March 25, 2017 Rules revision

March 25, 2017 Rules revision 2017年3月25日ルール改訂 (2017-Nen 3-gatsu 25-Nichi Rūru Kaitei)

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March 25, 2017 Rules revision refers to rule changes made to the General Game Rules made on March 25, 2017.

Details

While there has been various small clarifications and errata released, these rules are the first extensive rule changes made in the Duel Masters trading card game.

The official announcement of rule changes include the following;

1) Shield Breaking
2) Shield Trigger
3) At the start of your turn

Shield Breaking

Up to now, abilities that break more than one shield (such as Double Breaker) at a time were done one by one, but is now changed to all break at the same time.

The processing of a shield break is as follows:

1) An attack against a player isn't blocked, and a shield break is determined.
2) Choose as many shields as you can break depending on the ability (You can't choose the same shield twice).
3) Break the chosen shields. The opponent player adds those shields to their hand at the same time.

For example, Ragnarok, the Clock and Triple Breaker will now work different. Previously, if a creature with Triple Breaker was to attack unblocked and break 3 shields, and Ragnarok, the Clock was the first shield to be broken, it's Shield Trigger ability can be used to immediately skip the rest of the turn, and the rest of the shields wouldn't be broken.

However, due to this new rule, the other shields were already chosen to be broken at the time the Shield Trigger ability can be used. Even if the ability of Ragnarok is used to skip the rest of the turn, the rest of the break continues, and the other 2 shields are still broken.

Until now, shields breaks done by an ability such as Double Breaker were able to break a specified amount of shields up to their maximum of X even if shields were increased by Shield Addition. However, the rule new only allows them to break the shields that were in play when the amount of broken shields were decided, so any shields added into the shield zone with a card such as DNA Spark can't be broken by that attack.

Since breaks can't choose the same shield twice during breaking, shields with Shield Saver can't be broken during the break by Double Breaker.

Shield Trigger

As shown above, how cards with a Shield Trigger ability are used is also changed.

The processing of a shield break is as follows:

1) The broken shields are added to your hand at the same time.
2) You may choose to use any of them with a Shield Trigger ability
3) Resolve any of those cards abilities, and cast any spells or summon any creatures.

For example, Dragon's Sign and Cyber Book. Since shields are broken one by one, even if Dragons Sign was the first broken shield, it can't be used unless you already had an applicable card. However, with the new rule as the shields are broken at the same time and the shield trigger abilities can be used in any order, you can draw an usable card with Cyber Book, and then summon it with Dragon's Sign.

If shields are broken by a creature that has Triple Breaker while there are 5 shields, and the first Shield Trigger is DNA Spark, since the number of shields at the time the shield trigger ability can be used after the break is 2, you are able to use the Shield Addition ability,

Since the shields broken at the same time is handled in your hand, if cards such as Heaven's Rosia, True Dragon Edge and Dragon's Sign are broken at the same time, you may immediately put the Heaven's Rosia into the battle zone by Dragon's Sign.

At the start of your turn

Until now, abilities that triggered "at the start of your turn" was used before you did any other actions in your turn such as untapping. However, this is now done in the reverse order.

The processing at the start of the turn is as follows:

1) At the start step of the turn, the active player simultaneously untaps all their cards in the battle zone and mana zone.
2) Resolve all trigger abilities that occur at the start of the turn.

For example, cards such as Dokindam Area, Forbidden of D and Quattro Fang, Soul Gang Leader have abilities which trigger at the start of the turn. However, if the unsealed creature was tapped after being unsealed, or card put into the mana zone was multicolored and put in tapped, they would have untapped before the untap step, and could be used in that turn. However, in this new rule, the untap step comes before the "at the start of your turn" abilities, so these cards would not be untapped.