deck with a decent level 2. this card is very easy to make as it's quite generic and gives you pluses and interactions every turn even outside of these two there are still countless other decks which can make very good use of Elf by reboarding a diviner or a try Brigade monster Sprite elf band the power level Sprite and tear very well though it is a way bigger blow to Sprite than it is to anything else this is a huge loss to Sprite but the deck is still playable and this hit will probably prevent it from being dominant in the power vacuum that will happen due to the tear lemon hits Maxi is an insect type monster whose level 2 has low stats and has the ability where during either player's turn you can send this card from your hand to the graveyard and for the rest of the turn each time your opponent special summons a monster or Monsters you immediately draw one card now this effect is a hard once per turn but that's kind of funny because it doesn't really matter since you do get to draw a card every time your opponent special summons a monster the card was released in 2011 alongside other hard-hitting Stables like forbidden Lance and an oppressive boss monster in the form of legendary 6th Samurai Sheen or I guess I should say it was a pretty unremarkable debut it was released in the middle of the single era so special summons wore a thing but it was definitely overshadowed by the completely overpowered legendary Six Samurai Xi'an who it would once per turn negate a spell or trap card which is kind of funny considering the legacy of these two cards six samurais are no longer a consistent competitive meta deck and the one that do see play don't really use Xi'an and Maxi is currently on the ban list for being one of the best hand traps in the game's history so what exactly was so broken about Maxie well it just allows you to draw a whole bunch of cards and being able to draw cards is pretty good especially when it stops your opponent from trying to use so many cards which is why the card was eventually banned in February of 2018 after being on the limited list for a while however let's take a look at everyone's favorite confusing band card pot of greed this card is currently banned and will probably never be unbanned because it has the effect to draw two cards although more importantly the cost of drawing these two cards is simply the minus one from your hand of using that pot of greed which means the card is a plus one and card Advantage if you have five cards in your opening hand and one of those cards is pot of greed and you use it and send pod agree to the graveyard actor its activation your hand ends off with six cards which means a net plus one to Advantage and this is the basics of card advantage using cards to get better off afterwards and some of those cards generate to more Advantage if you had a deck full of pot of greeds then your hand would just get bigger and bigger the more cards you played although you wouldn't be able to win with a full deck of pot of greets you'd need to do something with those cards and that's where we get powerhouses in the meta cards that are able to do a whole bunch once they actually hit and impact the field take ultimate conductor Tyranno for example this is a one card that you can special summon from your hand by banishing two dinosaur type monsters from your graveyard and while it's on the field it has a grand total of about five separate effects bundled together in two of its effects one of them allows you to destroy a monster in the field or in your hand in order to book of eclipse your opponent where you flip all of your opponent's cards face down this effect is quick effect which means you can use it during your opponent's turn in order to flip all their cards face down so they can't use those monsters for extra deck plays or their active weighted effects in the field its other effect allows it to attack all of your opponent's monsters and if it attacks a defensive position monster it can send that card to the graveyard without a battle or destruction and you get to inflict 1 000 points of damage to your opponent the card itself has 3500 attack Baseline which is 500 over the normal maximum attack which means it can beat over any card except ones who specifically exist to have high attack Point values which are kind of rare in the metagame so if your opponent has a full Board Of Monsters And you bring out ultimate conductor Tyranno to flip them all face down this one card can wipe out all six of your opponent's cards which basically Nets you a plus six an advantage because one card in the field is able to get rid of six of your opponent's cards which can kind of count towards your own Advantage because you're depriving your opponent of resources and this card's cost in order to destroy a card technically netsu a minus one to Advantage but most of the time dinosaur decks use it to destroy cards like baby Sarah sorts which will cancel out the effect and actually turns it into a plus which will allow you to special summon another dinosaur type monster from your deck maybe something like solating oviraptor who himself allows you to go plus one on its summon which could turn ultimate conductor tyrannos cost into a plus one and card Advantage due to a very short and direct combo with baby sarasaurus which could also potentially get rid of all of your opponent's cards increasing the advantage even further and possibly win you the game right there all of this is accomplished with a simple one card in your hand ultimate conductor Tyranno and of course a setup of graveyard with two dinosaur type monsters assuming your opponent doesn't negate any of its effects say for example you bring out ultimate conductor Tyranno and try to use its effect to flip all of your opponent's cards face down that way you can attack over your opponent's bore load Savage dragon who might be currently equipped with a link monster so its attack is above 3500 although that bore load Savage dragon has a negate so it gets simply activate its effect in order to stop ultimate conductor Tyranno from flipping it face down in order to get rid of it much easier in that case you can then use a card from your hand like forbidden chalice which will negate the effect of the bore load Savage dragon that way the effect can result backwards in Ultimate conductor tyrannos effect would actually go off and allow you to get rid of all those cards but then say your opponent goes even further and has another nigget on the field something like red eyes dark Dragoon who can't be targeted by something like forbidden chalice you can then activate forbidden droplet from your hand and then discard a monster and choose your opponent's red eyes dark Dragoon to negate its effect as well and then eventually you'll be able to stop your opponents in a gate and your effects will go through in order to flip all their cards face down so that you can attack overall them without a problem in order to let the effects resolve though you need to go through a lot of cards in your hand in order to counter their counters but it's worth it because one card will then be able to get rid of all your opponents cards and all all of this requires cards in your hand ultimate conductor terminal wouldn't be able to resolve its effect against the board of negates without help so it's a singular super powerful card but it still needs support in the form of cards in your hand or other cards in the fields that have negates like borrowload Savage dragon or red eyes dark dragon and in order to set up these cards you just need cards in your hand in order to bring out that Advantage a red-eyed dark Dragoon can be brought out with a single normal summon from your hand using something like Neo space connector who can then special summon neospacey and aqua dolphin from your deck and then allows you use both those cards to go under preda plant vertay Anaconda who could then pay 2000 light points and send red eyes Fusion from your deck to the graveyard in order to special summon red eyes dark Dragoon from your extra deck so for the low low cost of a single normal summon and one card from your hand you get a super powerful boss sponsor in the field who can negate any card Effect once per turn destroy up to two monsters and can't be targeted or destroyed by card effects and if you have any tuner that can special summon itself or or just combine a normal tuner with a card that can special summon itself from the hand and thanks to cards like Chris drawn healthy fibracks desk spot 001 and Mecha phantombez aurorodon you can easily go into borlut's Savage dragon with the correct deck and extra deck setup so you're going into singular powerful cards that can help you further the game state or completely win you the game on their own with very few resources from your hand alternatively the opposite is kinda true if your opponent has five cards in their open hand and they draw one because they're going second and you set one card namely a pointer of the Red Lotus this lets you look at your opponent's hand and get rid of one card for a turn if your opponent has a hand full of nothing but hand traps and only one starter card like maybe Soul eating oviraptor for example you can just get rid of that one starter card and then completely stop them from playing the game for that turn as they can't pull off too many plays with only hand traps although both of them are kind of necessary in order for your deck to function in the Neta game you need hand traps in order to hurt your opponent from doing things and of course you need your power starter cards in order to make sure your plays go off all of this is within the confines of the starting hand of five cards if four of those cards are hand traps with quick effects that can allow you to get off one of your starting cards like Soul eating oviraptor neospace connector or protoplant Orpheus Scorpio then that's totally worth it because you can get so much Advantage from one card that can allow you to bring out your boss monsters like ultimate conductor Tyranno Boral load Savage dragon or red eyes dark Dragoon all of this is kind of balanced around the five card opening hand so this is where Maxi comes in if your opponent normal summons a neospace connector and you drop down to Max C and draw one card from its special summon from the deck where it immediately replaces itself and you go card neutral then it's up to your opponent to decide if they wish to continue their place for the turn or stop there with their special summons and hope you don't set the board on your turn if they decide to pass because if your opponent continues their combos then you who just played the Maxi is just going to draw more and more cards which can basically just allow you to shut down whatever your opponent is trying to do say your opponent then continues the Combos and tries to go into red eyes dark Dragoon they have to special summon at least two more times in order for that to happen and that's if they only play that one combo that turn which will then give you a plus two in card Advantage but say your opponent tries to go even further they're trying to set up a full Board of monsters well you can just keep drawing more and more answers to those problems you could draw into something like infinite impermanence to try to shut down one of their combos then you might be able to negate it with their red eyes dark Dragoon which can then be negated with side frame gear gamma from your hand which can then try to negate with one of their cards and then after all of their negates are gone you can drop something like the beer or their Primal being to destroy their entire field all during your opponent's turn before your turn even starts and while being at Advantage your opponent would have used all all of their resources trying to set up a field and you could simply just out resource them with a single Mac C and then when you start your turn you might have something like 10 cards in your hand and your opponent just can't do anything about it if they try to stop your plays whatever cards they have left you just simply have more answers than them a single card can set up a powerful monster on the board and you have 10 cards to work with therein lies why it's one of the most powerful hand traps sure a single Ash Blossom enjoy spring can probably shut down your opponent for a turn as well but you lose Advantage doing that whereas Maxi doesn't if your opponent tries to play through a maxi you'll have so many answers to whatever they have that if you're playing a competent meta deck it doesn't really matter what they have on the field because there's so many singular powerful cards I can just take out everything like Nibiru the Primal being evenly match lightning storm the winged dragon of raw sphere mode and of course boss monsters like ultimate conductor Tyranno and then you'll have other cards that can allow those ones to resolve like called by the grave forbidden droplet or Dark Ruler no more there are two cards in the metagame called the pot of extravagance and pot of desires pot of extravagance requires you to banish up to six cards from your extra deck face down and then can allow you to draw two cards but restricts you from drawing other cards by card effects for the rest of the turn this card is a risk because your opponent can negate the effect after you've already banished the cards and banishing six cards from reaction deck is equivalent to about a third of it give or take and a lot of meta decks require a lot of monsters in their extra deck in order to set up their place so it's a real downside to the card but your opponent can stop with a single hand trap like ash Blossom enjoy a spring and it's an excellent card to stop with Ash Blossom enjoy spring because you don't want your opponent to have a plus one advantage because of how strong singular cards are in the game in fact it's so common to stop pot of extravagance that a pro move is to only banish three cards when you activate your first copy of it because you know your opponent will probably negate it if you try to banish six and even if you resolve it you at least go hand neutral instead of -1 which you might have gone if they tried to negate it and there's also the opportunity you might just bait out that negate anyway pot of desires is also a risky card you have to banish 10 cards in the top of your deck face down in order to draw two cards the average metadatac only has 40 cards in it which means you're banishing one fourth of your deck cards that you can never use again for the rest of the duel maybe and the potential to banish all three copies of key cards that you really need for your deck to work like if you're playing ABC Dragon Buster and banish all three copies of a assault core you can't really go into ABC Dragon Buster anymore however in ABC decks they still play Pawn of desires anyway because that risk is worth the payoff of a plus one and it's also an excellent card to negate with Ash Blossom enjoy spring because you don't want your opponent to get a plus one in card Advantage so if you're able to stop your opponent's plus one while also forcing them to lose 1 4 3 attack this is an excellent use of the hand trap and despite the huge down down signs Upon A desires and pot of extravagance there's still two of the most played spell cards in the game so a maxi which allows you to accomplish similar Feats pretty easily is obviously a little bit broken if people risk playing cards like pot of desires or pot of extravagance for only a plus one and they're played so often in so many different kinds of decks even if it can actually be a detriment to those decks if they're unlucky then a maxi which can return even better results kind of makes those cards look like chump change in comparison basically with the correct deck a single card in your hand can probably win you the duel and Maxi is one of those singular cards in your hand I can probably win you the duel except it can do that by giving you every other card on your deck that might be able to do it as well and because it's the singular car that can help you bring out all the other singular cards it kinda creates a game state where if your opponent uses Maxi on you you're probably better off just skipping your turn than trying to play through it it's still a bad position to be in because you're skipping your turn and you'll probably lose the game as well in fact the effect of skipping your opponent's turn by force is one of the strongest effects in the game but it's still better than giving your opponent more than a card neutral on hand Advantage especially since most of the time you can just use maxi after your opponent is already activated the effect that allows him to special summon a monster so your opponent can stop your plays for the entire turn without losing card advantage at least other hand traps require you to lose advantage to play them Ash Blossom enjoys spring where cars Eagle minus one in card advantage to use its negate Nibiru the promo being can also win you the game on its own and even gives you a monster in the field but it's not a very good monster on the field and isn't the same as being able to draw another powerful card in your hand forbidden droplet can win you the game because of its ability to non-target negate cards and conditionally be immune to response but it requires a lot of card advantage in order to gain its spell speed for protection Max C allows you to accomplish all of this without losing any advantage over in the ocg max C is at three copies and not banned at all and because Maxie exists over there and not in the TCG we kind of have two completely different metas the ocg is very control heavy because if they go too combo Focus they either need to win immediately in that turn with something like the Tempest magician ftk or they probably lose because of all the advantages they might have just given their opponent due to a maxi although Max C being had three copies is not the only reason the metas are different but it is definitely a contributing factor that's why something like red eyes Dr goon was completely broken in the ocg where every deck was playing an engine in order to bring it out and white kinda flew under the radar in the TCG and wasn't even played in a majority of decks don't get me wrong reddit's dark Dragoon is kinda broken and will probably be banned in the TCG in the future as well but it wasn't used anywhere near as much as it was in the ocg so now that I've explained to you in so many words why Maxi is kind of game defining and broken as far as hand traps go I.E being able to stop your opponent from playing the game while not losing card Advantage let's go over the reverse side of Maxi you see Maxi is generally played inside metadex that might also play cards like pot of desires or go through huge combo plays during their turn leaving them with smaller and smaller main decks before their opponent starts their turn which coined the term when Maxie was still legal in the TCG of doing the Maxi challenge where if your opponent dropped down to Maxi when you were starting your combo place you could theoretically deck out your opponent by just special summoning as much as possible during your turn and with how much the average combo deck and special summon during their turn like Dragon link decks for example it was entirely possible to dug out your opponent using their maxi against them if they had used enough cards in their deck already although it was called the challenge for a reason because if you failed you were going to lose there's no coming back from a plus 20 and card advantage over you also with the amount of hand traps there's a good chance they would just draw something that would end all of your combos so it was a very difficult challenge to take on although funny enough there were some meta decks in the past which could play cards in their deck specifically to take on the Maxi Challenge and win every time back when azudiaks were still nearly at full power or at least when they still had zodiac broadball legal they would play two copies of Manticore darkness in their main deck Manticore of darkness is a beast Warrior type monster where during the end phase of this card is in your graveyard because it was sent there this turn you can send one beast beast Warrior or Wing Beast monster from your hand or feel to the graveyard in order to special summon this card from the graveyard this effect is not once per turn which means if you have a second copy of Manticore of darkness in your hand or on the field you could infinitely cycle between the two cards to special summon them from the graveyard where one of them would send the other one from the Fielder hand to the graveyard in order to special summon itself then the second copy which was just sent to the graveyard could then send the newly special summon one to the graveyard in order to bring itself out where then it would just repeat and they would keep sending each other to the graveyard from the field to special some of themselves because all of this can just keep happening in the end phase as much as you want normally there's no reason to do this because it's just wasting time if you're infinitely special summoning the same card over and over with no change in game state but if your opponent activated Maxi you could devote all of your resources to just getting off the Manticore Darkness Loop and then deck out your opponent during the end phase because zodiac broadbull allowed you to search out any Beast Warrior type monster from your deck and its effect was only a soft once per turn and Zodiacs were very good at getting out multiple copies of zodiac broadbull on the board in one turn which is why that card is currently banned as well and Zodiacs were already a tier zero deck and are one of the ones that was probably most impacted by Max because they special summons so much for their normal Combos and it's kind of funny that they also had a built-in out to Maxi and could regularly win by deck out thanks to Manticore of Darkness Tech although I will say this wasn't common Tech and Zodiacs are regularly just lose to Maxi a lot and zodiac wasn't the only deck that had a built-in way to take on the Maxi Challenge and win dark Synchro decks could do it too with level eater since he could special summon itself not an infinite amount of times but so many times if you didn't care about set up a board of strong monsters that you could deck out your opponent if they tried to Max see you anyways in the TCG Maxie was banned in February 2018. yet is still unrestricted in the ocg so can Maxi be unbanned the answer to this is maybe now if we go based on the fact that the card is a singular powerful card there's no question that it's broken anything lets you stop your phone from playing the game for a turn while not losing card advantage or requiring any kind of special setup is pretty broken however Maxi kind of goes above and beyond it's so broken that it unintentionally creates a fairer game State let's make a tier list real quick I'll compare all of the banned cards I've talked about in these videos so far and compare them in a tier list next to Maxi in this this small sample size we'll be comparing around 58 band cards to each other at D tier we'll have band cards that are either no longer banned might come off the band list soon or are only banned for reasons not directly related to the power level of the card itself and at seat here we have excellent banned cards that probably won't be unbanned anytime soon but just have a lower power level than the rest of the cards on the list at beach here we'll have all the band strong Staples as well as band cards that need to have decks built around them in order to be broken or just generate a significant amount of Advantage but only in very Niche specific decks excellent cream of the crop at B tier very hard to get past this point at a tier we have cards that are also strong Staples but can possibly win you the game on their own and here we have cards like confiscation and forceful Sentry both of which can probably single-handedly win you the game against a modern meta deck if you're playing a modern meta deck yourself Carter safe return is kind of Bonkers without a once per turn same with ultimate offering and painful choice is probably one of the best single of Staples that probably won't win you the game on its own but boy will it generate a ton of advantage for you in a lot of kinds of meta decks and at s tier we have cards that are just straight up broken or can Winnie the games by themselves without having to build a deck around the cart which is basically just World oppression and then we have ones that just generates so much Advantage it seems like kind of an oversight Spellbook of judgment with its plus seven and card Advantage at the end of the turn that grass looks greater with its potential plus 20 in card advantage and perform how plushfire who can special summon more monsters for the main deck than any other card on this short list so if pot of greed is a b tier arguably of course this isn't a tier list video just kind of a vague generalization to show where Maxi would be in comparison to all these other cards I've talked about so far and if we were to rank Maxi on this tier list it would probably go up here in s tier and then go two spots above it in the Triple S tier Maxi is so good that it kind of changes the format none of these other cards besides maybe the grass looks reader can't be said to be so good that it changes the game itself across all meta texts and not just a handful of specific ones you see if both players are allowed to play three copies of Maxi then it kind of evens out and heavily penalizes combo decks which most players complain are the problem with modern Yu-Gi-Oh anyway because Maxi exists and is so ridiculously good against combo Decks that it would just straight up make people not want to play them anymore kind of like what it does in the ocg they still play combo decks in the lcg but they're a little bit different from the TCG imagine a singular card being so broken that it kinda balances the game What's one way to stop a whole bunch of repressive decks from summon a full Board of monsters of negates in one turn having 20 cards in your hand to deal with that board of course but then there's the problem of every deck having to play three copies of Max C and if you don't play Maxi then you're doing something wrong and some decks just can't play the card for whatever reason or what happens if you just never drawn to your copy of Max C and lose anyway there's just problems that come with using cards in order to try to balance the game rather than changing the rules or limiting powerful cards the reason the ban list exists is part actually in response to how similar most early day metadex were created before the first ban list they would basically just limit every car that was strong and because there were so many strong singular Staples like pot of gree graceful charity rygecki delinquent Duo etc etc every deck would just be half all the staple cards and the other half would be whatever the deck was supposed to actually be about on screen I'm showing you the 2002 World Championship hand control deck there is no reason not to play pot of greed or delinquent Duo because of the advantage they give you and how easy they were to use in pretty much every deck and it kind of led to a lot of decomogenization where every deck was basically the same with only slight differences like maybe they'd focus on bringing out some in skull instead of Jinzo once they finally started banning all the super strong singular cards then the more archetype Focus type of yugu that we know of today really started taking shape and form although that was only like a side effect of the ban list it was actually created to stop the yada garasu Loop but I think it was a pretty good side effect people would probably argue that Yu-Gi-Oh is still like this today everyone plays the same hand traps and staple cards but there's so many restrictions and side effects of a lot of those cards that people do still play basically the same strong Staples but they heavily mix it up compared to before not every deck can afford to play pot of desires not every deck wants to play forbidden droplet or the winged dragon of raw sphere mode main decking twin Twisters or lightning storm they're just a whole bunch of strong Staples that are options but not necessary in every deck Max C would be kind of necessary in every deck though because if you're not playing Maxi then you'll lose to your opponent's Maxi unless they're playing a control deck where they don't really special summon very much this would probably change the metagame to the point where people would play more control decks where you don't have to special summon very much Maxi would be a three of staple in pretty much every deck because you'd be kind of stupid not to play it just like in the early days of the game where you were stupid to not play pot of greed or delinquent Duo so this is where the maybe comes in in terms of whether Mac C should stay banned or not but on the terms of completely changing how The Meta plays and kind of hitting all combo decks at once and of course the fact that it's already unbanned in the ocg leads me to not be very confident in one way or the other it's a very divisive card I don't think there's any other card in the game which really warrants as much discussion as Max C so if we were just to give my personal opinion I'd say it's probably better off just staying banned purely for the fact that shutting down your opponent's place for a turn while not losing card Advantage is busted how could you fix Maxi so that it could be unbanned this one's kind of funny I think you could probably fix the card if you just gave it a discard cost currently you can just use the card after your opponent's about to special summon a monster that way you immediately draw one card which gives you that car to neutral advantage that I've talked about a few times in the video or the equivalent of using upstart Goblin a card that's currently limited on the banned list or even chicken game which does the same thing and is currently banned if they require you to discard one in order to use it though you would still go mine as one even if your opponent decided to stop their combos there or if your opponent was able to stop the special summon in some other way you would go -2 instead giving some actual downsides to using Maxi you'd still have this super broken effect if they decide to special summon anyway but there would be a little bit more leeway where they could special summon just enough to set up a measure of a board while not giving your opponent too many cards to come back the average red eyes dark Dragoon requires about three special summons So currently Max C would be a plus to and card Advantage if you used it right as your opponent was about to go through those combos that allows him to bring out red as dark dragon however with a simple discard cost you'd only go plus one which is still good and worth using but not as completely broken as going plus two for the exact same combo although I'd probably go one step further and have that one card discard cost be from the hand actually banishing the card face down instead of sending it to the graveyard that way you can't gain any advantage from the Maxi cost at all plus ones are fine to an extent that's why they have cards like Destiny or malicious only semi-limited on the ban list at semi-limited it's only a plus one and card advantage in very specific decks some of those very specific decks are really good though so it stays semi-limited but if it's unlimited then it's a plus two and card advantage in those good decks which is a little bit too much and as I already explained with how Advantage works in the game just a small little discard cost could add a little bit of counter play to Maxi which doesn't really exist in its current unaroted form and of course this would still allow your opponent to try to take the max C challenge if they wanted and it would still make the card super broken if they just ignored Maxine went through all their combos anyway giving you 20 cards in your hand to deal with a full Board of monsters alright and that's the video explaining all main deck monsters part 4. so what do you think about Maxi have you ever wondered why this seemingly normal hand trap was banned next to more powerful boss monsters like true king of all calamities or Masterpiece the true Draco slain King and why it's actually better than those two cards how would you change Maxi in order to make it unban I think my suggestion would work to an extent but it would still probably be broken so I'm really interested in other suggestions that allow the card to still function its intended way but just not be crazy bonkers thank you

Channel: TheDuelLogs

Views: 969,665

Keywords: yugioh, ygo, dev, pro, link, duels, auto-matic duels, online, current, ban, list, dueling, network, theduellogs, the, duel, logs, loggs, Yu, Gi, Oh!, YGOpro, gimmick, links, top ten, edopro, 2021

Id: cQ74BbTyK38

Length: 509min 56sec (30596 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 28 2023