Konami has made another update to the Master Duel Forbidden/Limited List. Judging by the newly announced changes, it looks like the team has decided to bring back a running community joke; the use of a random number generator for deciding these updates.
To be Unlimited
Fire King High Avatar Kirin
First on the list of updates is Fire King High Avatar Kirin. This card’s release from semi-limited doesn’t necessarily mean any sweeping changes to the meta. For players running pure Fire King or a hybrid with Snake-Eyes, however, this is not an unwelcome addition.
As an easy-to-summon extender, Fire King High Avatar Kirin can easily be used for extra deck targets; Promethean Princess, Bestower of Flames, S:P Little Knight, or Garunix Eternity, Hyang of the Fire Kings, to name a few.
For those decks running a Fire King package, Fire King High Avatar Kirin just adds that little bit of recursion. Its special summoning float can target another Fire King monster card in the hand or graveyard.
Rescue-ACE Air Lifter
Next is another card being released to unlimited status, Rescue-ACE Air Lifter. Like High Avatar Kirin, this is more of an unexpected surprise than a meta shake-up.
With the ability to search high Rescue-Ace consistency spell cards like RESCUE! or ALERT! and the ability to function as a hand trap if another Rescue-ACE monster is in hand, the Rescue-ACE engine easily benefits from this card becoming unlimited.
Emergency Teleport
We are starting to sense a recurring theme here, as Konami has one of the best psychic consistency spells becoming unlimited with Emergency Teleport.
This quick play spell is already seeing play in decks like Goblin Biker and Ritual Beasts.
The former can use Emergency Teleport to snag a copy of Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit to use either for on-field quick effect or as a body for any extra deck plays. The latter, meanwhile, has a plethora of targets in the form of any of the Tamer monster cards, such as Spiritual Beast Tamer Lara.
Again, this barely changes up the meta, but it’s still a welcome addition for any player using Psychic-type monsters.
Purrely
The last card to join unlimited status is Purrely. This particular uplift is a little unexpected, but not really that surprising. Purrely’s sister card, Purrelyly, was also brought into unlimited status last March.
This is a one-card combo into one of the extra deck Epurrely monster cards, like Epurrely Plump or Epurrely Happiness. Purrely also doubles as an in-archetype excavation tool for any Purrely spell card, boosting the deck’s overall consistency.
Once more, this is not much of a meta-defining call. At most, this particular unlimiting just specifically affects the Purrely archetype to help stand against other leading competitors in Master Duel like Primite Blue-Eyes.
To be Semi-Limited
Solemn Judgement
This is the one part of the update that just leaves people scratching their heads. Solemn Judgement has that legacy of being one of the strongest negate cards in the history of Yu-Gi-Oh! but this card is a product of its time.
Due to the nature of the coin toss deciding the first player Master Duel, modern Yu-Gi-Oh! decks would mostly prefer cards that can activate right away in the event the player is going second.
If anything, the semi-limiting of Solemn Judgement mostly hurts any deck that is more reliant on trap cards in their list, like Dinomorphia.
We really don’t know what Konami is thinking with this update. It’s possible that Konami is using Master Duel as some weird Darwinian testing ground.
Experimenting with Master Duel’s meta via strange updates could prove useful when deciding the update for the physical counterparts.
There’s also the possibility that Konami is slowly preparing the digital card game for the eventual release of the Ryzeal and Maliss archetypes.
The oppressive nature of the full-powered Ryzeal and Maliss engines in the physical card game might’ve already clued Konami’s team to shore up the other archetypes in Master Duel.
One has to wonder what’s happening behind Konami’s doors. For now, this is an extremely confusing update that is to come into effect this coming May 9th.