Tuesday

As if Banning the Carrier weren't enough, Wind-Up Magician was Restricted. Carrier was the big searcher for the Wind-Up Deck, and Wind-Up Magician came in second. Now he's the best you have (but you still have Wind-Up Factory) and now you're down to just one. The Wind-Up Deck is crippled. I'm not sure what makes this Magician a Fire Monster, but he's Level 4, with a low 600 attack but a nice solid defense of 1800, and is a Spellcaster, appropriately enough with a name like Magician. If the effect of a Wind-Up Monster is activated, present company excluded of course, you can Special Summon a Level 4 or lower Wind-Up Monster from your Deck in face-up Defense position. As stated, he's the only real searcher you have now in this Deck, and he can't pull another of himself anymore, so that hurts. He's probably the best Wind-Up Monster left in the Deck though.

Ratings:

Traditional: 1.5/5

Advanced: 3.5/5 I don't usually leave such a difference between the Ratings, but he is, as said, the best Wind-Up you have left

Art: 4/5

I think everyone is happy that Wind-Ups got hit so badly, except for those playing the deck that is. One of the MVP’s of the deck is Wind-Up Magician; because of its ability to special summon more Wind-Up’s. With Wind-Up Magician at 3 per deck, we could swarm the field with Wind-Up’s with just two cards. Summon Wind-Up Magician, special summon Wind-Up Shark, use Magician to special summon another Magician, increase Shark to a level 5, use the second Magician to special summon another Shark, increase its level to 5, and then Xyz summon a rank 4 and 5 monster. If your opponent is trap, spell, or monster dependant, just use the above technique to special summon 3 magicians and Xyz for Shock Master.
 
Now that you can only have one Wind-Up Magician in your deck, swarming the field is not as easy for Wind-Up decks. Notice that I said not as easy. A popular card that is destined to replace the two missing Magicians is Summoner Monk. By using the Monk’s effect to summon Wind-Up Magician, we can special summon that Shark from the hand, activate Shark to make a level 5, special summon another Shark with Magician, make it a level 5, and once again, we have a Rank 5 and Rank 4 monster on the field with just two cards and a spell card.
 
There are a number of other great cards you can use in a Wind-Up deck to speed it up. Try using Emergency Teleports with Wind-Up Juggler. Even if you have nothing to go with Juggler, it can still best almost any monster on the field. We still have 3 Sharks and 3 Factory’s to make Wind-Up’s a good deck. Don’t count Wind-Ups out yet. The loss of two Wind-Up Magicians definitely slows it down, but there are still ways to speed it up.
 
Traditional: 3/5
Advanced: 4/5

Welcome to day two of Pojo's F/L list discussion! Yesterday we looked at our first xyz monster banned, and now we look at the true culprit of the Wind-Up deck of recent times; let's take a look at Wind-Up Magician!

Wind-Up Magician
Level 4/ Fire/ Spellcaster

If the effect of a "Wind-Up" monster is activated, except "Wind-Up Magician": You can Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower "Wind-Up" monster from your Deck in face-up Defense Position. This effect can only be used once while this card is face-up on the field.

600/1800

Last format, where you scared when you saw your opponent summon Wind-Up Magician? Last format saw the threat that was the Shock-Lock; a powerful combo that allowed your opponent to stun you on the very first turn, making you unable to make plays. This deck took the most YCS tops last format and took about 30% of the top 16 of all YCS'es.

For me, this was the problem card in the Wind-Up deck. It allowed you to gain insane advantage, as was why the Shock Lock even worked. Then again, it was only really useful thanks to the utility of Wind-Up Shark (This is why Wind-Ups were not used in the OCG, they didn't have Shark). We can see now with how players are trying to recreate these combos with Summoner and Monk and Invoker for just how useful Magician really is. Here is the sample play:

Summon Summoner Monk- > Ditch a Spell Card -> Summon Magician -> Special Shark from hand -> Magician summons Rat from deck -> Xyz Monk and Magician into Photon Pap -> Detatch Magician to switch Rat into attack mode -> Special Magician off of Rat -> Shark to level 3 and XYZ summon Invoker, this also triggers magician again to summon a Wind-Up Shark from deck -> Invoker Summons Wind-Up Soldier from deck-> XYZ summon Shock Master

The only difference now is that it takes a third card. As we can see... Magician is clearly the problem card as the entire combo is based around abusing his special summon ability. Rat and Shark are clear factors as well, but time will tell if Magician is enough as we approach this next format.

Advanced: 4.5

It's an amazing card with a ton of synergy with it's deck. Even limited, we can see that it allows Wind-Ups to be a very strong contender this format.

Traditional: 3.5

Not sure how well the deck can play here. A shock lock can be very devastating to an opponent in this format.

Art:

It's kinda cool looking. Just your typical toy look, haha

Today's Card of the Day Review #2 for the Ban List Week will have us going into the Limited section to poke fun at one of the newest cards to join that portion of the list. It is also the 2nd directed hit for a deck that has seen quite a lot of play and quite a lot of success.
 
That card happens to be the Generation Force Rare, Wind-Up Magician.
 
This card is one of the two most important pieces of the decks and can get the player free card advantage like none other. With Zenmaity and Sangan both Forbidden along this card being Limited, this removes almost all of the ways to reliably search it out, killing the consistency of the dreaded Magician + Shark combo play.
 
There really isn't much that I can say concerning this card that is already said before for the past 2 years or so and I'm sure players of all kinds has no desire for me to go in-depth with this card. I'm sure seeing a Turn 1 Shock Master with very few cards being used to summon it is enough to annoy players for months.
 
Traditional Format: 3/5 (This card deserves to see play even there so if you want to ignore players with Shock Master, you need this......in 3s.)
Advanced Format: 4/5 (If it wasn't for Wind-Up Shark, we wouldn't even see this card, or this deck for that matter, at anywhere near the top tables. Such a shame.)

Wind-Up Magician
Fire/ Spellcaster/Effect/Rank4/ 600/1800
If the effect of a "Wind-Up" monster is activated, except "Wind-Up Magician": You can Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower "Wind-Up" monster from your Deck in face-up Defense Position. This effect can only be used once while this card is face-up on the field.

March 2013 Status: Limited

Another Wind-Up monster faces the horrors of the ban list. Wind-Up Magician faces one of harshest ban list moves, going from Unlimited to Limited. Wind-Up Magician like most Wind-Up monsters has an effect that can only be used once while this card is face-up on the field, in this case if a “Wind-Up” activates its effect, you can Special summon any Level 4 or lower "Wind-Up" monster from your Deck in face-up Defense Position. Special Summoning from your deck with no cost even if you can only use it once, is still very powerful, not to mention you still have the effect of the “Wind-Up” you activate to activate this effect and you then have another “Wind-Up” to use as well. The possibilities with this in a Wind-Up deck are limitless hence the limiting of this card.

Overall another powerful card limited, but as with Wind-Up Carrier Zenmaity only “Wind-Up” decks are going to be crying about the limiting with this card.

Traditional: 3.5/5
Advanced: 3.5/5