My Yu-Gi-Oh! August/September 2023 banlist predictions

It’s quite amusing that only now people are just finding out that this card is scummy and horrible. I’ve been advocating for the ban of Eradicator ever since Runick Spright was stacking a fat Gigantic in order to fulfil the activation requirement. Obviously, EEV is at the forefront of everyone’s minds right now because there’s a deck that can actively search it, but you can play this card in fucking EVERYTHING. It turns out that dark monsters with 2500 or more attack includes 90% of all Yu-Gi-Oh! cards ever made.

Oh, don’t give me that look, Gigantic Spright is a generic extra deck monster that special summons from the deck, of course it’s gonna get banned eventually! Besides, it’s been an entire year since Power of the Elements came out, are we not sick of this shit yet? Don’t you think that deckbuilding could be a little more interesting rather than every deck capable of putting 2 level 2 monsters on the field becoming another Spright variant? The more I think about it, the more I realise that Gigantic Spright is essentially a slightly less splashable Kinghtmare Mermaid, except you get to play actually good cards. Yes, I am making that comparison. Fuck you.

It’s bad enough when Konami gives obnoxious walking floodgates to bad decks like Dinomorphia or that Kairyu-Shin thing, but giving them to decks that are actually good? A recipe for disaster. The last 6 months of Yu-Gi-Oh! have revolved around if your deck can play around/answer exactly this one asshole. Ariseheart is like that one guy in your friendship group that no-one really likes, but will always tag along to every single social gathering, being generally annoying and spoiling the overall vibe. He probably also smells like out-of-date dog food, but no-one can be brave enough to tell him to piss off and go away. But I’m telling you to piss off and go away Ariseheart, now get in the fucking bin.

I could blather on and on about how much I despise the Runick cards, so I will; I hate that I inhabit the same mortal coil as someone who thought putting “draw 3 cards” on a field spell was a good idea, I hate that it’s a splashable engine that you can put in fucking everything, and I especially hate how well it synergises with every cancerous stun-tool in the game. I don’t really care what among the Runick cards gets hit, just kill this thing.

It’s been almost a year since Crystron Halqifibrax was publicly disembowelled for our enjoyment, but the damage he caused during his lifetime still remains. Free this please.

This is less of a hit to Dragon Link for undergoing it’s 47^th format of metagame relevance, but more due to the fact that, in formats where Bystial Magnamhut is good, it single handedly makes 70% of all other decks unplayable garbage. I bet all you Mathmech and Drytron players really enjoyed Darkwing Blast format.

Dark World can handloop far more efficiently than this ever could and that’s not even meta, so I don’t think 1 Zenmaity would be a big deal. Besides, this thing could’ve been freed years ago if Wind-Up Hunter would’ve taken its place on the F/L list.

In the agonisingly slow procedure of removing all Pendulum cards from the banlist that aren’t exactly Electrumite, I suppose Majestpecter Unicorn – Kirin is next in line. Don’t get me wrong, Krin is a very good card, but powercreep has long since gotten to the point where Kirin would just be “ok” in the modern game. Also Pendulums are rubbish.

I’ve heard the argument that, if Mind Control were to be at multiple copies, it would be an auto-include in very side deck, but I’m not sure that’s entirely true. Can Mind Control even compete with all the going-second staples that we’ve been playing over the last few years? Are people really gonna play this over cards like Dark Ruler No More, Forbidden Droplet and Evenly Matched? Besides if Konami’s design philosophy continues as it is, these kind of blowout cards are only going to get stronger. I for one eagerly await the release of Dark Ruler No More 2, The Dark Rulering, in a few sets time.

Despite holding a reputation as “a card so powerful that it could never be unbanned” for most of its lifetime, Spellbook Of Judgment has been re-legalised in both the TCG and OCG for about a year now and seen absolutely no competitive play. It turns out going plus 7 in the end phase is meaningless if all the cards you add are bad.

Are we really worried about Infernity in 2023? What does this deck even do? From what I gather, the best thing Infernity could do, is be a worse version of every other mid-tier combo deck in Yu-Gi-Oh! right now. Incredibly fragile combos that summon some generic boss monsters,backed up by a counter trap? Yeah, I don’t think that’s a big deal nowadays.

The more time we drift further away from TOSS format, the more I fail to understand why Salamangreat is even a fan favourite deck. Maybe some people’s idea of peak Yu-Gi-Oh! is stalling under Bagooska for a turn, until you can make Update Jammer into Accesscode Talker for game. Or perhaps you looked at Mathmech and thought “hmm, this is very good, but I’d like to win less games.”

Man, Konami employees would’ve really fed their own grandmothers to lions if it meant avoiding banning Crystron Halqifibrax for another format.

Denglong returned to us last banlist, only for it to be basically ok. Besides, I really don’t think there’s a difference between 1 and 3 of this thing.

Isn’t this just a more restrictive and worse version of Pot of Desires?