With the exception of the period spanning from January to June 2020, Zoodiac Drident has been globally banned from Yu-Gi-Oh TCG tournament decks since 2017. This has been to the dismay of a great many players because as time has passed, it has become increasingly obvious that the metagame conditions which made Zoodiac Drident “broken” in the first place no longer exist. With this in mind, players in Japan and Asia-Pacific will be relieved to know that Zoodiac Drident will no longer be banned starting from 1 October 2024.

About Zoodiac Drident (Raging Tempest RATE-JP053)

Back in 2017, Zoodiac Drident was banned because with it around, the Zoodiac deck would be completely immune to most hand traps, allow its player to play through an entire end-game board with just one card, and enable the player to make use of removal, disruption, and/or extension with any other Zoodiac card as the player requires. As such, Zoodiac Drident was regarded as blatantly overpowered and unsurprisingly received the banhammer.

However, this isn’t the case anymore largely because Zoodiac Drident works best with certain extenders. The combination of Zoodiac Drident and these extender cards is no longer anywhere near as potent as it was in 2017. For this reason, Konami made the long-overdue call to overturn its ban.

From the collector’s perspective, the fact that the card depicts a female character, as usual, elevates its value. This card which comes in Ultimate Rare is part of a card archetype of 12 cards which will never have any new members as they are based on the signs of the Chinese zodiac, hence the name of the archetype. Thus, this card will have appeal to completionists seeking to collect all 12 cards; its value also gets a bump because its corresponding card archetype has essentially been “retired”.

Release Details

This card is already out in English.

An Ultimate Rare Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon (Legendary Gold Box LGB1-JP001) card has a price tag of 2,260 JPY (~US$16).

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