My Yu-Gi-Oh! February 2023 banlist predictions

Ok, let’s just get this over with. We all know what decks (or deck in this case), needs to be addressed on the upcoming banlist, so you don’t need me to give you a particularly intricate analysis of the current format. However, there is something that I’d like to talk about first before we get into the meat and potatoes of this article, namely that mini banlist we got at the beginning of December, released presumably as an apology for the last list being so shit.

I chose not to review the December banlist for multiple reasons: firstly, since it came out so soon after the previous one, I couldn’t be asked to write another article. Secondly, there weren’t too many substantial changes on it, so I wouldn’t have had much to write about anyway. But the main reason I didn’t review the December banlist was because it was actually alright – neither vomit-inducingly awful or anything to wank myself raw over in sheer delight – just okay. It did about as good a job at hitting Tearlaments without actually hitting any Tearlaments cards as it could’ve done, plus Mystic Mine finally got fucking banned. Rest in piss, you will not be missed.

As much as I would like to continue participating in the collective defecating all over Mystic Mine’s grave, we must continually look to the future, hopefully finding more fresh corpses to take fat shits over.

BANNED CARDS:

Instant Fusion:

As previously stated, the last banlist an “ok” job at hitting Tearlaments, however, if that goal was the sole objective of the banlist update in December, then someone explain to me how the fuck Instant Fusion is still legal? If your ever up against a Tearlaments player and drop this card on you, just concede and go to the next game to avoid wasting your time, otherwise the experience is fairly akin to watching your opponent play an incredibly generous slot machine for half an hour.

If Instant Fusion does get the axe, I’ll be a little sad to see it go, as it’s a very unique card with a variety of different applications, boasting a long history of competitive success. With that said, I would also not like to immediately lose a game of Yu-Gi-Oh! just because my opponent drew the one-of that mills out their entire deck.

Barrier Statue of the Stormwinds:

I’m actually disgusted that my ancestors crawled out of the same primordial soup as those who’d eventually evolve into Floowandereeze players. Fuck Floowandereeze and fuck Barrier Statue of the Stormwinds in particular. How many times have I asked for this piece of shit card to be banned now? I’m certain it’s been on my every prediction list since last January! I really think it might finally be its time though, since Stormwinds recently got banned in both the OCG and Master Duel. Also, can we please stop spreading the lie that Floowandereeze is/was ever bad, when it’s been the most consistently playable deck for the last year? Just think of all the other decks that’ve come and gone since BODE – Swordsoul, Despia, Tri-Lyrilusc, all the P.U.N.K./Scythe/DPE/Adventurer abominations – Floo outlived all of them, being just as hateful to play against as it was day one.

I’ve heard people say that banning Stormwinds is unfair to Floowandereeze, because the deck won’t see much competitive play without it. I have just one thing to say about that: good, now please proceed to suck out all the poo from my rectal passage. Wait is that two things?

Number 41: Bagooska the Terribly Tired Tapir:

Ok bear with me, this is actually a Tearlament hit……. Sort of. What’s a very popular card that people are using to counter Tearlaments? Dimension Shifter or course! What does Tearlaments do if they get hit with D. Shifter? Make Bagooska of course!It’s kinda insufferable that the best deck of the format still has a backup win condition, even for when it gets hit with its silver bullet (the nickname “plan B” really living up to its name here). Considering Floowandereeze is the most popular deck to use Shifter, how on earth do the birds play even through a Bagooksa? Eww, I think I just defended Floo there for a second. I think I need to do something no other Yu-Gi-Oh! player has ever done and take a shower.

On a somewhat more biased note, I’ve always despised Bagooska, as its essentially Mystic Mine on legs that can be cheated out with any 2 level 4s in the game. The Yu-Gi-Oh! player base has been crying out for some time for the alt art of Bagooska to finally be released in the TCG, but I’d prefer to see this card buried under 6 feet of soil, then preferably urinated on. By me.

Terraforming:

Yeah, I know Mystic Mine is finally banned, but field spells nowadays are just too damn good. Plus, if Tearlaments don’t get their field spell limited, they can at least not have 4 copies of the best card in the game.

LIMITED CARDS:

Tearlaments Havnis:

In the unlikely scenario that the Japanese men and women that design Yu-Gi-Oh! cards have stumbled across this acticle, I ask but one favour of you all: promise me that, no how silly the power-creep in this game becomes, never, EVER make another card like Tearlaments Havnis again. Whilst Havnis isn’t necessarily the most powerful Tearlaments card, (definitely not in a universe where Kitkallos exists), she is probably the most obnoxious one. Considering that players have previously complained about decks like Orcust, Tri-Brigade and Floowandereeze for performing their entire combo on the opponent’s turn, Havnis takes a whole new calibre of piss for allowing you to go full Tearlaments combo on turn fucking zero. Who at Konami HQ thought that was a good idea? Sure, a card like Havnis is certainly a new and unique creation, but so is bleach and mushroom soup.

Primeval Planet Perlereino:

Try saying that name with a mouth full of marshmallows. For those not in the know, Perlereino is the ROTA for what just might be the best archetype in Yu-Gi-Oh! history, that also features a load of unnecessarily good bonus effects for no reason. Not to go all Yugi-boomer on your asses, but do you remember the days where field spells just had effects like, “Increase the defence of all placenta type monsters by two points”? Not saying that those days were better, but maybe the effects of all modern field spells shouldn’t be “add the best card in the game to your hand, then proceed to fuck your opponent in the ass with a rusty baseball bat.”

Tearlaments Kitakallos:

This probably seems incredibly stupid and pointless, which is because it is. But stay with me for a moment, there’s a reason for this; Tear players are only running one Kitakallos because that’s all that’s required right now. However, when Photon Hypernova rolls around in a few weeks, they’ll be forced to run two Kits because of all that new Kasthira nonsense coming out in that set, which has the ability to banish a card from the extra deck. The point I’m getting at is that limiting Kitkallos makes sense from Konami’s perspective, as it’s a decent way to encourage players to fork out the several million dollars required to build a Kashtira deck, rather than just continuing to play Tearlaments. Also it’s the best way of hitting Kitkallos without actually hitting Kitkallos, if you know what I mean.

All of the Ishizu cards:

And here I thought the Adventurer engine was going to win the extremely coveted “most horribly designed Yu-Gi-Oh! archetype of 2022” award. Where the fuck do you even start with these borderline custom cards? First there’s Mudora and Keldo, both of which essentially read “if you’re playing a graveyard focused deck that’s not Tearlaments, prepare to eat shit and die.” Then there’s Kelbek and Agido, which feature effects such as “if your opponent happens to mill one of these cards of the course of their elaborate Tearlaments combo, prepare to have both yours and your opponents’ entire deck milled out. Also Kelbek is a hand-trap Compulsory Evacuation Device for some fucking reason, no seriously who thought that was a good idea?” I think its unanimously agreed within the Yu-Gi-Oh! community, that whoever pitched these cards was huffing some kind of bath salts at the time.

Orcust Harp Horror:

*Sigh* What more do you want me to say about Harp Horror? I’m pretty sure that almost every Yu-Gi-Oh! player agrees that Harp could easily come back to 1 and be no big deal. Though at this point, you could bring every single Orcust card off of the forbidden/limited list and the deck would still get shafted by Tears.

Wind-Up Carrier Zenmaity:

To be honest, I haven’t the foggiest idea what Wind-Ups actually do. Supposedly around the time of the cretaceous period, Zenmaity was responsible for some incredibly unfun hand-loop shenanigans, but aeons of powercreep since then have apparently made it safe for this boat-thingy to come back to the OCG and Master Duel, so I don’t know why it wouldn’t be fine for TCG as well. But then again, the OCG and Master Duel still have Block Dragon at 3, so I can only assume that those formats are exclusively run by people straight out of the loony bin.

Ancient Fairy Dragon:

Overpowered card gets errata that makes it no longer overpowered, make sure to bookmark WillDoArtForFood.com for more in-depth analysis like this.

SEMI-LIMITED CARDS:

Some old and shitty Pendulum cards:

As much as I’d like to cast this entire mechanic into the mighty toilet of hell, I suppose we should bring some more shitty Pendulum cards off of the forbidden/limited list, mainly to appease the 12-year-olds still screaming “PEND BEST DECK” at the beginning of every format. As much as I refuse to touch any Pendulum card that’s not Chaos Emperor, The Dragon of Armageddon with a 20-foot barge pole, there’s a still a decent amount of Pendulum garbage still clogging the F/L list. For example, I recently read Draco Face-Off and I swear it’s just a worse E-Tele, (a card that’s at 3 by the way). There’s also Servant of Endymion, which probably didn’t even need to be limited when it was 3 years ago.

I’m pretty indifferent to whether or not Electrumite comes back, but I do like that fact that Konami is still keeping it banned despite the outcry of players asking for her to be free. “Why” I hear you ask? Because upsetting Pendulum players is really funny.

Spyral Quik-Fix:

Though Spyral was tier zero many moons ago, it’s since been resided to the realms of unplayable garbage after having most of its best cards limited or banned. Turns out that hard-once-per-turns are really important actually. Nevertheless, maybe it’s time to start freeing Quik fix from his purgatory on the limited section, because I’m pretty sure that Spyral still sucks ass without Master Plan. “Oh but you can use Machine Duplication with Quik Fix!” So, who cares? Real chads are busy using Machine Dupe with Cyber Dragon cards anyway.

Sky Striker Mecha Modules – Multirole:

You know Striker is up shit creek without a paddle when it gets new support but no-one cares, because the deck unplayable dogshit in a format where Bystials, Gigantic Spright and the Ishizu shufflers exist. Maybe this is Raye’s punishment for winning that YCS last year with Mystic Mine?

I confess I wasn’t playing Yu-Gi-Oh! when Multirole multiples….. I mean multiple Multiroles were a thing, but speaking as someone who does delve into Sky Striker from time to time, I don’t get why this thing’s still limited. It’s not like Engage, where the difference between one and 3 copies ranges from “basically fine” to “time and space is collapsing in on itself.”

Genex Ally Birdman:

Birdman was limited aeons ago for some nonsense but is now fine to come back to more than one copy because of reasons. I don’t have a fucking clue what’s going on, I’m just copying the OCG and Master Duel with half of these predictions.

Yata Garasu and Time Seal:

Both these cards are worthless garbage but Konami seems to really dislike them for whatever reason. Maybe the person who designed Time Seal and Yata dissed the mother of Konami’s CEO and for some reason, keeping these cards on the F/L list of all eternity was the chosen punishment?

UNLIMITED CARDS:

Salamangeat Miragestallio:

Why is Stallio still on the list, when it doesn’t even help Salads accomplish their one and only win condition of making Accesscode Talker?

Lyrilusc Recital Starling:

It’s quite harrowing when this time last year, Recital Starling was so busted that it needed to be limited, yet it got put to 2 in December and no-one gives a shit. I still think Lyrilusc cards are annoying and ugly, (except Ensemblue Robin, solely because of her massive tits), but it’s perfectly fine for Recital to come back to 3 now. Hey, at least Simorgh, Bird of Sovereignty is still banned. And no, I haven’t stopped celebrating yet.

A bunch of shit that got limited or banned because of Crystron Halqifibrax:

For a period of about 2 and a half years, the entire purpose of the F/L list was to lock up cards for the crimes of Halq. Now that fucker is finally gone, it feels like we barely even need a banlist anymore, since we can now remove about 50 level 3 or lower tuners off it. Please tell me who’s gonna abuse Jet Synchron, O-Lion and Red Rose Dragon now? All that shit can come to 3 tomorrow and see zero play in competitive Yu-Gi-Oh! Even fucking Mecha Phantom Beast Auradudaudauadon could come back to the game and not be a problem – a card I hated so much I actually ate my copy of it. I would even advocate Glow-Up Bulb’s return to the game, but maybe not when the best deck in the meta is a mill deck.

That’s everything! I will once again return to my infinite purgatory, where I’m forced to constantly play against Eldlich and Labrinth decks that main deck 30 floodgates, until I briefly re-emerge to inspect the aftermath of the upcoming banlist. Whenever the fuck that is, of course.