Crystal Gazing: March 2011 Ban List Predictions

As I'm sure all of you competitive Yu-Gi-Oh players are already aware, the March 2011 ban list is just around the corner, likely leaking in Japan before the end of the month, and with it will bring an entirely new format. It's always fun to make predictions about what's going to happen, so that's exactly what I'm taking this opportunity to do! Brace yourselves, I could (and most likely will be; Konami is completely unpredictable sometimes) be wrong about this!

Banned:

Cold Wave

Monster Reborn

Limited:

Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier

Dandylion

Pot of Avarice

Semi-Limited:

Gateway of the Six Samurai

Pot of Duality

Mind Crush

Royal Oppression

Royal Decree

Icarus Attack

Unlimited:

Mystical Space Typhoon

Bottomless Trap Hole

Magic Cylinder

Skill Drain

So, what's the reasoning behind all of this? Cold Wave and Monster Reborn are both incredibly broken cards, and in a format where Dark Hole was also limited, the game tended to quickly devolve into sacky top decks. Cold Wave, however, is one of those cards I feel SHOULD be banned, but most likely won't. I guess you could say it's on my "wish list". I'm fairly confident, however, that Monster Reborn is going to get the boot and I'll be surprised if it doesn't.

Trishula is an obvious choice for limiting. It's already limited in the OCG, and its release in the TCG is imminent. Might as well nip the problem in the bud.

Dandylion would be a completely fair card if the Synchro mechanic didn't exist in this game. Unfortunately it does, so token and synchro spamming is a really big problem this format. I don't think the card is ban worthy, but at 1 it's going to slow down Debris Plants enough. Combined with a limitation of Pot of Avarice, Debris Plants are going to have to work a lot harder to make the broken kind of reverse-toolbox plays that they're grown to be known for. Pot of Avarice itself is a broken card that's needed to be limited for a long time now, it just needed a deck to come along and really abuse it for Konami to do anything about it. Now is the time.

Konami isn't stupid; they're going to want to milk Storm of Ragnarok as much as humanly possible, yet they also don't want to have a one deck format, so semi-limiting Gateway seems like a good enough compromise, at least for now. I predict that eventually the card will get limited, but I doubt it will be this March.

The same thing could be said for Pot of Duality. Konami is still making plenty of money from Duelist Revolution, and while the card itself is pretty fair, it adds a lot of consistency to decks that otherwise wouldn't be able to compete. Putting it to two seems fair for now, though eventually I also expect Duality to become limited as well.

With all of the searching that's bound to happen in the next format via X-Sabers and Six Samurai, bringing Mind Crush back to two seems like a simple, obvious way to balance that out. I'm not too sure that Konami will do this, but it's something that I would like to see happen.

The next three things on the semi-limited list will probably be the most controversial. Royal Oppression really should never have gone to one, and with the next format shaping up to be a pure contest of speed, it seems like a no-brainer decision to bring it back to two. However, with the lack of Heavy Storm AND Cold Wave, Royal Decree absolutely cannot stay at three. Finally, Icarus Attack... Blackwings have been performing very well in both the OCG and TCG this format, consistently topping and I think a combined semi-limiting of Pot of Duality and Icarus Attack would be a fair way to help further balance the deck, even though I don't believe the deck really needs anymore balancing in the first place. However, I'm basing this prediction on track record; there hasn't been a single ban list to pass that hasn't hit Blackwings in some way or another, and given that the deck is still performing so well, it's almost a given that it will be hit.

As for the cards I've predicted to become unlimited, I think they're all fairly obvious choices. With no Heavy Storm or Cold Wave, MST can come back to three without a hitch. Most players are dropping Bottomless Trap Hole from their decks anyhow, so I think that can come back to three as well. Magic Cylinder was brought back to two last ban list and hasn't done anything at all this format, so I think that going to three would be fine as well. Skill Drain absolutely NEEDS to come back to three in a Monster effect driven format to keep things balanced.

That's about it! Like I said, I very well could be completely off base with these predictions, but that's half the fun! We'll see in about two weeks just how right or wrong I was. What do you all think? Share your predictions in the comments!