Controversial Yu-Gi-Oh card unbanned after 17 years in the shadow realm

Yu-Gi-Oh! has remained a popular trading card game since it first debuted in 1999. Based on the popular manga comic of the same name and published by Konami, it has since sold over 35 billion cards around the world as of January 2021.

It also remains a popular card game of choice at tournaments where players can battle against each other in a competitive scene.

Cards can regularly be cycled in and out of the official rules at Konami’s discretion. This is to ensure that games can remain balanced without one card, in particular, being used to dominate games.

Now after 17 years, Konami has removed the “Change of Heart” card from the blacklist and will allow competitive players to add it back to their decks. It’s unusual to bring back a card that has been banned for the majority of its existence but fans are excited about the rule change.

Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter

Change of Heart is a spell card that once activated, gives control over another player’s target monster until the “end phase”. As you can imagine, this could lead to some headaches for the other player.

Yu-Gi-Oh

The card was originally banned back in April 2005 but now its status has been changed from “Forbidden” to “Limited.”

This means that during tournaments, players are allowed to keep just one Change of Heart card in their deck, to prevent the spell from being overused.

Change of Heart has remained a popular card in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Fandom as it has regularly appeared in both the manga and anime show.

Yu-Gi-Oh! has seen a resurgence in popularity partly due to the release of Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duels, a free-to-play digital simulator of the trading card game which was released earlier this year and has since been downloaded over 10 million times.

Now that the card has been unbanned, players can add Change of Heart back to their decks both digitally and at in-person events.

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.