Public Events at a YCS are a great way to unwind after playing in the Main Event, or a great way to have fun and meet new people while Dueling even if you don’t want to play in the Main Event. We always strive to hold a wide variety of Public Events in a wide variety of formats. Whether it’s regular Advanced Constructed, Draft with Battle Packs, or sealed Structure Deck tournaments, there are a lot of different Public Events to choose from. For YCS Chicago, taking place April 10^th through 12^th, we’re going to be trying out yet another new Public Event: The Special Format Win-A-Mat!

Different Duelists enjoy different types of gameplay. Some enjoy Duels with long combos featuring lots of Special Summons, and others prefer Duels with fewer Summons per turn, putting a greater importance on each individual monster.

The Special Format Win-A-Mat is a variant on the regular Advanced Format aimed towards fans who prefer a slower, more methodical Advanced Format experience by putting a hard cap on the number of Summons per turn. The same Deck Construction rules apply as in the Advanced Format, and you still follow the same basic game rules as you always do, with one addition:

“Duelists are allowed a maximum of 3 Summons per turn: 1 Normal Summon/Set, 1 Special Summon from the Extra Deck, and 1 ‘other’ Special Summon.”

Normal Summons/Sets are self-explanatory, and of course this includes Tribute Summons. Remember though, that you still have to follow the basic rules of the game, so you don’t automatically get to Normal Summon during your opponent’s turn, you’d still need a card effect like Ultimate Offering to use your Normal Summon during your opponent’s turn.

Special Summons from the Extra Deck are Fusion Summons, Synchro Summons, Xyz Summons, card effects like Instant Fusion or Cyber-Stein, along with cards like Chimeratech Fortress Dragon or Gladiator Beast Gyzarus .

“Other” Special Summons are any Special Summon that isn’t from the Extra Deck. So cards like Rescue Rabbit, Cyber Dragon, D.D. Survivor, Embodiment of Apophis, Call of the Haunted, any Ritual Spell, etc. Basically anything that Special Summons and isn’t Special Summoning from the Extra Deck falls under this category.

So what about Pendulum Summoning? Pendulum Summoning can Summon from both your hand and the Extra Deck, so it counts as both your Extra Deck Special Summon and your “other” Special Summon, regardless of where you actually Summon monsters from. Additionally, there is no limitation placed on Flip Summons. Flip Summons are battle position changes that happen to trigger cards like Torrential Tribute, so they’ll continue to follow the rules regarding battle position changes.

Here are some examples of the Special Format Win-A-Mat rules in action:

Normal Summon Tour Guide from the Underworld, activate its effect to Special Summon Graff, Malebranche of the Burning Abyss, Xyz Summon Dante, Traveler of the Burning Abyss. You have used all 3 of your Summons for the turn, so you decide not to detach Graff to use Dante’s effect.

Normal Summon Jiaotu, Darkness of the Yang Zing, use its effect to simultaneously Summon Chiwen, Light of the Yang Zing and Taotie, Shadow of the Yang Zing from your Deck, then Synchro Summon Yazi, Evil of the Yang Zing. This is legal because Jaiotu’s effect is one single Special Summon that puts two monsters on the field at the same time. You activate Yazi’s effect targeting Chiwen and an opponent’s card, but you cannot activate Chiwen’s effect afterwards because you’ve already used your “other” Special Summon with Jaiotu’s effect.

Pendulum Summon Qliphort Carrier and Qliphort Helix from your Extra Deck, then Tribute Summon Qliphort Disk. You cannot activate the effect of Qliphort Disk because the Pendulum Summon used up both of your Special Summons for the turn, even though you only Pendulum Summoned from the Extra Deck.

Flip Summon Stealth Bird, then Flip Summon Magician of Faith, activating its effect to retrieve a Spell Card from your Graveyard, then Tribute both Stealth Bird and Magician of Faith for Dark Magician. Flip Summons are battle position changes, not Normal Summons, so this is OK.

You Normal Summon Constellar Pollux. You cannot Normal Summon 1 “Constellar” monster in addition to your Normal Summon/Set because the Special Format Win-A-Mat rule enforces a hard cap of 1 Normal Summon per turn, regardless of card effects.

Stellarknight Delteros and Stellarknight Triverr, both with Xyz Material, are destroyed by Raigeki. They were destroyed simultaneously, so you can activate both of their effects to Special Summon a ‘tellarknight because you have not used your “other” Special Summon yet for the turn. However, the effects on the Chain resolve in sequence, so if one of them resolves and Special Summons its target, the other will not Summon anything.

Vanity’s Emptiness is face-up. You haven’t used your “other” Special Summon yet for the turn, but you still cannot activate Nekroz Kaleidoscope. The Special Format Win-A-Mat rules do not eliminate any restrictions placed on your Summoning abilities by card effects.

During your opponent’s End Phase, you Special Summon Gigaplant with Call of the Haunted. During your turn, you Normal Summon Gigaplant to change it into an Effect Monster. You cannot Normal Summon another monster this turn, even though Normal Summoning Gigaplant in this way did not add a new monster to the field.

During this turn, you Ritual Summoned Nekroz of Valkyrus and Nekroz of Unicore using Nekroz Kaleidoscope, Tributed it them with Valkyrus’ effect to draw 2 cards, and then drew into Nekroz Cycle and Shurit, Strategist of the Nekroz. You cannot activate Nekroz Cycle, even if you’re planning on Summoning one of the two monsters you previously Ritual Summoned this turn. You have already used your “other” Special Summon from the turn, and trying to Summon the same monster multiple times in the same turn is still more than one Special Summon.

This Special Format is still a work-in-progress, and all data collected from Duelists participating in these Public Events will be put towards improving the experience for future events. It’s our hope that this Special Format, much like the Monster League Rule was for Draft Play, will be just the first of many different fun Constructed Deck experiences available in the future!