The banished zone and the banlist.

[nukm4]

Originally Posted by Valafar123

The idea is that **** goes there and doesn't come back.

Forbidden:

Leviair the Sea Dragon
D.D.R. - Different Dimension Reincarnation
D.D.M. - Different Dimension Master
D.D. Survivor
D.D. Scout Plane
Burial from a Different Dimension
Return from the Different Dimension
Miracle Dig
Parallel World Fusion
Escape from the Dark Dimension
Light of Redemption
Dimensional Alchemist
Drill Warrior
Eclipse Wyvern
Gold Sarcophagus
Chaos Zone
Shutendoji
Fortune's Future
Fish and Swaps
Elemental Hero The Shining
Lightforce Sword
Different Dimension Capsule
Wind-Up Rabbit
Different Dimension Gate
Destiny Hero - Doom Lord
Elemental Hero Voltic
Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon
Primal Seed
Sea Lancer
Skystarray
Spellbook of Alma (Not released yet)
Spiritual Light Art - Hijiri
Strike Ninja
Trance Archfiend
Time Escaper
Wattpheasant
Interdimensional Matter Transporter
Future Visions

Am I doing it right?

I should note, this isn't a personal attack on Valafar himself, but on the idea that the RFG zone should serve no other function than to be a black hole from whence cards can never return.

[Mugi-Chan]

I never thought I would see the day where nukm advocated the banning of Parallel World Fusion .

[nukm4]

Originally Posted by Pink Mink

I never thought I would see the day where nukm advocated the banning of Parallel World Fusion .

Dat ****'s so broke, it returns stuff from your banished zone to your deck so you can use it over and over again, it's like a Transmigration Prophecy for the banished zone that summons a beat stick.

[Mugi-Chan]

Originally Posted by nukm4

Dat ****'s so broke, it returns stuff from your banished zone to your deck so you can use it over and over again, it's like a Transmigration Prophecy for the banished zone that summons a beat stick.

...Did you really not get the joke?

[nukm4]

Originally Posted by Pink Mink

...Did you really not get the joke?

If you mean the reference to me playing Macro HERO, then yes.

[Dragynking1]

You forgot Chaos Zone. You can even take your opponent's banished monsters with it. So broke.

[T-REX]

Leave poor D.D. Survivor alone, he's the victim here...

[nukm4]

Originally Posted by dragynking1

You forgot Chaos Zone. You can even take your opponent's banished monsters with it. So broke.

Omg how could I possibly forget that. So freaking broke.

[HochDeutsch]

You are not, in fact, doing it right.

The idea that the banished zone should not be able to be accessed as easily as it is does not entail banning cards as god-awful as Miracle Dig.

Konami itself also has the basic idea that control changing should be difficult... as evidenced by the only 3 generic control taking Spells ending up on the banlist, and Mind Control put to 1 (and it should be banned, anyway, and we all know this). I think most players can agree that Change of Heart, Snatch Steal, Mind Control, and Brain Control are banworthy.

The thing is, taking control of your opponent's monsters should not be easy. It's an intrinsically powerful effect, given the plus-minus system, the fact that it provides both an out to a big monster and free access to a big monster, and the fact that very very few cards have any protection from it (Mataza the Zapper and Botanical Lion ftw!). However, would anybody in their right mind argue that Alien Brain is banworthy, Falling Down, or Zekt Conversion? No, because Reptiles and Archfiends are terrible, and Inzektor players have far far far better options. What about Tragoedia? Well, I dislike him for his versatility - jumping out the hand like that, having huge ATK, being used for any Level for a Synchro or Xyz Summon, and also having the control change effect... but the control change effect itself is probably his weakest effect. Nobody gives a damn about that aspect of him most of the time. Even Creature Swap, which I still think is hypothetically banworthy personally, is clearly a great deal less powerful than the Mind Control/Brain Control/Change of Heart/Snatch Steal group because you do -1 to activate it and your opponent chooses what to give up.

Now, why am I talking about all of this? Because something which should not be readily available for very little cost (control changing or "heart changing", to borrow a term from the originator of it all) is still balanceable by deck-specificity or a suitable cost or drawback.

And - the same can be said quite easily about the banished zone. No, it should not be so easy to toolbox from it. That defeats the entire point of it in most cases. It quite literally breaks an aspect of the game which has been considered more or less fundamental since Legend of Blue-Eyes White Dragon (Gravedigger Ghoul!).

So yes, the current format aside (where none of these cards are problematic because there are bigger fish to fry), some of these cards are banworthy.

Leviair is banworthy, Tour Guide or not. Dimension Fusion is so banworthy that it's actually banned. And Return from the Different Dimension is, quite frankly, banworthy as well - it's as OTK-y as Limiter Removal or Card Destruction or more, except that it takes a little more setup and is a Trap so needs to be played face-down first.

But no other card on your list is even close to worthy of consideration for any kind of ban. Some of those cards are quite good... but the best among them (Gold Sarc. and Eclipse Wyvern) don't even "really" remove from play - they more "put some cards off to the side for a little while and to be brought back later", and Burial is limited for another reason (to stop cards like Mezuki, Vayu, and Necro Gardna, whose banishing effects were intended to work like "once per Duel" effects - Konami wised up on that real quick), and frankly I think it should go to 3 anyway assuming other relevant hits.

The rest of the cards require lots of deck infrastructure, or incur minuses for their power, or are just plain awful. There's absolutely no reason to hit them, even under a "**** goes there and doesn't come back" mentality.

It's the ones that turn the banished zone into an insanely accessible toolbox, or that turn it into an avenue for +3s to +5s, that are broken in light of the fact that the stuff is actually supposed to be "removed from the game".

[Raz0r77]

Just because you feel that the banish zone is some place where cards should not be able to be retrieved back ever in the game doesn't mean it should be. Konami is the one deciding the philosophy of their game design.

As long as banished cards are harder to access than graveyards, then it still serves a purpose. Some archetypes like psychics could try to play around with the idea of banish zone and may create bold new possibilities and combos. Stop being so resistant to change, just because the banish zone was almost impossible to access in the past doesn't mean it always should be.

I would also argue that having a toolbox in your graveyard or in your banished zone, gives players options and the more options a player has, the more decisions they have to make which leads to more skill. It's up to each player to calculate what resources/advantages they have and how to best use them or use that info against their opponent to prevent their plays. As long as a card has reasonable risks for it's rewards it should be balanced. Having to do with the banished zone has nothing to do with whether or not a card's balanced.

If you look at it objectively, is a card generating too much advantage for little investment/cost? If so, then it's banworthy/limit, otherwise it's fine. Tour guide is the problem, not leviair. Leviair without use of tour guide is a 2 for 2, you -1 yourself by using up 2 lvl 3 monsters to xyz into it, then you break even by bringing a lvl 4 or lower banished monster back, with tour guide, leviair becomes 1 card into a +1 banished monster, because essentially you're normal summoning into leiviair by using only 1 card. Leviair has risks/costs to it's benefits. It takes 2 monsters to summon, it can give you a banished lvl 4 or lower monster back. Tour guide on the other hand gives you plusses for no reason other than normal summoning it, high rewards, little/no risk to you other than normal summon.

All arguments of how broken leviair is comes from abusing rescue rabbit, inzektors. Inzektors, are they a fair archetype? No. So don't even bother putting the blame on leviair. Leviair is only a win more card that they use to otk. If you just solve inzektors by making them more balanced, leviair won't seem op. Dino rabbits, consistently get out leviair how? -Tour guide, exactly. No Tour guide, what are you going to do, run maurading captain and other inconsistent lvl 3 spam garbage that drain your hand to try to ss leviair that same turn or set reapers one at a time and try to hope you dont get disrupted before you can make leviair? Those are plenty of opportunities for players to disrupt dino rabbit at that point, making another laggia/dolkka won't be so consistent anymore and that'll give players plenty of time to deal with that 1st laggia. It'll just be luck sack or just good luck on the dino rabbit player if they open with 2 rabbits.

This is not even an argument about what is balanced or not, it's about the game design. You believe banished cards should permanently stay banished. I say it should be harder to retrieve than from the graveyard, but not too impractically impossible. For most archetypes I think it should be a bit difficult to access the banished zone at least for high lvl monsters but certain archetypes could function in this niche of banish retrieval strategy, like how Chaos Dragon or Psychics sort of function.

[Suibon]

I am going to invoke Konami in my defense of Leviair and others like it, as I do not want to defend errors made in their name.

Now, I would agree that recurrence (my catch-all term of the month for all cards fetching monsters from both Grave and banished zone) is an inherently powerful thing, given the potential even one monster has in contributing to its user's plans (for saving or smashing face -- your pick). I agree that cards that touch touch upon this thorny issue must be handled with the utmost caution if it is to prosper for long; what I disagree with is this notion that Leviair was improperly handled on its way to release.

Leviair, being an Exceed, is far more balanced than an Effect Monster of the same effect and like Level; the fact that you must use up two Level 3 monsters to summon what is ultimately an underpowered monster, stat-wise, is what makes it a balanced card outside the confines of Tour Guide shenanigans; for ultimately you must consume resources and/or depend on maintaining prior field presence to get a benefit of the doubt from this card.

Don't believe me? Well then, two examples -- an unimpeded Marauding Captain + random LV3 play, for instance, guarantees you immediate access to Leviair, but one must first take into consideration the availability of said LV3 in the hand, and as any person cognizant of this game would tell you, the hand is the most limited resource pool in Yu-Gi-Oh. For a different perspective into summoning Leviair, we have Feedback Warrior and its ability to make any other target monster's Level LV3; but then rare is the chance that you can Special Summon it (and even if you do so, you likely are consuming a card to do so -- so I still win), thus making Feedback's worth dependent on actual field presence that somehow lasts the opposing turn.

What I am saying, in essence, is that Leviair is a fairly costed source of recurrence, having to consume two monsters, one of which is not named Tour Guide From the Underworld with all the cheating it promotes to dodge the costs of summoning Rank 3 Exceeds, and having a weak body and a fairly restricted target pool on top of it.

[nukm4]

Originally Posted by HochDeutsch

You are not, in fact, doing it right.

The idea that the banished zone should not be able to be accessed as easily as it is does not entail banning cards as god-awful as Miracle Dig.

Nowhere in my post, or the post I quoted was there any mention of the EASE of access to the banished zone, it was ALL pertaining to the sheer fact of the existence of access to the banished zone.

The point of my post is that accessing the banished zone is not ban-worthy. It is only ban-worthy when it is too easy to be balanced. Leviair is easy to use to recur things from the grave because it is costless, and summonable in basically any deck almost on demand. Why is this? Tour Guide. Take Tour Guide away, and Tour Guide simply vanishes from competitive, and even most casual play. The only competitive decks that could summon Leviair without Tour Guide are Inzektors and Wind-Ups, and in both cases, getting back a banished combo piece at the expense of another combo piece is a totally balanced play, and since it only rewards the user when the piece brought back is more useful than the piece used up, it tends to reward good players who are capable of accurately assessing risk vs reward situations. Although, I should add that what Wind-Ups or Inzektors would normally get back like this would almost certainly enable problematic combos, but those combos are problematic in the first place and therefore shouldn't exist anyway.

Additional Comment:

Originally Posted by Raz0r77

Just because you feel that the banish zone is some place where cards should not be able to be retrieved back ever in the game doesn't mean it should be. Konami is the one deciding the philosophy of their game design.

As long as banished cards are harder to access than graveyards, then it still serves a purpose. Some archetypes like psychics could try to play around with the idea of banish zone and may create bold new possibilities and combos. Stop being so resistant to change, just because the banish zone was almost impossible to access in the past doesn't mean it always should be.

I would also argue that having a toolbox in your graveyard or in your banished zone, gives players options and the more options a player has, the more decisions they have to make which leads to more skill. It's up to each player to calculate what resources/advantages they have and how to best use them or use that info against their opponent to prevent their plays. As long as a card has reasonable risks for it's rewards it should be balanced. Having to do with the banished zone has nothing to do with whether or not a card's balanced.

If you look at it objectively, is a card generating too much advantage for little investment/cost? If so, then it's banworthy/limit, otherwise it's fine. Tour guide is the problem, not leviair. Leviair without use of tour guide is a 2 for 2, you -1 yourself by using up 2 lvl 3 monsters to xyz into it, then you break even by bringing a lvl 4 or lower banished monster back, with tour guide, leviair becomes 1 card into a +1 banished monster, because essentially you're normal summoning into leiviair by using only 1 card. Leviair has risks/costs to it's benefits. It takes 2 monsters to summon, it can give you a banished lvl 4 or lower monster back. Tour guide on the other hand gives you plusses for no reason other than normal summoning it, high rewards, little/no risk to you other than normal summon.

All arguments of how broken leviair is comes from abusing rescue rabbit, inzektors. Inzektors, are they a fair archetype? No. So don't even bother putting the blame on leviair. Leviair is only a win more card that they use to otk. If you just solve inzektors by making them more balanced, leviair won't seem op. Dino rabbits, consistently get out leviair how? -Tour guide, exactly. No Tour guide, what are you going to do, run maurading captain and other inconsistent lvl 3 spam garbage that drain your hand to try to ss leviair that same turn or set reapers one at a time and try to hope you dont get disrupted before you can make leviair? Those are plenty of opportunities for players to disrupt dino rabbit at that point, making another laggia/dolkka won't be so consistent anymore and that'll give players plenty of time to deal with that 1st laggia. It'll just be luck sack or just good luck on the dino rabbit player if they open with 2 rabbits.

This is not even an argument about what is balanced or not, it's about the game design. You believe banished cards should permanently stay banished. I say it should be harder to retrieve than from the graveyard, but not too impractically impossible. For most archetypes I think it should be a bit difficult to access the banished zone at least for high lvl monsters but certain archetypes could function in this niche of banish retrieval strategy, like how Chaos Dragon or Psychics sort of function.

I sincerely hope this isn't directed at me, because if it is, you should consider glasses.

[HochDeutsch]

Originally Posted by nukm4

Nowhere in my post, or the post I quoted was there any mention of the EASE of access to the banished zone, it was ALL pertaining to the sheer fact of the existence of access to the banished zone.

Indeed. But you were attacking "the idea that the RFG zone should serve no other function than to be a black hole from whence cards can never return", and my post was designed to argue that you are correct in trying to suggest that that is more or less a silly idea, but that nobody was trying to make that argument in the first place. The argument against cards like Leviair is that "the RFG zone should...be a black hole from whence cards can not easily return".

[nukm4]

Originally Posted by HochDeutsch

Indeed. But you were attacking "the idea that the RFG zone should serve no other function than to be a black hole from whence cards can never return", and my post was designed to argue that you are correct in trying to suggest that that is more or less a silly idea, but that nobody was trying to make that argument in the first place. The argument against cards like Leviair is that "the RFG zone should...be a black hole from whence cards can not easily return".

No, because no one ever says "cards should be hard to get back from the banished zone", instead, they MUCH more frequently say "cards shouldn't be able to be gotten back from the banished zone" as though that's all that needs be said [I'm bloody well looking at you Hydronix; seriously, do better], and it just feels so lazy and entitled.

[Chaos3600]

Needs more Shutendoji and Fortune's Future.

[nukm4]

Originally Posted by Chaos3600

Needs more Shutendoji and Fortune's Future.

Added, can't believe I forgot those stupidly broken cards.

[HochDeutsch]

Originally Posted by nukm4

Added, can't believe I forgot those stupidly broken cards.

Well, if we're listing cards like that... what about Fish and Swaps.

(nah in all seriousness, Fish and Swaps is one of the worst cards of all time)

[Kunai Wit' Chain]

Elemental Hero the Shining. Too good. Get it outta there.

[Mugi-Chan]

Nevermind...

[nukm4]

Originally Posted by Pink Mink

Nevermind...

I ORDER YOU TO TELL ME.

[Mugi-Chan]

Originally Posted by nukm4

I ORDER YOU TO TELL ME.

Um, no

[nukm4]

Originally Posted by Pink Mink

Um, no

*******...

[Camero]

The "true" banished zone is banished face-down. We need more cards like Lightforce Sword and Different Dimension Capsule....though of course if we do that, in a few years even THAT would be a toolbox(can you imagine?)

[Super Mario Bro]

Don't forget Wind-Up Rabbit.

[nukm4]

Just keep 'em coming, we need to fix this problem while we still can.