Thread: Bandai Card Analysis

Wow, this is. So damn interesting. Thanks so much for posting this.

I'd so buy a set of these cards for lulz if I had someone else to play with.

Your rule and combo explanations were very helpful. I had no idea that was how the card game was played. Granted I much prefer YGO as it is today, but it's still cool to know how it originally started.

Wow Series 1 Zombiemaster made it in to a card even if its not really Konami's XD. Which I prefer to be like that for some reason.
Was this ever in the manga too or just Toei's YGO! show ?

That's some unique info. It actually made me read all of the card analysis.
I would prefer Magical Hats' effect much better this way.

I'm glad I could be of help. Zombiemaster is unique to the TV show, being Daimon's signature card. If you're interested in them, while you can find these cards for some absolutely exorbitant prices on certain YGO websites, but there are other...obvious places to get them for cheap. I won't say who because of certain dirty words involving ad and ent.

I like this game because if you give it an LP system, it feels much closer to the original manga than the modern game does. No weird 50 ATK monsters that tune or deal poison damage or something, just completely mechanics you'll only ever apply to one or two cards and skyrocketing attack scores.

Yeah from what I read it has the feeling of me first time playing the first YGO! Power of Chaos PC game. Lol Dark Energy XD. It was awesome, specially when I barely knew the rules thanks to the dub.

I like that feeling.

Onto Set 2!
Best Monster: Four Stars and Under
Armored Zombie loving hell this card is insane. He's a level 4 Fiend-type with a whopping 2400 base attack and 0 defense. Being immune to Dragon Capture Jar, Armored Zombie is a complete monster, and can be even moreso as discussed in today's winning combo.

Best Monster: Over Four Stars
Uniquely, Catapult Turtle. At 1600/2200 it's a rather poor six-star monster, but you're not running this card for its stats. Catapult Turtle's effect is that you can discard it to boost one monster's attack by 1000 points, smashing the 3300 threshold wide open. This is a vast improvement from its Konami counterpart, which could only deal half of a tributed monster's attack to the opponent's life points, and best of all this boost is permanent.

Best Fusion Monster
As alone as Gaia, for this set we have the 3200/2600 Black Skull Dragon. Having to choose between which support card to play for Red-Eyes is a very good problem to have, and in my case I'd pick its counterpart Meteor Black Dragon. Skull is the more defensive of the two, and while that's nice and all, I can only pray I never fusion summon for defense. Still, Skull is very good in light of his own set, and has the highest attack of any monster through Set 2. He can work in a fusion deck that isn't having an especially amazing day.

Best Spell
Out of seven spells to choose from, Monster Reborn is the winner. This is a familiar number to most duelists. As it can call back any monster from the grave, this card can usually make summoning troublesome cards like Blue- or Red-Eyes much easier, but this incarnation is crippled by two factors; first, Bandai's OCG lacks any discarding cards like Foolish Burial. Second, even if the OCG did have those cards, Monster Reborn in Bandai's version only adds a monster from either graveyard to your hand. The best reason to have this around is to get back the monster that your opponent's Mirror Force just wiped out, or to double-dip on Catapult Turtle.
...Yes, Bandai's OCG has Mirror Force. Tremble and fear for when it comes.

The runner up is Polymerization, for the obvious reason of getting to laugh at all the Blue-Eyes players with Meteor B. Dragon.

Best Trap
Kunai with Chain, as it's the only trap of this set. Kunai activates when your opponent declares an attack. Your opponent's monster is switched to defense mode, after which this card equips itself to any monster of your choosing and raising its attack by +500. This is a highly splashable card, and can work to throw your opponent off their game by suddenly burying that Meteor Black Dragon they just summoned and raising Blue-Eyes to a level Monster Reborn will never bring them back from.

Worst Monster
Sword Arm of Dragon, what the hell? A five-star monster with only 1,000 ATK, Sword Arm of Dragon is probably intended as a defensive monster, but its 2100 DEF is beaten out by Mystical Elf(who in Bandai is at 2500 DEF, but is unfortunately also a five-star monster)

Best Combo
Armored Zombie + Dragonic Pulse of the Land. This one's really out the window; Dragonic Pulse of the Land is supposed to, y'know, enhance dragons but for some reason its Bandai effect is to enhance Fiend monsters by 800 points. At 2400 this throws Armored Zombie into the 3200 range, and gives him some measly defense to toy around with. Don't bother with defense, instead double up on Dragonic Pulses to get a 4000 attack monster out. You can stretch this combo to its logical conclusion by combing it with Catapult Turtle, for an attack that's between 4200 and 5000!

Worst Combo
Time Wizard with anything; this combo is only ever good because Dragon Capture Jar is so hard for a dragon-heavy deck to remove, in a game where dragons account for the upper 90% of strategy. In any other situation you would never want to use Time Wizard, because if that tails hits then all of your monsters are off the field and you better have something else to summon in hand. On the flip side, Time Wizard is a magic card in this, so you don't waste your summon by playing it.

Ironically, Elegant Egotist with Harpie Lady 1 is the runner up. This set finally gives us Elegant Egotist, but now that the insane Armored Zombie combos are available, Harpie Lady has been outclassed in full. The Dark Magician combo is faster and gives more power for less cards, and Armored Zombie reaches double Harpie Lady's maximum power in exactly half the time. The Harpie Lady combo requires that your hand consist of exactly Harpie Lady 1, 2 and 3, as well as Elegant Egotist and Cyber Shield, while Armored Zombie only asks for an Armored Zombie and a Catapult Turtle or Dragonic Pulse of the Land. 'Or' is the keyword here, as Harpie Lady just can't function on her own.

Oh come on guys, tripleposting already? Help me out here

Set 3!

Best Monster: Four Stars and Under
The following three monsters are level 4 and all have identical 1500/1500 stats; Violet Hecate, Red Hecate, and Yellow Hecate. Ironically, these monsters were intended to be used as a team, but prove to be absolute garbage in that department. More on that further down; for now, we'll focus on Violet Hecate, because we may as well cover the second best monster in the game.
Violet Hecate has four things going for her. First, she's a girl, which makes her susceptible to Cyber Shield's effects. Second, she's a black magic type, which makes her susceptible to Dark Energy. Third, Violet Hecate has two other copies of herself, so you can run the three Hecates together and you're effectively running 9 of the same card. Finally, Hecate is below level 6, which makes her work with Horn of the Unicorn.
In essence, very nearly every equip card in the game works with the Hecates. While terrible for fusion, the nine Hecates can gain a total of 1800 ATK from Cyber Shield, Horn of the Unicorn and Dark Energy. This makes a four-star 3300 ATK monster that is not susceptible to dragon capture jar, and if you get really lucky you can use Kunai with Chain or Catapult Turtle to further boost her into the 3800~4800 range. You 'could' do this with just about any monster, but Hecate is the only one that is compatible with so many different buff cards and has so many other copies of herself. I would recommend running all three Hecates in any serious Bandai deck.

Best Monster: Over Four Stars
Blue-Eyes White Dragon is a welcome surprise, as this is the only set where it's not outshined by a different 5+ monster(well it is, but Meteor B. gets its own section). Blue-Eyes actually has even less support than Red here, as there are no specific cards designed around it. With the greatest raw power and unique status as a super rare in both Sets 1 and 3, this monster was reprinted in English for Set 3 and still has its 3000/2500 attack. While nothing special, especially not in light of Hecate, Blue-Eyes is nonetheless the strongest raw monster of Set 3.

Best Fusion Monster
Meteor Black Dragon is by far the best Red-Eyes support in Bandai's OCG. At 3500/2000, this is the second most offensive fusion monster in the OCG, and very difficult to stop. As a dragon it has the classic lack of support and vulnerability to Dragon Capture Jar, but DCJ can potentially be worked around by doubling up on Magical Hats—play Meteor Black Dragon, swap it when your opponent attacks for Dark Magician or any nondragon with 300+ attack, and swap it back on your turn with the second MH. This should be the secondary goal of any fusion-oriented deck.

Best Spell
With its ability to instantly swap one card from your hand with one on the field without wasting or limiting your summon, Magical Hats takes the crown. You can potentially avoid tributes by swapping a card you just played with Blue-Eyes, Red-Eyes or Dark Magician, or swap a card you played on your previous turn and play it again to support your heavy-hitter. The runner-up is Dragonic-Pulse of the Land, for its crazy Armored Zombie combo.

Best Trap
There are no trap cards in Set 3.

Worst Monster
Golden Pegasus. Level 6, 1500 ATK, one tribute for 500 less than Baby Dragon's ATK, at least with Skull Servant I get what I pay for.

Best Combo
While the aforementioned Hecate combo is devastating, by far the most powerful and simultaneously most difficult to get out combo of this set is Blue-Eyes White Dragon's Wicked 3-Body Connection. This is separated into four cards in the style of Exodia, except each card is one corner of a massive jumbo-sized monster card; when summoned this creates a prototype of the Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, chaining together three Blue-Eyes for 4500 ATK and 3000 DEF. This doesn't actually require three Blue-Eyes to play, but you do need all four cards, making this one of two fusion monsters that doesn't require Polymerization. What's special about 3-Body is that it can attack eight times consecutively. Throw in a simple buff like Catapult Turtle to blow past the monsters and your opponent's life points are gone. The critical weakness of this combo is of course its vulnerability to Dragon Capture Jar, but given that you need all four cards to play it, you've hopefully gotten rid of DCJ by the time this comes out.

Worst Fusion Monster in the Entire Game
Today's entry bears special mention for introducing us to the fourth fusion monster of Bandai's Official Card Game, and the last one to require Polymerization. While Violet Hecate and her sisters are amazing individually, together they can be fused to summon Gorgon. Gorgon is a level 6 2000/3500 black magic fusion monster created from Red, Yellow and Violet Hecate. Let's run down the grocery list of problems with this fusion.
Like Exodia, this requires five cards to play; Red Hecate, Yellow Hecate, Violet Hecate, Polymerization, and the fusion monster of this set, Gorgon. Gorgon can attack three times consecutively but only has an attack power of 2000; the only way to make this combo work reasonably is by doubling up on Dark Energies and Catapult Turtle, raising her attack power to 3600~4600, and that eight card combo will never come out, especially not while it's easily countered with Mirror Force. If you're running a fusion deck, this is the one at the bottom of your extra deck that you once in a while might assemble all the cards for on turn 2 and pull it out for a really weird win. Gorgon's defense is pretty high at 3500, but why are you summoning a fusion monster for defense? Armored Zombie will tear this apart.
This is also the only normal fusion monster in Bandai's OCG to require three monsters for fusion.

Next time, we discuss promotional cards!

So that's how Bandai's BEUD is played. Lol Jumbo card XD. Wonder why Konami never has come up with that idea and instead give is synchros or Psychic type of cards that were never in the mangas.

I have some of these Bandai cards myself, they were pretty cheap on Ebay (Shipping was expensive as hell though).
These are actually really informative and interesting to read aswell

Promotional Cards!

Best Monster: Four Stars and Under
Promotional Set contains no monsters under four stars.

Best Monster: Over Four Stars
Gate Guardian is a source of debate. On one hand, it reduces all of your opponent's monsters attack points to zero. On the other, it's not even a real monster; it's summoned by having Sanga of the Thunder, Suijin of the Water, and Kazejin of the Wind on the field. Unlike in the TCG, they are not tributed. However, each of these monsters is a six-star monster and Bandai's OCG has no tokens to help summon them. There is no easy way to get this monster out on the field and there's no reason to do so without other monsters there to take advantage of its effect, so its effectiveness is limited and it's in this category largely because the others are taken. Think carefully before using this.

Best Fusion Monster
Blue-Eyes White Dragon's Wicked 3-Body Connection. This is the second way to summon this card; this variant was released as a promotional card for the Toei 1999 movie, as a last-ditch effort to revive Bandai's game, and it's a single card variant of the original 3-Body. This is the best fusion monster in the game, as it's a two-card summon of another fusion that has all of its effects and none of its drawbacks. This can only be summoned by playing Wicked Chain, which just special summons it from your hand, and it can still attack eight times with 4500 ATK and 3000 DEF. I imagine this to be the final finger Bandai gave to its Exodia metagamers before going out with the bang that was Dark Burning Meteor!

Best Spell
Swords of Revealing Light stops all opposing attacks for three turns. You can still attack, while your opponent cannot, and that's just swell.

The runner up is Wicked Chain, which special summons Blue-Eyes White Dragon's Wicked 3-Body Connection.

Best Trap
Mirror Force, which has its same ability from the TCG; destroying all of your opponent's monsters when they declare an attack. The only way I can think of to defend against this is to use Magical Hats to swap one of your monsters for one of the ones being destroyed.

Worst Monster
Gate Guardian for all the reasons it's the best. Three six-star monsters on the field, no attack or defense points, and has an insane effect that is nonetheless impossible to get out. On one hand, this requires you to get out seven cards, on the other hand...your opponent won't be getting out any.
Except Mirror Force. Yep, worst monster of this set.

Best Combo
Wicked Chain + Blue-Eyes White Dragon's Wicked 3-Body Connection. No tributes, no Polymerization, no equip cards. There's just no stopping this once it's come out. Maybe a sufficiently-buffed Hecate or Armored Zombie could prevent you from chaining the attacks by stopping 3-Body in its tracks with their sheer attack points, but they would have to have been buffed on the previous turn in anticipation of the most broken combo in the game.

Worst Combo
Gate Guardian again. Just about the only thing worse in the game is Gorgon.

Next time I'll cover particular deck builds and how the game is supposed to work under its own OCG rules. Stay tuned for some absolute

I just looked at the Wiki again and there is a fifth set called shields.
I'm slightly confused as it just seems to be monsters from all the previous sets.
Matsura is there anything special about this set?

Shields are basically reprints of all the existing cards, but with highly detailed artwork and no stats. The Shields can't be used in gameplay, and for a bit of weirdness, they're also stickers. Basically, collectible art cards.

Ah right you explain this a lot better than the wiki does can't wait to see deck builds.

A lot of the Bandai cards are really quite beautiful (the Bandai Gate Guardian trinity make the Konami one look like shit) and I don't like the way the YGO world has tried to retcon Bandai and the Toei series out of history. This is very useful and interesting.

Although some might call them ugly, most of these cards are actually quite a miracle of effort. Most of these were heavily reduced hand-painted illustrations with a small amount of digital modification. They're a lot closer to what the manga originally envisioned.

So, what would a Bandai deck look like?
Monsters
Violet Hecate x 3
Red Hecate x 3
Yellow Hecate x 3
Armored Zombie x 3
Baby Dragon x 3
Blue-Eyes White Dragon's Wicked 3-Body Connection (PR) x 3
Catapult Turtle x 3

As stated before, running nine Hecates works great and can form the meat of an offensive deck. Using the PR Blue-Eyes is recommended over the four-card piece, because it just comes out so much more easily and there isn't any real downside to using it. Armored Zombie can be spliced into pretty much anything. With this setup, you're almost guaranteed to have a full field of 3000+ ATK monsters.
If you don't have access to 3-Body(which is very likely, it's expensive as hell) you could actually run Harpie Lady 1, 2 and 3 in here because their equipment overlaps slightly with the Hecate sisters. Due in part to the expense of Blue-Eyes and Wicked Chain, I throw in a single Dragon Capture Jar into my deck and it just laughs at dragon synchros.

Magic
Wicked Chain x 3
Magical Hats x 3
Horn of the Unicorn x 3
Cyber Shield x 3
Dark Energy x 3
Dragonic Pulse of the Land x 3

Wicked chain brings out the Blue-Eyes, while other cards buff our sisters and zombies. Magical Hats can actually let you swap Blue-Eyes into the field without playing Wicked Chain, so it's in there to make your opponent rage.

Traps
Mirror Force x 1

Kunai with Chain just isn't really all that great in this deck when everything else is outshining it. Note that because I've been talking about this game as part of the TCG thus far, I've been kowtowing to the banlist.

Let's look at a fusion deck:

Monsters
Red-Eyes Black Dragon x 3
Meteor Dragon x 3
Summoned Skull x 3
Blue-Eyes White Dragons' Wicked 3-Body Connection (PR) x 3
Gaia the Fierce Knight x 3
Curse of Dragon x 3
Catapult Turtle x 3
Violet Hecate x 2
Red Hecate x 1
Yellow Hecate x 2

By far this deck's weakness is that Curse of Dragon is its only non-tribute monster, so I splashed the three Hecates in along with 3-Body, just in case you don't get a viable combination of monsters in your opening hand. Since the Hecates also have an (albeit horrible) fusion, they get to mix into the theme as things stand.

Magic
Polymerization x 3
Magical Hats x 3
Swords of Revealing Light x 1
Monster Reborn x 3

Another problem this deck encounters is that it only has one way to fuse, so I put in Swords of Revealing Light to stall the opponent until you can draw your Polymerizations, and Magical Hats to switch Red-Eyes or something into the field in an emergency.

Traps
Mirror Force x 1
Kunai with Chain x 3

Some requisite counters to opponent's monsters, as well as a way to power up your fusions once they're out.

Extra Deck
Black Skull Dragon x 3
Meteor Black Dragon x 3
Gaia the Dragon Champion x 3
Gorgon x 1

Of course, Gorgon is completely optional and should probably never be summoned unless you have no better options, but I threw her in since the Hecates are here as things stand.

Now that we've looked at potential TCG-format decklists, I'm going to delve into Bandai's OCG as it was intended; a horrible soup of strange mechanics that kind of...never work well. As before, I will analyze it set-by-set, but this time with Bandai's rules in mind instead of Konami's, which gives certain monsters a much greater advantage.

First off, an overview of the rules.

～ＲＵＬＥ ➀～
Both players must use the same number of cards as their Decks.

A little strangely worded, but already we have the most exploitable rule in the game. You are required to use the same number of cards as your opponent, but neither player can force the other to buy more cards. So you can have a deck that consist of a single five-card combo and have it in your opponent hand, and from set 1 one of these combos is incredibly obvious; Exodia the Forbidden One. Well, more on these combos later.

～ＲＵＬＥ ➁～
Draw 5 cards from your Deck to form your hand.

Since both players draw on their opening turns, and no card in Bandai stops the opponent from drawing, your hand is mechanically 6.

～ＲＵＬＥ ➂～
Select 1 Monster Card from your hand and play it to start a Battle.

What's important is that this is done on both player's turns. One difference is that you have to wait for your opponent to play their monster before defending, which sort of gives the defending player an advantage, although the best of decks can negate that advantage easily.

～ＲＵＬＥ ➃～
To determine the result of the battle, compare the ATK of your attacking monster with the DEF of the attacked monster.

This rule comes off as plain weird to modern duelists, but in Bandai there was no attack or defense mode. You attacked on your turn and defended on your opponent's.

～ＲＵＬＥ ➄～
If your monster's ATK is higher, your opponent's monster is destroyed.

ATK--> ATK never happens, it's always ATK--> DEF.

～ＲＵＬＥ ➅～
Even if you destroy the opponent's monster, if the DEF of your monster is lower than the ATK of your opponent's monster, your monster is also destroyed.

This one's a bit more like the modern game, but notice that this means that each player actually attacks twice, once during their turn and once during their opponent's. This throws out a lot of extended combos, as you've effectively got two attack stats jumping around during a battle and it becomes that much more important to have a strong defense.

～ＲＵＬＥ ➆～
When the battle ends, draw 1 card from your Deck and you can end your turn.

Duels last approximately half as long in Bandai compared to a modern duel. You're drawing two cards per turn, so in a 40-card deck you have 20 turns to win. I assume that this is to imitate Season 0's dueling patterns, where characters drew both before and after attacking.

～ＲＵＬＥ ➇～
Each turn will continue like this, until both players' Decks are empty.

There is no deck out in Bandai.

～ＲＵＬＥ ➈～
Finally, each player counts the total Level Stars of all monsters that he/she destroyed. The player with the highest amount is declared the WINNER.

There aren't Life Points either. One of the more curious elements of Bandai strategy is that playing low-level monsters with high attack is driven less by tribute costs(there are none) and more by keeping your opponent from scoring too well. It also means that your magic-to-monster ratio should probably prioritize magic, again to keep level stars from being gained.

～ＲＵＬＥ ➉～
If you have Spell, Trap or Equip Cards in your hand, you can put them in play face-down.

There are approximately twelve spell cards, two trap cards, and four equip cards in the game. One of those equip cards is a trap.

～ＲＵＬＥ ⑪～
You can activate your face-down Spell, Trap or Equip Cards at any time during a Battle.

More in line with the anime here, this is why we had things like the nurse's Tsunami play and Yugi's Miraculous Water in Season 0. Bandai is unique in that magic works on everybody's turn, making traps a little more difficult to distinguish in terms of gameplay.

～ＲＵＬＥ ⑫～
When the effect of a Spell, Trap or Equip Card is used, it is discarded.

But the effect lingers. Since Bandai didn't have the five monster and five magic zones, this is to keep the table from getting cluttered. If your monster was powered up and is still around after the battle, it still has the effect on it, but the card does go away.

～ＲＵＬＥ ⑬～
When a player's Deck is empty, the Duel will continue until the other player's Deck is empty as well.

I don't even know how this is supposed to work, since you can't attack a player's Life Points. There's nothing to attack! What do?

Some final things to note:
* There are no tributes. Any monster of any level can be played.
* You can only win through having destroyed more total level stars or having all five pieces of Exodia in your hand. The actual number of monsters is irrelevant so long as it's a high number of level stars.
* Since you're counting from the graveyard, discarding monsters adds their levels to the opponent's score. This makes some cards involving discard effects much more balanced.
* This one actually made me go back and rewrite some of these, because it was completely assumed by me, but Bandai's OCG does not have a maximum card limit. Even though the anime and manga both establish through Kaiba that you can only have three of any one card in your deck, the OCG has no such rule.

Enough with that, Set 1 Analysis let's go!

Best Monster
Blue-Eyes White Dragon hands-down. This card really is as legendary in Bandai as it is in the manga, as an instant 3000 attack is pretty much unstoppable. The greatest flaw in Blue-Eyes is its complete lack of support and vulnerability to Dragon Capture Jar, but that's one monster that's very dangerous to run, as anything non-dragon type can kill it. There are other cards from this set that can take out Blue-Eyes, but they can't do it until their corresponding magic cards are released in later sets, and none of them have the kind of instant power Blue-Eyes does. Great Moth can beat its defense just barely with 2600 ATK, but it will die the turn it does from the dragon's counter.
Keeping in mind Rule 6, Blue-Eyes also has the advantage of being the best all-around monster. You need strong defense to go with offense in this.

The runner-up is Great Moth. Great Moth in this incarnation does not require Cocoon of Evolution to be played, and its 2600 ATK is quite a threat to contemporary cards. Only Blue-Eyes beats it out, and even then it sacrifices itself to wipe BE from the field. Honorable mention goes to Dragon Capture Jar for taking out every dragon-type in the game(and for being one of two illusion-type cards.)

Best Spell

There are no spells in Set 1.

Best Trap

There are no traps in Set 1.

Worst Monster

Larvae Moth loses for being a 300/400 monster that just...doesn't do anything. It's not compatible with any particular equip cards, it has no effect, and it can't even mature into Great Moth.

Best Combo

As it's the only set with the combo available, I'll spell it out now; Exodia the Forbidden One. Having all five pieces of Exodia in hand makes you the instant winner of the game, and Bandai does not have a banned or limited list. Furthermore, by taking advantage of Rule 1, you can have a deck of just six cards—Exodia and one other card. Game starts, you win.

Worst Combo

(Curse of Dragon + Gaia the Fierce Knight)Polymerization= Gaia the Dragon Champion. While this could be a pretty good combo in set 1, Polymerization isn't released until set 2 and by then there are better things to work with. The fact that this asks for all four cards to be in hand when the result only has 2600 attack and is easily beaten out by Blue-Eyes makes it a rather underwhelming combo, which rather asks why you don't just play something a little weaker like Armored Basic Insect With Laser Cannon.

Originally Posted by Matsura

If you don't have access to 3-Body(which is very likely, it's expensive as hell) you could actually run Harpie Lady 1, 2 and 3 in here because their equipment overlaps slightly with the Hecate sisters. Due in part to the expense of Blue-Eyes and Wicked Chain, I throw in a single Dragon Capture Jar into my deck and it just laughs at dragon synchros.

Actually, I think you'd be pleasantly surprised about the price of an all-in-one Blue Eyes Connection card. I got it very reasonably from eBay; it's probably still on there.

Larvae Moth loses for being a 300/400 monster that just...doesn't do anything. It's not compatible with any particular equip cards, it has no effect, and it can't even mature into Great Moth.

I guess Larvae Moth truly will always be one of the worst cards in the game. But not even being able to form Great Moth seems like even more of an insult.

I think I know the seller you're talking about and yeah he's really great, my whole deck cost about $40. The difficulty is tracking down three of those, for which you'll have to go to certain people who decide that it's worth $44.50

One difference between the two is that the four-card version has no level stars. So it's also immune to Gravity Bind! :V

Part of me says that cards like Great Moth and Insect Armor With Laser Cannon should be overlain on top of their base forms, but the card text really doesn't allude to this at all(no special rule declaring it) and it doesn't work so well with Bandai's gameplay.

Bandai view, Set 2!

Best Monster

In all of its gamebreaking glory, Catapult Turtle is here to increase your monster's ATK by 1000 points. At the cost of itself, the target monster gains a permanent boost in attack, most likely dropping your opponent's jaw. The strategy here however, is to use this on a monster with high defense but low attack to prevent its destruction in battle. Admittedly, giving your opponent a free six stars isn't always a good thing.

The runner-up is the 2400/2400 Labyrinth Tank. A solid monster, it can safely hold off most cards and readily combat others. In terms of unsupported generics, this is probably the best of them.

Best Spell

Cyber Shield equips to a monster with a female illustration to give it +500 ATK/+400 DEF. This is applicable to a wide number of monsters, including the famous Harpie Lady series.

Best Trap

Kunai with Chain is the only trap of this set, and a fairly useful one. It seizes the opponent's monster during their attack, and adds 500 attack points to your own monster's. So even if your monster isn't powerful enough to deal with the opponent's after the boost, their monster is basically removed from play.

Worst Monster

Wattkid has 1500 ATK and 800 DEF. Sure you can boost the attack with Catapult Turtle or an equip, but that 800 DEF is taking you nowhere. Except maybe against a Larvae Moth.

Best Combo

Albeit a weird one, Black Skull Dragon takes the cake here. Reason is, if you're trying to play it then you're trying to play its components; Red-Eyes Black Dragon is not spectacular compared to Blue-Eyes, but it has decent attack and defense. Summoned Skull is likewise up there in the top tier cards, so the fact that you're running multiple copies of these monsters together and can potentially pull out Black Skull Dragon to overcome heavy obstacles is a great asset.

The runner-up is Gate Guardian. With no attack and defense stats, you can special summon this monster when you have Sanga, Suijin and Kazejin on the field. Each of them has 2400-2600 ATK/2200-2400 DEF and when played together they fuse into the token monster Gate Guardian Spirit for a 2800/2800 beatstick, and summons the regular Gate Guardian. This monster has no attack or defense, but makes all of your opponent's monsters have 0 attack for three turns. Likewise, GGS can attack continuously for three turns; however, getting GG out is tricky when all of its components are vulnerable to being Blue-Eyed or even Red-Eyed in some cases.

While not the best, Dragon Piper needs mention. It allows you to use any dragon-type card defeated by Dragon Capture Jar...and hey, remember Wicked 3-Body Connection?
Yeeaaahh.

Worst Combo

Harpie Lady Sisters isn't benefiting much from the rules change. Yeah the result is 2800/1700, but only if you can play Elegant Egotist. That makes this a four-card combo, again in a game without searching, and it becomes six-card if you include Cyber Shield and Horn of the Unicorn for 3800/2300. It's eased up a bit by Bandai's OCG being able to have multiple copies of each Harpie Lady, so you get to have 9 of them for a much better time building a Harpie deck than in the current TCG. You want a good time building a Harpie Lady deck? Bandai places no restrictions on how many of one card can be in there. Go nuts with nine of each Harpie Lady, nine elegant egotists, and four Cyber Shields.

Set 3!
Best Monster
King Beetle is kind of a hidden treasure here, since at 1200 ATK for five stars while most of his contemporaries are pushing 2000+ he appears underwhelming, but Catapult Turtle can fix that since his defense is good enough as things stand. Something needs to be said for Armored Zombie here. Because spell cards don't have level stars, and thus don't affect your opponent's score, using Dragonic Pulse of the Land on him has the same effects as before. Even though Armored Zombie will be destroyed by anything in the game when he attacks, he'll also take out anything in the game; so at 2400~3200 ATK he'll take on much higher-level monsters at a cost of just four stars.
Blue-Eyes White Dragon received an English-language reprint here.

Best Spell
Spellbinding Circle reduces your opponent's monster's attack to 0 when it's higher than that of your own monster. It should be noted that since the flow of battle goes Your ATK → Opponent's DEF, Opponent's ATK → Your DEF, you still need to make sure that you can actually destroy their monster even if they can't do the same to yours. Magical Hats, as was noted before, lets you switch out monsters at your leisure, but with no tributes there's not much reason to do so unless your turn-end draw was really good.

Best Trap
There are no trap cards in Set 3.

Worst Monster
Wight/Skull Servant is the standard joke we're all familiar with, 500 ATK and 300 DEF. At least it's strong enough to beat its Konami counterpart!

Best Combo

Blue-Eyes White Dragon's Wicked 3-Body Connection. It's actually stronger in real life than in the anime. In the 1999 movie, it could only attack once, but here it gets the full eight hits I've mentioned before. Some other cards like Meteor B. Dragon can actually stand up to him, but they'll still die in the process.

As the aforementioned close second, Meteor Black Dragon is Black Skull Dragon's big brother. At 3500/2000 he's a monster well outside the regular Blue Eyes' stats, and you can take care of his somewhat low(for the purposes of facing a Blue-Eyes) defense with double Megamorphs, though then we're getting into five-card combos. Keep in mind that the difficulty of pulling off these combos can be mitigated, like most problems in Yu-Gi-Oh!, with money. Bandai has no card-per-deck limit, so feel free to run as many of Red Eyes, Meteor and Polymerization as you like.
Just keep in mind that there's no fusion deck either.

Worst Combo
Gorgon can go find a hole and die in it.

I have no idea why the forum wouldn't load until now nor am I going to make any effort at finding out until at least tomorrow. One hour till midnight, not going to question the magic internet.

Promotional Cards!

Best Monster
Gate Guardian even though it's really more of a magic card. Mechanically I guess it was intended that it be summoned by playing the three Guardians, but it doesn't explicitly say that you can't play it alone, and with an undetermined attack/defense it can't really be killed, nor does it have level stars to give the opponent. So it's a weird thing that already does a nice thing I talked about last week.

Best Magic
Swords of Revealing Light is no less powerful here than it is everywhere else.

Best Trap
Mirror Force for an instant “gently caress you off the face of the earth you loving spoony bard”

Best Combo
Wicked Chain + BEWDW3BC. One essential difference between this version of the card and its Set 3 counterpart is that the S3 version has no level stars, which means that even if your opponent could bring it down, they'd get nothing for it. On the other hand, this version nets your opponent eight level stars, provided they can kill it.
Hint: They can't.

So what would a Bandai-rule deck look like?

Well, to be honest...
Blue-Eyes White Dragon's Wicked 3-Body Connection(PR) x 20
Wicked Chain x 20

But in practice...
Exodia the Forbidden One x 1
Left Arm of the Forbidden One x 1
Right Arm of the Forbidden One x 1
Left Leg of the Forbidden One x 1
Right Leg of the Forbidden One x 1
Misc x 1

And assuming fairness...(a very big assumption considering the game we're talking about)
Monsters
Blue-Eyes White Dragon x 3
Great Moth x 3
Dragon Capture Jar x 3
Blue-Eyes White Dragon's Wicked 3-Body Connection (PR) x 3
Red-Eyes Black Dragon x 3
Summoned Skull x 1
Meteor Dragon x 1
Meteor B. Dragon x 1
Black Skull Dragon x 1

Magic
Polymerization x 3
Wicked Chain x 3
Monster Reborn x 3
Magical Hats x 3
Spellbinding Circle x 3

Traps
Mirror Force x 3
Kunai with Chain x 3

Next time I'll close up my analysis with some information regarding the end of Bandai, and how a game already so well along can die so quickly.

I like how some cards like Catapult Turtle are more faithful to the original version.