Hello everyone, once again, to Anteaus’ History of Yu-Gi-Oh! Although the name is kind of a misnomer, considering that we really discuss everything in this little section, but today is a bit different. I’m going to offer up an explanation as to the cards that I chose to include on my recent banlist changes, and also the ones that I took off of the list (much to everyone’s surprise). I’ve received a lot of e-mail about this, as well as some flaming on the message boards (seriously? If you’re gonna flame me, at least have the decency to e-mail it to me, so I can have a chance to respond), and I have to say that I was really surprised, shocked, taken aback – however you want to describe my reaction, the fact of the matter was that I’ve received a ton of e-mails about this subject, and I thought I would clarify my positions.

Many people had some problems with the choices I made, starting (primarily) with Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning. Here’s this: if anyone here has ever played Magic: The Gathering, you’ll know what I mean when I say that a limited card pool produces limited results. When so many cards are banned, only one or two decks can surface to the top and try and dominate. With Black Luster Soldier back in the mix, what it would do is give a lot of variety to the game without taking too much balance away. You can’t sit there and tell me that the game today is balanced, because believe me it’s not. With BLS back in it, it opens up paths to whole new deck ideas that have been lost to time, that frankly need to resurface.

Another huge one was Imperial Order. We need more counter cards in this game, end of story, and one of the best plays was this: Play a Heavy Storm, counter with Imperial Order, and chain with a Mystical Space Typhoon. Imperial Order is an amazing card, but it’s not broken because people have to rely on spells – including the player who is playing Imperial Order. You can switch it off at any time, and with the mass amount of Monster-based Spell destruction, it’s not difficult to get rid of. We have Royal Decree in multiples, and that thing can obliterate the best Traps in the game. Imperial Order has a cost, and it’s banned. That’s a bit fishy, no?

We need to stop thinking of costs in terms of LP payment and negative advantage. A cost is any negative effect that a card may have, be it text or otherwise. Call of the Haunted is a prime example: many practical duelists tout Call of the Haunted as being broken because it apparently has no cost. However, theoretical duelists disagree, saying that Call of the Haunted’s cost is actually the fact that it’s a Continuous Trap Card, meaning it stays on the field. This presents several problems to the controller, the main one being that if Call of the Haunted is destroyed, the monster that it revived is also destroyed, and vice versa. Not only that, but it takes up a slot in your Monster Card Zone and your Spell/Trap Card Zone. It’s important to take into account a card’s overall use when calculating its cost, and Call of the Haunted has a pretty high cost, making it perfect at one-per-deck. The same goes with Premature Burial, except now we have LP cost factored in, which makes Premature Burial actually worse than Call of the Haunted, if you’re thinking cost-wise. But both are stable cards that can bring a lot of variety to the game, and both deserve to be in the Limited section.

Another card that stuck out was Pot of Greed. Come on, who doesn’t want this card back? In an era where a lot of draw cards are lacking in substance, Pot of Greed will bring balance because of its ability to thin the deck. It makes fast decks faster, sure, and gives power to the already power builds, but what it also does is gives a huge weapon to decks that aren’t quite top-tier, but could be soon. Notice, too, that Graceful Charity has stayed on the Forbidden list – my reasoning is that one draw card is enough, and Graceful’s ability to dump two cards into the Graveyard can make certain builds overly powerful, to the point of domination. The point of this list is not to bring back old decks in a fit of nostalgia, but rather bring balance to the game, where any deck can make it to the top of the list. A good cycle is a cycle where many different decks dominate the metagame; don’t forget that. A static and stagnant cycle is a cycle where the banlist is incredibly out of balance, and needs to be fixed, and one cannot help but notice the fact the this cycle is incredibly broken.

Magician of Faith, Tsukuyomi, and Thousand-Eyes Restrict all made it off of the Forbidden list as well, traversing to the Limited list. This is for good reason, because Goat Control was a powerful deck, but its advantage creation was limited. In todays metagame, with today’s cards, theoretical and practical duelists can safely assume that Goat Control will not be too powerful because of the amount of stopping power we’ve seen released in the past bazillion sets. Let’s not let our fears of the past limit our view of the present and the future, for then will we only have chaos. Goat Control, and the subsequent Morph builds, will come back furiously, but it will allow duelists to change their decks around and bring more diversity to the metagame – that’s what we’re striving for here.

The pieces of Last Turn have been removed, and again this is due to the fact that we need diversity in the metagame. Here’s another reason why we need diversity: the skilled players, with the well-built decks (decks that can effectively counter every deck at a Jump Championship), will rise to the top. Last Turn builds, Goat Control builds, Chaos builds – they can all be easily be countered, and if anyone has read my “Looking at the Past” articles, you’ll see that there was still plenty of diversity in the game then, allowing for new and creative decks to flourish, even with all these decks out there. Just because a deck was once dominant doesn’t mean that it will continue to be, especially with the amount of cards we have out now.

Other choices were generally received well, mainly because they bring support back to decks that sorely need them, and others because they are no longer a threat. Don’t forget that with new cards comes new strategies, and new strategies bring new decks, and new decks make old, dominant decks obsolete, and forces adaptation and change, which in turn fuels creativity and makes for a diverse metagame.

So, this time, let’s not hear about my shortcomings as a theoretical duelist on the message boards; if you still have a problem with my selection, and can effectively counter what I have said without a “BLS iz borked, n00b!” then e-mail me. Otherwise, don’t, because I don’t waste my time. I’ll respond to you in kind, and we’ll establish a dialogue. Yu-Gi-Oh! is about the community at the end of the day, and I’m hoping that the community can rise to the occasion and prove its brilliance. Because practical duelists and theoretical duelists alike have a lot of brainpower – just try and use it.

As always, my e-mail is anteaus44@hotmail.com.

Thanks,

Anteaus