Banlist prediction march 2013

I feel I have to talk about the banlist but nobody seems to care about it this time. I do want see some cards ban and other unbaneed. However I don't feel an specific hate for any in particular.

So, just to keep up this tradition of trying to predict the banlist, here I go with my attempt:

ban:

T.G. Librarian

Heavy Storm

Black Luster soldier envoy of the beginning 

To 1:

Atlantean Dragoon

Wind-up Factory

dragged down to the grave

Rescue rabbit

Elemental hero bubbleman

To 2:

Wind-up Magician
wind-up shark

deep sea diva

fire formation - Tenki

So, librarian uh? Yes. At first I though rekindling should be limited, but then I realized that konami is pushing many fire archetypes. However laval have been out for long time, and the only problem with them is that librarian is broken. When Laval find a way to resolve the first rekindling, they make Librarian and draw 4-5, probably getting another rekindling and ending with quasar on the field. So, if konami don't want to touch rekindling, he will ban librarian to stop the massive amount of player that will jump on laval when the next hidden arsenal will came out. 

Everybody knows why black luster should be banned, I don't need to tell you how broken this card is. Also, there is no market for him anymore, so konami wins nothing with this card on the game.

I don't know if Heavy Storm should be banned this time. But I have to stick to my prediction because I have been telling this for a year now and I know someday it will happen.

Mermail have been a strong deck this format, however I agree with Simon He when he said: "After summon moulinglacia the deck does nothing". The decks real problem is how fast it is, It goes for megalo and then Moulinglacia in only 1-2 turns, probably sealing his wining in the process. Limiting atlantean dragoon should be enough to avoid the megalo-moulinglacia play and force them to not play recklessly.

Rescue rabbit to 1 need no explanation

Elemental Hero bubbleman shouldn't be limited. The real problem here is Heroic champion excalibur, which is actually a syncro monster if you realize that he lose both material after his effect goes on. With both monsters in the grave (alius/bubbleman), you can active miracle fusion in the same turn and bring good fusion monsters. So, to fix this HERO fever, bubbleman should go to one.

Many people think grapha is the main problem in Dark worlds. I think It is the only good think in the whole archetype. The rest is only to search and summon grapha. Dragged down to grave is way worse, it not only active a dark world monster and add a fiend to grave. It also let you check the opponent hand, a privilege that few cards have on this game. And most of them went finally limited or/and banned.

Wind-up is probably one of the most consistence decks in yugi-oh. Almost any two cards in the deck create a combo with each other, and probably the most annoying combo in the whole deck is magician-shark, which sometime ends in shock ruler. So, to avoid this combo I think we only need to semi-limited Shark and magician. The probability of this combo is reduced and limiting factory to 1 helps to assure it. The deck is still playable, which is good.

Fire formation tenki should go to 1, but putting at 2 will help to stop the sacred deck in the OCG and still let fire fist do some tricks.

The main problem with this prediction, is that banning heavy storm will push many old decks that used to work when Heavy storm wasn't on the game. Like Gravekeepers, Six Samurais, evols, geargia, among others. And I don't think konami want that, also I'm not sure if Fire king Garunix and Fire fist - Bear will be enough to stop people from shield themselves.

So, that's it. hope get some things right this time. 

Harpie dancer FTK??!!

So, first the gishki ftk and now this, at least this one can be stopped by veiler. Konami is either blind or stupid, maybe both.

Gishki FTK?!

I was really surprise when I saw this. How on earth I didn't saw that coming when I was building gishki?

If you study the combo carefully you will see that veiler won't stop you.

Good luck to anyone that already have the cards (really easy to obtain btw).

Fire Fist and the BanList

In my previous "BanList prediction" I usually present a solution to ban Heavy storm and create a decent game state. And even I always failed, I still think Heavy storm should be banned and Konami knows it, that's why Konami creates Storm, Absorbing jar and Inzektor. Most recently, Fire king appears like a way to punish players for use backrow destruction and bring back Sacred phoenix of Nephthys to the competitive game. Haze beast can't be target them, so few magic or trap cards can stop them. Also, Harpie ladies destroy all the backrow thanks to their field spell card. With all this backrow hate, Heavy storm shouldn't be on the game, however it is. And apparently there are still reasons for that.

Right now, most decks don't play backrow cards, many moves can be review like: "Player A use MST on Player B MST". Chaos Dragon, Hieratics, Mermails, Agents, and many others just don't play a trap at all. In fact, a guy in a recent YCS played a machine monster smash and topped, proving again that using backrow is overrated. Only DinoRabbit can use backrow successfully due to Laggia effect. Fire fist, dino rabbit and ophion have a lot of backrow control on this game. And if we ban heavy storm, all these decks will be stronger than ever, even if rabbit goes to one. So, my doubt here is: Is Heavy still healthy for the game?

Konami needs to find a solution to this nonsense, because we should be to use magic and trap cards. The first and good solution is Fire Fist, maybe the second archetype capable of search their magic and trap cards (the first deck to do this was Infernity, searching all the barriers in one turn). Even if you use Heavy storm against Fire fist, they can easily search for more. The deck remain me a lot to Gladiator beast because they are focus in battle, even though they have a mechanism to destroy spell, trap or monsters on the field. However, give the possibility to use magic or trap cards to one deck is not the solution to make heavy storm unplayable or less broken. Konami needs to ban heavy storm and substitute it for some cards that create the same fear on people (like inzektor just to make us feel in the past format).

the game right now have plenty of strategies capable of deal with backrow cards. Also, konami already designed strategies capable of destroy backrow fields. So, we will see if heavy storm finally goes to 0 again or not.

New Brionac?

The card that I want to talk about it is this:

Beast Lord Volcan
lv6 syncro
 2000 / 1600
1 tuner + 1 or more no tuners

When this card is Synchro Summoned: Target 1 face-up card on each side of the field; return those targets to the hand, and if you do, cards with the same name as the card that was returned from your side of field (if Spell or Trap) cannot be activated, or (if Monster) cannot activate their effects for the rest of this turn. You can only use the effect of "Beast God Vulcan" once per turn.

and I know many of you will think that it can't be remotely similar to this:

Brionac, dragon of the ice barrier

lv6 syncro
2300/1400

1 tuner + 1 or more no tuners

You can discard any number of cards to the Graveyard to target the same number of cards on the field; return those targets to the hand.

And you might be right, Beast lord volcan is not brionac but tell me one thing. What generic lv6 syncro you usually summon if you need to? Gaia? and to do what, attack? The true is that nothing can rid off things better than brionac. And after brionac went to the banlist, lv6 syncro was similar to rank 1 xyz, totally useless.

Now we can see Volcan like the new best lv6 syncro capable of get rid of things. Is like a well-design Brionac. Let see how this card evolve in the ocg meta. 

Ivory and Ebony deck

After a lot of testing, I finally made a successful deck build to show you. But before that, I want to talk about how Ivory and Ebony helps a lot to the consistance of chaos dragon.

A usual escenario with chaos dragon: You have only light in the graveyard and Pulsar/Darkflare in hand. So, the usual move here is just lose. Now, thanks to ebony and ivory, you can remove the light to summon ebony (dark), then tribute it for darkflare and search for ivory (light). At this point, you have dark and light in the grave and a dragon in your hand to use darkflare effect. You can summon any chaos monster and push for a lot of damage.

Ebony and Ivory let you advance summon and syncro summon a lot. Also Paladius can be summoned sometimes. I have trying to find the right tuners for the deck, even though syncro summon have no value right now. My solution for this was resonators.

2 Tour Guide
2 Dark resonator
1 Sangan
1 Plaguespreader zombie
1 Barrier resonator
2 Dimensional alchemist
1 Eclipse wyvern
3 Lightpulsar
2 Darkflare
3 Wybustar the Ivory dragon
3 Collapsarpent the Ebony dragon
1 Dark armed dragon
1 Red eyes darkness dragon
2 Veiler
2 Maxx C
2 Tragoedia
1 Gorz
1 Honest

1 Resonator call
1 MST
1 Heavy
1 Dark hole
1 Reborn
2 D.D.R.
1 Allure
1 Mind control

I decided to use the resonator tuners because:

1.- Resonator call let me decide if I need a lv1 or lv3 tuner, or if I need a dark or light monster in the grave.
2.- Barrier resonator can be send it directly from the hand in case I need to stall and prepare my grave for a big next turn.
3.- Tourguide have more targets, so I will almost never need to make the "Tourguide-search-Tourguide" move.

Also, a lv3 tuner and Ivory/ebony makes Black Rose dragon. After cleaning the field and search for Ibory/ebony, I can summon any chaos dragon to push for damage. In the other hand, Barrier resonator and Ivory/ebony make light/dark lv5 syncro, so I have a complete control of my graveyard.

I find myself removing so many things that I decide to add ddr and alchemist to take back key cards like plagues, Red-eyes, eclipse wybern, Honest, among others.


I'm waiting for a new laptop next week, so I will make some awesome videos about this deck (and about my previous deck). All of you will see how great this deck can be and hopefully you won't need to mill your best cards anymore.

METAMETAMETA

I will start this new year with one of the most funny duels I had on Dueling Network in 2012. I was using my chaos skull deck, opening with drill warrior in the rfg and level eater on the field. My opponent started with centipede, search for hornet using ladybug.

At this point I decide not to make field presence so he won't have anything to destroy. Maybe I could kill him in one attack with the right cards. In my turn I bring back drill warrior attack direct and remove him again (I had like 6 in hand).

He summoned wind-up rabbit and wind-up shark.... and after 3 zenmaigthy and 1 zenmaines, I had 0 cards in my hand. However, since drill give a card every time he come back and I had piper in grave, I manage to still have some resources. I had everything I needed to continue thanks to drill warrior.

(At this point, I knew he was using Inzektor-WU. But I wasn't prepare for what come next...)

He summon rescue rabbit, tribute for two sabersaurus and exceed summon DOLKKA. he attacked, and in my turn Dolkka negated drill warrior eff... I asked him if he had a name for his deck, he said: METAMETAMETA. Which, of course, is a perfect name for this deck.

At the end, after 3 zenmaigthy, 1 zenmaines, 1 dragonfly loop, 1 dolkka and 1 laggia, I was still ALIVE!!!! but that was done. I had nothing else to survive and he had everything to win.

That is just another prove of how broken that format was.

Anyway, I hope all of you had happy holidays. Expect some nice build using wyburstar and collapsarpent ;)