Why Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon Should Be Banned

Dragoon's Reign of Terror in the OCG

When was released in the OCG, it was a format-warping card. The OCG format in general is a lot slower than the TCG format and control decks are much more dominant in the OCG than they are here in the TCG. Many decks quickly added Dragoon to their strategy in the OCG, be it through or through main decking three copies of . In the OCG, Dragoon was finally banned in October 2020.

Dragoon, because of the dominance it displayed in the OCG, has been a long-awaited addition to the TCG. In August 2020, it finally happened. Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon was released into the TCG card pool in the 2020 Mega Tins. Many people anticipated that it would have a similar effect on our metagame as it had on the OCG. But, as many players tested Dragoon in their decks, they found it somewhat lacking. Most meta decks quickly dropped Dragoon from their strategies after its release and it has faded into semi-obscurity.

Dragoon's Arrival in the TCG

Apparently, it was not worth running the three additional bricks of , , and in a TCG meta deck just to be able to play Dragoon. How did a format-warping card in the OCG have next to no effect on the TCG's metagame after its release? One of those reasons is the more control-focused format in the OCG. The TCG has more combo decks, which just don't need Dragoon to perform well. Combo decks in the OCG are much rarer, partly due to the legality of in the OCG.

Another reason for Dragoon's immense impact was the lack of outs to the dragoon. When it was released in the OCG, there weren't many cards that could actually answer it. Possible outs in the OCG were or any . By the time Dragoon made it to the TCG, we already had additional outs for Dragoon that the OCG did not have when Dragoon was first released. For example, we already had and , two additional meta-relevant cards that can easily get rid of a Dragoon.

The highest impact Dragoon had in the TCG was on rogue decks. Typically, rogue decks already have inherent consistency problems and a lower power level than the higher tier decks. When it comes to rogue decks, there is still a good trade-off for the addition of the bricks that the Dragoon package requires compared to the power that Dragoon provides them. If a rogue deck's actual combo gets stopped by an opponent's hand trap, they simply have to put two monsters onto the field, go into Verte Anaconda and they can at least summon Dragoon.

Why It Needs to be Banned

You might be wondering why I still think Dragoon should be banned despite it only seeing play in rogue decks. First, this actually seems to be changing. More and more players are choosing to include Dragoon in their strategy. Drytron is by far the most oppressive combo deck of the current format. If it can go off unstopped, it can put a with four to six negates and additional interruptions for their opponent. This is why people currently choose to incorporate more hand traps in their decks to stop a deck like Drytron from freely comboing off.

When a Drytron player's combo is interrupted, they now simply choose to summon Dragoon through Verte Anaconda. This means that their opponent has possibly already used two of their cards to stop the Drytron combo and now has to get rid of a Dragoon (with a built-in negation) with the remaining four cards on their turn. So, Dragoon has, in fact, finally reached the metagame in the TCG and makes playing against already oppressive decks like Drytron even harder when they do have a Dragoon on standby. But, this is only one example and not the real reason why I think the dragoon deserves the ax.

The Spirit of Rogue Decks

When you summon a Dragoon against a rogue deck, Dragoon is an auto-win in most cases. Many rogue decks cannot deal with a Dragoon themselves. Moreover, those players on rogue decks are often more casual players who try to stay within a given budget when it comes to building their decks. I mentioned that we do have several outs for Dragoon. However, when we take a look at some of their price tags, we see that cards like or are currently being sold for upward of 55-60 euros per copy. Hence, buying a playset of either of those cards requires a budget of at least 160 Euros, solely to be able to deal with shenanigans like Dragoon.

However, the most disappointing factor when it comes to Dragoon is what it actually has done to all those rogue decks. Even though they almost instantly lose against a Dragoon, most of the rogue decks have simply turned into Dragoon-turbo decks themselves. Dragoon is simply too good a card to not play it in those decks. It increases these decks' ceilings tremendously because Dragoon in itself is a better boss monster than most of those rogue decks' actual boss monsters.

I do think that a card like Dragoon kills the spirit of all those rogue decks and is very unhealthy for the game in general. These rogue decks now have diverted a lot from what they were originally intended to do. Yet, you cannot really blame them. Dragoon is too easily summonable and the sheer power it provides justifies the actual drawback of running some additional bricks in those decks. This comes at the cost that these rogue decks have lost their spirit and everything that made them fun to play before.

Hopefully, this will be addressed in the future with a ban of Dragoon in the TCG. I think that Dragoon is a completely overdesigned card that is too easily playable outside of the archetypes it was intended for – Red-Eyes and Dark Magician. What are your thoughts on Dragoon? Would you like to see it banned? Or would you rather have him stick around for some more? Let me know your thoughts and reasons down in the comments!

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