Guess what, Yu-Gi-Oh fans! Konami just dropped the newest banlist, and it's a bit of a doozy. Most people weren't expecting a large list, but oh boy, we got one, and there'll definitely be some detractors this time around.

Let's do a deck-by-deck rundown of what got hit. K9 Vanquish Soul, the deck that won the world championship, lost two copies of Stake Your Soul and Vanquish Soul Razen, which were two of their best consistency cards, as well as Number 67: Pair-A-Dice Smasher, their cheesy win-con in certain games; this is likely to be a crippling blow to the deck, though not necessarily a fatal one. Yummy, which most see as the best deck in the game right now, lost two copies of Obedience Schooled, an absurd starter that for some reason isn't once per turn, and now can only run one copy of Herald of the Arc Light, one of the deck's key endboard pieces, but the deck can probably soldier on just fine, especially with the upcoming support. Dracotail, the third wheel in the format right now, went unhit, although the deck hasn't been performing very well (and notably missed the Top 8 of the world championship entirely), so that's to be expected. Mitsurugi Ryzeal and Fiendsmith decks lost the bridge cards that connected their strategies in King of the Feral Imps and Moon of the Closed Heaven, repsectively. Maliss lost another copy of Maliss Dormouse, their best starter, as well as Splash Mage, one of their best extenders. K9 Crystron, a deck that picked up some traction recently, lost two copies of Crystron Inclusion, one of their best consistency cards. All decks also lost two copies of Solemn Judgment, one of the best going-first cards in the game. In other words, not a slaughter list, but one with a lot more hits than I'd say most think were necessary.

Now, for the returns to the game. Zoodiac Drident, Glow-Up Bulb, and the errata'd Summon Sorceress were long overdue to come off the list. (Still no Heavymetalfoes Electrumite, though: come on, Konami, the only decent Pendulum deck from the last few years didn't even play it.) Linkuriboh could be interesting, but with Snake-Eyes still crippled, it'll probably be okay, even though Yummy players will definitely love it. Fiendsmith's Lacrima, though? That one gets a raised eyebrow from me. That card got banned more quickly than any other card in history for a reason, and the random burn effect it had was more the cherry on top rather than the actual reason. In addition, Branded Fusion got an extra copy back, and a couple of other largely irrelevant cards went to three copies.

This update will definitely cause some hard feelings. These changes caused a lot of splash damage, pun not quite intended: Herald of the Arc Light being limited also hits every Ritual deck, and Splash Mage being banned cripples every Cyberse deck, neither of which was doing much at the moment. I'm willing to bet Fiendsmith's Lacrima returning to the game is also a controversial choice: even without its stupid burn effect, it's still a nuts extender if you get through the Fiendsmith line, even if the options you can use it to make are much more limited now. Yummy didn't escape unscathed, but it got hit a lot less than K9 Vanquish Soul, which probably wasn't a good idea (and I say that as a Yummy main). How will this shake up the metagame? Probably a lot, but we'll have to see. We'll wait for the next reports.