Hey all, for today I am just going to post some general things about yugioh people may or may not know. Im delaying chains till after this because they are really complicated... xD

So first let's go over the phases of yugioh and what occurs.

Draw phase:
In the draw phase the first thing to happen is drawing a card. This does NOT start a chain, therefore a card cannot be chained to a draw. Nothing else occurs in a draw phase, unless someone activates a trap or quickplay spell during this phase. Also some cards have effects that activate during the draw phase.

Standby phase:
During the standby phase nothing happens. Only effects that specify standby phase happen, also traps and quickplays.

Main phase 1:
During your main phase 1 you can activate spell cards, normal summon or normal set 1 monster, and activate monster effects. Of course you can also activate traps and quickplays.

Battle phase:
The battle phase is a little more complicated. During the battle phase you declare and resolve attacks.
So how does attacking work? First is attack declaration. You simply say my X monster is attacking your Y monster. Then your opponent may respond with a card. For example, they could activate mirror force or D prison or whichever. Then you can respond to that, and you go back and forth until the response is finished. After that you resolve all the cards. If the monster is still alive you go back to attack declaration and declare if/who your monster wants to attack. This is called a replay. If you decide you dont want to attack after this chain, the game state still recognizing that you attempted to attack, so you cannot attack later on. After attack declaration either player can activate a card that does not require activation in response to an attack.

a not on the damage step: Only cards that specifiy damage step, alter the attack of a monster, are a counter trap, or a trigger effect whose trigger occurs, may be activated.

Damage step substep #1: start of the damage step. Continuous effects such as Jain, lightsworn paladin activate as well and any trigger effects such as Catastor or grand-mole. Effects that alter a monsters attack, such as forbidden lance, can be activated at this time.

Damage step substep #2: Flip any face-down attacked monster into face-up defense position. If that monster has a continuous effect, immediatly apply it. Effects that alter a monsters attack, such as forbidden lance, can be activated at this time.

Damage step substep #3: Cards such an drillroid or Ehren activate at this time. Effects that alter a monsters attack, such as forbidden lance, can be activated at this time. multiple chains of these effects may happen. For example you could activate forbidden lance, your opponent negate with Solemn Judgment. After that you could activate a new chain with a second forbidden lance or shrink or whichever.

Damage step substep #4: effects that happen "during damage calculation" happen now. Only 1 chain for those effects happens in this step. If a monster is destroyed at this time, as per divine wrath or whichever, no damage is done.

Damage step substep #5: Battle damage is then applied.

Damage step substep #6: resolve effects. Flip effects are applied at this time. If a flip effect targets, you cannot target a monster that has been destroyed by battle.

Damage step substep #7: End of damage step, destroyed monsters are sent to the grave.

After completing the damage step, restart for any further attacks.

Main phase 2: During this phase you can do anything as per main phase 1. if you didnt summon during your 1st main phase, you may normal summon or set here.

End phase: During this phase any effects that specify end phase are activated. At the end of this phase, if the turn player has more than 6 cards in his hand, he discards until he has only 6 left.

And that is the turn!

Some other stuff to note.

Changing battle position: A mosnter's battle position may only be changed once per turn, exception being a card effect. So if a monster's battle position is changed by a card effect, it can then be changed manually up the 1 manual change per turn. for example, if book of moon is used on a monster then that monster could flip itself the same turn for its 1 position change per turn. However, if it was already flipped or changed and then booked it would not be able to flip. Also, a monsters battle position cannot be manually changed the turn it is summoned.


I know there was something I wanted to include... Hm. Maybe ill add it on later if I remember.

Hope this was interesting and enjoyable. thanks for reading ^^

Ah! one of the things I wanted to mention. Special Summoning a monster from the grave.
To special summon a seminormal monster from the grave it must be correctly summoned originally. This means Synchro summons, XYZ summons, Fusion summons, and summons of special-only monsters like chaos sorcerer must first be summoned by their own effect. If they are NOT correctly summoned via fusion summon, synchro summon, etc, then they CANNOT be summoned from the graveyard. This means that if you do something like Starlight Road to summon stardust then he cannot be revived from the grave. Not even by his own effect, because starlight road is not a synchro summon.

Another thing to note. Negating a summon. If you have a card such as Black Horn of Heaven or Thunder King Rai-Oh that specifies it negates a summon, then it cannot be used on a summon that was from a card effect. This includes Red-eyes Wyvern, Monster Reborn, Call of the Haunted, and any such cards. This will make a lot more sense after chains have been explained.