One of the nice thing about playing Weiss in English is the absence of a ban list. However, if you play Weiss in Japanese, or mixed, then you would have to pay attention to the ban list update, which happens twice a year. While it can be debated if English should also have a ban list, Japan has adopted one since 2010, and continue to add/remove cards to the list. In this article, we’ll look at three of the infamous cards on the ban list.
The first banned card for all three format
Choose up to 2 cards in your Clock and put them in the Waiting Room. Send this to Memory.
Rest! is probably one of the most famous card when comes to the ban list, as this card was extremely dominant in the format back when it came out. At a time when standard was more popular than neo-standard, the general saying was, “start your deck construction with 4x Rest!”. As a result, this card had a close to 100% play rate for standard, side, and neo-standard. This card entered the banlist when it was announced in Dec 2010, for all three formats.
Event cards are generally stronger than character cards, but this card is very powerful for letting you to “heal” 2 and compress by running to memory, for the low cost of 1 stock. While there are other cards that heals, Rest! was more cost efficient and helped in a deck that wants cards in the memory. For neo-standard, since Little Busters can be played with Kud Wafter, Little Busters overwhelmed other sets by its sheer healing powers, when mixed with other healing cards such as “Starduster” Himuro or Mio in Maid Uniform in the series. Remember, this is back in 2010, where burn and re-stand were rare and generally expensive to use.
CIP heal 1. If there is 3 or more cards in memory, this card gains “When a level 2+ battle opponent reverses, you may pay 1 to heal 1,”
In the 2nd half update of 2016, this card was taken off the ban list for standard/side, but still remains on the neo-standard ban. This is probably due to the lack of people playing standard, and that healing-only decks are not as strong as it used to be. However, this card (along with Good Friends Trio (FS) and Xylophone Fortune Reading (DC)) created a slow-play problem as the player is allowed to pick and choose the card they want to send from the clock to the waiting room. It is only until Cordelia’s Garden (MK) that all the healing events has switched to “put X cards from top of your clock to your waiting room.”
Continuous soul pump and untouchable
[C] This cannot be chosen as target of your Opponent’s effects.
[C] All your other ::Fleet Girl:: Characters gain +1 Soul.
Speaking of the heal meta , we fast-forward to 2014 for one of the set that was created to curb that. With the popularity of the browser game Kantai Collection, came one of the biggest set ever printed in Weiss history. In that set, Junyo, 2nd Hiyo-class Light Aircraft Carrier created a huge advantage for the players by offering a continuous boost to soul damage.
By offering one extra soul to any of your own attackers, you can start to continuously deal out the same firepower as your level 3s from level 2, without the use of a CX. The untouchable aspect also makes it annoying for any bounce or send top/bottom abilities, as Junyo can also be used as a attacker that is immune to anti-damage counters like Horrible at Horror (DC/DS) where your opponent has to choose your characters.
This card also worked extremely well with the Y/G-Shimakaze meta at the time, as it was very compatible with the Musashi and Akagi-kai finishers. Kantai Collection was one of the best set in 2014, and had the highest number of players who have topped in singles/trios for most of that year. Although Musashi, Junyo and Inazuma entered a 3-choose-1 restriction in September, the restriction did not curb the set much. Junyo eventually moved to the ban list on December 29, before the Nationals of WGP 2014 (more on why there was a emergency ban list later.)
All of your other 《Fleet Girl》 characters get +1000 power. Shift, Level 2
When English would finally get its own Kantai Collection set in May 2015, Junyo was completely omitted, and replaced with an English only card, Junyo-kai. The card had became less useful as it mainly serves as a back row 1000 assist that can be shifted out. Needless to say, the card wasn’t used in the English-meta much.
The deck that changed future tournament formats
[A]When this card’s opponent reversed, if you have 2 or more <key> character, you may pay 2 and discard 3 to re-stand. (Once per turn)
In the same year of Summer of Kancolle, another beast has emerged. Nisekoi was a set that had the most stable compression engine at the time – as long as you are playing the Maiden Heart, Marika-centric deck. The deck did extremely well in the tournaments after its release, where 27 out of 32 topping decks in WGP used Nisekoi. The deck was dominating so much to the point that the top 8 players of WGP Sendai all used Niskoi – something that had never happened before. Nisekoi eventually joined the ranks of other over-dominating set, and earned the name “Winter of Nisekoi” while Weiss was ridiculed as “Nisekoi-Schwarz” at that time.
Even to this date, Marika’s effects are rare. It allows you to burn and re-stand, without the use of a CX. Also, you only have to pay to re-stand after you reverse a battle opponent, as many of the cards with similar effects at that time required you to actually pay before you attack, where you can risk wasting resources if your opponent plays any backups. Since the burn happens as long as you attack, you are effectively attacking 4 times at 1-2-1-2, assuming you don’t trigger during the attack. The cost of pay 2 discard 3 might sound expensive, but Nisekoi had many ways to salvage cards so that it was generally easy to re-stand once, and not unusual to see two Marika re-stand if there are multiple out. Depending on your opponent’s compression at level 2, it is also not uncommon to push them from level 2 to 4 in one round of attacks.
Unlike Kantai Collection, where there were other builds that also topped, Marika-centric build dominated the scene and was the main build. After the incident at Sendai WGP, Bushiroad announced that there would be a ban list change right after the event, where Marika would become limited to 1 copy only, and a few other cards being on the restriction list. However, Bushiroad stated that because the set was too new at the time of the banlist, players are allowed to play 4 copies of Maiden Heart, Marika, if the deck only played a Marika-waifu build. The deck only allowed Marika characters and the 5 cards below. The exception was allowed up to August 30th of 2015, where Marika has been limited to 1 copy ever since.
Until that time, Bushiroad has only announced changes to the ban list until all the tournaments in the series (BCF/WGP) has finished, and it still remains the only time when a new ban list was in effect before the national finals. Despite the ban list change, Nisekoi still took 1st in nationals and 2nd in worlds, which shows how strong the build was.
CIP reveal top, if <key> then burn 1.
If another of your <key> character reverses, give one of your character +1000 until end of turn.
Another thing that Nisekoi has caused was the change in the tournament format, regarding the revival slots. The old format did lottery draws for all players who lost only once, while the new format gives priority to sets that are not the same as the undefeated players. This has effectively ended where a single set would completely fill all the slots of at a tournament. As for the English Nisekoi set, the whole Maiden Heart series (all 3/2 characters) was completely replaced, where Marika and Kosaki are weaker versions of their Japanese counterparts.
What about the others…?
In the next article of this series, we’ll look at the set that started the nickname of “summer/winter of XXX”, a card limited/banned because of a possible print error, and a card that changed it’s ban/restriction details 6 times.
Wild Wild Weiss 
3 thoughts on “Brutal. Savage. Banned.”