It is the sort of thing that would send Maximillion Pegasus reaching for the wine. Konami’s new Forbidden & Limited List for the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game comes into force today, Monday 19 October, and it is a bloodbath. By Konami’s own count, 34 cards are newly Forbidden and eight newly Limited, all revealed in five instalments across the YCS Houston weekend, like an advent calendar sent from the Shadow Realm.
The headline oddity is Perfectron Hydradrive Dragon, a card from the Japanese OCG that has not been released in the TCG yet. It arrives in the Magnificent Maestros set on 11 November and will make its debut already Limited to a single copy. According to YGOrganization, the last time an OCG-only card entered the TCG pre-limited was Sixth Sense back in October 2013. It is rather like being handed a parking ticket on the drive home from the showroom.
Elsewhere, the cull is wide and deep. Called by the Grave, a fixture of competitive decks for years, goes from Limited to Forbidden. Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier is banned, along with Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon, Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon and Albion the Branded Dragon; anybody who thought dragons were safe in this game should have read more fantasy. Konami has also taken a broom to the floodgates, the cards that lock opponents out of whole strategies, with Anti-Spell Fragrance, Secret Village of the Spellcasters, Gozen Match, Rivalry of Warlords and There Can Be Only One all shown the door. Droll & Lock Bird drops to one copy, Sky Striker Mobilize – Engage! goes to two, and the Branded strategy takes hits on several fronts, with Branded Opening and Branded in High Spirits both Limited.
Our favourite casualty, for reasons that need no explaining, is Number 41: Bagooska the Terribly Tired Tapir. After years of shoving everything on the field into defence position and grinding games to a halt, the tapir has finally been allowed a very long lie-down.
The list arrives barely four weeks after the previous TCG update on 21 September, and it applies to the physical card game only; Master Duel players have their own list. For anyone who stopped playing when Exodia was still the scariest thing in the deck box, all this will read like the shipping forecast from another dimension. But for tournament players sitting on a carefully tuned Branded deck and a stack of Called by the Graves, today is the day the heart of the cards skipped a beat.
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