It took me a while to get used to both banlists, and I'm not certain which is my favourite but both have merit. While the OCG banlist is somewhat traditional, playing it mostly safe, it is in my opinion a perfectly solid list. Most questionable thing there is the way they handled the Blaze Fenix OTK - they both overhit it and chose the wrong cards to overhit. Blaze Fenix to 2 = OTK dead. Otherwise, no complaints from me.
The TCG list however, is far more ambitious. It's as if they're trying to calm the players who complain about power creep so fiercely. The more ambitious the list, the more failings. Positive points for the TCG are:
- Agents are free!
- Blackwing have had their return sped up!
- Divine Wind is safe!
- 3-axis Fire Fist are dead!
- Random overpowered crap like Gateway of the Six was hit!
Negatives:
- They hit the wrong 3-axis card
- The reversed Mermail hits force the deck to play in a far more linear manner
- Gladiator Beast Bestiari is fine to go to 2 in the OCG but is annoyingly at 1 here
- Shock Master banned from unlimited for no apparent reason (?)
I feel as if both the OCG and TCG lists are going to move around a lot, though - possibly they'll get closer in terms of their ideology until they're again the same before Worlds. A lot of the "let's hit it differently" moves like the Mermail and Fire Fist swap, as well as the lack of Divine Wind on the TCG list, seem to be based around Konami wanting to test to see which hit is ideal for the respective decks. But I must say I'm finding it somewhat baffling that Konami of Japan thinks Shock Master is fine at 3, while the TCG thinks 1 is too many.
As primarily a Mermail and Harpie player, I'm conflicted. Obviously Harpies are better off with the TCG list, so that's fine, but while Mermails are perfectly viable under both lists, I preferred the OCG moves. Diva and Dragoons are two of the reasons the deck is so fun: their searching gives you so many options. In contrast Abyss-sphere and Abyssteus are focused entirely on getting out your level 7s, which is far less interesting. The deck is forced to just try and overpower you with Megalo before the lack of hand management hurts it now, especially with Pot of Avarice banned.