Dimension Fusion

So I remember when Dark Magician of Chaos was teaming up with this card to do crazy things, and then Diamond Dude, but is the only difference now between this spell and Soul Charge really the battle phase and lifepoint cost? If so, just errata this card and bring it back, because everybody banishes these days. Giving your opponent a bunch of his monsters is really unappealing and would most likely keep people from maining it just for the sake of it, especially in this ABC format. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be used. I’m sure it would be played for all sorts of shenanigans, but any card at 1 is hardly scary unless it’s highly searchable (a la Disc Commander).

Of the five cards we review this week, this is the card I would say could come back the easiest, or would make the smallest impact. It’s easy to forget this card is dead weight if the opponent doesn’t have a banished card as well. Bring it back, Konami. It’s okay.

Advanced: 3.5/5

Future Potential: 2/5

History:  Actually, this card didn't have much of a history.  It lasted for maybe 2 formats at most.  It was a very powerful card that was a near-staple, but it got released at an inconvenient time.  It got released during the Chaos Emperor Dragon era in Invasion of Chaos.  That era was so imbalanced that Konami/UDE decided to start banning cards.  Dimension Fusion was one of the earlier cards to get banned.  Had it been released at an earlier time, it may have have been a permitted powerhouse (like Delinquent Duo) for a while.  At a later time, with Chaos out of the way, it may have had a meta to itself (like Return to a Different Dimension).  But this card was made to be used with monsters like Dark Magician of Chaos, so it was a two-edged sword.

Why It Got Banned: Plain simple, it's crazy powerful.  You can summon a bunch of your banished monsters, strong or weak.  It's like a Monster Reborn on steroids, except you can summon more than 1 monster.  You can refill your graveyard for more Chaos.  It lacked meaningful restrictions.  Yes, you paid 2000 LP, but you gain a massive amount of card advantage.  You can OTK the opponent for much more damage than that (with a revived swarm).  Yes, the opponent gets the monsters too, but the player can simply choose to use it when they know they'll benefit much more.  Plus, you can just destroy those monsters in battle with your monsters (or via card effects.

Currently: Even today, this card is great.  Not every deck will use it.  Some don't banish much.  But the ones that do banish a lot can abuse this.  It can also be tech against decks that banish your cards.  It doesn't have much of a legacy right now.  It's sad that this card was released in such a chaotic era (pun intended).  In a calmer time, this would've been more than a footnote in Yugioh history.

Advanced: 5/5 (hypothetical)

Traditional: 5/5

Here's a more balanced version of this card that I would make.

Dimension Warp

Normal Spell

Pay 1500 life points ; Special Summon 1 of your banished monsters.  If your opponent has banished monster(s) of the same Type or Attribute, they can Special Summon 1 of them.  You cannot attack directly during this turn.

Dimension Fusion is the most recent card by release date, from Invasion of Chaos, of this week's nostalgia week to be banned. It is a Normal Spell that costs 2000 Life Points to let both player's Special Summon as many banished monsters as the can. No options other than if there are more than 5 eligible monsters, you get to pick the 5 on a clear monster board. Why is this still banned? There are on summon effects that might activate on either side. Pendulum Summoning and Soul Charge can provide similar advantage. This card is also useless if you have less than 2000 Life Points. Sure it can be searched by some random stuff that search the term Fusion, but that is not why this is banned. They tested Snatch Steal coming back, so I think we could try a format with this non-nerfed card. 
 
Score: Banned/5
Art: 4/5
 
-WarlockBlitz

Yesterday I spoke about how I felt a return sometime of Graceful Charity I could live with.  I feel quite differently about Dimension Fusion.  Like most Banned cards, it is more powerful in Traditional, if only because it has more to work with, ignoring the ban in Advanced, if only for a moment.  Dimension Fusion should stay banned forever.  (Along with Pot, Snatch Steal, and Change of Heart).  2000 Lifepoints is a bargain for a card that can generate as much advantage as this can.  It falls in the category of cards that can turn a seemingly sure loss into a victory. 

Ratings:  Traditional:  5/5
Advanced:  Would be 4.5/5
Art:  5/5

This review is about the Forbidden Spell Card. If you are looking for the goal of the main antagonist of Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, look up Arc Area Project.

Dimension Fusion was used occasionally in the anime, mainly by Kaiba who would use it to bring back his pieces of XYZ-Dragon Cannon after banishing them to summon it. At the cost of 2000 LP, you allow both players to summon as many of their banished monsters back to the field as possible.

That seems fair, right? After all it helps both players. But what happens when one player doesn’t utilize the banish pile as much as the other?

It becomes insanely broken.

This card’s first most notable use, if I’m not mistaken, was in Airblade Turbo, which utilized Reasoning and Monster Gate to quickly turbo into multiple copies of Elemental HERO Stratos. You then used Divine Sword – Phoenix Blade to banish Warriors from your Graveyard, which you then revived with Dimension Fusion to easily put 8000 damage on the board (while also wiping out opposing backrow thanks to that other effect Stratos has that tends to be ignored). The best part was that this Deck could do this multiple times throughout the Duel, so even if it got stopped, it would just do it again. This Deck, if I’m not mistaken, dominated a good portion of the format in the OCG, but didn’t have the same luxury in the TCG, with Stratos not being released until a month before it was ultimately Limited.

Dimension Fusion’s next most notable use, again, if I’m not mistaken, was in Dark Armed Return. I was just starting to get into competitive play when this Deck was around, so forgive me if my details are off, as Dark Armed Return was around for such a short time that it tends to get overshadowed by what eventually followed it (TeleDAD). But if I understand correctly, Dark Armed Return made use of the Destiny HERO engine (which only had 2 Malicious at the time, but also had Disk Commander) and other cards to turbo into Dark Armed Dragon, who banished 3 DARKs to destroy 3 cards. You then used either Dimension Fusion or Return from the Different Dimension (which does the same thing but is one sided, temporary, and a Trap Card) to bring all of those monsters back in order to make a push for game. Allure of Darkness further fueled this strategy by banishing DARKs from your hand.

This Deck was so powerful and centralizing that a mere 3 months after its release, Upper Deck Entertainment (yeah, they used to run this game) made emergency changes to the banlist that banned Dimension Fusion, Limited RftDD, and Semi-Limited Allure of Darkness. To put this in perspective, this was only the second emergency banlist change since the December 2006 banning of Cyber-Stein, and not counting the immediate banning of Temple of the Kings upon its release, we wouldn’t see another emergency update to the banlist until the Adjusted List in 2016 neutered Performage Performapal, almost 8 years later.

And thus was the last we ever saw of Dimension Fusion. Return from the Different Dimension was also eventually banned, with its final hurrah being in Dragon Rulers. Should either of these come back?

No. Even with the Rulers gone and the DAD Return and Airblade strategies both severely weakened by time, many Decks still make good use of the banish pile, and would simply jump at either of these cards coming back; Kozmo comes to mind for me.

Rating: 5/5