Two infamous classic Yu-Gi-Oh! cards have been unbanned

Konami has revealed the latest banlist for the Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game, and two of the game’s oldest banned cards are now legally playable.

The cards in question are the powerful spell card Change Of Heart, and the infamous Yata-Garasu, which was most notably one of the first cards to ever be banned when it appeared on the TCG’s original banlist in August 2004.

Yata-Garasu was viewed as a game-defining card in the early years of Yu-Gi-Oh!, with its effect of skipping the opponent’s turn essentially allowing its user to lock the opponent out of playing any cards in retaliation. While its effect can still be powerful, the prominence of monster effects in the graveyard and effects that can be activated from the hand makes preventing the win condition a lot easier than in the early competitive scene.

Change Of Heart is another notorious card, first being banned in April 2005. While it wasn’t as detrimental to competitive play as Yata-Garasu, its effect of being able to take control of an opponent’s monster for a turn with no repercussions can be potent enough to single-handedly change the flow of a game.

Additionally, a total of three new cards are now forbidden from legal play: Mecha Phantom Beast Auroradon, Prank-Kids Meow-Meow-Mu, and Predaplant Verte Anaconda. Meanwhile, Jet Synchron, Performapal Monkeyboard, and Time Seal have joined Yata-Garasu and Change Of Heart in being removed from the banlist.

None of these changes are currently applicable to Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel but may eventually influence the ban list of that game in future updates depending on their effect within the TCG.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel is free to download on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, iOS, and Android.

In other news, a new Marvel card battler has been announced titled Marvel Snap.