Welcoming the January 2023 OCG List The January Ban List for the OCG is here before the year ends! What could this format resetting changes mean for us all?
1 year ago by Therarely
5,512 1 10 Min Read Article

Table of Contents

It's the end of the year again! And with every end, comes a new beginning: the birth of a new OCG Format. Santa Claus has a list of nice and naughty cards, and here it is in its lengthy glory!

This article will attempt to cover my personal thoughts and breakdown of the relevance of these sudden new shifts within the F/L list while we celebrate the passing of another great year.

As a final disclaimer, this is about the OCG January 2023 Ban List. Several TCG exclusives like Garura, Wings of Resonant Life and Pitknight Earlie do not exist in the OCG yet.

You can read my previous banlist articles here:
January 2022 / April 2022 / July 2022

January 1st, 2023 Limit Regulations

FORBIDDEN

LIMITED

SEMI LIMITED

UNLIMITED

Understanding the Current OCG Metagame


Source: Road of the King

 

This picture depicts the 19 – 27 November Metagame. It is not an exact accurate representation of the current OCG Meta.

Tearlament Kashtira has firmly established itself as the best deck of the format. By ridding itself of the synergistic Ishizu package, the Kashtira part of this deck delivers the same amount of consistency and the ability to trade unfairly without excessively relying on any Fusion Summons. Kashtira Fenrir, the deadliest card of the deck, is able to either devastate board states or bait out multiple negations by itself. This deck, which is able to rapidly adapt to any and every sort of game state presented towards it, has consistently dominated every other deck beneath it.

Pure Kashtira trails behind as the natural predator to Tearlament Kashtira. As a deck centered around the domineering effects of Kashtira Arise-Heart, they seek to remove opposing key cards away from the game until the opponent can no longer resist. 

The rest of the decks are either simply categorized into decks that are specifically engineered to defeat these two like Runick and Floowandereeze, or something more fun to play like Springans.

The last banlist completely put Spright out of commission, but the balance remains the same - This format is still dominated by two tier 0 worthy decks, and the banlist has to be impactful enough for things to change. And it was!

Ancient Fairy Dragon's Errata

 

image(Pre-errata text)

Ancient Fairy Dragon
Level 7 LIGHT Dragon Synchro Effect Monster
ATK 2100
DEF 3000
Materials: 1 Tuner + 1+ non-Tuner monsters
You can only use the (1)st and (2)nd effects of this card’s name each once per turn.
(1) You can Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower monster from you hand, but you cannot conduct your Battle Phase the turn you activate this effect.
(2) You can destroy as many cards on the Field Zones as possible, and if you do, gain 1000 LP, then you can add 1 Field Spell from your Deck to your hand with a different name than that of the destroyed card(s).

Ancient Fairy Dragon is one of the more popular monsters of the 5Ds era, and it has the amazing abilities to back up its worth. Ancient Fairy Dragon was normally a key factor in many exaggerated combos, including but not limited to multiple FTKs under its namesake, constant usage in the metagame (notably ABC and SPYRALs), and overall just being the most powerful synchro to ever grace our game. What changes now?

If you notice from the bolded changes in the card effects, it is now relegated into a Hard-Once-Per-Turn usage. This greatly limits its usage amongst several notable FTK combos while retaining its original signature effects. Being forced to tutor a different field spell is also a great nerf against particular decks that can rapidly tutor cards with Field Spells, such as Trickstar Light Stage.

Personally, I think these erratas are great, as they have greatly lowered the potential of this card, yet kept it to an extremely playable degree. This Signer Dragon may see potential use in the future, but for now, we can only experiment with the tamer variant.

 

Tearlament Hits

image

Since the inception of Kashtira, Tearlaments has proven that it is basically able to merge with any other archetype. What happens when Kashtira is hit on the banlist? Will Tearlaments simply adopt yet another engine?

But now, we do not need to worry about such a future! Tearlaments Kitkallos, the central piece of all Tearlaments strategies, is now completely banned. Unlike the TCG which allows their Tearlaments to fuse into a back-up Garura, Wings of Resonant Life, the OCG absolutely needs their first Fusion Summon to be Kitkallos. Without this initial first step, the Tearlaments gameplan is now extremely hindered. Along with this, Tearlaments Reinoheart, the key piece to summoning the alternative Tearlaments Kaleido-Heart, is also limited to prevent any possibility of the deck surviving the banlist. Tearlaments Scheiren is also limited, as it itself can potentially be a great boon to any other fusion-related strategy even outside of her archetype. With multiple bans and limitations on this banlist, what I would have considered a hopeless dream is now a reality: Tearlaments is finally unplayable as an archetype. However, one can expect Tearlaments cards sneaking into other fusion based decks, like Dark World or Shaddoll.

I included the other four cards as a consideration to the future of Tearlaments. With these specific hits, I feel they are concerned about other decks that can adopt the same strategies as the current Kashtira Tearlaments, so slightly tapping these cards that may easily take over the top spot is a very good move too. 

 

Kashtira Hits

image

Kashtira begun to step into the meta pie once they recieved their due support from Photon Hypernova, which was very good. On one hand, Kashtira allowed the pilot to snipe off potential threats from the opponent's extra decks, field, sometimes even the hand and deck! And each main deck monster could stand their own ground: Kashtira Fenrir tutored itself and sniped cards off the field every turn, Kashtira Unicorn removed threats from the extra deck, and Photon Hypernova gave these insane cards a way to co-exist and stand together as one whole threatening board. This deck, which was thought to be Tearlament's natural predator due to their banishing strategies, was easily countered by them including Kashtira cards in their deck too. Ironic? 

Anyway, with Tearlaments' downfall, it would be normal to state that the next best deck, Kashtira, would rise to the throne - unless Konami did something about it. And thus, they hit a total of three of their best tutor cards, basically rendering this deck's searching abilities very limited. Not only that, monsters being at one copy each meant the Kashtira pilot could not recklessly overlay - because the presence of these monsters served as important disruption by themselves. With these hits, now both of the top decks are definitely down.

Ancient Fairy Dragon is a newly released level 7 synchro that partly synergizes with the Kashtira theme, so it may grant some sort of boon in return, but personally I believe this archetype is now unplayable as both pure or an engine.

Minor Archtypical Changes

There are a lot of relevant archetypes that could potentially go straight for the throne after the topple of power, so let us look at them!

Barrier Statue of the Stormwinds is the most interesting ban here, since it not only directly removes a key win condition for Floowandereeze, it prevents Kashtira from developing an alternate win condition through Raidraptor - Arsenal Falcon. In a sense, these decks have been nerfed even further.

Branded Fusion was an integral part of the Branded Despia strategy, the deck that used to be the best before Sprights and Tearlaments. If those decks stopped being the reigning kings, it could be possible that Branded Despia would rise to the top again. This hit will prevent as such, and this also serves to prevent the already decaying Tearlaments from relying on yet another strong fusion alternative to survive again.

Galatea, the Orcust Automaton, Sky Striker Ace - Kagari, Trickstar Light Stage, Infernity Launcher, ABC-Dragon Buster, Double Iris Magician, Water Enchantress of the Temple, and The Phantom Knights of Torn Scales are all unhits that should have happened a long time ago. These unhits are quite frankly, almost irrelevant and may not heavily impact the metagame at all. Swap Frog in particular now boasts zero utility now that Toadally Awesome is banned, and may never see relevant play outside of Spright variants ever again.

Sky Striker Ace - Kagari is a very notable unhit, as if to celebrate the continuous waves of support the archetypes gets every year. This time, the power level of the game is way too high for Sky Strikers to compete. Although it may be a while before we can expect full power Sky Strikers again, we could be expecting even stronger cards for them, like the newly released Sky Striker Ace - Azalea.

Generic Changes

image

These are generic cards that has seen an abnormal amount of usage, or are expected not to. Tellarknight Ptolemaeus is the most interesting addition to this list, given that we are expecting more Satellarknight support in the next set Cyberstorm Access, and players have figured out multiple lines to trigger its incredible turn skipping effect. Aside from that, decks able to summon this card can potentially tap back into old combos such as summoning Cyber Dragon Infinity or Stellarknight Constellar Diamond.

Blackwing - Steam the Cloak was banned simply because of its role within Gouki - it was able to spawn multiple tokens for the player to summon many Link monsters alone! Despite being a Blackwing by nature, it currently does not fit within any playstyle of Blackwings. This card can now slowly rise back to unlimtied status now that Crystron Halqifibrax is banned.

Yata-Garasu and Change of Heart are cards that were previously thought to be extremely powerful throughout the entirety of the game's history - until the TCG unbanned them first. After witnessing the low impacts that these cards brought to the metagame, it is very safe to say that these cards are completely outclassed and will never live up to their legendary status 15 years ago.

Raigeki and Foolish Burial Goods are very weird hits in my opinion, because while they were never useful in the latest metagame, semi-limiting them makes no difference at all. However, they could be very important pieces for supports in the next three months, we may never know. 

What do I think of this List? 

What we have waited for with baited breath since the middle of the year has finally come - Tearlaments is no more. Tearlaments as an archetype is way too powerful for its time, and punishes players for attempting to remove their monsters with an even bigger threat - while being able to develop threats and disruptions on any moment of either players turn. Undoubtly, Tearlaments is the best deck in the entire game's history as of now. 

Many did not expect Tearlaments Kitkallos to get banned, and we were expecting the same sort of response given how long it took to deal with True King of All Calamities (it took 1½ years), or were already expecting a Kashtira centric metagame should Tearlaments get hit. This list is so massive it hit everything, and the potentially meta-worthy decks ready to take over, what a wave! Now players will have to experiment to figure out the next best deck of the format, and it will not be so obvious this time.

Upon recieving news of this banlist, many stores begun to adopt this list for future tournaments, bringing a very varied and colorful piechart showing many different decks topping. Very much like a garden, this format before Cyberstorm Access is very colorful and exciting, as there are no more unfair strategies to deny the expected gameplay. From current results, you may expect to see Spright Tri-Brigade as the most popular deck, followed by other Spright variants, Runick, Labyrinth, Exorsisters, the list only goes on. There are too many decks ready to take over any time! In fact, you can read more about this here.

Personally, I am quite pleased with this list. Compared to last year, this list is a complete rest of the metagame, and we are not forced to rely on past topping decks to win. Being able to compete with your favorite decks and feel a chance of winning is very rewarding.

Cyberstorm Access releases on the 14 January - two weeks after the implementation of the banlist. Are you ready for this format? I know I will have a ton of fun with it.

 

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