The banlist that actually did bring back goats

http://shriek.twoday.net/stories/453141875/
This was the weirdest list I've seen from konami, and I've seen many lists. If it wasn't for the other announcements, I'd say konami went crazy and is thinking of closing down shop. When you look at the list, you see the latest 2 big decks killed and forced to do something completely different (killed as they are, dragons can still work differently, books still have a massive arsenal although they will have much bigger issues adapting than dragons). Then you see the overdue hit on mermails, then you see the hit of an engine that actually did not get its time in the spotlight, right into the jail of limited along with a hit on another core card, which is weird to say the least (chicken/rooster didn't get to play because it was constantly outclassed by dragons and spellbooks, that's a fact, and now it won't get to play at all). After that we still have several things to comment on. The redundant hit on super rejuvenation after hitting all the standard discard outlets, reminding us this is indeed konami redundancy, as well as the hit on both divine wind and birdman at the same time, perhaps one of the most fun cards out there, which shows us you can never have enough of konami's redundancy. Big eye, the dragons' money maker 1 out of 2 is put to 1, and is joined at 1 by the sexiest synchro ever, which is an old deck support card which is out of print and actually can support the afforementioned dragons (lv3 dragon/dragunity tuner + dragossac tokens). And then, to add to the wtf factor, we see a bunch of support to older decks and engines coming out of the restrictions (although, goats and trishula can be justified due to new plant support). Speaking of which, someone in the OCG R&D must be gay for alius, it explains everything.

Now the reason why this alone is batshit crazy, bonkers or whatever else you want to say. There are decks that remain. Those are old decks. For example, dragunity dragon is practically untouched, same for laval and karakuri spam. Heroes gain more searchability and Ophion remains for deterance of the first decks mentioned. Let's take the decks mentioned here for example. 4 out of 5 of those have in common the fact they are all built from old cards, while verz is a deck already out and owned which will not change much considering it is stun (a good choice by the way, matching good with all of the above decks). Then you add wind-ups returning (3 magicians loop, 3 sharks don't, you just need 1 and it's searchable), the best blackwing card going to 2, double the mole (for ophion? it seems they just can't touch DT sometimes, then again, the ice barrier was massacred), double the Gorz, which many people will whine for and which will certainly affect the metagame, at least for decks that can otherwise deal with verz (1 warning, 2 gorz, now that's funny), obvious chaos support and then plenty of old single cards. I guess I should mention Bestiari as people have been asking for it for a while, but there's little point now, you should be able to make a first turn gyzarus with plenty builds, glad accessibility is huge.

Other than seemingly leaving everything to decks they have already sold, they seem to be making a very Ophion-centric metagame. Verz seem to be dealing with most remaining threats well, including the returning heroes (they can run over alius with +50, defend from spark while blocking the draw if the target is a monster, miracle fusion and super poly are blocked under ophion), however, while on the one hand the hit on fire fist seems to further support them, on the other the return of a viable wind-up looping engine as well as the targeted hate in the form of Mole reveals they gained a mixed bag of goods when it comes to competition. Now, there's certainly stun fire fist, buujin, ghostrick and vampires. The issues of those is that even though most of them can match up with verz (not vampires though, there it goes both ways), they have trouble matching up with the dragon abusers, as well as a matchup with heroes ranging from even to simply unfavourable. Then there's hootcake madolche which can go anti-meta at this point, maintaining a good verz matchup, but again that's an old deck. Certainly some new decks can get in there, again though Dragon abusers on one hand (including plants), verz on the other, and they need the ability to match against both sides.

Pointing all this out is to show that konami seems to not be trying to sell new cards anymore. If you want to do well, the top tier is decks already sold, and the stronger ones are actually pretty old. While that can be fun for players, it's not fun at all for konami.

But there's also a second major point when you consider those changes for the TCG as well. First of all, spellbooks and dragons are decks that were used for 1 ycs and 1 wcq, people bought all the cards needed in the set to put together the deck just for those, and in fact, many people did exactly that if you look at the numbers. Those people, if we are looking at the TCG list, got the finger from konami for actually being loyal enough to buy their product. Especially one of those cards, judgment, was a secret rare, was extremely expensive and sought after and is now banned. But that's not all, Brotherhood of the Fire Fist Rooster, a card that as of now has been out for only 10 days in the TCG and was released as a secret rare, is now limited, practically scamming those that bought Judgment of the Light on the first days because of it. Instead of those people, those that are benefited this time are those that haven't been buying konami's product for a while.

All of the above though makes much more sense when combined with the following information.
http://photozou.jp/photo/show/2652683/184989653
Which explains there are new tournament formats for shops, such as custom banlists, unlimited formats etc. Some changes for example could have been made with Traditional Format in mind. Most importantly though:
http://photozou.jp/photo/show/2652683/184989653
The dates at which banlists come out change from the following March and September. The next 4 banlists are for November 2013, February 2014, April 2014, July 2014.
Let's talk about that for a bit.
First of all, this means this is a two month format. On November of the same year, that is 2 months after the banlist is official, we will be having a new banlist. In fact, list goes in effect for that latter half of September for the OCG, so it's less than two months (or November doesn't get its list on November 1st either and it's two months still).
Secondly, those dates may seem random when you consider that the time intervals between them are all different, but they actually match the set release dates for the OCG. The 4 sets that OCG releases in the year are indeed in February, April, July and November. This means new banlist for every set.

What this means for this banlist is that first of all, as mentioned, it's a 2 month banlist. Not the longest format ever, and hardly impactful considering it's right at the beginning of the season, so no matter what they do with it, it won't be really weird considering no major product is released between September and November as the next set release is for November. And that brings us to the second point. November, February, April and July all match set releases. September does not and is the odd month out, which further reinforces the point that they can do whatever they want with it, including testing.
There's a third point to that. As was mentioned, these dates match OCG set releases. OCG. Not TCG. Set release dates for the TCG are actually around 3 months later each time (give or take a lot, less busy seasons may go up to 4 or even 5, more busy seasons can drop down to 2 and all that is for main set releases, the rest is all over the place). For the OCG we see banlists tailored for each set as they match their release dates. But what about the TCG? If we keep getting the same banlist, wouldn't we be always applying the wrong banlist to each set, having a constantly up to date metagame in OCG but a constantly messed up metagame in TCG no matter what?

That is in fact a major desync point for the TCG and OCG banlists. Obvious way to fix that is to match set releases for TCG and OCG, we all want that. No such plans have been announced about that at this point though, while still, it may be possible. There is another way to resolve this however, and it may be what TCG konami officials tell us every single time the banlist information is released for the OCG. The banlist may be different, wait for the actual TCG banlist to be posted. In every other case I would say the banlist will be the same, as I always have. The banlist is always the same. However this time, the change in OCG banlists, as well as the financial incompatibility of the list with the TCG (rooster, half a month, secret, limited. Judgment, summer season, secret, banned), suggests there is a good chance the ever present warning of the TCG officials may this time actually be true.

At the same time, let's keep in mind this is a 2 month banlist with no set releases in between for either CG while OCG is getting its list later in September with TCG still getting its list on September 1st, earlier than the September implementation of the OCG list. It would be totally ok for the TCG to ignore this list. What would be completely weird for the TCG to do on the other hand is to adopt a temporary 2 month banlist for the whole 6 month period. What would be just as weird would be for the TCG to keep adopting outdated banlists as the OCG releases them. What would also be weird is the TCG trying to match the November set release date of the OCG for Legacy of the Valiant, as it coincides with the set release date of Shadow Specter for the TCG, meaning they would release two sets which financially is a horrible move. Finally what would be kinda weird would be for the TCG to adopt a 2 month test banlist all the way to February or January where we are getting our own Legacy of the Valiant (probably). Is it impossible for KDE to adopt any of the above solutions? No, it is certainly possible, I know not to assume someone will take the most sensible route at a given time. At the same time I recognize KDE does not have to mechanically take the standard route of adopting the OCG banlist for 6 months when everything changes for the OCG.

Now, to analyze more the banlist and banlist periods themselves. Looking at it, I can't help but think this is sort of a testing period. Not much to buy right now, so go out and play, and we'll see how it goes. They have the leeway to do so when considering everything. At the same time I consider the possibility of resting periods for the metagame when looking at the multiple banlists and I'll explain what that means. We know that traditionally we don't get good sets back to back, we get shit sets in between. Now we know banlists will be set to match said shit sets as well. So what is possible is that we get a really competitive brand new card banlist at once, then get a resting banlist of older/cheaper cards, then return to new product, which is a way to please both sides of things and can be made to avoid/join major tournaments.

Something very important to note here is money. If banlists are made to match every set, that means completely new format every set, which will often mean new deck every set. That's a lot more costly ygo irl in my opinion, since the rate of buying cards greatly increases, therefore demand increases, therefore prices increase. Online it's fun, irl it both means you'll need more money to keep up and it also means your deck "investments" are completely uninsured as your deck could be made void by a "kill it with fire" mentality (as we saw in this exact banlist) in just two months, and that's actually if you buy really early, buying in mid format becomes financially prohibiting unless you can throw money away. For the OCG where it is implemented, maybe things are easier, in fact I know they are, although still it is harder than it was. If we get a similar policy for the TCG and combine it with standard TCG greed, Martha help us all.

As for the list itself, I may come out as a hater, but I actually like it in practicality. Irl it helps me greatly as with little money I have decks that turn viable, while everything died last format to the point where I didn't even try. As for online, I love it there as well since I can actually make a bunch of decks. I suspect I'll be making 30+ ocg decks when I get back home and get a decent PC-internet combination, and that's just for the first couple of days. Above all, Trishula is my waifu, how can I not be happy. Add 20 more Trishula decks to the above count. As well as 20 more weird decks. My deckbuilding fun was kinda crippled before as I had no choice but to play competitivelly with what was there, now I can do whatever. Maybe I'll get back the will to play ygo too, although iunno whether that's a good thing.

As an additional point, if banlists are different, tier changes will be a bitch for me. We'll have to think things through again.
As a final point, I am writing this two days too late and two days too early. Two days too late as the banlist has been out for a while but I was too lazy to get to writing. Two days too early as the TCG banlist is coming out on the 20th, so what the heck is the point in speculating. Anyways, that's all for now. More when we get our TCG banlist.
For what its contents will be, I can't make much of a prediction unless it's standard. You can get my feelings for it from the pre-banlist post I made. Other than that, they can do whatever with it seeing the OCG changes, so anything can be in it.

i'm waiting for L to come here and say damn the ocg

im ok with it . if it das not fuck my deck .

It's going to be a slow format, not slow to the point of 1 gen Yugioh, but slow enough for someone not to complain about 1st degree meta. Ophion my get not have gotten hit, but most of his competitors have been damaged by the banlist; Prophecies (from my experience) are now reduced to where they once were and playing Reaper Turbo and Dragons are mostly going to resort to seperate decks, if not Chaos Drags. Most prominant decks that I see in the next format are: Six Sams, Gadgets/Karakuri, Chaos Piper, Blackwings, Mermails (just play Undine instead of Teus, 1 Sphere isn't THAT bad imo), and perhaps others I didnt mention.

Maybe goats will come back, but most of its cards were removed, and back then we didn't have such cards to counter them like we do now such as Solemn Warning and Effect Veiler. 3 Scapegoats however would annoyingly prolong any game with Enemy Controller and Plasma and triple Mirror Force with a side of double Gorz makes all attacks almost frighting.

They are really changing alot about the game, first changing deck sizes and combination rules, but now they are shortening the format span is news to me. We can only wait until tomorrow.

Goat control is not a thing as it has no cards for a deck, the title refers to the scapegoats themselves. Deck size never changed, dunno what combination rules stand for. And yeah, TCG list tomorrow.