LogFAQs > #979996738

Future_Trunks posted...

why is master duel different from ban lists for tcg

There are quite a few reasons:

1) It started off more based on the OCG side than the TCG side, but has now diverged so much from both that it's basically it's own format.
2) They have the hindsight of seeing how the IRL formats went because Master Duel is months behind in card releases, so they sometimes pre-hit cards they know will be problematic. Example: they pre-banned Toadally Awesome before Sprights could abuse the shit out of it.
3) Master Duel is a best-of-1 format with no side-decking, so some cards and decks may be less or more of an issue than in the IRL best-of-3 format that has side-decking. Example: Red Reboot is insane in best-of-3 when you know you can just side it in whenever you run into a Labrynth player, but if you need to main-deck it and risk it being a dead card against most other matchups, suddenly it's not so good of an option.
4) They really want to avoid hitting UR cards (and to an extent SR cards) as much as possible and giving players precious dust as a refund, so they'll often hit low-rarity cards from the same archetype instead, which might be different that the IRL hits a deck got. Example: Tearlaments still have Kitkallos (SR) in Master Duel because they banned Merrli (N) instead.
5) Sometimes Master Duel is used to experiment with unhits that they're considering for the IRL formats. Example: Master Duel was the first format to unban all of the Dragon Rulers, and they've been totally fine, so now the IRL formats are bringing them back too.

EDIT: Looks like some of my reasons were already covered while I was typing this post.