Well, it happened. It happens to every game that hangs around past its initial cup of coffee. Some cards have been banned for competitive play. What cards are banned? What did it effect? Is it a good decision? We will go over all of it. Let’s dive in.
What cards are banned?
Two cards for Ultraman Mebius: BP01-022 and BP01-026. These cards are no longer allowed in constructed decks for competitive play. Ultraman Mebius is the most consistent character in the game, and we will be going over why that is. Mebius decks want to dump a lot of cards into your discard area and then pull them back into play using Champion of the Fierce Fight. Let’s look at how each of the banned cards affects those actions.
RR BP01-022. Not only does this card send two cards straight to your discard area, but you then get to pull the most useful Mebius or scene card out and go to your hand. The important aspect of this is being able to pull that scene card out of your discard area. Maybe that scene card got there from your earlier discarding frenzies. Or perhaps you already had it in play and your opponent removed it. Or yet, you might have discarded it from your hand earlier to help activate another effect. This RR Level 2 Mebius lets you get it back into your hand at any point in the game, no matter when it was put into your discard area. It allows you to be careless with your discarding, knowing you can always get the scene card back later.
U BP01-026. Like I mentioned earlier, this card lets you put cards from your deck into your discard area and have an additional effect. That other effect is an simple +2000 BP to any Ultra Hero. There are a few other Mebius cards that also allow you to send multiple cards from your deck to your discard area. BP01 R level 1 will send 2 cards to your discard area. BP02 RR Level 2 will send 3 cards to your discard area. And that’s just Mebius. If you are pairing him with another Ultra, specifically Ultraman Hikari, you have a “scene searcher” card that will send 4 or 5 cards to your discard area. And Hikari has a Level 1 R identical to Mebius where 2 cards get sent to your discard area.
So, WHY were these cards banned? Because Mebius/Hikari is hands down the most popular deck currently in the competitive scene. Here’s a graph from May showing Mebius/Hikari made up 45% of decks in major tournaments in Japan. It is so popular because of its consistency. It’s difficult to get a “bad” hand while running this deck because there are so many ways to fill your discard area and get your scene card. The RR level 2 being able to grab a scene card from anywhere in your discard allows you to play recklessly. It lets the player indiscriminately send cards to discard, knowing you can pull a scene card back out as long as you are sitting on the RR level 2 in your hand. The U level 3 isn’t exceptionally good in a vacuum, but it is just one of the many cards that allows you to fill that discard area as a byproduct. Out of all of the cards that do this, this one is the lowest rarity. There’s also the fact that THIS level 3 is possibly the best target to swap into play with the Champion scene card, since it will be able to give +2000 to any Ultra in play. This card can fuel your win condition AND is maybe the best card to be used with that win condition. Removing these two cards will make Mebius players have to make decisions a little more intentionally. They won’t be able to just use cards and stumble into a win.
Was it a good decision? Well, it’s too soon to tell. I’ll be honest, my gut reaction was that it’s too harsh of a response. An overcorrection. Did this deck really warrant the banning of two cards? The more I think about it, neither of the cards that were banned were pivotal to winning with Mebius. They just made it more consistent, as I hope I’ve illustrated above. I don’t like the idea of banning multiple cards in one fell swoop. I feel like I’m being robbed of future deckbuilding interactions. Maybe that’s just me. Maybe that’s something I need to get over.
I think this is going to be good for the game. I don’t know if it will immediately reduce the amount of players using Mebius/Hikari. But I think it will reduce the number of tournaments where almost all of the Top 4 or Top 8 are made up of Mebius/Hikari decks. It will take a few months, but this will have a positive impact on the diversity of decks being used in high level tournaments.
Who cares what I think. What do YOU think? Did something need banned to knock Mebius down a peg or two? Was this the right call? Sound off and let me know in the comments.
I am still new to TCG. My gut reaction was like this will not change how strong Mebius/Hikari deck would be. My gut thought was that if we want to decrease the deck’s strength, it should be to limit how many “Champions of the Fierce Fight” should be allowed in the deck. That said, a wait-and-see approach would be best in a growing game like UCG.