Today’s article answers questions received by mail that involve the topics we’ve discussed during the previous weeks.

Kuraz of Safe Return

"I have a question aboutKuraz the Light Monarch. If you have Card of Safe Return on the field and you special summon Kuraz from the graveyard, and you target your Treeborn Frog and your Safe Return, do you still get the draw effect?"

Kuraz the Light Monarch’s effect and Card of Safe Return’s effect are both optional trigger effects. When a chain ends with you special summoning Kuraz from your graveyard, you can activate his effect and also activate Card of Safe Return’s effect. Since they are both optional trigger effects, you will choose how they are ordered on the Chain.

If you place Kuraz as chain link 1 and Card of Safe Return as chain link 2, you will draw one card and then destroy your two selected cards (Treeborn Frog and Card of Safe Return), drawing another two. If you do it the other way around, with Card of Safe Return as chain link 1 and Kuraz as chain link 2, you will destroy the Frog and Safe Return and draw†two cards, but Safe Return’s effect will disappear. (Continuous spell and continuous trap cards don’t like being removed from the field.)

"When Dark Magician of Chaos is special summoned with Magical Dimension, doesthe player have to choose between destroying a monster, and getting†a spell back?If you choose to get back a spell, wouldn’t it just go into a chain, destroying the monster, then getting the spell?"

Magical Dimension creates some interesting situations with optional trigger effects because it has an optional part of its effect that will impact what you can activate following the chain’s resolution (assuming Magical Dimension is chain link 1). You will always special summon a Spellcaster monster, because you have to, but you aren’t forced to destroy a monster. If you decide to special summon your Spellcaster and pass on destroying a monster, the effect will end with your special summon. If you decide to go ahead and destroy a monster as well, the effect will end with you destroying a monster and not with your special summon.

So when you special summon Dark Magician of Chaos, you’ve got a decision to make. If you destroy a monster, Magical Dimension’s effect will end with the destruction of a monster and not the special summon of Dark Magician of Chaos. This choice renders Dark Magician of Chaos’s effect useless, because the timing is no longer correct for it. If you decide only to special summon Dark Magician of Chaos and pass on destroying a monster, the effect will end with you special summoning Dark Magician of Chaos and the timing will be correct to activate its effect, starting a new chain.

Jinzo - Returner single handedly ushered in a brand new wave of "missing the timing" questions, and it’s not surprising that it did. The prospect of special summoning Jinzo is a tempting one and players wanted to figure out every way they could manage to do it. Jinzo - Returner isn’t any different than other optional trigger effects. You just need to send it to the graveyard in the right way.

Example 1 has our player sending Jinzo - Returner to the graveyard with Hand Destruction. When Hand Destruction resolves, both players send two cards from their respective hands to the graveyard and then immediately draw two more. When Jinzo - Returner is sent to the graveyard this way, it wants to activate its effect, but it cannot because you still have to draw two cards. After you draw, the timing is no longer correct to activate Jinzo - Returner’s effect.

Example 2 has our player discarding Jinzo - Returner to activate Dark Grepher’s second effect. You want to try and avoid using monsters with optional trigger effects to pay a cost, because you cannot activate its effect when you do so. Example 3 provides a better use for Jinzo - Returner, because our player sends it to the graveyard using Dark Grepher’s effect, not to pay a cost. In Example 3, we can activate Jinzo - Returner’s effect.

When else could we activate Jinzo - Returner’s effect? The most popular method requires Future Fusion. When Future Fusion resolves, we can ideally send Cyber Dragon, three copies of Jinzo, and three Jinzo - Returner cards from our deck to our graveyard, under the guise of Fusion summoning Chimeratech Overdragon. No other effects resolve after the cards are sent to the graveyard, so we are free to start a new chain by activating their effects. All three effects are triggered by the same event, and if we activate all three, they build onto the same chain, as links 1, 2, and 3. When each copy resolves, it will special summon one Jinzo, giving us three copies of Jinzo on our side of the field.

Next week we shift focus to The Duelist Genesis. Until then, send all comments and questions to Curtis@Metagame.com.

—Curtis Schultz