I'm sorry, I really don't see how "Dark Armed Dragon" is a real threat. You need exactly 3 DARK monsters in your Graveyard to play it. Do you realize how difficult that can be? It's not like I can just Set 2 cards, activate "Card Destruction", and Special Summon "Dark Armed Dragon" on the first turn. And there are so many cards that kill it. "My Body as a Shield", "Divine Wrath", "D.D. Crow", "Disappear", "Necrovalley", "Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer", and even "Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror" all destroy "Dark Armed Dragon"'s entire strategy, not to mention the typical "Mirror Force", "Torrential Tribute", and "Raigeki Break".
Sorry, but I have to lol at this. First off, My Body As a Shield doesn't do crap against Dark Armed because the dragon will always nuke S/Ts first, leaving the monsters to Lightning Vortex and Darklord Zerato. Second, Necrovalley will suffer the same fate as Royal Oppression; being blasted off the field by Snipe Hunter, MST, Heavy Storm, or Dust Tornado. Besides, while the Dark Armed deck is inconvenienced by losing access to its graveyard, do keep in mind that they also have excellent RFG management, allowing them to plunk out whatever big beater they pitched for Allure anyway. Mirror Force will never counter the dragon because, again, Dark Armed
always nukes the S/T zone or summons Jinzo before going for the kill. Disappear is just plain crappy and not even worth the mention when Crow already exists, and even Crow loses its glamor between Escape, Return, and Dimension Fusion. (Not to mention that Burial From a Different Dimension is a trendy tech card for Dark Armed Return) Finally, and most crucially, a common denominator for the counter-measures is that they lack searchability, meaning that the Dark Armed player will most likely find their rush combo before you find your counter. It doesn't matter how brilliant your tech is if you can't get your hands on it, ne?
As for exactly three monsters...again, the deck has it covered. Prometheus can remove any number of darks from the graveyard while Burial From a Different Dimension can put them back in there. And of course, even playing to prevent the three cards can play into the dark armed player's hands. Why, you ask? Because it's a big old scarecrow if ever there was one. By the time your opponent has two darks in their graveyard and one monster on the field, players seem to be very reluctant to attack unless they have RFGs (fearing the magical three darks even though it's actually pretty unlikely that their opponent is even
holding Dark Armed), thus letting the dark armed player avoid a lot of - potentially gamebreaking - damage
and giving them extra time to draw out whatever they need to bump up their graveyard count to three or just plain swarm the field anyway.
So yeah, as has already been pointed out by several far better analysts than me, the dragon isn't really what makes Dark Armed Dragon decks so powerful; it's the crazy draw and recursion sprees they set up. Sort of like how Gadget's big weapon actually isn't the gadgets themselves.
As for limiting Diamond Dude...it wouldn't have as much impact as you seem to think, actually. All the Diamond Dude player would have to do is substitute with extra copies of Fear Monger (which, essentially,
becomes your extra copy of Diamond Dude when it's destroyed). They still have two Reinforcement and one Stratos to search out Diamond Dude, not to mention three copies Emergency Call to search Stratos and three each of Monster Gate and Reasoning (That's 11 cards in the deck that can become Diamond Dude, plus the Diamond Dudes themselves). Trust me, I've tested out a watered-down Magical Explosion DDT and even that one had no trouble getting the dude out virtually every turn. Also, if the amount of monsters in the Diamond Dude deck is lessened, that just means that Reasoning and Monster Gate rip through it even faster, setting up the game-ending Magical Explosion faster too.
Now if we
really wanted to kick this metagame in the crotch we should ban Dark Magician of Chaos. XD
Finally, I disapprove of your declaration of war against Rainbow Dark Dragon OTKO. That is one of the funniest, most innovative builds I've seen from this banlist's lot and certainly doesn't deserve that kind of spite. :< Besides, with all those unsummonable monsters the build is so unstable that thinking it a serious threat is pretty freakin' lol. Sure, it looks impressive when it goes off right, but the same can't be said for when you're holding an opening hand of Darklord Zerato, Demise, Dark Magician of Chaos Plasma, Rainbow Dark, and Berserk Dragon (and because we're talking a deck where a good 50% of the cards are precisely high level beatstick with no real method of summon, you will be seeing this kind of opening
a lot). Because of the way it's set up, Rainbow Dark OTKO also has basically no defensive ability, so unless you get a good draw you've basically lost already. D=
And...Monarchs are actually just as trampled as Rainbow Dark these days too. (Seriously, guys, when was the last time you saw
no monarchs in
any of the top 16s?) I'm not a big friend of monarch and wouldn't really care if they weren't around, but I don't think they have enough of an effect on the state of play to really warrant ban and/or limitation. The glory days of monarch have passed; no need to kick them on their way out.
And like, ACC, you've forgotten that there's still unlimited Return From the Different Dimension. Again, Dark Armed can just substitute without taking a serious hit. Banning Dimension Fusion
does kill the Cyber Valley exploit loop, though. Odds are that they'll just make Valley go the way of Card Trooper, though. It's like, whenever Machine Duplication sees use it creates something utterly crazy. xD
