Limited

Today I will review the new unprecedented amounts of limited and semi-limited cards and the effects they may possibly have on the meta and top decks as a whole. Read more to find out how much the limits really hurt.

Limited:
Honest
Dandelion
Black Feather - Kalut the Moonshadow
Book of Moon
Gateway of the Six

Semi-Limited:
Card Trooper
Archlord Kristya
Spirit Reaper
Debris Dragon
Royal Tribute
Overload Fusion
Megamorph
Solemn Warning
Icarus Attack


Honest: This card was a staple in any deck with over 10 LIGHT monsters and single handedly revamped the Damage Step making many old cards useless like Green Baboon Defender of the Forest. Not only this but it was also a kind of full turn Magic Cylinder and full turn Michizure at once without losing your monster... Back when it was at three every time you would see someone attack a Lumina either this or the 3 Necro Gardna's negated it or destroyed your monster. Since then Necro Gardna was put to 1 and Honest was put to 2. At 2 Honest was still a threat but less of it along with the huge beatdown LS got that banlist. Now at 1 LS is nearly out of options as to what to run when Agent Angels seem to be so much better.

Dandelion: It saddens me to see this go to 1 again but it seriously isn't too bad of a hit. They gave us back one more Card Trooper meaning more chances to mill but less chances to mill dandelion making it only a slight hit. Now the big pain is that we used to remove Dandylion haphazardly for things like Spore because we knew we had a second, with only 1 we have to play it smarter. Expect this card to continue being abused by Plants just not to the same degree as before.

Blackwing - Kalut the Moonshadow: Same reason they hit Honest as this card single-handedly took away Shura, Bora , Armed Wing's weakness to higher defense away and created OTKs where you would normally survive. It was also highly predictable but unlike Honest you can't play around it unless you either Book the monster and swing or get rid of it from the hand early as they will use it when they attack directly. This card furthers Blackwings push to the brink, they can still work but it seems Konami is trying to rid the meta of things that shouldn't still be meta, Blackwings, Debris, Anything running Honest, and such. With this card gone  a lot of decks will have better matchups against Blackwings the Ryu of Duel Monsters.

Book of Moon: This hit surprised me but after thinking it over every deck ran this in 3's or lost... It was the first defense to any Synchro Summon by stopping it before it happened, it stopped attacks, it enabled decks to beat Jinzo and Destiny Hero-Plasma and such with ease and was almost as powerful as Tsukuyomi back in the day (Which honestly could have came back just to make this format less ridiculously punish based.)  The card was just the ultimate Swiss Army knife it could do anything and occasionally rendered Anti-Meta useless by booking that Rai-oh and starting to set up safely. This format is going to be Trap-Negation and destruction heavy due to this one hit.

Gateway of the Six: This card made Six Samurai a plausible deck once again when it came out as a TCG exclusive in Stardust Overdrive (Now out of print). Now with the new support that can be special summoned immediately and the occasional loop you may have seen with Mizuho and Shinai (Konami hates loops so couldn't put it to 2), the deck had to be slowed. With the printing of a more balanced Gateway in the form of Shien's Dojo the deck will still be powerful but not as ridiculously consistent.

Semi's:
Card Trooper: Being returned to 2 keeps away the old age Troop Dupe Scoop many of our older players had to face (Like myself back when I was pretty noobish still) but still leaves the extra milling there to replace Dandelion in all Plant decks that rely on milling. It also made Chaos Plants more plausible by giving them more milling options to set up their graveyards (Chaos Plants doesn't fully rely on Dandelion to make plays). This was a good move by Konami and I hope they make more good moves on older cards.

Archlord Kristya: This card is what began the Angel's rise to power over Darkness and the Earth (Blackwings...Plants, Sams, Sabers). This card has a DAD like summoning requirement which DADreturn and Tele-DAD made seem like cake. No special summons are allowed and it's high attack stat ensures it won't die. Book of Moon used to be the first option to getting rid of it due to stopping it's lock-down and leaving it vulnerable with Honest unable to help it. With Book and Honest at 1 putting this card at 2 has slightly made it less dangerous while keeping it very much so beastly by limiting Book.

Spirit Reaper: This card is less of a threat nowadays but at the same time with 2 less Books killing this card is slightly more difficult and still requires you to waste something on it but not 1 of them but 2 of them. Card is great in plants and deter's Sabers and Sams from murdering you while you activate Puppet Plant. It also supports Chaos Plants by being a DARK Debris target. This card at 2 was a nice move and helps mitigate some of the damage the list has caused while shaking things up a bit.

Debris Dragon: This card at 2 is only slightly less broken than at 3 but lots of builds only ran 2 so this change wasn't nearly as painful as the minorly painful Dandelion hit but it still hurt and expect to see a few more Doppel Junk plays.

Royal Tribute: This is the only Semi-Limit that surprised me... OCG doesn't have recruiter so why limit this for a deck that isn't played there too often? It's a nice limit making sacky openings of Royal Tributing your hand of monsters before you play anything... (It also gives them a view of your hand so they know what you have face-down). If the card said "You cannot activate this card unless you have at least 1 monster in your hand" it would be better but as it stands... Turn 1: Set Spy> play Necrovalley> Royal Tribute> Flip Spy> get anything... This deck was too powerful in TCG having the power to dump your hand before you can do anything with it.

Overload Fusion: Interesting to say the least but with only 1 Future Fusion this is just going to be like 2 extra Limiter Removal except in Karakuri and Morphtronics and Machina Gadget where this card fits naturally like sex and turns turn 1 OTK's into OTK-failed play this instead and Turn 2 OTK... With only 1 Book of Moon these decks all get a boost from this.

Megamorph: Gives Morphtronics and Vylon's a great boost making them more dangerous. Otherwise this change means nothing except Konami giving back equips that used to be very dangerous which are now fairly pointless aside from the attack on Book of Moon making equips safer to play.

Solemn Warning: Skips this because card is God like and was only used in 2's for the most part.

Icarus Attack: I have 10 or so of these from EOJ and 1 or 2 from the Structure Deck from way before Blackwings were invented and it was nearly unused aside from in that one Harpie deck that topped. Now with Blackwings taking the Kalut hit this is a further nail in the extremely unailable coffin... In other words expect Blackwings to still do well with some nice innovation to fill those 4 slots in the deck.

All in all this will be a very tech based format because well everything good took a hit and tech will need to fill those spots. At the first YCS of the format remember to not expect anything specific from any deck. Also with tomorrow's post expect to see my idea for what the top tier of decks will be.