Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel: February 2025 banlist – what to know

Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel is one of the most popular ways to play the famous card game, and Konami supports its digital simulator by giving it its own unique format. As opposed to the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game or Official Card Game formats, which receive updates to their Forbidden & Limited Lists every few months, Master Duel sees updates to its list about once a month. These frequent lists are often used to micro-adjust the metagame and test to see what’s actually working. The list that goes into effect on February 5th, 2025 follows that example, but with a few big changes.

FORBIDDEN

There aren’t many cards being banned, but what’s being banned matters. Summon Limit and Secret Village of the Spellcasters are floodgates that run rampant on the meta, depending on the format. Even at their best, they are cards that shut down other players and keep them from playing. Many players have been calling for floodgates to be phased out of standard formats for years, and Konami has been slowly answering that call. Master Duel being a best-of-one format means that floodgates have been a terror to anyone facing them. Summon Limit is already banned and limited in the TCG and OCG, respectively. Secret Village of the Spellcasters, though, marks a more aggressive move against floodgates on Master Duel‘s part, as the card is currently still unlimited in both other formats.

LIMITED

Only one card being limited here, but it continues the trend of addressing floodgates and changing the meta through small adjustments over time. Anti-🌜Spell Fragrance is another card that is only good in certain match-ups and formats, but it is no less aggravating to the average player. Alongside slowing down play, some decks, like those playing Pendulum monsters🍌, are rendered completely moot against this trap. The number being reduced makes it that much more rare a player will have to deal with it.

SEMI-LIMITED

The semi-limited list is controversial because all of Yu-Gi-Oh!‘s formats tend to use them as a sort of quarantine zone, a way to test the waters and see what changing ratios for decks does to the game. This list of semi-limits is very much the same, but what’s actually being hit is more notable than usual. Firstly, Sangen Kaimen and Nightmare Throne are notable hits to the “Tenpai” and “Yubel” decks that have been operating at the highest tiers of the meta for some time. Both decks have been dominating the card game in all formats for the second half of 2024, and Tenpai in particular benefits form Master Duel‘s best-of-one format as a deck that wants to take its turn second. The Master Duel lists have been slowly chipping away at these decks since release, and this will have an effect on them, but it probably isn’t the deathblow some players might be hoping for. But every change to these decks does weaken them and their consistency, and with new meta archetypes being added to the format, maybe you’ll be able to overcome them.

The big change for this list is the inclusion of Maxx “C”. Since Master Duel‘s release, this insect-type has been something of a plague for players. The card has been banned in the TCG for a number of years, but it was still unlimited in the OCG when Master Duel first released, partially basing its ban list on the OCG’s The card has been part of the “Master Duel Tax,” a term coined players to describe a handful of cards that you needed to play for your deck to be remotely viable on Master Duel‘s ranked ladder. Those cards have consisted of Maxx “C” for drawing on every opponent’s special summon, Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring to negate Maxx “C”, and several cards that are only in the deck to stop Ash Blossom from negating Maxx “C”. This chain of interactions also earned the nickname “The Maxx ‘C’ Minigame.” Maxx “C” has been the center of many debates about the format, and Konami has finally given an answer. This semi-limit is in tandem with the same change made in the OCG some time ago, though Master Duel tends to go through ban list cycles quicker.

Maxx “C” isn’t just being seemingly phased out for no reason, however. All of Yu-Gi-Oh!‘s formats have seen the arrival of the “Mulcharmy” monsters, Purulia, Fuwalos, and Meowls. These cards take the “draw on Special Summon” effect of Maxx “C” and split it amongst multiple monsters, with their own unique drawback to using them. If Maxx “C” going to 2 really is a sign of future things to come, it’s in your best interest to find out if the Mulcharmy cards are good replacements for your deck.

UNLIMITS

One thing that is Master Duel excels at with its unlimits continues to be identifying cards that do not need to remain on the list and releasing them to the masses. Sometimes it’s because the card is no longer a problem or maybe it was never a problem at all. This unlimit list features exactly that. It’s cutting chaff off the list.

Morphing Jar and Cyber Jar are recognizable to anyone who played Yu-Gi-Oh! back in the early 2000s. They were core parts of the infamous Empty Jar deck, whose win condition was to mill your opponent’s deck until they had nothing left or to annoy them so much by reseting the entire game with Cyber Jar that they just quit. FLIP-effect monsters just don’t have what it takes in the modern game, and these cards could have gone to 3 any time in the last few years. But, now that they’re here you can find some support for FLIP monsters and really surprise a friend or some poor gamer on the ladder. The shock might win you a game.

Aluber the Jester of Despia and Branded Opening are cards to support the ever-popular “Branded” archetype. Despite being a few years old already, Branded has continued to see play and get decent results. There was a brief time in Master Duel when the deck was a menace, and these cards were put on the list to slow down its briefly-lived dominance. The fact that the Branded archetype is having its card lore adapted into an anime may or may not play some part in this decision. Bystial Saronir, similarly, sees a lot of play in Branded decks alongside its Bystial brethren. Bystial Saronir, in particular, has explicit synergy with Branded decks, but it’ll find a home in any deck that wants to run a Dark Dragon. It’s an even better time to consider building a Branded deck if you’re so inclined.

Limping back into the format, finally, is Destiny HERO – Celestial. Celestial was banned fairly early after Master Duel‘s release as a way of dealing with the boss monster that used to plague the meta-game, Destiny HERO Destroyer Phoenix Enforcer (DPE). DPE was summoned through a combination of cards, mostly the infamous Link-2 Monster Predaplant Verte Anaconda, which could send any “Fusion” card to the graveyard and then activate its effect. Celestial was the fusion material of choice for an even more profitable DPE. When it was banned, players simply found a different Destiny HERO to make DPE with. So, Celestial has been sitting in jail for crimes committed by monsters who remain unbanned even now, but his sentence is over, and he can return to HERO players like me, where we will happily send him to the grave as fusion material once again.

DECRAFTING BONUS

If you happen to have multiple copies of any cards on the list that are having their numbers reduced, don’t decraft them until after the ban list goes into effect. Once the list goes live on February 5th, you can decraft any cards that are being banned, limited, or semi-limited and receive extra crafting dust for new cards. Instead of the usual 10 Crafting Points, you’ll 20 of the type you’re decrafting. Hold onto those Maxx “C”s just a little bit longer so you can get closer to replacing it with a Mulcharmy. The defrafting bonus will only last from February 5th to March 5th.