Announcement Date: July 27, 2015

Effective Date: Immediately

El Shaddoll Construct is no longer restricted.

Nekroz of Unicore is no longer restricted.

Shurit, Strategist of the Nekroz is restricted to one (1).

Debris Dragon is restricted to two (2).

Deep Sea Diva is restricted to two (2).

Wind-Up Magician is no longer restricted.

Wind-Up Hunter is now banned.

The complete list of all banned and restricted cards, by format, is here.

Next ARG FORMAT Announcement: Season 3.

EXPLANATION OF CHANGES

As another ARG Format event comes to a close, we're excited to see all of the innovation put forth by the players. We don't want this innovation to end and so we're back with a few changes to the list.

Banned: Wind-Up Hunter We want to bolster the power of Wind-Ups but we don't want to introduce the once format defining "hand loop" into our format. Banning Wind-Up Hunter allows us to give Wind-Ups more with other changes.

Restricted to one: Shurit, Strategist of the Nekroz Shurit, Strategist of the Nekroz has taken a leading role in the new Nekroz deck. Providing two free summons per copy as well as a search for either Nekroz of Clausolas or Nekroz of Brionac are the main reasons why Shurit has been seen at 3 in the new Nekroz deck. Allowing instant summons of Nekroz of Decisive Armor, Nekroz of Gungnir, and Nekroz of Valkyrus is proving too powerful for the current format. We want to weaken Nekroz in order to allow other decks to thrive alongside of Nekroz instead of lagging behind it.

Restricted to two: Deep Sea Diva: We wanted to give Mermails a boost to bring them up to speed with the current decks so that fans of this major strategy can have a fighting chance. Deep Sea Diva allows more plays while limiting the consistency of the former "Megalo-Diva OTK" since Atlantean Dragoons (an integral card to this OTK) is still at one. Debris Dragon: Bumping up the number of Debris Dragons gives plant fans a new breath of life into their deck. With the Dragon Rulers banned we felt that this card could come back to two without destroying the balance we're aiming to create.

No longer restricted: Wind-Up Magician With Wind-Up Hunter banned, Wind-Up Magician can safely come back to three and allow Wind-Ups to exist as an Xyz toolbox deck.

El Shaddoll Construct With the absence of Shaddolls once again, we felt we had weakened the deck too far. We want to give them a little more power to try and bring them up to a fair playing field. Nekroz of Unicore With Shurit at one, leaving Unicore at one would allow other strategies that were neck and neck with nekroz to blatantly overpower them. Our goal has always been a diverse meta where anything can do well and keeping true to that we don't want to kill Nekroz. We simply want to weaken it down to a point where other decks can compete as well.

***With our new ARG Format we will evaluate the list a little closer for any imbalance after each Circuit Series event. We will look at cards that are unlikely to add more strength to the already powerful decks but might add a new plan of action for decks presently not performing as well as the top decks in the current format.

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