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wavering-eyes · 7 months ago

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Age of Fire - April 2024 Banlist

Konami has once again dropped the banlist mid-YCS, this time interrupting YCS Guadalajara. Honestly, it's about time.

Analysis below.

If you've been paying attention at all, you probably know we're still well into FIRE format. Your choices of tier 1 decks were Snake-Eye and Fire King Snake-Eye and that's about it. Both packed similarly highly advantageous engines with 1-card starters and high redundancy alongside up to 18 defensive cards. The mirror became common enough that the pure deck started playing Crossout in main, either to deal with the slew of handtraps or to cut off your opponent's engine in case you went first and didn't need to insulate your own plays.

Snake-Eye Ash goes like, double-digits plus by itself. The pure version has an extra deck of classic combo boss monsters like Apollousa, Borreload Savage Dragon, and Baronne de Fleur which it summons off of lines involving Jet Synchron, which is easily accessible off of Original Sinful Spoils, Snake-Eye Ash, or any card that searches the above two cards, which is probably also in the double digits now. Granted, you needed to see specifically Diabellestar in order to make Savage, but people started playing a lot more copies of her once the addition of Poplar made the engine's high redundancy one of its biggest strengths.

Of these, the pure version was usually superior for reasons that are a bit complex. Compared to pure, the Fire King version has a pretty bad chokepoint at Fire King Island where, if that card was interrupted, you were generally locked out of any Fire King engine cards you didn't draw. This was a problem since the deck started cutting down on the Fire King cards towards the end of the format, usually playing 2-3 Kirin and Ponix, 1 Garunix and 1 each of Arvata/Sanctuary/Island (and maybe Circle), and its second turn disruptive plays were pretty reliant on Garunix being in rotation. Playing more of these wasn't really an option since the Snake-Eye cards were on average a lot better to draw, and there is basically no way to make a real board with just Fire King cards going first. It was also a fair bit weaker to blowouts, both because the deck ends on no Spell/Trap negates (Rangbali was cut pretty early on since it's much worse than Arvata, and because old rulings prevent you from triggering it alongside Garunix) and because so much of the board's interruptions were actually in the GY, so in addition to being weak to Dimension Shifter, you could also blow the deck out with just Soul Release and a playable hand.

Of course it still had plenty of advantages. Arvata being a recursive monster negate is a huge deal in simplified board states, and it was pretty easy to put on board as long as you could resolve Garunix, either by popping it from deck on your turn to summon something back and summoning Arvata later with Promethean Princess (or by destroying Kirin), or in hands where you didn't draw any other Normal Summons, etc. Naturally you could also start with something like, pop Kirin for Island, search Arvata, Special Summon it and then use any of your myriad of ways to put Snake-Eye Ash on board and win the game off of that alone, now with additional insulation against hand traps. Random hands where you drew tons of Fire King engine could actually put up negates or destructive disruption on turn 0 since Kirin is a Quick Effect. Kirin is all kinds of insane; Infinite Impermanence sees near-universal play and Kirin basically invalidates it since you can just destroy the card in response and it will still resolve, possibly triggering one of your many float effects...

On that note, Imperm saw that much play because successfully using it on Snake-Eye Ash meant that your opponent would then have to jump through hoops to summon Oak or another copy of Ash to get out Flamberge, sort of killing two birds with one stone. Of course, this deck had ways to deal with that too... If you drew Bonfire, you could Bonfire for Poplar to grab Original Sinful Spoils, then make Linkuriboh and send Linkuriboh for cost, summoning a Snake-Eye Ash from deck that could be protected from targeting with Linkuriboh's GY effect. It's hard to put into words how frustrating this was; people wanted Linkuriboh banned because of it. Not to mention that it was a recursive Link Monster that enabled easy access to S:P Little Knight.

Generally this led to end boards with obscene amounts of card advantage. In the Fire King deck, just Snake-Eye Ash alone can lead to something like Amblowhale + Flamberge Dragon with I:P Masquerena in the Spell/Trap zone and Kirin in hand, which doesn't seem like much at first, but that's Flamberge summoning I:P which makes S:P, banishing an opponent's card while summoning back both Snake-Eye Ash and Ponix, searching cards off of both. Or using Kirin to pop Amblowhale, triggering that and to summon back a Link Monster and making a giant Apollousa that still floats into tons of advantage (you can summon a Sunlight Wolf underneath the EMZ to get another card back, etc). And yet there are still lines where you can trigger Garunix to pop Arvata, then summon and destroy Kirin to summon that back...

What you were giving up for this was basically raw disruptive power. These decks probably have ten Extra Deck cards in common but those differences are all a huge deal; the pure deck's lines into Formula Synchron leading to Baronne made on the opponent's turn with itself and Flamberge Dragon similarly led to a lot of advantage, of course there was still Savage if you saw Diabellestar, and the worst you could end on was usually I:P with Flamberge, which still lets your entire engine recur.

What you might not know is that those decks actually did have counters. Both were theoretically shut down pretty hard by Dimension Shifter, and since Floowandereeze got Swallow's Cowrie last set, lots of people went back to birds at first, though they naturally fell off in the same way and for the same reasons Floowandereeze players always do: it's too inconsistent for its own good, and it was always highly reliant on seeing non-engine to go second. Both versions of Snake-Eye were also pretty bad at removing big Towers monsters, so a few people experimented with Raidraptors to minor success.

I don't have much else to say about it, but Voiceless Voice also saw a fair bit of play. I don't think it was ever particularly good into Snake-Eye though, it just sort of does okay against it and bullies everything else.

There's also been a recent uptick in people playing straight-up stun, with and without Runick cards, and it's easy to see why as well. Runick engine is basically all going-second cards, all of which are useful in some way against the board. Flashing Fire and Freezing Curses are useful for pretty obvious reasons, but Destruction threatens Fire King Island, Sanctuary, any cards that Flamberge intends to summon, and any cards Set off of Diabellestar. The engine of these decks doesn't directly threaten Runick Fountain in any really effective way--Kirin can pop it potentially the chain after it hits field, so you can draw a card by protecting it with Hugin, and Baronne and Savage can negate it, but assuming you can't deal with those monsters directly, you could just get the card back off of Geri.

Why so many people are on pure stun is beyond me, but... yeah, the engine is not great if you can't use the GY or Special Summon. Better win some die rolls.

So that's where we're at. Two deck format, both playing mostly the same cards, so people liked to call it Tier 0 anyways. Snake-Eye cards both out-advantage every other deck and out-interrupt all of them due to the massive number of hand traps and random card draw from things like Wanted! and Formula Synchron.

Before we get into the list proper, for no reason in particular, here's a little snippet from the wishlist included in my last banlist post...

Banned: Baronne de Fleur Baronne is miles better than almost every other Synchro released in years. I think the only deck where it's actually healthy is Swordsoul, and it would be a shame for that deck to lose this, but it's way too strong. This is also a wide hit, it hurts the combo variants of R-ACE and every version of Mannadium and Infernoble. Hot RDA King Calamity King Calamity lock should not be a thing, I don't really care how good/bad Centur-Ion is.

And let me take a brief victory lap for predicting both Ishizu millers getting banned, Air Lifter to 1, Sharvara to 1, and some hit to Infernoble.

Without further ado...

Banned Linkuriboh

I think I made a good enough case for this above. With Linkuriboh banned, Snake-Eye decks will have a lot harder time dodging targeted negation and making S:P on later turns without committing more cards from the Extra Deck. Granted, I think they'll just play Relinquished Anima instead, but that card is basically only useful once and isn't a recursive menace like this one.

Baronne de Fleur

I won't say I particularly expected this to happen but I agree word for word with what I said earlier. Baronne is a lot better than almost every Synchro printed before or since, it's totally generic, it's got an omni-negate, it pops cards on your turn to push through boards (and enable float effects if you're Mannadium), it's got 3000 ATK so it's not trivial to out, and once you've used the one negate, you can put it back in your Extra Deck to summon it again! There were a couple of variants of Ghoti I was testing that would literally just make Baronne for the pop and to synchro with Arionpos a second time, not really caring whether the negate ended up getting used or not.

Pure Snake-Eye loses an interruption for this, but lower-tier decks are even worse off. Mannadium now hard loses to Nibiru. Swordsoul loses to both that and Impermanence, since half the time you stuck early Baronne, you were basically just trying to protect Mo Ye. It's gonna be rough for pretty much any Synchro-focused deck (well, except Resonator) since this saw play in every single one that could make it.

Borreload Savage Dragon

Another hit for Pure Snake-Eye, Savage was by far the best Level 8 synchro in any deck that played Link Monsters. (Incidentally this also excludes Resonator, which would otherwise happily take an omni-negate on a Level 8 DARK Dragon Synchro.) This also saw some play in Mannadium piles where you were hoping to summon it with, big surprise, Diabellestar and Jet Synchron.

And of course, its home for the past several years has been Dragon Link, where you could make it off of just Rokket Tracer. That deck now ends on no omni-negates; it doesn't necessarily hard lose to Nibiru now since it kind of always did (your best answer was to hope your opponent uses it too early or to stick Spheres, pass, hope your opponent uses Nibiru and hope you could make a better board afterwards).

These lines suffered a bit already since Linkuriboh was usually the Link Monster you'd put in GY to enable this (outside of Dragon Link), but Savage being banned dug a void into a lot of decks that one copy of Psy-Framelord Omega probably can't fill.

For the record, I think this card was well-designed, at least compared to Baronne (notably, it doesn't destroy the card it negates, and it basically never played under Nibiru), but if we want generic Extra Deck negates out of the game, so be it.

Summon Limit

Konami hit Rivalry, TCBOO, and Gozen to 1 on the last list and everyone immediately started playing sets of the next best floodgates, Summon Limit and Anti-Spell Fragrance. And yes, this card is worse than all of those, but it's toxic all the same and will not be missed.

Honestly, great job so far from Konami. I'm at worst positive on all of these bans.

Limited Archnemeses Protos

And just when I give them credit, they give me reason to worry. Protos was last seen two years ago in Swordsoul where it could be searched off of Emergence and activated calling DARK to both wipe the board of DARK monsters and to activate a lingering effect that prevents them from being Summoned. (As a reminder, this card has to declare an Attribute that is currently on the field, so DARK was always available since this card itself is DARK, but you could make plays to put other Attributes on field, at least in theory, though you'd be negging yourself.) This was a lot more relevant then since Verte was still legal and everyone was playing DPE or Dragoon in everything. Nowadays it's a little bit diminished in impact since most engines aren't DARK, but a lot of staples are. This card stops Diabellestar, S:P, I:P, and Accesscode Talker from hitting field and for that reason alone it is concerning.

As I mentioned, this last saw play in Swordsoul since it's a Wyrm searchable off of Emergence if you control a Synchro, but Nemeses have their own search card--Nemeses Flag, a Level 2 Pyro monster that summons itself by shuffling back a banished card. That card is now searchable off of Bonfire and Infernal Flame Banshee, so you could potentially see this in other decks as well.

I'm gonna make a wild claim here: I think this card will see play, and I don't think Swordsoul is gonna be the deck that makes it good. It might take a few years but this is a very degenerate card in the right format.

Tidal, Dragon Ruler of Waterfalls

Tidal is the last Dragon Ruler to be unbanned and it's definitely the best one... the hand effect triggers Atlanteans while giving you a totally generic Foolish Burial, and as an added bonus you get a Level 7 body on later turns to combine with Mermails or the like.

Of course, this was all true in HAT format, which was the last time Tidal was legal, and I don't think Mermails will be making an impact even with this in tow. It's got some potential but I don't expect much immediately, and I think the Rulers could all go to 3 with no negative impact on the game, and minimal impact in general.

Thunder Dragon Colossus

In another retro format throwback, Colossus was last seen in Eternal format in Danger! Thunder which used the draw power of Dangers to pitch Thunder Dragon monsters in order to enable summons of chaos monsters like White Dragon Wyverburster and Black Dragon Collapserpent. Colossus was an essential part of the end board, both for being an easy to summon Level 8 body and for being an indestructible Mistake on legs, and the deck usually played two for this reason. On top of that, since its alternate summoning condition tributed the monster from field, this would also trigger Darkest Diabolos in variants that played it in order to rip another card out of hand.

This deck's boards were some of the best of the entire VRAINS era; you could open a hand like Batteryman Solar and Wyverburster and end on Spheres + Hot Red/Crystal Wing + Colossus + Hope Harbinger + Starliege Photon Blast Dragon (boosted by Saryuja Skull Dread so everything but Spheres is untargetable), and potentially more interruptions or hand rips depending on the other cards you saw. This was pre-Shifter and Dark Ruler No More (at least during that year's NAWCQ) so that wasn't a consideration, but lots of people played Droll and Lancea to interrupt the combo and later variants just didn't care.

It this card healthy? No, not really. If you open a hand with a lot of search cards, you're shit out of luck. However, we've got a lot better ways to deal with it now than we did then, and there's not really a deck that currently exists that would want to play Colossus, so one will have to be reinvented. But I fully expect that it will. Maybe Bystial Danger! Thunder?

For your consideration... this card was never legal alongside Nemeses Corridor, a Level 4 Thunder monster that activates in hand to shuffle back a banished monster and summon itself to the board. That provides both the body and the condition necessary to summon this card. Nemeses Corridor is searchable off of both Nemeses Flag and Cupid Pitch.

Majespecter Unicorn - Kirin

Another throwback, this card has been banned since, what, 2016? It never saw play in Majespecter since the deck's scales wouldn't let you Pendulum Summon it, but was a generic recursive untargetable disruption in other Pendulum decks, sort of like a less bricky and powerful Apex Avian since it was also a low scale.

This card's reasons for being on the banlist have been very pedestrian for years, and Majespecter just got a new wave of support that lets them actually summon this card, so it's definitely time for this to come back.

Now someone tell the guys making the OCG banlist, clearly they haven't noticed. This card is still banned there and it's been months.

Chicken Game

This card has a lot of text for what is essentially Upstart Goblin on a Field Spell, so I'll repeat here what I said about that when it went to 3:

Most decks play hand traps and seeing Upstart going second when it could have been a hand trap is bad. This card is also unbelievably bad into Droll & Lock Bird which has seen near-constant Side Deck play since 2019, so that doesn't help either. The only reason you'd play this is for synergy or deck-thinning in decks that simply don't play going-second cards, so I would expect this to see play in Dark World (the illusion of free choice: you will still lose to Droll), Endymion decks (since those cards no longer see play in Pendulum piles) and Sky Striker (mega-cope) and very little else.

I don't know if Dark World ended up playing Upstart, by the way; it could easily have 40 cards it actually wants to play. Upstart is very good in Sky Striker and this is significantly worse since this doesn't put a Spell in the GY unless you play Area Zero over it or send it with Multirole or Linkage, and Linkage is usually already free or better saved to dodge interruptions anyways.

That said, there are a few points of obvious synergy. This is a pretty good card to send for any card that has to send something else to activate, such as, for example... Snake-Eye Ash's second effect, Diabellestar's summoning condition, Original Sinful Spoils' cost... But I would not expect to see this along Snake-Eye cards; the Fire King version has had plenty of opportunities to play Tenki for Arvata and has declined every time, and their own Field Spell is really good already.

Anti-Spell Fragrance

See Summon Limit. This card was worse at disrupting hands of monsters, but much better at disrupting hands of search cards like Bonfire and Fire King Island. It was also better against blowout cards like Lightning Storm and Harpie's Feather Duster. Given the speed of the game, this was basically Imperial Order, and I think this should have been banned alongside Summon Limit, but one is better than three.

And no, Pendulum players, we are not back, not as long as Flamberge is in the format.

Semi-Limited Armageddon Knight

This card's been up and down the list tons of times. It was last hit after the Danger! Dark World deck debuted, where this card enabled a one-card FTK via Cannon Soldier, but it saw a bunch of play before that by dumping Destrudo to make Ancient Fairy Dragon or Yazi. It's a good card but doesn't fit into any decks right now. I would say that some Thunder Dragon combo deck might play this, but Batteryman Solar was better in that deck anyways, and eventually Danger! Thunder cut all of its Normal Summons for Crusadia monsters anyways.

Purrely Delicious Memory

If this deck ever becomes good, Goblin cards destroy it, Book of Moon helps a lot, etc. This is the best Memory card in most cases since it most directly enables turn 1 5-material Expurrely Noir summons and buffs its stats while doing so, but the deck is a lot weaker now than it ever has been in the past, and I swear around 2/3 of the time I lose to this deck, it's because the player drew a floodgate.

Unlimited Destiny HERO - Malicious

This was also last seen at 3 in that Danger! Dark World deck, and... yeah, this card is basically the reason you'd play Armageddon Knight instead of Batteryman Solar as your starter.

This card has outlived tons of decks and it will probably outlive me. It's been up and down the list several times at 1, 2, and 3, forming an infinite cycle of getting put to 3, only to enable some insane combo that proves it should have stayed at 2, and consequently getting hit again.

Nowadays most of its enablers are gone. Nobody's gonna be using Mali as an engine for Tribute Summon fodder, I wouldn't expect it to see much play in Synchro decks, and the best Link-2 to make with it and Armageddon Knight was Isolde, which is now banned. That said, it's seen play in HERO ever since they got Cross Crusader and subsequently Denier (which might as well be a HERO-exclusive third copy of this), and that deck will definitely appreciate it. If this saw play outside of HERO it would be in a pile deck or something like Tearlament that wants to make Beatrice by any means necessary.

Orcust Harp Horror

I said last time that this could go to 3 with no downsides and that's still the case. Bystials dunk on this deck and we still have all of them but Magnamhut at 3.

I think Orcusts have a chance still since the engine is so strong and accessible (not to mention they also played Armageddon Knight), but any Synchro focused variants lost Savage Dragon and these cards are still bricks. I think the best variant so far has been Orcust Horus and that seems alright if not exactly inspiring.

Speedroid Terrortop

Speedroid doesn't really appreciate the difference between this at 2 and 3 since it was mostly getting summoned off of Rubber Band Shooter, but it's not nothing. Unfortunately they also lost Baronne, and it's not looking likely that they'll be able to come back from that.

If the deck ever becomes real, I would expect to see this in Goblin Riders as a free Rank 3 engine, since that deck hardly seems to play its own maindeck monsters. It also appreciates a quick Gossip Shadow to play around handtraps, Droll aside, and interrupting Terrortop was virtually always a bad idea.

In short, very strong card which very few decks want to play.

Sky Striker Mobilize - Engage

Oh god yes.

Engage was last seen at 3 in late Eternal Format as a part of Sky Striker Orcust, since the one copy of Hornet Drones could make Knightmare Mermaid which did your entire combo, and any other Spells you happened to put in the GY could enable free draws. To its credit, that deck actually played several other Sky Striker spells for disruption since you could make a real end board with just a single monster in the EMZ and a bunch of backrow.

In the pure deck it caused eternal frustration, since this card being at 3 and not being once per turn meant that your free draw off of Engage could draw you into another Engage, which might draw you into another Engage... Hands like that were basically the only times Striker was threatening going first, floodgates aside, and well, here we are again. That version of the deck didn't even have 3 Kagari!

I should also mention that there's been some recent experimentation with a small Sky Striker engine in Snake-Eye decks (I have reason to believe that Kagari being a fire matters to this somehow, but how exactly, I'm not certain), but it's sort of fallen off. Maybe this is what brings it back?

More importantly, we have full power Striker back, well, full power with 1 Drones, which is a reasonable concession. I don't think it's going to see much success but it will definitely see play, and I will certainly be playing it. Not to mention, Sky Striker Ace - Camellia is just around the corner, with a speculative release coming in this year's Battles of Legend set.

END OF LIST

Here's where I pull the rug: I think some version of Snake-Eye is still the best deck and I don't think these changes help any currently existing decks deal with it at all, Runick aside. That said. This banlist gives a lot of old decks toys to play with, and I'm really excited to see what the real deckbuilders can do with pile enablers like Colossus and Protos back, even if the cards themselves are degenerate.

To summarize, though:

Pure Snake-Eye lost its entire Synchro line. I did some testing with Psy-Framelord Omega and Bystial Dis Pater or Chengying in place of Baronne and Savage, but going for double handrip is not practical and the board overall is much worse against blowouts. (With this in mind, Evenly kind of cooks every deck right now, apart from heavily under-extended Fire King. I would expect it to see a lot of play until Tenpai comes out.)

Fire King Snake-Eye lost Linkuriboh and that's about it, so it could see more play compared to pure. The pure version also lost this so you can now pretty safely imperm Ash until they decide to start playing Sauravis or something.

Voiceless Voice is untouched and still gets dunked on by Bystials and blowout cards, and I think the Fire King matchup seems really bad.

Labrynth, as always, is probably okay. Skill Drain hasn't been good lately, but the engine is still very strong. Fire King is a pretty bad matchup though.

I don't think the Yubel decks are even slightly real until they get the new fusion. I also don't think HERO is real until it gets that, assuming it's fine cutting Faris and Cross Crusader for a counter to Nibiru and Droll, which remains to be seen. (The combo is A HERO Lives for Prisma, revealing the new fusion to dump Yubel, then contact fusing.)

Almost every deck that used Synchro as its main mechanic is dead, Centur-Ion and Resonator aside. I expect to see some amount of success from Runick decks, but Synchro-focused builds like Bystial Runick are not looking great without Baronne.

Striker best deck. Raye is bae. We are so fucking back.

Thanks for reading.

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