Once per Turn Effects

[TurkeySloth]

I'm watching a lot of TheDuelLogs videos on YouTube. During several of these videos, they consistantly mention "hard" and "soft" OPT effects. What's the difference between the two types of effects?

[Atypical-Abbie]

53 minutes ago, TurnkeySloth said:

I'm watching a lot of TheDuelLogs videos on YouTube. During several of these videos, they consistantly mention "hard" and "soft" OPT effects. What's the difference between the two types of effects?

The simple answer is that "hard OPT" means a card that says "You can only use the effect of "card name" once per turn", where "soft" means any card that says "Once per turn: You can..." or similar. What hard OPT means is that even if you have multiple copies of the same card, you can only use one copy's effect, or if the card leaves the field and is Special Summoned again or something, you can't use that effect. With soft OPT, you can use multiple copies or if it leaves the field and is Special Summoned again you can use that effect again. You can see more below:

https://yugioh.fandom.com/wiki/Once_per_turn

[Tinkerer]

Sure thing!

A "Soft" Once per turn (SOPT) is an effect that is usually written as "Once per turn: X". A "Hard" Once per turn (HOPT) usually comes at the end of an effect and it says something like "You can only use the effect of *card name* once per turn."

The difference between them is that HOPTs can only be used once that turn and it imposes a condition on the rest of that turn to prevent other copies from using the effect. There's no way around it*.

SOPTs can potentially be used multiple times. For example, if a monster with a SOPT is flipped face-down then flipped back up, or if it leaves the field and comes back, it "forgets" that it used the effect and so it can use the effect again. If you Summon another copy of a monster that used its SOPT effect, the new copy can use that effect as well.

[TurkeySloth]

Thanks for the lovely explanations, guys, even though I shouldn't have needed to ask for them because I was on the Wiki Abbie linked (not the page) just before posting the question and would've searched if I weren't thinking of the terms from the videos.

[Tinkerer]

19 minutes ago, TurnkeySloth said:

Thanks for the lovely explanations, guys, even though I shouldn't have needed to ask for them because I was on the Wiki Abbie linked (not the page) just before posting the question and would've searched if I weren't thinking of the terms from the videos.

Hey, no worries! There's no fault in asking questions.

Ygo's got a lot of fan-made terms, so if ya need any more help, feel free to ask!