In their new Duotone treatment, Capture Evil-Doers and Back Alley Haymaker are the newest additions to the Banned List. Notes from UVSGames:

BACK ALLEY HAYMAKER
First, let’s address Back Alley Haymaker. That is going to require a little zooming out. Typically when measuring card usage, foundations dominate the top few slots. This makes sense, foundations normally comprise 60 to 70% of most decks. Since the release of Undaunted Raid, one card has bucked that trend in a BIG way. Back Alley Haymaker has gradually moved into the most played card in competitive UVS in a big way, passing even the foundations it usually comes partnered with. We’ve been monitoring its climb up usage and win rates for a while now, but the National Championship Series proved to be the breaking point. Back Alley passed the next closest card (It Can’t Be Fixed) by over 140 copies played across the 3 national events, and it beat the next closest attack (Rejuvenating Smash) with nearly twice as many copies. We have never seen card usage rates like this for an attack card and it’s clear the card is warping deck building at higher levels of play in particular. In addition to high usage, the card is having big success to go along with it. At all 3 national events, Back Alley Haymaker appeared in 50% or more of the top cut qualifying decks, as well as putting up strong numbers in the decks outside of top cuts. Back Alley has spiked up in usage rate in a way we have never seen before, all while sporting an incredible record of success.

CAPTURE EVIL-DOERS
Capture Evil-Doers is a bit more complicated topic. The community conversation around the card has been running for a while, and while we were never fond of the NPE it created, especially against characters who put a premium on momentum, its usage (compared to other actions) and win rates never reached abnormal numbers. It mostly found a home in the Good Punch decks that were competitive, but not dominant. It also wasn’t fully pushing out the decks you’d expect it to, like Tamaki Amajiki. Then at the 3 Nationals events we saw a big uptick in usage. Many decks that in the past that were only siding the card, had shifted it to their main decks, and decks that were running it mainboard before now had even more copies. It also started to find broader adoption outside of the Good decks, ending up finding homes in Fire decks in particular. At Nationals, Capture tripled the next closest action (Barrier Shield) in usage and raised some alarms. We also knew with the release of Jet Burn, the card was about to find a few more homes. The Elephant, or Dragon to be more apt, in the room is Pro Hero Ryukyu. Ryukyu’s synergy with Capture Evil-Doers is incredible, just about always being able to pay the bill on the card pool clear ability. This leads to some very consistent kill turns in earlier turn windows that we are trying to reduce the number of games ending in. The impact in local level of play is particularly pronounced, as Ryukyu is deliberately a straight forward character meant to be welcoming to various levels of play experience. We know this strategy has some counterplay, especially at higher levels of play, but the play experience it creates when you don’t find those counters goes against our current goals for the game. Between the existing NPE the card creates for momentum driven characters, the large spike in play usage, and the gameplay loops the card is creating at various levels of play with the release of set 6, we’ve decided that it’s time to ban Capture Evil-Doers.

With these changes, we will continue monitoring the post Jet Burn metagame for outliers. These cards have jumped off the page but we are watching very closely the early results coming in from all levels of play and the conversations about the game happening on our official social platforms.

Usually, I like to give my opinions first. However here, I’ll let UVS get the main points out the way first. Yes, BAH is an overused card and plays in a variety of the meta’s elite decks. It’s generic value additions allow it to be played in almost anything, and give players a Something-for-Nothing kind of feeling. Personally, I don’t think the card is out of variance in terms of strength. I think several decks on the Good and Earth symbols lack enough good attacks specific to their deck’s strategy to nudge out attacks like Back Alley. Look at last weekend’s Top 8. BAH was played at 4x in Nomu and Sato.I; decks without dedicated attack line-ups. However, Patrick Tombs chose to play 1 in his Mirio because he has other options to work wish specific to Mirio (Phantom Threat, Valiant Assault, etc.)

Capture Evil-Doers ban is an absolute no-brainer. I think there’s still other ways that Ryukyu will be dangerous, but CED was a dose of consistency and power that was clearly unintended when it was printed.

With that the meta is left in a wide-open landscape. It’s still anybody’s guess what tops and wins any given event. Home-brewed decks are consistently landing in top cuts proving you don’t need the cookie cutter to be competitive, and there’s brand-new simple strategies that new players can pilot to success. I don’t know what December will bring, but I can’t wait to find out. Until next time, I’ll see you on the tables!