How to Play Yu-Gi-Oh! Part 3 - Knowing your Phases!

Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG is a turn based reaction card game. That means there are 2 players and they activate cards and your opponent would have a response to  the turn player's actions. Very simple.

There are a few things that we have to understand, PHASES. Phases are window frames where a certain type of action is allowed. All phases must be gone through by a player except when you are going first in the game and for Battle Phase (more detail bellow). I will help you through these steps in a very basic manner. After the introduction, I will go further into details.

DRAW PHASE

• First thing that happens here is the turn player, DRAWS 1 CARD. Simple, not much explanation needed :)

STANDBY PHASE

• Any type of effects that needs to happen here will happen (the car will say so if it does). 50-80% percent of the time, this phase would be skipped unintentionally. 

MAIN PHASE 1

• Activating Spell cards or Summoning monster happen here. Also Setting your Trap cards and Monsters if player chooses to do so. This is where player interaction really starts. An example would be me summoning Gemini Elf. My opponent then has first response to the summon, they activate Torrential Tribute, destroying my monster(s)! OH NO! That's very sad. That's a simple interaction with my opponent and I. We will talk about, "What if I want to protect my Gemini Elf?" in a later post (Chains and Spell Speed).
  

BATTLE PHASE

• This is where all the monsters collide and clash for who is stronger! If the player chooses not to go into Battle Phase, you will skip Main Phase 2 and go directly into End Phase. We can see the difference of power by the numbers written on the card! For example, taken from above, Gemini Elf has 1900 ATK and Psi-Blocker has 1200 ATK, so Gemini Elf wins! So now, we take the difference and subtract it from the weaker monster's Life Points (both players start at 8000). Again, this is another player interaction heavy phase. So your opponent can use cards like Mirror Force to destroy your Gemini Elf! Another sad story indeed. There are more advanced steps in here, but we can go into that at a later stage of this series. 

MAIN PHASE 2

• After the battles have been done, we head into Main Phase 2. Now we can reassess what damage has been done and set or activate more spells and trap cards! This allows you to set up for your opponent's turn. Maybe you can get them with your own Torrential tribute or Mirror Force! Bwhahaha!

END PHASE

• In here, this is where you say, "My turn is over, it is now yours". Well, you don't have to say that exactly, but you get the concept. Any card that says that you have to activate at the end of turn will occur here. This phase is sometimes complicated, but can be easily simplified in a later post. 

From here, your opponent does the same 6 phases and continue to go back and forth until someone's life points goes to 0 or wins through a game-winning effect (Exodia). Hope this teaches a little bit more about how to play this game. Comment below for any more specific details!