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JC on Yu-Gi-Oh

Ban Rant: So Much Better Than the Others!
March 28, 2006

Oh boy! Another featured writer for the Pojo Yu-Gi-Oh site! Aren’t you all excited about it!? Well, you may not be, but I am. It definitely does not hurt to get my name out there. Trust me you’ll all know my name once I win 3 Shonen Jumps in a row! Oh yea, and by the way, my name is Justin Cardoza; JC for short. Remember that name…. =P

Anyways, back to why you’re actually reading this bunch of words that are put together to make sense. Throughout my entire Yu-Gi-Oh gaming “career”, I’ve always taken pride in attempting to be original or different from everyone else that wins those tournaments that we all hear about. Yes, sometimes I may be let down by my deck and fail at an event, but most of the time it’s worth it. I get to learn more about the game and figure out what my exact mistakes were to possibly Top 8 the next event that I go to. You are probably wondering what deck I play; it is Zombie. I’ve always entered all major events with my Zombie deck because I just seem to always end up preferring it over any other deck that I play-test. And trust me, I play-test a LOT of decks whether it be in my spare time, or with my friends.

Speaking of play-testing, that is exactly what most people have been doing in the past week ever since the new list came out. WAIT! I know what you are thinking….”Not another ban-list article!” Well yes, it is another ban-list article. But most of the other articles have explained how the list is bad to our current format, or how (to quote JaeLove) it is a “Failure on an Unprecedented Level.” So how about we do a little “Compare & Contrast”
from 5th grade.

~~~~~Book of Taiyou-->Unrestricted
Effect-->Cyber Jar-->Banned
Effect->Exchange of Spirit->Banned

- Well, this example might not be as hard as the others. Most people agreed that they didn’t like OTK’s very much, but I still believe that once again, UDE/Konami has gone too far to kill one certain (or more than one) deck-type. From these three cards, think about what gets a boost, or takes a hit. Mill most obviously receives a boost from the un-restriction of Book of Taiyou, as well as other flip-effect decks. But mill (along with it’s brother, the Exchange of Spirit deck) took two bigger hits that basically cancel out its gain. Cyber Jar shouldn’t be banned. Most of the time it will help your opponent out, or even end up screwing you over. At the same token, it provided the game with a luck factor that quite frankly, we don’t need right now. I’ll give that decision to UDE/Konami as a win. =P Exchange of Spirit on the other hand rarely saw play, and was a neat optional win strategy that could be quite effective. Even so, with Cyber Jar banned, this really did not need to go on the list at all. Once again, UDE/Konami is slaughtering everything from a certain deck-type.

~~~~~Magician of Faith-->Semi-Restricted
Effect-->Graceful Charity-->Restricted
Effect-->Nobleman of Crossout-->Semi-Restricted

- Out of everything that happened on this list, these choices were by far the worst that UDE/Konami could make. Right after a format where Chaos for the most part was finally taken care of or “controlled”, they decide to give us a second Magician of Faith and Graceful Charity comes back. I’ll be brief here.* I agree 100% with Jae about how Nobleman of Crossout eliminates a game-play mechanic that should otherwise allow you to be safe for that turn.

Other cards like Dark World Lightning serve a better purpose as they actually cost something. Being able to remove a core component of a deck (i.e.- Sangan or a Elemental Searcher) should not be made so easy. One was too much, and two is over-board. Although I will say that I could have lived with one.

Magician is I guess “controlled” by Nobleman of Crossout, but that’s a moot point considering that Magician can actually get back NoC! Why, just why did we have to bring a second one of these girls back. =\

Graceful Charity (along with Mirror Force) is about the only thing that I believe they did right on this list. It provides players with more options, as well as giving them the chance to determine their fate in a duel rather than have it determined through luck. In addition, this card can require a good amount of skill to play, and cards like that should be able to be in every deck.

From there on, you can probably get a good idea yourself of how everything effected each other in this ban list. Instead of simply going through each and every card that was touched on the ban-list, I’ll let you think for once. I know you guys must be tired of reading this much about the ban-list anyways.

If you want to contact me at all, my E-Mail address is:
Fantasy_X-69@hotmail.com

*I attempted to make this article on the ban-list as short as possible, since I knew that everyone has read 5+ article’s on the list now.

~~ JC