Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG: August 2024 Banlist Review

Announced back in July 2024, the latest Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG forbidden and limited list has finally been revealed, on August 31st. In July, besides scheduling this banlist, Konami also announced their main targets, namely Snake-Eye, which is considered a tier-0 deck by many, and Yubel, which became increasingly more popular and resilient after the latest Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG set was released.

Both decks became this powerful because of their synergy with the most recent engine that is dominating the metagame, Fiendsmith. Most duelists were excited to hear how Konami would use the banlist to deal with these culprits.

The new banlist will be valid from September 2nd, 2024 onward, and, by all accounts, should heavily affect the Advanced metagame.

Check out below all the changes announced to the new Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG format.

The Fiendsmith's Lacrima ban looks like a great loss to Fiendsmith, but it is actually not that relevant for this engine's playability. So, it's more like a pseudo-ban.

On the other side, the Apollousa, Bow of the Goddess and Beatrice, Lady of the Eternal bans, heavily requested by most players, were a great call by Konami. They'll affect how versatile the Fiendsmith engine is, which now uses D/D/D Wave High King Caesar as its main "boss".

Hot Red Dragon Archfiend King Calamity, which is thoroughly disliked by many for being a FTK card, definitely needed a ban, and this decision should be excellent for the game. However, it is a bit untimely, once it wasn't relevant at all in the current format.

Eva's return to the game will be great for Drytron, which, with her, will once again be able to use a Fairy engine. Furthermore, this archetype also recently got some support cards that gave it more consistency, and could become a new contender in the metagame.

Snake-Eye Ash's limitation looks a bit late, but I believe that, as Snake-Eyes Poplar was also limited, this will be enough to push out "pure Snake-Eye" out of the meta.

However, considering Snake-Eyes Flamberge Dragon is still around, Snake-Eye will most likely remain in the metagame as an engine.

Despite not showing up in the top cuts of any great tournaments, Gimmick Puppet was becoming more popular, particularly because it can set up a "burn FTK". However, now that Number 40: Gimmick Puppet of Strings and Number C40: Gimmick Puppet of Dark Strings were limited, this FTK will no longer be a concern for players.

We have been waiting for Branded Fusion to be limited to 1 ever since it was released, and now that it happened most of us feel like it wasn't necessary, at least not right now. Branded's actual "unfair" move included the Albion the Sanctifire Dragon FTK, which put Gimmick Puppet Nightmare lock in play.

Even though Konami listed it as one of their main targets in this banlist, Yubel only got hit once, indirectly: Opening of the Spirit Gates is now limited to 1. Ironically, many players already only used one copy of it in their decks.

Another card that should have been limited a long time ago was Pot of Prosperity, and finally Konami answered our plea. This decision will affect the consistency of many decks, as they'll now have to use less powerful cards to replace it and still perform as well as before.

Sangen Summoning's design is totally anti-interactive, and gave an absurd amount of protection to Tenpai's Fire Dragons. As a result, it was unsurprisingly, but very welcomely, limited.

That Grass Looks Greener is quite insane: it makes any "mill" strategy more powerful. The greatest question is whether it will "mess up" the metagame in 2024.

Skill Drain, which is very popular right now in Snake-Eye's side decks or Stun's main deck, is one of the most terrible cards to play against, and this limitation was considered "not enough" by many players. Nonetheless, it's still better to deal with only 1 copy of it than 3.

As Dragon Rulers were limited to 1 copy and were not relevant to the game at all as a result, the current banlist decided to free one more copy of each one of them, which should remain irrelevant to the metagame.

Besides Dragon Rulers, the other cards above were also limited and had no space in main strategies, even the problematic Thunder Dragon Colossus. They'll most likely be fully unlimited in the future, if they remain "under control".

The unlimited cards in this banlist all follow a pattern: they were all limited or semi-limited before this banlist.

Among them, I'll highlight Performage Plushfire, which got an erratum and moved straight from "banned" to "unlimited". Before, it was used in a loop to summon Performages in the deck, but its effect is now restricted to "once a turn".

The Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG meta was being dominated by Snake-Eye Fiendsmith, then Yubel Fiendsmith, and, on a smaller scale, Tenpai. Most players expected a lot from this banlist, considering that, besides delaying it for a month, Konami also announced which decks they wanted to impact, namely Snake-Eye and Yubel (besides the Fiendsmith engine, of course).

These bans will directly affect 2 ("Apollousa" and "Beatrice") of the 3 main monsters Fiendsmith accesses, as well as one of the fusions in this archetype, but this engine will remain playable, as it now "only" accesses "Caesar". Furthermore, Snake-Eye's recently limited cards were good decisions, as this archetype will remain alive as an engine when most players expected it to go away forever. The most significant detail about this banlist is that, even though Konami listed Yubel as one of its main targets, it didn't truly impact it. Now, it is the only deck that is still incredibly compatible with Fiendsmith, and should move on to become the newest best deck in the game.

Another key detail is that we lost 2 FTK's, but the FTK that popped up more often in the format was replaced by the Branded Fusion limitation. Still, overall, these were good changes. The only other issue will most likely be the return of That Grass Looks Greener.

So, I consider this banlist quite average, as it only resolved "part" of the problem. The upside is that it maintained the trend of limiting floodgates from past banlists and acquired a new trend: eliminating FTKs or at least weakening them.

But what about you, what did you think of this banlist? Did you miss any cards? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

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