Changes to the Banned/Limited/Errata Card List and Policy Changes Moving Forward
Hello, everyone. We have two critical announcements for you today:
Based on recent tournament results, it appears that Goku’s Lineage decks with BT6-106 Super Dragon Balls/ Super Shenron as their Leader Card are going to continue dominating the tournament meta, damaging the competitive health of the game. To weaken these decks and allow others to thrive, we’ve chosen to ban two cards and errata another.
Here are the details.
Added to the banned card list:
Card number | Card name |
---|---|
BT4-073 | Bardock, the Progenitor |
BT5-118 | A Child’s Wish |
BT4-073 Bardock, the Progenitor has been a key card in aggro decks since its release. A highly powerful 1-cost card that can quickly whittle down opponent’ life totals when paired with Super Shenron, the Almighty, dumping Battle Cards on the board and eventually winning the game with extra turns. We realized that even if there were countermeasures, it wouldn’t fully address the negative experience of playing against the deck. Banning the card, we decided, was the only way.
BT5-118 A Child’s Wish is a defining card for Shenron decks, and has seen consistent use. Players can play 3-cost Battle Cards on turn 2, use BT4-093 Explorer Bulma and Shenron Leader Skills to reuse energy for free, then recycle A Child’s Wish to take incredibly long turns. Players frequently have to wait for 10 minutes or more for opponents to finish their turns, which feels unfun and unfair from a competitive standpoint. For this reason, we’ve chosen to ban the card.
Added to the errata’d card list:
Card number | Card name |
---|---|
BT6-106 | Super Dragon Balls/ Super Shenron, the Almighty |
Current Skill Text:
Choose 20 cards from your Drop Area then shuffle them into your deck. If you do, flip this card over at the end of the turn and take another turn after this one.
Errata’d Text:
Choose 30 Battle Cards from your Drop Area then shuffle them into your deck. If you do, flip this card over at the end of the turn and take another turn after this one.
Super Shenron’s extra turn skill ended up being far easier to activate than we anticipated, and far more powerful as a result. There are a lot of ways to quickly dump cards in your Drop Area to meet the 20-card requirement for the skill: BT5-118 A Child’s Wish and BT4-093 Explorer Bulma, BT5-009 Yamcha, at 100%, TB2-015 Tainted Power, Spopovich & Yamu, TB3-062 Assimilate, and TB3-058 Nail, Pride of Namek all fit the bill. 0-cost Extra Cards also go straight into your Drop Area, making it even easier to filter through your deck.
For this reason, we’ve made the condition on the extra turn skill harder to meet by raising the 20 card requirement to 30 Battle Cards. We believe this is necessary to make it harder for players to use Extra Cards to fill their Drop Areas, and raise the overall difficulty of meeting the skill’s activation condition.
These changes will go into effect on the following date:
All regions, including France and Italy:
Effective June 1, 2019
We’re implementing these changes worldwide to ensure Championship and Preliminary tournaments around the world are on a level playing field. We would like to stress how deeply sorry we are for the sudden notice and for the many player who were currently using these cards.
This isn’t the first time we’ve announced the temporary banning, limitation, and errata of cards to help create a healthy metagame. However, we worry that the sudden way we’ve made the announcements may be stressful and confusing to players.
As such, new additions to the banned/limited/errata card list will line up with the release of future Series Boosters going forward. We hope this will alleviate any confusion players may have had previously.
Here’s the schedule we’re currently considering:
Note: Emergency changes may go into effect outside of the above schedule.
Needless to say, we don’t want to to add any new cards to the ban/limit/errata list. Everyone on the design team is working tirelessly to ensure that game balance is a top priority.
The next ban/limit card announcement will arrive prior to the Series 7 pre-release.
Thank you for your continued support of the Dragon Ball Super Card Game.
May 24, 2019
Dragon Ball Super Card Game Team