By Froylan Carreno
In a world filled with superfluous amounts of card games, one managed to catch my eye at a very young age. The Yu-Gi-Oh Trading Card Game was fast paced, popular, easy to play but hard to master, and many other characteristics that managed to keep me engaged and invested in it to this day. Perhaps the one aspect that appealed to me most about Yu-Gi-Oh was how often and quickly the meta (short for metagame) could drastically change. For this reason, most of these weekly blogs will cover the ever changing game of Yu-Gi-Oh and will highlight any noteworthy Yu-Gi-Oh news, such as recent tournament winning decks and card reprints that could strongly shift the course of the game. I will also try to find a balance between speaking in the game's jargon and in more common terms most people can understand or relate to.
In the past few days, many important events have transpired in the Yu-Gi-Oh game, greatly affecting every player across the world that may even cause permanent ripples in the meta. The biggest of which is the new card Ban List, which is essentially an official list of cards that may not be used or used in certain quantities. Previously, a ban list emerged every 6 months, one in early September, and one in early March. Now Konami, the official owner of the Yu-Gi-Oh card game, proclaimed a new ban list would emerge every 4 months now opposed to the original 6 months. And if that was not enough, the new ban list banned some incredibly potent Spell and Trap cards, such as Heavy Storm, Monster Reborn, and Solemn Judgment -- All cards that almost every deck ran, but were previously only allowed one copy of before September 1st of this year. To describe the magnitude and impact of this ban list, I have an account on a free website called Dueling Network that allows me to make limitless amounts of Yu-Gi-Oh decks. I had over 50 decks created on the site, and to allow legal play with most of them, I had to go back and painstakingly edit the decks to remove any banned cards and insert new cards to replace them. I have yet to insert new cards, as just thoughtlessly taking cards out took almost an hour, and thinking of what cards to "tech" in as replacements could take an entire night. Some decks had so many cards removed, that I thought it easier to outright delete it to save the effort of trying to repair a deck devastated by the ban list. Rest easy my Macro Rabbit and Elemental Hero Beat decks.
However, the ban list is actually a very important balancing factor to the game that most players appreciate world wide. It neuters decks that are too powerful in the metagame that are always seen destroying the competition in official tournaments, or cards that generate too much advantage for little cost, such as Gateway of the Six and Card Destruction. Until today, one of the top decks of last format, Dragon Rulers, was thought to have been hit so hard by the ban list, it would be unplayable this format. However, it was revealed that it had indeed just topped a YCS tournament in Toronto, earning 1st place overall. This was a personal shocker to me, even though I had seen the new and improved version of Dragon Rulers on Dueling Network several times. Even more surprising to me was seeing another deck destroyed by the ban list, Mermails, nabbing 2nd place. The results of this Yu-Gi-Oh Championship Series (YCS for short), will likely be a hot topic tomorrow at Victor Valley College, including topics about other decks that managed to reach spots in the top 32. Over the course of the week, I will see how the results of this tournament will impact the game, to see if more people will use winning decks, or if for once people will try to be original and use lesser used decks, such as Blackwings and Gladiator Beasts. In addition, I will be on DN (Dueling Network) and seeing what decks are commonly being played and will note any sudden spikes in the metagame. Yu-Gi-Oh truly changes by the week, this week more than ever, but I am looking forward to the calm after the storm for a while. I don't believe even Konami themselves know where this game is headed, for better or for worse.
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