Game Breaker / Yu-Gi-Oh! Banned and Nerfed cards

With few exceptions, any card that winds up banned or nerfed is too powerful for its own good.

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Banned Cards (TCG)

• Banned Jar cards ^explanationsome of the most powerful and Power Creep-proof flip effects in the game.:
  • Fiber Jar Got a bad hand? Close to losing? Your key monsters are in graveyard and you can't recover them? Fear not! Just flip up Fiber Jar and it effectively resets the game, barring banished cards. Its effect has been compared to Shahrazad from Magic: The Gathering, in that it forcibly extended the duration of a duel by a fair amount, which was something you didn't want in a tournament environment.

• Banned draw power cards ^explanationAllows for attaining additional resources and/or turboing through a deck for crucial cards.:
  • Pot of Greed is a classic card with the Boring, but Practical effect to make you draw 2 cards. This is a very powerful effect on its own: Pot of Desires, a downgraded version of this card that has the massive cost of making you banish 10 cards from your deck, is still good enough to be Semi-Limited. But what makes it truly broken is the fact that there's no cost, condition, or downside associated with it: it's outright a free +1 that can be activated at any time once you draw it. This effectively means that if it were legal, literally every single deck would want to have this card in it, and there would be very few reasons not to play it as soon as you drew it, so there would be next to no strategy or consideration involved in using the card. Its power is so infamous it's widely considered to be Yu-Gi-Oh's version of Black Lotus.
  • Graceful Charity is easily one of the best toolbox cards the game has ever seen. It lets you draw 3 cards, and then discard 2 of your choosing (Meaning no hand advantage is lost using it). Between the insane draw power and easy graveyard set up and/or effect triggering, it's even better than Pot of Greed in many decks.
  • One of the most useful cards to be released in Japan before the first Forbidden List was instituted was Sixth Sense, which was not released in the TCG until more than a decade later (which tried putting it to 1 on its release for a single format before immediately realizing what they had done and banning it right after). In theory, the card is a risk or reward. Except the mill is almost completely incidental unless you're playing against a dedicated mill deck (or outright beneficial, if you're playing a Deck that uses the Graveyard a lot), whereas guessing 5 or 6 and rolling that amount would give you so much advantage that you essentially play with two starting hands. So there's a two in three chance that the card does almost nothing or creates mild benefit, and a one in three chance that the card wins you the game. As stated before, the card came out in Japan before the Forbidden List existed, and as soon as it was introduced, the card was Forbidden and has held that position ever since. To put that in perspective, the only other card to have been banned for as long as banning a card has been possible is Yata-Garasu. Not only that, but it's the only card with a gamble-related effect to ever be banned. It's that formidable.
  • Card of Safe Return. An example of reverse Power Creep, it initially saw little use when first released as there were few ways to recover from the Graveyard. As time marched on, however, Graveyard recurring cards and strategies became prevalent, allowing the user to make a large number of draws as they make their plays. The release of Zombie Master in 2007 resulted in this card becoming frequently used in Zombie Decks, and later the TeleDAD and Lightsworn Decks abused its newfound power to no end. As a result, it was banned in September 2009 and has never seen the light of day since.
  • Mirage of Nightmare. Even ignoring its potential for rapid graveyard setup, its downside can easily be dodged by preventing its discard effect from resolving (like destroying the card yourself at the end of the opponent's turn), allowing you to keep all the cards drawn off of it. The classic combo seen in the anime, which drew prevalence to the card, was Emergency Provisions, which would send any number of your back row to the grave for an extra 1000 LP per card, but any quick-activation Spell or Trap destruction effect would do. Even barring the use of combos like these, there's many, many cards that can be activated from your hand on your opponent's turn, potentially offsetting the disadvantage of Mirage of Nightmare on its own. And even if you can't use your cards, cycling your deck by 1-4 cards each turn is also a really good effect.
  • Chicken Game has three effects, but the effect that allows one card to be drawn at the cost of 1000 LP once per turn is what makes it so good. Such restriction can be bypassed and abused by having three copies of it as well as three copies of Pseudo Space, where six cards can be drawn by a hefty 6000 LP in total. Draw power will go up to eleven when used with Terraforming, Royal Magical Library, Upstart Goblin (which is limited in the TCG format) and Hope for Escape, where a total of eighteen cards is drawn. Such play style makes Exodia an even more High-Tier Scrappy solitaire deck. There is also an FTK combo involving the aforementioned cards, the Monarchs, Life Equalizer (which is banned in the OCG format) and Magical Explosion.

• Banned hand control cards ^explanationAttacks resources in the hand, one of the hardest types of removal to prevent or recover from.:
  • Delinquent Duo. A sort of inverse Pot of Greed, this card was often devastating if used first turn, since they effectively lose 1/3 of their opening hand, with no ways to respond. Its only downsides are enabling graveyard setup, but the card is so powerful that the risk doesn't matter.
  • Confiscation has the same 1000 LP cost as Duo, and discards only one, but it lets you see your opponent's entire hand for strategic purposes, pick and discard the card you want.
  • The Forceful Sentry is the strongest of the bunch; not only you don't pay any LP, shuffling is a more powerful way of removing a threatening card on your opponent's hand as it doesn't allow them to setup their graveyard and can deal more easily with monsters. Like Confiscation, you see your opponent's entire hand.
  • Trap Dustshoot, the most "balanced" of the bunch, due to being a trap, and only being able to shuffle back monsters, still was such a devastating card going first (especially when combined with Mind Crush), that it too was banned. It also didn't help that its super rare version's unusual thickness made it easy to stack.
  • The Forceful Sentry, Confiscation, and Trap Dustshoot all have the effect to look at the opponent's hand and cherry-pick a card to get rid of. But you also get the advantage of knowing what cards are in their hand, allowing you to prepare accordingly and/or use Mind Crush to further cripple their hand.
  • Topologic Gumblar Dragon is the most feared and hated of the virus dragons, and it's not hard to see why. It has two effects that allow it to rip away up to two cards from your opponent's hand once per turn, either by special summoning to a zone one of your Link monsters points at, or by completing an Extra Link with it. It's common to see this monstrosity used in Extra Link-focused Decks to rip away two cards on the starting turn, then use any Special Summoning ability during the opponent's Standby Phase to drop another monster in a Link Zone to rip away two more cards before the opponent can even react. In a best case scenario, the opponent was left with two cards to try and break your board (possibly less if they tried to stop you with hand traps like Ash Blossom or Ghost Ogre). In a Dark Warrior Deck, though, it was usually a worst case scenario where they would have no cards in their starting hand, as the Deck could use Neo Space Connector along with Isolde and Summon Sorceress to empty the opponent's hand with Neo-Spacian Aqua Dolphin. You heard right, folks: VRAINS had created a card that made teching Neo-Spacians a meta strategy. Gumblar was promptly catapulted into Forbidden status in the January 2019 TCG Lists, and the OCG would follow suit a year later.
  • Smoke Grenade of the Thief. The card went completely under the radar ever since its introduction in 2004, as there was no real practical way to take advantage of the effect. That all changed with the introduction of the Infernoble Knights in 2020, whose main combo line usually ended on Infernoble Knight Emperor Charles, who could both automatically equip Smoke Grenade from the graveyard and destroy it to enable the hand rip effect. Getting Smoke Grenade into the graveyard was a cinch thanks to Isolde, meaning a potent new combo deck had the ability to gain invaluable hand knowledge and take a card out it without even breaking a sweat, or possibly even two cards if it starts its combo with Neo Space Connector. Smoke Grenade even saw use in Dragon Link decks since it was searchable by a Vylon Cube summoned by Halqifibrax and could then be destroyed by Rokket Tracer to summon another Rokket. Since the effect had become far too easy to trigger, the TCG banned Smoke Grenade of the Thief on the December 2020 banlist.
  • Appointer of the Red Lotus is a trap card similar to the above Trap Dustshoot that had many costs that seem to offset its hand rip effect: 2000 Lifepoint cost to activate, you reveal your own hand, and the banished card can return to your opponent's hand on the next end phase. Back when the card is introduced in 2009, the speed of the game is slow enough that these costs kept the card from use, being seen as a much worse Confiscation. In the VRAINS and Series 11 eras, the game is so explosive that even temporarily denying a vital card can win the game. By the late Series 11 era, Kashtira players can make this a permanent removal because of Arise-Heart. Once limited but because of the incredible ease of searching it out and usage by the aforementioned Kashtira players, Appointer hits the June 2023 banlist.

• Banned Floodgates ^explanationPrevents or punishes certain types of cards or playstyles.:
  • Royal Oppression allows both players to negate any and all special summons at a cost of 800 LP each time. This seems balanced until you realize that you could just swarm your field during your turn, then flip this card up during the opponent's turn, not to mention that certain cards can activate their special summon effects infinitely, making attempts to stop their effects futile, and it can't be used during the damage step.
  • Number 16: Shock Master. This colorful ruler has an effect that locks out either spells, traps, or monster effects, and it's Rank 4, the most supported rank/level in the game. The only attempt at balance was that it required 3 materials, but that would had been easy with -hunders, Wind-Ups and the then-upcoming Satellaknights, and Pendulums in general. And it can be protected by Number 66: Master Key Beetle. It was banned in the TCG before the ARC-V cards (including the Satellarknights) made the scene but it was still unlimited in the OCG until the EmEm deck (our equivalent of PePe) demonstrated its power, with the January 2016 list banning it.
  • Djinn Releaser of Rituals, by far the best of the ritual supporting Djinn archetype that can also be banished from the graveyard for ritual summons, blocks Special Summoning only on the opponent's side if used for one. However, as Ritual Summoning was incredibly impractical at the time it was released, such an effect never became a huge problem, until Nekroz came about and alleviated every single weaknesses that Rituals have. All of a sudden, the Djinn-lock becomes a massive headache for the duelists to deal with because they can use Nekroz Cycle in tandem with Djinn and Clausolas in order to lock the other player from Special Summoning, essentially shutting down their entire turn as long as the Ritual Summoned card remains on the field. This forced many players in the format to main deck anti-Djinn cards such as Bull Blader, Book of Eclipse, and D.D Warrior Lady in order to make their plays or else they get locked forever. There are accounts of players running Shock Troops of the Ice Barrier to try to get rid of Clausolas. Due to forcing the usage of otherwise mediocre and/or outdated cards just to answer it, the card was banned in the TCG, though it took the OCG a few years to do the same.
  • Kaiser Colosseum has a convoluted effect that basically makes it so the opponent can't summon any additional monsters if it would make them control more than you do - as long as you have a monster on the field. While it saw little play back when it was released, once new summoning mechanics came into being, such as Synchro and Xyz summons (as well as Link summoning, which came after this card's ban), this card became a nightmare for many duelists to deal with. As these mechanics require multiple cards to be on the field to be used, if a player using this card can maintain a monster on the board (an easy feat in protection and/or floater based decks), many decks will be stuck being unable to get their critical plays off if they fail to get rid of Kaiser Colosseum.
  • Rounding out the unholy trinity of anti-Special Summon floodgates is Vanity's Emptiness. It's a Continuous Trap Card that completely prevents any sort of Special Summoning by both players, and because of this, it generally will be activated on the opponent's turn in response to an effect that Special Summons a monster(s), making them waste resources for absolutely nothing and more often than not making them lose a turn entirely. But it also stops the owner from Special Summoning so it's a fair exchange, right? Well, Vanity's Emptiness downside - destruction when any card is sent from your field or Deck to graveyard - is almost embarrassingly easy to exploit with something as simple as using a Spell or Trap Card. And, like Royal Oppression, you can simply do all of your Special Summoning before flipping Vanity's Emptiness and watching your opponent squirm. While the downside also makes it easier to play around than Djinn Releaser or Royal Oppression, Vanity's Emptiness still proved game-breaking enough to warrant a ban for both TCG and OCG.
  • As of Feb 2018, Maxx "C" joins these ranks. At the time of introduction, it was the most balanced anti-special summoning card of its kind, preventing spam decks from dominating the meta, while being a dead draw against a deck that doesn't need to special summon. However, due to Power Creep, it's increasingly the case that decks that need to do multiple special summons are more common than not, and the introduction of handtraps like Ash Blossom and Nibiru meant that the opponent's next draw could interrupt your plays when you least expect it. Now, Maxx "C" can leave an opponent in a Catch 22: Continue their plays at the risk of getting punished by the cards the opponent is drawing, or awkwardly end the turn with a less-than-ideal board state to deny their hand advantage. This led to its ban.^TriviaThis marks the major difference between the TCG and OCG banlists, where it is banned in the former and is an all-time staple in the latter. This leads to some major differences between the two metas, though players do note that the card is overcentralizing — every Deck at minimum would require 3 Maxx "C", alongside 3 Ash Blossom and as many Called by the Grave and Crossout Designator as is legal. That's easily a quarter of your Deck dedicated to countering Maxx "C" before getting to what you want to play! For environments where it's legal, you also have the "Maxx "C" Challenge": Special Summon as much as you can to force your opponent to draw out their whole deck.
  • Number 86: Heroic Champion Rhongomyniad is a pure beast of a card. While it had some use in the Tellarknight, Igknight, and Clownblade decks of the Arc-V era, this card truly came into its own when combined Number 75: Bamboozling Gossip Shadow. The combo was to summon a Link with multiple arrows (often Summon Sorceress or Isolde), Summon Rhongomyniad with two materials, then summon Number 75 in the same way and use its effect to transfer itself and its materials to Rhongomyniad, giving you access to the field nuke and locking your opponent out of summoning anything for two turns while you have free reign over the field. Dark Warrior decks often combined this strategy with Topologic Gumblar Dragon, depleting the opponent's hand and preventing them from summoning anything to protect themselves from attacks, leading to a literally unavoidable defeat. The card was thus banned in the January 2019 TCG List and eventually in the October 2023 OCG List.
  • Meet Thunder Dragon Colossus. Extremely easy to summon, and while on the field, it acts as a one-sided Mistake, shutting down your opponent's searches and consistency cards. What's worse, it has inherent protection against battle and effect destruction. Combining it with high ATK beatsticks such as Ultimate Conductor Tyranno (easily summoned by Double Evolution Pill which fits right in an archetype that wants their cards banished) or Thunder Dragon Titan (Summoned by banishing the aforementioned Colossus and one Thunder monster in your hand) grants an oppressive board of locking down the opponent's searches and a field filled with indestructible monsters. The introduction of Nemesis Corridor made it even easier to summon in other decks besides Thunder Dragons, being essentially a one card Colossus while recovering a banished monster as a cherry on top. This ultimately prompted the Fusion monster getting Limited in the OCG's January 2020 ban list and flat out banned in the TCG the same month.
  • Outer Entity Azathot. At first, it doesn't seem too useful; its field wipe effect is very hard to setup, and its monster lockdown effect basically just ensures OTKs, since you can normally only Xyz summon during your turn. However, the Arc-V and Vrains era saw the release of several cards that allow you to get it out on your opponent's turn, with the most common being The Phantom Knights' Rank-Up-Magic Launch, allowing you to cripple. Even when Launch was banned, the card still saw some use as an stun card in FTK decks, and as such, the TCG banned Azathot in their January 2020 list, while the OCG quickly followed suit.
  • Number S0: Utopic ZEXAL. Not only does it have a piss-easy summon condition, (notice you can use any Utopia monster to summon it, which means level 6 decks also had access to it), but the opponent can do nothing to prevent or negate its summon. No effects of any kind, including those already on field can be used after it detaches a material, essentially preventing your opponent from even playing the game for the turn. Not only is this insane in its own right, its addition to the game made sure Konami didn't print a consistent RUM searcher for years, and in fact caused the TCG ban of Argent Chaos Force, a totally innocent card, simply because players could combo it Beatrice, Lady of the Eternal and Gaia Dragon, the Thunder Charger to access Utopic Zexal with Utopia Beyond. However, the addition of Don Thousand's Numeron cards (see the Series 11 folder) provided such an easy way to summon the card, that it became a problem that couldn't be ignored anymore. It got banned in the OCG in October 2020, and sure enough, not long after it was banned, Konami printed an easily-used Rank-Up-Magic search card, ZEXAL Construction. The TCG subsequently gave it the axe in March 2021, also allowing Argent Chaos Force to come back to the game immediately.
  • True King of All Calamities. A lingering (meaning you have to negate it on the spot) lockdown of any Attribute you declare, with an attack lock for everything on the field on top, both lasting for the entire turn. Even if the monsters that are not within the declared Attribute can still activate their effects in hand or GY, it still proved devastating for the opponent because the majority of monster effects activate while on the field, potentially shutting down their entire turn. It's offset by needing two Level 9 monsters (a sparsely populated Level at the time of its release) but later down the line, decks like Dinosaurs, Generaiders, and particularly Virtual World could meet the requirements with little effort. It can even be used in Dark spam decks by Ranking up Dingirsu, Orcust of the Evening Star using The Phantom Knights' Rank-Up-Magic Launch. With the ever-expanding array of good Rank 9 support, Calamities eventually became an omnipresent lockdown card in the meta (earning itself the sarcastic Fan Nickname of "Very Fun Dragon" in the process), and as such was banned in the TCG lists in March 2021, with the OCG following suit seven months later.
  • Imperial Order, one of the first cards ever banned, is one of the few continuous Spell negation cards in the game, but required you to pay 700 Life Points during each of your Standby Phases as a mainteinance cost. This card, alone, can win games by stunning any Spell-based deck to the point of being unplayable if they can't answer it. And if that weren't bad enough, its "downside" actually just made it so that you could cancel its effect before your turn starts, giving you an insane strategic advantage while it's on the field. It took this card over a decade to leave the banlist, and only after receiving a heavy Nerf via erratum: its Life Point cost became mandatory and now must be paid on both players' Standby Phases. And even after its nerf, the card remained extremely effective, since it was still a win-condition against Spell-based decks and would go on to protect most of your own other floodgates and/or monster negation effects from being broken open by staples like Forbidden Droplet, Lightning Storm, or Dark Ruler No More. It became a semi-staple of tier 1 decks after its re-release, to the point where it was re-banned in both formats in early 2022, making Imperial Order the first card to be banned again after being nerfed.
  • Archnemeses Protos is yet another lingering lockdown effect in this list, this time preventing the summon of any monsters with the declared attribute until the end of the opponent's turn. Not only does this have great implications for breaking boards and preventing follow-ups, Protos itself cannot be destroyed by effects, so declaring its own Attribute, DARK, it can cut off the opponent from Special Summoning arguably the strongest monster Attribute in the game without destroying itself. What made Protos particularly infuriating was its use in the Swordsoul strategy. Swordsoul's archetypal search spell, Swordsoul Emergence, can search any Wyrm monster in the game, meaning Swordsoul can easily get Protos to the hand and fulfill its summoning condition as part of its standard combo. And, unlike Calamities and Utopic Zexal, the window the opponent has to answer Protos' summon is even more ridiculously tiny, as it activates on its own player's turn. It was banned in February 2022, as a way to curb the power of the recently released Swordsoul without hitting the main archetype cards.
  • Mystic Mine, another Field Spell with an extremely potent floodgate effect, prevented the player who's controlling more monsters than their opponent from attacking or activating any monster effects. The card doesn't specify monsters that they control, which means not only monsters on the field that are sealed, you cannot activate monster effects from places like hand and Graveyard too. It made sense on paper since most decks are so monster-dependent that Mystic Mine would actively hurt anyone in a leading position, and the Field itself would self-destruct once both players reached the same monster count. Decks that abused the card would often play Metaverse and "Demise of the Land" (this card being the reason Metaverse is limited) to activate the Field Spell the moment the opponent played a monster, and even cards like "Solemn Judgment" and "Dark Bribe" to deny the opponent's attempts at using backrow removal. It was also an excellent board-breaking card for decks that already played Field Spells and were able to take care of an entire board with a single monster, such as Sky Striker or Dinosaur while also slowing down the pace of the game considerably. The OCG banned this card in the October 2021 list, while the TCG did not follow suit until it was finally banned in the December 2022 banlist, much to the delight of the playerbase.
  • Part of a collection of six similar floodgate monsters, Barrier Statue of the Stormwinds rose to prominence in the early 2020s. Not only does its combination of Attribute and Typing make it easy to access by two semi-generic Extra Deck monsters, the WIND attribute it locks you into is one of the rarest in competitive Yu-Gi-Oh. Decks that use "Simorgh, Bird of Sovereignty" to fetch it add insult to injury by making it immune to targeting negation. Try to take advantage of its pitiful stats by destroying it in battle, to then make plays on Main Phase 2? Think again, because the decks that usually play it will hide it behind multiple layers of protection, such as Floowandereeze (see Series 11 folder in the main page), which on top of searching it easily, will also actively punish your attempts to out it in battle by starting up plays off your Normal Summon. This combination of factors led to its eventual ban in both the OCG and the TCG in-between late 2022 and early 2023.
  • The Artifact archetype had already enjoyed some meta success in 2014, but ended up falling by the wayside after significant powercreep. However, one member ended up becoming increasingly relevant as the years went on; Artifact Scythe, one of the most potent Extra Deck-lock effects to ever exist. While the card was intermittently used by control-based decks in conjunction with Artifact Sanctum (and even enjoyed a brief meta stint in the TCG in early 2017), this was nothing compared to the relevance it reached in the Series 11 era, all thanks to what everyone assumed was a fairly average card on release: Artifact Dagda. It doesn't matter that Dagda doesn't set Sanctum upon effect activation, because popping Scythe yourself on the opponent's turn is nothing short of a joke. The number of ways to summon it on the opponent's turn has also been increasing since then. Want to know the worst part? Scythe's effect is a lingering effect, which means that nothing short of preventing its summon, or negating it on activation will stop the lock. The card was eventually banned in February 2023 in the TCG, eliminating the core of the problem.
  • Branded Expulsion is a Trap Card that allows you to Tribute a Fusion Monster to Special Summon two non-Fusion monsters from your Graveyard, one to each side of the field. The issue with this is gets used on monsters that prevent their controllers from Summoning as a downside, like Ido the Supreme Magical Force, Gimmick Puppet Nightmare, and Ra's Disciple. Because these monsters are easy Fusion Material for Branded Fusion monsters, and the Branded Spells and Traps are really easy to search, Expulsion can be easily slipped into the usual Branded play lines to set up the combo to put those detrimental monsters on the opponent's field, locking them out of most plays unless they have the means to get those monsters off the field. Expulsion was banned in the June 2023 list to stop Branded players from teching cheesy floodgate tools... and then Albion the Sanctifire Dragon got printed, with a similar effect that players exploit for the same purpose.
  • Kashtira Arise-Heart is a boss monster for the Kashtira archetype meant to pair with Kashtira Shangri-Ira. The taxing cost of three Level 7 monsters is easily circumvented by using any one Kashtira monster if you've triggered any of Shangri-Ira's effects. It's got a monstrous 3000/3000 body that also passively banishes any card that would go to the GY, and can snatch any banished card as Xyz Material, which loads up for its Quick Effect that can banish any card face-down to trigger Shangri-Ira's zone-locking effect yet again. Arise-Heart backing up Shangri-Ira makes for a really difficult board to break as you're fighting against a walking floodgate with a big body and removal effect while Shangri-Ira is pumping out other Kashtira monsters and locking away more of your Zones. The TCG initially Limited him in June 2023 (alongside other Kashtira hits), but eventually saw fit to ban him in September 2023.
  • Summon Limit is a card that has become exponentially more powerful over time. Initially releasing in 2008, it is a Continuous Trap that prevents both players from summoning more than twice per turn. It is somewhat unassuming by the standards of its debut year, as the game was slow enough that summoning only 1 or 2 monsters per turn was a fairly standard play. However, with the increasing speed of the game, Summon Limit becomes much more devastating, as most modern decks are required to summon many monsters in one turn in order to execute their strategies. With only 2 summons to work with, even making a half-decent board can be near impossible, especially in combination with other disruptions the Summon Limit user may have. Furthermore, the Summon Limit user can easily deal with the card restricting their own summons either by playing a strategy that can summon powerful monsters without lengthy combos, or by removing it from the field with their own card effects. Summon Limit was banned in April 2024 after a stint in popularity as a Side Deck option in both Snake-Eye, which could send Summon Limit to the Graveyard to pay for their card effects, and Voiceless Voice, a Ritual deck which could easily bring out its main boss monster under Summon Limit's restrictions.

• Banned Mass Summoning cards ^explanationAllows for easy swarming of a field.:
  • Magical Scientist. Essentially Instant Fusion but with even fewer limitations and usable multiple times per turn, Scientist created one of the first true FTK strategies in the game: all you needed was this card, the pre-errata Catapult Turtle, and Fusions with 2000 or more ATK, and you could burn your opponent down to nothing before they could even respond. In non-FTK decks, the card was still immensely useful, given its ability to bring out reasonably strong beaters or toolbox effect monsters at minimal cost. Even with Catapult Turtle's nerf, common consensus is that Magical Scientist has only gotten more powerful since then, due to the massively increased number of things you can do with spare high-level monsters and the strong Fusions released making more options available—the card can essentially generate FTK plays by itself now.
  • Dimension Fusion, a mass recover from the banished zone. Among other things, this was a key card in the infamous Dark Armed Return deck, which was so fast and powerful, that it became the first entire deck to be emergency banned with this being banned along with its partner in crime, (Pre-errata) Dark Magician of Chaos, which allowed for instant recycling of it.
  • Return from the Different Dimension, a trap version of the above, was limited in that same emergency banned list for similar reasons. The final nail in its coffin came when Dragon Rulers came out, and this card became an instant One Turn Kill for said deck almost any time it was used.
  • Ultimate Offering. Yep, a card that lets you bypass one of the most basic restrictions in the game as long as you have life points to spare. This card saw all kinds of abuse in decks with heavy normal summon search power (Gadgets and Blackwings in particular) before it was banned.
  • Performage Plushfire, a monster with a ridiculous, spammable special summon from the deck or hand effect. Not once per turn, and since it's a Pendulum Monster, it can activate if destroyed in the Pendulum Zone. Not only that, two of the monsters that can be summoned have effects that make extending combos easier and bring another copy of Plushfire to trigger even more summons. This monster was a cornerstone for the infamous PePe deck, and is the most notable card hit on the second emergency banlist. Even after the Master Rule Revisions that limit Pendulum Monsters, this card wouldn't see the light of day without an errata.
  • Soul Charge. Dimension Fusion meets Monster Reborn, all for a somewhat heftier Life Point Cost. However, its restrictions mean nothing, because there is absolutely nothing that prevents you from Special Summoning extra monsters that turn, and if you're playing this when going first, you aren't able to attack anyway, effectively giving this card zero drawbacks. There are also zero restrictions on which monsters you can bring back, letting you use high level monsters as materials, then simply bring them back to use again. The card ended up enabling the revival of Infernity and allowed the Sylvan archetype to make some quite absurd powerful fields with only two cards. The card sat at 1 copy for years and was considered very sacky, and only got worse as the meta shifted to more aggressive single-turn plays. Konami finally put it to banned status in 2019.
  • Level Eater has long been a staple in many of the more popular Synchro-based decks. It can resurrect itself from the graveyard infinitely as long as you control a level 5 or higher monster, making it a vital piece of any strategy that involves performing multiple Synchro summons in a single turn. While it has been forbidden for a while in the OCG, the TCG left it unattended until the advent of Link Monsters, where Level Eater's effect would have been just as useful for spamming Link Summons as it was for Synchros. Thus, it was banned in the February 5, 2018, List for the TCG.
  • Ronintoadin is a Level 2 Frog monster that can Special Summon itself from the Graveyard without a once per turn limitation. This monster is a cornerstone for the infamous Frog FTK deck in tandem with the now-limited Substitoad and the still-banned Mass Driver, and even during Substitoad's time on the banlist continued to see play as an enabler for the infamous Toadally Awesome. Ronintoadin finally got the axe in September 2022 due to its interactions with Spright, thanks to being Level 2 and being used with Swap Frog to bring Toadally Awesome for consistent interruption plays for the deck.
  • Spright Elf is an incredible extender, only needing a Level 2 monster as one of its materials. The monsters it points to can't be targeted, and as a Quick Effect it can revive a Level 2 monster (extending to Rank/Link 2 if the opponent controls a monster). Unlike the other Spright extender Gigantic Spright, Elf imposes no restrictions on what you can Summon after using its effects. There are a lot of good targets with on-Summon effects for Elf to recur for great value, both in and outside its home archetype, so it got banned in the TCG in February 2023, with the OCG following suit in April that year.

• Banned Token Swarming cards ^explanationCards that summon a lot of tokens, which creates potential for easy extra deck plays.:
  • Blackwing-Gofu the Vague Shadow. It's basically 2 free tokens and a tuner body. The fact that these tokens couldn't be used for Synchro Summons or tributes, however, meant it fell by the wayside... until Link Summoning was introduced. Suddenly, simply having a Gofu in hand meant a free Link-3, which enabled easy turboing out of Link Monsters. Gofu was banned February 2018 in the TCG, with the OCG following suit the same year. The funny part? Gofu has only gotten more potentially broken with the existence of cards like Crystron Halqifibrax, meaning the card will never see the light of the day again.
  • Dandylion summons two tokens when it hits the graveyard by any way. Discard it, mill it, and use it as a Synchro, Xyz, Link material and/or tribute fodder. Anything is fair game with this card. It saw some play during the 5Ds era in the Plant Synchro strategy, but it got really crazy when Link monsters were introduced. On top of creating easy tokens for Link plays, it also has no once per turn restrictions on it, meaning that if you had multiple copies of Dandylion, or managed to resurrect and send it to the graveyard again, you'd get even more Fluff tokens, leading to some degenerate plays. To stop this swarming, Dandylion got banned in February 2018.
  • Grinder Golem is perhaps the biggest upward swing of power a card has ever had. For the small cost of locking down your Normal Summon, you get two free tokens and summon Golem to the opponent's field. For years, this card was considered terrible: you gave up your Normal Summon to give your opponent a sizable beatstick, all for two measly tokens in attack position. Then, Link Summoning came out, and those tokens could be used effectively. What pushed this card into game breaking territory, however, was that this effect wasn't once per turn, and certain Link Monsters could return Grinder Golem to your hand, summoning even more tokens. It quickly became one of the most hated cards in the game, as getting this card in your hand would almost always spell a loss for your opponent by creating a flood of Link Monsters they couldn't handle. It was finally axed on January's 2019 banlist.
  • Number 42: Galaxy Tomahawk was originally not such a threatening card, since the tokens it summoned were destroyed at the end of the turn and couldn't deal battle damage anyway due to the drawback of the effect that summons them. However, the advent of the Link format, and the Danger! archetype in particular turned things upside-down. The Danger! decks could easily summon materials for Number 42 and summon tokens to be used for a massive wave of link summons, usually resulting in a first turn Extra Link and an almost certain defeat for the opponent. Galaxy Tomahawk was therefore banned on the January 28 2019 TCG List.
  • Linkross was often combined with Crystron Halqifibrax with terrifying results, as it summons tokens to your field up to the Link Rating of the monster used for Linkross' Link Summon. Sure, these tokens cannot be used for a Link Summon during the turn you Special Summon them, but they can be used to Synchro Summon with the Tuner monster Halqifibrax just summoned to Synchro Summon Martial Metal Marcher which summons that Tuner back, allowing you to Synchro Summon more high level monsters. With the Master Rule (April 1st Revision), Synchro Summons became easier, as you don't need to summon it to a zone a Link monster points to anymore. This card allowed for any deck with a few Tuners to easily end with boards containing Herald of the Arc-Light and Borreload Savage Dragon. It was Limited in the April 2020 OCG Lists, later banned in the July 2020 OCG list and the December 2020 TCG list. It is the fastest Extra Deck Monster to be banned in the OCG.
  • Mecha Phantom Beast Auroradon summons three Tokens when Link Summoned, but prevents you from Link Summoning any further to keep you from using those Tokens for further Link Climbing. Seems reasonable, until you read Auroradon's other effect: It can Tribute two monsters, including itself, to Special Summon a Mecha Phantom Beast monster from your Deck, such as any of its Tuners, to use the Tokens it's made for Synchro Summoning. For instance, you can pull out O-Lion to make a Level 8 Synchro such as Borreload Savage Dragon which equips Auroradon to itself to stock up three charges of omni-negates, and that's just one of the simplest ways to use Auroradon. The "Machines-only" Summon requirement was also easy to meet since Halqifibrax is also an easily-accessed Machine Link monster that can Summon a Machine Tuner. The Halqifibrax-Auroradon combo was so generic that nearly any Deck could access it as a Plan B (or even their main play line), so Auroradon was banned in the TCG, in May 2022; Halqifibrax followed five months later.

• Banned graveyard setup cards ^explanationBoosts graveyard setup, a crucial resource for many decks.:
  • Painful Choice: While it most definitely lives up to its name, it hides what is quite possibly the most convenient graveyard setup card ever created in the game. If you use this card right, it should matter little what the opponent chooses as everything else goes to the graveyard and, unlike Future Fusion, this card can be splashed into any deck. After using this card, you can gain tons of advantage for each card sent or simply instant setup for Soul Charge, Rekindling, or for resources to banish for special summon monsters. It's so devastating, that it was among the very first cards to ever be banned in the game.
  • Mind Master, which is essentially a Substitoad for Psychic-types, albeit with a stricter tribute cost and an 800 lifepoint cost per use (unless you use Brain Research Lab or Telekinetic Charging Cell...). Due to a much larger pool of monsters to choose from than Substitoad, there are many potential ways to (ab)use this card. But, the most infamous combo involves Caam, Serenity of Gusto, where every 1600 lifepoints spent gets you another draw using Caam's effect. And if you combine Mind Master with the aforementioned cards that remove the lifepoint costs? Congratulations, you now have an infinite draw engine.
  • Fishborg Blaster is a level 1 tuner. At first the effect may appear fair, as you need to synchro with it only using WATER monsters and need to discard a card to special summon it, limiting its usage... until you realize the existence of multiple monsters that offset the cost while being summoned and the existence of multiple engines that swarm the field with WATER monsters with little to no cost. Fishborg could lead to some crazy fields in what came to be known as Water Synchro, and was a big part of what got T.G. Hyper Librarian and Formula Synchron Limited. It was banned in September 2011, being one of the few cards that went from Unlimited to outright banned. And its abusability has only increased throughout the years with the addition of the Atlanteans.
  • Lavalval Chain is a Rank 4 Xyz monster (the most supported rank in the game) with an effect to send any card from the deck to the grave (a Foolish Burial/Foolish Burial Goods on legs). This card was abused in several FTKs and loops, resulting in its ban. Its second effect is also really useful for stacking any main deck monster, which coupled with any draw card enables a lot of combos.
  • That Grass Looks Greener is a card that thins your 60-card deck out in order to compete with 40-card decks. Oh sorry, we misspoke: Grass Looks Greener puts 60-card decks over 40-card decks. With any archetype that can revive cards from the graveyard, Grass Looks Greener becomes a Foolish Burial on speed, turning your graveyard into your second hand very early in the game. This resulted in its Limitation in the TCG in March 2017 and ultimate banning in May 2018. Even in Duel Links, where the reduced deck sizes makes the card less effective (milling a maximum of 10 cards), it proved so broken that it forced the creation of Duel Link's own banlist as one of the first two cards on it.
  • Galaxy-Eyes Dark Matter Dragon, basically a Foolish Burial x3 for Dragon decks, can be easily summoned by just using a Galaxy-Eyes Xyz monster as material. Already the card responsible for sending the adult Dragon Rulers to the banlist, it once again found a way to be abused with Guardragon Agarpain. It got banned in the Apr 2019 TCG lists to hit Dragon Link piles.
  • "Chaos Ruler, the Chaotic Magical Dragon" is a great card for almost any Graveyard-heavy deck; on Synchro Summon, it allows you to excavate 5 cards, add a LIGHT or DARK monster to your hand, then mills the rest, giving you a way to dig for key combo pieces while dumping cards for future use. It also has a great statline for a Level 8 Synchro at 3000 ATK and can be revived once by banishing a LIGHT and DARK monster from your Graveyard. Its favorite deck was Dragon Link for its ability to massively extend thanks to Graveyard setup shenanigans and was ultimately banned in the October 2022 TCG list for being just a little too good and generic. The OCG would eventually ban it in its October 2023 list after it singlehandedly kept the hobbling remnants of the Tearlaments deck alive for several months past its expiration date.
  • Much like Lavalval Chain, Curious, the Lightsworn Dominion is able to send any card from the deck to the Graveyard, but instead of being a Rank 4, Curious is a Link-3 monster that needs 3 monsters with the same Attribute, but different Types. A great perk of Curious' Link Rating is that you can send a Trap Card to the Graveyard, then use Curious and any other monster to Link Summon Knightmare Gryphon, who can set that Trap straight to the field, meaning you could essentially search any Trap Card in the game if your deck could easily make Curious. It was banned in the TCG on the December 2022 banlist after its success in Danger Tearlaments, a deck that used the Danger monsters (which are all DARK and had varying Types) to support the Tearlaments archetype, a Fusion strategy that especially enjoyed powerful Graveyard setup.
  • Tearlaments Kitkallos is a powerful member of the Tearlaments archetype, which Fusion Summons by putting material from hand/field/GY on the bottom of the Deck when they themselves get sent to the GY. She's made with any Tearlaments monster and any Aqua monster (effortless for the Tearlaments Deck), but as a Level 5, she can also be cheated out with Instant Fusion. She's got three ways to put Tearlaments monsters in the GY — milling one of your choice on Summon, sending one on the field to the GY for another Tearlaments Special Summon, and milling five cards if she herself is sent to the GY by card effect (this includes sending herself to the GY for the second effect). She's incredibly versatile in an already powerful archetype, so when the Tearlaments archetype was getting gutted by the early 2023 banlists, Kitkallos was banned by both OCG and TCG. Since she's also a Material for the Tearlaments boss monster Rulkallos, her ban also indirectly made it hard (but not impossible) to Summon Rulkallos.
  • Released in the Magnificent Mavens set were the retrained Ishizu Fairies, built around fueling and manipulating the Graveyard to synergize with and enable Exchange of the Spirit. Agido and Kelbek are powerful millers, able to mill five cards if sent from the hand or Deck to the GY in any way. Naturally, these two were fantastic enablers for the Tearlaments, able to start or synergize off their milling effects and load up Fusion Material for their unconventional Fuse-from-the-Graveyard methods. Though they were initially Limited in the February 2023 TCG Lists to take down Tearlaments a peg, even a single one of these millers going off was still fantastic for any Graveyard-based strategy, not just Tearlaments. The OCG saw it fit to ban Agido and Kelbek in October 2023, and the TCG followed suit in January 2024.

• Banned anti-backrow cards ^explanationDecimates the opponent's spells/traps and clears the way for One-turn Kills:
  • Heavy Storm is similar to Harpie's Feather Duster, except it also affects the user's own cards. So, while it can be problematic late game if you play a backrow heavy deck, it’s still just as effective as Harpie’s Feather Duster going second for any deck. When this card was legal, it pretty much mandated playing Starlight Road if you ran a backrow heavy deck, lest you lose it all to Heavy Storm. The most notable reasons this card is still banned in comparison to Harpie's Feather Duster? There are spells and traps that have graveyard effects and/or floating effects that make great mileage off this (the Phantom Knights are the most notable examples of this) and this also works well for scaled Pendulum Monsters which go to the Extra Deck and trigger their effects after destruction. It wasn't until 2024 when this card would come off of any banlist, going to Limited in the OCG's January 2024 list.
  • Cold Wave, which prohibits both players from activating or setting Spells or Traps until your next turn, allowing the user to go the first two turns without needing to worry about Spells or Traps or go straight for the kill, barring any monster effect use. It also does not destroy, making it much harder to answer than the above cards.
  • Giant Trunade returns all Spell/Trap cards on the field to the hand. Like Cold Wave, this card does not destroy, limiting answers to it. But, on top of the power of clearing backrow, it also allows you to reuse Continuous Spells/Traps for either additional plusses, and/or give yourself a turn to play around your own floodgates, then reactivating them against the opponent before they can do the same.
  • Red Reboot is a Counter Trap that can be activated from the hand provided you pay half your LP, and can negate the activation of any Trap while also preventing the opponent from activating any Traps for the rest of the turn. While it doesn't destroy the card and also allows the opponent to set any Trap from their deck, being locked out of Traps for the turn is incredibly devastating for any Trap-based deck, especially if the other player can easily deal enough damage for an OTK. Making it worse is the fact that it's the hardest of these to answer, as only another counter trap can negate it.

• Banned control cards ^explanationCards that allow a player to dictate or disrupt the flow of the game:
  • Last Turn, which clears the field of all but one of your monsters, wipes the field and hands and then your opponent special summons any monster, last man standing wins. Sounds fair right? Until you realize just how many monsters have an effect that prevents special summons or the abundant ways to abuse the loopholes in the card and guarantee a win or at worst, a draw. It also doesn't help that Last Turn is a rulings nightmare.
  • Master Peace, the True Dracoslaying King. Can be tributed by sending Continuous Spells and Traps to the graveyard, has a quick free pop, and easily searchable with Dragonic Diagram (itself a Game Breaker due to its interactions with other cards in the archetype and even outside of it - leading to several powerful hybrid builds like True Draco/King Dinosaur Yang Zing before Diagram itself was banned in the OCG). All of the Spell and Trap cards in the archetype also destroy things when sent to the graveyard from the field, worsening the impact of a successful Master Peace summon. The best you can do is act on its one weakness (if you have the available cards to exploit it), or tribute it for a Kaiju...but then, the True Draco player can easily either shore up against spells with Imperial Order, or shuffle him back into the deck with one of the Continuous Spells, where Dragonic Diagram can fetch him again. Adding insult to injury, the Continuous Trap True King's Return can let a player bust him out on their opponent's turn, disrupting plays by suddenly destroying key monsters, and forcing the opponent to reckon with an easily recurred Master Peace. It also doesn't help that you can use many oppressive floodgates to summon Master Piece and that blanket card protection makes him immune to the floodgates in play, it's the Floodgate Boss Monster who can live and breathe under the miasma of floodgates with little problems to the controller. The card was so oppressive that it was banned in the OCG in October 2017, with the TCG following suit in May 2018.
  • Knightmare Goblin, notably the first Link monster to be banned, is by far and away the best of the Knightmare cards, basically being a Double Summon in legs. This made it a very powerful play extender for Link-based decks. And to add insult to injury, it gives a draw if it's co-linked, and it also makes it so that co-linked monsters can't be targeted, easily the best form of protection offered by any of the Knightmare cards. This made it an instant staple of oppressive Link spam decks, which were nigh impossible to beat without siding Sphere Mode Ra, earning the card a spot on the Forbidden list.
  • Zoodiac Drident: One of two Zoodiac Xyz monsters to be banned, with a straightforward effect; detach 1 to destroy a face-up card on the field. This effect pretty much forces the opponent to answer it, or plan to lose an important combo piece, beater or enabler if they can't. Ending off with one of these was a very standard play in Zoodiacs, and a major part of the reason the archetype was so dominant. And, good luck winning if they break out another one in the following turn. Even if you weren't playing a Zoodiac deck, it's so good that you'd be foolish not to run it if you ran any other Zoodiac Xyz monster, including Broadbull. It was brought off to limited in April 2020, but even then, the fear for Zoodiac's return to dominance with it was enough to send Barrage to limited status as a precaution. As of July 2021, however, Drident has once again returned to being Forbidden, likely because of the archetype's interactions with "Divine Arsenal AA-Zeus - Sky Thunder" (see Series 11 folder), a field wipe that synergizes ridiculously well with the Zoodiac's stacking effects.
  • Simorgh, Bird of Sovereignty, a Link monster with laughable summoning requirements (any Link 2 and any Winged Beast will suffice), that can Special Summon ANY Winged Beast from hand or deck during any player's End Phase. Just in the first turn, it can setup free negates or a special summon floodgate. And on top of this, it makes any Winged-Beast monsters it points to untargetable by the opponent, greatly limiting the possible answers against them. These effects were heavily abused in decks using Winged Beasts - such as Tri-Brigade, Lyrilusc and Blackwing -, and as such, it got banned in the TCG in early 2022.
  • Fairy Tail - Snow has been an annoyance for many players since its release. Neither of its effects are once per turn, and if you have the resources to keep paying its cost, Snow isn't even once per Chain, allowing it to dodge counters. This led to the card being used as cheap play interruptions and free materials for Xyz or Link plays in everything from Lightsworn and 60 card mill decks to Danger! and Thunder Dragons, the latter of whom actually benefited from the banishing cost, until it was banned in January 2019. It would later return to Limited in the February 2022 banlist after Thunder Dragons fell off the map... that is, until the release of another self-milling strategy in Tearalaments saw Snow being abused once again and promptly got her thrown back back on the banlist in September 2022.
  • The duo of Borreload Savage Dragon and Baronne de Fleur were banned at the exact same time in the TCG (April 2024), and for the exact same reason: Both are completely generic Extra Deck monsters with massive bodies that offer a Quick Effect omni-negate at no cost. Both monsters were constant fixtures in Extra Decks & represented a toxic design philosophy for Extra Deck monsters that had been plaguing both the game and the community for years. On the gameplay side, high tier decks that either had random Tuners or could find incidental Tuner synergies constantly ran them to insulate their boards, while any weaker archetype that made Synchro plays had to constantly ask if its in-archetype Extra Deck payoffs, if it even had any, were more valuable than a 3000 Attack body that could just stop a play dead, and in almost every case they weren't. On the community side, the pair were often held up as the posterchildren (alongside Apollousa) for the game's negative reputation of being a "Go first & spam a million negates or lose" combofest, as well as contributing to years of unhealthy power creep. The final nail for these two was the Snake Eyes engine, whose ability to make use of Level 1 FIRE monsters led to another round of abuse for poor Jet Synchron.

• Banned toolbox cards ^explanationAllows for easy searching of crucial combo pieces for a player's strategy or offers them too many potential options for plays.:
  • Last Will. Think of Sangan BUT ON CRACK. Add the Power Creep that has followed throughout the years and Last Will has become a free tutor for everything broken under the sun. Last Will was banned in March 2007 and hasn't left the list ever since. Notably, what truly made it broken was a ruling change. Prior to 2006, it only worked if you played it before a monster was sent to the Graveyard, which made it Awesome, but Impractical since there were few reliable ways to send your own monsters from the field to the Graveyard at the time and, once played, the opponent could avoid destroying your monsters that turn to make the effect expire (this is why it's rarely ever seen in 2005 Goat Format matches). After the ruling change that it could be played after the monster was sent to the Graveyard, it became a lot more consistent to pull off.
  • In the earliest days of the game, Fusion Monsters were considered Awesome, but Impractical. While some of their effects were decent, they often required too many resources put into them, which could bite you in the behind if your field got nuked. In an attempt to make fusions more practical, Konami created Metamorphosis, one of the most convenient cards in the game. The intent was to give Fusion based archetypes better access to their Fusions, but it worked a bit too well, as it gave decks that were completely unrelated to the Fusions powerful new options they had no right of ever having, and ended up contributing to the infamous Goat format. While certain ban list cards have gotten weaker over the years thanks to Power Creep, Metamorphosis has gotten more powerful thanks to more useful Fusion monsters being introduced.
  • In the old days of the game, all one needed to do was summon a Cyber-Stein to ensure victory. Cyber-Stein on its own is not that great - terrible ATK and DEF, practically useless, right? Wrong. It has a nasty little effect that lets you summon any fusion monster at the cost of 5000 life points. Like, say, a Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon with 4500 ATK, for instance. Using this effect almost ensures you have less life points than your opponent, which allows you to equip Megamorph (doubling its ATK to 9000) and Fairy Meteor Crush (allowing it to deal damage to defending monsters) to it and attack for game. It was the first One Turn Kill strategy ever invented in the metagame, since life points started at 8000. It got banned in 2007, and finally got unbanned after twelve years. Even after its unban, modern-day users could use it to lock your opponent from activating Spells and Traps, ban your opponent from ANY kind of Summon and burn your opponent to death which was made even worse with several modern cards being able to search Cyber-Stein. It got banned again on the June 2023 TCG list.
  • Zoodiac Broadbull, the other of the two Xyz monsters from the infamously broken Zoodiac archetype to be banned, allows you to search any Beast-Warrior monster from deck that can be Normal Summoned. As if being a universal type searcher wasn't bad enough, all Zoodiac monsters can be Xyz summoned as long as you have a Zoodiac monster on the field. This mechanic also allows you to use its effect twice in one turn by simply Xyz summoning it the normal way, stacking a different Zoodiac Xyz on top of it, then stacking another Broadbull on top of that, enabling some crazy combos such as an instant Pendulum scale setup off of essentially one Xyz summon, and that's not even getting into the fact that even after all that, you could still stack a Zoodiac Drident on top as well.
  • Supreme King Dragon Starving Venom is able to copy any monster effect on the field or in the GY. It is able to be easily summoned by simply having two DARK monsters on the field (achievable enough in Pendulum Magicians), but in conjuncture with burning your opponent to death, recursion and draw power, and (in the OCG) field wiping, proved it to be too powerful, so it became banned on May 2018.
  • On that note there's The Tyrant Neptune, this Level 10 monster can gain any effects from its tributes, with the most notable card leading to its ban being Lyrilusc - Independent Nightingale. When Tribute summoned with that card (easily setup with Instant Fusion), you have a 6000 attack beater, immune to card effects, and that can deal 5000 burn damage every turn. To make things worse, the monster is easily searchable with King of the Feral Imps, a generic rank 4 Xyz monster. As such, it was banned in both formats in 2017.
  • M-X-Saber Invoker. At the time of its release, it saw little play due to being a niche card at best that also wasn't very compatible with the X-Sabers themselves. But then power creep kicked in, and it was a key card in two of the game's more notoriously overpowered archetypes, those being Zoodiacs and Gouki. Its abuse in the latter as a crucial combo piece proved the card's demise.
  • Eclipse Wyvern. Long a staple in Chaos and Dragon Ruler based decks for its ability to search out powerful dragon monsters, to the point that it was a major factor in the ban of Future Fusion, its own demise would come with its usage in Guardragon variants, where it was usually used in conjunction with cards like Black Dragon Collapserpent, White Dragon Wyverburster, and Chaos Dragon Levianeer to allow you to always maintain advantage while keeping board presence. Its effect not being once per turn certainly helped too. It was banned in the July 2019 list, alongside Collapserpent and Wyverburster going to Limited status as well.^note The OCG lists have Wyvern banned and Wyverburster limited as well, but have REDMD banned and Collapserpent Unlimited instead.
  • Knightmare Mermaid is the second banned Knightmare Link Monster. By discarding one card you special summon one Knightmare monster from the deck, allowing you to get an Anti-Special Summoning floodgate, or, what eventually got the card banned; start the Orcust engine. Its materials: Any other Knightmare monster; by extension, it means any two monsters with different names, since you can make Knightmare Phoenix or Knightmare Cerberus, which in turn can be used as the material for Mermaid. This allows any deck in the game to splash the Orcust engine for a free omni-negate or a non-targeting send, recover and destruction protection. As such, Mermaid was banned in both TCG and OCG in mid-2019.
  • Guardragon Agarpain and Guardragon Elpy gave you access to Dragons from your Extra Deck or Main Deck respectively, without negating their effects. The catch is that you can only Summon to a Zone that two Link Monsters point to, but in dedicated Dragon Link decks, this is easy to do. You can easily get access to Dragon boss monsters out of your Extra, or Dragon extenders out of your Main Deck, leading to formidable, difficult-to-break boards. Agarpain would get banned in the Oct 2019 lists, and Elpy would be banned in mid-2021 afterwards.
  • Heavymetalfoes Electrumite. All of its effects are strong, but are taken to game-breaking levels when used in Pendulum Magicians. Suddenly the deck has been given easy searching for most of its cards, gained free additional advantage for something it was already doing (destroying its scales), and had a way to easily loop Astrograph Sorcerer, often resulting in massive boards being produced from just two or three cards. It was so effective that it resulted in the TCG banning Astrograph Sorcerer in May 2018. Electrumite itself wound up limited to 1 in the September 19 2018 list in the TCG, and ultimately got banned in the January 2020 TCG list.
  • Union Carrier was intended to be a tool to support Union-based archetypes and a few occasional non-Union archetypes with equippable monsters like Cyberdarks and Dragunity. However, its restrictions were too loose, resulting in Decks that it wasn't meant to support finding combos with devastating consequences. The most potent of these is Dragon Buster Destruction Sword, which locks your opponent out of the Extra deck while equipped; it's meant to be equipped only to Buster Blader, but Union Carrier can equip it to any DARK or Dragon monster (which happen to be among the most popular Attributes and Types respectively). This specific interaction led to Dragon Buster Destruction Sword getting banned in the TCG in December 2020. Union Carrier also assisted in the Dragon Link FTK by allowing Earthbound Immortal Aslla piscu to be equipped, easily exploiting its "leaves the field" trigger while bypassing its Field Spell requirement. Due to the sheer amount of shenanigans it enabled, Union Carrier was banned in the TCG in March 2021, while the OCG banned it in October 2022. Dragon Buster Destruction Sword was allowed to leave the banlist afterwards.
  • Eva was initially overlooked for its situational searching conditions making it a niche card. But after the release of Drytrons, Ritual-based strategies, such as decks combining Cyber Angels and Heralds, which both fulfill the graveyard setup for Eva, became far more consistent which allows for the normally Awesome, but Impractical Herald of Ultimateness all but guaranteed to hit the field on the first turn. What pushed it over the top was that Eva can search up two copies of Herald of Orange Light, and was accessible from the deck by Beatrice, Lady of the Eternal which is right at home alongside the Level six Cyber Angels. The card advantage and first turn set-up provided by Eva made it Limited in the September 2021 TCG banlist, before being outright banned in February 2022, while the OCG limited the card in the July 2022 banlist.
  • Predaplant Verte Anaconda can be summoned using any two Effect Monsters, and its effect allows it to copy any Polymerization or Fusion spell card with the only caveat being that you can't special summon any other monsters after you use it. Being so generic and easy to use meant that virtually every deck that could run Links and was willing to carry a few bricks could go into certain FTK strategies or simply sit on horribly powerful Fusion Monsters that were meant to be balanced by being chained to mediocre archetypes, such as the notorious Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon and Destiny HERO - Destroyer Phoenix Enforcer. What's worse is that Verte Anaconda was not very useful in its home archetype because their best play starter Predapractice locked its user out of Summoning non-Fusion Monsters from the Extra Deck. Out-of-archetype combos involving Verte Anaconda led to Dragoon being limited in the TCG and banned in the OCG and Fusion Destiny was briefly Forbidden in the OCG. Konami finally got the message after its two-year reign, and Verte was banned in the March 2022 OCG banlist and the May 2022 TCG banlist, which allowed Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon to come off the TCG limited list, albeit heavily crippled despite being unlimited ^note the same cannot be said for the OCG version of Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon which is still banned to this day.
  • Crystron Halqifibrax, when Link Summoned, Special Summons a Level 3 or lower Tuner to a zone it points to. Many of the most common hand traps in the game happen to fall under this category, giving decks that run them even more value. Other common targets include Tuners that can Special Summon themselves from the Graveyard, such as Spore, Glow-Up Bulb, and Jet Synchron. This effectively makes Halqifibrax a free Link 4 unless it gets interrupted. It's rather telling that the three best generic tuners (one of which being the aforementioned Glow-Up Bulb) were all banned in one fell swoop the month after its release in the TCG. The fact that it took until nearly the end of the VRAINS era (March 2020) for this card to be imported to the TCG should tell you just how good of a combo starter it is. The strength of the plays Halqifibrax enabled eventually led to both Jet Synchron and Mecha Phantom Beast O-Lion getting banned in the September 2020 TCG list, with the restriction on Jet Synchron only being lifted in May 2022, once the aforementioned Mecha Phantom Beast Auroradon (Halq's main parter in crime and combo enabler) was Forbidden. Halqifibrax itself would be banned in the OCG in July 2022, and the TCG followed suit in October 2022; Blackwing - Steam the Cloak and Mecha Phantom Beast O-Lion were both subsequently allowed back at 1 as Halqifibrax (and, in O-Lion's case, Auroradon) was no longer around to facilitate easy toolboxing of those cards.
  • Superheavy Samurai Scarecrow is a Link 1 that lets you discard cards to Special Summon Superheavy Samurai monsters from your GY. It also can't be used as Link Material, so you definitely cannot abuse it for Link climbing. Scarecrow, as a Link 1, meant that you can just use Soulpiercer as the Material for it to trigger its non-once-per-turn search ability, and Scarecrow can revive Soulpiercer to do it again. This became incredibly potent when Superheavy Samurai Prodigy Wakaushi was introduced in Cyberstorm Access, allowing the Superheavy Samurai to create enormous end boards with generic boss monsters (not even the Superheavy Synchro bosses!) off just two cards. Rather than hit the new playmakers, Scarecrow was banned to nerf the deck.
  • Isolde, Two Tales of the Noble Knights searches a Warrior to the hand upon being Link Summoned, with the caveat of being unable to summon or use the effects of any more monsters with that name. Her real power comes in being able to send Equip Spells to the GY to Special Summon a Warrior whose Level is equal to the number of Equip Spells sent. Note that this can be any Warrior, not specifically a Noble Knight; Goukis are Warrior-type, have a Level 1 monster with Octostretch, and love to recur Phoenix Blade as discard fodder for Knightmares. The match practically made itself. As a bonus bit of irony, many players consider Isolde to be sub-optimal in Noble Knights, the very archetype she is a part of and meant to support. As a result, Phoenix Blade is now banned in the 2019 OCG lists, and Isolde was banned in the January 2024 list.
  • Mathmech Circular is a very potent support for the Mathmech archetype. Released in Power of the Elements, it's a one-card combo that does everything the archetype needed to reach competency. It Special Summons itself by milling a Mathmech monster as cost, allowing you to set up and Special Summon Sigma. When you Summon another Mathmech monster (like the aforementioned Sigma), you can search a Mathmech Spell/Trap from your Deck, so you can either extend with Equation or prepare a Superfactorial to disrupt on the opponent's turn. This puts two Cyberse monsters on the field without even using your Normal Summon, opening up a lot of Cyberse Link climbing combos that can end on bosses like Accesscode Talker or Firewall Dragon Darkfluid - Neo Tempest Terahertz. The only drawback is that you only get to attack with one monster for this turn, which is a very lenient restriction coming from a one-card combo. Circular not only pushed Mathmechs into prominence, but it can also condense Mathmech combos into compact engines that can be melded into many other Decks that can accommodate it. The only thing keeping Mathmech from dominating tournaments was that it was pushed out by the even stronger Spright and Tearlament cards, and the combos can be interrupted by Bystials in the next pack. Circular was Limited in the June 2023 TCG list and the July 2023 OCG list in acknowledgement of its power, and later banned in the January 2024 TCG list.
  • Linkuriboh is a LINK-1 Link Monster that can send itself from the field to the Graveyard when an opponent's monster declares an attack to change that attacking monster's ATK to 0 and has a Quick Effect to Tribute a Level 1 monster on the field to Special Summon itself from the Graveyard. While consistently useful in many decks that have access to Level 1 monsters, the presence of the Snake-Eye archetype finally pushed Linkuriboh over the edge; it functions as an enabler for Snake-Eyes Poplar, allowing Poplar to put itself in the Graveyard to use its effect to put itself in the backrow, can be used for Link climbing plays or as fodder for the activation of Snake-Eye Ash to fetch any other Snake-Eye monster from the Deck, makes boards frustrating for your opponent to punch over, and Linkuriboh's Grave effect can be used to tag out your monsters and dodge targeted negates and/or removal, making Snake-Eye combos that much more difficult to interrupt. Linkuriboh was banned in the TCG April 2024 list to weaken the potency of Snake-Eye decks.

• Banned loop cards ^explanationEither creates or weaponizes a loop.:
  • Premature Burial, a graveyard revival card that due to the wording, does not result in the destruction of the revived monster if it leaves the field by any means besides destruction. Any card that returns cards to the hand (i. e. Giant Trunade, pre-errata Brionac, pre-errata Dewloren, etc.) can lead to revival abuse with this card, more than compensating for the 800 LP more often than not. With Disc Commander, this led to multiple revive-draw loops.
  • Butterfly Dagger - Elma: On its own, it's a very mediocre equip spell whose only upside is its immunity to Spell/trap destruction. However, when combined with spell counter decks, which gain spell counters with each spell card activation, and Gearfried the Iron Knight, which destroys any equip cards equipped to it, what you get is an infinite source of spell counters for such decks. A Magical Marionette with infinite attack power? Go for it. Fuel for the otherwise Awesome, but Impractical Mega Ton Magical Cannon? You got it. Or most infamously, use this combo with Royal Magical Library and Exodia for an easy OTK or FTK.
  • Mass Driver has the effect of tributing a monster to inflict 400 points of damage. That might not sound like much, but once you factor in that it's not a once per turn and the number of times some decks can summon the same monster(s) in one turn, you may start to realize just how abusable it is, especially since it is a Continuous Spell card. This card was a key part of the infamous Frog FTK deck, which resulted in this card and Substitoad getting banned.
  • The release of Topologic Bomber Dragon, a monster that destroys all monsters in the Main Monster Zones each time a monster is special summoned to its Link Markers, resulted in the ban of two monsters; Phoenixian Cluster Amaryllis, and Samsara Lotus. Both monsters can be special summoned multiple times from Graveyard, and as such can be combo'd with Bomber Dragon's destruction effect (which is also not a once per turn effect), to setup FTKs - as long as you can setup multiple Plant monsters in GY (for Phoenixian Cluster Amaryllis), or co-linked Knightmare Cerberus and Trickstar Black Catbat (for Samsara Lotus). As such, Cluster Amaryllis was banned in both formats in mid-2018, and Samsara Lotus in the TCG in September 2018.
  • Tempest Magician has the effect to remove every Spell Counter on the field to inflict 500 burn damage for each one, and give monsters Spell Counters by discarding cards. This card wasn't that useful, due to there being no reliable way to set Spell Counters en masse. Enter the Endymion archetype, who could place lots of Spell Counters on their cards, and fairly consistently, at that. Suddenly Tempest Magician could easily deal massive amounts of burst damage, or potentially even FTK the opponent! Due to this, the TCG axed the card on its January 2020 banlist, and the OCG banned it on April 2021.

• Other examples ^explanationCards that either don't fit or fit several of the previous categories:
  • The Dragon Ruler series is quite possibly one of the most infamous examples of Power Creep in the franchise to date. They're a series of Level 7 dragon type monsters with a set of smaller Level 3/4 versions of themselves that can special summon them from the deck. They're designed to also support their Attribute but can also synergize with other Dragons, including themselves, have a plethora of effects that can enable swarming and rapid summoning of Rank 7 Xyzs. Sure, you can only use one of their effects per turn and even then only once per turn, but the sheer speed and consistency of these effects more than makes up for it with consistency, power, and other effects and the smaller dragons are instrumental in overriding this limitation. The deck also abused Super Rejuvenation and Sacred Sword of Seven Stars as draw power and as an extra way to trigger their effects. And it's for this reason that this deck was so widely hated before it even came to the TCG. Consider this: Half of the archetype was banned, and the other half was Limited. Countless cards had been hit to weaken the deck. And the deck was still a strong contender to the point that the Dragon Rulers themselves became forbidden after the Dark Matter OTK abuse. It wouldn't be until July 2019 that they even so much as attempted to loosen them from the list by bringing back Tempest to 1, and Super Rejuvenation on the next banlist.
  • Elder Entity Norden, one of the best Fusion monsters the game has ever seen, is a Level 4 monster that can summon any Level 4 or lower monster from your graveyard upon Special Summon, though its effects are negated. Sure, it requires two Synchro/Xyz monsters or one of each to Fusion Summon, but it can be Special Summoned by Instant Fusion, potentially giving you advantage and very easy access to any Rank 4 or Synchro monster, so much so, that it turned Instant Fusion, previously a niche card that only saw use in a select few decks, into a staple card overnight. Its WATER Attribute also made it very easy to target another WATER monster to summon Bahamut Shark, which gave easy access to Toadally Awesome. Not to mention, it can be abused with Super Polymerization. Most importantly, it does not have any Summoning restrictions and its effect can be used multiple times per turn! (Several OTKs and FTKs can be achieved very easily with Norden. Here is an example.) Because of that, it was banned in the OCG in October 2015. It remained Limited in the TCG for a while, until a powerful combo involving Zoodiacs came to light—a combo that eschewed Instant Fusion in favor of summoning it normally via Fusion Substitute— contributing to Zoodiacs completely dominating the Top 32 of a Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series tournament, which ended up being the final nail in this card's coffin. Instant Fusion itself would later get Limited in both the April 2020 OCG & TCG lists.
  • Brilliant Fusion is a powerful support card for Gem-Knights, in that it allows one to Fusion summon using materials from the deck, though at the cost of the summoned monster having zero ATK and DEF. Due to most Gem-Knight Fusion monsters having one generic fusion material however, Brilliant Fusion became an unlimited Foolish Burial with free Link fodder for any deck that ran the type of monster needed (like Seraphinite for LIGHT-heavy decks and Prismaura for Thunder Dragons) and could tech in a few Gem-Knight monsters. Brilliant Fusion into Seraphinite was particularly nasty, as Seraphinite gives you one extra Normal Summon per turn with no strings attached. This was such a massive play extender that the otherwise unremarkable vanilla Gem-Knight Garnet became a staple, since no deck that ran LIGHT monsters left home without three Brilliant Fusions to bring out Seraphinite. Brilliant Fusion was thus limited to 1 in the January 2019 TCG List and the April 2020 OCG list, and banned in the TCG in early 2020.
  • Block Dragon is known as "The Dragon Ruler of Rocks" for a reason. Not only does it have a piss-easy summoning condition, it has a ridiculous floating effect that activates when it's sent from the field to the GY in any way: it can add three Rock monsters from your deck to your hand, whose levels equal 8. It was held back, however, by the fact that Rock-Type monsters were pretty bad in general. Then came the Adamancipators, who were not only a good deck by themselves, but had three monsters that were the perfect levels to be searched out by Block Dragon, could special summon themselves from the hand, could special summon other Rock-Type monsters from the deck, and were Tuners to boot. Moreover, it can be summoned multiple times from the Graveyard as long as you have enough fodder to banish, and it protects all your Rock monsters from effect-based destruction. So, even if you got rid of their board, the Adamancipator player could just start their board up again, thanks to Block Dragon. It ultimately got banned in the September 2020 TCG list.
  • Prank-Kids Meow-Meow-Mu was printed to assist the archetype's struggling consistency issues. This worked a little too well, as being a Link-1 it essentially turns any Main Deck "Prank-Kids" card into a combo starter, since many of their effects require them to be sent to the GY for the Fusion/Link Summon of a "Prank-Kids" card and once in the GY can subsequently combo into powerful boards. As a result, the archetype became a lot less reliant on engines to get going, resulting in many "Prank-Kids" decks shoving in generic engines such as "Adventurer Token" to become even more oppressive. Meow-Meow-Mu was ultimately banned in the May 2022 TCG list, dealing a severe blow to the archetype as the deck's best starter was essentially gone.
  • Number 89: Diablosis the Mind Hacker is a Rank 7 DARK Psychic Xyz Monster that has the ability to banish a monster in your opponent's Extra Deck face-down by detaching 1 Xyz Material, can banish a card your opponent controls face-down at the end of the Battle Phase if it destroyed an opponent's monster by battle, and whenever your opponent's cards get banished face-down, it banishes more cards from the opponent's Deck, also face-down. This card was completely innocuous until the release of the Kashtira archetype, which also happen to be Level/Rank 7 Psychic monsters that revolve around banishing cards face-down. Naturally, Diablosis was a perfect fit for the Kashtira deck and was able to create horribly oppressive game states, getting matchup knowledge and removing answers from the Extra Deck while triggerring the effect of Kashtira Shangri-Ira to lock out the opponent's zones and/or get Kashtira Arise-Heart out which is effectively Macro Cosmos on legs. Diablosis was axed in the June 2023 list as a result, neutering the ceiling of Kashtira endboards.

• Special case cards ^explanationBroke the game in ways unrelated to being too powerful.:
  • Victory Dragon has the effect to allow you to win the match if you reduce the opponent's life points to 0 with a direct attack. To be clear, this doesn't mean you win just the duel, you win the match (meaning no games 2 and/or 3 if used successfully before then). A nasty effect indeed if you can get it off, but given that it can only be summoned by tributing 3 dragon-type monsters, it’s debatable just how overpowered it truly is. However, there's a very good reason why it was banned and why all cards like it since have been World championship prize cards that have "This card cannot be used in a duel" printed on them by default. The card was responsible for some of the most obnoxious and confusing rulings out there due to unscrupulous players both attempting to surrender or find other ways to simply lose a duel to avoid its match win effect, or attempt to use it to circumvent the typical match rules (for instance, insisting on a third match after having already lost two of three, because a win by Victory Dragon would undo two losses). This was one of the reasons it was banned. ^note OCG rulings around surrendering work differently, as the opponent must accept your surrender, and if they don't you must forfeit the match to still surrender, reducing the ruling hassles brought on by Victory Dragon. There actually was a competitive OCG deck built around Victory Dragon, which is the other part of why it was banned.
  • Self-Destruct Button can only be activated if the player using it has 7000 less life points than the opponent and causes the game to become a tie. It may look pretty worthless at first glance from a competitive standpoint, and for once, that's actually pretty accurate. For the typical duelist, it's far too situational to ever be of any use. The problem with the card is that, due to poor design, it became the most obnoxious Troll card ever made. Just build a deck around giving your opponent an absurd amount of life points, activate Self-Destruct Button once possible, and repeat ad nauseam. While it's bad enough to encounter in a tournament, where you'll almost certainly go into time against such a player, it's even worse in online games, where the opponent can do this infinitely until you Rage Quit. This led it its ban in the TCG.^note Interestingly, Self-Destruct Button is not banned, per se, in the OCG, but it falls under special consideration, where you will be barred from a tournament if it is clear that your intent with playing the card is to deliberately cause ties in tandem with other cards.

Nerfed Cards (TCG/OCG)

In Yu-Gi-Oh!, an erratum refers to the changing of a card's text between reprints. By the official rulings, all cards must follow their newest errata even if you own an outdated copy, effectively making it a way to Retcon cards. Originally used mainly for fixing errors and inconsistencies, Konami eventually began using errata to Nerf problematic cards, usually of the Forbidden variety. As such, any card nerfed by errata was, by definition, far too powerful to be allowed in play.

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• Starting in 2011 for the OCG and 2012 for the TCG, ALL of the cards with Ignition effects, due to Konami officially changing the ruling of priority, so that the opponent could activate a card in response to a successful summon before opponent could use the summoned monster's Ignition effect. A perfect example would be the formerly banned Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning. Before the rule change, you could immediately banish 1 monster for free before your opponent's trap card like Bottomless Trap Hole could be activated to destroy it. After the change, monsters no longer had the opportunity to activate their Ignition effects if a trap card like Bottomless Trap Hole responded to their summon.
• For a period, the wording of XX-Saber Darksoul, which allows the searching of an X-Saber during the End Phase of a turn it was sent from the field to the Graveyard, meant it could activate its effect for every time it was sent to the Graveyard that turn, even if it was just the same copy over and over. And X-Sabers, being a swarming Synchro-based deck with multiple revival options and a boss monster with a powerful tribute effect, had absolutely no problems with recycling Darksoul and getting it into the Graveyard. This took a deck that was already incredibly good and made it downright silly—not only could it make extensive Synchro plays and switch flawlessly between control and OTK, but a Darksoul with a bit of setup could also yield two or three searches for the next turn to finish the job. This resulted in Konami changing the wording of its effect so that it would now only trigger once per copy.
• One of the first cards to get the nerfbat was Dark Strike Fighter, a Level 7 monster that can sacrifice monsters to deal damage equal to their Level x200. Sounds simple? A direct attack from this card plus its own effect does damage equal to half of your Life Points. Which means if you'd taken a bit of damage already (or there were other monsters to attack and sacrifice), this "finisher" ended games on the second or third turn. The worst part was that it was an inverted Nerf from the anime that removed the factors that would have made it balanced: the effect only being allowed once per turn, preventing it from attacking on the same turn, and that it could not sacrifice itself for its effect. Dark Strike Fighter's erratum made it a hard once per turn that can only be used in Main Phase 1, largely neutering the card.
• Exchange of the Spirit, a card that was banned on TCG banlists before its official export to the TCG. While it was slightly milder than other game breaking cards in the sense that it gave you a turn (and that is only if you consider entering your draw phase as getting a turn) it became devastating because you could easily win by milling your deck whether or not to search the card you wanted, end your turn, activate the trap, mill the opponent's entire deck to the graveyard and force your opponent to draw. The only reason it was unbanned is due to an erratum which added the condition that both players needed to have 15 cards in the Graveyard before Exchange of the Spirit can be activated, and that only 1 Exchange of the Spirit can be used per Duel, turning it from a fearsome OTK/FTK enabler into a mostly useless gimmick (while you can theoretically still OTK using Exchange of the Spirit, it requires milling the opponent's entire Extra Deck, making it astronomically harder to perform).
• Crush Card Virus, which, in the TCG, was notorious for being one of the most difficult and expensive cards to obtain for yourself, due to being released initially as a Shonen Jump prize card and otherwise only available as a gold rare from the limited release (original) Gold Series until shortly before it was banned outright. Though the card's effect drove the card's price just as much as the difficulty of owning one. Its effect effectively rendered so many decks unable to play monsters, that it's easier to list what decks wouldn't be affected by it (even to this day). The card was so strong, that anybody who was lucky enough to have a copy would play cards (most commonly Sangan and/or D.D. Crow) just so they could use the card against the opponent. As such, the card was eventually banned and stayed on the list for years until it got an erratum changing the 3 turn duration into the opponent getting to destroy up to 3 1500 or more ATK monsters from the deck and also making the opponent immune to damage until the end of the next turn after its activation.
• Ring of Destruction, one of the most powerful burn cards in the game's history. Sure, you will take the damage too, but at worst, it would result in a tie if used well. Also, there was nothing preventing a player from using it on their own monster, which might sound like a -2 on paper, but in practice, was like getting an additional attack against the opponent with a powerful monster, easily and frequently closing out games. The card was only able to come back via erratum, limiting its usage to the opponent's turn against an opponent's monster whose attack is less than or equal to their current life-points, and making the player using it take the damage first, removing most of the card's utility. However, even with these nerfs, it remained on the limited list for years before being put to semi-limited in May 2018, and then in September 2018's banlist, it has become unlimited.
• Sinister Serpent, a Reptile with the ability to come back to your hand on every Standby Phase. Naturally, this made it into infinitely reusable discard fodder, effectively negating the costs of many, many cards in the game. Most infamously, it was combined with the fellow banned card Tribe-Infecting Virus to ravage your opponent's field every single turn. Sinister Serpent was nerfed by making you banish a Sinister Serpent from your Graveyard on your opponent's next End Phase after using its retrieval effect and making it a hard once per turn, slowing the card down immensely. Tribe-Infecting Virus went straight from Forbidden to Unlimited in 2020.
• Dark Magician of Chaos, easily the strongest spell recursion card ever made, originally allowed for a spell card to be added to your hand from your graveyard upon its summoning. This allowed for potentially instant recursion of cards that summoned it, most notoriously Monster Reborn and the long banned Dimension Fusion, both of which allowed for quick and easy One-Turn Kills and/or loops. Its only downside originally is that it banishes itself upon leaving the field, though this made its combo with Dimension Fusion even more potent, earning it a key role in the notorious Dark Armed Return that became the final nail in both cards' coffins. Furthermore, with the creation of Xyz monsters that would allow for the card to dodge its banishment effect, and cards like Soul Charge, and it's no wonder that it only came back via an erratum making its recursion a true once per turn that happens only at the end of the turn it's summoned.
• Temple of the Kings is a Continuous Spell Card that lets you activate Trap Cards on the turn they are set. There's nothing that needs to be said about this card that hasn't been said already; taking away the intended balancing factor of Trap Cards (requiring a turn to get ready) leads to abuse up the wazoo. Temple was banned immediately upon its introduction to the TCG and stayed that way until it was changed to only let you use a freshly-set Trap once per turn. Its extra deck summon effect was also changed to only fusion monsters, though this effect was never very relevant by comparison.
• Future Fusion. At first glance, it's an extremely slow back row target that'll net you a fusion monster from your deck every once in a few blue moons. However, what seems like a mediocre fusion card at first glance hides one of the single best mill/graveyard setup cards in the game. When combined with cards that have high fusion material costs, such as Five-Headed Dragon, this card allows you to hand-pick cards (five dragons in this case) from your deck to the graveyard. With how graveyard-centric the game is, this is an amazing setup card, especially with other cards that can abuse cards in the graveyard such as Chaos Dragons, The Envoys, and the Dragon Rulers. Generally, once you have this card in your hand, it's practically game over for your opponent. On top of the setup, it would net you a free beatstick on the following turn. There's a reason this card ended up getting banned. Future Fusion returned in the March 2017 format of the TCG, sporting a new erratum: the Fusion Monster is chosen, and the Fusion Materials sent to the Graveyard, on your first Standby Phase after its activation, thus giving the opponent a turn to respond and stop you from filling up your Graveyard.
• Brain Control was designed to be a balanced version of the long-Forbidden Change of Heart, with it having a life point cost of 800 and being able to target only face-up monsters. But even with these additional downsides, it still proved too powerful a card for the game and eventually found its way to the ban list as well, only coming off after getting an erratum to only affect monsters that can be Normal Summoned, thereby limiting a lot of its versatility.
• Rescue Cat, a prime example of a card becoming rather deadly due to Power Creep, was originally just a tutor somewhat limited by the single turn duration of the monsters it retrieves from your deck, which can only be beasts of level 3 at the highest. Gladiator Beast gave it a shot in the arm. Then the Synchro era happened, and X-Saber Airbellum, a powerful level 3 beast tuner, was available from the start. Cue mass first turn Synchros. The card ended up on the semi-limited list, advancing each successive year until it was forbidden in March 2010. To solidify how severely devastating Rescue Cat had become due to such progression, with the release of certain Xyz/fusions to use alongside Synchros, first-turn kills were possible starting with Rescue Cat alone in previous Traditional Formats. It only came off the ban list because of an erratum that made it a true once per turn effect and negates the effects of the monsters it summoned.
• Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier had the ability to discard any number of cards in your hand to bounce that many cards on the field back to their respective hands. Being able to get rid of your opponent's field and being able to recycle your own cards meant it was incredibly good. For these reasons it was Limited. It kept being strong into the Xyz era, eventually getting banned because of its interactions with the Atlantean archetype and only getting unbanned after an erratum that made its effect a hard once per turn and restricting its bounce to the opponent's cards.
• Destiny HERO - Disk Commander previously let you draw 2 cards any time it was summoned from the graveyard. Yep, every revival card in the game suddenly became a Pot of Greed with this card (On top of it being prime discard fodder for Destiny Draw, allowing you to draw even more cards). It was unbanned in the September 17 2018 list, following an errata that limits the draw effect to once per duel and prevents resurrecting it on the same turn it was sent to the graveyard, giving the opponent a chance to banish it if possible.
• Grandsoil the Elemental Lord may be special summoned if you have exactly 5 earth monsters in your graveyard, and has the effect of the famous Monster Reborn when it is special summoned. It was heavily abused in several loops, finally being banned September 2017. It came back after receiving a true once per turn erratum.
• Pre-errata, Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End. Its effect generally ended games. If it didn't, then it would often be followed up by a Sangan or Witch of the Black forest search for Yata-Garasu to finish the job 200 points at a time. After a decade and a half, it would finally come off with heavy nerfs that limited the card's owner to not activate any other card effects that turn and limited the damage to only count your opponent's cards, heavily reducing the chance of OTKs and leaving the user with an empty field, giving your opponent a chance to fight back.
• The effects of Sangan and Witch of the Black Forest were to search for any monster from the Main Deck with 1500 or less ATK or DEF, respectively, upon being sent from the field to the Graveyard, with no downsides other than the ATK/DEF cap. Among making searching for important monsters in players' strategies laughably easy, both monsters played a major role in the infamous Yata-Garasu Lockdown Deck that wreaked havoc during 2004. Even after Yata-Garasu was banned, Sangan and Witch of the Black Forest proved extremely powerful searchers in many, many Decks. In 2016 and 2017 respectively, the effects of Sangan and Witch of the Black Forest effects were nerfed so that you cannot activate the searched card or any card with the same name's effect during the turn you search for it, and also made them HOPTs as well.
• Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon. Both of its effects are great and led to the card becoming a staple in many different Dragon decks. It was eventually limited to one copy to circumvent the fact that its first effect was not once per turn, but even a combination of that limiting and a soft once per turn did not stop people from figuring out ways to loop the second effect, primarily with Guardragon Elpy and Pisty, to make strong fields by reviving as many Dragons as possible. Eventually it got an errata, making both of its effects hard once per turn, and it's still used quite a lot as both effects are still very good.
• Makyura the Destructor, one of the best cards ever created. Its effect is that during the turn it's sent to the Graveyard, you can activate Trap Cards from the hand. This alone makes it quite useful (it's the equivalent of giving a Mighty Glacier a much faster movement speed, I.E. removing their intended downside), creating all kinds of dominant combos. But, it's also ludicrously searchable too, since it's a Dark Level 4 Warrior type monster. Also, triggering its effect technically doesn't count as an activation, making it nigh impossible to stop, even newer cards like Debunk, Shadow Imprisoning Mirror, and Majesty's Fiend are powerless against Makyura. Unsurprisingly, Makyura has been banned since April 2005. 15 years later in September 2020, the ban on Makyura has been lifted but now it has been significantly nerfed with its new errata; Makyura MUST be in the Monster Zone and sent to the GY from there in order for its effect to work. Also you can only activate 1 Trap card from your hand. No longer can you simply discard it from the hand or Deck and activate its effect.
• In something unprecedented for the franchise, Firewall Dragon, the VRAINS main character's ace monster, became a Game-Breaker. Its second effect allows any monster sent to the Graveyard in one of its four Link Points (yours or not) to be replaced with any monster from your hand. It could be used multiple times per turn which created several First Turn Kill loops^note Due to being the ace monster of the VRAINS series protagonist, as well as disputes between the producers of the anime and the card game, many believed Firewall Dragon couldn't be banned until the VRAINS series ended. This led to all Cannon Soldier variations and Amazoness Archer being banned as scapegoats in the OCG.. It's a pretty speedy effect, which made any deck with hand recovery a powerful Link-spamming machine. Its link markers are also pretty convenient, and with the second effect, it wasn't too hard to create co-links between both Extra Deck Zones, locking out the Extra Deck for your opponent with no need for a monster effect. But the worst is still to come: its first effect allows him to target monsters in the fields and Graveyards, up to the number of co-links it has, and send them back to the hand. While it's only once per copy while on the field, multiple copies could be used, and thus, Firewall Dragon became an infinite looping machine. This earned it the distinction of being the first Link monster to be limited. Even when limited to one copy, though, many decks were still able to easily create huge boards with Knightmares, rip away their opponent's hands with Gumblar Dragon, or perform various FTK loops. This gamestate went on for months before Konami would finally give in and ban Firewall right away,^note Rumors point to a charity event at YCS Pasadena being the final nail in the coffin for the card, with multiple employees from Konami being soundly beaten in a tournament by various decks abusing Firewall's looping power. and it would eventually come back off the OCG banlist in December 2020 with an errata giving both of its effects a hard once-per-turn restriction and also restricting the second effect to only summoning Cyberse monsters, with the TCG following suit in April 2021 when the errata is imported (though the decision was first announced alongside the March 2021 banlist change).
• Dewloren Tiger King of the Ice Barrier. While its materials are heavily restricted and the ATK boost is unimpressive, Dewloren's bounce effect made it part of multiple burn and draw loops leading to consistent First Turn Kills throughout the years. While not broken enough to be banned, Dewloren at multiple copies can self-loop. This was what led to its Limited status in the September 2013 banlist, serving a seven-and-a-half year sentence on the list until it was changed to a hard once-per-turn, at which point it was finally allowed to go free. Here are some of the few ways pre-errata Dewloren can be used at anything higher than 1 copy allowed.
• In a similar vein to Sinister Serpent, Night Assailant was Limited for the entirety of the banlist's existence, as otherwise you can use its effect of retrieving a Flip monster from the Graveyard when discarded to grab another Night Assailant, which can then be used to return the first Night Assailant, and so on. And unlike Sinister Serpent, this could hypothetically be done any number of times per turn in the Main Phase, potentially making things like Snipe Hunter immensely busted. It got Semi-Limited in the OCG in 2022, due to being too slow for the meta and it added a nerf that added "except “Night Assailant”", making infinite loops impossible. Come May 2022's list and Night Assailant is back in 3's. Most older players looked at it in shock, only to realize that the infinite combo got errata'd and no longer works.
• Ancient Fairy Dragon is an example of a card that just becomes more powerful as the game evolves. It could destroy any Field Spell in play, and then search another Field Spell from your deck. Field Spells were underused and mediocre back in the day, but Power Creep saw that they would get even stronger over time, and went from being basic ATK and DEF boosts to becoming massive consistency boosters. As such, AFD became a powerful combo and consistency tool for any deck that can include a few different Field Spells to enable their plays. And just as the cherry on top, AFD lets you Special Summon any level 4 or lower monster from your hand, making it one of the best extension tools in the game, at cost of the Battle Phase, which is a menial price to pay. Ancient Fairy Dragon subsequently got the axe in the January 2018 OCG lists, with the TCG following suit in May 2018, and would only come back off the lists in 2023 after receiving an errata that forced hard once-per-turn restrictions on it and restricted its Field search to one of a different name than the ones you destroyed.
• Gandora-X, the Dragon of Demolition became infamous in the OCG for being an FTK enabler due to inflicting burn damage equal to the highest ATK monster on the field that it destroys with its effect, ultimately causing it to be banned for several years. This was not an issue in the TCG since the TCG print fixed this by only checking for original ATK, preventing players from boosting up a monster on the field to pop it with Gandora-X. Gandora-X would eventually be errata'd and unbanned in the OCG in 2024, with the effect text now matching the TCG.
• Summon Sorceress allows you to summon one monster from your deck of the same Type as another monster that it points to once per turn. And even if you have no monster remaining on field after you summon it? Summon Sorceress will let you put another monster out (albeit on your opponent's field) right when its summoned, meaning its effect will almost always be live. As the cherry on top of all of this, Summon Sorceress is a mostly generic Link 3, while Isolde and Halqifibrax are Link 2's. This means that if you make Summon Sorceress out of one of the other two monsters, you're getting the setup it created on top of the setup that they made, netting you a massive advantage from what was likely just one or two cards. This resulted in Summon Sorceress getting banned in the OCG, with many TCG players calling for Konami to follow suit on the TCG list. Those cries for it to be banned in the TCG were finally answered as of April 2019's banlist. Summon Sorceress was eventually released from the banlist in the OCG's April 2024 list via an errata that combined both of its effects (meaning that you must now first summon to the opponent's field before you can summon from your Deck) and adding a summoning restriction that locks you into summoning monsters with the same Type as the monster you summon from your Deck for the rest of the turn.