Banned:
Heavy storm
Black Luster soldier - envoy of the beggining
Wind-up Hunter
Sangan
Limited to 1:
Insektor Dragonfly
Solemn Warning
Red eyes darkness metal dragon
magician of faith / Dark magician of chaos / Witch of the black forest
grapha the dark world dragon
Limited to 2
skill drain
Rescue rabbit
BLS is a game shifter on his own. His 3000 de atk makes him really broken, which is far better that chaos sorcerer. On the other side, WU hunter is one of the reason wind-ups reach the top of the meta, this card is why we have to play veiler and maxx C if we want to go to a competitive tournament. In this game, there are some cards that shape the meta only because they exist. Some examples of that were: dark strike fighter, royal oppression, book of moon, royal tribute, shi en, among others. All of them get into the banlist because they restrict diversity on the game, and force the player to use a certain type of deck or some specific cards. I think is time for BLS and Hunter to be banned.
My fellow readers already know I'm one of the few persons who thinks Heavy Storm should be banned, again. But before explain why I believe this, maybe I should talk about why Heavy Storm were banned the first time two years ago. From the tactic point of view, heavy Storm is an unbalance card capable of break all the defensive line on the field, it leads into +X card advantage that ends in a total control for the heavy Storm's player. The absence of this card on the game made the game slower and strategic, card advantage was almost only possible with skill. From the financial point of view, it was a good way to sell Solemn Warning and Pot of duality. A few months later, the game was full of defensive cards, and Heavy Storm wnt back because his only presence on the game will make people set less back row. However, Konami took advantage of this meta characteristic, so decks capable of destroy M/T easily will be at the top of the meta. Lyla and ryko in Chaos Dragon, Hornet in Insektors, Laggia in DinoRabbits, Grapha in DW, all of them can easily manage a field with only one or two back row cards, and they also can acomplish other purpose if there is no back row in the field. The card advantage was huge and the OTKs were one step closer for everyone. Finally Konami created Hieratic, a clear signal that OTK decks have doors open in this format.
So, once again the presence of Heavy Storm lead us into a wrong path, and Konami already saw it. This game needs a resource to deal with back row fields, it must have harder activation process than Heavy Storm, but it must be less complicated than summon Black Rose Dragon. The middle point is the balance, that's why Konami have created Storm, Night Shot and Absorbing Jar. But he didn't stop, Konami have also shaped the next meta. The next meta deck is geargia, a deck who moves making continues +1 like a gadget 2.0 version, we all know that decks like this never afraid of heavy back row fields. The next deck is Atlantean, which have a boss monster only useful if your opponent set a lot of back row cards. The third deck is mermail, an OTK deck for fish, but mermail also have his own Heavy storm, it is searchable and immune to stardust or starlight. In the financial point of view, the absence of Heavy Storm will promote the sell of all this archetypes and Void Trap Hole (a super rare card in the OCG).
At this point in the game, we have xyz flooter monster for every rank from 2 to 6: Gachi gachi gagentsu, Wind-up zenmainess, Maestroke Djinn, Ninja Carmesi and Tiras. All of them are capable to deal with heavy backrow fields and maybe even destroy some of them in the process. The banlist I suggest here promote what konami have to time looking for, stimulate xyz monsters and new cards. Now I'm gonna explain why.
1.- Insektor is the first xyz summon engine of this game, all the xyz monsters that konami will create on the future will go through this deck. We lived the same effect with blackwings and synchros, that's why Insektor won't die too soon.Centipede will be still on the game, so we still have some way to search for dragonfly. Call of the hunted, Reborn and Reverse limit will let us taking back from the grave later. Aside, Insektor also have his own Heavy Storm in the form of Release Restraint Wave.
2.- Without Heavy in the game, people will be more open to set things, Chaos Dragon won't OTK so easily, and with REDMD limited we solve the Gustaph maxx issue. However, Chaos dragon still have his own Heavy storm and it is DarkStorm Dragon. He is one of the targets of LightPulsar Dragon. When pulsar dies, you can bring Darkstorm from the grave and if you didn't normal summon you could use his effect to clean the back row field. It won't be easy, but DarkStorm have a purpose, and his name is giving us a clue.
3.- With Heavy Storm out, Ninjas will be one of the most powerful decks on the game due to his strong trap cards and his ability to use Giant trunade every turn. That's why we will have a new Tin with Hanzo in the cover and new Ninja support in the next set cards. We all will have to use three MST in the main deck just to deal with this deck.
4.- Six samurai will take strength again because Magatama is one of the best trap cards in the game, However with only 1 warning, it will be difficult to avoid a single caius to remove Shi en. Also since everyone will be using three MST, the continuous M/T won't be so good. This is a crucial job that Night Shot can not accomplish. Also, with Geargian on the game, machine archetype will rise again, wich makes Kinetic solider a common side deck in many decks. By the way, one of the few main decks solutions to deal with Kinetic soldier is a Kageki boosted with Shadow of the six samurai - shien effect or an excalibur. So those are more things that improve Konami's sales.
5.- Gravekkeper will be alive again, however with MST at three it won't be easy. Also, Geargia, mermail, atlantean, ninja and six samurai are not graveyard based decks. The lack of Royal oppression and the limitation of solem warning will be also an important weakness for this deck. By the way, the new prophecy spellcaster deck will be capable of search his own field spell card as fast as gravekeepers, so it will be a nice spell battle.
6.- Grapha have one of worse card design I have ever seen, it is almost as unbalance than BLS. The possibility of summon a 2700 atk wasting no resources is something that any deck should be capable of do. Also, the absence of Heavy Storm will increase the presence of Dark World Lightning and the strength of Grapha. So this deck could receive benefits in a format like this, but Why grapha should be limited instead of Dark World Dealing or Dragged down to the grave?, With grapha limited, the DW engine only purpose is summon some sillvas and some goldds, this will lead us in two directions. They can die against mirror force, torrential or a non effect 2700 atk monster like scrap archfiend, Or they overlay to bring a rank 5 xyz monster like tiras to deal with stardust and mirror force at the same time. The result only means more sales for Konami.
7.- Konami show us he is capable of restrict a TCG exclusive the day Tengu went at two. Nobody was expecting something like that because Tengu wasn't even arrive to the OCG meta. I think it was because Tengu promote something that Konami have no interest to promote anymore, syncro-only-based decks. They saw that Tengu will get to Asia when it won't have any financial purpose, so it was more convenient limited now. Is not the same case for Tour guide, it promotes rank 3 xyz monstes. The only problem with this card is that he search for sangan. But without him, Tour guide won't be so versatile. Also, The new archetypes like geargia and mermail promote only rank 4 monsters, while atlantean needs water monsters only. Tour Guide will exist still in the game, but her purpose will be overshadow by superior archetype where she just doesn't fit in because Sangan don't exist anymore.
8.- Rekindling won't be touch still because Konami still have a lot to explore inside the FIRE atribute, Firestar monster are the prove of that. Also, Konami knows we want to still play syncros, we want a balance game where we can use white cards and black cards, we want more options and that is what they are working on. Firestar is the future, but Atlantean is the present. Atlantean is the first demostration of a deck that abuse of the best tuner on the game, deep sea diva, and makes huge combos with water syncro monsters like brionac or gungir to active atlantean effects, in the same way, the deck needs Leviathan dragon and snowdust giant because they also active atlantean effects. Finally we will have a balance xyz and syncro deck where both of them are important. We can see something similar in geargia since they can use karakuri to unleash more combos. Only time will tell us if these type of deck will exist.
9.- magician of faith / Dark magician of chaos / Witch of the black forest are all in the same line because I'm not sure that they come back to game. Both magicians are important to retrieve cards like MST, however the only real reason for this cards to come back is if Konami really wants to push the new spellcaster. Who knows right now.
Maybe the banlist will have more things, but I think I have cover the important ones.
P.D. Remember this is only my opinion... I can still be 100% wrong about this.
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