Yu-Gi-Oh! Rulings Questions

[Zazubat]

This question is already answered. Read both of my posts carefully.

 

Searching your deck when you do not have a valid target on an optional effect is an illegal move. As I said in my post, you cannot activate the effect to begin with.

You say: Mandatory = Both players check if none found.

Optional = You check yourself, your opponent doesn't get to see. Unless you mean something else with your second statement in your second post, as I asked about because I was confused on your wording on "you know your contents" but what I think you mean is that you get to see your "contents". Please use acual terms instead of contents if that's what you meant.

[darkwolf777]

You say: Mandatory = Both players check if none found.

Optional = You check yourself, your opponent doesn't get to see. Unless you mean something else with your second statement in your second post, as I asked about because I was confused on your wording on "you know your contents" but what I think you mean is that you get to see your "contents". Please use acual terms instead of contents if that's what you meant.

 

I say what I mean. I made no mention to you being able to look and therefore you do not.

 

You are the player. You built the deck. You know what is in and out of your own deck at all times due to that. You are expected by the game to know if you have a valid target in the deck before activating an optional effect that would search the deck for something. If you do not, then you cannot activate the optional effect and is therefore illegal to activate the effect.

[Zazubat]

I say what I mean. I made no mention to you being able to look and therefore you do not.

 

You are the player. You built the deck. You know what is in and out of your own deck at all times due to that. You are expected by the game to know if you have a valid target in the deck before activating an optional effect that would search the deck for something. If you do not, then you cannot activate the optional effect and is therefore illegal to activate the effect.

and this is a rule where? I really doubt that this is mentioned anywhere. I want a real rulebook ruling that you do not look if you do not have any targets, not even any you know. Also, your opponent can plant monsters in your deck, meaning you would have to look for those cards.

[Miror B]

and this is a rule where? I really doubt that this is mentioned anywhere. I want a real rulebook ruling that you do not look if you do not have any targets, not even any you know. Also, your opponent can plant monsters in your deck, meaning you would have to look for those cards.

How about you just accept that it's a rule?

At YCS in general a judge will look through your deck, it'll be considered an illegal activation and you'll be given a warning, and if you do such actions again potentially a game loss.

And I don't think Weevil's strategy works well.

[Zazubat]

How about you just accept that it's a rule?

At YCS in general a judge will look through your deck, it'll be considered an illegal activation and you'll be given a warning, and if you do such actions again potentially a game loss.

And I don't think Weevil's strategy works well.

I can't except it cause it sounds really shady. I was also not talking about the card he planted in Joey's deck, I mean other cards that add themselves to their deck, though you should know that it's there but still. I mean, of course I believe you, but I just ain't feeling like it's something that stated anywhere.

[Miror B]

I can't except it cause it sounds really shady. I was also not talking about the card he planted in Joey's deck, I mean other cards that add themselves to their deck, though you should know that it's there but still. I mean, of course I believe you, but I just ain't feeling like it's something that stated anywhere.

Can you activate Monster Reborn with no targets? No.

Same goes for effects like Tomato.

Sangan is mandatory and forces activation. You choose whether or not to activate Tomato.

It's not shady. It's game mechanics. You cannot activate an effect that cannot resolve.

[Zazubat]

Can you activate Monster Reborn with no targets? No.

Same goes for effects like Tomato.

Sangan is mandatory and forces activation. You choose whether or not to activate Tomato.

It's not shady. It's game mechanics. You cannot activate an effect that cannot resolve.

can you target cards in your Deck? I didn't think that was possible. Maybe I'm confusing it with the hand, though you can't just say that any effect applies to everything, there needs to be an actual ruling. Not that it matters anyways, though I can say that there isn't one, and forget that I have that card, and the judge will punish me? I mean what happens then?

[Miror B]

You cannot activate Marauding Captain's effect if you have no targets in hand.

IT APPLIES TO EVERYTHING. It's an actual ruling. It's ruled this way at tournaments. Find me somewhere that says otherwise and we'll talk.

And no the judge won't punish you. You get a warning.and be told to resolve the effect. Plain and simple.

[evilfusion]

Weird question, that came up recently.

 

Prime Material Dragon and Bad Reaction to Simochi have that infamous interaction where they'll cancel each other out. (A burn card will be changed to LP gain by Prime, but Simochi reverts it back to burn, and vice versa for heal).

 

But what about if there are TWO Prime Material Dragons and 1 Bad Reaction?

 

Would a burn effect be changed to heal by Prime, then back to burn by Reaction, and then back to heal again because of the 2nd Prime? Or would having 2 Prime Material have no advantage over having one? (Same sort of question with 2 Bad Reactions, 1 Prime, and a healing effect being played).

[darkwolf777]

I can't except it cause it sounds really shady. I was also not talking about the card he planted in Joey's deck, I mean other cards that add themselves to their deck, though you should know that it's there but still. I mean, of course I believe you, but I just ain't feeling like it's something that stated anywhere.

 

Would I waste my time telling you shady things? I am absolute. Either absolutely right or absolutely wrong. I will admit to being wrong if I am. This is not one of those times.

 

You will not find it written anywhere because Konami doesn't do that.

 

Would a burn effect be changed to heal by Prime, then back to burn by Reaction, and then back to heal again because of the 2nd Prime? Or would having 2 Prime Material have no advantage over having one? (Same sort of question with 2 Bad Reactions, 1 Prime, and a healing effect being played).

 

Their Continuous Effects overlap. They do not stack nor form any back and forth unseen chain. Having 194 Prime Material Dragons and 471 Bad Reactions on the field will result in the same. A heal will be changed to damage and then change back to healing and vice versa. That's all.

[evilfusion]

Okay, that's what I thought. It was easy to find a source and ruling for Prime vs Simochi, but no word about multiple copies, and I had a hunch the effects would overlap. That's what I ended up ruling, just decided to double check.

[Zazubat]

You cannot activate Marauding Captain's effect if you have no targets in hand.

IT APPLIES TO EVERYTHING. It's an actual ruling. It's ruled this way at tournaments. Find me somewhere that says otherwise and we'll talk.

And no the judge won't punish you. You get a warning.and be told to resolve the effect. Plain and simple.

except that Marauding Captain doesn't target anything... not sure what you're trying to say here honestly, and I mean I ain't saying it isn't true, I'm just saying that unless there's a rule that says so, why should it be true? And I get that other cards do it, but there's still need to clarify it.

Now, I just read the offical rule book, not much about targetting cards in there, so I went to the wikia page, doesn't say anything about the Deck. So I checked the "public knownlage" page, nothing there. Then I found Search Effects, and what it says is: "Card effects that you choose to activate will require you to know your Deck inside and out. You are not allowed to activate a card effect to search for a card in your Deck if you know that all the cards that meet the search criteria are no longer in your Deck. To do so, then find there's nothing to search for and shuffle the Deck is illegal, you are not allowed to shuffle your Deck unless you are required to by a card effect. This is a form of stacking the Deck and is considered cheating."

Here I see that you are still allowed to see your deck, though no shuffle, which makes sense. The example said that because he found other targets in the Grave and Hand, the effect cannot be activated. And since it says it like that, it would mean, that as you said, you need to know that you have the right targets in your deck to summon it. Though there's still a problem, your opponent doens't know that you have 1 of the monsters in your hand (example said 3 Psychic Commanders, where 2 are in the grave, and 2 Mind Protectors, where 1 were in the Grave. Also 1 Psychic was in the hand) so how can your opponent know that you have that card in your Deck? Showing him the card to prove that would be silly wouldn't it? Then your opponent would know you had that card in your hand, so you don't get your effect. Of course because you're not suppose to do so, it's not a real rule, just the fact that if it were to happen you would need to show that in your hand as well as showing your opponent your deck. Anyways, the site also said that if you weren't 100 % sure, the opponent would varify that there isn't a target in your deck, and then the deck would shuffled and you would get a warning and your card would simply be returned to your hand without ever activating it. Though this does mean you get a free shuffle, which in terms could be used in case you know you don't have one, of course the warning means you can't keep on doing this, but it is a fact according to the wikia. I think this should be changed so you would have to discard that card (for no effect, simply discarding like at the End Phase if you have more than 6 cards) and continue the duel. Either that, or make it so the card is removed from the game completly, not banished, just unable to be used in that duel again. It also said that there's legal activations, say in case your effect had a cost, and/or there was a chain that would remove that possible target from the deck. It didn't say though if it was shuffled, but since you would have to remove a card from the deck if this were to happen, you would need to shuffle anyways.

 

So that's what I have read, I havn't found anything that says it with it's own words, though indirctly, you are right. Though you didn't say/know that if you were do so and it would not have a target for you to choose, it wouldn't get shuffled. So having to do my own research for once, it's annoying but since you gave no site I could do so, I had to myself :P

[evilfusion]

The reason you can look at your Deck, but not shuffle is to preserve game state because searching your Deck in that instance would be ILLEGAL. If you ruin the game state doing an illegal move, you get a game loss.

 

We, as humans, may forget we dont have a target and try to use an effect like Mystic Tomato. This can lead to "bluffs" to get the opponent to use cards like Divine Wrath or Dolkka. That's one reason why it's illegal. You are trying to activate an effect that you cannot resolve. Unlike Sangan, Tomato is optional and cannot willfully be used under those circumstances. Sangan must attempt it, and will shuffle the Deck even if there's no target.

 

With cards like Marauding Captain, you know if you can use the effect when you Summon it, because you either have a Warrior in hand or you don't. You can't activate the effect (starting a chain) and then go "whoops, dont have anything" when trying to resolve it. If you know you cannot resolve the effect, then you cannot activate that optional effect.

[Mysty]

The reason you can look at your Deck, but not shuffle is to preserve game state because searching shuffling your Deck in that instance would be ILLEGAL. If you ruin the game state doing an illegal move, you get a game loss.

 

We, as humans, may forget we dont have a target and try to use an effect like Mystic Tomato. This can lead to "bluffs" to get the opponent to use cards like Divine Wrath or Dolkka. That's one reason why it's illegal. You are trying to activate an effect that you cannot resolve. Unlike Sangan, Tomato is optional and cannot willfully be used under those circumstances. Sangan must attempt it, and will shuffle the Deck even if there's no target.

 

With cards like Marauding Captain, you know if you can use the effect when you Summon it, because you either have a Warrior Level 1-4 in hand or you don't. You can't activate the effect (starting a chain) and then go "whoops, dont have anything" when trying to resolve it. If you know you cannot resolve the effect, then you cannot activate that optional effect.

 

Minor fixes, based on what I'm very sure you meant to say.

 

To add-on to what he's saying: Welcome to yugioh, the game with two big inherent design problems.

• The rulebook doesn't actually explain all the rules, just the basic rules and a guideline on how to play. All the rulings are gathered among many websites and sources.

• There are a great many ways you can cheat your opponent without them knowing. Committing any of them is fraud and, if you get caught, you can get you anything from a warning to a game loss (depending on a lot of various factors).

If suspicious, I'm pretty sure you can call over a judge to confirm what the opponent is doing is legal, as long as you aren't getting any more information except what is strictly necessary to confirm the opponent isn't playing illegally.

[Zazubat]

We, as humans, may forget we dont have a target and try to use an effect like Mystic Tomato. This can lead to "bluffs" to get the opponent to use cards like Divine Wrath or Dolkka. That's one reason why it's illegal. You are trying to activate an effect that you cannot resolve. Unlike Sangan, Tomato is optional and cannot willfully be used under those circumstances. Sangan must attempt it, and will shuffle the Deck even if there's no target.

 

With cards like Marauding Captain, you know if you can use the effect when you Summon it, because you either have a Warrior in hand or you don't. You can't activate the effect (starting a chain) and then go "whoops, dont have anything" when trying to resolve it. If you know you cannot resolve the effect, then you cannot activate that optional effect.

I know that chains resolve in reverse order, but I think there should be a Special ruling that says when you would search your deck with an optional effect, you would always need to do it when it's activeted, that way your opponent can't activate cards like that until they know what card is chosen, if any. I know it's not how the game works, though it would fix the problem. Simply have the card be "picked", but not taken out and it was simply placed the same place, and your opponent would then chose to activate cards such as Divine Wrath and Dolkka if they wanted to, and after that the chain could continue, and when the link that is the searching effect, you would do as you would normally and add the card to your hand, or what ever if the effect wasn't negated. Of course, it would be unfair to the searching player, because you would otherwise not ever be able to pick without your opponent knowing first so they can chain to what ever that might be, but as said we're humans, and we can't remember every card in our deck and we are of course suppose to, and if this would ever be a ruling (which it won't) then you would have a reason to do so since your opponent can look before the full chain resolves so he could activate cards if he felted like it. But, won't happen, just throwing it out there, and if I just play for fun with no real rules like this, I'll probably do it like that myself.

 

For the card in the hand, it's obvious that if you don't have it you wouldn't be able to use it's effect, but since you always see your cards in your hand grave or banished zone, that would not be a big issue since you're not illigally during anything to change the game, though starting a chain would case a few problems, but simply never having that chain then, and negate anything that's in that chain, and then remove that card from the game completly would fix that.

[Miror B]

except that Marauding Captain doesn't target anything... not sure what you're trying to say here honestly, and I mean I ain't saying it isn't true, I'm just saying that unless there's a rule that says so, why should it be true? And I get that other cards do it, but there's still need to clarify it.

You shot down my first example because Monster Reborn targets...and now you're shooting this one down because Marauding captain doesn't...

For the card in the hand, it's obvious that if you don't have it you wouldn't be able to use it's effect, but since you always see your cards in your hand grave or banished zone, that would not be a big issue since you're not illigally during anything to change the game, though starting a chain would case a few problems, but simply never having that chain then, and negate anything that's in that chain, and then remove that card from the game completly would fix that.

The game expects you to know your deck and deduce what's still in your deck. Yes we make mistakes, that still doesn't bend the ruled. Just makes the punishment more lenient then say, if you summoned Marauding Captain then declared you were using its eff even though you had no targets in hand to try and pull out a veiler.

[darkwolf777]

• The rulebook doesn't actually explain all the rules, just the basic rules and a guideline on how to play. All the rulings are gathered among many websites and sources.

 

I dunno if you just started playing Yugioh recently, but i will say it:

 

Welcome to Yugioh. 95% of the game's core mechanics are NOT explained in the rulebook.

 

Here I see that you are still allowed to see your deck, though no shuffle, which makes sense.

 

You cannot activate it period. It is not acceptable to activate an optional effect that you cannot perform the effects of. Whether or not you would shuffle the deck afterwards is irrelevant

 

Just listen to your older yugioh mates and not question everything we tell you.

[Zazubat]

You shot down my first example because Monster Reborn targets...and now you're shooting this one down because Marauding captain doesn't...

 

The game expects you to know your deck and deduce what's still in your deck. Yes we make mistakes, that still doesn't bend the ruled. Just makes the punishment more lenient then say, if you summoned Marauding Captain then declared you were using its eff even though you had no targets in hand to try and pull out a veiler.

I did? I don't remember saying anything about Monster Reborn not targetting. Though as far as I know you can't target cards in your hand, so that's why I said that about Marauding Captain.

[Zeppeli Gyro Supreme]

Which is why this thread has 570 pages.

[darkwolf777]

Also, you cannot target cards in the deck. No effect targets cards in the deck. For something to "target", it has to be chosen at activation when the card is first activated. No one has free view of the Main Deck and therefore it is impossible to target something in your Main Deck. For any search card, you select which card from the Deck during the resolution of that card's effect. The only time you can ever look at your deck is when a card effect or condition allows you to.

 

Top 5 posters in this topic:

evilfusion 1396

darkwolf777 1324

-Griffin 337

burnpsy 330

Expelsword - 黎明 276

 

evil and I have answered too many questions here, don't worry so much.

[Zazubat]

You cannot activate it period. It is not acceptable to activate an optional effect that you cannot perform the effects of. Whether or not you would shuffle the deck afterwards is irrelevant

 

Just listen to your older yugioh mates and not question everything we tell you.

No, you have been wrong, as you say yourself, in cases like this, I want to be 100 % sure. Also, as I said with the whole get rid off the card completly, you would of course not see your deck, and the activation would never have happened, that would be the simple way to just make sure that people don't use cards this way, though all you get a warning, and then you just take the card if necessary.

 

Also, you cannot target cards in the deck. No effect targets cards in the deck. For something to "target", it has to be chosen at activation when the card is first activated. No one has free view of the Main Deck and therefore it is impossible to target something in your Main Deck. For any search card, you select which card from the Deck during the resolution of that card's effect. The only time you can ever look at your deck is when a card effect or condition allows you to.

Of course you don't target in the Deck, I am pretty sure I didn't ever say this, and if I did, I must have forgotten at that moment.

[Zeppeli Gyro Supreme]

Zaziuma, darkwolf never said they are never wrong, but we're all agreed on this, and combined we probably have over 2000 times as much experience with YGO. That does not necessarily mean we are right, but you are making arguments that do not even apply, or talking semantics.

[darkwolf777]

No, you have been wrong, as you say yourself, in cases like this, I want to be 100 % sure. Also, as I said with the whole get rid off the card completly, you would of course not see your deck, and the activation would never have happened, that would be the simple way to just make sure that people don't use cards this way, though all you get a warning, and then you just take the card if necessary.

 

I am 100% sure because I said so. In things that I have considered the possibility of being wrong, I accepted corrections after looking at the other answers and their take to the core game.

 

This is not one of those things. I am 100% sure of the things I've said about this question.

 

I am more right than I am wrong. It is safe bet that there's a good chance i'll be correct here too.

[Zazubat]

I am 100% sure because I said so. In things that I have considered the possibility of being wrong, I accepted corrections after looking at the other answers and their take to the core game.

 

This is not one of those things. I am 100% sure of the things I've said about this question.

 

I am more right than I am wrong. It is safe bet that there's a good chance i'll be correct here too.

Fine, though doublechecking is always needed, and for me to find it myself could contradict what you said, which is why I asked you to link to a place where it said. I found out myself, since you didn't, which of course I should do from the very start, though getting infomation right always seems to go wrong for me, so I ask here instead :P Anyways, I think we're done with this now, I now know 100 % how this works.

[darkwolf777]

Fine, though doublechecking is always needed, and for me to find it myself could contradict what you said, which is why I asked you to link to a place where it said. I found out myself, since you didn't, which of course I should do from the very start, though getting infomation right always seems to go wrong for me, so I ask here instead :P Anyways, I think we're done with this now, I now know 100 % how this works.

 

I do not provide links because I don't go out looking for links to give my answers.

 

I know from experience. Knowledge of many rulings in order to shape out and solve the puzzle of the core gameplay mechanics Konami does not tell you is something i've done over many years. It makes it easy to give rulings on cards that have no rulings and even Anime/Manga cards and how they would interact with the real game.

 

I've burst many bubbles in new card topics.