Forbidden Lance and World Legacy Clash are cards that serve very similar purposes. Forbidden Lance protects a monster from spells and traps for one turn and makes that monster lose 800 attack. World Legacy Clash banishes one of your monsters until the end phase, dodging potential destruction, and decreases an opponent's monster’s attack and defense by your banished monster’s stats. Both are quick-play spells that have the potential to act as both protection or aggression. Typically we see World Legacy Clash more in the meta, but does that prove that it’s the best choice for all decks? Let’s dive into it.

Breakdown of the Differences

Simply put, Forbidden Lance is better during your turn, and World Legacy Clash is better during your opponent’s turn. When you’re going for the kill and your opponent has a trap like Floodgate Trap Hole, or even a more niche battle trap like Wall of Disruption or Drowning Mirror Force, both Lance and Clash offer protection, but only Lance allows your monster to stay on the field to continue your turn. Lance offers invaluable protection against Dark Magic Circle as well, which is always welcome as Dark Magician continues to thrive.

The utility of World Legacy Clash on the opponent’s turn cannot be overstated. World Legacy Clash can prevent destruction, stifle the battle phase, and cancel attacks if used in the opponent’s damage step. To reiterate, replays do not occur if World Legacy Clash is used in the damage step. A common trick is to banish your monster during the damage step and target a monster that hasn’t attacked yet. This effectively stops the damage of two monsters with one card, and saves your monster.

Another key difference is the card rarity. Now, in a bubble this has no effect on whether a card is viable or not, but in practice it’s quite relevant. World Legacy Clash is fairly easy to pull as a rare, while Forbidden Lance is an ultra-rare. Players, seeing that they have similar utility, will typically opt to just go for the rare.

World Legacy Clash’s popularity has proven to be its downfall. The October 2019 Forbidden/Limited list semi-limited it, unfortunately. This hinders its ability to be played in decks that have key pieces also semi-limited. Forbidden Lance conversely has no such restriction as of yet.

Niche Uses

Forbidden Lance and World Legacy Clash have niche uses that, while likely aren’t relevant enough to sway anyone one way or the other, are certainly worth knowing (if not just to baffle your opponent).

• Forbidden Lance can stop a monster on the field from being used as fusion material. This is especially useful against Aleister the Invoker, as it is unlikely the opponent will be able to resolve Invocation.
• If you banish a monster originally owned by your opponent with World Legacy Clash, you’ll keep it for the duration of the game, or until it dies. Unfortunately both Enemy Controller and World Legacy Clash are semi-limited as of the time of this article, but this extra utility could prove useful as the game progresses.

Deck Synergy

It's clear that Clash is the more popular card. It's also the more flexible card. Which leads to the question, what decks benefit from Lance over Clash? Forbidden Lance is the better choice for aggressive go-second decks, like Lunalights. Lunalights can benefit from access to the semi-limited card Neos Fusion, and appreciate the ability to continue their aggressive plays after protection. Any deck with key semi-limited pieces, such as Blackwings, Shiranui, Fur Hire, Six Samurai, Cyber Angels, and Invoked will also want to go for Forbidden Lance over World Legacy Clash. Otherwise, it's fair game to just slap two Clash into your decklist and start dueling.

Conclusion

Players use World Legacy Clash game-wide from Bronze to King of Games, and it’s not hard to see why. If a player is looking for a budget option that will greatly strengthen their grind game, World Legacy Clash is the easy solution. If your deck is not extremely aggro, it has no semi-limited pieces and wouldn’t benefit from the Neos Fusion Engine, World Legacy Clash is the clear choice over Forbidden Lance. But for everyone whose decks don’t fit those criteria, know that there is a card for you and its name is Forbidden Lance.