Greetings Summoners!

We’re always impressed by all the enthusiastic Battle Spirits Saga gameplay and are thankful to all the players and participants of BSS. Based on recent major tournament results and the current meta, we’re updating the Banned and Limited Cards List. These updates will be implemented starting with the Grand Tour Vol. 2, taking place on October 26, 2024.

About two months have passed since the release of BSS05 and the play rates of decks focused around [BSS04-001] Rage Star Dragon Siegwurm Ira and decks focused around [BSS04-086] Deepsea Emperor Hydra continue to be high. Despite the introduction of double color cards and spirits with Astral in BSS05, these two decks remain entrenched, and we have not seen much change in the meta. To rectify this situation and create a fresh gameplay experience, we will be implementing the following bans and limits.

Banned Cards

We’re adding the following two cards to the Banned Cards list.

• ・[BSS01-117] Big Bang Energy
• ・[BSS04-114] Great Sapphire Labyrinth

In order for this card to have an explosive impact, you needed a deck with both strong card draw and powerful Star Dragon spirits.
However, with the introduction of [BSS04-001] Rage Star Dragon Siegwurm Ira, replenishing your hand became easy. This card also makes it easy to summon both [BSS04-001] Rage Star Dragon Siegwurm Ira and [BSS01-001] Supernova Dragon Siegwurm Nova, and being able to both destroy your opponent’s spirits and recover life in the same turn proved extremely powerful.
We considered limiting this to one copy, but using red draw cards would still allow players to get that one copy in hand too easily, so we determined that a ban was necessary.

This card fulfilled two important roles in Hydra decks: increasing your cores and reducing the cost of Ascend. The concept behind Ascend spirits is to trade the payment of a great cost for exceptional power.
[BSS04-114] Great Sapphire Labyrinth was conceived as a way to overcome the drawbacks of Ascend and allow players to better enjoy that concept. However, it resulted in an excessive increase to the speed of games.
We considered limiting it to one copy, but blue has a number of ways to get a specific nexus into your hand, such as [BSS03-135] Strong Draw and [BSS04-102] Harp Princess Pollon, so we determined that a ban was necessary.

Limited Cards

We’re limiting the following three cards to one copy each per deck.

• ・[BSS01-101] Volcanic Canyon
• ・[BSS04-001] Rage Star Dragon Siegwurm Ira
• ・[PR-043] Tsathoggua

This card is used in red decks for its powerful draw support. The main purpose of this card is to get your deck’s most important cards into your hand. However, we have found that in best-of-threes it also allows you to get a card you’ve added from your sideboard to your hand easily, making red decks too consistent. Therefore, we are limiting it to one copy.

This card was conceived as a powerful card to reintroduce Star Dragon decks into the meta.
To balance this, we also designed other double symbol Ascend spirits and spirits that were resistant to destruction, but ultimately those weren’t enough to hold out against this card.
That said, this card has a flexibility of use in red decks and one copy should still allow for opportunities to make use of it during gameplay. Therefore, we are limiting it to one copy.

Hydra decks have many strong points, including acceleration of game pacing via core addition, continuous attacks via double symbols and Raid, and spirit destruction.
This card also strengthened its deck discards, which added to the weaknesses of white decks that feature strong defense against continuous attacks and destruction, resulting in Hydra decks that were too all-purpose.
Banning [BSS04-114] Great Sapphire Labyrinth would slow down the speed of games and repress the offense of deck discarding versus slower decks, so we are limiting it to one copy.

Unbanned Card

We’re removing the ban for the following card.

• ・[BSS01-010] Oviraptodon

Since various other aggro decks have been developed and the strength of defensive decks that can defeat aggro decks is in a good place, we have determined that this key card for Terrasaur decks should no longer pose a significant problem. Therefore, we are unbanning this card.

The updated Banned and Limited Cards List is as follows:

[Banned Cards]

• ・[BSS01-106] Netherworld Depths
• ・[BSS01-117] Big Bang Energy
• ・[PR-006] D-08 Axebiter
• ・[BSS04-114] Great Sapphire Labyrinth

[Limited Cards]

• ・[BSS01-101] Volcanic Canyon
• ・[BSS01-119] Volcanic Break
• ・[BSS04-001] Rage Star Dragon Siegwurm Ira
• ・[PR-043] Tsathoggua

We will continue to monitor the meta. If we observe an extreme imbalance in top-placing decks or cards used in tournaments, we will consider additional changes to the Banned and Limited Cards List.

Thank you for your continued support of Battle Spirits Saga

Battle Spirits Saga Development Team