March Banned list

Its about 1 month from the reviewing of the banned list. And I want a head start from the others. If someone else has already posted their list, please link me to them in the comments since that means I had not subscribe to their blog yet.

First, let us look at the problems.

Without much difficulty, we can say that Inzektors are a major pain in the ass. The deck is way to autopilot for the format, and sometimes, way too powerful. (Not as powerful as TeleDAD in its prime, but still ... )

Next, we see Agents. These guys had claimed all but the last month of 2011 as their own. If there weren't Inzektors in ORCS, Agents will still be THE top deck. Hitting Inzektors and not hitting them will not be fair at all.

Sadly(or maybe gladly), I see no other deck being a major problem in the competitive scene. Other random 1.5s like Darkworld, Laggia and Dandy generally don't deserve to get hit, but to stop anyone from bitching ...

Banned :

None

Limited :

Gachi Gachi Gantetsu
Inzektor Hornet
Wind-Up Zenmighty or Wind-Up Rat
Rescue Rabbit (if this is hit, it'll most probably just be semi, but I would like to see it here)
Magician of Faith
Royal Oppression

reasonings :

For Gachi, its pretty obvious. The reason why Agents have been successful wasn't Hyperion (alone) but with the help of this rank 2 wall. Venus gain free pluses (almost free), Shine Balls aren't as dead as they were initially thought, and Earth made sure you have 6 copies of Venus in your deck, BUT without Gachi, these knowledge and resources aren't gonna top anything. Of cause, we can't banned Gachi, its not broken. But making multiple Gachi without costing any hand is way too much pluses. Most of the time, you don't mind a Gachi, its the fact that your opponent could make another 1 that bothers you. Gachi at 1 makes sure your opponent plays it right, his 3rd Shine Ball isn't as live anymore and you can concentrate on Hyperion. Problem solved.

Hornet is the center of the Inzektor Engine. Of cause, being a new archtype, we can't just kill it. But Konami should try to move the archtype away from free pluses, or at least thats how I feel. Hornet at 1 means you still can do the loop, since you only need 1 Hornet for it anyway. But this decreases the consistency AND makes DD Crow much more deadly. But Inzektors make Leviair easily. This shouldn't be a problem, and will not kill the deck. Like how the previous Banned List did on Samurai (limiting Gateway), it slows them down to a healthy speed and consistency, but still keeping it at top tier level.

Zenmighty's loop is just stupid, we all know that. While people say that a pure Zenmighty deck dies if the loop is somehow stop, thats not a very good reason in my books. The combo is way too easy to do and it leaves your opponent with nothing to fend itself. Zenmighty and Rat are both the culprits for this deadly loop, but hitting one of them would render the other useless (in this loop). Hitting which one would be anyone's guess, since both of them are healthy cards on their own (like how Dewloren and Symbol are).

Rescue Rabbit proves auto plus ones are broken, even with restrictions on it. While not being THE top deck in OCG, it still is one of the threats you need to side for. The deck is broken with Tourguide, YCS coverage proves that (not sure how it would do if Inzektors get thrown in the mix). While I do agree putting Rabbit at 1 will kill the deck, since unlike Cat, its targets are useless unless being brought out together. BUT, with Tourguide and Gold Sarc, I'm not entirely sure.

Faith can be brought back ages ago. While we do have 3 powerful spells (Reborn, Heavy and Mind Control, not Dark Hole) in the game, it still needs to set itself. Its effect is still powerful but that doesn't change the fact that its slow. It can be a power house in Chaos, and that may cause problems, BUT personally, I don't think so, and I wish for it to come back, it's been banned for way too long, BLS was way better and it got out.

Royal Oppression HAS to come back. The card is too important for non-spam decks all together. I don't think I need to say more for this card.

There may be others, but to me, these are the only ones worth changing. Of cause, we all know Tourguide of the Underworld deserves to get herself limited but we all know thats not happening anytime soon, same as Tengu getting semi-limited.

Semi-limited :

Master Hyperion
Agent of Mystery Earth
Grapha, Dragon God of the Dark World
Mystic Space Typhoon

Hyperion and Earth made Agent deck way too consistent. Putting them at 2 will not kill the deck, but this will drastically lowers its consistency. Together with Gachi at 1. This will force Agent players to either play a different strategy, find ways to work with the consistency issue or just drop the deck all together (although these changes will NOT kill the deck, but definitely not on tier 1 status). Maybe this will force them to run Krystia again, and take the deck to a more control approach. Hyperion is just too good a boss, even if his not generic.

While DW isn't doing much, it did top a few events and Grapha is a little too overpowered. The deck face consistency issues, that I agree. But with the right hands, or should I say, with Grapha in hand, this deck is even deadlier than Agents. Hitting Grapha would be the best choice since this would force DW players (or whats left of them) to play the other DW monsters, and not just rely on Grapha itself.

*Grapha : I shall not be hit by the semi-limited list, as my soldiers of the Dark realm aren't doing as much as they should be. Therefore ... bla bla bla ...

Me : Will some one please shut this overgrown purple dinosaur up ... *

MST at 3 basically made any deck that plays field spell and continuous S/T worthless. And it serve as a spam deck's best buddy against control deck players. While being a one for one, this card isn't as healthy as it seems at 3. Its should be at 1 in my opinion, but I say 2 would be fine.

 

No longer on list :

Emergency Teleport

We want this back, NO, we NEED this back. Mind Master is long gone, this is not TeleDAD format anymore. Emergency Teleport is no longer the broken lightning speed combo piece it used to be. BUT its the one thing Psychic decks need to be playable again. So, it needs to come back in my opinion, or Psychic will remain dead (or maybe thats what Konami wants).

...

These are the cards that are currently on my mind. Maybe I'm hitting Agents too much and maybe not hitting Inzektors hard enough. But I feel this would balance out this deck enough for it too be still competitive, but not autopilot and broken.

I didn't hit any Karakuri cards because I feel like they're not winning big events enough and I can't think of anyway to make the deck slower but not kill the deck entirely.

Of cause, I don't think we'll ever see a banned list update with less than 10 cards on it, but I can't think of anything else at the moment. Some haters may add Inzektor Damsel//Dragonfly somewhere up there and definately BLS, but I think that will kill the decks in question entirely, but who knows.