The past week we received two different updates to Yugioh’s formats, a phrase I thought would be little more than fantasy in years past. Yes, Yugioh now has two formats with a significant playerbase, the Advanced format we know, and the brand new Genesys format that’s still being figured out. The surprising thing is that when it comes to each of them, Konami took similar but differently-weighted paths towards handling each’s problematic cards. In short, outside of a few cards that led to non-games, the Advanced format has been coming off the heels of one of its most dynamic metagames, and Genesys likewise has been an utter joy to explore and break. We knew the latter would be touched-up this past Monday, but the banlist for Advanced came as a shock. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the why, for Yugioh’s shifts in October 2025.
First and foremost, let’s talk about Advanced. There was a general agreement by the best players the game has to offer that the format was good, but fundamentally broken by a few unfortunate interactions. Steven Trifunoski was held back from a threepeat, one of the first in the game’s history, by one of those cards: Archnemeses Protos. The Nemeses monsters have cool concepts, but in execution they leave lingering floodgate effects that, if not dealt with immediately, likely end your opponent’s turn before it begins. The same can be said of Dimensional Barrier, which has deserved a ban pretty much since its deeply cynical release a foot away from the Link era. Any time either of these cards has been playable—read: the vats majority of their lifespan, barring Link or DARK decks—they’ve sucked to run up against, and made the going-first advantage even greater.
Also along those lines is another in a lineage of cards that lead to non-games: Artifact Mjollnir. Konami should have seen this coming, putting one of the most brutal lingering locks on a Level 5 monster that was released within spitting distance of Imperial Princess Quinquery. Not unlike the now-defunct Branded gameplan of Special Summoning a useless lock target like Gimmick Puppet Nightmare to the opposing board, this halted any play but without the meager counterplay of Tributing over a ‘bad gift’ or otherwise sending it to the GY. You couldn’t Imperm Mjollnir, and negating the effect of a card you control was nigh-impossible. The next suite of newly-banned cards are all searchable, Normal Summonable floodgates that demand an Infinite Impermanence as a tax for the game to continue: Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo and two more Barrier Statues. These could be searched by the admittedly-dangerous Gallant Granite & Flame Banshee, each created in their time to help soup decks thrive in a single type.
These Rank 4s, alongside Protos, were core to Ryzeal being a deeply problematic deck cloaked in the shade of ‘Rank 4 Spam’. That deck was put in the ground even further somehow, with the banning of Evilswarm Ouroboros, signalling they’re getting tired of handloops. With that in mind, expect Ryzeal to finally die off, and Mermail players to shake in their boots for the next actual list.
I say ‘actual list’ because this was a surprise, an Emergency Banlist released out of sync with the next expected Forbidden & Limited List. Why is that? Well, there’s been very vocal, very public outcry that many of the voices of the game have actually agreed on something: Losing the game based on opening 0 non-engine isn’t fun, now. The proliferation of in-engine plays turn 0, like the K9s, has alleviated this, but lingering floodgates such as Protos that don’t even give you the chance to react unless it’s when the effect goes off lead to anticlimactic finals and disappointed players. Thus, with how Yugioh now caters to a deeply-enfranchised, smaller playerbase, Konami of America listened.
That’s also true, somewhat, when it comes to Genesys. Genesys was in a shockingly good place, with decks of all stripes making up an ecosystem of three core build paths: Expensive engine with 0pt non-engine, 0pt engine with expensive non-engine, and FTKs. Konami saw it fit to not only chuck the FTK decks into the bin, with stated intent to ensure no such decks persist in a playable state as to Top 8 an event, and loosened some restrictions on middle-area archetypes, with engine that had just enough cost as to not allow for playable non-engine. Was this successful? Potentially, as we’re now seeing decks like Ninja have a shot at the top when previously they were the explicit example of a deck you shouldn’t play, but at the same time the amount of changes was drastic.
I get that it’s a nascent format, and things are still being worked out, but I do sincerely hope the amount of changes here isn’t what we’ll be seeing going forward. Clearly, Konami cares—these changes are properly batched by format design intent, and the communication rivals even Magic: The Gathering in its candor from the developers. Yet still, people who bought into Genesys with decks like Dinomorphia or Gishki are now at a loss, because those decks have a variant which enables an FTK. Not only are there ~550 pointed cards at present, many of those are stray bullets that strike innocent midrange strategies with a few ugly enablers. It reminds me quite a bit of how Konami handled Gem-Knight in Advanced, skirting around the problem of the FTK by ensuring its actual gameplan either didn’t function or couldn’t go first, rather than taking Lazuli out behind the shed.
The Genesys deck I have in paper, Diva Altergeist, lost access to Pot of Extravagance, which we knew was coming but still hurts. It’s likely just going to be swapped for some free handtrap like D.D. Crow, but along those lines a lot of the barely outsized players saw a shakeup on that front. Impulse got pointed…why? Nibiru went down in points, and again I ask: Why? Part of what made Genesys so interesting was that it had its own scaffolding of turn 1 interaction compared to Advanced. Cards like Skull Meister, D.D. Crow, and Impulse were cornerstones of what you could expect to see, but with the recent changes the best in slot hand traps are now Droll, Ghost Ogre, & Nibiru. In essence, part of what made Genesys feel unique to play (combo decks losing to different things) has erred towards what you might see in the core format for Yugioh. Disappointing stuff.
As it stands, Genesys is shaping up to be dominated by a single deck, with branching builds: Radiant Typhoon. Formerly Magnifistorm, Radiant Typhoon plays midrange with the best of them, and crucially saw no hits which cripple it amidst a sea of contenders all utterly ravaged. Mitsurugi, Vanquish Soul, & K9 were all pointed to nonexistence, and Typhoon being untouched in the ‘eye of the storm’ is potentially an ill omen given it’s also the newest of those strategies to release.
I like playing against Typhoon, but it is very obviously the best deck, and if we see Konami be as reactionary as this point change in the next month, I worry players may get cold feet about decks’ permanence in the format. Playing online when the meta shifts rapidly sure feels a lot better than in person, because by the time a card reaches your doorstep it may already be on the chopping block. I’d love to see some restraint going forward with Genesys, and a continued vigor in handling Advanced Format’s worst offenders.
With that being said, how have you enjoyed the recent shifts in Yugioh’s formats? The very fact I get to say formats, plural, still feels surreal! Are there any Genesys decks you want to see covered in the future? Should I cover Advanced format more? Let me know in the comments below!
