Game Breaker / Yu-Gi-Oh! Video Games

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links has its own page.

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Video Games

• The 8-digit password on the bottom left corner of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards serves as an identification number so that you can get the same card in any Yu-Gi-Oh! video game. Older games let you pretty much port your entire physical deck into the game for free (with the caveat that you can only obtain one copy of each card this way), but there's nothing stopping you from just looking up the password of a powerful card online. Later games fixed the strength of this function by adding costs to it — some let you obtain any card at any time but at an exorbitant price, others restrict the use of the password function only to obtaining additional copies of cards you've acquired in-game (or to round off a Last Lousy Point in a card list), and a few place the corresponding card in the shop, so you still have to gather up the cash if you try to obtain a game breaker early on.
• In the original Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters for the Gameboy, there was a cycle of burn-damage cards. Sparks did 200 damage (negligible), Hinotama did 500 (not much better), Final Flame did 1000 (actually pretty considerable), Ookazi did 2000 (incredibly high), and Tremendous Fire dished out a whopping 5000 damage. Though it was one of the hardest cards in the game to get, requiring you to win 200 victories, a single Tremendous Fire activation could decide games practically by itself. Every future game in the series nerfed the stronger burn damage cards into the ground and the changes reflect in the real-life prints, where Final Flame does 600, Ookazi does 800, and Tremendous Fire 1000 (with a self-damaging backlash). One harsh nerf that didn't go into print was Sparks going down to doing a piddly 50 damage.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories:
  • Change of Heart. Its effect in this game is permanent instead of only lasting one turn like in real life, so you can steal your opponents best monster from them for the rest of the duel if you use it right.
  • Thousand-Eyes Restrict. It's a normal monster in this game, requiring no tributes, which steals your opponent strongest monster, and increases its level by 2 (equivalent to a 1000 ATK/DEF boost), so you can deal massive amounts of direct damage right away. Broken for obvious reasons. Coupled with Change of Heart, Brain Control, and Relinquished, duels becomes a "I steal your monster, you steal my monsters" game against the tier 4 / 5 opponents.
  • Dark Hole is one due to a quirk in the tribute mechanics. You're allowed to tribute monsters, play Dark Hole, then tribute summon a monster in that order. Played with minimal monsters on your field to tribute, Dark Hole becomes cost free.
  • Cocoon of Evolution will evolve into Great Moth after a turn on the field, which then evolves into Perfectly Ultimate Great Moth the turn after. With its high defense for a 4 star monster, it'll likely survive long enough to change once. Finally, the Cocoon can be used once your Duelist Level reaches 26! This is extremely low compared to the benefit this card gives you.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! The Sacred Cards also runs off the same engine as Dark Duel Stories, and returning cards are just as strong here. On top of that, you get some really strong game-breakers here:
  • Darkness Approaches. Rather ironic, as the real-life card game version is considered one of the worst spells in the game, but there's no denying how utterly game-breaking the SC version is. It turns all monsters on your whole field face-down for no cost at all, allowing them to re-use their Effects, a great many of which are clearly meant to be used once per card.^note This game's mechanics meant that every monster you play enters face-down, giving you the opportunity to use its effect at the cost of attacking for the turn. Using the effect or attacking will turn the monster face-up. One extreme example is Revival Jam, a card that copies itself when activated. Not game-breaking by itself, but with a single Revival Jam and a single Darkness Approaches, you now have four Revival Jams on your side of the field ready to pounce.
  • Hourglass of Life powers up every monster on your side of the field by 500 attack and defense points. Permanently. Not only is this a Game-Breaker by itself, but combine it with the above Darkness Approaches and Revival Jam tactic, and you now have two 2500 ATK and two 2000 ATK Revival Jams (not to mention the now 1700 ATK Hourglass itself) in practically no time at all. It is possible to, with the right combination of Hourglass of Life, similar attack boosts, and Darkness Approaches, get a full field of garden-variety monsters to over 4000 ATK, without ever needing any tributes. To call this a One-Hit Kill is an understatement.
  • The lesson of just how game-breaking these sort of attack boosts are is taught to the player very quickly via Witch's Apprentice, a card the player starts with. It works like Hourglass of Life, except it only powers up Shadow-element monsters. Which in itself is overpowered, because of how the game's Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors works. In theory, it's Shadow > Light > Fiend > Dreams > Shadow. The problem with this is that Dreams-element monsters are ridiculously rare, to the point where encountering one in the entire game is an event unto itself, making Shadow an unintentional Infinity +1 Element. And on the off-chance that you do encounter such a monster...well, that's what your trap cards are for.
  • Nearly any Trap Card can become an A.I. Breaker due to the simplistic AI choosing to attack whenever it has the chance to win a battle. This definition of "chance" includes your face-down monsters. All you need to do is the following: set trap, set monster, end turn, laugh as the opponent kills themselves, attack with all face-up monsters, and repeat until you have won the duel. Traps like Invisible Wire (kills anything under 2000 ATK that attacks you, which no enemy except the final boss can summon without a tribute), Acid Trap Hole (everything under 3000 ATK), and Widespread Ruin (just everything) make the game insultingly easy. To make matters worse, these cards have a deck cost that is absurdly low; deck cost acts sort of like your Character Level, determining the relative power of your deck. Widespread Ruin costs less than the local Goombas to put in your deck, and the other traps cost even less than that. Only Torrential has anything even vaguely resembling a real cost... which you can still pay at the very beginning of the game with minimal effort.
    • To top that off, Trap Master has an effect that creates an Acid Trap Hole for free, while only taking up a little more deck capacity than the card itself. You can have what amounts to up to 6 Acid Trap Holes in a Deck, and that's before taking into account reuses thanks to Darkness Approaches. Its paltry 500 ATK matters very little when the opponent will subsequently try to attack it and lose their strongest monster in the process.
    • Torrential Tribute is the strongest of all Trap Cards as it wipes out the all of the opponent's monsters should they trigger it. You can have three in your Deck.
  • Beckon to Darkness falls under the same vein as Trap Cards, being able to destroy anything that isn't a God Card, having a very low deck cost, and always hitting the strongest monster the opponent has. From start to finish, it will always see play in the player's deck because it's so efficient at taking out threats they otherwise cannot surmount.
  • Ancient Lamp. While its moderately high level requirement means you can't use it until mid-late game without Level Grinding, it more than makes up for this with its ability to completely circumvent the level requirement system. As soon as it hits the field, it can summon La Jinn the Mystical Genie of the Lamp—whose level requirement is extremely high, and justifiably so. La Jinn overpowers every single non-tribute monster that can possibly be summoned by your opponents in the game—and the most common field effect gives it an automatic 540-point attack boost without you even needing to do anything, in a game where the 500-point attack boost from Hourglass of Life is a Game-Breaker, as listed above. And to cap it all off, it's Shadow element! Add a Darkness Approaches and a Witch's Apprentice, and with just 3 cards and no tributes you have not one but two monsters with 3340 attack, both of which are nigh-impossible to hit with Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, in just two turns. Wish your opponents luck, they'll need it.
  • You can use The Inexperienced Spy or Monster Eye to reveal all the cards in your opponent’s hand and turn them face-up, which prevents them from using their Effect Monsters. Really useful against opponents that use effects.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction: Due to similar mechanics, almost every game breaker listed under The Sacred Cards also applies, even if some of them have been restricted to only 1 or 2 copies per deck or have had their deck costs inflated. On the other hand, you're probably going to need them to beat opponents with cards far stronger than yours.
  • Monster-destroying effects are even more vital to help you overcome the advantage the opponent has. Nothing except the God Cards have protection against them, so you can easily turn the tables after the opponent has spent resources on their strongest monster.
  • The Winged Dragon of Ra's Phoenix Mode can be discarded in the hand to immediately appear on the field in Battle Mode, negating the need for three tributes. ^note It doesn't necessarily guarantee a win, though, if your opponent can lower its Attack/Defense Points with Effect Cards or Umi. You can only access it through a password, but given that it's going into a pretty steep Difficulty Spike, you might need it to level the playing field.
  • Dark Flare Knight can similarly be discarded from the hand to immediately summon Mirage Knight to the field, a 2800/2000 monster that normally needs two tributes. Mirage Knight then splits into a Dark Magician and a Flame Swordsman on the opponent's next turn, giving you two powerful beatsticks. Provided you can afford it in terms of money and deck capacity, there is no reason to not run Dark Flare Knight in most any deck you may end up building.
  • Castle of Dark Illusions constantly turns your other monsters face-down, acting as a continuous version of Darkness Approaches. It also constantly turns the field into the Yami field which conveniently gives it a 30% power boost, creating a 3250 DEF wall with no drawback. However, its absurd deck cost makes it unlikely for a player to even run it until postgame, unless they somehow take control of an opponent's copy.
  • The Paradox boss rush has you winning specific cards from the Millennium Guardians on top of the normal duel rewards. If you answer Paradox's question wrongly or choose to leave in the middle of the boss rush by going left, you have to start over, but also get to keep everything you've won on the way. This means you can keep defeating the first Guardian to get a ton of Kuribohs to wager on duels, or keep beating the third Guardian to amass Giant Soldiers of Stone for large sums of money.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist and Link Evolution: In Single Player matches, there is no Forbidden and Limited list, allowing you to put 3 copies of ANY card you want. FROM THE START. Yes, you heard that right. This includes the broken Zoodiacs, Pot Of Greed, the Dragon Rulers, Magical Scientist, Last Will and freaking EXODIA. Now you can steamroll your opponent easily with these cards. This speedrun is just an example of how this can be abused.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! 7 Trials to Glory: World Championship Tournament 2005, there is a special area in which there is no banned/limited list, which means you're not only allowed three separate copies of each Exodia piece in your deck, you're allowed three copies of Sangan and Witch of the Black Forest to search them out, AND three copies of Dark Hole, which destroys all monsters on both sides of the field, nuking the opponent's offense while allowing your searchers to do their job. There is also access to 3 copies each of Pot of Greed and Graceful Charity, which all together accounts for fifteen cards with essentially no penalty. The in-game currency reward system has a strong bias towards winning through non-standard means (and Exodia is considered non-standard); what this means is that you get ten times the normal winnings for performing poorly. You can even buy a Deck that is pre-made with all the above cards. Be wary, though, because the opponents in that area are also not bound by the banlist either, so you might get stomped by the opponent spamming similarly broken strategies, such as the Rare Hunter who's also using a no-banlist Exodia deck.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! The Duelists of the Roses has a lot of extraordinary cards only available through hacking, passwords, or the Destiny Draw mechanic. Card Reincarnation can get you Darkness Approaches, which is effective for the same reason as it was in The Sacred Cards, and there are two monsters it works wonderfully with: Mystical Elf, which when flipped raises the attack power of all Light monsters (including itself) by 800 points, and Wood Remains, which raises the attack power of all Wood Remains on the field by 500. The kicker here? You can get a Wood Remains by fusing a zombie and plant monster that both have less than 1000 attack points, and you can get a Mystical Elf by fusing either Dancing Elf or Wing Egg Elf with a Fairy-type monster with less than 800 attack points. These materials are easy to farm from the right opponents and significantly raise the number of potential copies of these monsters a deck can bring out.
  • You think those are bad? Try Spirit of the Books. An otherwise unknown normal monster in the TCG becomes completely effective here, because its flip effect is to summon Boo Koo, another otherwise unknown monster in the TCG. When Boo Koo is flipped, Spirit of the Books gains 700 attack points. If Boo Koo is fused with another Winged Beast monster with less than 1400 attack, it creates yet another Spirit of the Books. This creates an endless cycle of powerups so long as every newly flipped Boo Koo can be fused with another Winged Beast you draw. You do have to throw out the weaker Spirits so that new ones can keep coming in, but hey, three or more psycho cleric hawks with over 5000 attack? That's worth it.
  • In this game, Pumpking, King of Ghosts pumps the attack of all your zombies when in defense mode permanently every turn (even the face down ones). Pumpking is particularly easy to fuse from your hand, using the games generic attack power based fusion system. (Plant+zombie = Wood Remains) + another zombie =Pumpking. Also not that hard to get in card form. One of the starter decks even has it. This game also has Coccoon of Evolution too. Just like before, fuse it with Larvae of Moth or Petit Moth to get Pupae of Moth, which turns into Perfectly Ultimate Great Moth, which decreases the attack and defense of your opponents creatures every turn permanently when in defense mode (even the face down ones). And Pupae of Moth enter the graveyard when Perfectly Ultimate Great Moth comes on the field, allowing you to resurrect it with many cards to get ANOTHER moth, and the pupae of moth enters the graveyard again, where it can be brought back AGAIN.... Now we add in Blue Eyed Silver Zombie, with a flip effect that turns all your creatures into zombies, which are then pumped by your many pumpkings. Call of the Haunted does the same thing, but on a spell card. You quickly build a field of 9999/9999 monsters and turn your opponents into 0/0 with large numbers of pumpkings and moths.
• The Yu-Gi-Oh! Tag Force Series games allow you to use certain cards that were only in the anime.
  • The Tag Force games allow you to use the Dark Synchros. Ordinarily, they're Difficult, but Awesome, with their raw power balanced out by the trickiness in using a 0-ATK, high-level Dark Tuner to summon it... unless that Dark Tuner is Doom Submarine. Doom Submarine can revive itself once per game while you control no monsters, and it's Level 9, meaning it can summon pretty much any Dark Synchro you could want. Discard Submarine, Summon Submarine, Normal Summon something else... free Dark Synchro.
  • Even as Dark Synchros go, Hundred-Eyes Dragon is incredibly strong. It can be played with a simple combo of Doom Submarine/Infernity Randomizer or Mirage, it has a nasty 3000 ATK, and it has three effects. The first shuts down opposing Spells and Traps while it attacks, the second gives it the effects of all the Infernities in your Graveyard (which can include piercing and burn damage, drawing a card every turn, indestructibility by battle or effects, summoning Infernities from the Graveyard, or making it impossible for you to lose the Duel), and the third lets you, whenever the Dragon is somehow destroyed, add any card from your Deck to your hand. This last effect combos perfectly with fellow anime-only card Cursed Prison, letting you Summon it instantly in DEF, so that you'll be able to grab a card when it gets taken down.
  • Fog Castle, which revives a monster up to four times after it gets destroyed, is incredibly abusable with any card whose effect activates upon destruction. How does knocking 35 cards from your opponent's Deck with a Voltic Bicorn sound? How about using Sangan to instantly draw out Exodia? If that wasn't enough, when Fog Castle runs out of uses, you get to take four monsters from your Graveyard and add them to your hand, massively boosting your advantage in the unlikely event that you haven't just won the Duel.
  • Philosopher's Stone Sabatiel may be limited to one, but it can be added from your Deck to your hand whenever you lose a Winged Kuriboh, so it's incredibly easy to draw (especially with a Flute of Summoning Kuriboh). It lets you pay half your LP to add any card from your Deck to your hand. And then it goes back to the Deck, letting you play it again. After three activations, it turns from its original effect to one that multiplies one monster's ATK for a turn by up to 5, potentially giving you a card with over 10,000 ATK... and somehow, that feels like a downgrade.
  • Trick Battle (a card that reverses the results of a battle so the stronger monster gets destroyed, but damage is still calculated normally) sounds like a quirky bit of fun... until you combo it with Colossal Fighter, a card that can revive itself when destroyed. Summon Colossal Fighter, activate Trick Battle, attack a weaker monster. Your opponent takes damage, but the weaker monster stays and Colossal Fighter gets destroyed. Since it was technically destroyed by battle, you can Summon it back, and since you Summoned it back, you can attack again. Repeat until the opponent dies.
  • The Destiny Draw mechanic, which automatically places a designated card on top of your Deck if you were losing, was remarkably abusable, letting you put game-winning cards on top of your Deck in the second turn with some good management of your Life Points. The Tag Force version of Afterglow, which shuffles itself into the Deck and wins the Duel if you draw it on the next turn, was probably the worst offender. What made it more egregious is that you can set a handicap that starts you off at an immense Life Point disadvantage, which allows you to immediately access Destiny Draw.
  • The trio of the ZEXAL shout cards are illegal in the real card game (for very good reasons) but are legal in this game.
    • Creator of Hope: At the start of your Draw Phase, if your LP is lower than your opponent's and this card is in the GY because this card in your possession was destroyed by an opponent's card and sent there since your last Draw Phase (you can ram it into your opponent), you can put ANY CARD from your deck and place it on top on your deck before conducting your normal draw. How about the aforementioned Afterglow, that instantly OTKs your opponent?
    • Winning Formula allows you to Special Summon any Number monster from your Extra Deck, except a Number C monster, if only your opponent controls a monster. So now Superdreadnought Rail Cannon Super Dora and Galaxy-Eyes Full Armor Photon Dragon( by using Galaxy-Eyes Prime Photon Dragon as material) is easily splashable in any deck that can use this card.
    • Creator of Miracles targets 1 Number C39 monster you control, and lets it attack your opponent directly, and if you have activated the effects of "Creator of Hope" and "Winning Formula" previously this Duel, when it inflicts battle damage to your opponent,YOU WIN. You could just Special Summon Number 39 using Winning Formula then upgrade it to Utopia Ray to easily activate this card's effect, making it the easiest Duel Winner to ever exist in this game.
  • Ultimate Offering is not banned in Tag Force and in Tag Force 6 you even start with it. Enjoy.
  • You can unlock the option to disable the banlist in ARC-V Tag Force Special by paying 1000 JP, allowing you to use 3 copies of the above cards.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel

Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel is essentially a digital parallel to the modern card game, so its banlists would reflect the OCG banlist as the game's database matches print releases. However, with a different release schedule, exclusive best-of-1 format, and increased frequency of banlist adjustments, expect to see some banlist decisions differ from in real life.

• Near the beginning of the game, players discovered an insanely quick way to win duels on the spot: Using Banquet of Millions to banish the opponent's Extra Deck for a turn, then using two copies of D.D. Dynamite to inflict 9000 damage (assuming their victim had the standard 15-card Extra Deck) for game. Aiding this combo was Trap Trick, a card that could banish a D.D. Dynamite from the Deck and Set another copy to the field that could be activated immediately, which made the deck incredibly consistent. It was so oppressive that some players started to consider playing with 13-card Extra Decks to prevent themselves from being instantly wiped out. This resulted in D.D. Dynamite being Semi-Limited in May 2022, which severely hurt the deck's consistency because it meant players couldn't use Trap Trick to find the second copy needed.
• During the first Xyz Festival, one of the most common decks being played was Nurse Burn, a deck that used Darklord Nurse Reficule or Bad Reaction to Simochi to turn cards that would normally give LP to the opponent into potent damaging cards instead. Not only did this deck not use Xyz Monsters, going against the spirit of the event, but the majority of its key cards were N or R rarity, making the deck incredibly easy to craft. All subsequent Festival events ban Reficule and Simochi to prevent it from dominating the special formats.
• Floodgates are a significantly bigger issue in this game due to the lack of sideboarding, since countering them requires running Highly Specific Counterplay cards that weaken your own consistency or are less useful in other matchups. The Stun Deck, which is built around running them to prevent the opponent from playing properly, is a very frustrating Deck to face whenever you match against one on the ladder. Hence, several cards, be them the floodgates themselves or cards adjacent to them, would receive hits that their physical counterparts wouldn't see.
  • Various floodgates like Skill Drain, Gozen Match, Rivalry of Warlords, and There Can Be Only One have been Limited to make the game's best-of-1 format a little more tolerable. Inspector Boarder, a Level 4 monster with beefy stats and an effect that restricts monster effect activations, and Kaiser Colosseum which restricted monster Summons, would also get Limited on January 2024.
  • Archetypes that are known for being adjacent to floodgates, such as Eldlich and Runick, received hits in tandem. Conquistador of the Golden Land was first Limited in May 2022 to curb Eldlich's power before eventually getting Semi-Limited months later in February 2023 and finally Unlimited in February 2024, while Runick Fountain, Runick Tip, Runick Destruction, Runick Freezing Curses, and Runick Slumber all received Semi-Limits. Runick Fountain would later get Limited in December 2023, with Runick Destruction following suit in January 2024.
  • Amano-Iwato prevents non-Spirit monsters from activating their effects, but it's normally held back by its own effects that force it to the player's hand at the end of the turn, keeping it from stopping plays during the opponent's turn. However, this monster serves as yet another floodgate wielded by Runick Decks, which can shut off the opponent's handtraps or on-field Quick Effects so that the Runick player can dismantle the opposition unimpeded. Amano-Iwato was Limited to 1 in the March 2023 list to make it much harder for Runick stun players to open an incredibly potent floodgate.
  • Generic consistency cards like Pot of Desires, Pot of Extravagance, Pot of Prosperity, Pot of Duality and Card of Demise usually come with restrictions or costs to limit the kinds of Decks that can benefit from them. The Stun Deck is largely unfazed by those restrictions or costs, and would gladly run multiples of these cards to improve the rates at which they find their floodgates. All of these cards would get increasingly restricted on the banlist over time; first Prosperity going to 1 on August 2022, Extravagance going to 2 on September 2023 then 1 on November 2023, Desires and Duality going to 1 on January 2024 (from 2 copies at different points in time in 2023), and Card of Demise getting straight-up Forbidden in January 2024.
• The Destroyer Phoenix Enforcer package (using Verte Anaconda to copy Fusion Destiny and fuse DPE using Celestial and Dasher from the Deck) was as impactful as it was in real life when it hit Master Duel, but it was addressed much differently. Celestial has a Graveyard effect that lets you draw 2 if you've got no cards in hand, so even if DPE has been dealt with, you still have an extra Pot of Greed to give you the leg-up in the long-term advantage game. Master Duel didn't ban DPE or Verte, but instead banned in Celestial August 2022. Now, without Celestial, players looking to use this package would resort to Denier as a body on board, but Denier itself is much less valuable than Celestial's draw power. Fusion Destiny would also be Limited in this same list, eventually coming back to 2 in March 2023.
• Floowandereeze Decks are very irritating to play against, usually requiring Highly Specific Counterplay to fight effectively, but including cards to counter them often hurts your Deck in most other matchups. Floowandereeze is so effective at searching and Normal Summoning on the opponent's turn that they would usually slap down a Barrier Statue of the Stormwinds to render most non-WIND Decks unable to play, while the Floowandereeze player is completely unhindered by it. The Barrier Statue would get banned on December 2022 to deny Floowandereeze Decks a strong floodgate that they can play under; this ban would later be mirrored in both the OCG and TCG for similar reasons in conjunction with major "Tearlaments" hits. Even with their most prominent floodgate banned, the deck remained a cheap yet decent contender, causing "Floowandereeze & the Magnificent Map" and "Floowandreeze & Empen" to get Limited to further reduce its consistency and ceiling.
• Flying "C" is deliberately designed to be anti-Xyz tech, but in regular gameplay it only counters a small fraction of Summoning mechanics, and players would simply Tribute/Link/Synchro it off. Naturally, in the Xyz Festival, where players could only run Xyz monsters in the Extra Deck, this card would be ridiculously strong, often tantamount to a free win. The card was forbidden in the first Xyz Festival, but was allowed in the second Xyz Festival, likely due to an oversight. The error was quickly rectified.
• Much like what happened in the TCG and OCG, Tearlaments became the dominant deck in the game on debut, despite the pre-emptive Limits and Semi-Limits to a number of their members. This resulted in a few additional cards getting sideswiped that didn't previously see hits in paper formats because of Master Duel's banlist schedule relative to its Selection Pack schedule. Notably, Instant Fusion, a card that could put Kitkallos on the field for free, was banned. King of the Swamp and Foolish Burial Goods were also Limited to 1, the former being played to easily make Rulkallos and Kaleido-Heart, and the latter being used to dump Tearlaments Spell/Traps (and occasionally Rainbow Bridge of Salvation) to trigger their GY effects. "Tearlaments Sulliek" eventually got Limited as well, putting a harsh damper on the deck's ability to control the board and generate resources. The August 2023 list would finally ban a Tear name, albeit one that didn't see a hit in the physical card game: "Tearlaments Merrli", dealing a severe blow to the deck as Merrli's ban further reduces the deck's mill power, limits its access to Fusion Summoning and additionally locks them out of viable access to Spright Elf and Spright Sprind as play starters and extenders.
• Terraforming is a Spell Card with a simple but powerful effect, letting you grab any Field Spell from your Deck. The fact that the card is generic and Field Spells have gotten exponentially better since the card was first introduced meant that Terraforming was trapped in the Limited list for the longest time. This has come to a peak with Primeval Planet Perlereino which has three amazing effects, and given the power of Field Spells to come, Terraforming would be banned.
• Eradicator Epidemic Virus is a massive blowout of a Trap Card, as its ability to nuke every Spell or Trap (of your choice) your opponent possesses makes it immensely powerful to the point of being potentially game-determinative. Its main flaws are it being typically unsearchable, its activation requirement (Tributing a DARK monster with 2500+ ATK) and requiring knowledge of what your opponent is playing, but in Labrynth you can not only get to Eradicator fairly consistently but also always have a card to send for it by using Welcome Labrynth to fetch Lovely Labrynth of the Silver Castle from your hand or Deck. This only leaves the latter condition, which isn't much of a hindrance regardless as calling Spell is enough to cripple the vast majority of decks in the game save for other Trap decks. Eradicator Epidemic Virus was thus Limited on the June 2023 list in advance of future "Labrynth" support to limit the deck's ability to either draw into it or fetch it off "Trap Trick". Incidentally, this announcement was made exactly a day after TCG German Nationals 2023 in which a "Labrynth" player game-ended his opponent in the first two minutes of the duel by flipping exactly Eradicator Epidemic Virus.
• Sillva, Warlord of Dark World is a Dark World monster that has an immensely powerful ability to handrip your opponent for two cards and has no once-per-turn on its effect due to its age. The big catch is that it must be discarded by your opponent's card effect to do so, which used to be virtually impossible against most decks, but the then-upcoming advent of new Dark World support in tandem with the existence of Link Monsters enables a devastating combo with fellow card Ceruli, Guru of Dark World to trigger Sillva's effect multiple times in a single turn, robbing your opponent of the ability to play before they can even start playing the game. To stop this from happening, Sillva was preemptively shot down on the July 13th, 2023 list.
• Phantasmal Lord Ultimitl Bishbaalkin is a Synchro Monster with a difficult but not unfeasible Special Summoning condition that has the ability to flood both players' fields with Tokens once per turn and gain ATK equal to the number of monsters on the field x1000. The fact that Token spam cards are already fairly nonsense in a post-Link Monster era makes this card very strong, but its most common play was to execute FTK combos by using cards like Geonator Transverser and Number 33: Chronomaly Machu Mech to swap it to the opponent's field and then inflict 8000+ burn damage to the opponent. While extremely susceptible to interruption from handtraps, the game's format lent itself to a fair amount of abuse in Ranked due to the high volatility, causing the card to eventually get banned in the August 2023 list.
• White Dragon Wyverburster is an incredibly strong playstarter and combo piece for the "Dragon Link" deck, as it is easily searched, easily Summoned, searches its counterpart "Black Dragon Collapserpent" and even fuels Collapserpent's Summon. Both White and Black Dragons make a strong advantage engine that's one of the big reasons why "Dragon Link" is so resilient to interruption and is able to combo into extremely powerful boards. This was deemed too powerful and ended up being Forbidden in the January 2024 list alongside "Chaos Ruler, the Chaotic Magical Dragon". While hitting either Wyverburster or Collapserpent would break the advantage cycle since they can only search their counterpart, Wyverburster is easier to Summon since putting a DARK monster in the GY is much easier compared to LIGHT.

Simulators

The various forms of the fanmade YGOPro tend to have an "anime cards" feature—and as it turns out, there are a lot of cards that, are either Purposely Overpowered or become laughably overpowered when removed from the context of Hikokubo^note the duel plotter for most anime episodes trying to fill a deadline. A fully anime-legal duel is basically going to consist of a race to FTK the opponent; notably, at one point the most well-known version featured an "anime banlist", but simply gave up because even relatively innocuous cards could be snapped in half with ease.

• In the real game, cards that let you easily draw are rare—in the anime, they're everywhere. Generic "draw 2" cards with minimal or easily-circumvented requirements include Akashic Record, Card of Variation, Card of Adversity, or Card of Compensation, and those are the ones substantially worse than Pot of Greed, not even getting into cards like Spell Books from the Pot (both players draw 3), Kuribandit(draw 5 cards then send all monsters drawn to the graveyard by tributing itself), Roll of Fate (roll a die, draw cards equal to the result and then banish the cards from the top of the deck equal to the result), Card of Safe Return (draws whopping 3 cards each time a monster is special summoned from either graveyard), Card of Demise (draw until you have 5), Nibelung's Treasure (toss your opponent an Equip Spell that locks down one of their monsters, then draw 5) or especially Card of Sanctity (both players draw until they have 6). There's a very good reason Card of Sanctity was played in so many anime duels.
• Mill cards are even more nonsense, either for the player's graveyard setup or to deck out the opponent in the blink of an eye. Golden Castle of Stromberg (forces the opponent to send half their Deck to the Graveyard each turn, cannot be destroyed, in addition to summoning level 4 or lower monsters from the Deck and destroying opponent monster that attacks as well as burning their LP for half their ATKs), Crush Card Virus (destroys all monsters with 1500 ATK or more in hand, field, and Deck), Virus Cannon (discards ten Spell Cards in the opponent's hand and deck), Final Attack Orders (both players pick three cards and send the rest to the Graveyard), Underworld Circle (banishes all monsters from both player's Decks upon activation along with Dark Hole nuke), Level Pod (spins the entire field, then forces both players to draw cards equal to the combined level of the sent monsters, discarding them if they fail to draw one of the spun cards), and Monster Register (players have to discard a large amount of cards each time they summon) can all pretty much deplete an opponent's deck singlehandedly.
• There are many more card recycling effects here as well, and the ones that benefit players the most are Elemental HERO Flash (adds any spell or trap from graveyard when it's sent there by any means), manga version of Spell Reproduction (adds any spell from graveyard), Altar of Restoration (adds any card in the graveyard by banishing 2 top cards of the deck), Burning Soul (adds any card from graveyard, a quick-play spell), and Blade Graveyard (adds any card from either player's graveyard by banishing itself). But the one that takes the cake is Graveyard Rebound, which allows the player to activate any Spell or Traps from the Graveyard, which'd mean it can be infinitely re-activated as those cards go there after activation. This card can make Jar of Greed draw your entire Deck!^note Although the way it was played in the manga (where cards' written text don't always accurately describe their actual function) is that it only allows the use of one Spell/Trap from the Graveyard, which is still powerful enough to make this page but far less busted than the written text implies.
• Stealing cards that can be a bit too overpowered are Road Raven Red Queen (takes control of any number of opponent's monsters, albeit their ATK are changed to 100), Traitor Fog (takes control 1 of the opponent's monsters each time they summon something, as long as it's on the field), and Forceful Deal (when opponent summons a monster, pay half of your LP and tribute all monsters you control to permanently take control of opponent's monsters). There are cards that even steal something from opponent's Deck, like Amazoness Chain Master and Darkness Outsider.
• Hand control cards here can have Game-Breaker-ness that surpass the banned real-game ones, such as Pillager (look at the opponent's hand to take one of their cards), Summon Capture (normal summoning one of the opponent's monsters in their hand), and Topologic Gumblar Dragon (destroys all cards in the hand instead of only discarding 2, and its Extra Link effect is unnegatable).
• Cards that can bring out extremely powerful monsters easily, even in laughable levels, potentially ending the game quickly, such as Future Fusion (fusion summon by picking materials from the Deck), Past Life (similar to Metamorphosis, but adds similar ATK requirement and can summon any type of monsters in Extra Deck rather than just Fusions), Numbers Evaille (summons a Number with the same number in its name as the total number in the names of the chosen monsters as Xyz materials), and Sphere Field (both players can Xyz summon random Number with 2 same level monsters from hand).
• Mass summon cards that qualify include Soul Charge (other than only 500 LP per monster instead of 1000, this doesn't prevent the Battle Phase in that turn, only that the summoned monsters can't attack), Call of the Haunted (mass summon while also granting them battle protection), Sea of Rebirth (picks any monsters from Deck each time opponent special summons), Multiply (summons multiple copies of any monster, complete with its effects, as long as it's 500 ATK or lower), as well as rapid token generating cards like Toy Robot Box, Hippo Carnival, Grinder Golem, Blackwing - Gofu the Vague Shadow, and Graveyard of Wandering Souls.
• Overly generic searchers with little to no or potentially beneficial conditions like Three-Eyed Ghost, Kabuki Stage - The Rough Seas, or Elegant Light LV4 for monsters, Magician's Library, Spell Sanctuary, or the manga version of Left Arm Offering for spells, and the ones which add any card like Mathematician, or especially Sabatiel - The Philosopher's Stone (adds any card from the Deck or Graveyard for half LP, and if it's not enough, it'd return to your hand after said picked card is used until 3 times, instead of just shuffling itselt to the Deck like Tag Force version). Those cards would increase your deck's consistency up through the roof as you can search any card of your liking such as archetype searchers, board wipes or even other draw cards including the aforementioned Card of Sanctity.
• Removal cards that can stop almost anything like Beckon to Darkness (sends a monster to graveyard without targeting or destroying it) or Briar Transplant (banishes a card without targeting or destroying it), not to mention the mass removals like Giant Flood (sends all monsters in the field and hand to the graveyard), Prominence (destroys all opponent cards by destroying the equipped monster, as well as 500 burn for every destroyed monsters), and Drawber (returns all opponent cards in their field and hand to the Deck if the card they draw as per this card's effect is the declared one).
• There are cards that allow the player to use the opponent's monsters freely as the materials for their needs, which can double as both mass removal as well as their field setup, such as Soul Exchange (tributes, not only restricted for summon), Synchro Material (Synchros), and Destiny Overlay (Xyz).
• Many cards have no HOPT or even OPT clause, allowing endless loops to be created, like constantly re-summonable monsters such as Blackwing - Zephyros the Elite and Glow-Up Bulb, self bounce cards like T.G. Recipro Dragonfly and Compulsory Recoil Device, stat gaining cards like Photon Satellite (level) or Performapal Laugh Maker, and burn cards like Catapult Warrior.
• Beastborg Medal of the Crimson Chain institutes such a hard lockdown (completely shutting down a single monster, blocking all Spells, Traps, and summoning for the opponent) that it may as well simply read "if your opponent summons a monster from the Extra Deck while you control a Beastborg, you win the Duel.". There are other overly deadly floodgates as well such as Domain of the Dark Ruler (negates all Spell and Traps on the field), Freezing Dance (prevents summoning monsters from hand for 2 turns, destroys itself after opponent's 2nd turn thus the controller is able to act again first), and especially the equally devastating Ivy Bind Castle (negates all opponent's face up cards, prevents attacks, 800 damage per opponent's monster in their Standby Phase).
• When Z-ONE is destroyed by a card effect, it can banish any card from your hand, Deck or Graveyard to have Z-ONE copy its effects and activate it. Moreover, it's indestructible on the field if it's activated this way. Other than acting as an overly generic searcher, this can be especially devastating if it's used together with either aformentioned Beastborg Medal of the Crimson Chain or Ivy Bind Castle to get their devastating floodgate effects while eliminating their self-destruction effects.
• There are even more cards that can steal the effect of other cards here which can give huge benefits like bypassing the once per turn restriction of those cards, unlike the real game where it's either banned or heavily limited in use, such as Spirit Illusion, Synchronic Ability, Synchro Alliance, as well as Number 69 and Hundred-Eyes Dragon mentioned below.
• Cards that can skip turn for no cost like Turn Jump means the entire turn is also reset, and that'd mean the player can attack again, Normal Summon again, activate OPT or HOPT effects again, activate previously set Traps, advancing turn-based cards like Final Countdown, Wave Motion Cannon, or Destiny Board, and more. Cards like Mischief of the Time Goddess is even nastier as it doesn't have Battle Phase restriction, which'd mean it can be used at the first turn to attack, though it helps less with the turn-based cards as it skips straight into your Battle Phase.
• Relay Soul summons a monster, then changes your loss condition to be "if the monster summoned is destroyed." That means that if you can get the monster off the field by other means, such as bouncing it, you essentially cannot lose, ever.
• The un-nerfed version of Hundred-Eyes Dragon is even more horribly busted than the Tag Force version, gaining the effects of every Dark monster in the player's graveyard. Think about how many broken Dark monsters exist, and now imagine a card with all of their effects put together—Vennominaga alone gives it superlative protection and an instant-win effect.
• Chaos End Ruler - Ruler of the Beginning and the End, a rather obvious Continuity Nod to the Envoys which only existed as a Freeze-Frame Bonus in the anime. More or less: it banishes the opponent's entire hand, field, and graveyard, and then does 500 LP damage for each card banished, at the cost of only 1000 LP. If this thing uses its effect, you basically win. Even if you didn't get 16 cards banished which itself is an instant OTK there is little hope for a comeback after you don't have any resources except your next draw and that is if you get to that point.
• Supreme King Z-ARC is hilariously easy to bring out through the effect of Astrograph Sorcerer, and it doesn't only contain the superior version of its real life version's monster effects such as opening up by nuking the opponent's field and likely doing hefty burn damage, summoning up to 2 (instead of 1) Supreme King monsters upon destroying a monster by battle, and basically cannot leave the field, but its real life pendulum effects are this one's monster effects as well (with the only pendulum effect being summoning itself by tributing a Supreme King monster) by making your field immune to the majority of Extra Deck summoning methods and locks the opponent out of drawing by effect or searching (not OPT unlike the real card). It being a Fusion, Synchro, and Xyz (with rank equal to its level) monster all at once allows it to gain supports tailored to those monster types as well. There are methods to deal with it, but many Decks simply can't handle this thing.
• The majority of anime Numbers get some kind of buff (particularly in the form of battle-indestructibility), but those cards stand out even by those standards:
  • Number 39: Utopia Beyond grants effect immunity to all of your cards. Not just itself, but your entire field (another card similar to this is Spectral Ice Floe by banishing a DARK monster). A single unaffected monster (that also has battle immunity for non-Numbers in this case) can be a pain to deal with, let alone a field full of them! Not to mention, it'd further protect your plays by protecting all of your Spells and Traps from card effects too, such as using Mask of Restrict to prevent your monsters to be Tributed (by cards like Kaiju) would have the Trap itself be a pain to remove as well. The higher ATK monsters aren't exactly safe either, as if this card is summoned by ranking up the base Utopia, it'd turn the opponent's monsters ATK to 0 in each of your Battle Phases.
  • Number 69: Heraldry Crest is remarkably overpowered. It gains an additional layer of protection in the form of immunity to card effect destruction, and can detach a material to block attacks while destroying a card on the field, but what pushes it here is its signature ability: it negates the effects of all Monsters on the field (the real-game version only negates Xyz monsters), and gains their effects on top of that (the real card can only copy one Xyz Monster and needs to detach a material to do it). So it's a Skill Drain on legs that's difficult to get rid of and only becomes more powerful if the opponent has an established field—and all for the cost of three Level 4 monsters.
  • Number 88: Gimmick Puppet of Leo is the opposite of real game's usually Awesome, but Impractical instant win condition cards including its real life version, as the anime version only requires it to detach all its Xyz materials to win instead of having 3 Destiny Counters. Its effect to detach Xyz material has no conditions or restrictions as well unlike the real life version. Meaning this card can be summoned only with 1 material (especially with the aformentioned Numbers Evaille) and you'd instantly win the duel by then for detaching its single material. Its upgraded version, Number C88: Gimmick Puppet Disaster Leo adds immunity to monster effects and 4000 burn when detaching Xyz materials.
• Earthbound Immortal Wiraqocha Rasca's anime incarnation lets you skip the Battle Phase to do an HP to One maneuver on the opponent. After you're done with that, a single Sparks can finish them off. On top of that, it's immune to Spells and Traps. It's little wonder that the real game retooled Rasca's effect almost completely, which made the real card almost useless.
• Unsurprisingly, the Purposely Overpowered Egyptian Gods are considered borderline unbeatable, being immune to nearly all removal and boasting effects (which are all quick effects) that skyrocket their already impressive power output, with Slifer stopping decks from making plays by destroying any summoned monsters that has 2000 ATK or DEF (or heavily weakening it when it has more than 2000 ATK or DEF) or less and Obelisk easily finishing off the opponent with huge 4000 burn (along with a field nuke) or infinite ATK in 1 attack by tributing 2 other monsters. Ra in particular, as a result of being given all its manga effects, has some of the longest text in the game to reflect its New Powers as the Plot Demands, gaining huge stats by various means, its attacks being unstoppable by any means, and removing any monsters ignoring their effects are among some of its abilities, and can win games by itself relatively easily, even against modern decks.