Breaking Down the Yu-Gi-Oh October 27th, 2025 Forbidden & Limited List
Crunch$G
I guess we’re finally bringing fun back into the format. Hello Pojo Readers, Crunch$G here with an unexpected Forbidden & Limited List update. After getting a list last month when we had to wait a while for it, it’s funny to see now we’re getting yet another update a month and a half later. It’s an overall small list, where everything on it is cards going to Forbidden status, with 7 cards in total, but they were overall necessary changes for the health of the game, considering the state of the format, so let’s see what we no longer have to deal with in the game and see how things improve.
Archnemeses Protos
From Limited to Forbidden
We start with a card that was previously banned and constantly kept popping up in the format since it returned, making players beg for it to be put back in the Forbidden section, and after a year and a half of being back in the game, Archnemeses Protos is once again banned. Protos was arguably better now than when it was initially banned from when it was a power player in the Swordsoul strategy, now being more splashable into other Decks thanks to Infernal Flame Banshee being able to search for Nemeses Flag, who then would search out your Protos. It started seeing play in Ritual Beasts last year and just kept expanding its range after that. It’s a card that can let you play the game and then lock the opponent from trying to do the same, so thankfully it’s back to being banned where it arguably should have stayed at in the first place.
Artifact Mjollnir
From Unlimited to Forbidden
We have a second piece banned thanks to the release of K9 that was preventing the opponent from playing the game, as Artifact Mjollnir is now banned. Mjollnir is for the K9 package what Gimmick Puppet Nightmare basically was for Branded, a card you would summon to the opponent’s field in order to prevent them from playing the game, as Mjollnir has a mandiatory trigger effect that would attempt to revive an Artifact, but whether you do or don’t doesn’t matter since either way the player will be locked from Special Summoning anything but Artifacts. This was too easy to setup thanks to Artifact Dagda being able to grab it out of the Deck so you can try and put it into the graveyard and summon to the opponent’s field with Imperial Princess Quinquery. They could have went for Dagda or Quinquery in theory, but Mjollnir going makes this type of play impossible instead of inconsistent, which is overall better. Hopefully there’s no more Artifacts in the future locking players from playing the game now.
Barrier Statue of the Drought, Barrier Statue of the Inferno, and Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo
From Unlimited to Forbidden
Doing a three-for-one here as they all basically serve the same purpose. It’s become a common play for Decks like Mitsurugi who can make a Rank 4 to go into Gallant Granite to search for Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo to then put onto the field and prevent the opponent from being able to do their combos, so its ban makes sense, but then you would have to go for cards that serve the same or similar purpose. If it was just Fossil Dyna banned, they would have still went for the Gallant Granite play, instead searching for Barrier Statue of the Drought, and if you then banned Drought, the next option would have been Infernal Flame Banshee to search for Barrier Statue of the Inferno, who could have also been used in a Deck like Fire King fairly effectively. These three bans take out the Special Summon preventers who can be searched by a generic Rank 4 Xyz, ensuring this doesn’t happen again.
Evilswarm Ouroboros
From Unlimited to Forbidden
The only card not banned for having a floodgate-like effect, Ouroboros is instead banned for ripping multiple cards out of the opponent’s hand in a single turn. Despite Ext Ryzeal going to 1, Ryzeal variants still exist like Onomat Ryzeal, who with Eclipse Twins can easily use Ouroboros’s effect to rip a card from the opponent’s hand more than once a turn, basically giving the opponent less resources to play with when their turn starts, and worse these combos could potentially eat through a couple of hand traps with the right opening as well. Ouroboros leaving the game now means that whatever Ryzeal Decks do now, the opponent will have their full hand to try and out what their opponent put up.
Dimensional Barrier
From Unlimited to Forbidden
We end things off with the card I’ve probably heard ban requests towards for the longest time, with now finally being the time Dimensional Barrier leaves the game. D-Barrier is a very strong card, especially against Decks specifically focused on a singular summoning mechanic instead of multiple, but either way it could severely cripple the opponent’s plays. It gets even more unfair considering if the opponent interacts with you making your plays using a hand trap, you could just then use Triple Tactics Thrust to set Dimensional Barrier from the Deck. Banning Dimensional Barrier makes the opponent have to go towards Simul Archfiends for a similar use, but that lets the opponent at least play first and isn’t as chainable if the opponent doesn’t have one of the Extra Deck types on the field. A ban that arguably feels very long overdue, in my opinion.
In Conclusion
It’s a very small list of changes, but I don’t think there’s anything here that many players will be upset at. The only complaint would be certain things staying in the game, with Harpie’s Feather Storm being suspect #1. Mitsurugi can still access Divine Golden Shadow Dragon Dragluxion to search Seventh Tachyon to get to Barrier Statue of the Torrent or Barrier Statue of the Heavens, so you could argue that we should have just banned all the Barrier Statues while we were taking two more of them out of the game to join Stormwinds. You could even argue for Dimension Shifter, but that currently isn’t popping up as much, so that’s fine. They didn’t hit the best Decks in Mitsurugi, Yummy, Dracotail, etc, instead focusing on the degenerate and unfun parts of the format, nor did they bring anything back that many could easily agree could return to the game, but this list was clearly meant to make the game more bearable to play, and in this case they did their job and I hope this happens more often when we have degenerate plays and cards showing up in the format.
