A surprising move has been made by Konami with the Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championships are just around the bend. On May 31st, or June 1st, depending on where you are in the world, a new Forbidden List update will come into effect for Master Duel. As usual, this update has the potential to massively shake up the competitive metagame, which is hugely exciting.
Cards to be Unlimited:
Nadir Servant
Used in decks like Voiceless Voice or Dogmatika, Nadir Servant can easily fling a varied list of extra deck monsters into the graveyard as either combo extenders or board breakers.
The likes of Herald of the Arc Light can easily be targeted to search for in-archetype Ritual Spells or Monsters. You also have the likes of Mereologic Aggregator acting as a board breaker option for going second.
While this doesn’t adjust the decks currently at the top of the competitive scene, it elevates the strength of rogue decks. This is always a welcome change for some variety in the game.
Spright Blue, Spright Jet, and Nimble Beaver
Cards becoming unlimited rarely ever raise eyebrows. Usually, semi-limited cards were just ahead of their time and just needed to be held back a touch. As time progresses, however, Konami often sees fit to make these cards unlimited, since they no longer pose a major threat.
Spright Blue and Spright Jet both have the in-archetype package of being able to special summon themselves if an allied Level/Rank 2 monster is on the field. The former can extend into another Spright monster, while the latter can grab an in-archetype spell/trap card.
Both Spright monsters play off Nimble Beaver, a Level 2 monster that can special summon a copy of itself, or another “Nimble” monster, from the deck now that it’s back to maximum copies.
The Spright engine is a rather compact one that players could surgically add to another archetype if they wanted to.
With Spright Blue and Spright Jet back up to maximum copies, a player can now have more consistency when trying to access Gigantic Spright to clamp down on opponent responses.
Cards to be Semi-limited:
Branded Fusion
Coming in from being Limited, the Branded archetype just got a bump as it recovers more copies of one of its most powerful fusion spells.
Fusion summoning has always been a card-intensive form of special summoning. Not only did you need to have the needed materials on hand, but you also needed the spell to access the Fusion monster sleeping in the extra deck.
Branded Fusion does away with the former need as it can pull whatever listed requirements straight from the deck as long as Fallen of Albaz is mentioned as a material.
The Branded archetype may not be one of the more popular decks in Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel today. While this semi-limiting won’t catapult the archetype to stardom, it can offer its dedicated player base a better bridge for any gaps to cross.
Maiden of White & Sage with Eyes of Blue
These two are probably the most painful things to see on this list, especially if you're a fan or are currently using the Blue-Eyes archetype. Both Maiden of White and Sage with Eyes of Blue are integral pieces to the modern Blue-Eyes deck as combo starters.
The latter can easily search out the former or be used to summon the biggest brick of the main deck, the titular Blue-Eyes White Dragon.
Maiden of White not only offers a recursion package if necessary but also gives access to the True Light trap card, another extension tool that can access several one-ofs in this tightly packed deck.
Both cards help facilitate extra deck plays as requirements for Blue-Eyes Spirit Dragon or Spirit with Eyes of Blue.
It cannot be emphasized any further how impactful this decision is to the archetype. What’s most puzzling, however, is the timing of this update.
While Sage with Eyes of Blue has been in Master Duel for some time already, Maiden of White has only recently been added to the digital format, roughly two months ago.
It’s possible that Konami thinks the archetype is too strong in Master Duel for the moment and that it warrants this type of consistency hit. That said, both of these cards are at full capacity in the physical formats without issue.
We can’t say for sure why Konami made this particular decision. Some members of online communities think that an upcoming card pack might be the cause. That can only be considered as hearsay until we know for certain.
Unfortunately for Blue-Eyes, this kind of update will definitely hurt its chances of being represented in the Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship this coming August.
Cards to be Limited:
Bonfire
This was a long time coming. Bonfire just offered too much consistency to any deck that ran Pyro monsters like Snake-Eyes or Rescue Ace. With this update, this puts Bonfire to Limited status in all formats of Yu-Gi-Oh!
As basically another flavor of Reinforcement of the Army, a card that has sat on the Limited List for the better part of a decade or two, there is a very strong inclination that this card will never go above a single copy for the foreseeable future.
It’s also interesting that Konami decided to clamp down on Bonfire now, while Ryzeal has yet to be introduced into Master Duel. Perhaps the writing is on the wall here, and we may see the introduction of Ryzeal and maybe Maliss to Master Duel sooner than we think.
Original Sinful Spoils - Snake-Eye
Konami is once again using Master Duel as a bedrock for testing. In the Trading Card Game (TCG) and Official Card Game (OCG), Original Sinful Spoils - Snake-Eye is Forbidden and Unlimited, respectively.
So Master Duel gets to sit in this weird halfway point where Snake-Eyes still has access to one of its key pieces for its combo lines, albeit heavily neutered.
A pure Snake-Eyes engine may have fallen out of favor due to all the restrictions the archetype has been given. These hits, however, don’t necessarily kill off the deck as a whole.
Grafted to another archetype like Fiendsmith or Rescue-ACE, the engine still has plenty to offer to its player as a robust spearhead for board-breaking or just added extension value for long combos.