"It's this asshole. This piece of shit, who cripples the entire Synchro mechanic just by existing because Tuners have to be overbalanced and banned accordingly due to his batshit insane summon effect. Let's be real here for a second, do we really still need this card? I think society has progressed past the need for Halq. I think it's genuinely impressive that they made a card without any negation or disruption that's this obnoxious, but it's been a while since it stopped being funny and now it just brings my piss to a boil."
With over thousands of cards that continue to churn out new sets, it is inevitable that there will always be a card or deck that leaves players hollering for bans.
For cards that are looked down upon for being underpowered, see here.
- In general, any new card that causes an older card to be banned while avoiding the banlist itself is likely to not win many fans. This goes double if the banned card is an integral part of lower-tier decks which are crippled by its loss, while the unrestricted card was exclusively used for degenerate combos or field states. Examples have included Dragon Rulers (got a lot of generic Dragon support banned, including the main playmaker of Dragunities), Utopic ZEXAL (got Argent Chaos Force, one of the few strong Rank-Up Magics, banned, and is seen as the reason that the game had never had a good RUM searcher), Crystron Halqifibrax (got a lot of Tuners banned), and Firewall Dragon (at the height of its infamy, seemingly every new list would ban or limit a card used in a combo with Firewall).
- Rescue Cat
was not all that popular when it first came out (2004-2005), being a common card that people found rather silly, but it started to suffer of a very disturbing case of Vindicated by History around 2008. The reason? Its insane synergy with Synchros. Synchros, in and of themselves, are considered this due to their insane power-to-cost ratio (doing everything from whittling the opponent's hand down to drawing cards to destroying the entire field on a whim while only needing a few token nondescript monsters to summon), but Rescue Cat pushes that over the top, letting you get out any two monsters needed to bring out the most powerful low-level Synchros with just the effort of summoning and then tributing itself. It's pretty sad when the unbanning of two Game-Breaker revival cards and a field-clearer that's been banned ever since the list was first created is considered a fair trade-off to the feline's dismissal from the game. Oh, and don't ever speak of X Saber/Rescue Cat in the Western metagame where X-Sabers have even bigger synergy with this evil thing. - Rescue Rabbit, Rescue Cat's Nerfed brother, gets even more hate nowadays because of his insane synergy with the Xyz mechanic. Decks based on this little guy work by Summoning him, getting 2 Dinosaur-Types and using them to Xyz Summon Evolzar Laggia. Laggia is absolutely brutal — it can negate almost anything, but it's balanced out by the fact that this can only be done once and it's quite hard to Xyz Summon... except that this deck does it with only one card. Oh, and there's Leviair the Sea Dragon, which is Summoned just as easily and allows you to get back the Rabbit once you use his effect. Twice. So, the whole "can only be used once"? It won't matter when your opponent has three Laggias. Have fun not being able to play anything at all because of two cards!
Another reason why Rabbit is even more of a Scrappy than the cat is because unlike Cat, Rabbit is far more expensive thanks to a TCG rarity bump from Rare in Japan to Secret Rare - turning Rabbit from a possible keycard of a pseudo-budget deck to an extremely expensive deck. - In 2013, the Dragon Ruler archetype was hit with this before it was even released. In addition to being very consistent with only two other decks at the time that could even hope to compete with it, it could lock down the entire field in one turn and won most matches in three turns. The deck was also very simple to construct, requiring little innovation and consisted of a number of the most expensive cards in the game, making it an example of Bribing Your Way to Victory. Konami seemed to realize this and banned half the cards in the series and limiting the other half from 3 to 1, taking a number of support cards with it in the process.
- This move made the deck very hated by Dragunity players, since the deck became a joke after one of the key cards of the deck, Dragon Ravine, was banned due to its popularity with Dragon Rulers. While Konami tried to bring in an Equip Spell to give the deck a chance to become part of competitive play again, the deck still did not enough power to become part of competitive play. This continued until The Dragon Rulers were banned and Dragon Ravine came off the ban list, giving Dragunity some of its competitive nature back and letting the hate die down.
- This move made the deck very hated by Dragunity
- Around the same time as Dragon Rulers, there was another deck almost as hated, Spellbooks/Prophecies. Previously, the deck had been on the radar, but not spectacular. Then, it got one card that pushed it into being one of the two completely dominant decks of the format, Spellbook Of Judgement. With just that addition, the deck gained access to a way to instantly replenish their supply of spells and also end off with searching their boss monster and another Judgement or a powerful stun. Judgement is widely considered to be one of the most overpowered spell cards ever made, and it's telling that A: the 2013 World Championship players not playing Dragon Rulers were all playing it. And B: that by simply banning Judgement, Prophecies ceased to be oppressive while Dragon Rulers remained a problem for years despite getting many key cards banned.
- One of the worst offenders of the later 5Ds era was Legendary Six Samurai - Shi En. Shi En is one of the aforementioned Synchro Monsters, meaning he's easy and cheap to summon, but requires a Six Samurai deck to do so. Such decks are Lightning Bruisers, capable of spamming monsters with 2000 or more attack very easily and can often destroy another Samurai in place of themselves. Shi En can do that, on top of being able to negate one of your opponent's spell or trap cards every turn, meaning the best ways to deal with him often require you to spend a card to lure out his effect. Getting out two would usually end games right there.
- Reborn Tengu has insane synergy with Synchros. When it's removed from the field, whether by being attacked and destroyed, returned to your hand, being banished or sent to the grave for a Synchro Summon, you grab another from your deck and since it's mandatory, said effect can never miss the timing. Combine this with the fact that the other requirement for the synchro summon, a tuner monster, can be laughably easy to summon and T.G. Hyper Librarian (another tier-induced scrappy), who lets you draw for each synchro summon you make (and can be made with a tengu and the most spammable tuners in the game) and you have yourself a deck that can explode into victory if you draw a tengu. Reborn Tengu got Semi-Limited from the March 2012 banlist, and wouldn't be unlimited until years later.
- In the earlier eras of the game, there were two major High Tier Scrappies. One was Goat Control, which used Scapegoat to create easy walls of defenders and Metamorphosis to morph one of them into the normally Awesome, but Impractical Thousand-Eyes Restrict, paralyzing the enemy from attacking, stealing their monsters, and basically rendering monster-based strategies moot. The other one was Chaos, which was even worse, consisting of three powerful creatures with the ridiculously easy summoning cost of removing one light and one dark monster from the graveyard. Chaos Sorcerer, the least powerful of the three, was hated because it was an easy summon with a body bigger than beatdown staple Cyber Dragon and guaranteed to remove an enemy creature from play if the opponent had any face-up monsters. Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning was loathed for having a more powerful version of Chaos Sorcerer's effect, 3000 attack to make it basically untouchable in battle, and the additional ability to gain a second attack whenever it killed something, meaning fending it off without losing nearly half your life points was remarkably difficult. Finally, Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End was considered the most broken card ever printed in its day; in addition to being just as strong as the Blue-Eyes White Dragon despite being easier to summon than most 4-star monsters, it also had an effect that let it nuke both players' field and hands for a minor lifepoint payment, completely hosing any strategy because of the wording of its effect and generally leaving the opponent at a massive life point and card disadvantage. All three cards saw time on the banlist, with the latter being unbanned following a Nerf errata. That said, the era later became Vindicated by History due to players actually enjoying the slower speed caused by the format.
- Black Luster Soldier was, for a while, a Limited card and later put to 3, but seeing as it is not nearly as unbeatable in today's meta as it was before (there are plenty of cards that can defeat it or even trump it in terms of Attack Score) it doesn't have as many haters (or even as many fans) as before.
- Chaos Emperor Dragon returns to the game limited to 1. However, it received a drastic card effect change (errata) on November 2018 that not only weakened the card's effect, but greatly restricted the use of the card. The burn damage only applies to how much your opponent's card has, thus a lot less damage inflicted. The effect can ONLY be used if you did not use any card effect, breaking all combos this card would have done in that turn including Witch and Sangan. Since its return, "priority" to its effect no longer applies due to that rule change in 2011 (OCG) and 2012 (TCG), so you can't activate its effect if cards like Bottomless Trap Hole are used in response to the summon.
- Tour Guide From the Underworld. She's a level 3 fiend that can summon another level 3 Fiend from the deck when Normal Summoned at the cost of negating the monster's effect (which doesn't matter if the monster has an effect that activates in the Graveyard) and can't be used as Synchro material (which doesn't matter when she enables a free Rank 3 Xyz summon). The fact that she was so rare and expensive when she first came out cranked her Scrappy-ness up to eleven.
- Dear God, Wind-Ups. While these cards looked like funny wind-up toys, players were able to figure out something called the Wind-Up Loop that could destroy your opponent's entire hand before they even had a turn. note And this wasn't even the best strategy the deck could do! Fortunately, with Zenmaity now limited, strategies using Wind-Ups are somewhat more respectable.
- Inzektors were even worse, as the players who hated them wondered if Konami even bothered with playtesting them before release. These Insect-Type monsters that resembled Kamen Rider had another lethal loop strategy involving Inzektor Dragonfly and Inzektor Hornet, which could not only destroy every one of your opponent's cards turn after turn, but continue to swarm the field in the process. Even worse, it was nearly impossible to defend against this strategy unless you could banish them from your opponent's Graveyard. After both Hornet and Dragon were Limited, effectively ruining the Loop, Konami quickly started to put "once per turn" clauses on most new cards, meaning that the effect of a card could only be used once per turn, even if you controlled two of them.
- One of the first known High Tier Scrappies is Yata-Garasu. Despite only having 200 attack points, it possesses the ability to make your opponent skip their draw phase when it does damage. But its low attack makes it easy to destroy right? Wrong. It also possesses the Spirit characteristic, which means it returns to its owner's hand at the end phase. Of particular note is the combo with Chaos Emperor Dragon and Sangan in the old days. After triggering CED's effect while your Sangan is on the field, Sangan hits the graveyard and triggers its tutor effect, allowing you to retrieve Yata, and assuming you haven't used your normal summon for the turn yet, leaving you free to summon it and attack. Not only is your opponent unable to draw, but their hand was just emptied by the effect of Chaos Emperor Dragon, resulting in a guaranteed win. Such was the brokenness of the combo that Konami saw fit to ban both, with Yata returning to limited status in the May 2022 banlist in the TCG and the October 2022 OCG banlist, a whopping 18 years later, and CED only coming back after a nerf.
- Jinzo was one of the most devastating cards to ever be published around the time of its release (2000). Its effect of negating traps was borderline insane in a time when most decks needed to rely on permanent traps in order to successfully advance their own combo's and especially to counter devastating cards (such as Raigeki (with Magic Jammer) or Blue-Eyes White Dragon (with Trap Hole)) of the opponent. The card also had some decent ATK (2400 to be exact) and only required one tribute to be summoned, which meant that it could easily dominate the field. The hatred towards it has however calmed down around 2008 when decks started to rely more on special summoning and cards such as Stardust Dragon could counter devastating cards without being rendered useless by Jinzo. Nowadays you can play 3 copies of it, but only because the game's exponential power creep has made Jinzo's stats along with Trap Cards in general almost completely obsolete.
- "Floodgates" are reviled for preventing certain aspects of the game from being played at all, especially when only the user is likely prepared to work around them. The big issue is that if their player goes first, they can establish their board, and then activate the floodgate card during the opponent's turn to keep them from trying to take the advantage. The game's Power Creep also means that having your meaningful plays locked out for even a single turn can lead to a loss.
- Skill Drain has jumped on and off of the banlist. At the simple activation cost of 1000 LP, it continuously negates all face-up monster effects. It has become particularly notorious in Trap-heavy Eldlich decks, where the star monster doesn't need to be on the field to activate its effects, and almost everything else is a Trap Monster that skirts around Skill Drain by activating its effects in the Spell & Trap Zone. But its criticism pales in comparison to...
- Mystic Mine prevents the player who controls more monsters from attacking or activating monster effects from anywhere, with the caveat that it will destroy itself during the End Phase if the monster count is equal. It encourages the user to play few, if any monsters, and even if they go first, they can simply hold back on their Summons and use Metaverse to pluck it from the Deck in the middle of the opponent's plays. The card is reviled for slowing games to a halt if one can't "draw the out"... which the Mine player is probably prepared to counter anyway in a twisted form of "Defend the Castle". The card is banned in the OCG, but it took until the December 2022 banlist for the TCG to also ban it.
- Of all the floodgates, Vanity's Emptiness, a Trap that prevents any Special Summons, proved truly devastating as most modern decks Special Summon several times. Its intended downside, where it self-destructs if a card entered the player's Graveyard (meaning that you break the lock if you destroy anything) also made it ridiculously easy for the player to lift the lock themselves and continue with their game plan unimpeded. This resulted in the TCG banning it. The OCG instead limited it, but it continued to be a sacky staple that decided games by pure luck of drawing it, so it got banned there too in July 2022.
- In the same vein, Imperial Order, which negates any Spell effects (which comprises several of the common cards that could get rid of it) as long as you pay 700 LP on every Standby Phase, was essentially a death sentence to any deck that uses Spell cards and saw heavy abuse in decks that either don't use Spells or use them first on their turn before activating Imperial Order during the opponent's, resulting in its ban. Notably, it eventually left the banlist in both formats after a nerf that forced you to pay LP on both Standby Phases, only to prove to be a staple yet again that kneecapped decks that needed Spells to make their plays, leading to the card ending banned again in the TCG and eventually the OCG as well.
- Other floodgates like Rivalry of Warlords, Gozen Match, and There Can Be Only One also draw ire due to some implicit rulings. For instance, if Rivalry of Warlords is active (forcing both players to control 1 Type among monsters they control), you cannot even attempt to Summon a monster of a different Type, even if you intend to use all monsters you control as material for that monster. This locks out a lot of plays in the right matchup.
- Skill Drain
- Decks primarily centered around Level 4 monsters that make Rank 4 Xyz monsters are often disliked. A large number of very powerful cards are Rank 4 Xyz monsters that only require two non-specific materials and, all together, they make an incredibly versatile toolbox that get around many decks or become common staples.
- One example is Castel, the Skyblaster Musketeer; once he's summoned, he can use his materials to send one face-up card your opponent controls back to the deck. Any face-up card. Rank 4s vastly outnumber any other Rank whose best cards are either too hard to summon or not as good as the multitude of options the Rank 4 toolbox has.
- Elder Entity Norden. It has been abused like there's no tomorrow with Instant Fusion and can summon any Level 4 or lower monster from your graveyard upon Special Summon. Worse, unlike most other cards nowadays that are balanced the "only once per turn" restriction, this card does not have any Summoning restrictions and can be used multiple times per turn! (Several OTKs and FTKs can be achieved very easily with Norden. Here is an example. Note that the FTK is no longer possible as Instant Fusion and Blaze Fenix are limited in OCG. In TCG on the other hand...)
- Tellarknight Ptolemaeus: At first glance its nothing special, a Rank 4 with low ATK but high DEF. Except for one thing; it can ditch 3 materials to bring out a Rank 5 monster (provided it isn't a Number). Constellar Pleiades or Outer Entity Azathoth? Both became staples. Stellarknight Constellar Diamond? There are now two ways to get it out. Cyber Dragon Infinity? The most infamous combo with Ptolemaeus, summon this bad boy out, use its effect to summon Nova and then Summon Infinity immediately. At the peak of its use, putting out three Level 4 monsters for this ability was way too easy.
- What happens when you take a a clown that revives itself by and takes 1000 LP away afterwards and a knight with too many swords an an ability to revive himself if you take damage? The exact same result you would get from summoning Elder Entity Norden with Instant Fusion: a 1000 cost Rank 4 Engine. Except for one thing; you can do this every turn. That right, You can get out Ptolemaeus one turn, bring out another one the next and then repeat with other Rank 4 cards like Castel, Number 39: Utopia, or Number 101: Silent Honor ARK, so long as you can get both monsters to the Graveyard, And you can combine this with cards like the Star Seraphs, Goblindbergh, Tin Goldfish, or even Norden himself to bring out monsters that need 3 materials or just add more to Ptolemaeus and immediately use its effect to Summon Bigger Fish.
- One example is Castel, the Skyblaster Musketeer
- A generic Extra Deck monster is appreciated, since it can lend support to multiple archetypes, especially the weaker ones, to support their game plan or compensate for their obsolete boss monsters. But some Extra Deck monsters are too generic and too strong, and their existence can lead to archetypes discarding their original game plan to focus on pushing out those new generic bosses leading to very same-looking endboards, and players bemoan the loss of the archetype's uniquity when it happens. The Rank 4 toolbox was one of the earlier examples, and other examples include Baronne de Fleur, Borreload Savage Dragon, Apollousa, Accesscode Talker, and AA-Zeus, all of which have a mixture of high stats, removal, and/or negates.
- Firewall Dragon has ascended to becoming the most singularly loathed protagonist monster of all time among the card-game-playing fanbase. It has very generic requirements, making it feasible in pretty much any deck, usable stats, and two great effects. The first is a bounce effect that can allow for both getting rid of an opponent's problem cards and recycling your own cards, and the second allows you to summon a monster from your hand whenever a monster it points to is sent to the Graveyard. This makes it an absurdly versatile card, capable of starting combos, keeping combos going, and turning a duel around - and what's more, while the first effect has a use limitation on it, the second effect doesn't. This last detail makes the card far more powerful than it should be, allowing its effect to be potentially looped and go on forever. The card broke new ground by being the first protagonist ace monster to ever be limited to one, after it was discovered just how laughably broken three Firewalls could be, and even when limited to one, it was still a deadly cog in the machine of multiple FTK decks. But what pushes it here is that because the card is Yusaku's ace monster, it was able to survive many banlists while other cards involved in those FTK decks were banned or limited, meaning the fanbase saw it as surviving not because it's balanced, but because Konami wouldn't ban or errata Yusaku's ace. It was finally banned in the TCG in early December 2019, becoming the first card of that stature to face the list. It was later released after both effects were given an "only once per turn" clause, and the second effect was nerfed to only Special Summon Cyberse monsters from your hand.
- The Knightmares are a small archetype that primarily consist of Link Monsters designed around co-linking, with the eventual aim of facilitating a well-protected Extra Link. Because they have three in-archetype Main Deck monsters at best, they were made really generic, requiring just two monsters with different names. On Summon, they let you discard cards for various effects, such as removal, extension, or recursion, and if they happened to be co-linked, you also draw a card. They turned out to be extremely powerful generic tools — Mermaid and Goblin got banned for enabling easy extensions, while Phoenix and Unicorn still see plenty of play as easily-accessed removal to this day.
- Firewall Dragon
- After years of Power Creep, the current modern day deck aims to, while going first, set up as many boss monsters with negate or interruption effects that make it very difficult for the opponent to play, lest the opponent proceeds to set up on them. Many tournament-topping decks are adept enough at this to fit into this trope this way. However, occasionally a deck comes along that's so strong that it becomes Tier 0, where no other deck can compete barring Highly Specific Counterplay, and these decks generally live in infamy forever. Some notable Tier 0 decks include Zoodiac, which lets you go +5 or more off of one card, PePenote , which is the most commonly cited reason for why the Pendulum mechanic needed to be heavily nerfed to the point of not being able to function, and Ishizu Tearlaments, whose quick GY effects can let them put out Fusion monsters in the middle of the opponent's turn while going second and needed multiple hits to take out.
- Zoodiacs are probably the most divisive monsters in the game's history. It's designed to build up the power of its Xyz Monsters from the ATK from all of its Xyz materials, but the real threat was their neverending combos that can break out at least seven Xyz summons, Ratpier, who can recover a destroyed field from nothing, and Drident, who has quick effect destruction, all of which are accessible by throwing together a couple of cards into the deck. This led to them immediately taking over tournaments as soon as they dropped, so much so that almost every deck in the OCG and TCG at the time was either Zoodiacs, or a hybrid of Zoodiacs, causing many casual players to resent them and fear that one day ALL decks will have Zodiac cards in them. They also brought along the much reviled "one card Xyz Monster" mechanic from the ZEXAL and ARC-V animes, which many hoped would stay as far away from the game as possible. Adding fuel to the fire is that with the new Link Monster Master Rule in place limiting monsters summoned from the Extra Deck to one monster zone without dumping resources into summoning Link Monsters, many Extra Deck-reliant decks were crippled, whereas Zoodiacs found ways to get around those limitations, making them even more powerful and more commonplace. It was so bad, that many Japanese card shops refused to allow them in their tournaments out of protest. They finally stopped seeing as much play in September 2017, with their play makers Drident and Broadbull being banned in the TCG.
- SPYRALs at their launch was a fun and functional if inconsistent deck that focused on knowing what was on top of your opponent's deck to maintain advantage. Enter their new shiny Link Monster SPYRAL Double Helix, which fixes all of the deck's problems a little too well. Double Helix is easy to break out with only two SPYRAL monsters required and is in an archetype with easy swarming, and it can special summon any SPYRAL monster from the deck, such as Master Plan and Quik-Fix for easy resource advantage, and Drone to rearrange the opponent's top cards of their deck to guarantee a correct guess and stop any top-deck comebacks. Throw in SPYRAL Resort, which gives the deck overwhelming amounts of protection, and SPYRAL Sleeper, whose card popping effects do not come at any cost with the above field spell in place, and you have Zoodiacs II to the groans of many players. This ended up with emergency action being taken with the November 2017 TCG banlist, which Limited Quik-Fix, and Drone, so while the deck is still powerful, it's no longer untouchable.
- Hoo boy, Blaze Fenix the Burning Bombardment Bird. On its own, it's a completely unspectacular monster with materials that don't fit into any deck (who uses Machines and Pyros together?) and a reasonably strong burn effect that requires it to skip attacking. But that burn effect isn't once per turn, and it's high enough that with a full field, multiple activations can be a game-ender. Add in Fusion Gate for repeated fusings, Black Garden to fill up the field, Galaxy Tomahawk to generate a pile of Machine-type Tokens, and the fact that you can fuse those Tokens with a Blaze Fenix in play, and you have the high lord of FTK decks. Particularly bad is that he's led to multiple other cards getting limited or banned for their interactions with him, including Divine Wind of Mist Valley, Genex Ally Birdman, Ancient Fairy Dragon, and Elemental HERO Stratos, despite the fact that the playerbase generally agrees that simply Limiting Blaze Fenix (as it is in the OCG) or errataing it to be hard-once-per-turn would kill the FTK dead.
- When Maxx "C" was first released, it was a decent tech card to use against special-summon heavy decks, where each time the opponent special summoned, the user of Maxx "C" draws one card. However, through the advent of Power Creep, many of the top tier decks began doing multiple special summons within one turn and with the advent of hand traps, allowed the player to either gain huge amounts of cards that is potentially strong enough to break the board or drawing hand trap monsters to disrupt the opponent plays. Or even better, have them abruptly end their turn before the opponent drew too many cards which leaves themselves vulnerable to counterplays. While it was banned in the TCG, it is unlimited in the OCG meta and its presence warped the entire metagame where mass special summon decks like Adamancipators and Dragon Links are virtually non-existent while decks like Eldlich and Invoked variants, as well as Dragoon + Anaconda, are far more successful compared to its TCG counterpart. Following its ban, the card was largely forgotten by overseas players for a while until the advent of 2022's Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel, a digital format heavily based on the OCG that has Maxx "C" legal at three copies. It didn't take long for mass hatred for the cockroach to ignite worldwide, garnering complaints from players everywhere about how it is essentially a floodgate, allows 1st turn players to shut their opponents out of the game even harder, and forces virtually every competitive deck to dedicate roughly 8 card slots to it and its counters just to actually play the game.
- Number S0: Utopic ZEXAL has the rather bizarre requirement of three "Number" monsters with the same Rank as material, but this can be completely ignored in favor of using a single Utopia monster after discarding a Rank-Up-Magic Normal Spell. Its Xyz Summon is impossible to negate or respond to, and it can prevent your opponent from activating anything by detaching a material during their turn. So for the most standard possible effort, and the price of one easily-summoned Xyz and a RUM from the hand, you now have a 3000-ATK monster that can decrease its ATK by 1000 to prevent the opponent from doing...basically anything during their turn, and keep this up for three turns. This single card is considered to be so overpowered that it prevented generic Rank-Up Magic search cards from being printed, simply because they'd make its summon consistent, and Argent Chaos Force got banned due to a combo that could bring out S0. This made it largely hated by RUM users for essentially kneecapping the mechanic and banning one of their best cards. It only finally saw the banlist when Numeron Calling allowed Utopic ZEXAL to be summoned with its "intended" conditions. Tellingly, right after it was banned, the game saw the unbanning of Argent Chaos Force and the release of generic RUM searcher Zexal Construction.
- Crystron Halqifibrax was intended to make Synchro decks viable in Link format—it's a very easy-to-summon Link Monster with favorable arrows that can be brought out in just about any deck that runs Tuners, and its effect to bring out a Tuner from the Deck could enable some extra consistency. Unfortunately, it did its job far too well, because people quickly realized that it could simply be used as a Link engine in and of itself. In particular, if you managed to bring out a Tuner that also had some kind of revival or Token-generating effect, then that was essentially a free Link 4 on board, just as a basic example. Aside from the fact that it's a ridiculously good searcher and combo extender that will usually leave the user with far more resources than they know what to do with, what really puts it here is that four different tunersnote were all banned specifically for their interactions with Halqifibrax while the card itself remained untouched, which meant that even Synchro players quickly grew to hate this thing for indirectly kneecapping Synchro decks by getting all the good Tuners banned. The card proved to be so devastating that any future Tuners and Synchro-based decks were released with this card in mind as most of the level 3 or lower Tuners no longer have effects that activate in the Graveyard and if they do, they lock you of special summoning Link Monsters while future archetypes based around Synchro summoning prevents the player from special summoning any Link Monsters after their effects are activated. Eventually, its brokeness led to the OCG finally banning Halquifibrax starting in July 2022 Banlist, while the TCG limited him to 1 and banning Auroradon instead becasue of the many combos it was involved with Halq. Eventually, the TCG would follow suit in October 2022 and also ban Halqfibrax as well.
- Fusion Summons using materials from the Deck can be very controversial, whether by making powerful monsters too easy to summon without sufficient drawbacks, or by free dumping. To name a few prominent cases:
- Future Fusion needs to stick around for two of your Standby Phases to Fusion Summon a monster, who then depends on the Spell to live, but that was ultimately trivial when you already got to freely dump all the necessary materials on activation. Five-Headed Dragon was a common target for this as you essentially get to dump five Dragons of your choice. The card ended up banned, only returning after an errata delayed the dumping for a turn after activation.
- Brilliant Fusion uses Deck materials to Fusion Summon a Gem Knight, but the resulting monster will depend on the Spell staying on the field to live, and has its ATK/DEF reduced to 0, requiring a discarded Spell to temporarily regain the original values. Seems balanced enough... until Seraphinite comes into the picture. By dumping any Gem-Knight (most likely Garnet, whose name became associated with monsters you don't want to draw out) and any LIGHT monster (who may have a floating effect upon being sent to the Graveyard), you get a monster that provides an extra Normal Summon/Set each turn. The restrictions imposed on Seraphinite itself barely matter if you simply use it as material for another summon. The free LIGHT monster dump and extra Normal Summon were so potent that Brilliant Fusion ended up banned.
- Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon is a Fusion of Dark Magician and Red-Eyes Black Dragon (though the latter can be replaced with any Dragon Effect Monster). It can be summoned easily via Red-Eyes Fusion which can also fuse the Material from your Deck. It's immune to effect targeting and destruction, can pop up to two opposing monsters per turn (if both of its Fusion Materials were Normal Monsters) without technically targeting them and burn the opponent for their original ATK, and has a once per turn omni-negate that costs a discard, but boosts Dragoon's already high 3000 ATK by 1000 each time it goes off. Even Worse, Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon can be easily summoned through Predaplant Verte Anaconda (itself a contender for high-tier Scrappydom that got banned), an easy to bring out link monster that lets you copy the effect of Red-Eyes Fusion at the cost of 2000 LP.note The sheer difficulty of getting past this thing and the ease of bringing it out led to players willing to shoehorn three potential dead draws (Dark Magician, Red-Eyes, and Red-Eyes Fusion) into their deck list to access it. Dragoon was eventually banned in the OCG. Quite the accomplishment for a Fusion of two of the most iconic monsters in the franchise.
- Fusion Destiny uses materials from the hand or Deck for any Fusion Monster that lists a Destiny Hero as material, but locks you out of Special Summoning anything that isn't a DARK HERO monster afterward, and the resulting Fusion monster is destroyed during the next End Phase. However, the intended short lifespan of the Fusion is rendered null by its most common choice, Destiny Hero - Destroyer Pheonix Enforcer, which can simply use its Quick Effect to blow up 1 card you control (such as itself) along with 1 card your opponent controls, then revive itself in the next Standby Phase to do it again. And while it's on the field, it drains the opposing field's ATK/DEF by 200 for each HERO in your GY, and its most common materials, Celestial and Dasher, are perfectly functional in the GY, so it largely averts the bricking issue that the Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon components faced. This whole combo, on top of Enforcer's near-complete disregard for Fusion Destiny's drawbacks caused the Spell to get Limited in the OCG, and Semi-Limited in the TCG.
- Branded Fusion, debuting in the Albaz Strike Structure Deck, allowed you to make any Albaz Fusion using cards from hand/Deck/field, only restricting you to Summoning Fusion Monsters out of your Extra Deck on the turn the card is activated. The Albaz Fusions themselves have very loose material requirements, so Branded Fusion effectively becomes a Foolish Burial for nearly anything while also putting out a strong Fusion Monster. If you go into Albion or Lubellion you can then follow up with their effects to make Mirrorjade and threaten the opponent with a Quick non-targeting banish on top of a boardwipe should they answer it. Branded Fusion does so much for so little that Branded hybrids run as many ways to search or recycle the card as possible, and naturally this card is the chokepoint for Branded lines of play. The OCG would go on to Limit Branded Fusion in January 2023 to keep it from overtaking the power vacuum that would result from hitting Tearlaments (not that they needed to do that).
- Future Fusion
- And of course, you can't really talk about the Fusion-from-deck spells without mentioning their most notorious enabler, Predaplant Verte Anaconda. This snake is a Link-2 monster with generic materials that allows you to effectively use any Fusion card straight from the deck for the mere cost of 2000 LP, meaning that any two monsters on the field could be turned into Dragoon or Destroyer Phoenix Enforcer, bypassing the final drawback to their power: actually requiring to draw the Fusion spell. The debate as to whether the spells themselves or Verte Anaconda was the issue here raged for months, until Konami themselves stepped in and banned Verte in May 2022.
- Union Carrier was likely designed to support the A-to-Z series of LIGHT Machine Union monsters, but it can equip any monster (not even restricted to Unions) from your hand or Deck to one you control with the same Type/Attribute, giving it 1000 ATK, likely to support other Equip-based strategies like Cyberdarks and Dragunity. Turns out this effect was too loose and it saw play in anything but those archetypes — clearly Not the Intended Use! One of the most notorious interactions it abused was Dragon Buster Destruction Sword, which is normally only compatible with Buster Blader, but through Union Carrier can be pasted onto any DARK/Dragon monster you control to become an imposing floodgate that completely shuts the opponent out of Extra Deck summons. Union Carrier's effect also abused "leave the field" effects that don't specify leaving from Monster Zone, so cards such as Earthbound Immortal Aslla Piscu could still trigger without needing to Summon it properly. Ultimately, this resulted in its ban in the TCG, but it would take until the October 2022 banlist for the OCG to also follow suit and ban it.
- At first glance, the Sky Strikers don’t seem like much as they’re a fairly small archetype, with relatively weak Monsters and Spell cards that only work if the player controls no monsters in their Main Monster Zone. That said, despite their small numbers and low stats, the Sky Strikers are perhaps one of the best and most consistent control Decks in the history of the game. A good Sky Striker deck will be able to maintain complete control over the board, thanks to its powerful Spell cards that allow players to eliminate threats at will, and essentially preventing their opponent from making any plays, all while maintaining a considerable card advantage over them. But what makes this archetype truly ridiculous are Sky Striker Mobilize - Engage! and Sky Striker Mecha Modules - Multirole, the former allowing a player to search out any Sky Striker card they need (and draw an additional card on top of that), and the latter able to prevent the opponent from activating card effects in response to Sky Striker Spells (at the cost of a card), and allowing the player to reuse any used Sky Striker spells by setting them back on the field. Finally, the Sky Strikers Ace Link monsters are both incredibly easy to bring out and incredibly difficult to get rid of thanks to Sky Striker Ace - Raye, who can Special Summon herself from the Graveyard any time one of the Link monsters leaves the field, then immediately activate her other effect to summon another Sky Striker Ace from the Extra Deck. It speaks volumes that subsequent Sky Striker support is borderline useless in the actual archetype.
- Endymion has earned a reputation for being extremely confusing due to its use of Spell Counters necessitating that every monster have a whole dictionary written on it. In addition to that, if it gets to go first it just completely shuts down a ton of different decks with the sheer quantity of negates it can put out. What makes it so scary is that it laughs at a lot of the common counters for such decks through the combination of Mythical Beast Jackal King and Servant of Endymion. And what Jackal King doesn't cover can be countered with the deck's access to Secret Village of the Spellcasters and Magician's Right Hand. And even though it lacks the ability to run a lot of those same counters, the Pendulum effect of their boss monster makes the deck somewhat competent even going second. Additionally, it minimizes the Pendulum mechanic's overreliance on Link Monsters in Master Rule 5 by having lots of ways to Special Summon by means other than Pendulum Summon. The deck has long since fallen out of favor in the TCG due to Servant being limited as well as Electrumite, the Link Monster band-aid designed to help Pendulums function in Master Rule 4, being banned. However, it gained a second life in Master Duel, where it remains one of the strongest rogue tier decks, taking second place in the first official Master Duel tournament.
- The most infamous and impactful additions to the 2022 meta in general were the "Adventure" Archtype. It is a small archetype inspired in JRPGs centered around the "Adventurer Token", a Level 4 EARTH Fairy token with 2000 ATK/DEF, and cards that summons the Token or require it to be on the field to use their effects. The most notorious card out of the bunch, however, was Wandering Gryphon Rider, a cheap omni-negate splashable in about every modern deck that doesn't require their normal summon to do their own plays (Read: about 90% of the decks in the modern meta) with good stats. The "adventure engine" ended up rising to the top of the meta right away and becoming one of the most loathed game-engines ever, making even the likes of Prank-Kids to suddenly become relevant again and fully capable of disrupting opponent's plays in their turn with very little resource investment. This culminated in the OCG banning Wandering Gryphon Rider in the October 2022 listing, and subsequent Adventure support would restrict the player from summoning other monsters that don't mention a Adventurer Token to keep the group of cards from being too splashable.
- As an archetype, Ice Barriers are widely seen as mediocre on their best day, consisting mostly of lackluster stun and draw cards and possessing a fragile and slow playstyle. The Ice Barrier Synchros, on the other hand, are universally regarded as among the most overpowered in the game, with three of the initial four having spent time on the banned or limited list. Brionac's multi-card bouncing at minimal cost (to the point that it had to get an Obvious Rule Patch), Dewloren's ability to bounce any number of your cards (including itself) making it the main cog of countless infinite loops until it got a similar patch, Trishula's non-targeting banishment of all parts of the opponent's strategy... even Gungnir, the only non-broken one, can blow up two cards per turn. Ironically, Ice Barriers were considered among the worst decks to try summoning their own ace monsters in, being too slow and lacking the swarming capability to pull it off.
- The Floowandereeze archetype has been a constant meta threat ever since their introduction in Burst of Destiny. They're an archetype of Winged-Beast monsters centered around Normal Summoning many times during either player's turn to swarm the field with their Level 1 monsters, then tributing them to go into various high-level Winged-Beast monsters. The birds banish themselves when they would go to the GY otherwise, but will return to the hand whenever you Normal Summon them, ensuring that you almost always have them in steady supply. Their boss monster, Floowandereeze & Empen, passively prevents your opponent from using the effects of their Special Summoned monsters (provided they are in Attack Position), and can halve the ATK and DEF of a monster it's battling (at the cost of a card in your hand), making it almost impossible to destroy by battle. On top of that, their best support cards Floowandereeze and the Magnificent Map and Floowandereeze and the Dreaming Town, permit you to Normal Summon during the opponent's turn, setting off a whole chain of Normal Summons off each of the Floowandereeze monsters and putting out other threats such as Raiza The Mega Monarch (which can, on summon, spin problematic cards back into the hand/deck) or Mist Valley Apex Avian (which is an omni-negate). Floowandereeze puts out Normal Summons as fast as other Decks would Special Summon, bypassing effects that restrict or punish Special Summoning. They even have the ability to search and play Barrier Statue of the Stormwinds to lock out the opponent from playing (until the Statue was banned). On top of all of that, the deck is also extremely cheap to built given how much of a meta deck it is, with its most expensive card costing around 20$ per copy. The deck also doesn't rely on its Extra Deck at all, meaning it doesn't need to run expensive Extra Deck monsters, such as Baronne de Fleur or Accesscode Talker (and allows the deck to freely run cards like Pot of Extravagance and Pot of Prosperity).
- When you apply Power Creep to the concept of handtraps, you get Bystials. Their main gimmick is that you can Special Summon them from the hand by banishing a LIGHT or DARK monster from either GY. If your opponent so much as controls a monster you can do this as a Quick Effect. And as it turns out, LIGHT and DARK are some of the most prevalent Attributes in the game, many of which interact with the GY, so the Bystials see use nearly everywhere to interrupt the opponent on top of putting out a beefy body — essentially doing the work of D.D. Crow but better. In the Tearlament-heavy meta they're basically a "necessary evil", but in most other environments they've been observed to render many GY-dependent Decks unplayable. Bystial Magnamhut, the most popular of the Bystials, is egregiously strong as it can search for any Dragon after being Summoned, like another Bystial (but not another Magnamhut) to keep disruption available. Magnamhut would be limited in the OCG January 2023 list, with Baldrake and Druiswurm (the next most popular Bystials) to follow in April that year.
- Tearlaments have fallen under this for the absurd rate at which they spam out Fusions. The deck focuses on milling itself, with several monster effects activating if they are sent to the Graveyard by card effects. And since Fusion Summons are generally performed by card effects sending Materials to the Graveyard, one quickly leads into another. Of particular note is Havnis, which can Special Summon itself and mill 3 cards the moment your opponent simply activates a monster effect, making it common for the Deck going second to churn out a couple Fusions and mess up the opponent's plays before its first turn actually arrives. Worse still is its synergy with the mill-heavy Exchange of the Spirit series of EARTH Fairy monsters, especially Agido the Ancient Sentinel, which mills even more cards from both players' Decks after getting milled itself. The OCG first hit the Deck by just Limiting Agido and Keldo, before taking more thorough measures in the January 2023 list by banning Tearlament Kitkallos (which had three different ways to get your monsters in the GY) and limiting both Reinoheart (which can dump a Tearlaments upon summon and revive itself when sent to the GY by card effect) and Scheiren (which can casually Special Summon itself and send 4 cards to your GY) for good measure. The TCG did a more thorough approach by banning Kitkallos and Limiting nearly every key monster of the Ishizu Tearlaments hybrid in one go (with the OCG following suit in April)... and as a testament to how powerful Tearlaments are, they still turned up as the best deck of the format (just not as oppressively so) despite being violently kneecapped by the banlist to the point of being forced to use King of the Swamp instead of Kitkallos.
- Sprights focus on quickly bringing out Level/Rank/Link-2 monsters. Controlling a single Level 2 monster allows all the Main Deck monsters to Special Summon themselves from the hand. While they lack raw power, they have some potent effects that can secure an advantage for the player, even if some of them restrict you to Summoning Level/Rank/Link-2 monsters. Spright Starter got Limited in the OCG for allowing them to casually pump out another Spright from the Deck at no cost and trivial drawbacks. Spright Elf gives targeting protection to monsters it points to with a Quick Effect to revive Level/Rank/Link-2 monsters without restricting yourself afterwards, while Gigantic Spright pumps out more Level 2 monsters from the Deck with the "drawback'' of locking both players into Level/Rank/Link-2 monsters for the rest of the turn, which means little for Sprights, but restricts the opponent's options — especially when it locks out Nibiru from punishing them. A particular issue is its synergy with the Frog engine, especially the notorious omni-negating Toadally Awesome, which got banned in the OCG. After seeing how it provides quick extensions for various hybrids, the TCG would instead ban Spright Elf in February 2023, with the OCG following suit in April (and Limiting Spright Blue, their main searcher, for good measure).
- Kashtira is a deck focused on swarming the field with powerful Level/Rank 7 monsters with a game plan that involves banishing the opponent's cards face-down, a powerful form of resource denial that is difficult to recover from or work around. The major payoff for their face-down banishment synergy is Kashtira Shangri-Ira, which locks out the opponent from using their card zones, and a complement to the strategy is Number 89: Diablosis the Mind Hacker who can snipe important answers right out of the opponent's Extra Deck and provide two triggers for Shangri-Ira in one go. Capping things off is Kashtira Arise-Heart, who has a passive banishing floodgate ability that supplies himself with Xyz Material, and has another banishing disruption effect to make the setup almost impossible to break without Highly Specific Counterplay. The Kashtira matchup often has a very binary outcome — either the Kashtira player goes full combo and outright prevents the opponent from playing, or the opponent has the outs that disrupts the combo or breaks open their board, and the Kashtira player loses due to having no follow-up. It's a Curb-Stomp Battle for either player tied to a Luck-Based Mission which is not very fun for either player to experience, and Kashtira would quickly fill the power vacuum left behind after the Tearlaments were hit by the banlist. Both the OCG and TCG would go on to hit different pieces of the full Kashtira combo (Fenrir and Unicorn on OCG, Unicorn, Arise-Heart and Diablosis for TCG) to knock it down a peg. Special mention goes to Kashtira Fenrir, a card that's seen tons of competitive play outside of Kashtira due to how good it is in every deck (as it's a free special summon that can immediately search for a another copy of itself that can banish face-up cards when it battles or the opponent activates a monster effect).
- Labrynth may very well go down as one of the best Trap-based decks ever printed in Yu-Gi-Oh!. They are an archetype of DARK Fiends of various levels that are focused around using powerful Normal Traps to control the board and the opponent’s hand, while activating their effects when monsters leave the field via Normal Traps. Lovely Labrynth of the Silver Castle is the deck's main offensive boss monster, able to non-target destroy cards on the field or randomly destroy cards in the opponent's hand whenever a monster leaves the field due to a Normal Trap card, and can target Normal Traps in the GY and reset them back on the field. Lady Labrynth of the Silver Castle is the deck's main defensive boss monster, being a formidable towers-like monster that cannot be targeted or destroyed by card effects (provided the player controls a Set card), and can set an additional Normal Trap Card directly from the deck whenever a Normal Trap card is activated (regardless of who activated it), and can easily special summon herself whenever a Labrynth card or Normal Trap has been activated. Both boss monsters can be easily Special Summoned from the directly via Welcome Labrynth or Big Welcome Labrynth. The "Furniture" of the deck, Labrynth Stovie Torbie and Labrynth Chandraglier both allow the player to set any Labrynth Spell or Trap directly from their deck (at the cost of discarding themselves and another card to the GY) at Quick Effect speed, which when combined with Labrynth Cooclock (which when discarded allows Trap Cards to be activated the turn they're Set), allows for Turn Zero plays on the opponent's turn. What makes the deck especially deadly is its synergy with the Normal Trap floodgates, such as Dimensional Barrier, Different Dimension Ground, Deck Devastation Virus, Full Force Virus, and Eradicator Epidemic Virus, all of which can single-handedly win you the game against the correct deck. Lady Labrynth can search whatever floodgate you need and Lovely Labrynth can reset every other turn, effectively locking your opponent out of the game.
