We've seen a lot of speculation around what could be hit in the upcoming announcement on the 21st. Bandai have made it clear that their data set covers March 2026 through July 2026, so I was curious about what that data might actually look like.

To be clear, this is not a prediction of the upcoming banlist. We don't have access to Bandai's internal data or decision-making. Instead, I wanted to run a thought experiment: if we look exclusively at Top 16s from 3-star events during that period, what patterns emerge when we look at the format through the lens of card versatility and cross-archetype presence?

That gives us a slightly different way of looking at what Bandai may be seeing across the Regional stage.

The Flood Gate

Crimson Blaze - BT8-097 immediately stands out.

It appears 64 times across 14 different archetypes, making it the most widely distributed card in the data set. That's significant because Crimson Blaze isn't tied to a particular strategy. It's a generic answer that can be dropped into a wide range of red decks.

And its role is fairly clear.

If the format starts becoming too wide, too low to the ground, or too reliant on building a large board, Crimson Blaze is one of the easiest ways for red decks to check that strategy.

That doesn't necessarily make it a problem in isolation. But from a restriction perspective, this is exactly the kind of card I'd expect to attract attention: high representation, high versatility, and a role that exists independently of the archetype playing it.

The Aggressive Fairy

Ukkomon - BT16-082 is the second most versatile card in the data set, appearing in 60 Top 16s across 12 archetypes.

The important part here isn't just the number of appearances. It's what Ukkomon does to the format.

At four copies, it's incredibly easy to include, and its presence effectively pushes decks toward playing the game faster. Rather than supporting one particular strategy, Ukkomon raises the floor of aggressive development across multiple decks.

That becomes even more interesting when you consider its recent success alongside Glowing Dawn.

Of the cards we're looking at, a restriction to 1 copy feels like one of the more plausible outcomes. Not because Ukkomon is necessarily the strongest card in the format, but because it is one of the cards most capable of influencing the format regardless of which deck is winning.

It doesn't just enable a deck.

It pushes the entire format.

Lingering Effects

ShineGreymon: Ruin Mode - EX4-074 appears 54 times across 9 archetypes.

Ruin Mode is a slightly different case from Crimson Blaze and Ukkomon, but the common factor is still versatility.

Its effect creates a state where the opponent can be meaningfully weakened for an extended period of the game. Whether that's a 10K DP reduction for one turn or 5K for two turns, you're not simply dealing with a single interaction.

You're changing the state of the board.

The interesting question for Bandai isn't necessarily "Is Ruin Mode too strong?" but rather "How often should purple and yellow be capable of creating this kind of swing across unrelated strategies?"

At 54 Top 16 appearances across nine archetypes, it is clearly not confined to the deck it was originally designed around.

Snap

Blinding Ray (BT4-104) is where things get more complicated.

It has appeared 46 times across 7 archetypes, but looking at it individually doesn't really tell the whole story.

You have to look at the wider group of memory manipulation cards:

• Gravity Crush - BT1-090

• Parabolic Junk - BT6-104

• Jack Raid - BT4-111

• Blinding Ray - BT4-104

• Hammer Spark - ST2-13

• Hidden Potential Discovered! - BT3-103

These cards all occupy a similar space in the game's history. They're old, extremely efficient memory manipulation tools that have survived into a significantly more powerful game.

And importantly, they're already restricted to 1.

The interesting question is therefore whether Bandai sees the individual cards as the problem, or whether the existence of the entire package of generic memory manipulation is becoming problematic.

If one goes, I think there's a reasonable argument that the others could follow.

There's also an interesting bit of timing here. Several of these cards have recently received new alternate arts. Those are cards Bandai presumably wants to sell as collectibles.

A restriction or ban immediately changes the nature of those cards.

They go from being game pieces people actively want to play into cards people may suddenly only want to own.

That creates an awkward tension for this particular restriction cycle. The power-level argument may exist, but the commercial timing makes me wonder whether Bandai actually wants to pull that trigger now.

Take 1, Trash the Rest

Analog Youth - EX1-066 is another card that becomes significantly more interesting when we stop looking at raw appearances and start looking at what role the card plays across different decks.

It's a 2-cost Tamer that digs three cards deep, puts two into the trash, and adds a Digimon to hand.

That's already a lot of value for two memory.

But the important part is what has happened to the card over time.

When this card came out, the game was much slower and we didn't really have anything in terms of trash interaction. Now that Trash 2 has almost become a selling point, throwing 2 cards in the trash for later use.

A previous downside of the card has turned it into a pure engine piece.

And that's where cards like Analog Youth become dangerous from a design perspective. Generic enablers don't necessarily get worse as the game gets stronger.

They often get better.

Every time Bandai prints another powerful payoff for having cards in the trash, the value of a card that efficiently fills that trash increases.

So while Analog Youth may not have the same raw representation as Crimson Blaze or Ukkomon, its long-term scalability is arguably more concerning.

The Highest Topping Card

Then there's Asuna Shiroki - BT24-088

Asuna has the highest number of Top 16 appearances in the entire data set at 91, comfortably ahead of Crimson Blaze.

At first glance, that makes her an obvious candidate.

But this is where looking at versatility changes the picture.

Asuna isn't a generic card that can be dropped into half the format. Her appearances are concentrated around Time Stranger and Three Musketeers strategies.

That's an important distinction.

The current format is heavily saturated with Time Stranger cards, so naturally Asuna is going to appear frequently.

But if we move away from Time Stranger, Asuna's representation should fall with it.

That's very different from a card like Crimson Blaze or Ukkomon, where the card itself can move from archetype to archetype regardless of what the rest of the format looks like.

So What Does It Mean?

This is where the data becomes more interesting than simply asking which cards have the most Top 16s.

If you line these cards up, the strongest common factor isn't necessarily power.

It's versatility.

The format has increasingly moved toward individual decks having their own identities, engines and gameplans. The cards that stand out in this data are often the ones that cut across those identities.

Crimson Blaze is a generic answer to wide boards.

Ukkomon accelerates aggressive development.

Ruin Mode creates a powerful board-state effect.

The memory cards provide generic resource manipulation.

Analog Youth is a generic trash enabler.

Different cards, different effects, different colours and completely different purposes. But they all share the same characteristic:

They don't particularly care what deck they're being played in.

That's potentially the more interesting signal.

If Bandai is concerned about deck diversity, then raw representation isn't necessarily the best metric. A card appearing in 90 Top 16s because one archetype is dominating tells you something very different from a card appearing in 60 Top 16s across 12 completely unrelated archetypes.

The former tells you that a deck may be too strong. The latter tells you that the card itself is helping shape the format.

And that's why Asuna is the interesting outlier: 91 appearances sounds far more alarming than 60. But those 91 appearances are heavily concentrated within a particular part of the card pool. Her usage is a symptom of the success of those strategies. The other cards are closer to the opposite.

They're contributing to convergence.

Different decks arrive at the tournament with different gameplans, but once they sit down, they increasingly reach for the same small collection of universally useful cards. That's the pattern I find most interesting when trying to think about what Bandai might be looking at.

None of this is a prediction of the 21st. We don't know what Bandai is going to restrict, ban, unrestrict or leave completely untouched. This was simply an experiment in taking the data we do have and asking a slightly different question:

What happens if we stop looking for the cards with the most wins and instead look for the cards that are influencing the largest portion of the format?

The answer was surprisingly consistent. The cards that stood out weren't necessarily the ones defining individual decks. They were the ones that transcended them.

Take that as a lens for looking at the upcoming announcement, rather than a forecast.