I'm just going to come right out and be as blunt as possible. I am SICK of hearing arguments between people who do and do not like the bans. The Pojo forums have become clogged with thread after thread where people childishly refer to people with the opposing opinion by using names like "n00b", "lamer", "idiot", and so on. The same old reasons are cited again and again for what is good or bad about the bans, the same old complaints about there being two formats, and the same derision of players who enjoy the other or both formats.

Clearly, anyone who cares about this game should be supportive of both formats. You don't have to play in one if you don't like it, but deriding those who do or calling for the removal of one format just to suit your own whims is what is ultimately most idiotic.

What is my own opinion on the ban list? I think it, like a lot of other things in this game, has both upsides and downsides. But what I am certain on is that the ban list being optional and dynamic is FAR preferable to the kind of situation that exists in games like Magic: The Gathering, where you simply cannot and will never EVER be able to play vast sets of cards simply because they're arbitrarily deemed to be out of date. Anybody who is complaining about this simply doesn't know what that kind of situation is like, clearly, especially for those of us who are low-budget players.

One of my biggest irritations is how people automatically put down the banned cards as being "unoriginal," "broken," and other terms when some of them clearly have merits and may return from the ban list to be legal in "Advanced" format again. Anyone who questions this opinion, however, is automatically a n00b or an idiot, because obviously, if they don't like even one card being banned, it MUST mean they have no skill at dueling or deck construction, right? Wrong. This is why I've started my week of Banned Card Reviews, so that it might stimulate people to think about the entire mess with less of a playground bully mentality.

So in short, everyone needs to get over themselves and drop the arguments over the ban list. It's not going anywhere, and hopefully neither is the dual-format tournament setup. If you want to see this game survive, you'd better support more ways to play it, because to be frank, it's already behind some other TCGs when it comes to rules and formats. Permanently eliminating cards on a global basis will NOT help the situation at all.