The Ban/Restricted List

It’s a whole new world.

Greetings fellow readers! As you may know already, Games Workshop released a ban and restricted card list yesterday. Today I’ll be going through my thoughts on the subject as well as helping everybody through this new change.

To begin with I’ll explain the basics:

1. The ban and restricted list applies to all Organised Play events as well as Grand Clashes
2. It goes into effect immediately and is compulsory for that format (tournaments this weekend have the option not to due to the short notice drop)
3. Casual play is unaffected

So what does the list contain for those who have not read the document? Well, the following 3 cards are banned and can no longer be used in competitive play. These are:

This alone is a huge change in itself. While I’m sad to see Time Trap (my favourite card) banned, I totally see why it needed to go due to the ability for double charging. I would have preferred the charge action being re-worded but such is the world we live in.

Great Concussion and Quick Thinker will not be missed by me. While I did use and abuse them, they were too good and effected the game too much considering every player ran a copy of each basically.

Next we have the restricted list:

The above cards can only make up a total of 5 cards across your objective and power decks. This additional change adds a new element which I didn’t consider seeing as I previously only wanted a ban list but I’m more than happy to have it now. It’s the best of both worlds.

Most of the cards on the list don’t need much explaining as they contributed to the “1-hit meta” commonly seen within the game. Loner and Perfect Planning were hit in order to hurt control/turtle players as well from what I can see which I think is great. Control/Turtle play is strong and needed a little hit seeing as aggro play (its main rival) got hit hard along with the (hopeful) resurgence of Hold Objective play.

So what are my thoughts overall? In regards to how I play, here is my current Skaven deck:

16 out of 34 cards I use have been banned and restricted meaning I need to re-work my Skaven deck entirely. It’s going to force me to start from the ground up again, I may even change warbands now and I entirely love this change.

That may come as no surprise considering I have been pushing for a ban list. In fact, back in September I emailed the Underworlds suggestions e-mail along with a lot of players from the London scene messaging support of a ban list. I’m not saying we directly caused it as GW said themselves it was first brought up by play testers but we felt the need to in our local community.

For the ban/restricted list in terms of regularity, a 6 to 12 monthly review would be fine in my eyes. It gives time for metagames to develop without cards being cycled around too quickly. I’ve seen people say cards like Superior Tactician and Sidestep should be restricted too but Superior Tactician can “brick” a lot and was only easily scored due to the high scoring objectives that were very easy to score for it. Sidestep is just a simple push and while commonly used, it isn’t in every deck or meta defining.

Of course you can also send Games Workshop your thoughts if you’re unhappy with the ban/restricted list. I’d suggest giving it a shot and see how it changes your games. Only 3 cards are now not available for use while 26 are restricted to a max of 5, not bad considering we currently have around 700 cards in the game.

Overall I’m very excited with the game again and will be testing out the new ban/restricted list at a store tournament on Saturday. I encourage you all to use the lists and give your feedback to Games Workshop here: whunderworlds@gwplc.com. It’s great to see that the majority of the player base are positive about the whole thing and it looks to be widely accepted.

We also have a new GW official Underworlds deckbuilder! It already has the filter for organised play and restricted cards as well as transferring your lists into tournament-ready documents.

The game is on a fresh slate and the January Warhammer World Grand Clash is going to be very interesting. It will be great to see what people come up with as decks will be far more personal to the player than ever. It’s time for new combos and tactics with the ever-faithful crits.