Xyz Dorm Lesson 1

[jackachu100]

Xyz Lesson 1

Reading cards and how they show some of the fundamental rules of the game

1.0 Contents

Here you will find the different sections in the lesson (you can use CTRL+F (Command+F i believe on macs) to go to a certain section using the 1.0 etc. bits)

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1.0 Contents
2.0 Introduction
 2.1
3.0 Reading Cards
4.0 Problem Solving Card Text
 4.1 Simultaneous Effects Go On Chain
 4.2 "Missing the Timing"
5.0 Types of Effects
6.0 Conclusion
 6.1
7.0 Homework

2.0 Introduction

Hello class. Unfortunately, this is going to be one of those lessons where you get taught things you already know (or at least I hope you do), but as these are lessons the first one should be the basics right?

(make sure you read it all (or atleast do the homework at the end) or you won't be able to graduate)

Now I'm not going to start at 100% the basics, so instead we will start with reading some cards (exciting I know) which can tell us a lot about the fundamental rules of Yu-Gi-Oh!.
(If anyone finds any problems with this notify me ASAP so I can fix it)

(this lesson will pretty much be the same as the ones for the other dorms (apart from fusion as Zaio wrote his own) as we are all using the one I wrote with a few changes)

2.1

Starting off we will have a look at the card "Dante, Traveler of the Burning Abyss", as it covers the majority of the points I want to make (and he's an Xyz).

Dante, Traveller of the Burning Abyss:

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His effect:
2 Level 3 monsters
Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card and choose a number from 1 to 3, then send that many cards from the top of your Deck to the Graveyard; until the end of this turn, this card gains 500 ATK for each card sent to the Graveyard this way. If this card attacks, it is changed to Defense Position at the end of the Battle Phase. If this card is sent to the Graveyard: You can target 1 "Burning Abyss" card in your Graveyard, except this card; add it to your hand.

You can easily tell what his effects do from reading them, but he is a very complicated card which we can talk about a lot by analysing his effects in detail (which I will do at the end).

3.0 Reading Cards

The main thing when reading a card is know what parts of a card effect are what.

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The 4 things you might find in a card effect are:
Activation Requirements
Costs
The Effect
Additional Information

Each effect on the card is a sentence, whenever you see a "." that indicates the end of that effect and the next part of the text will be a new effect.

Activation Requirements
Activation Requirements tell you when you can use a card effect. For example "Once per turn" or "When this card is Normal Summoned".
You can tell where these are on cards as they are the part of an effect before a ":".
You can only use card effects when the Activation Requirement has been met.

Costs
Costs are things you must pay before using a card effect. For example "You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card;".
You can tell where these are on cards as they are part of an effect before a ";".
You can not attempt to use a card effect if you can not pay the Cost.
(Note: you have to exactly be able to pay a Cost for the card to work. For example if a Cost states that you have to put something in your Graveyard, it has to go there (e.g. you can't pay the Cost to send something to the Graveyard if Macro Cosmos is on the field).
(Note: Costs occur before you use a card, this means if you want to Activate Mystical Space Typhoon from your hand you can't pay its Cost ("Target 1 Spell/Trap Card on the field;") by target Mysical Space Typhoon as it is not on the field to target yet).
(Note: Costs cannot be negated and you can still pay them even if the card's effect is negated by something like Fiendish Chain).

(Note: card effects will only start a chain if they have an Activation Requirement and/or a Cost in them).

The Effect
This part of the effect is what the effect actually does.
(Note: unlike Costs you don't need to pay them exactly, so if Macro Cosmos is on the field, you can still use an effect that states "Graveyard").
(Note: you cannot activate a card if the effect would do nothing (e.g. You can't activate Dark Hole if there are no monsters on the field)).

Additional Information
These are things like the "2 Level 3 monsters" part of Dante. Things that aren't actually effects, but are in the cards effect.
This also show up on Synchros and Fusions, where it tells you how they can be synchro summoned and what fusion materials you need to use respectively.

4.0 Problem Solving Card Text

One of the things you can learn from reading cards is how an effect will occur from words like "and".

These conjoining words are part of something called "Problem Solving Card Text" (or PSCT for short) and help you work out different parts of a card will resolve.

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There are 4 of these conjunctions:
Then
And
And if you do
Also

(Note: when I say effect I am not talking about just the effect part of a card effect, Costs can also have these words in them).

Then
When you see this on a card the part of the effect before "Then" happens first then the effect after it. If you cannot do the first part of the effect, you do non of the effect. If you can not do the second part of the effect you can still do the first part of the effect.

And
When you see this on a card the part of the effect before and after "And" happen at the same time (although when resolving the effect you would do the part before the and first and the part after the and second even though game state wise both occur at the same time). You cannot use either of the parts of the effect if both parts cannot occur.

And if you do
When you see this on a card the part of the effect before and after "And if you do" happen at the same time. If you cannot do the first part of the effect, you do non of the effect. If you can not do the second part of the effect you can still do the first part of the effect.

Also
When you see this on a card the part of the effect before and after "Also" happen at the same time. If you cannot do the first part of the effect you can still do the second part of the effect. If you can not do the second part of the effect you can still do the first part of the effect.

To help us learn these I will invent a fake card effect which uses a couple of these conjunctions so you can see how they work.

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Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz material from this card; destroy this card, and if you do, add 1 "X" monster from your Deck to your hand, then your opponent discards 1 card from their hand.

Starting off with the "and if you do". If you cannot add 1 "X" monster from your Deck to your hand (e.g. you have non in your deck or "Mistake" is on the field), you would still destroy this card. On the other hand, if you couldn't destroy this card (e.g. this card is currently under the effect of your opponent's "Safe Zone"), you would not be able to add 1 "X" monster from your Deck to your hand even if you could. Both of these effects would occur at the same time.
With the "then" part, if you couldn't do either parts of the first conjunction you opponent does not discard 1 card from their hand. If your opponent doesn't have a card in their hand to discard you can still do the parts of the effect from the last conjunction. This part of the effect would occur after the destruction and adding parts.

(https://yugiohblog.konami.com/articles/?p=4514#more-4514)

4.1 Simultaneous Effects Go On Chain

Optional effects are ones that you "can" do; whereas, Mandatory effects are ones you must do (ones that don't say can).

The main place this makes a difference is in Simultaneous Effects Go On Chain (or SEGOC for short).

The idea of SEGOC is so you know where card effects would go on chain if multiple "Trigger" effects would occur at the same time.
For example both my opponent and I controlled monsters with an Optional effect and a monster with a Mandatory effect that activate when destroyed and all of these monsters were destroyed at the same time. How do we form the chain?

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To answer this we must know SEGOC, the rules of this are:
(where they go on chain ordered from lowest chain link to highest)
Turn Player Mandatory effects
Turn Player Optional effects
Non-Turn Player Mandatory effects
Non-Turn Player Optional effects

If 2 or more cards of the same type of effect controlled by the same player occurs the player whose cards they are decide which chain link they go on.

If 2 card effects would trigger on the same chain, but the Activation Requirement of the 1 card occured was met before the other one (for example a "then" effect on a card would cause 2 effects to occur), the card whose Activation Requirement was met first would be the lower chain link.
(Note: this only applies to TCG. So If you are using OCG rules (if you are playing at worlds or something for example) if a situation like that occurs you would follow the rule above it instead).

Meaning in our example if both my opponent and I control 1 monster with an Optional and Mandatory effect, it is my turn and say I used Dark Hole to destroy all the monsters.
The chain would be formed as follows:
CL1 My monster with a Mandatory effect
CL2 My monster with an Optional effect
CL3 My opponent's monster with a Mandatory effect
CL4 My opponent's monster with an Optional effect

I also want to explain the final rule of SEGOC using the card Sinister Shadow Games.

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Its effect:
Send 1 "Shaddoll" card from your Deck to the Graveyard, then you can change any number of face-down Defense Position "Shaddoll" monsters you control to face-up Defense Position.

As we can see from the PSCT the monster will be sent to the Graveyard and then the monster will be flipped. This will normally cause 2 trigger effects to activate. In this case the monster sent to the Graveyard will be Chain Link 1 and the monster that got flipped will be Chain Link 2.

(https://ygorganization.com/learnrulingspart3/)

4.2 "Missing the Timing"

Another part of PSCT is the use of "if" and "when" and how they apply to Optional effects ("you can"). These will show up in the Activation Requirements of cards.

To illustrate the difference between them, I will use these Activation Requirements and show how they work under a certain situation:
If this card is sent to the Graveyard: You can...
When this card is sent to the Graveyard: You can...

Say for example we add these as the start of another effect to our effect from before. That card destroys itself which would normally (unless something banishes it) would cause it to go to the Graveyard, which you would assume would be enough for these Activation Requirements to be met. This is not the case, the effect after the Activation Requirement would only work in this case if the Activation Requirement starts with "if".
The reason for this is that "when... you can..." requires the card being sent to the graveyard as the last thing to occur, while "if... you can..." doesn't care about that.
As you can see from the conjunctions used in our effect the card will be destroyed and then your opponent would discard 1 card from their hand, meaning that the card going to the Graveyard wasn't the last thing that happened.

(Note: This is unofficially referred to as "Missing the Timing").

(https://www.reddit.com/r/yugioh/comments/1dlaqv/an_explanation_to_missing_the_timing_and_what_it/ (link goes off screen but eh))

5.0 Types of Effects

We can also learn what type of effects a card effect is by looking at the card.

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There are 8 types of card effects:
Ignition
Trigger
Quick
Continuous
Condition
Summon
Maintenance Cost
Unclassified

Ignition
Ignition effects are spell speed 1 effects that you have to manually activate.

e.g. Photon Papilloperative
Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card, then target 1 Defense Position monster on the field; change it to face-up Attack Position, and if you do, it loses 600 ATK.

Trigger
Trigger effects are spell speed 1 effects that occur when something happening causes an Activation Requirement to be met, such as a monster being sent to the graveyard. Will say "when" or "if" in the Activation Requirement.

e.g. Number 39: Utopia
When any player's monster declares an attack: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; negate the attack.

Quick
Quick effects are spell speed 2 effects that are denoted by "during either player's turn" on the card.

e.g. Number 25: Force Focus
Once per turn, during either player's turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card, then target 1 Level 5 or higher Effect Monster your opponent controls; negate the effects of that opponent's face-up monster, until the end of the turn.

Continuous
Continuous effects are ones that don't start a chain.

e.g. Dante, Traveller of the Burning Abyss
If this card attacks, it is changed to Defense Position at the end of the Battle Phase.

Condition
Conditions are things along the line of "This card cannot attack the turn you activate this effect". Conditions cannot be negated.

e.g. Hazy Flame Basiltrice
This card gains effects based on the number of Xyz Materials attached to it.

Summon
Summon effects are either summoning related conditions like "Cannot be Normal Summoned/Set" or ways to summon cards that don't start a chain like "Must first be Special Summoned (from your hand) by banishing 1 LIGHT and 1 DARK monster from your Graveyard"

e.g. Gaia Dragon, the Thunder Charger
You can also Xyz Summon this card by using a Rank 5 or 6 Xyz Monster you control as the Xyz Material.

Maintenance Cost
Costs that are required to keep a card on the field. These cannot be negated.

e.g. Fairy Box (couldn't find an Xyz for this one)
During each of your Standby Phases, pay 500 Life Points or destroy this card.

Unclassified
Anything that isn't one of these effect types. (http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Unclassified_Effect) (https://yugiohblog.konami.com/articles/?p=4956 Not totally related, but an intressting read nevertheless (which might lead to you learning a new ruling).)

e.g. Bujintei Susanowo
You can only control 1 "Bujintei Susanowo".

6.0 Conclusion

Now that we have learned all of this, back to Dante.

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His effect again:
2 Level 3 monsters
Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card and choose a number from 1 to 3, then send that many cards from the top of your Deck to the Graveyard; until the end of this turn, this card gains 500 ATK for each card sent to the Graveyard this way. If this card attacks, it is changed to Defense Position at the end of the Battle Phase. If this card is sent to the Graveyard: You can target 1 "Burning Abyss" card in your Graveyard, except this card; add it to your hand.

Starting off we can see that to Xyz summon him you use 2 level 3 monsters.

You can see he has 3 different effects.

His first effect has an Activation Requirement and a Cost. The Activation Requirement is "Once per Turn", meaning the requirement has been met if it is your turn and you haven't used this effect of Dante before this turn. The Cost is to detach 1 Xyz material from Dante, meaning you need Xyz material on the card to pay the Cost, to call a number between 1 and 3 and to send the called number of cards from the top of your deck to the graveyard, meaning you can't call a number higher than cards left in your deck and you can't pay the Cost if you have no cards in your deck or cannot send card(s) from the top of your deck to the Graveyard.The Cost has some PSCT in it, "and" and "then", meaning the detaching a material and declaring a number happens at the same time, then you send the cards equal to the number called from your deck to your Graveyard. When you have payed the Cost he gains 500 attack for each card milled for the Cost until the end phase of your turn. This is an ignition effect, as you have to manually activate it.

The second effect has no Activation Requirement or Cost, so it doesn't start a chain. The effect changes Dante to defense during the end of the battle phase that he has attacked in. This is a continuous effect, because it doesn't start a chain.

His last effect has an Activation Requirement and a Cost. The Activation Requirement is "If this card is sent to the Graveyard", meaning the requirement has been met if Dante was sent to the graveyard in the last chain/action. The Activation Requirement states "If" and the Cost has "You can" in it, so this effect cannot "Miss Timing". The Cost is to target a "Burning Abyss" monster (i.e. a monster with the exact words Burning Abyss on it in that order), so to pay the Cost you need a "Burning Abyss" monster other than Dante already in the Graveyard. When you have paid the Cost you add the targeted "Burning Abyss" monster to your hand. This is a trigger effect, because it happens "If" the Dante is sent to the Graveyard.

6.1

So as you can see you can learn a lot of information about the rules of the card just by knowing the background knowledge provided in this lesson and by knowing how to read the card effect properly.

I hope you enjoyed that lesson (I'm sure you didn't) and will enjoy future lessons I post (which will probably be more balanced on theory and practical work and will probably be a lot shorter).

7.0 Homework

Now there just so happens to be one last thing, which is homework. Homework will be placed at the end of each lesson and ALL homework MUST be done for you to take the final examination. I also might take in how well you have done on homework when deciding if you can graduate or not, so take them slightly seriously and don't just guess on any tests.

Today I just have a quick 5 (well 6 but one is what you'd call an extra credit question that isn't meant to be easy) question quiz, later homeworks will include practical sections and won't just be theory.

Rules: Only 1 attempt, no using outside sources (other than whats written in my lesson but try not to use it) (all card effects are on the quiz), no time limit, no guessing (if i suspect you have I'll void your result and you won't get a second go).
Link: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (please use your MADA username as the username)

[Starfox Falco]

i got 3/ 6 man i suck at ruling ;-;

[Satellite's Shooting Star]

ahhh so boring

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