The Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game, known as the Yu-Gi-Oh! Official Card Game (遊☆戯☆王オフィシャルカードゲーム, Yū-Gi-Ō Ofisharu Kādo Gēmu) in Asia, is a Japanese collectible card game developed and published by Konami. It is based on the fictional game of Duel Monsters created by manga artist Kazuki Takahashi, which is the main plot device during the majority of the manga franchise, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and its various anime adaptations and spinoff series.
The trading card game was launched by Konami in 1999 in Japan and March 2002 in North America. It was named the top selling trading card game in the world by Guinness World Records on July 7, 2009, having sold over 22 billion cards worldwide. As of March 31, 2011, Konami Digital Entertainment Co., Ltd. Japan sold 25.2 billion cards globally since 1999.
A player loses if their Life Points reaches zero. If both players reach zero Life Points at the same time, the game ends in a draw.
A player loses if they are required to draw a card, but has no more cards to draw in the Main Deck.
Certain cards have special conditions which trigger an automatic win or loss when its conditions are met (e.g. having all five cards of Exodia the Forbidden One in the hand or all five letters of the Destiny Board on the field).
A player can surrender at any time.
Cards are laid out in da toilet Deck: The player's deck which consists of forty to sixty cards. Normal, Effect, and Ritual Monsters and Spell and Trap cards are stored here.
Extra Deck: The player's deck which may contain up to fifteen cards consisting of Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, and Link Monster cards. Pendulum Monster cards are placed face up here when they would be sent from the field to the Graveyard.
Graveyard: A zone where cards are sent when they are discarded, such as used spell cards or monsters that are tributed or destroyed in battle.
Main Monster Zone: A field of five spaces where Monster cards are placed when successfully summoned. Prior to the addition of Link Monsters, any kind of monster could be placed there anytime. Since then, monsters special summoned from the Extra Deck can only be summoned to a space on the Main Monster Zone if it is linked to a Link Monster's Link Marker.
Extra Monster Zone: Introduced with Link Monsters, this is a zone where monsters from the Extra Deck can be summoned.
Spell & Trap Zone: Five spaces in which either Spell or Trap cards can be placed.
Field Zone: A zone where Field Spell cards are placed.
Pendulum Zone: The two left and rightmost spaces in the Spell and Trap Card Zone where Pendulum Monsters may be placed instead of Spell or Trap Cards in order to activate Pendulum Effects and perform Pendulum Summons. Originally separate zones, these were integrated into the Spell and Trap Card Zone following the introduction of Link Monsters.
Banished card: Cards that are banished by card effects are placed outside of the game in a pile.
Draw Phase: The turn player draws one card from their Deck.
Standby Phase: No specific action occurs, but it exists for card effects and maintenance costs that activate or resolve during this specific phase.
Main Phase 1: The turn player may Normal Summon or Set a monster, activate cards and effects that they control, change the battle position of a monster (provided it wasn't summoned this turn), and Set Spells or Traps face-down.
Battle Phase: The turn player may choose to attack their opponent using any monsters on their field in Attack Position. If the player chooses not to attack, they can skip straight to the End Phase.
Main Phase 2: The player may do all the same actions that are available during Main Phase 1, though they cannot repeat certain actions already taken in Main Phase 1 (such as Normal Summoning) or change the battle position of a monster that has already been summoned, attacked, or had their battle position changed during the same turn.
End Phase: This phase also exists for card effects and maintenance costs that activate or resolve during this specific phase. Once this phase is resolved, the player ends their turn.
The player who begins the game cannot conduct the Draw and Battle Phases during their first turn.
Tournaments are often hosted either by players or by card shops. In addition, Konami, Upper Deck (now no longer part of Yu-Gi-Oh's Organized Play), and Shonen Jump have all organized numerous tournament systems in their respective areas. These tournaments attract hundreds of players to compete for prizes such as rare promotional cards.
There are two styles of tournament play called "Formats;" each format has its own rules and some restrictions on what cards are allowed to be used during events.
The Advanced Format is used in all sanctioned tournaments (with the exception of certain Pegasus League formats). This format follows all the normal rules of the game, but also places a complete ban on certain cards that are deemed too powerful for tournament play. These cards are on a special list called the Forbidden, or Banned List. There are also certain cards that are Limited or Semi-Limited to only being allowed 1 or 2 of those cards in a deck and side deck combined, respectively. This list is updated every three months (January 1, April 1) and is followed in all tournaments that use this format.
Traditional format is sometimes used in Pegasus League play and is never used in Official Tournaments and reflects the state of the game without banned cards. Cards that are banned in Advanced are limited to one copy per deck in this format.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Cards are available in Starter Decks, Structure Decks, booster packs, collectible tins, and occasionally as promotional cards.
As in all other Trading Card Games, booster packs are the primary avenue of card distribution. In Konami's distribution areas, five or nine random cards are found in each booster pack depending on the set and each set contains around one hundred different cards. However, in Upper Deck's areas, early booster packs contained a random assortment of nine cards (rarity and value varies), with the whole set ranging around one hundred and thirty cards. To catch up with the Japanese meta game, two or more original sets were combined into one. Now, more recent Upper Deck sets have simply duplicated the original set. Some booster sets are reprinted/reissued (e.g. Dark Beginnings Volume 1 and 2). This type of set usually contains a larger number of cards (around 200 to 250), and they contain twelve cards along with one tip card rather than the normal five or nine. Since the release of Tactical Evolution, all booster packs that have a Holographic/Ghost Rare card, will also contain a rare. Current sets have 100 different cards per set. There are also special booster packs that are given to those who attend a tournament. These sets change each time there is a different tournament and have fewer cards than a typical booster pack. There are eight Tournament Packs, eight Champion Packs, and 10 Turbo Packs.
Duelist packs are similar to booster packs, albeit are focused around the types of cards used by characters in the various anime series.
Some cards in the TCG have been released by other means, such as inclusion in video games, movies, and Shonen Jump Magazine issues. These cards often are exclusive and have a special type of rarity or are never-before-seen to the public. Occasionally, cards like Elemental Hero Stratos and Chimeratech Fortress Dragon have been re-released as revisions.
In its original incarnation in Kazuki Takahashi's Yu-Gi-Oh! manga series, Duel Monsters, originally known as Magic & Wizards, had a rather basic structure, not featuring many of the restricting rules introduced later on and often featuring peculiar exceptions to the rulings in the interest of providing a more engrossing story. Beginning with the Battle City arc of the manga and Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters anime series, more structured rules such as tribute requirements were introduced to the story, with the series falling more in line with the rules of the real life card-game by the time its spin-off series began. From the Duel Monsters anime onwards, characters use cards which resemble their real life counterparts, though some monsters or effects differ between that of the real life trading card game and the manga and anime's Duel Monsters, with some cards created exclusively for those mediums. Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's featured an anime-original card type known as Dark Synchro, which involved using "Dark Tuners" to summon Dark Synchro Monsters with negative levels. Dark Synchro cards were featured in the PlayStation Portable video game, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's Tag Force 4, while Dark Synchro Monsters featured in the anime were released as standard Synchro Monsters in the real-life game. Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V features Action Cards, spell and trap cards that are picked up in the series' unique Action Duels, which are not possible to perform in the real life game. In the film Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Dark Side of Dimensions, an exclusive form of summoning known as Dimension Summoning is featured. This method allows players to freely summon a monster by deciding how many ATK or DEF points it has, but they receive damage equal to that amount when the monster is destroyed. The Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS anime series features Speed Duels which use a smaller number of Monster and Spell & Trap Zones and remove Main Phase 2 for faster duels. In the anime, characters can activate unique Skills depending on the situation (for example, the protagonist Yusaku can draw a random monster when his life points are below 1000) once per duel. A similar ruleset is featured in the Duel Terminal arcade machine series and the Duel Links mobile game.
With the exception of the films Pyramid of Light and The Dark Side of Dimensions, which base the card's appearance on the English version of the real-life card game, all Western releases of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters anime and its subsequent spin-off series, produced by 4Kids Entertainment and later 4K Media Inc., edit the appearance of cards to differentiate them from their real-life counterparts in accordance with U.S. Federal Communications Commission regulations in concerning program-length commercials, as well as to make the show more marketable across non-English speaking countries. These cards are edited to only display their background, illustration, level/rank, and ATK/DEF points.
From March 2002 to December 2008, Konami's trading cards were distributed in territories outside of Asia by The Upper Deck Company. In December 2008, Konami filed a lawsuit against Upper Deck alleging that it had distributed inauthentic Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG cards made without Konami's authorization. Upper Deck also sued Konami alleging breach of contract and slander. A few months later, a federal court in Los Angeles issued an injunction preventing Upper Deck from acting as the authorized distributor and requiring it to remove the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG from Upper Deck's website. In December 2009, the court decided that Upper Deck was liable for counterfeiting Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG cards, and it dismissed Upper Deck's countersuit against Konami. Konami is now the manufacturer and distributor of the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG. It runs Regional and National tournaments and continues to release new Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG card products.
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