Welcome back to part two of the TCG terms and lingo list! We hope you’re on top of the terms from last week, because there’s plenty more where those came from. If you missed yesterday's article, make sure to read it over, because it’s got more of what you’re viewing here today. Ready? Here we go!
• Hand control – Control of how many and which cards are in the opponent’s hand. Cards that let you look at and/or discard cards from the opponent’s hand are considered hand control cards.
• ID (Intentional Draw) – If two duelists decide not to play their match and instead take a draw, it is called an intentional draw. The result of the match is reported to the Tournament Organizer as a draw. Duelists often take this route to secure slots in the top level of a tournament. Some Tournament Organizers frown on it, and different duelists will argue for or against it, but it is perfectly legal.
• Judge Levels – In Yu-Gi-Oh!, aspiring judges can take tests to prove their knowledge of the rules and gameplay. The highest test level so far is Level 3, and there aren’t more than a dozen or so current Level 3 judges outside of the Upper Deck staff.
• Late Game – All the parts of a duel from about turn 7 onward.
• Limited – A format that is played with decks built from sealed product obtained at the event. Limited tournaments can be Booster Draft or Sealed Pack. The one thing they always have in common is that they are built with cards from sealed product that duelists get at the tournament.
• MANTIS – Mobile Advanced Networkable Tournament Interface Software. This is the tournament software used at sanctioned events. It keeps track of pairings, wins and losses, and tiebreakers. It generates the pairings for each round and determines the final standings.
• Metagame – The metagame encompasses an area of play where certain strategies from the environment are used. A metagame can be as large as a country or continent, or as small as a single store. The metagame represents what people actually do within an area—what parts of the environment are seeing play. To put it into context, the environment of Yu-Gi-Oh! is currently very diverse. There are over 30 viable deck strategies a duelist can use. Despite that, most metagames are about 90% Chaos decks . . . not very diverse at all.
Metagames are defined by common trends. Recognizing the trends within a metagame can help you to be successful within that particular metagame. However, a good working knowledge of the environment will help you spot and track those trends and keep ahead of the game as it develops.
• Mid-game – Turns 4 through 6 . . . the middle of the game.
• OP (Organized Play) – Organized play, or OP in its abbreviated form, refers to leagues and tournaments—events for which an official record of the results is kept. To participate in organized play, a duelist needs a nine digit UDE number that is used to track that duelist’s rankings, enter that duelist into tournaments, and so on. Without organized play, there would be no Regionals, no Nationals, no World Championships, and no other events or prizes beyond the local level.
• Pairings – Pairings show us who plays who in a tournament. They are posted at the beginnings of each round, and are determined by comparing duelists’ win/loss ratios. When pairings are posted, duelists often stampede to the list to find their table number and opponent.
• Premiere Event – This is a higher-level tournament, usually with big attendance and desirable prizes. Premiere events are generally arranged by the Organized Play department at Upper Deck, and not by independent Tournament Organizers or stores that run events. Regionals/Nationals/World Championships are the highlights of the Premiere Events.
• Priority – You’ll hear this word a lot when you play, even though many duelists aren’t quite sure what it means. It is a term used to indicate which duelist has the right to activate a given card effect at a given time. If a duelist holds priority, he or she may choose or refuse to activate a card effect, after which that player will pass priority to the opponent. The opponent then may do the same, and so on.
• Pull – A pull is the card you get from a booster pack. Or, when used as a verb, pulling is to get cards from a pack. If you and your friend each buy a pack of Invasion of Chaos, and you get a [Black Luster Soldier—Envoy of the Beginning] while your friend gets stuck with [Sasuke Samurai #3], then you might boast about your amazing pull. Only do this if you are really secure in that friendship.
• Randomizer – Something used to generate a random result, such as a coin to flip or a die to roll. Duelists need a randomizer both to determine who goes first, and for certain card effects that require a coin flip or die roll. It is not a bad idea to have both a coin and a die, in case a card requires one specifically. While a die roll can generally be substituted for a coin flip, coin flips can never be substituted for a die roll. Asking a judge to guess a number between one and six is also not a substitute for a die roll, so make sure that if you have cards that need a randomizer, you have one with you.
• Replay – Replay means to back up the game to the beginning of a phase and play it through again. Replays in Yu-Gi-Oh! occur when the number of monsters on the opponent’s side changes during a duelist’s battle phase. It doesn’t mean “do over,” so replaying because a duelist changes his or her mind about what he or she has already done is not valid.
• Rush – This is a strategy involving a fast buildup of many monsters with the intention of gaining an advantage by sheer numbers and speed, rather than relying solely on high-powered attacks. Also known as “swarming,” both Machine decks and Warrior decks rely on this approach.
• Sanctioned – Sanctioned tournaments are officially recognized by Upper Deck Organized Play. Duelists participating in a sanctioned event will need a nine digit player number that is used track his or her progress throughout the tournament, and to determine that player’s overall ranking in the system. The more sanctioned events a duelist wins, the higher his or her ranking will go. Conversely, the more sanctioned events a duelist loses, the lower his or her ranking will go.
• Scoop – To concede a duel in the face of certain defeat. If a duelist is in a duel he or she feels is impossible to win, scooping is a way of saving everyone some time and moving on. Just say “I’m gonna scoop,” and follow it by literally scooping up your cards. Some duelists concede by holding their hand palm-down over their deck, but if you see that happen, always ask (don’t assume) if scooping is what they intended by the gesture.
• Single Elim (Elimination) – In a single elimination tournament, duelists are removed from the tournament after one match loss. The number of tournament participants is cut in half each round, until only the winner remains. Single elimination is much faster than Swiss, but not as good for getting the most out of your entry fee . . . unless you are the winner.
• Standings – Standings are how duelists rank against one another in a tournament. Standings are ordered from first place down to last, and are usually posted with the pairings in between rounds. The MANTIS program, using several different tiebreakers in case of a tying win/loss record with other duelists, determines standings.
• Swiss – Swiss tournaments are those in which all registered duelists play the full number of rounds. A loss does not result in removal from the tournament, and at the end of the last round, the top finishers are determined by the final standings.
• Synergy – Cards that work well together are considered synergistic. Cards with good synergy are ones that interact well with other cards, while cards with poor synergy are cards that don’t gain much, if anything, from other cards that share their deck space. A card doesn’t necessarily need to be synergistic to be good. In fact, being too focused on synergy can result in a deck that is too combo-dependant, which can make it unreliable. Still, it’s important to keep synergy in mind when building any deck. Synergy is the difference between a cohesive deck and a pile of 40 (please, not 100) cards.
• TCG – A short, sweet, and snappy abbreviation for Trading Card Game.
• Tiebreaker – Tiebreakers are three numerical statistics that determine your exact ranking in a tournament when your win and loss count is the same as other duelists’. You’ll see them listed on the standings sheet as T1, T2, and T3. Here’s what they all mean: T1 is the total number of match points of the duelists who beat you, T2 is the total number of match points of the duelists that you beat, and T3 is the really complicated one . . . but boiled down, it is a sum of the round numbers in which you lost. They’re squared before being summed to give you a benefit if you lost in later rounds. It’s assumed that players who lose in later rounds will have played tougher opponents overall, since players with identical win/loss records are paired against one another whenever possible. If you’re able to explain this clearly and coherently at your next tournament, you’ll be on the receiving end of some serious respect.
• Timing – Timing is what determines when and if card effects will resolve. It sounds so, so simple when put like that, but it can get pretty involved. Rulings questions involving timing can get insanely complicated, especially when a chain full of card effects triggering right and left has to be resolved. Look forward to a whole article dedicated to unraveling the mysteries of timing at a future date.
• Topdeck – Often seen hanging around with Luck, topdeck is also well acquainted with the God Hand. Topdecking a card means drawing the card you need, exactly when you need it. Yugi calls it “heart of the cards,” and many other duelists call it “really good deckbuilding,” or “Yes! Yes! Yes, I’m saved!” However, if your opponent is the one who gets the topdeck, you may find yourself calling it something else . . . .
• TO (Tournament Organizer) – The Tournament Organizer, or TO, is the individual responsible for the tournament. Duties of the TO include, but are not limited to, finding a venue, scheduling the event, applying to sanction the event, selecting the format, registering the duelists, ensuring that all duelists are properly entered into MANTIS, supervising the judges, and generally keeping track of the entire event. Really good TO’s are popular with the tournament-going public, because their tournaments tend to run on time, have quality staff, a nice venue, and so forth. If a duelist wishes to run sanctioned tournaments, he or she will need to pass the Level 1 Tournament Organizer test on the Upper Deck website.
• Traditional Format – This is the alterative to the Advanced format. It is played without adhering to the Forbidden card list. Since some leagues, TO’s, and duelists are loath to give up the core cards that were dropped from the Advanced format, Upper Deck gave them the option of playing without using the new list. It’s important to note that Egyptian God cards and Japanese cards are still not allowed in the Traditional format, and that the restricted and limited lists are still in effect. Also, the high profile Premiere events—Regionals, Nationals, and the World Championships, use the Advanced format.
• Utility – Utility refers to how useful a card is in different situations. A card with high utility is like a Swiss army knife—it comes in oh so handy in all kinds of situation. Utility in Yu-Gi-Oh! is a fairly abstract concept. If you divide the game into four sections—the opening hand, the early game (the first three turns), the mid-game (generally turns 4–6), and the late game (everything on or after turn 7 or 8)— a card’s utility will depend in part on how useful it is in each of those sections. A card with very high utility will be useful by itself in all four parts of the duel. A card with very low utility will only be useful at a few points during the duel, and will need other cards or special conditions to be playable. Cards with very low utility are considered to be “conditional,” meaning they’re only useful under certain conditions.
So, now we have a reasonably comprehensive list of terms we’re likely to encounter while gaming. We probably haven’t hit them all, and different regions will have their own terms and phrases that might end up passing into the general lexicon, so if you can think of any we’ve missed, send us an email (Julia@metagame.com) and let us know!
Being more comfortable with the lingo generally translates into being more comfortable with the game, and there’s never anything wrong with that. Review this list until you’re confident that you know the terms, and make sure to pass them along if other duelists in your area aren’t familiar with them. After all, there’s nothing like an entire game store speaking the same language!