← Duel Masters English

PLAY'S · Reference · 14 Sep 2026

How Duel Masters actually works

You have installed it, the tutorial was in Japanese, and you are now in a match. The app enforces every rule for you — you cannot make an illegal play even by accident — so this is not a list of things to memorise. It is the handful of ideas that make the screen make sense.

How you win

Break five shields, then hit the player once more

Your opponent starts behind five face-down shields. Attacks aimed at them break one shield each instead of dealing damage. There is no life total and no damage number.

Once all five are gone, one more successful attack ends the game. That last swing is called a direct attack.

You can also win because your opponent's deck runs out — drawing from an empty deck loses. It happens, but it is not what most decks are trying to do.

The turn, in the order the app walks you through it

1 Untap and drawEverything you tapped last turn stands back up, and you draw one. The app does this without asking.
2 Charge manaDrag one card from your hand into the mana zone. Any card can be mana — there is no separate land card. It stays there for the rest of the game. You may skip this, and skipping is sometimes correct, but it is usually not.
3 Play thingsTap mana to summon creatures and cast spells. The app greys out anything you cannot afford, so you cannot get this wrong.
4 AttackDrag a creature at the opponent or at one of their tapped creatures. Then end the turn.

The zones on screen

DeckFace down. Running out loses you the game. HandCapped at ten — draw past it and the extra is discarded. Mana zoneFace up, permanent. One card added per turn, by you, from hand. ShieldsFive face-down cards standing in for a life total. Battle zoneWhere creatures live. Capped at seven. GraveyardFace up. Plenty of cards can pull things back out of it.

Mana is the part with no equivalent

Every card is also a land

Any card in your hand can be put into the mana zone. There is no mana screw and no flood — you will always have something to charge.

The cost is real though: a card in the mana zone is spent. You chose to turn a spell you might have cast into a resource, permanently. Every turn you are deciding which card you are willing to never use.

Cards have a civilization — Light, Water, Darkness, Fire, Nature — and to play one you need at least one mana of that civilization, plus enough total mana to cover the cost. More on how that shapes deckbuilding.

Attacking has three rules worth knowing

Creatures cannot attack the turn they arrive

Summoning sickness, as in most card games. Some creatures have keywords that ignore it.

You cannot attack an untapped creature

Attacks go at the player, or at a creature that is already tapped. An untapped creature standing in front of you is not a target. Certain keywords override this.

Blocking is a keyword, not something every creature can do

Only creatures that say Blocker may block, and blocking taps them. This is the one that catches Magic players hardest: a board full of untapped creatures does not protect you at all unless they have that word on them.

And the idea the whole game is built on

Breaking a shield gives it to your opponent

A broken shield goes into the defender's hand. Not the graveyard — their hand. Attacking hands your opponent cards.

Worse, some cards say Shield Trigger: if one of those is in a shield you break, they cast it immediately and for free, during your attack. Attacking into five unknown shields means five chances to be punished for it.

This is why experienced players sit on boards that look lethal and do nothing. They are not being passive; they are waiting until they can break everything in one turn, so the cards their opponent draws never get used. The full version of that argument is here — it is the single biggest difference between this game and the ones it resembles.

Two things the digital version added

Neither exists in the paper game, and both change what is possible.

Sevencards maximum in your battle zone. When it is full, anything an effect tries to put into play goes to the graveyard instead. Tencards maximum in hand. The excess is discarded as you draw it.

The rest of the construction rules are here — deck size, copy limits, and the zones that sit outside your forty cards.

What to do first

Play the story mode

it hands you cards, and the opponents are slow enough to experiment against

Beyond that: the app is free and not region locked, and there is a community English patch that makes all of this considerably easier to read. What to know before installing. Terms you will meet are in the glossary, and the rules that trip people up once they are past the basics are here.

Sources

Corrections and questions

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