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Huge Bans before NA Nationals! - Episode 22
20 Plays28 days ago
We go over the most recent banned announcements and how they will impact the upcoming Nationals event in Vegas. Read the ban list here: https://www.gatcg.com/article/ban-and-restricted-april-20th-2026 #grandarchivetcg #tcg
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
If you want to hear more of Careful Study, make sure to subscribe and ding that bell to be notified when we post. These are the pod people.
00:00:13
Speaker
Yes, I'm hanging out with pod people.
00:00:20
Speaker
Welcome to Careful Study Band Edition. I'm David Morris and joining me today is Steve-O and Corbin.
00:00:34
Speaker
Well, we got we got our band and restricted a little early.
Card Bans and Their Timing
00:00:41
Speaker
It's effective on the 20th. We got a whole mess of cards on the ban, and we got two Proxia cards. Well, one update and one new Proxia card.
00:00:51
Speaker
um And I think a lot of us have a lot of questions as to why now and why not three weeks ago? There's been one event since then, right? Just the charity the charity cup and like one one yeti local or two i guess not yeti anymore yeah oh okay listen fine what do we call it now one na online local that how's that all ne yeti it's forever yeti yeah yeah um so yeah know there's there's a lot of stuff uh to talk about here and we're we're gonna start with the the proxies cards and then we'll
00:01:34
Speaker
We'll talk about the bans and how they affect what we're what what our preparations for Nats are going to be. And I believe there's a regional in North America before right before Nationals. That's Michigan, right? Michigan is this coming weekend.
00:01:50
Speaker
yeah that's Yeah, right before Nats. So um it'll be the first large tournament after these bans.
New Card Introduction: Duchess's Thorns
00:01:57
Speaker
But first, Proxia's Vault card. We have the Duchess's Thorns.
00:02:04
Speaker
So this is a zero cost regalia. It is fire. It comes into play hindered. ah Whenever you activate cardistry ability from an ally, that ally gets plus one and gains true sight until end of turn.
00:02:19
Speaker
I like that. ah You can exhaust it to banish the Duchess Thorns. The next cardistry ability you activate this turn costs six less to activate. So they they basically write here that this card aims to help diversify the decks in the aggressive category of this meta by supporting the fire suited archetype.
00:02:39
Speaker
It pushes more damage, gets around stealth, and synergizes with cardistry
Suited Decks: Strategies and Vulnerabilities
00:02:44
Speaker
abilities. We're excited to see how players adjust to their fire adjust their fire suited decks to include higher number of suited cards and take advantage of the cardistry ability cost reduction this new Regalia provides.
00:02:59
Speaker
So I haven't tried a suited ah deck in quite a while. I did play with it ah early in um in DTR and it it was fun, but it was kind of another one of those, like once someone understands what you're doing, they can pretty much deal with you. Like you burn fast, you burn bright. And if the person that ah you're playing against hasn't seen it before,
00:03:22
Speaker
They usually die. um But really the best way to deal with ah with ah with a suited deck was just board control. you You control their allies. You focus on making sure that their allies don't do anything.
00:03:35
Speaker
um and rip, you're done. Just run
Fire Aggro Deck Challenges
00:03:39
Speaker
out of steel. Yeah, Fire also a weird aggro deck where it didn't run like a lot of the spell damage like Philo and Suzaku do. It was all allies. It was a lot of allies. So it was a very one trick pony kind of thing. And um that's where I got my... um ah that's kind of where like, you know, like things like Lunette or, um, ah, what is it? Uh, of war, um, art of war, art of war. That's where I got my art of war PTSD from.
00:04:08
Speaker
I'm like, well, rip that, this deck doesn't work anymore. So what ah what what are you thinking about this one? How do do you think this is going to, I mean, getting, getting the plus one is pretty, pretty awesome there.
00:04:21
Speaker
I think the plus one in Truesight is kind of interesting because a lot of the times the cardistry abilities, at least for the allies that like generate value that are stuck to the board early, are abilities activated on the opponent's turn.
00:04:33
Speaker
So the plus one in Truesight aren't as relevant for those. But the more aggressive ones, like i think two of hearts gets like plus two when they use it. Mm-hmm. um ah I don't even know what half the suited cards do but I know like a lot of the aggressive ones they do activate on the opponent's turn so it does buff some of the more niche ones that are only seen in those suited decks do you think this is going to change certain people's play styles to instead of activating them on their opponent's turn they're going to activate them pre-rec instead so that they can get they can take advantage of these buffs I do think and it incentivizes that play style more it it kind of does yeah
00:05:15
Speaker
I'm looking at all the cardistries, at least in fire, that are like high cost. And the reduction effect I don't think is ever going to come up, honestly. Right. i mean At least because it's a fire card, so it can only be played in fire. i mean The best ability I think you have is the Eight of Hearts or Duchesses, um where you kind of get like good good influence from it.
00:05:38
Speaker
But even then, it's just... And you're banishing it and to lose the plus one and true site then on. Yeah, exactly. It's definitely something that you kind of just swing with everything and then maybe you get like extra value, you get like the draw two cards and you can squeeze in a little bit more damage.
00:05:53
Speaker
But it's definitely something you're going to have to materialize pretty
Cardistry Strategy Shifts
00:05:56
Speaker
early on. And then. I mean, if you think about how often cardistry gets activated, i want to say, if I remember correctly, in the games I played against those decks, usually that effect comes in, like the cardistry effect comes in maybe three to four times.
00:06:13
Speaker
I don't really see it being used beyond that.
00:06:17
Speaker
Fire Aggro has been in a rough spot for for a while. It's... it's um You don't see a lot of it. um You know, as always, there you always see ah there's always going to be a fire aggro deck here and there that spikes. I i have answers for that, though.
00:06:34
Speaker
Yeah. I think the reason it's in a bad spot, because i don't think it's in a bad spot. I really don't think it's in bad spot. No. I think it's not in a bad spot. It's just there's other low-to-the-ground decks that just beat the crap out of it and push it out of the meta.
00:06:47
Speaker
If you think about Water Diana... Oh, she's just a better fire aggro deck. She's better fire aggro deck. Yeah, she Absolutely. If you think about Windseer, they could just turbo and get the dragon and then aggro can never really kill the dragon. So how do you? Well, I mean, that's kind of what I mean by a rough spot. There's better choices, you know? But in terms of like the aggressive play style, you could probably make the argument for sure that Diana is an aggro deck.
00:07:11
Speaker
Oh, hundred almost certainly make the argument to that. Guoja being able to turbo to three as consistently as she can could also be considered a form of aggro when it comes to fire aggro versus Guoja.
00:07:21
Speaker
Sure. Because the biggest thing with aggro decks is always they're all gas, no breaks. So if anyone comes in doing kind of the same thing that they do, but with defense, then what's the point of playing fire aggro? Yeah, because you want you want tools, and water gives you a lot of tools. Wind gives you a ton of tools.
00:07:40
Speaker
But I think that it's fine. i think it's just being pushed out because of these other aggro decks that have defense tools, and we just once those are going, fire aggro will be fine. It'll go back to the way it was.
00:07:53
Speaker
Nothing... Like I might play around with with this regalia, but nothing screams to me as like maybe I'm missing something, but nothing here screams of like what this would be fantastic for as far as how to, you know, alter some of my old suited builds. But I might give this a whirl at a locals, see how it goes.
00:08:16
Speaker
I think one other thing is the existence of this may bring back Resolute into some of the other level three decks in the format. Sure.
Buffed Card: Mantle the Abyss
00:08:24
Speaker
Because I think a lot of them have been cutting it right now, is specifically because it doesn't it's not as impactful into Diana and Seiryu.
00:08:31
Speaker
But if the go wide strategies come back, then Resolute makes a lot more sense. Believe me, i've I've noticed the absence of Resolute. It's helped me out quite a bit. ah I'd do a lot of swinging for three.
00:08:45
Speaker
um All right, so this isn't a new Proxia card, but it is an update to a previous one that was somewhat underpowered. Mantle the Abyss, zero cost Fire Regalia.
00:08:59
Speaker
um And previously all it did was ah for three, you banish Mantle of the Abyss and you generate a Ryle the Abyss card, a banned card, and put it into your memory.
00:09:11
Speaker
Pretty cool. They added... Alice bonus, you may sacrifice a Specter ally to activate this card from your material deck. So this card is a bit of a miss in the terms of power level compared to other cards in proxy of vault.
00:09:29
Speaker
So we're buffing it. ah they They realized that it wasn't powerful enough. We've added a way to activate this card from your material deck by paying the costs of sacrificing a Specter ally.
00:09:43
Speaker
That makes this card very interesting to me because you do not take a turn off to bring it out. I like this quite a bit. And this is not an Alice card. This is a Merlin card.
00:09:54
Speaker
In disguise, yeah. This is a Merlin Kingslayer card. I think we talked about the Merlin deck on a previous podcast. We might have. Built by Justin, um who went into Alice and then into Merlin. So the Alice level one provides Merlin the heal ability for healing for five. like Yeah. ah And he was playing four copies of Another Beginning to grab Mantle out from the material deck early.
00:10:23
Speaker
And that was pretty much the key card that helped the strategy work and being able to activate mantle now, like pushes it a little bit higher.
00:10:35
Speaker
Yeah, especially if you just you you play your Liminal Guide, yeah sacrifice it, bring it out.
00:10:43
Speaker
I'm hoping people are seeing the writing on the wall here. I'm kind of worried about this card because everyone knows how good Activate from material deck
Strategic Potentials of Alice and Merlin Decks
00:10:51
Speaker
is. So good. And on top of that, even if you sacrifice like a Spectre that doesn't do anything in the discard pile, which obviously you're not going to be running other than maybe like Unyielding Wraith Guard, but if you do that...
00:11:05
Speaker
This card effectively replaces the specter you sacrificed so that it's a neutral line regardless. Yeah. So not only do you now have the option of neutral line, you also have the option of, well, kind of dealing with what the Lorraine's issue versus Alice's issue was. You got a sword and you got a regalia.
00:11:24
Speaker
So now you have a regalia that you can ghost if you really wanted to. But this card, if like you said, dude, if you play any Spectre with any interaction with the discard pile, sack it to get this out, that's a plus one.
00:11:36
Speaker
That's a plus one just from the material deck. That's kind of crazy. Now, obviously, like ah if you want to use this in in Merlin, you're going to have to you know the the yeah alter the the way she's built currently. um So do you think that you're looking to put in 12 to 16 Spectres, or do you want to go like to stick to the lower side because you're only essentially activating one Ryle?
00:12:05
Speaker
I think it's probably 8 to 16, probably closer to 10 to 12. 10 to 12, yeah. that's That's where I was thinking too. Because I don't think you need to go into the blue specter anymore because you're probably not doing prismatic.
00:12:18
Speaker
You also can't get that out to sacrifice it. Right, you can't. You'd only be pitching it. And with only one Ryle, it's like... ah Granted, creative shocks, but you lose value there.
00:12:28
Speaker
The one that Justin was playing to stay neutral was Dodo Bird because it's a three cost that can sack itself to draw to memory. Dodo Bird. Okay.
00:12:40
Speaker
Nether Dodo Bird, I think was the name of it That's a crux card? No, it's a firear fire card. It's a fire card. Oh, okay. Is there no I'm thinking of, um, what is it? Um, the bird that, what what is it? The, the crux bird.
00:12:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the one I was thinking of. Um, So yeah, like, the again, the first thing I thought of was this is just going to change. I was literally changing how my um my Merlin deck was in my in my bag, like right before this. Like, all right, Mantle of the Abyss goes in. Let's get back all my Spectre cards. In she goes. I think like this is also a good time for Merlin to explore this because the Merlins are currently cutting Ascension in favor of Cybella.
00:13:26
Speaker
so yeah like the biggest drawback to the alice merlin previously was that you didn't have the sword for ascensioning but it doesn't matter in the new builds no because sabella is basically just ghost light because you're getting your drawn blade back and i guess you really only need drawn blade um as a sword in your entire material deck you don't really need any other swords yeah and fluffy just puts that in banishment for spell immediately Yeah.
00:13:59
Speaker
Fun times. So, yes, this is this is probably going to be a Kingslayer build here, but do we see a world in which there is a Fire Alice build that's running this?
00:14:11
Speaker
Yes. 100% yes.
00:14:16
Speaker
there's There's so many good level 3 exalted... Well, I don't say level 3. Exalted. There's so many good exalted allies now. I know people from the get-go were already looking at Crystal of Argus when it was released.
00:14:28
Speaker
But with Grim Pastiche banned, the Wind Alice list lost a lot of oomph. So I think now you could probably look at Alice level 2 Umbra.
00:14:40
Speaker
and utilizing kind of a more specter slash exalted, you know, card pool. Yeah. um On top of just the umbra specters that she has generally, because Bandersnatch, I mean, Bandersnatch just sacrificed another ally and it gets cleaved. So it's, you, like you can use that card to, um,
00:15:03
Speaker
as like your justification for throwing a little bit more specters in there, but for like the discard effect from Ryle. But yeah, a hundred percent. I think Alice is going to be using that card because they could play anything with Ephemerate and sacrifice it and then Ephemerate it back at a later date.
00:15:22
Speaker
Our, ah our local Alice player, Kevin, um he has both the wind and the fire version of Alice going. And when he played his his Fire Alice, like, holy crap, that can start putting on a lot of pressure.
00:15:37
Speaker
Especially when Bandersnatch gets out. Like, it just... itch It is brutal. um And that was even with me, like, banishing a good chunk of his of his graveyard. He was still able to, like...
00:15:50
Speaker
really start pushing pressure on me because it just doesn't die. So much health on that little girl. So much health. but Yeah. And like I said, these exalted cards are going to make it better. Yeah. You've got four fours with ambush vigor. You've got three, four oath guards. You've got Argus if you really wanted to run it. i mean, there's so many options now. Even the the new Gildas card that's a four, three with stealth.
00:16:21
Speaker
I mean, hell, you're going straight to level two. You got lost providence online. You've got all this recursion for your influence to get back. And then you're just playing like allies 2.0, if that makes any sense. Yeah, I'll be very interested interested to see where these these these kind of des these kind of decks go. um Like Alice has always been a very interesting um champion for me. And like i've I've always wanted to play her. But every time I have, i just just it just didn't feel good to play because I didn't feel like I was doing anything.
00:16:53
Speaker
um And I liked the fire build, but I also felt like I was going to... i It just didn't feel like it had enough oomph without Ryle. Like it really needed it.
00:17:04
Speaker
So very interesting. i'm I'm excited to see what kind of things people come up with, especially if there's any surprises at Nats. That'll be interesting as well. Let's move on.
00:17:16
Speaker
We have three cards that have entered category three.
00:17:22
Speaker
We're going to start with the baby green slime. This has been a long time coming, in my opinion. Yeah, I agree. So here's their reasoning here. In line with the reasoning given for putting this card into Category 2, we're now moving it to Category 3.
00:17:40
Speaker
Due to its usability as an engine piece as well as interaction, the low opportunity cost makes the wind element Value engine outshine others. It's possible that a slightly different shade of baby green slime will come in the future, this time with less potency.
00:17:58
Speaker
Ready for baby emerald slime?
00:18:01
Speaker
As a spell. On
Fire Slimes and Meta Changes
00:18:03
Speaker
enter. As a spell. I think we can all say that, yeah. Cue the confetti edit. It's just like, yeah, birthday sounds stuff. This is one of those ones where I was, I wanted Baby Green's time gone when they banned Baby Gray. I thought that, I thought Baby Green was the bigger issue there.
00:18:20
Speaker
Yeah. Which is very funny because with this ban, they have done now the first unban. Baby Gray is now back.
00:18:31
Speaker
And also completely sold out on TCG player. And I see no problem with having a 1-1 that says on enter draw a card. No problem at all. There's no way we're going to abuse this again like we did before. No. But the thing is every other deck has something like that they can abuse.
00:18:47
Speaker
m do they though benediction angel is that the one that draws to memory yeah but that draws into memory corbin and that's advanced imbue sure this is just show two slimes and you could reclaim this thing on enter and show it and another slime so i i think fire slimes is going to be uh going going hot again I disagree. I disagree. You don't think that baby gray helps fire slimes?
00:19:16
Speaker
Oh, I'm not saying it doesn't help. I just don't think it's going to be seen. The biggest thing that slimes had going for them was the fact that they had an on enter deal 10 damage and then also create a five three. You don't think he's going to be playing fire slimes.
00:19:27
Speaker
What's that? You don't think Hank, he's going to be playing fire slimes. I'm sure he will try running into a topsy decree. Anyway, topsy level up to level three and then kill you like what?
00:19:40
Speaker
um Yes. So baby green slime being a cat three and then baby gray moving to cat two baby green had it coming.
00:19:52
Speaker
We've, I don't think there's anything really controversial about this baby gray going to cat two kind of a surprise to me, but also it's probably okay.
00:20:02
Speaker
I guess we'll see. I will call it right now. Someone's going to find a way to abuse the hell out of this card like we did in the past. And then they're just going like, we made a mistake. Back up. it back practice
00:20:16
Speaker
um The next card I'm going to skip over because we're that one last. We're going to go to... We'll talk about how to impact Serial. Oh, that's true. We should talk about how this... yeah Yeah, there's more than just slimes here, David. Come on. When's the last time you saw a slime deck run baby green? Never. i know Slimes did get Slimes Calling, I think, which is a win fast speed spell that lets them play stuff at the end step.
00:20:39
Speaker
Yes. So they do have a pseudo baby green replacement if they do want stuff at fast speed. Yeah, they do. You're right. Anyway, how does this ah how does this impact other decks currently, such as Razorgale and Saryuk?
00:20:55
Speaker
I don't think it really matters for Razorgale. Razorgale is still going to be stupid. I think Razorgale is fine, yeah. Serio, on the other hand, I still think is fine. It's just, you know, remove interaction pieces from it.
00:21:06
Speaker
It's good. Force them to play Zephyr, which isn't as powerful as a 3-1-1 that's recurrable with Reclaim. i mean I mean, it's going to hurt their Asin play too, right? Because that was like the primary card that they were bringing back with Asin.
00:21:18
Speaker
a windmill wall Windmill is always the default. Windmill too, okay. But baby green was just an alternative if they had like a forest cake out. I think that's the bigger thing is they can't just fast flash it in, replace itself, and then reclaim it back as like a line.
00:21:32
Speaker
it It just helps. It's not enough in my opinion, but it's something. and I'll take it. yeah it It definitely hinders the value version of Seru, but like the turbo version can still exist. They just lost some protection.
00:21:44
Speaker
Yeah.
Impact of Bans on Razorgale and Serio Decks
00:21:46
Speaker
Do you think that we're going to see more leaning towards those turbo strats? You seem to have implied that earlier, Corbin. Yeah, I think but that's where I would start if I was interested in playing Serio, was the turbo strats and maybe put in the Beseeched Fate Stone again. like Just replace that slot.
00:22:07
Speaker
And then as far as Razorgale goes, I mean... They just have one less thing to suppress ah amongst their like million suppressing cards. So I think they're fine.
00:22:23
Speaker
They're still just trying to recur, you know, fairy whispers nine times. You experienced that yesterday, right, Steve?
00:22:36
Speaker
It's still ridiculously close, which is mildly concerning, but you know.
00:22:42
Speaker
I guess they're fine with Razorgale for Nats. I feel like i feel like Nats is going to roll around and Razorgale is just going to be the dominant deck. And it's just going to be Toronto all over again. and It'll be interesting and interesting to see. Is there any other decks that this really impacts right now?
00:23:01
Speaker
No. Biakko, the little chance that it had of surviving is now gone. That's a good point. Biakko didn't struggle enough. You know, I keep thinking about this auspicious manifestation. As much as I hate that card's existence and the fact that Gloja definitely did not need it, it is probably the single best thing that Byakko could have gotten because now you can just get free quest counters because you know your ass is never getting more than five anyway.
00:23:31
Speaker
Poor Byakko.
00:23:34
Speaker
Me struggling to get this 6-6 that let me lets me play a beast for free. Meanwhile, and my opponent turned to as a dragon that's like... i'm a dragon does um does window allies care about this no not at all yeah there is one listed here uh next but i'm going to skip over it because we're going to about that last and we're going go to carp song coda so they wrote here that we understand the frustration that players have been conveying to us regarding the aggressive water aether wing diana does
00:24:09
Speaker
which shockingly still very few people play on this side of the coast. However, when looking at the format as a whole, we believe that this deck has a healthy place in the meta for now.
00:24:21
Speaker
That is currently, we are not confident that decks of the aggressive speed will be properly represented going into the national seasons. If what are aether wing Diana disappears without aggressive decks in the mix,
00:24:36
Speaker
other decks ah Other deck types become much more greedy in deck construction, which can lead to less interactive games. So basically they're saying if they cut Diana off at the knees, that aggro will not have a place in the meta and it will get into very slow, stale looking games, which, yes, I could see happening.
Water Aetherwing Diana's Aggressive Shift
00:24:58
Speaker
So Coda going changes how Aetherwing is built quite significantly. um you're not looking at you're You're taking out a lot of those beasts. You're looking at different alternatives.
00:25:11
Speaker
um She still has a very healthy gameplay into pumping your ass full of magical arrows um along with that crusty archer.
00:25:24
Speaker
So she just can't hit you on both sides now.
00:25:30
Speaker
like I think that's fine for an aggro deck. It shouldn't be able to hit from both sides, but also like that's what the other two best decks in the format are doing. is Barry is hitting you with combat damage then throwing an arcane blast at you.
00:25:44
Speaker
I just think it's funny that they're stating that it with Water Diana gone, it could lead to less interactive games due to greedier deck construction. It's like Sure about that? Like, you have a bow that's got Spell Shroud. What am I supposed to do if I'm fire? Just play Veruk? That's it?
00:26:01
Speaker
Veruk. What am I supposed to do if I play a water? Play Mustang? That's Mustang. That's it It's like, what interaction are we really talking about? You got like one card that interacts with this deck. Come on.
00:26:14
Speaker
Yeah, so, i mean, i have such little, funny enough, I have such little experience playing into this deck. um And given the nature of my very off-meta rogue deck, I never had issues into this deck just because, oops, all taunt.
00:26:33
Speaker
So...
00:26:39
Speaker
Do we think that this deck still survives um or is it or a lot of people going to be off of it now? I think the identity has to change. Like, I think it has to turn into more of the aggro strat. Like I would argue it was kind of mid range to start.
00:26:54
Speaker
um But I think now, like we could see them going to like Mad Hatter and really pushing the, um, no, right you don't think so? No.
00:27:06
Speaker
Why would you, I feel like that's a bit crazy. I mean the only reason you do that even in wind is just to, to get it out faster. i don't know. Maybe. Wouldn't you want to that here? Pump damage into them? like maybe I don't know. I feel like there's too many good things in your material deck in Water Diana that you don't want to hit. Are there other elements of Aetherwing Diana that could now shine without Coda?
00:27:37
Speaker
Does Fire or Wind have a place? No. No. Absolutely not. See, David... Water has been blessed with this beautiful line of text on their weapon, which is the main source of their damage that says spell shroud. Yeah. They're the only ones that have this thing here. Technically, they all have the normal ah and you know bow, but...
00:27:58
Speaker
But Water has the beautiful other line of text that says Glimpse of Bajillion, you know? So you get to play an aggro midrange deck that has consistency. On top of that, they have a card in their graveyard that says, load this when you materialize. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pay nothing to materialize. Yeah, absolutely not. No way. no I mean, I have to ask the questions, right? Yeah. Do you know, listen, do you know how bad topsy just ruins Diana entirely? Like at the very least water Diana can kind of get away with it because of the allies and whatnot. I think the wind bow, you could probably make an ally deck, but it's going to be weaker than nor than other alternatives. And the fire one, especially if you, if you topsy ah an arrow, not only does it it miss the load because it fizzles, but do you also make them discard a card and it's just a one for two.
00:28:48
Speaker
There's no way, no chance.
00:28:53
Speaker
So what kind of what kind of decks do we see do we see? Do we possibly see a water Astra Diana deck coming up out of this?
00:29:05
Speaker
Maybe. i think I think any water level 3 deck should always be in somebody's mind just because of all the new water support. You have Engulf and Fractal of Waves. I think those two cards alone push any water level 3 strat to the moon.
00:29:18
Speaker
Engulf, we already know how busted NCAP is. Now imagine that NCAP also stops allies and Fantasias and all this other stuff. Every level 3 water deck has access to this card. I have no doubt in my mind that Astrodiana can exist.
00:29:35
Speaker
I mean, every level two deck has access to Engulf at ah at the cheaper cost. ah Yeah, but David, I think Nico's like the only level two deck that's ever existed.
00:29:47
Speaker
That's why I'm um um a meme. Don't count me here. Actually, you know what? No, I lied. Umbra Alice. Umbra Alice is our second level two deck that has, you know, cemented itself. Yeah.
00:29:59
Speaker
Well, Rip Coda, um they can't seem to get these these song cards
Grim Pastiche Ban and CL Deck Limits
00:30:06
Speaker
correct. They can sit right next to a Rupting. I do want to mention before we go on here, ah before, mind you, before, I'm being a little cheeky with this one, um before Baby Gray got unbanned, there were a total of 14 cards, even though it got unbanned the same list. 14 cards on the ban list.
00:30:27
Speaker
Four of them were Tamer cards. Just throwing that out there. And yet Sylvie has only ever seen play really once.
00:30:39
Speaker
I mean, sure. But was she actually using these Tamer cards? That's the other problem. Half of the Tamer cards on that list weren't even used in Tamer.
00:30:52
Speaker
Let's go to the last one here.
00:30:56
Speaker
Your favorite one. Steve, do you want to read this? Grim Pastiche. Grim Pastiche is gone for silly reasons. This card has allowed CL players to resolve the same card more than six or seven times.
00:31:11
Speaker
Ha ha. We did the thing. We did the thing. Uh, this redundancy ah to certain effects as an exponential scaling that Grim Pristice enables very efficiently, even though CL has not highly been highly represented in the meta recently, we still feel that this was worthwhile change this BNR due to this updates larger scale.
00:31:32
Speaker
Um, The last part there, due to the updates larger scale, I think that's in reference to how much they're shifting with the ban list. I think this honestly is one of those situations where they hit Water Diana, they touched Windsayer U, and they're like, all right, well, if we don't do anything to Seattle, he's probably just going to...
00:31:48
Speaker
you know, maybe be top dog. That being said, though, I think this is a war crime. Yes, the card is busted. Yes, the card deserves to be banned. Does it deserve to be banned right now? Absolutely not.
00:31:59
Speaker
I see no reason that this card should have ever been banned given the current state of the game. We have stuff that's way more disgusting than this, in my opinion. And it is interactable through Orb of Sealing.
00:32:10
Speaker
So I, yeah. And we'll talk about another card that completely contradicts this statement, by the way. So does this make oblation the only way to play CL now?
00:32:22
Speaker
Yes. hundred percent. I, one of the first things I did last night or this morning was I went to the main chords, uh, see, make CL competitive. And everyone was just like, well, oblation is the only way to go. It's like, yep.
00:32:35
Speaker
Yeah, pretty much. Water just lost its main wind con because you can't pastiche Whirlpool anymore. ah Fire just lost the ability to fast speed Lava Storm and pastiche Foe and pastiche Topseas and Abnegations.
00:32:48
Speaker
and um And win we don't talk about wind. Wind sucks. But... Yeah, the like I agree with what DuckCats said. I remember hearing a quote from another podcast. It was like ah they asked him about if Grimm gets banned and he's like, I'm losing six influence to go to level three. Let me do something cool.
00:33:07
Speaker
So, yeah, I agreed. Like, let me do something cool, man. So with the current card pull, is there anything other than Whirlpool that you think would be problematic that Weebs is preemptively hitting this for?
00:33:20
Speaker
Absolutely not. Like Peaceful Reunion and a Lava Storm you can make arguments for, but absolutely not. real You could say Regal, but i think I think you could say Regal, but you can't at the same time because regal like if We just haven't really seen the spamming of Regal through pastiches really make that big of an impact, unless it's a very niche matchup for CL, like in the case of Jyn.
00:33:44
Speaker
would Would you think that this is more of a feels bad to play into type of ban rather than a competitive ban? No. Because it does feel really bad to have someone just loop shit on you.
00:33:57
Speaker
i mean, it it does when that looping is the win con. And I think yours might be internal bias because I have PTSD, yes. What's that? I have PTSD. Yes. Yeah, exactly. but it's like before Whirlpool, the only thing that was really getting looped would have been foe, topsies or defense tools like Abnegation.
00:34:18
Speaker
And then now Lava Storm, which gave ah the coup version a way to deal with the Wind Dragon. um I don't think this is a feels bad ban.
00:34:30
Speaker
I think this has been a ban that is getting ahead of itself in place of cards that are going to come out in the future. Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:39
Speaker
and um And like you said, just because they're shifting so many other potential um decks and how they're built, it could make Seattle just, i I guess, a tier zero type status if they didn't get rid of it.
00:34:58
Speaker
Depends. I mean, like even the whirlpool list, I don't think would have been guaranteed and like top, top dog. Like it's really, really good. But don't know.
00:35:09
Speaker
I mean, this also kind of impacts the Wind Alice build too. Does it not? Yeah, I think we mentioned it earlier because you can't Grim Pastiche the Omen card from the Condemned Trinket anymore.
00:35:20
Speaker
yeah So you can't like Omen the Abnegation or Omen the Gale Bind. Yeah. So that whole loop is gone for for Alice as well. But it's okay. so They're going to be fire now. and They're just going to go Bandersnatch you.
00:35:39
Speaker
All right, so Cielo Ablation is the way to go. You heard it here three or four months ago anyway, so start building your Ablation decks.
00:35:52
Speaker
Let's scroll down to Cat 2. We already mentioned that Baby Gray Slime is moving on down to Cat 2. And they wrote here that with the banning of a Baby Green Slime, the existence of more card economy engines than ever, and the low representation of slime decks in the metagame, we are comfortable unbanning Baby Gray Slime.
00:36:14
Speaker
We'll keep it in Cat 2 for now.
Ranger Strides Card Impact
00:36:19
Speaker
Slimes come back, they say. Meanwhile, anyone other than Slimes uses their cards. um And now we have Ranger Strides is moving to category two. This card enables the aggressiveness of the Water Aetherwing Diana deck and other Ranger decks.
00:36:38
Speaker
ah It can enable some spiky turns and can some spiky turns really in conjunction with Cheshire Cat, which can be a bigger burst of damage compared to what other aggressive decks are capable of.
00:36:52
Speaker
I don't know. Philo was able of of some like horrendous war crimes. Philo to build up to it, though. Yeah. I'm sorry, what? Philo had to build up to it, or Hyrule.
00:37:05
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, we've all turn-tuned someone with Philo. Yeah, but that requires like four cards specifically, and your opponent have no interaction.
00:37:16
Speaker
It is very likely that we will ban Ranger Strides eventually during a different meta where aggressive aggressive decks are more representative. So what it seems to be here is that theyre they, again, they're, they're afraid to cut Diana off at the knees because they, they, they don't want there to be no, no aggro decks.
00:37:35
Speaker
The thing I don't understand is like twofold with this. They say, ah it can enable spiky turns in conjunction with Cheshire Cat, which can be a bigger burst of damage compared to what other aggressive decks are capable of.
00:37:48
Speaker
And then if I scroll back up to where Carp Song Coda is, Carp Song Coda talks about, we are currently, we are not confident that the decks of the aggressive speed will be properly represented going into national season if Water Aetherwing Diana disappears.
00:38:04
Speaker
Without aggressive decks in the mix, then stuff becomes too greedy. It's like, okay, So are we, am I misunderstanding this? Like, are we banning part of Diana to allow other aggro decks to flourish, but then not banning Ranger Strides to not allow other aggro decks to flourish?
00:38:20
Speaker
i I think that the combination of Strides and Coda just made her way too overwhelming. Yeah. Also, something we didn't mention earlier with Coda is we also got the addition of the new boots to essentially um get everyone else. Yeah. the Everything cost two extra, which did she definitely needed, surely. Yeah.
00:38:41
Speaker
Yeah. So, like, I understand they they didn't want to completely chop her feet off and get rid of her shoes. So... so And given that it doesn't seem that there are any other aggressive decks, and I don't think that other aggressive decks would appear if Diana was was cut out.
00:39:05
Speaker
With that said, we don't know what suited is going to do. so Yeah. I mean, they they did buff suited a little bit, and I can assure you, dude, there's no way that aggro decks are going to disappear if you just get rid of Diana.
00:39:15
Speaker
And quite honestly, if you get rid of Diana and aggro decks just for whatever reason do not appear, then you have bigger issues. And Diana being your only premier aggro deck is kind of an issue. And you need to address those issues at that point. I mean, it sounds like they're aware.
00:39:32
Speaker
Yeah, but I think they're not doing anything to stop the fact that those aggro decks couldn't exist because of other reasons. Like, if you think about the bans or even what they're watching, what did they just ban? They banned Baby Green, which is a defense tool for Guoja.
00:39:48
Speaker
They banned Carpsong Coda, which is an aggressive tool for Diana. And they banned Grim Pastiche, which is a toolbox tool for CL. um Only two of those cards are...
00:39:58
Speaker
possibly defense and in most cases baby green doesn't really stop aggro because it's not like target ally grim pastiche is the only kind of unknown because it depends on what sale is doing but regardless they're not really do like if you want to talk about deal with aggro you would be looking at things like resolute stand vanish from sight or giving aggro more tools to pump more damage or deal with ah abnegation like effects i mean we got more healing this set than i think we've ever had before so i'm Fire has fire fire has ah ways to with it. They have the teapot. They you have the teapot.
00:40:34
Speaker
But if you're taking a turn off to do that, one, most people will just heal in response to its materialization. So then it's effectively done nothing. And if you get it too early, then you're losing out on tempo that you really need to drive home to kill your opponents.
00:40:50
Speaker
I mean, teapot's still an answer and they have, um, it is fire interference, fire interference. Yeah. And they do. But again, i think that you're not,
00:41:02
Speaker
I think if the statement is we want other aggro decks to exist, if aggro decks will not exist, if Waterdiana is gone, then you have other problems. And you need either buff aggro more or you need to nerf level 3 decks more.
00:41:14
Speaker
I mean, it sounds like they are, like I said, it sounds like they are aware of this. And since they mention different metas, it is possible we see those types of things start changing with whatever the next set release is.
00:41:31
Speaker
So... I think we're still early in this meta too, and we haven't really seen raccoons like fully
Raccoon Decks: Strategic Depth
00:41:36
Speaker
flourish. Like a lot of people have been playing that as like the premier aggro deck of the format. Which one?
00:41:42
Speaker
Raccoons. Oh. Raccoons sounds kind of scary, to be honest. It is funny. It is funny. Especially how it literally disassembles people's graveyards.
00:41:54
Speaker
Systematically munches on the discard pile. Like, it seems so meme-y, but at the same time, um like, it could be absolutely brutal.
00:42:06
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. as As you demonstrated, Steve. Oh, the on-stream game? Yeah. I'm telling you, dude. I whipped that up in 10 minutes. I just typed in raccoon and threw them all in there.
00:42:17
Speaker
Yeah, but Dan was playing Diana. She needs the graveyard. A lot of people need the graveyard. Yeah. Yeah, they do. um I don't believe there was there was no changes to Category 1 outside of Coda skipping Cat 2 and going straight to Cat 3.
00:42:36
Speaker
Yep. um So now we're going to go to Corbin here for the Pantheon ban list announcements. No changes. Thank you, Corbin, for the Pantheon ban list announcements.
00:42:49
Speaker
Well... I have a lot of things to think about for what gonna play at Nats. um i I honestly, for the past past few weeks, I just was really not paying attention to a lot of the testing some people were doing.
00:43:08
Speaker
um I was looking at some of the decks, I was keeping an eye on which ones were interesting to me, what you guys were playing. what other people on the team were playing but mostly i was just sticking to my own pet my pet local decks because i was very certain this this ban list was was going to come and and shake things up i was given the fact that they said that there was another one and they had just had one it was definitely one of those things where i was like they're gonna do it And I've experienced this before in other card games where there were two ban announcements like within weeks of each other and it completely upset what the next big tournament was going to be. So...
00:43:52
Speaker
interestingly next ban list is after uh u.s nationals yep i was just gonna say that the next bnr is may 11th which is right after nats it's so crazy i i don't think they're gonna do it because once the meta is fleshed out there's no reason to really shake it up other than ah fairness because I think it is completely unfair that North America has to deal with a massive change to the meta which was a massive change last year ah ah they introduced Clarence mid-national format last year I still don't think that was fair like it's it's national season it's
00:44:32
Speaker
I don't know. I'm always torn between how much you want to reward deck building and how much you want to reward player your skill. And when you shake up metas like this, it it can to some degree pull away from player skill.
00:44:44
Speaker
Yeah, understood. But being a good player is also being able to build properly. i don't know what I'm going
Nationals Planning and Future Content
00:44:50
Speaker
to play. I know, Steve, you're you're still playing what you're always going to play. so yeah It depends, because i told myself I'd play Oblation and Nats, but if there's a deck that's like clearly Tier 0, I'm not to be an idiot and not play it.
00:45:03
Speaker
And I honestly think Razorgale is just going to be the Tier 0 deck. But you're blinged out. ah Listen, dude, blinged out doesn't mean anything when you got a deck that's got like a 70% win rate across the board.
00:45:15
Speaker
I can't deny that. That's bad. Corbin pinned this. Pin this when he goes Razorgale and washes out. He'll come in at 17. 17, yeah.
00:45:27
Speaker
sh yeah ah ah ah putting putting putting that out into the universe that's that's cruel yeah you're gonna play Razorgale over Seattle and you're gonna come in 17th so and unless you get CSR Ari ah yeah see that's the trick yeah you need to get a CSR Ari
00:45:55
Speaker
you could You could club Justin for it. Is is Justin going to Nats? He is not. He also doesn't have money to afford CSR Ahri's. Oh, I thought he had one. He still owes Corbin money. He's a fake Ahri fan.
00:46:07
Speaker
Fake Ahri is a broke Ahri fan.
00:46:12
Speaker
He also spends way too much money on non-Ahri foils. Does he really? I still have the Kyrio foils of the Shard Fragment tokens that he wants. Oh my. We'll take that the lateral.
00:46:24
Speaker
Well, we will probably be back with a vlog during Nationals. I'll be vlogging during Nats. And then we'll probably have a kind of a post-mortem of Nats and Ascent Vegas right afterwards because Steve and I will be um on scene. So we'll do something. Maybe we'll call you in, Corbin, because you're staying home.
00:46:48
Speaker
<unk> I'll be supporting from my basement. You'll be supporting from their basements from afar. But thank you both for coming on for this ban only episode of careful study. Everyone, please do not forget to like subscribe and please tell us down below.
00:47:06
Speaker
What do you think of all these bands? Is there a card on here that you think should have been banned? Is there a card that doesn't deserve to be banned? Like icebound slam did nothing wrong.
00:47:18
Speaker
i I think, honestly, if Icebound Slam came back, it still would probably be a problem. It did nothing wrong. Anyway, thank you all for joining us. See all at Nationals.
00:47:30
Speaker
Bye.
00:47:33
Speaker
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