Playing cards, abilities and effects

Three kinds of ability#

• Activated — played by a player who has a play timing, by paying a cost. Written as a cost in square brackets followed by an effect. An activated ability that starts with 【Quick】 can also be played during the quick step.

• Automatic — plays itself when a stated situation occurs. Written as "when (condition), (effect)" or "at the beginning/end of (phase or step), (effect)". The stated situation is the trigger condition, and meeting it is triggering.

• Continuous — always on for as long as it applies. Never played; the effect simply exists.

Three kinds of effect#

• One-shot — does its thing once and is over ("draw a card").

• Continuous — persists for a stated duration; no stated duration means the rest of the game.

• Replacement — swaps one event for another before it happens ("if you would do A, do B instead"). The original event never occurs at all. The optional form is "if you would do A, you may do B instead".

Active and inactive#

An ability can be switched off. While an ability is inactive it still exists but generates no effect, and any choice it would have required is not made. Abilities that specify a zone are only active in that zone — including abilities marked with a zone icon, such as one that works from your hand. An ability on a Pal, structure or gear that names no zone is active only in the base.

Cost#

Actions inside square brackets at the start of an ability are its cost.

• Multiple actions are performed in the printed order.

• All or nothing. If any part cannot be paid, none of it is paid and the ability is not played.

• A cost of N souls is paid by turning that many standing souls in your soul area to resting.

How something is played#

1. Put the card or ability in the resolution zone. A card from a hidden zone is revealed first; an ability goes in as a stand-in card.

2. Make any choices the card or ability requires. Choices from a printed list are made now, and the unchosen options simply do not apply. An "X" with no stated way to determine it is 1.

3. Determine and pay the cost in full. Where several payment routes exist, the choice is made at payment time.

4. Resolve:

• a Pal, structure or gear card is placed in its master's base;

• an event card does what it says and then goes to its owner's graveyard;

• an ability performs its effects and leaves the resolution zone.

• An ability resolves even if the card that had it has since left its zone.

Choosing targets#

Targets are chosen during resolution, from what is available at the moment the instruction is given.

• Where a number is specified, choose as many as possible up to it; a player who can choose is not allowed to decline.

• "Choose up to N" allows anything from zero to N.

• If fewer legal targets exist than the number required, choose as many as possible; if none exist, no target is chosen and every effect that referred to it is ignored.

• Instructions repeated in 〈angle brackets〉 may pick the same target each time.

• Where targets are unrevealed cards in a hidden zone, a player is not obliged to have — or to choose — cards that meet the condition, even if such cards are in fact there.

Restrictions on how often#

Some abilities carry a limit on the number of times they may be played. An activated ability simply cannot exceed it. An automatic ability with a limit may be declined at the moment it would be played, which cancels that instance of the pending state and does not count it against the limit.

Resolving automatic abilities#

When a trigger condition is met, the ability enters a standby state — once per time it triggers. At a check timing, the player who wants to play one chooses a single standby ability they are master of and plays it; resolving it removes one instance of the standby state.

• Players must play every standby automatic ability; the only latitude is the order, and only when several are theirs.

• An ability with an optional cost may be declined by declining the cost, which removes that instance.

• If a chosen standby ability cannot be played at all, its standby instance is removed anyway.

• An ability plays even if the card that owned it has changed zone.

Zone change triggers#

Abilities that trigger on the card moving zones are zone change trigger conditions. Where such an ability needs the card's information:

• public → hidden, or hidden → public: use the information from the public side;

• base → anywhere else: use the information from the base;

• public → public otherwise: use the information from the destination zone.

Delayed and state triggers#

An effect can create an ability that triggers later; unless stated otherwise, such a delayed triggered ability triggers once only. An ability that triggers on a condition being true rather than an event ("when you have no cards in hand") is a state trigger condition: it enters standby once, and can enter standby again only after resolving and having its condition become true again.

Ordering continuous effects#

Where several continuous effects touch the same piece of information, apply them in this order: printed value first; then effects that grant, remove, enable or disable abilities; then effects that do not change the value; then effects that do. Where that leaves a tie and one effect changes what another applies to, the dependent effect resolves last. Where nothing else decides, apply them in the order they were generated.

Replacement effects and final information#

Where several replacement effects would apply to the same event, the player affected chooses the order, and each applies at most once. A choice-type replacement effect that cannot be chosen simply does not apply.

Where an effect references a card's information and that card leaves its zone (or the base) mid-resolution, use the information from the last moment it was there.

Source#

The source of an ability is the card that has it — or, for a delayed triggered ability, the card whose ability created it. For damage, the source is the card that had the ability, except in battle, where it is the card that dealt the damage.

Source: Comprehensive Rules ver. 1.00 (30 July 2026) §10 “Play and Resolve Cards and Abilities”.