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Pojo's Yu-Gi-Oh Card of the Day

Reviewer's Choice
of Banned Cards

 

 
 

 

 


Date Reviewed - 03.04.05

 
ExMinion OfDarkness Magical Scientist

Scientist finally got the boot.

Konami made it VERY clear they want NO first turn kills in the Advanced Format, and horribly limited them in the Traditional Format. Scientist's first turn kill, Elma's many infinite loop combos, and the Makyura the Destructor/Chick the Yellow/Call of the Haunted combos will be eliminated come 4/1.

I play m0rph, so this hurts, but not as bad as everyone thinks. I've honestly used Scientist very little compared to morphing Serpent, Scapegoats, Different Dimension Dragon, Chaos Sorcerers, Mobii (Mobiuses), and opponent's monsters that were stolen than Scientisted-out fusions.

I understand its ban, and it's really unfortunate that "combo bans" couldn't be done in place of this...for example, stuff like "If you play Scientist, you can't have Catapult Turtle in the deck. You can play Makyura as long as the deck doesn't have Chick the Yellow. Mirage of Nightmare can be used if the deck doesn't have Emergency Provisions or MST, and so on..."

I'm just glad that this gives other players one less possible answer to a BLS smacking them in the face.

5/5 until it's banned.
 
Coin Flip I'm going to do something different from the other reviewers today and give you a Japanese card for review. Just so you know, we will never, ever see this played in official tournies in America because it was a mistake on the part of Konami. It's a shame, yes, but once you see the effect, maybe you'll agree with me when I see it's unbelievably powerful.

Sixth Sense
Normal Trap
Call two numbers between 1 and 6 (including 1 and 6). Your opponent rolls a six-sided die. If it is a number other than the one you called, discard that number of cards from the top of your deck. If it is one of the numbers you called, draw that many cards from your deck.

Ah, the memories of brutally being owned or owning in duels thanks to this card are coming back... Just in case you were wondering, this thing is featured (or should be) in every single deck in Japan as of today (Feb. 28, the day I write this). Come tomorrow, when the Japanese banlist appears, it will never be featured in a tournament deck again.

So why is this thing so powerful? If you don't call the number right, you lose cards from the top of your deck that might be very good ones.
I can tell you that. I've lost a Pot of Greed or a Mirror Force to this card before when I really needed them. But let's take a quick look at the odds here.

Let's say that you call 5 and 6, specifically (which are the only numbers you should EVER call). Well gee, what just happened? Let's say you fail. Which you have a 2/3 (4/6, more specifically) chance of doing. You discard, at the most, 4 cards from your deck. If you are running Chaos and have drawn an Envoy, this just dumped a LIGHT and DARK in the graveyard for you. If you are running Reversal of Worlds (I should have mentioned this before, but if I haven't, you have to have 15 cards in your graveyard and it switches deck and graveyard, normal trap, check DM7FGD's articles for more depth). It thins the deck in Exodia (which could use Monster Reincarnation if the Head was dropped, or Compulsory Evacuation Device with revival), and does a large amount of other useful things. The "downside" isn't really a "downside" at all.

Let's say that you call it right. Hey, you just drew 5 or 6 cards.
Your opponent is whimpering and currently thinking how he can best save his remaining pride.

There's a good reason we won't ever see this card in play in America.
The 1/3 chance to win the game you are currently playing is that reason.

It earns a 5/5 in all formats upon release. Well, in the few formats it is still legal in, anyway.
 
Tranorix Butterfly Dagger – Elma

I’m going to review Elma, since (out of the choices given) it’s basically the only one worth reviewing that I haven’t reviewed already. Elma was never a fantastic card, only boasting a 300 ATK boost; and the effect of returning when destroyed was good but not very reliable.

So why the ban? Well, in case you don’t know about them yet, there are a few combos with Elma that result in instant wins. Play it on Gearfried – repeatedly – when you have a Royal Magical Library on the field and you get to draw your entire deck (Exodia, anyone?) Play it on Gearfried when you have Fire Princess and Morale Boost on the field and you get an instant win through Burn damage. And there are two others, one involving Magical Marionette and one involving Spell Absorption (in FET); both of those also involve Gearfried.

But these combos aren’t exactly easy to pull off (maybe the one with Spell Absorption is, but still…), or at least they aren’t played very often here. However, they are in Japan, and this ban list was made with Japan in mind – First Turn Kills are essentially a thing of the past now. Elma was a decent card, a decent card with a lot of potential – perhaps too much – so it was banned.

I’ll leave it to you to decide whether it was a good choice.

Traditional – CCCC: 2/5
Traditional – Exodia: 4/5
Advanced – CCWC: 2.5/5
Advanced – Exodia: 4.5/5
OVERALL RATING: 3.3/5
 
Snapper For the final card this week we’re supposed to review one of the newly banned cards. But because I basically agree with all the new bannings, I’m going to instead review a newly limited card, Dark Scorpion - Chick the Yellow.

Chick is, no matter how you look at him, a bad monster. 1000 ATK won’t get him very far, even with his Warrior classification. Sure it offers him power boosts and the chance to be easily searched for, but Chick isn’t a monster worthy of such privileges. And sadly for Chick, his effects don’t do him much good either. Like all of the Dark Scorpions, Chick has the option of using two effects whenever he does damage to the opponent’s Life Points. In Chick’s case he can a) return one card on the field to the owner’s hand or
b) allow Chick’s contoller to look at the card on top of the opponent’s Deck and return it to the top or bottom of said Deck. Both effects are not something you’d want to waste your time trying to use, or something you’d be able to use easily. Remember Chick’s wonderful ATK? It’s not going to help him much in damaging the opponent.

So by the looks of it there is no reason to have limited a monster such as Chick, correct? Well that’s basically true, but Chick actually does have one use, and that’s with Makyura the Destructor and Call of the Haunted.
Activate the now banned Makyura’s effect through something like Graceful Charity, and activate Call of the Haunted to Special Summon Chick. Have Chick do damage to the opponent and use his effect to return CotH to your hand, destroying Chick. Activate Call of the Haunted from your hand (thanks to Makyura) and Special Summon Chick. Attack with him, and repeat the process to achieve an OTK, assuming your opponent had nothing to stop Chick’s effect/Chick. While this possible automatic win seems like a reasonable excuse to limit Chick, Makyura (as already said) has been banned, taking away all chances of using this combo. So my question is this: why limit Chick now that its useless? I guess you could use it in Traditional, but if you’re going to play Traditional thare are better OTKs than Chick…

Advanced Format: 1/5. No reason to use it.
Traditional Format: 2.5/5. Since you can use Makyura…
Overall: 1.75/5.
Art: 2/5. That mallet isn’t very intimidating.
 
dawnyoshi Of all the cards that were banned, I'm wondering why Makyura the Destructor had to be added to the list...it makes an old duelist sad. =(

Makyura the Destructor was easily one of my favorite warriors in this game. Its effect is by far one of the most innovative effects introduced into this environment...it also created the potential for some very deadly combos. One of the reasons it saw banning was because of its combo with Dark Scorpion- Chick the Yellow and Call of the Haunted. With Makyura's effect active, you could have Chick inflict almost endless direct attacks to your opponent's life points. Combo number two involves a lot of flip effect monsters like Morphing Jar and Cyber Jar, Desert Sunlight, and eventually decking your opponent out, most commonly used with Card Destruction and Serial Spell. Reversal of Worlds was Makyura's third major use, but that's not out in America yet.

Was it worth banning? In my opinion, not at all. This executioner certainly has some great versatility, but it's not completely unstoppable, and these combos rarely happen on turn 1. It's likely, but it's much harder to pull off than the Scientist FTK. Hopefully this card will be unbanned in the future, as America should be given its chance to try this card out.

Oh, and this thing's just a rare draft pick in limited. Its effect won't be that useful, and there are better choices for your deck.

Traditional: 4/5
Advanced: 3.5/5
Limited: 2/5
 
Otaku

Well, it’s another Reviewer’s Choice day with the condition that it pertains directly to what was added or removed from the upcoming Ban List.  I’ve heard a lot of commotion over how the loss of Painful Choice will hurt Chaos decks.  I agree that it will, but I don’t think it will be as serious as a lot of people make it out.  Read on to find out why.

Name: Painful Choice

Set: Magic Ruler

Rarity: Super Rare

Type: Spell Card

Text: Select 5 cards from your deck and show them to your opponent.  Your opponent must select 1 card that will be added to your hand.  Discard the remaining cards to the Graveyard.

I am short on time, so I won’t be quite as “structured” as normal.  This card has an excellent effect that many overlooked at first.  To be fair, until we had three great generic resurrection cards (Call of the Haunted, Monster Reborn, and Pre-Mature Burial) it wasn’t that great.  Now though, we have not only those but several card effects that are aided or entirely dependant upon the contents of your Graveyard.  The first time this card was reviewed, only Yonex saw this cards real potential, and was pre-Chaos for the Japanese era.  Everyone else dismissed it as just something for Exodia.  Oh well, I am pretty sure I didn’t get this card either at the time.  Anyway, with all the recursion we have available now, even if your deck isn’t running something that feeds off the Graveyard, you run this.  Why?  Pick Sinister Serpent, then 4 pieces of TecH or other situational cards that have served their purpose or will serve their purpose in the discard.  It’s also good for main hitters if they can be revived to full use.  Now all that is easily at hand for the cost of a recursion card.  We got some more of those recently, didn’t we: Monster Reincarnation and A Feather of the Phoenix are both unrestricted cards that meant, thanks to Sinister Serpent, Night Assailants, or the like, made it even easier to turn Painful Choice into multi-card deck manipulation.

Now, for those who have talked with me about it, they know I detest “staples”.  I am none too fond of cards that, even when not counted as staples, are “general use” cards.  The reason for the former should be obvious; it forces you to spend deck slots to remain competitive, since a lot of time the only reason to run a staple it to counter said staple in another deck.  Yes, staples, as a whole help every deck, but they tend to help some decks significantly more than others.  That’s where I begin to dislike “general use” cards as well.  What do I mean by “general use”?  I use the term to denote cards that can be used in almost any deck with no real effort to full effect.  They may not seem very powerful when compared to more specialized cards, but when enough general use cards accumulate, you tend to get the dominant deck archetype.  How so?  Well, look at how this game began.  In the days of “starter deck only” Yu-Gi-Oh, the generic Beatdown deck was born despite all cards being available from two different theme decks!  Field Spells were useless not because they were easy to destroy (you going to “waste” De-Spell on Yami when Sword of Darkness would likely be the real threat?), but because the minimal attack boost ended up applying to most of the commonly played attackers, namely Summoned Skull and LaJinn.  But I digress, let’s get back to why I really chose Painful Choice.

I disagree with Painful Choice being banned because, even though it is either a staple or a general use card, we don’t have replacements available for it (that I would want to be non-general use), and it really only makes a handful of decks over-powered.  Further, only one deck really abused it beyond tolerance: Chaos.  It would have been much better to get rid of the source of Chaos’ (and aggro’s) power.  For Chaos, that would Black Luster Soldier-Envoy of the BeginningFor aggro, mainly restricting/semi-restricting the cards that really put it over the top.  Banning Painful Choice means little to Aggro, and is a mere annoyance to Chaos.

Why do I think it won’t matter to Chaos?  While it did afford Chaos some sick tricks, they only depended on it for said sick tricks, not for viability.  As Jae (I think >_<) mentioned not too long ago, Magical Merchant can really help Chaos.  It’s searchable by the returned Sangan, and since you probably are running at Book of Moon anyway and you need Light Monsters, searching it out with Shining Angel can still prove useful.  Magical Merchant, for those who have forgotten, is a small flip effect Monster which basically dumps the top cards from your deck until you hit a Spell or Trap card.  With those recent recursion additions, it’s even less a problem than before to discard large quantities of Monsters.  It is a hair slower, but speed tends to be a relative concept: the loss of Painful Choice slows many decks far worse than it hit Chaos, or Chaos was just so much faster than those decks to begin with it makes little difference.  We also got Graceful Charity back.  Like Painful Choice, it either speeds up Chaos as much as most any other deck, or it ends up increasing its lead.

Ratings

Traditional: 4/5-Feed the Chaos, or pretty much anything else.

Advanced: 4/5-Same thing until it gets banned.

Limited: 4/5-Chuck all the filler you were forced to run or maybe if you are lucky, be able to draw the one of five cards that you need to win (“I only had a tribute Monster…”).
 


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