Nova

Based on my experience playing this format I think this was a good ban. However, this banlist absolutely stinks of corporate motivation. Shanks/decken and the usopp event remaining untouched when they are obviously negative gameplay experiences is crazy. Additionally, while Mihawk has been top tier consistently was he really getting results in op17 that justified a ban this early? The motivation here is obvious: Mihawk fucked with the wrong deck. Rocks is the Imu of OP17 in that it was obviously designed to be a top tier and they basically custom printed the entire deck for you in one set. Despite the fact that 95% of decks can't touch rocks, Mihawk gatekeept him at major events and that was clearly unacceptable. So wham, he's banned. I find this particularly funny because it also exposed how the testing team completely missed this deck while OP17 was being developed. I am quite sure if they had anticipated Mihawk hard countering Rocks they would have printed a silver bullet counter or added some text to the leader ability that stopped don untapping or something. This is ALSO really funny because when I started thinking about the development process for OP17 I realised that it likely was in its late stages when pudding was banned. I thought it was weird that after being in the game for so long Bandai finally decided this year was when it had to go (though I agree the card was too good), but realising that they were probably custom printing their new S Tier Leader as a deck that drew a load of cards right around banlist season suddenly explains the change of heart. Basically I think this ban has exposed more than ever that OP isn't interested in balance bans for the sake of making a good game, they just care about what's good for sales and optics. Cringe 💀