Butterfly Dagger Elma was released in 2003 as apart of the Dark Crisis Set, and has a fairly simple effect. However, this brings up the question “Why is Butterfly Dagger – Elma Banned?”
What does Butterfly Dagger – Elma do?
The card is an equip spell card that gives the equipped monster an additional 300 Atk. However, if the card is sent to the graveyard while equipped it instead returns to the hand. At first glance, this card doesn’t seem that powerful, but on closer inspection, the interactions it allows are problematic for the game. Equip spell card support in the game of Yugioh is actually rather good, but the card that really made this card broken is actually an equip spell counter card.
Butterfly Dagger – Elma enables FTKs
An FTK or first turn kill is when a player can end the game on their first turn. Butterfly Dagger – Elma’s partner in crime is Gearfried the Iron Knight. The effect is also simple, Gearfried the Iron Knight sends all equip spells to the graveyard after they are equipped. This created an infinite loop of equipping and unequipping the card.
For example, and Exodia FTK combined the two above-mentioned cards with Royal Magical Library in order to create a way for the player to draw their whole deck. This combo required two monsters on the field and only one spell card in hand which is not hard to set up. This is just one of many FTKs that Butterfly Dagger – Elma enabled.
Can Butterfly Dagger – Elma be unbanned?
Probably not. This card has been a problem for a while and has been banned since 2005. The card causes too many problems, and now those FTKs would be even more consistent. Despite this, the card isn’t really that great besides the return to hand. If Gearfried didn’t exist then maybe this card could be unbanned. However, unless this card gets an errata then it will remain banned.
If you want to learn how Pot of Greed got banned may I suggest this article?