■ Banned card
We have determined that Dadaluma [4-085H] will be banned from Standard Constructed Format matches. It will still be usable in Title Format matches.
■ Ban enforcement timing
July 19th, 2019 (simultaneous to Opus 9 release)
■ Reason for this decision
Since Opus 4, this card has long been a reigning presence in the landscape of this game, a card that players have always needed to be conscious of during everything from deck construction to actual matches, and it has acted as an obstruction to changes in the tournament landscape. As it stands now, the card’s strength is not so great as to be insurmountable; however, in order to prevent the tournament landscape from becoming too stagnant, we have determined that it will be a banned card.
We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you in advance for your understanding.
■FINAL FANTASY TCG Banned Card Decision
・ Banned Cards
We have determined that the two cards below will be banned from Standard Constructed matches starting December 1, 2018.
・[5-034C] Gesper
・[5-040C] Thaumaturge
These two cards cannot be included in Standard Constructed decks. For Title and Limited Formats, they can be used as usual.
・Reasons for the ban
1: Their low cost makes it easy to play them from the first turn.
2: Placing them onto the field forces players to immediately discard from their hands.
3: [5-034C] Gesper can force players to discard during every turn
4: It is easy to play multiples of both [5-034C] Gesper and [5-040C] Thaumaturge because they have the standard unit icon; therefore, both of these cards make it possible for you to easily force players to discard their hands repeatedly.
・Regarding the Decision
Currently, we are not faced with any major problems regarding the decks used and the balance found in FF-TCG. Across the many different tournaments, a number of different types of decks have ranked highly, and the current situation isn’t one where any one deck is constantly dominating in terms of wins. As such, I think the game environment itself is healthy.
That said, separately from the tournament environment, after the release of Opus 6, we’ve been concerned that the portion of “decks specializing in hand destruction,” which force cards to be discarded one after another from players’ hands, could be placing unduly stringent limitations on what players can do from the very first turn, and that this in turn could be placing too much stress upon the players. With this in mind, the development team has held deliberation upon deliberation regarding this matter. Consequently, we’ve decided to ban the two cards listed above, even though this is an extremely rare example of banning cards for reasons other than strength/weakness in the environment. Generally, cards aren’t banned for reasons other than mistakes in adjustments to card balance, or strong skews in environment, so the situation this time is extremely unique. Apologies for the hassle, but your understanding would be much appreciated.
Additionally, the World Championship will be held this November, so the two cards above will be allowed during it. Because the reasoning behind this decision is not meant to correct the tournament environment, and because banning the cards could make all the adjustments that players have been making up until the World Championship be for naught, we will reiterate that the cards will be usable in the World Championship.