Mirage of Nightmare was first released in 2003 as a part of Pharaonic Guardian. However, due to the great draw power, the card was banned in the April 2005 banned list. This does bring up the question “Why is Mirage of Nightmare Banned?”
What does Mirage of Nightmare do?
Mirage of Nightmare is a continuous spell card. During your opponent’s standby phase you can activate the effect to draw until you have four cards in hand. However, in your next standby phase, you have to randomly discard the same number of cards you drew from your deck. This could be your entire hand if you don’t have enough already. This is useful if you want to dump some cards into the graveyard, or if you want to go through your deck rapidly it can be useful. The card does not work as intended, and this stems from the fact that it is a continuous spell card.
You can remove before the discarding
Mirage of Nightmare only requires the player to randomly discard if the card is still on the field. This means that you could use Mystical Space Typhoon or Emergency Provisions to pop the card off of the field before the standby phase which means you don’t have to discard anything. This is actually referenced in the anime when Jaden Yuki uses this same strategy. The combo is accidentally really good and consistent.
However, you might be saying that maybe the card was used in a discard heavy deck. The card does discard up to four cards in your hand per turn. Despite this, it is not a great card for discarding. The cards are selected randomly, so you don’t get the benefit of setting up your graveyard as you want. The card was really only banned for how good it was in combo with MST or Emergency Provisions. The card was banned for similar reasons to Graceful Charity or Pot of Greed.
Can Mirage of Nightmare be unbanned?
Unlikely. The card is good, and draw the power of the same quality is banned. However, unlike a pot of greed or graceful charity this card requires you to have another spell in hand. The card doesn’t have much use outside of the combo mentioned above. Another factor is that the use of Mystical Space Typhoon has gone down over recent years, and decks would need to re-include it for the combo. I think the chance of it coming back is unlikely, but weirder things have happened.