Weiss Schwarz Updated Ban List [01/05/2024]

The January Weiss Schwarz announcement also came with a change in the ban list. We will be sharing the changes and giving our opinions as well. The banlist will be live after January 9th, 2024.

I don’t think this came as much of a surprise to anyone with the restriction of Ney from Puzzle and Dragons. Ney’s power birthed quite a number of memes with many usually referring to death by her as something akin to a random unlucky accident. Truth be told, Ney’s problem lies in her combo’s wide reach in terms of damage. Few cards can compare if any when Ney can consistently deal two instances of four damage in addition to her own swing. Additionally, she would tuck cards back into your opponent’s deck, making it more likely her second round of damage to go through.

Given Ney’s deck having a multitude of soul triggers on costless cards, any unlucky bout of damage could push you into a poor clock state with Ney to finish the job.

As for Miru, my rationale on the limitation was likely because she pushed far too much damage for so little cost. Firstly, her ability doesn’t require one to actually have stock since the second trigger would be paid out later. Given how Ney’s deck focused heavily on having soul triggers in the deck, Miru could make use of that and push your opponent hard with a single swing. Oichi herself is quite flexible with her on-reverse ability, letting the player salvage quite a range of cards. Keep in mind that she allows for the salvaging of both green and God (神) characters to hand. As for Seina, this is a very powerful support piece that also doubles as an advantage combo. This is likely more of a limitation for an emerging bar deck or something of that sort to reduce consistency and advantage.

Aki being limited to two will reduce the overall consistency of his deck as a whole. What made Aki very strong lay in his latent ability provided to him by his Easy Revenge event. Easy Revenge’s ability was not a once per turn ability, letting you give Aki potentially four surveil procs when he attacked. Normally, Aki was a completely blind mill bottom four and ping ability, but now with Easy Revenge, Aki could, in most circumstances, guarantee a hit or two of damage.

Having to pick between the two Himeno cards above have greatly lowered the deck’s overall consistency. Easy Revenge is an event and must either be drawn or bonded to usually. Putting Himeno’s bonder to the event in a pick one of two alongside the level zero combo heavily reduces the consistency of getting Easy Revenge to hand. Now, you can only try to fetch the event from one of the two cards, choosing between a guaranteed bonder or the combo to increase your hand advantage, lowering the consistency of giving Aki those powerful surveil ability instances.

I think Shizu was a great pairing for Mjurran in terms of combos, mostly because she shared an arc trigger. The bonus of sending herself to memory for free was just a side benefit. More importantly, I think the removal of Shuna was needed. Similar to Overlord’s backrow 1/1, Shuna essentially made your field indestructible. Combined with the Mjurran brainstorm, Shuna was a single cost card that made your back row grant your entire field 2000 global power. On top of this, she gave all your other characters a hexproof ability, preventing your opponent from targeting your cards, effectively making them indestructible. Funny enough, this made Slime a very good contender against Overlord since Ainz could not target your entire field with his field destruction ability without targeting Shuna first. Due to this, forcing Shuna on a list with Mjurran reduces Mjurran’s power and makes her easier for decks to deal with, giving you a fighting chance against her.

As mentioned earlier with Shuna, this back row support gives hexproof to your Ainz in front while also preventing him from dying. Additionally, this support also reduces the costs of the Dark Young events for Ainz to zero, turning the 1/1 event effectively to a 1/0 event. This card provides far too much utility and power for Ainz. Giving Ainz indestructability and hexproof provides a death sentence to your opponent as you can easily nuke their board the next turn while also simultaneously putting the Dark Young to memory and using their abilities. This is on top of the base ability as mentioned before to turn Dark Young in hand to free hand filters, chaining the cards you need for free. Having this card gone opens Ainz to vulnerability and turns the Dark Young in hand to costed cards. Ainz will have to play the game more fairly, making it more difficult for him to get his game-plan off.

The addition of the Haachama rest counter and 3/2 Luna present some interesting ideas. Haachama being on the list next to 2/1 Amelia and the 3/2 Luna now makes it clear that it cannot be abused in either Gura or Luna builds.

The release of Kanata suggests that she’s no longer considered to be a considerable problem to the game. With Haachama rest counter on the list, it seems that Bushiroad is accepting the 3/2 Kanata loop with the rest counter as a viable design. Additionally, Sora’s release shows that they don’t consider Sora neg soul punish to be too oppressive for the game anymore. Gura being at two does limit her consistency; however, Gura’s deck is allowed to have 2/1 Amelia back which could raise potential concerns.

I do believe Bushiroad may be a bit too lenient on this set. Personally, I wish the bonder to Kanata and Azki’s combo were restricted in one way or another. Kanata’s bonder provides far too much consistency to her deck, and Azki is an enabler for far too many decks. Restricting these two cards in some fashion or another will also lead to increased diversity in deck builds. I don’t agree with the decision in regard to Gura and Amelia being allowed to be used together. Amelia generated far too much advantage that heavily relieved the stock costs required for Gura’s combo. Given that Azki is still around, Gura in conjunction with Amelia may cause for a partial return to the previous state of GuraAzki but in a slightly lesser capacity.

Starting with the unbans/unlimits, we have Rest, an infamous event from Little Busters!, which lets you heal two for the price of a single stock cost while sending itself to memory. I doubt that this has any big implications on the game at the very moment. Healing two is nice, but given that a player usually only has a single turn at three anyways and how potent finishers nowadays are, it’s not going to make that huge of an impact. That healing might help in a pinch, but you’re probably better off using that stock and card slot to finish your opponent instead.

You was a problematic card back in its day, but given the amount of powercreep that has expanded over the years, her free damage is rather slow in comparison. You benefits from longer games where she can remain on field for several turns. If she can be rushed out early, that would be great, but given the amount of stock investment required from Chika or the standby delaying her for another turn, she can be rather slow. Furthermore, without more scrying or surveilling support, You may end up doing nothing. I would still be on the lookout for her mostly due to the constant support provided to Love Live! sets in general.

Chris from Symphogear is a generic Chiyuri profile that is an additional way to pay out stock when sent to waiting room to salvage more hand. Symphogear as a whole plays a larger number of level one or higher cards due to the set’s CHANGE gimmick. Chris would end up having an above rate of getting her effect off as a result due to higher ratios of said cards, but that being said, with the deck she was most used in is missing it’s main CHANGE target, Kirika. As long as Kirika and Shirabe remain on the list, I don’t think Chris poses any harm at all. As it currently stands, it’s just another generic Chiyuri profile.

The last card that has been changed from the ban list is shown above. Heathcliff in all his mighty glory has been removed from the ban list yet again. I’ll be blunt, I do not like this card. Heathcliff denies an integral mechanic in the game, encore. As a standalone card, he doesn’t particularly do much. He’s an activated mill that replaces himself, but given that he’s Anniversary (Anniversary) trait, he has a more limited pool of cards to work. His anti-encore ability in memory punishes decks that heavily rely upon encore, but most decks at this point rarely use the ability, are non-reliant on retaining field, or have some way to cheat around keeping their cards on board. Simply due to Heathcliff’s base design, there is a chance he could be problematic in the future depending on how future designs are made. As it currently stands, I don’t see him as a large threat, but this is a card I would rather remain on the ban list for being unfun and frustrating similarly to Akinari from Persona 3.

Overall, I am quite happy with the current changes. The meta will likely take a big shift with contenders such as Alice Gear Aegis rising in its place. I’m not too happy with Bushiroad designs as of late. The philosophy for design seems to stem from creating one of two possible scenarios in these overly powerful decks: solitaire-style that denies opponent’s interaction or decks that are too low costed with powerful top-ends that do not care about interaction. Occasionally, both exist in the same deck.

Decks like Overlord and Slime created massive walls that were extremely difficult for most decks to get over, but more so, they were often covered with an additional mask of protection in the form of hexproof, making non-combat removal pretty much impossible outside of a few rare exceptions. Chainsaw Man and Puzzle and Dragons both carried end-games that could heavily sway the game in your favour regardless of your opponent’s deck state with massive amounts of damage. Chainsaw Man, having its main advantage combo in the back, meant that it could freely dump bodies in the front row for the most part without ever being interrupted. I’m already not fan of Aki’s ability as is since it has the potential to do so many instances of small chip damage with no cost or a real condition to worry about whatsoever.

Hopefully, with this ban list, other decks have a better chance of playing in the meta, leading to a higher variety of decks in the format.

We have attached Weiss Tea Time’s translated infograph for the current ban list. Make sure to check them out!