I’m all about reading. I love to read and it’s my favorite pastime . . . except for instruction manuals. I have no use for those. If it takes more than three pages to explain to me how a thing works, then I don’t want to learn how that thing works. I’ve had my cell phone for a year and a half and I still don’t know most of the things it does, because I’ve got six shelves of novels that are shorter than the manual that came with the stupid thing. I skim over the first few pages of manuals, and then I throw them in the filing cabinet. I just hate reading them.

You don’t want to take that approach with your cards. Carefully reading the text will answer a lot of the questions that you might have about what you can and cannot do with a card, and if you don’t read your cards carefully, you might end up having all kinds of unhappy adventures. You might make a misplay—either by not understanding one of your own cards, or not understanding one of your opponent’s cards. This could cost you the game while earning a face-smacking reaction from a teammate who’s watching your match. “Aaaarrgh, why didn’t you attack his Steamroid? You would have won the game!”

You could end up building a deck that flat-out doesn’t work because you skimmed over a vital bit of wording. You could show up at a Shonen Jump Championship prepared to own everyone with a Butterfly Dagger – Elma*/ Woodland Sprite deck, and end up sitting sadly in the corner eating some frightening nachos, clutching your useless deck as the laughter of your peers echoes harshly in your ears. That’s no way to spend your day at the Shonen Jump Championship!

You can get rules-lawyered on a technicality if you don’t read your cards carefully. Goblin Elite Attack Force switches to defense position at the end of the battle phase, not the battle step. If you switch its position too soon, you may be rewarded with the dulcet tones of your opponent hollering for a judge when you try and attack with your next monster. Trust me—you won’t enjoy the experience, and the judge would rather not have to sort it out, either.

Since none of these scenarios sound fun, we want to avoid them! Reading the cards provides you with the information you need to avoid problems like the following:

Missing a Vital Keyword

Yu-Gi-Oh! cards generally have keywords on them that let you know what the card is supposed to do. If you miss one, you might not realize how the card works, and that can lead to trouble.

For instance, if a card has an effect that involves summoning, it makes a great deal of difference whether the card special summons, fusion summons, or sets a monster. These cards are usually very careful to point out the position in which the summoned monster must be placed. If you bring out Cyber Jar with Mystic Tomato and forget that you can’t set it, you aren’t going to get much use out of its effect, and your opponent might not treat it kindly.

Speaking of which, there are several cards that only work on face-up or face-down monsters. You don’t want to incorrectly activate a card like Enemy Controller or Snatch Steal, especially if it’s set on the field and you don’t want your opponent to know what it is. Discarding a card to activate Lightning Vortex against a field of set monsters will make you want to smack yourself, too.

The phrase “pick up cards,” vs. “draw cards,” sometimes trips people up. Picked-up cards won’t cost you the duel if you don’t have enough cards to pick up, and they also won’t trigger the effects on cards like Appropriate. “Send to the graveyard,” and “destroy,” mean completely different things, too. If a card needs to be destroyed in order to get an effect, then it has to actually be destroyed, and not merely “sent to the graveyard.” If you’ve got some kind of crazy bear-and-kangaroo thing going on, and you use Polymerization to fusion-summon Master of Oz while you’ve got Maji-Gire Panda on the field, your Big Koala and Des Kangaroo aren’t going to boost the panda’s ATK. That’ll make it (and you) a . . . wait, I’m not going to say it.

Keywords tell you what kind of effect a card has. Is it a trigger or multi-trigger effect? An ignition effect? Or maybe a continuous effect? The keywords will help you determine when and how to use the effect. You know that you can use Injection Fairy Lily’s effect on your opponent’s turn, because the card tells you that it works that way. Keywords such as “can” will indicate whether or not an effect is optional or mandatory. D. D. Warrior Lady and D. D. Assailant provide a perfect example of this contrast. The kind of effect and whether that effect is optional or mandatory indicates how the timing of the effect works and whether or not you can miss it. Knowing how the timing works for your cards will optimize your deck and minimize the time you’ll spend explaining the situation to the judge.

Misunderstanding a Specific Mechanic for the Card

Some cards have very clear instructions on them. Perhaps they can only be activated during certain game phases, or only in response to specific actions. They may specify targets on certain sides of the field. I once watched a very good friend (whom I won’t name), take control of his opponent’s Barrel Dragon with Change of Heart, attack with it, and then use its effect in main phase two. He flipped enough heads, and opted to destroy the Barrel Dragon. I leaned over and asked him what he thought he was doing! Both players took another look at the card. “I totally missed the ‘opponent’s side of the field’ part!” they both exclaimed. It was a good strategy—it’s too bad that it was completely illegal!

Always pay attention to monster types, attributes, and ATK/DEF values. It’s easy to forget the exact stats of every card out there, and many cards have effects that only work on monsters with specific traits. Don’t grab Jinzo with Sangan, or mistakenly assume that you can return Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys (a Winged-Beast type monster) to your hand with the effect of Behemoth the King of All Animals. And don’t let your opponent do it, either!

Making a Wrong Assumption About How a Card Works

The classic example here would be thinking that Mystical Space Typhoon negates a spell card as well as destroying it. How many times have you seen a novice player “chain” their Mystical Space Typhoon in response to your Raigeki or Heavy Storm, and think that they’ve prevented your card from resolving?

The Legendary Fisherman was another card that was often misread. Plenty of players interpreted “cannot be attacked by your opponent’s monsters,” to mean, “if I have this guy on my side of the field, I’m protected by an invulnerable wall!” Guardian Kay’est recently put in a similar appearance, holding off opponents who assumed that because they could not attack the monster, they could not attack at all.

Just Plain Not Grasping What a Card is Supposed To Do

Oddly enough, there are plenty of cards that inspire common delusions. Do you remember when people thought Waboku prevented attacked monsters from being flipped face-up? Or that Enchanted Javelin would increase your life points while preventing you from losing any (if your opponent attacked directly, or attacked an ATK position monster)? Players would take a quick glance at the card and somehow come away believing that it did something it didn’t, and judges everywhere would be baffled by the nonsensical disputes that they would have to sort out as a result. “Where are you getting this from?” they would ask in bewilderment.

“From the card!” the player would respond.

A good contemporary example is Wave-Motion Cannon. Some players came up with the notion that Wave-Motion Cannon collects counters, and then made the jump to assuming that they were spell counters that would be affected by cards like Pitch-Black Power Stone and Exhausting Spell. But if you look at the text for the card, you’ll see it doesn’t say a single word about counters at all. Duelists started using them to keep track of things, and it sort of evolved from there.

Also, consider Thousand-Eyes Restrict**. Heaven knows it’s hard to read all that tiny text, but if you’re going to use the thing, please read it first. You’ll find that it’ll answer 99 percent of your questions about, “I just did this thing, so what happens now?” The text will tell you exactly what the monster can do. Use a magnifying glass if you have to, but get the updated version of the text and make sure you read it!

The days when kids made up what the cards did as they went along have more or less passed us by, but players still have occasional moments of epiphany. These moments are fine when you’re sitting at home building a deck, or having a casual game at Duelist League, but they’re not so enjoyable when they happen at a top table in front of the Metagame.com reporter and 300 of your closest dueling friends. Always, always, read the card—the actual, most current version of the card, not an Internet spoiler, not, “Hey, what does such-and-such a card do?” called down the table to your friend. Be sure you check the errata list, too.

Sometimes we think that we know the cards so well that we don’t bother to read every word on them. Although not knowing a bizarre ruling that only ever comes up once is excusable, totally blowing a game over something that’s actually printed on the card is really embarrassing—and this goes for your opponent’s cards as well. If you ever come up against a card you haven’t read, don’t take your opponent’s word for what it does. Ask if you can read it, and do so. I used to have to do this all the time, when I was playing on the mall tour. Sometimes I’d get a derisive “Aren’t you supposed to be an expert and know all the cards?”*** If you’ve actually memorized every card out there—well, everyone gets to pick what to do with his or her brain cells, and I shake you warmly by the hand. If you haven’t, don’t worry that someone is going to disrespect you for picking up a card and looking over the text. Believe me, making a misplay over an assumption is a lot less enjoyable. Call over a judge if you need something to be clarified, because there’s always the possibility that your opponent has missed something too.

I expect to see a lot more reading at the next event I judge, so don’t let me down! Now, it’s time for me to figure out how to download a new ringtone . . .

Hey! Email response time has now improved by 18 percent! Actually, I’m making that number up, but I’m getting better at answering emails quicker. Thanks for the notes you have sent so far. Do you have a good “I wish I’d read the card” story? Send it along because I want to hear it. One more thing—if anyone can explain in fewer than three pages how to get new ringtones on a Nokia 3650, I’d love to hear from you at MetagameJulia@gmail.com!

* Yes, I know Butterfly Dagger – Elma is a forbidden card and won’t be played at a Shonen Jump Championship. I just saw so many people show up at events in the past with this kind of deck that I couldn’t leave it out. Sometimes, they actually cried when they found out that it didn’t work.

**Take it far, far away.

***My usual response was to smile charmingly and say, “I know all the good cards.”