Banlist Talk: Heavy Storm

There’s always some fuss when banlist season comes around about Heavy Storm. Flurries of people think it needs to get banned while others think it’s necessary for the game. I sit in the needs to get banned category because I hold that this card is a huge problem. Read more to find out why and listen to me rant a little.

We all know the pain of Heavy Storm. It’s you first turn, you have some traps in your hand you need to set. You want to set only 1 in fear of Heavy Storm, but if they have Mystical Space Typhoon (which there are better chances of) your defense will be meaningless. So you’re in quite a predicament, either choice is thoroughly punished. So you end up going with the odds and setting two, and just as luck would have it it they play Heavy Storm.

The fun continues though. You decide you really want to set cards on turn one so you add a Starlight Road to your deck. This way you can draw it and set a whole bunch without fear. But, as luck would have it again, when you draw Starlight Road your always a card down on the opponent because they conveniently don’t draw Heavy Storm when you have it and they do draw it when you just set 2 with no Starlight Road. Once again you lose either way. Tough cookies buddy.

Of course, this isn’t always the case in Yugioh, that was just some examples of what seems to happen all too often, and the worst part about these situations is absolutely no skill is involved. Even worse is the fact that the player who’s getting Stormed is being punished for making the logical decision most of the time. It really only comes down to a player’s luck to draw Heavy Storm, and if I wanted to play a game based on luck I’d go play something else. I hear from a lot of people that they’re tired of the “sacky” style of the current format, the “herp derp” per say. This card is exactly that so I don’t understand why anyone would support it.

One of the biggest arguments against Heavy Storm being banned is that if it were to be banned, people would just open set 5 summon Laquari/Rush Rhino and end turn and that this is apparently no fun. While this is tough to deal with, you must admit that the duel will require a significantly higher amount of skill to win. When a player is aloud to play this way it disallows players to play OTK styled decks and play more defensively. Isn’t that good and what you wanted? I thought you didn’t want top deck *insert random OTK card: Card Destruction, Wind-Up Rat, Miracle Fusion etc.* for game?

In a similar argument, some people say it’s not possible to effectively deal with large amounts of set cards without getting lucky, and to an extent this is true I will admit. It takes luck on both people’s part thought to bring that situation to the table. First, the opponent has to get lucky and draw the perfect set 5-summon a monster-pass hand. As anybody who runs those decks will know, this doesn’t always happen, in the end many set cards may actually be bluffs to scare the opponent into thinking they opened amazing, and you’d be surprised how often this occurs. Many less skill players will fly head into a mess of set cards to there demise with out truly thinking there plays through; in the same way they may be far to passive in fear of what may be bluffs and be easily controlled by the opponent.  But, if that small case does occur and a player does open nutty set 5, the opponent can then also get the equally likely chance of opening the super crazy hand that counters it, both of which happening at the same time I am doubtful of. So there is luck, but that’s not exactly what the person means by “it’s impossible to break through”. This argument assumes that the player facing the mass back-row is running a highly offensive deck, a deck that wouldn’t be uncommon nowadays. And they think they’re going to have to open 2 MST and 2 Night Beam to break through, and well yes you might have to if your running a deck like that, but then that’s the problem, you obviously shouldn’t be running that deck in a format where Heavy Storm is banned. You should adapt to the meta and run a defensive deck that can play a game wrought with traps or a deck that can aggressively push through them with losing to much advantage. Most of which don’t really exist this format.

Another thing that people like to forget a lot is about the last format we had with Heavy Storm banned. Pointing back all I hear people say is T.G. Stun was dumb and stupid, unstoppable etc. Ironically enough that format was characterized by a deck that ran about 5 trap cards: Plant Synchro. Which by no means was going to play hyper defensive. So there’s past examples of decks with low back-row thriving in that format. Giant Trunade was legal at the point, but the Plant players could still consistently win with out it, it just became a blow-out if they did draw it. At that point in the game I ran a Frog variant, which obviously ran no Trap Cards and was still able to thrive.

The last thing that I have to say is that no matter what happens in Yugioh the players will always adapt. This has always been the case. Card like Evolzar Laggia that used to be oh so threatening are now pretty surmountable with the decks people make. Stardust Dragon use to take complete control of the field and now it’s almost worthless. With Heavy Storm banned the game would adapt and be no different in that sense. There’s plenty of cards that can plow through back-row that people aren’t running right now because it’s pointless when people don’t set as much as they would. Cards like Icarus Attack become very strong with no Heavy Storm because its power and control become unprecedented especially considering no one will likely run Starlight Road any longer. The Lightsworn Engine can still stand very strong under heavy resistance with Lyla and Ryko in addition to all the generic support like MST and Forbidden Lance. All that’s really required to deal with this new format is adaption.

That’s all I’ve got for now. If you got any questions or anything to say about Heavy Storm, feel free to comment. Also, I was thinking about doing some articles about specific cards that are currently banned and talking about why they should either stay banned or become un-banned. If you’ve got any specific cards of that nature you’d like to hear about make a comment, I’d love to talk about what you want to hear. Once again, happy dueling everyone!