September 2007
Some thoughts on
the new restriction list. - Rob Gray
Hey everyone! Been quite a while since I posted
anything on here, I've been a bit busy, and also
quite lazy, I must admit. I've recently started re-modelling
my deck (again), because of some unfortunate mishaps
during a tournament at a convention I went to this
August (I'll be honest; I lost every game. Although,
of the 8 games I played, I lost 6 of them purely
because my opening hand contained no monsters, which
is quite a defiance of probability considering that
over half of my deck is composed of low-level
monsters alone! I guess the gods didn't favour me
that day... lol)
Anyway, despite the fact that I lost before I
actually managed to really test out anything in the
deck, I still managed to glean a little information
and some ideas from it, so I'm not too disheartened.
With a little bit of re-vamping (which has now been
mostly done, but might still have a little bit of
tweaking), and less of the dire luck that I'm
getting so used to of late (20 minutes of shuffling
while waiting between games, and
still I draw 4 Spells, a Trap and Kaiser
Glider in my opening hand!!!), my deck should work a
lot better! Sadly, I think it'll be a while before I
get to test it... grr...
Still, that's not what I'm here to talk about
today. Nope, today, I intend to talk a bit about the
new restriction list. So, let's get down to it!
Newly added/re-added to the Forbidden list are
Confiscation, Metamorphosis, Ring of Destruction and
Snatch Steal. Not a lot to say here; if I'm brutally
honest, I can see how Confiscation can be an
incredibly useful card, but I don't think it really
deserves an outright banning. But then, I've never
really bothered using it...
Metamorphosis is a fairly obvious one; there're
now quite a lot of different fusions that can abuse
this spell, many of which have ludicrous,
game-altering effects that are only kept in check by
their difficulty to summon. Making their summoning
easier by allowing Metamorphosis defeats that
purpose, and so off it goes. The banning of Ring of
Destruction is also not entirely unexpected, as a
great many OTKs are made possible by its inclusion
in a deck.
And Snatch Steal makes its return to the Forbidden
list. To be honest, I'm not that convinced that this
one needs banning, either, although I anticipate
accusations of being a "n00b" for even daring to
suggest this view. True, it has the potential to be
game-changing, and the drawback isn't that much of a
drawback considering you can just tribute off the
monster it's equipped to, and completely bypass the
drawback altogether. But, at the same time, it
doesn't really take much to stop it; Dust Tornado or
a set MST are sufficient for stopping it, among
other cards, and that's without even bothering to
look at Counter-Traps! Still, I've no reason to
grumble about the banning of this card; even when it
was unbanned, I never bothered with it for my decks
anyway. It serves no justifiable purpose.
Now, let's look at the Limited cards! There've
been plenty of changes here, but two in particular
that I really wanted to focus on: the return of
Breaker and MoF! What an exciting event, surely
there must be some mistake? This has got to make a
massive change to the way the game's being played!
Hmm, typing sarcasm is a little trickier than it
seems. In actual fact, although I expect plenty of
people to be frantically scrambling to cram their
Magicians of Faith and Breakers back into their
decks, to me it's not a big deal at all. I still
remember when everyone used Magician of Faith as a
matter of course, regardless what their deck was
based around, and Breaker was thrown into a great
many decks that really didn't need it. They're both
great cards, but I think the last format was good in
that it showed people that you can build a deck
without them, and you can make decks work quite well
without even considering including them! I used to
have a Magician of Faith in my Dragon deck, to get
my Spells back to me when I needed them. But, to be
honest, she's not needed in it, certainly not in
this incarnation of it! If I wanted to run Pot of
Avarice, then yes, she'd have a purpose (namely
near-perpetual recycling), but my deck should be
good enough in its newly-remade form that I won't be
relying on previously used spells to bail me out. In
fact, she'd only really slow my deck down, as she
loses her effect if searched for by Shining Angel's
effect. I like her in a Spellcaster deck, or in a
deck focussed around recycling and stalling (again,
I'm thinking of Pot of Avarice here), but aside from
that, I think people can make better use of their
imagination when building a deck.
As for Breaker, I found him to be an incredibly
annoying opponent once; his effect made him strong
enough to take on and equal the stronger of my
low-level monsters, and able to take out anything
else I summoned that wasn't of high level, and by
removing the spell counter, it could take out one of
the spells or traps I had on the field to defend
myself. And, with Pitch-Black Power Stone and a
reasonably strong Spellcaster deck behind it, it was
a complete nightmare to get rid of! And then I
rebuilt my deck to make it more balanced, and
repeatedly trounced the Spellcasters into the ground
after that. Breaker is a good card, but it isn't
fantastic. There is reason for it to be limited, but
it doesn't really deserve banning. Still, it'll
never appear in my decks, and much like MoF, I think
it's really suited to a Spellcaster deck; outside of
that, it's not justified, regardless how good it is.
Other cards in this section that drew my notice
were Fissure, Smashing Ground, and Megamorph. I was
surprised to not see Hammer Shot there as well,
until I remembered that it affects your side of the
field, too. Not certain that Fissure deserves this
treatment (maybe semi-limitation, but this seems a
tad extreme), but it is without doubt a useful card!
The ability to destroy an opponent's monster with no
cost is very nice, and since the card doesn't target
(before you ask, I e-mailed Upperdeck on that one,
and they said it doesn't target), it can get around
things like King Dragun's protection! Shame it only
hits the monster with the lowest Atk. Smashing
Ground on the other hand hits the opponent's monster
with the highest Def on the field. This can be quite
beneficial, especially if the monster with the
highest Def is also that with the highest Atk, but
this isn't always the case, and to be honest, I'd
rather get rid of my opponent's strongest attacking
monster than the one with the highest defense in
most cases. Still, a strong card, very valuable and
effective in the right hands. And Megamorph, which
is one of the best equip spells available, if not
the best overall! No wonder it's limited now; not to
mention the number of OTK opportunities it can
provide!
As for the semi-Limited list, I don't think
there've been any really game-breaking moves here.
Jinzo being made available in twos isn't going to
hurt too much, because I don't see many deck lists
being based around traps anyway, and Jinzo's no
stronger than the majority of level 6 monsters out
there at the moment. To be honest, I'm surprised
more people aren't throwing Summoned Skulls into
their decks; sure, they're vanillas, but they're
just that little bit stronger than pretty much any
monster you can expect to meet (in a game that's
currently still full of Monarchs and the like, a
2500-hitter can throw a real spanner in the works,
and if you build the deck right, it can make Ancient
Rules an incredibly useful card)!
Similarly to Jinzo, Royal Decree is now on the
semi-Limited list. Not entirely a big deal, since,
as I said, not many people really abuse trap cards,
but that little bit of negation can be reassuring
when you're about to throw everything together for a
big strike, and the only thing you can see stopping
you is one of the two face-down cards on the
field...
Nobleman of Crossout can now be used in twos. This
could make a bit of difference, as people may be
more reluctant to set monsters in defense position,
but I honestly believe that the release of this card
from its previous Limited status will do more good
than harm for the game at present. Time will tell.
Pot of Avarice... hmm, if I can get hold of
another one, then there may be call to re-adjust my
deck again. It's a good card, but I'd not recommend
throwing it in the deck and hoping for the best; the
requirement to have 5 monsters in the graveyard to
use it is enough of a drawback to keep it balanced,
although the right deck can abuse its recycling
power. Still, at 1 it was easily countered and not
especially effective, so making it able to run as a
2 is quite reasonable.
And the Gadgets... to be honest, I don't really
see this hurting them. It'll slow them down a tad,
but I don't think anyone's really going to miss
their third set of Gadgets.
And now, the newly unrestricted cards! At last,
Good Goblin Housekeeping can be run in threes! It
probably doesn't make much difference to a lot of
people, but one of the only things holding me back
from running this in one of my decks was that I
could only use two, and it's only really a good card
when you use the third one. Now I can make use of
that third copy, it may make an appearance in my
Exodia deck, at the least!
Deck Devastation Virus... well, it's a card I'm
thinking of trying out in the odd deck, mainly
because one of the toughest decks I've faced did its
most damage using a monster of only 800 Atk! The
match was getting close towards the end, but in the
early game he'd got me in a total lock-down by
constantly forcing my monsters back to my hand, and
with Messenger of Peace on the field, I couldn't hit
his monsters! Well, with Deck Devastation Virus, I
wouldn't have to; I could sit back and watch for
three turns as his most effective monsters went
straight to the graveyard! And with two more copies
of DDV, I can give a total of nine turns of evil
punishment, without even needing to deal with his
continuous spell card! That having been said, I
don't run any Dark monsters with 2000+ Atk in that
deck, and I don't intend to. And I certainly don't
know a deck that could efficiently run enough of
those monsters to casually throw 3 away to pay for
DDV's effect. Which is probably why it's
unrestricted; it doesn't deserve to be Limited, and
keeping it semi-Limited is pretty much a meaningless
exercise.
I think I've covered enough regarding the current
ban list, so I'll leave it there. I hope the
comments I've made have been reasonably fair, please
contact me at the e-mail address below if you have
any views (although no flaming. Constructive
criticisms and views are very much appreciated, but
rudeness and personal attacks are not, and are most
unnecessary. Thank you all for not sending any thus
far). I intend to post my current deck up here soon,
to get a few opinions, if nothing else, and there
are also a few more ideas I have, and bugbears I
feel I need to voice, regarding the state of the
game, but I'll leave them for now, as I've waffled
plenty in this message! lol
Catch ya later!
Rob (aka sephiroths_champ, and all the other
usual stuff...)
<the_eye_watches@hotmail.com>
