I know... It's too soon and you are still in mourning... It's like I am making jokes about a dead guy's embarassing moments in his funeral...
...
Buuuuuuuuuut idc and will do it anyways, never was good with funerals.
Here is the changes we got:
- Quote :
- Forbidden
Trishula
Glow Up Bulb
Spore
Trap Dustshoot
Limited
The Agent of Mystery Earth
TG Striker
Semi-Limited
Marshmallon
Lightlord Summoner Lumina
Emergency Teleport
Shien's Smoke Signal
Level Limit Area B
Torrential Tribute
Ultimate Offering
Reborn Tengu
Unlimited
Call of the Haunted
These are the changes we got, you are still able to deny it all the way till March 1st ofc, heck you could enter with an illegal deck after March 1st and scream "I WILL NEVER ACCEPT THIS! IT'S NOT TRUE! CAN'T YOU ALL SEE IT'S PHOTOSHOPPED?! CAN'T YOU ALL SEE YOU ARE BEING FOOLED BY THE JAPANESE?! SNAP OUT OF IT BROTHERS!!!", but it's still a mental issue.
So, what we see in this banlist is:
1. "The no surprise there" thing of wind-ups and inzektors not getting hit. I will not re-write things and instead use an extract from a post from the predictions.
- Spoiler:
Yep. And konami will definitelly kill inzektors and wind-ups, they will go all ballsy on us and say both in TCG and OCG "WE DON'T NEED YOUR MONEY, STOP BUYING OUR LATEST SET!"
When konami makes the banlist, they do it under 2 and only 2 criteria
1. Direct profit, meaning how much they make off their sets. For example if they devalue their entire set overnight obviously they'll sell less than a 10th of what they did before, which they might want to avoid, maybe, just maybe.
2. Customer satisfaction and service. Now we are all online players so many of you are not directly customers of konami, and as for myself I am no big buyer, so the only side of this you see is the state of the game. But there is another side to it. Here for example is a post by Kevin Tewart himself on a similar, card value and customer satisfaction matter, which will give some useful insight http://www.pojo.biz/board/showpost.php?p=23883417&postcount=341
Now you may hate the guy but what he is saying there has a point, and I am refering to the "exodia parts" part. While the only side of the game we see is the online moneyless play, there are people who often buy cards and have collections, bigger of smaller, of large value cards, and they too are konami's customers, in fact if we take smaller collections in account as well, they are their largest source of income, regardless of how many times you bring up people who buy a pack or two randomly or infrequently (packs aren't snacks that you take on a whim to taste to take those into account, they are actual parts of a game, you either play it or you don't). Now would those people be satisfied if the 3 hornets they paid 40$ each to get got a value of 5$ (basically garbage) overnight? Will those customers say "Yay! Konami made me lose 1000$ in 1 day! I love them and will buy every product they release from now on!" ? Additionally if konami instantly devalues a product it just released, would that give them enough trust for customers to buy their next product? I ask you guys, if you knew they had a policy to instantly bring down the value of their own products within a month of release, without of course reducing the price, would you be as eager to buy their next product?
And yes, following such a policy of customer satisfaction may harm the health of the game by our standarts, but that is of much less importance. If their source of income desired an FTK format, an FTK format we would have, it is the regular "customer is always right" in the sense that if that is what they want to buy, then why the hell shouldn't we sell it?
2. T.G. Agents clearly being in konami's list this time, they overstayed their welcome in the OCG and got hit for it. Agents was an old structure deck and T.G. striker a low rarity card, so there is really no real harm in hitting them since the money cards in the deck that were added in can be used for other decks and still retain their value. They are pushing new product, satisfying people that asked for bans, not leaving much disatisfaction to T.G. Agent users while they are not devaluing product either, it's a win win win.
3. Lumina, Emergency Teleport and Smoke Signal giving back decks some strength or allowing for new variants. Since wind-ups and inzektors have to stay then you need an extra push for the rest. And no, 2 smoke signals don't make a samurai format, 2 Luminas don't make a Lightsworn format and 2 Teleports don't make a... whatever it would make (Don't say Tele-DAD...). At the same time we see Torrential Tribute at 2, succeeding there where bottomless trap hole fails against the threat of Inzektors, and even partially wind-ups, which are punished by Torrential Tribute accuratelly as well.
4. "Random" switch ins/outs, with call of the haunted coming at 3, a fair move imo since it won't be used at 3 in the top tier most likely, yes you get a monster but it doesn't help you set up which is what you need atm,
ultimate offering going to 2, hitting offering decks which had a small piece of success at some point in the OCG, but mainly satisfying players who screamed for it among others,
and then useless stall cards going from 1 to 2, but you didn't use gravity bind and you won't use that either, not in the top tier where it matters at least.
We also lost Trap Dustshoot from the power cards. Yes it was a card that would give you the game, and as much as I like the card it's also true it's heavily luck based. Either you open with the 1 copy of it and dominate or you draw it late game when it's useless and add it to your list of dead cards. Like many power cards it is ban-able and they took the shot with it.
Here you could mention that BLS stays. It's hard for both wind-ups, inzektors and rabbit to use it. Perhaps inzektors with triple veiler, which is viable, and rai-oh, which again is usable in anything but the mirror, but that's as far as bls goes in between those 3, either a weird build will arise that will use it or the sacky swordsman will join the anti-top tier fight against them.
5. Finaly the death of plant decks, and for the first time, a TCG exclusive being hit before its OCG release. I can see one of two reasons for this, which you can only see in retrospect really since that was the big surprise that sets the precedent. The first reason being more likely and the second seeming like a conspiracy theory but not without any basis.
The first is, Tengu will be shortly released in the OCG (say, in May? We already saw quickspeed releases of zenmaines and alexandrite, both fresh TCG exlusives, in the OCG, so it is possible, as Tengu is much older than both.), so they hit it with a pre-emptive strike to be safe. Remember they don't have such a strong presence of Rabbit and Wind-Ups due to lack of other TCG exclusives, and mainly tour guide, so they were afraid of what the traditionally combo based, trap light OCG, would do with 3 pieces of Tengu for the next months.
The second scenario is, something had to get hit. As I said, it was very hard to hurt inzektors, or wind-ups (although the second matters less in the OCG), so in order to not have an unbalanced format they needed the boost in other decks. T.G. Agents was down due to overuse, but perhaps all other justified hits would hinder players' ability to compete with inzektors, so they instead filled the list with a TCG deck, tengu synchro, hitting 2 birds with 1 stone, both keeping their format healthier and showing TCG they care, while of course using the TCG as fodder in that case.
Now, the TCG was obviously much more willing to lose Tengu than Tour Guide, and by TCG I mean people who buy cards in the TCG and Konami, since due to the high price of Tour Guide and recent Epic Dawn release, hitting Tour Guide would murder people's collections at this point and give nothing but disatisfaction to the spending player base. That arguement is of course relevant only in the second scenario.
Now let's look at the consequences of this.
1. Wind-Ups and Inzektors stay, Rabbit stays since it's still relevant and relatively fresh, and promotes new cards in xyz, while you need some decks to stay in the top tier to deal with the mandatory inzektors (in OCG, wind-ups as well in TCG). TCG is a wind-up, inzektor and perhaps rabbit format, while new things may come up. OCG is still Inzektors, and whatever followed after them. They can still be dealt with even in OCG really.
2. I'd say it's not the end of Agent variants, at least in OCG where it's relevant. You could still manage some builds with 1 Earth. Of course they are too weakened to claim shots at being best deck. As far as T.G. goes, fun synchro builds and deck T.G. variants were hit with T.G. Striker as well, but out of synchro based decks they can all take the hit. With the hit of striker and Tengu we'll probably be seeing less and less of T.G. stun as well. Mostly because of Tengu though.
3. It seems like the impact of Teleport, Lumina and Smoke Signal will only be fet in tier 2 decks and the sams following the rest now being utilized as more of a stun and anti-meta deck. Perhaps Teleport will find it's place in wind-up or inzektor weird builds, but whether they are willing to accept the inconsistencies that come with it remains to be seen, while likely they won't sign up to the idea, at least the majority of players. Of course I could be wrong, things change fast.
Trap Dustshoot is self explanatory. At the same time it promotes hand traps and not setting too many for the heavy scared player. We will probably be seeing a format where your "traps" are in your hand for multiple reasons. Which could in turn start hand hate or blocking. Perhaps the return of gravekeepers? Although that's too big of a leap here...
Torrential will probably be seeing play in both copies. After the solemns it was probably the most used trap card and for good reason. Starlight aside it stops everything. There is another side to it. Before seeing a torrential tribute in the graveyard meant you are clear to do certain plays, however now with 2 of them you will be all the more scared not to simply overextend but to do any kind of summon based play. It could perhaps be proven to be the change with the biggest impact in this banlist.
4. Call of the haunted will probably not be used in more than 2 in the top tier, you have probably seen the inconsistencies that come with it if you have played top tier. It will see some play in decks that do need it, or even make new decks (call of the haunted unlimited was something I wanted for a while to make weird decks where you chain it for rai-oh, dyna or banisher for +1 plays) but not that big of an impact.
Stall once again will not be seeing significant play. And ultimate offering... Ok, now I'm just making small talk.
Knowing TCG players, BLS will be seeing play in inzektors most likely, and most likely in the basic build. Other than that it could be the one card boost of other decks. Chaos can still handle some things and actually should be dealing with an otherwise favourable format, and it is possible, although not that likely, that GAOV will give birth to new chaos decks in OCG.
5. Yes, this time plants are dead. Idk how many times it has come up and we've said that, but plant cards have ran out by now. You only have 1 dandy and 1 lonefire left. Looking back, with so many hits they have taken (debris at 1, dandy at 1, lonefire at 1, spore and bulb banned, formula and librarian limited, trishula banned, pot of avarice at 1) you could say it was the best engine ever, I mean has any deck ever received that much hate over sequential banlists and still lived through all of them? What saddens me more than the loss of my most expensive card however is the loss of Trishula. You will be missed...
At the same time, the hit of an unreleased OCG card does set a very important precedent, as it has many times been stressed, that now it is possible for TCG exclusives to get hit normally in reference to future banlists. Who knows, perhaps with the reprint here we are one or two banlists away from the hit on Tour Guide from the Underworld now, or perhaps OCG gets Tengu soon and this means nothing. We will see.
And that's all that happened, enjoy your new format and don't be scared.
