Yu-Gi-Oh! is one of the OG anime series. It was my first exposure to anime, come to that. Tho♓se classic days of the original Yugi Moto saga defined my childhood. No evil I’ve seen in movies, TV shows, or video games matches Kaiba tearing up grandpa’s prized Blue-Eyes Whitജe Dragon. Damn you, Seto Kaiba, damn you and your gravellier-than-Solid-Snake-chewing-a-mouthful-of-gravel voice.

The thing that hooked me and a lot of my generation to the series was the monsters. At the heart of Yu-Gi-Oh! –whether we’re talking show or TCG—is a series of duels between huge, angry slathering beasts. A huge proportion of which are dragons, because they’re the most tough-as-nails f🔥antasy trope in town. You don’t screw with dragons, do you? That’s what I thought.

Now, the trading card game itself can’t quite rival the holo-creatures of the show, but it tries super hard. Not only is this some of the darn prettiest and most terrifyiജng card art you ever saw, but some of these thi✱ngs are WAY too strong.

As any trading card game player will tell you, ban-lists are dynamic things. A Yu-Gi-Oh! card may move from unlimited or limited to banned and then back again, as n🌊ew strategies arise and others fall out of favor. The metagame is ever-changing. Some of the cards we’re taking a look at today aren’t banned anymore, but they all share one thing in common: They are/have been considered far too powerful. Hold on to your hindquarters and let’s check them out.

15 Witch Of The Black Forest

We’re kicking things off the right way here, with the most relatively feeble💟-looking card in the countdown. At first glance, Witch of the Black Forest looks about as thr🌱eatening as a one-legged kitten in a coma. You’re not setting the world ablaze with that 1100 attack and 1200 defense, buddy boy. The fact is, though, there’s much more to the game than brute force.

The card has taken a nerf or two and is now unlimited (a full playset of three copies can be used in a deck🔯), but it used to be banned for its super powerful effect. The Witch is a searcher ( a card which allows you to draw a certain other card from your deck) that targets a friendly monster’s defense rather than attack, which allows the player to draw from a much wider variety of targets. A lot of powerhouses have low defense, you see.

14 Pot Of Greed

TCGs, as I say, vary quite a bit in terms of gameplay mechanics and such. Nevertheless, there are certain aspects of the game that will always be key, whether you’re playing Magic The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, or the Final Fantasy Trading Card Game. One of the most fundamental of these is draw po💫wer, the ability to keep as many cards as possible on hand when you need them.

Any ability that allows you to draw cards is going to be valuable, and there’s always some kind of cost or condition associated with doing so. Except, of course, in Pot of Greed’s case. This broken spell card guarantees you card advantage in any situation, allowing you 🤡to draw two cards with no drawbacks at all. Pot of Greed, you are indeed a greedy jerk, and you have no b๊usiness here.

13 Monster Reborn

With Yu-Gi-Oh!’s focus on monster battles, it stands to reason that you’ll need somewhere to st🌟ore all the mangled, blood-leaky, sobbing-on-the-kitchen-lino-in-the-fetal-position monster cards you’ve lost. This area is the aptly-named Graveyard.

As such, it also follows that reviving monster cards from the Graveyard is going to be key to play. Certain archetypes, like Zombies, can be hugely reliant on this tactic, swarming the field with ‘dead’ creatures and going in for the ♑kill.

There are a variety of cards that let you return your cards from 💟the Graveyard💟 to your hand or to the field, and they’re also a valuable asset. Monster Reborn is a cut above, though, because you can use it to Special Summon a monster from your own Graveyard OR your opponent’s. This lets you disrupt or outright steal their strategy, too, which is just too good.

12 Substitoad

Here’s another ♓unassuming little card. Look at the guy, ♏what harm could it possibly do? A super cute little pink toad with wings? Nuts to banning it, I want to invite it into my home, adopt it and love it forever and ever.

Which is why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, friends. Because sometimes, the book can actually be a real Grade A d-bag once you get to know it. Substitoad, I’m sorry to tell you, i𒅌s one of those jerks for sure.

As with Witch of the Black Forest, it’s not so much wha❀t the card can do by itself that’s the problem. It’s what it can set up. This thing’s so easy to sea🥃rch for, and it paves the way for all manner of frog-related horrors.

11 Chaos Emperor Dragon- Envoy Of The End

Now 👍that’s more freaking like it. See this guy’s name? Well, yep, that says it all. Does this sound like something to mess with? Does it sound like an innocent goodly do-gooder, who spends their days feeding the homeless soup kitchen? That’s because it isn’t. Hold on to your underpants, the Chaos Emperor Dragon is coming.

In and of itself, this thing’s a real powerhouse, but it isn’t broken per se. It allows you to pay a chunk of your life points to send all cards in both players’ hands (aওnd in the field) to the graveyard, and burn them relative to the amount of cards that were༺ destroyed.

The true reason for the ban, though, was the infamous Yata-Garatsu lockdown, which would leave your opponent completely helpless while💜 you kept swinging. It was awful.

10 Magical Scientist

Oh, Magica♉l Scientist. You are the king of dodgy exploit-y shenanigans.

Once༺ again, this little guy doesn’t look like very much at all. Its attack and defense stats are non-existent. All it seems to have going for it is that purple hair and cool as heck green glasses combo (let’s be frank here, if you try and deny that this is the coolest looking nerd you ever saw, you’re lying).

Looking beyond straight-up stats, Magical Scientist’s effect can be quite neat and tricksy with Fusion Monsters. This isn’t 𝄹too harmful in and of itself either, but the true use of the card lies in devious OTKs and cheap plays with Synchro Summons and Catapult Turtle. I’ve seen this happen with my own damn actual eyeballs, and it was not a good time.

9 Victory Dragon

Now that’s a name, right there. Who wins in a battle when Victory Dragon is involved? Victory Dragon does, that’s who. It’s the ꧑motherfreaking Dragon of Victory, not the Dragon of Being A Good Sporting Player And Allowing Your Opponent A Fair Match. That guy wouldn’t be much fun at parties, and you’d never fit its name on a trading card anyway.

With a name like that, you’d better expect this thing to be able to walk the walk as well. Its true strength lies in its effect, ꦫwhich automatically wins the player the entire match if Victory Dragon is the one to reduce the opponent’s life points to zero. Not just the ro🧜und, mark you, but the entire best-of-three Match.

In a convenient technicality, the opposing player can forfeit the round as Victory Dragon attacks, but still. There’s an obvious reason why 𒁃this thing is banned from tournament play.

8 Return From The Different Dimension

A lot of Yu-Gi-Oh! play centers around aggression and rushing. From the early days of the game to the present, we’ve seen an array of different archetypes based on this simple gameplan. Blackwings, Zombies, Fortune Ladies and many others usually h🧸ave one main strategy in mind: swarm the field and keep up relentless attacks.

To support these sorts of decks, naturally, there are a range of spells, traps and monster effects that help players get their attackers out. ꦇReturn From the Differenᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚt Dimension is one of these, and while it’s more difficult to use, it’s completely devastating when played right.

The ꧅monsters you summon via its effect must have been removed from play, not simply sent to the graveyard. You can instantly fill your field with them, though, which is the terrifying part.

7 Tribe-Infecting Virus

Mass destruction cards are not an uncommon thing. We’ve got Heavy Storm, w♍hich wipes out every Spell and Trap card on both players’ sides of the field. We’ve got the fearsome Mirror Force, a mind game in itself which destroys all attack position monsters the opponent controls, Lighting V🧔ortex… there are all kinds of examples.

Tribe-Infecting Virus is a curious one, though. Yu-Gi-Oh! players often like to build decks based around certain archetypes (some of which are better supported and more effective than others, of course). Whether because we like a particular theme or because it’s just plain strong, lots of duelists go down this route. Tribe-Infecting Virus allows the opponent to instantly shut down these types of decks, destroying all face-up monsters of a particular type. It has a super low 𝕴cost to activate, too. Leave my damn tribe alone, ꦫyou. I like my tribe.

6 Giant Trunade

We’ve already spoken about ꦚmass destruction cards, but what of mass not-quite-destruction-but♏-might-as-damn-well-be cards? It’s not such a well-known card type, granted, as there’s only one of them: Giant Trunade.

The offending Trap card work𒁏s in a similar fashion to Heavy Storm, but it’s a little more subtle. Instead of destroying every Spell and Trap on the field outright, it returns them all to their owners’ hand. This makes it much less situational for the user, as they can simply reset everything♔ they had laid down. Meanwhile, the other player is left with no defensive back line until their turn.

Giant Trunade is so powerful becauꦦse there’s very little doꦰwnside to using it, and no real price either. For this reason, it’s forbidden under standard tournament rules.