Yu-Gi-Oh! may be a widely popular anime and manga series, but perhaps not as much so as the global popularity of its trading card game of the same name. In 1999, Konami released the Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card to the masses. Years later, it broke a Guinness world record for selling over 22 billion cards worldwide on July 7, 2009 making it the best-selling trading card game at the time. Even though Yu-Gi-Oh! may be past its prime and facing stiff competition from the likes of Magic the Gathering, Pokemon and others, there is still plenty of reasons to learn to play this game if you haven’t previously. Here is a step by step walkthrough on the rules, types of cards and strategies on how to play and win in the Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game.
Types of Cards, and How to Play Them:
If you bought yourself a shiny new booster box with a ton of cards or even just a single booster pack to satisfy your curiosity, then congrats! On taking your first step to learn the popular trading card of Yu-Gi-Oh! Either way, once you open your first pack of cards, you’ll see the nicely designed, colorful cards with most likely a picture of a creature such as a dragon or a person on it. The card also has numbers at the bottom, the number on the left is the monsters attack power, while the number on the left is its defense power. This type of card is know as a monster card, and it is what you can use to engage your opponents monsters in battle with or to attack your opponents directly, more on that later. Some not all monster cards come with a card effect which is written just below the image of the card which be anything from increasing your attack power for one turn or recovering a card that was destroyed by battle.
Another type of card is called a spell card, or sometimes referred to as a magic card. The spell card is meant to inflict damage to your opponent’s life points, cards by destroying them, draw more cards if your hand is running low, or can also give your own monsters a boost in attack and defense power. Spell cards can be set onto the game field facedown or played from your hand when it’s your turn. Each spell card has its effect or what it does written in the box below the image on the card. If your playing a game and have no monster cards in play and your opponent has a few in play, a spell card like ‘Dark Hole’ which destroys all monsters on the field is a useful effect if you are in a bind.
The third type of card in Yu-Gi-Oh! are trap cards. Trap cards unlike monster or spell cards can be played on either your turn or more often during your opponent’s turn. These tricky cards are meant to disrupt whatever your opponent is doing. Whether their playing a monster, spell or trap card, you can set your traps facedown on the field and wait for the right moment to activate them. Let’s say you set a trap card facedown on your previous turn and this turn play a monster card with an attack of 1800 and go to attack your opponent’s weaker monster who is in attack position with an attack power of 1600. Your opponent has cleverly prepared a trap card on the field called ‘Mirror Force’ which destroys all opponents monsters on the field when they attack, but you are prepared for this. You reveal your trap card that you flip faceup called dust tornado which when activated destroys one spell or trap card that your opponent’s plays.
Building Your First Deck:
Once you have a basic understanding of how your cards work, it’s time to put together a well-balanced deck. Every deck should contain a deck of 40-60, although I would keep it closer to 40. In this case more is not better, because if there are certain cards that you really want to play but have not drawn yet, then you should trim down your deck to just the essential cards. Also, every good deck plays towards a certain strategy or method to win. So, let’s say you want to build a deck with nothing but zombie cards, you shouldn’t have any other monster type in your deck besides zombies unless it has a card effect that helps your zombies in some way. And you shouldn’t have only monster cards either, but enough spell and trap cards that can aid you in summoning your zombie monsters faster than simply drawing and playing them from your hand. Specifically, spells, traps and monster effects that can bring your zombies back from the card graveyard and back onto the field to overrun your opponent.
The 5 Phases of Play:
The following is a rundown of the 5 phases of play you will need to know before playing your first game:
•Draw Phase- At the start of every turn, this is the phase where the player draws his/her cards.
•Standby Phase-This is a phase where certain card effects of yours or your opponent can activate.
•Main Phase 1-The time to summon monsters, play spell cards, or set down trap cards.
•Battle Phase-When you can use your monsters to attack your opponent’s monsters and or life points.
•Main Phase 2-Your last chance to set down a trap or spell card or summon a creature if you have not already this turn.
•End Phase-If you have no more moves to play, let your opponent know that you end your turn.
The Playing Field:
Now that you have a deck with cards that work well with each other, it’s time to duel. Your playing your good friend who has been playing Yu-Gi-Oh! for a while and knows that this is your first time playing. Determining who goes first in a friendly match can be decided with a game of rock, paper, scissors, flip a coin, or a roll of a die that you have lying around. Either way, your friend ends up going first, so this is your chance to watch and see how the game is played up close. Each player starts by shuffling his/her deck and letting their opponent cut the cards. Once that’s done, each player then draws 5 cards into their hand. Each player starts the game with 8000 life points and the object of the game is to reduce your opponent’s life points to 0.
The player going first in this case your friend plays a monster card faceup(vertical) with an attack of 1500 and defense of 1200. He then ends his turn as the player who begins the game first can’t choose to attack right away; they must wait until their following turn to do so. Now, it’s your turn as you draw a card bringing the total in your hand to 6. You see that you have a monster stronger than your opponents and go to play it faceup onto the field. But then your friend says “wait, you can’t play that one yet. It has five stars. You can only play monsters with 4 or less stars from your hand. To play a level 5 or above, you have to offer any monster you have on your side of the field as a tribute summon, then you can play it.”
Your friend is right, you can only play monster cards with 4 stars or lower which are on the top next to the cards name, and you check your hand for any such card. You find one, but its weaker than your opponents’ monster currently in play. You play the monster card facedown turned horizontally which signifies that it’s in the defense position. You look in your hand for anything else you can play, maybe a spell or trap card that will destroy his creature but see none. So, you declare that you end your turn and wait to see what your friend does next.
Your friend goes through the draw and standby phases and decides to flip over his facedown card that was set on his last turn. It’s a trap card, and its effect flips changes your monster that is facedown and in defense position now to faceup attack position. Your monsters attack power is 1100 while your friends’ monster is 1500. So, when his monster attacks yours, your monster is destroyed, and you lose 400 life points as it is the difference in both monster’s attack powers. Your monster goes where all cards go when they are destroyed in battle or if they are spell or traps that have no continuous effect, the card graveyard.
The graveyard is a pile to each players side just above where your draw pile is located. While your monster card goes into your graveyard, the trap card played by your opponent goes into his graveyard. Your friend ends his turn, and on your turn, you draw Big Shield Gardna, which is a low enough level to play on this turn and has a defense of 2600, which is greater than your friend’s monsters attack strength. You end your turn, and your friend sacrifices his monster in play to play something stronger in his hand. It has an attack power of 2200 and defense of 1600, and since he summoned it and not set it, it is in attack position.
Playing no other cards, your opponent calls for an attack. Once you flip your monster from facedown to faceup defense position, your opponent takes 400 life points of damage, but doesn’t lose his monster because it wasn’t attacked or destroyed using a spell or trap card. Just like earlier, damage calculation takes the difference in the strength of the two dueling monster cards and subtracts it from the owner of the weaker one’s life points. But wait, your Big Shield Gardna has a special effect that changes it to attack position if it is attacked by an enemy monster. Your monster attack power is only 100, but thankfully, your friend has no other monsters on the filed and since he already played a monster this turn, he can’t play another one unless a card effect would summon something from his deck, hand or even from the graveyard onto the field.
Your friend ends his turn, and now, you immediately change your Big Shield Gardna to defense position after you draw a card while you plan your next move. You draw a spell card can turn things in your favor. Because you also have a really powerful monster card in your hand but requires 2 tribute monsters in order to summon. You think for a moment before making your move. You play the spell card Monster Reborn, which brings back a monster from your graveyard to the field. You have only one, the one with 1100 attack power so you choose it. Now with two monsters on your side of the field, you can offer both of them as tributes to summon your Barrel Dragon to the field.
Your newly summoned monster has an attack and defense of 2600/2200 and also has a special effect. Its effect states that Once per turn, you can target 1 monster your opponent controls. Toss a coin 3 times and destroy it if at least 2 of the results are heads. So, you grab a quarter from your pocket and proceed to flip it three times. And look at that, 2 out of 3 times it landed on heads so your friends’ monster is automatically destroyed before the battle phase can commence. But now that he has no monsters or card on the field to prevent your attack, you can attack your fiend’s life points directly. You have your Barrel Dragon attack and it does 2600 worth of damage which is equal to its attack power, and your friend is now down to 5000 life points.
“Wow! You really surprised me their man. I don’t think I have anything that can beat that, at least not yet.” At first, you might be puzzled by what he just said, but all will become clear in just a few short turns. On his next turn he plays a monster facedown and sets one card facedown in the spell/trap zone then ends his turn. You play another monster with an attack of 1400 and during your battle phase, your friend activates his trap card by flipping it faceup. The trap in question is Spellbinding Circle which stops one of your monsters from attacking or changing battle position as long his trap remains on the field, he chooses your Barrel Dragon.
Remember your dragon’s ability, well you could still use it, so you do. You flip a coin 3 times but this time, it only comes up heads once so your out of luck there. But you still have your other monster that you just played and decide to attack his monster with. Once he flips and reveals his facedown monster, you see that it has a defense of 2000, so you take 600, but still have your monster. With no answer to his defense you end your turn. The next couple of turns pass, he plays a card that allows him to summon three 100/100 tokens with no card effects, and then one card facedown in the spell/trap zone.
You manage to flip heads twice on one of those turns and destroy his 2000 defense monster. Once another turn passes, and your friend has a smirk on his face. The last few turns, he has been playing defense preparing for something. And when he showed me his hand, it showed five cards that looked like pieces of something that fit together if joined.
“What are those?” you say baffled.
“Oh these. Well these are the five pieces that make up Exodia the Forbidden One. And if all five are in my hand which you see they are, it means you lose.”
“Wait what. Are you kidding right now?”
“Nope, no joke. You can check the rules online, but its true. I win this one. Good first try bud, you surprised me. It’s been awhile since I played Exodia actually, I could’ve played a different strategy here or one of my other decks, but this worked pretty well.”
“Wait, other decks? Other strategies in this deck?” you say with wonder.
“Well yeah. I could have bet you in a few other ways with this deck, but really wanted to keep you at bay for a bit so I could get all the Exodia cards. But I had fun, did you?” says your friend.
“Yeah, you know I actually did. Thanks for showing a few things there.”
“No problem. And next time, I’ll play with one of my better decks after I help you with yours, and we’ll have a real match, how about it?”
“Yeah sure man, I’d like that” you say happily. Afterward, you reflect on just what you have learned by playing Yu-Gi-Oh! for the first time, but how much fun you had. Because at the end of the day, no matter what rare cards or clever strategies you conjure up, having a good time while playing is what truly matters most.
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