YuGiOh! - Dueling Network Online

http://www.yugioh-card.com/en/rulebook/ - Current official rules of YuGiOh
http://www.yugioh-card.com/en/news/index.html - Official YuGiOh news
http://www.yugioh-card.com/en/limited/ - Official banlist (forbidden and limited cards)

http://www.pojo.com/yu-gi-oh/ - Pojo's YuGiOh site, lots of articles, good messageboards.
http://www.yugiohcardguide.com - Card lists for all attributes, types, sets, structure decks, etc.
http://www.pojo.biz/board/showthread.php?t=989984 - List of yugitubers (youtube channels on yugioh)
http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page - YuGiOh wiki. VERY HELPFUL, articles on archetypes, strategy, help with deck building, in-depth card analysis, in-depth explanations of rulings, card tips, etc.
http://yugioh.tcgplayer.com/ - Tons of resources, plagued by lots of annoying ads though.
http://www.duelingnetwork.com - The dueling network. Play YuGiOh online for free. Redundant but listing anyway.

Scoop - Forfeiting a duel. Giving up.
Bounce - When an attack doesn't destroy a monster OR returning cards from field to hand.
Pitch - Intentionally putting a card of yours in the graveyard either to activate an effect (Effect Veiler/Maxx C) or often to meet another cards special summon requirement (Black Luster Soldier)
Pop - Discarding or destroying your own card on the field for an effect. An example is detaching an XYZ material or using the effect of a card like Gravekeeper's Descendant.
Eff - Used on Dueling Network to signify that you are activating/using the effect of a monster. Declare "eff" to let your opponent know you are activating an optional effect or so that they do not accidentally make a move while you are resolving the effect of a card such as Sangan.
Mill - Discarding a card from the top of your deck.
Banish - Means the same thing as "remove from play".
Floater - A monster that retains card advantage by usually being able to replace itself thus meaning even if it is destroyed you retain the same amount of cards either in hand or on the field as you had before. An example is Gravekeeper's Spy or Reborn Tengu.
Boss/Boss Monster - The "boss" of a deck so to speak is its biggest/most powerful monster. Any extremely high ATK monster or monster with a broken effect could be considered a boss. Black Luster Soldier, Red Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon, Judgment Dragon, Trishula, Absolute Zero, etc.
Beatstick - A monster with a good ATK rating. Anything 1700+ that requires no tribute could be considered a beatstick, at the special summon/tribute level anything 2500+ is pretty good.
Splashable - A card that works well in any/most decks. An example of a splashable card is Sangan, as it can usually search for many different cards in a deck.
Searcher - A card thats effect allows you to search for another card in your deck and special summon it or add it to your hand. Sangan is the most used searcher in the game.
Staple - A card that is so good it is worth considering in every single deck. You are likely to see these cards in play constantly no matter what type of deck you are dealing with.

In this guide, I will assume you have played YuGiOh around the time it corresponded to the Battle City arc of the anime. Despite a few new card types, not much has changed with the fundamentals of the game other than the fact that cards are much more powerful now. To demonstrate the difference in power consider the card "Gemini Elf". Gemini Elf was a 1900 ATK monster at Level 4. Being able to have that much attack power without tributing a card was amazing at the time. Now Level 4's with 1800-2100 attack AND amazing effects are exceedingly common and Gemini Elf is now a basically worthless card. Examples of rather common cards that outshine Gemini Elf are Cyber Dragon and Doomcaliber Knight.

Another basic change in the metagame is that the graveyard is much more accessible than it has ever been. In fact, many decks revolve around getting your own cards into the graveyard and banishment is the only really effective form of card removal against some types of decks. An example of a deck that is based around the graveyard is the "chaos" deck or the "disaster dragon" deck both of which need to have certain cards in the graveyard to work, or the "lightsworn" deck which discards a ton of cards from the top of your deck to the grave to special summon powerful game winning monsters. It is also no longer considered bad to use cards that have high life point costs. The trap Solemn Judgment, which negates any card effect/spell/trap/summon at the cost of half your life points is considered the most essential staple and sees play in almost every deck I can think of. The only decks I've seen that don't run Solemn Judgment are lightsworn decks and some skyscourge decks.

There are a few new monster types to be aware of. The first and most useless it the union monster which can act as an equip spell. This makes it vulnerable to spell/trap removal. I will be focusing on Synchros and XYZ as they have huge impacts on the metagame.



A synchro monster is stores in the extra deck, just like a fusion monster would be. To summon a synchro monster you must meet its synchro requirements. Most synchro monsters have the same synchro requirement (1 tuner monsters + 1 or more non tuner monsters). To summon a synchro monster you must tribute a tuner monster and a non-tuner monster on your side of the field whose levels add up to the level of the synchro monster. So to summon Stardust Dragon we can tribute a level 4 tuner and a level 4 non-tuner, a level 3 tuner and a level 5 non-tuner, and so on and so forth.

Tuner monsters are the other relevant kind of monster in this format. A tuner monster simply has "tuner" listed in the errata along with its type and if it is an effect or not. Tuner monsters are pivotal in the metagame and tuners that can be easily summoned or come back from the grave (plaguespreader zombie, spore, glow up bulb) are considered to be among the best cards in the meta.

Some synchro cards have specific requirements such as using a specific tuner monster (Zombie Archfiend requires you to use plaguespreader zombie but you can substitute pain painter as well) a specific type of non-tuner monster, multiple non-tuners, or even synchro monsters themselves.

Synchro monsters are the most powerful cards in the game along with fusion monsters. Cards like Brionac and Trishula are on the verge of being broken and the trio of Brionac, Trishula, and Stardust are in my opinion the three most annoying cards to encounter in the game. You must have a solution in your deck for dealing with big boss synchros.



XYZ monsters are new monsters to store in your extra deck. The summon requirements are simple. You must have two or more monsters of a specific level (this requirement will be stated on the xyz card) that corresponds to the rank of an XYZ monster. Utopia requires two level 4 monsters. The XYZ monster is summoned (OL) on top of the cards in question. Those cards are not tributed but "attached" to the XYZ monster as XYZ material. XYZ cards have an effect that requires you to detach one or more of your XYZ materials and a penalty that is incurred when the card has no materials left. XYZ monsters do not usually have very high attack levels but often very useful effects and can be summoned much earlier and easier than synchro monsters can.

It's important to realize XYZ monsters have ranks, not levels, and thus cannot be effected by cards such as "gravity bind".

I'm writing a rough tier list for deck types so you can have an idea of whats competitive. A lot of this is based on TCG/OCG which is behind DN so be aware of that.

Top Tier
Plant Synchro
Agents (Variants)
Rescue Rabbit

Highly Competitive
Dark World
Zombie Synchro
Six Samurai
Karakuri
Hero
Scraps
Blackwings
Disaster Dragon
Chaos Stun
Anti-Meta
Gravekeepers
Frog Monarchs
T.G. Stun
Dragunity

Playable (Good just less often seen)
Lightsworn
Herald
X Sabers
Gadgets
Junk/Doppel
Infernity
Malefic
Worms
Fabled
Macro
Flamvells
Nordic
Watts
Laval
Evol

Unknown (Not played often outside Duel Network)
Inzecter
Verz XYZ
Steelswarm