THE RULES

The goal

Bring your opponent's Life Points from 8000 to 0.

There are three ways to win:

• Life Points — reduce your opponent to 0 LP, by battle or by card effects.
• Deck-out — if a duelist must draw with an empty Deck, they lose.
• Special victory — certain cards win on their own. Gather all five pieces of Exodia in your hand and you win instantly.

The field

This is the classic playmat — no Extra Monster Zones, the way the original game played. Each side has:

• 5 Monster Zones — where your monsters stand.
• 5 Spell & Trap Zones — for your back row.
• Field Zone — one Field Spell at a time.
• Deck — draw from here; Graveyard — destroyed / used cards rest here, face-up for both players to read.
• Extra Deck — holds your Fusion Monsters (0–15), summoned only by their own methods.

The turn

Each duelist begins at 8000 Life Points and opens with a hand of 5 cards. A turn runs through six phases:

• Draw Phase — draw 1 card.
• Standby Phase — effects that trigger "during the Standby Phase" resolve.
• Main Phase 1 — your main turn: summon/set monsters, play spells, set traps, change positions.
• Battle Phase — declare attacks (see Battle).
• Main Phase 2 — a second main phase, after battle, for anything you held back.
• End Phase — turn ends; hand-size limit is 6 (discard down if over).

Summoning monsters

• Normal Summon / Set — once per turn, place one monster face-up in attack, or face-down in defense. Monsters of Level 5–6 need 1 Tribute; Level 7+ need 2 Tributes (send your own monsters to the Graveyard to pay).
• Flip Summon — turn a face-down monster face-up in attack position (this is not your Normal Summon).
• Special Summon — any summon granted by a card effect; it does not use your one Normal Summon, and you may make as many as your cards allow.
• Fusion Summon — with Polymerization (or similar), send the listed Fusion Materials from your hand/field to the Graveyard to summon a Fusion Monster from your Extra Deck.
• Ritual Summon — play the Ritual Spell and Tribute monsters whose total Levels meet the requirement to summon the Ritual Monster from your hand.

Battle

In the Battle Phase you may attack with each face-up attack-position monster once. A monster summoned this turn can still attack; a monster in defense cannot.

• Attacker vs. attack-position monster — compare ATK. The lower one is destroyed and its controller takes the difference as damage. Equal ATK — both are destroyed, no damage.
• Attacker vs. defense-position monster — compare attacker's ATK to the defender's DEF. Higher ATK destroys it (no LP damage). Lower ATK — the attacker is destroyed and its controller takes the difference. (Most monsters deal no damage through defense unless they have piercing.)
• Direct attack — if your opponent controls no monsters, the attack hits their Life Points for the monster's full ATK.

Spells & Traps

Spell Cards — played from your hand on your turn (or Set first and used later):

• Normal — resolve, then go to the Graveyard.
• Continuous — stays on the field, effect persists while face-up.
• Equip — attaches to a monster to boost or alter it.
• Field — one at a time in the Field Zone; affects the whole field.
• Quick-Play — the only Spell you can use during the opponent's turn (once it's been Set, or from hand on your own turn).
• Ritual — used to Ritual Summon (see Summoning).

Trap Cards — must be Set first and can only be activated on a later turn (never the turn you set them):

• Normal & Continuous — as with spells.
• Counter — the fastest cards in the game; only another Counter Trap can respond to one.

Chains & timing

When a card or effect is activated, the other player may respond by activating their own — building a Chain. The Chain then resolves in reverse order: last in, first out.

• Spell Speed 1 — most monster effects and Normal/Continuous/Equip/Field Spells. Cannot be chained to anything.
• Spell Speed 2 — Quick-Play Spells, most Traps, and Quick effects. Can respond on either turn.
• Spell Speed 3 — Counter Traps. Only another Spell Speed 3 can respond.

Building a deck

• Main Deck — 40 to 60 cards.
• Extra Deck — up to 15 Fusion Monsters.
• Side Deck — up to 15 cards (swaps between games of a match).
• Copy limit — at most 3 of any one card across your whole deck, minus anything the banlist restricts.
• You may only build with cards you own. Ranked duels require your own complete deck.

Format & banlist

We play the original era — the rulings and feel of classic Duel Monsters (Goat format), before Synchros and Links. Our banlist follows one principle: limit, don't forbid. Cards that history banned outright are instead held to a single copy — so every classic you remember is still playable, just not stacked three-high. Only a couple of true one-card game-enders remain fully Forbidden.

The live restricted list is shown below — this reads straight from the game, so it is always current:

Stakes

Casual duels and duels against the AI are purely for the play. Ranked is best-of-three with ranks from Rookie to King of Games, and comes in two tiers:

• Open — no cards at risk; a clean ladder for any deck. Rating moves in small steps (±1).
• Stakes — carries the ante: the victor takes one card from the loser's deck. You ante what you bring, so bring what you're willing to lose. Bigger rating swings (±3).

What ranked pays. Climb the ladder for rank titles — Rookie to King of Games. Your first ranked win each day pays 30 credits, and the free nightly Blitz tournaments pay prizes. Only ranked PvP moves rating — AI duels and friend lobbies never do. Every duel earns points — points get you a seat at Sunday's Championship.

Ranked is matchmaking only — you never hand-pick your opponent, and you won't be re-matched with the same player back-to-back.

The Shadow Realm. Rent one of ten hand-built Goat-format decks for the week (burn $YUGIOH or spend credits). The rented cards are soulbound — you never lose the rental; only your own added cards are ever staked. A rented deck counts in full on the ladder — rating and rank, same as a deck you own.

See How It Works for the full set of modes and the economy.