10 Cards that could come off the Banlist Part 2 (5-1)

Ok, So I'm finishing this list now. For those who haven't read 10 Cards that could come off the Banlist, Part 1 (10-6) simply click and you can read the cards and their reasons. The cards were as follows: 10. Pot of Greed, 9. Witch of the Black Forrest, 8. Elemental HERO Stratos, 7. Imperial Order and 6. Super Polymerisation. So now to continue the list:

5. Thousand-Eyes Restrict

So you the effect of Restrict and you go "Big Dub are you insane? A monster that can take one of my monsters and prevent me from attacking it? You want it to be legal?". Yes I do and here's the reason why.

To summon it, you need two monsters (Thousand-Eyes Idol and Relinquished) and one of those is a Ritual monster so unless you're using a Fusion Substitute you're already using 5 cards just to get this on the field. Back in the old days it was worth it, but now with Xyz's and Synchro's you can get rid of this card very easily so it's not really viable in the game, can't really hurt the game and just who in their right mind is going to run TER? The answer is no one.

4. Graceful Charity

So, Graceful Charity was banned due to a combo known as The Trinity. The Trinity used Delinquent Duo, Graceful Charity and Pot of Greed. Now, how it worked was like this: Delinquent Duo forced your opponent to go -2, Graceful Charity allowed you to draw 3 cards and discard two (very good in Dark World's) and then lastly Pot of Greed gave you two cards for free. It was a very powerful combo that generated a lot of hand advantage for you while putting your opponent at a disadvantage.

The Trinity can't work now because Delinquent Duo is banned and will probably stay banned for a long time. Dark World's aren't played a lot anymore, even though Charity can be thrown into anything, that's the only deck I can see it doing reasonable damage in. I don't think it should come back at 3 but Limited should be fine for the game.

3. Ultimate Offering

This card shouldn't even be on the Banlist, it really just needs a re-errata, but I suppose Konami doesn't want to errata it a fifth time but just give it some sort of condition like "You can only use this effect once per turn" or "you cannot conduct your Battle Phase during the turn you use this effect" or just some downside to the card because at the moment it is really good. If it does come back, it'll be re-errated and it'll be Limited.

2. Premature Burial

Burial was one of my personal favourites and yeah, I know it's abusable, but there are a lot of better cards that exist now that didn't back then because for those of you who don't know, this is a really old card. It's Yugi era old so that's at least a decade and some older cards are coming back into the game with the new Red-Eyes support. I'd love to see some new Dark Magician support though I think that's pretty much done, but Burial is something that I feel is viable and outside of its abuse, it's not particularly ban worthy. Pay 800 lp, if this card is destroyed, destroy the equipped monster it's not too good that players are going to use like they did before and there are much better resurrection cards out there that are legal.

1. Monster Reborn

Back in the day, this was the ultimate card to have, get the right combo and it was just free monsters for days which is why it was banned but the driver of that craziness (Dark Magician of Chaos, though some claim that it was Magician of Faith) is banned and will probably stay banned because it is just too good. Reborn was, I feel anyway, everyone's personal favourite card because it was just "have a free monster" and you could steal with it as well. probably needs a re-errata to become legal, something like "You can only use this card once per Duel" would do.

Anyway, that's my list finally done. I do have assignments to work on so the next post probably won't be for a month maybe

Top 10 Favourite Monsters (of all time)

So, a few days ago I was asked what my favourite monster was and I answered with the first monster that came to my head. Usually, your favourite monster is going to be the one that makes your deck. So if you’re running Lightsworn, your favourite monster is probably going to be Judgment Dragon. Dark World is probably going to be Grapha. Nekroz will probably be Trishula. Kosmos and Graydles we’ll have to see what their Boss is before players can really choose a favourite in those archetypes. But, what about more broadly? What about just your favourite monsters in general? Well, below is my top 10 and the reasons why.

10. Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon

Like I said in my previous post, I grew up in the good old days before Synchro’s and Xyz’s and Pendulum’s and the game worked fine. Back in those days, BEUD was the ultimate beatstick. There was almost no way out of this monster when it was used correctly. It was and, to this day, still is one of the most powerful monsters in the game looking at ATK only. And it is only monster Atem never actually defeated.

9. Thought Ruler Archfiend

I cannot tell you the number of times TRA has saved me in games. He’s number 9 purely because of his ability: you gain Life Points equal to the attack of the monster it destroys. It gets better when you Synchro Summon it with Vylon Prism because you can then equip Prism to TRA and it makes him essentially a 3800 beater at the cost of 500 Life Points which you usually get back anyway so it makes him very hard to destroy.

8. Dark Magician

This is here really for nostalgia. Dark Magician was the staple of Yugi’s deck and it was his favourite monster. I don’t care what he said. “Yeah, Maha Vailho is my favourite monster but I’ve never actually used it”. Another reason is that when Dark Magician was summoned in the anime, you knew there was an ass-kicking of description coming. Some monsters become my favourites because of what they symbolized and Dark Magician is one of those.

7. Number 101: Silent Honor ARK

101 is one of the most common Xyz’s to come up against because it is so easy to make and you can throw it anything. You’ve got 1 space left in your Extra Deck and have nothing to fill it with? Throw in a 101. I love it because of its absorbing ability, and it can then use the absorbed monster as a shield. It targets, so it can’t get rid of everything, but it can get rid of a lot of problematic monsters your opponent might be using, or taking their monsters in general is always good and it’s a decent beater as well. Only down side is that the absorbed monster has to be Special Summoned (so not Tribute Summoned) and be in attack mode. To me, 101 is better than Castel and I know that will upset a few of you upset because there are those who love Castel, but when you think about it, when you use Castel, you don’t have that much control over what happens to their monster, but with 101, you know that it will end up in the Graveyard and that can be highly useful at times.

6. Beelze of the Diabolic Dragons

“Big Dub’s a scrub”, “What sort of idiot uses Beelze?”. Get it all out of your system now because I am going to tell you why Beelze is on this list for me. To me, Beelze is one of the best level 8 Synchro’s in the game. Anyone who says that they’ve used or wanted Beelze, by the way, is a liar. There was a time not too long ago when everyone wanted 3 copies of Beelze. A monster that can’t be destroyed by battle or card effect and, assuming it’s the only monster you control, gains ATK equal to battle damage you take… that is an amazing effect. The only ways to get rid of this are: negate its summon or effects, banish it, absorb it or bounce it. Those are the four options your opponent has against this and if it’s summoned late in the game… yeah, good luck with getting rid of it. Additionally, though I haven’t tested it yet, this card could be a good counter to Timaeus the Knight of Destiny

5. Black Luster Soldier- Envoy of the Beginning

This is like Beelze in that it wasn’t too long ago that everyone wanted it. It was even a staple of some non-Meta decks. I like the choice in it: Banish or attack twice. They sound like a pretty fair trade off for each other. It’s Light-attribute so you can Honest it (though people don’t seem to play that anymore as the game is moving towards a Dark-attribute focus at the moment). My favourite thing about this card is that it becomes a monster MST, because you can not only banish monsters with it, but spells and traps as well which is amazing in the game because some archtypes rely heavily on backrow so if you can tear it apart, their deck stand little chance against yours.

4. Penumbral Soldier Lady

Ok, not many of you will have heard of her. She was never used in the anime or manga and is very much an old school card. She gains 1000 ATK during the damage step when she battles Light-attribute monsters so this is amazing against Lightsworn. Equip her with Magnum Shield and you get a 4500 ATK beater to use against Light monsters, not much is going to beat that, and, as an added bonus, she’s hot.

3. The Winged Dragon of Ra- Sphere Mode

This is another amazing card. How many decks rely on swarming? Pretty much every deck these days, so getting rid of three monsters your opponent controls, giving them a monster that they can’t use for a turn and then getting a 4000 ATK beater, with a targeting destruction effect to boot? Fucking amazing for players like me who love the God Cards, it just makes us a little more competitive, but of course there are decks that it just doesn’t work against, but I just love the card for what it can do. Hint: Use it against Qli’s and have a way to protect yourself for a turn.

2. Guardian Eatos/Guardian Dreadscythe

The combination of these two makes them inseparable. The same applies to their unique equip spells: Celestial Sword- Eatos and Reaper Scythe- Dreadscythe, and so these two monsters are tied for second place. It’s been a while since I’ve used Dreadscythe and I’m not sure exactly how viable it is now, so let’s talk about Eatos which is much more viable. Eatos has a base 2500 ATK. You then equip Eatos with Celestial Sword- Eatos, giving her an extra 500 ATK. You then activate the effect of Eatos to destroy Celestial Sword to banish three monsters from your opponent’s graveyard and Eatos gains 500 ATK for each. So at this point Eatos is already a 4000 ATK beater, but on top of that, you also get the effect of Celestial Sword which gives Eatos another 500 ATK for each monster that is banished, including your opponents monsters, so at a bare minimum, Eatos will have 5500 ATK for one turn. If you’re running a deck that loves to Banish: A) You’ll have no problem summoning Eatos, and B) Eatos would have virtually infinite ATK. A good card in and of itself right?

Well, things get even more interesting when you look at Guardian Dreadscythe. It is a pain to summon, but if you manage to do it, it is well worth the effort. When Eatos is destroyed (and sent to the Graveyard) by battle or card effect you can special summon this card from your hand. 2500 ATK base, so it’s already a decent beater, but you can then activate the effect of Dreadscythe to activate Reaper Scythe- Dreadscythe from your hand or deck and equip it to Dreadscythe. Reaper Scythe will then give Dreadscythe an extra 500 ATK for each monster in the Graveyard so it can get to insane ATK levels. I think the highest I pushed Dreadscythe to was about 16 000 ATK. I highly advise using The Seal of Orichalcos if you are going to use Dreadscythe because it makes it easier to time the destruction of Eatos e.g. Special Eatos, activate Orichalcos, Special Dreadscythe, activate Reaper Scythe. On top of that, if Dreadscythe is destroyed by battle or card effect, you are forced to discard a card to revive it (if you can obviously), but that’s not really a bad thing if you’re discarding monsters (because Reaper Scythe- Dreadscythe doesn’t care how monsters got to the Graveyard), so you can revive Dreadscythe and then activate another Reaper Scythe from your deck so Dreadscythe comes back 500 ATK stronger than when it was destroyed. Unfortunately, you can’t Normal or Special summon while you control Dreadscythe, but you can Set and I guess Flip Summon, but I’m not sure on that. But, in my opinion, Guardians Eatos and Dreadscythe, are very powerful monsters, even if Dreadscythe is a bit difficult to summon.

1. Slifer the Sky Dragon

This was game over back in the day purely because of its effect: If your opponent Normal or Special Summons a monster or monsters (but not Flip Summon) in attack mode, they all lose 2000 ATK. Then, if their ATK has been reduced to 0 by the effect of Slifer the Sky Dragon, they are destroyed. There are exceptions, such as monsters with 0 ATK originally, but for the most part, this stops your opponent summoning. And if you have Light of Intervention, Final Attack Orders and Mound of the Bound Creator all active at the same time, you basically win because your opponent is forced to summon in attack mode, triggering the effect of Slifer, Slifer then destroys the summoned monster (unless it had more than 2000 ATK or had 0 ATK originally) and Mound protects Slifer from card effects, so your opponent either loses the duel or wastes a large amount of cards to try and destroy Slifer. It’s my personal favourite God Card, in my opinion the best of the God Cards, and is easily my favourite monster of all-time.

I’m working on Part 2 of my 10 cards that could come off the banlist, after I get that done, I will be doing my top 10 favourite spells and traps of all-time (warning: will probably contain Banned cards).

Anway, Big Dub out.