Glossary

There are no land cards. Once per turn you put one card from your hand face-up into the mana zone, permanently, and it counts as one mana. Any card can do this.

vs Magic: lands are free; here every mana costs you a real card. Full explanation.

The act of putting a card into the mana zone. Once per turn, before you attack.

The five colours, plus Zero. In PLAY'S, a civilization is either present in your mana zone or it is not — the count does not matter. One Water card in the mana zone lets you cast any number of Water cards, mana permitting.

vs Magic: colour is a yes/no question rather than a quantity. This is the single biggest rules difference and it is why five-civilization decks are viable.

Five face-down cards instead of a life total. A creature connects, one shield breaks, and the broken shield goes into the defender's hand. Break all five and one more attack wins the game.

vs Magic: damage is not permanent — attacking gives your opponent cards. Why this makes players reluctant to attack.

Attacking a player with no shields left. This is how games are won.

How many shields a creature breaks per attack. Double Breaker is two, Triple Breaker three, World Breaker all of them.

Ten cards. Anything drawn past that goes straight to the graveyard — worth remembering before casting a large draw spell.

vs paper: the paper game has no hand limit. A digital-only constraint, like the battle zone cap below.

You never read your whole deck. A search offers up to three distinct cards that meet the condition, drawn at random from those that qualify; a Super Search offers five. You choose one of what you are shown.

In practice it is often a clean tutor, since few decks run six or more different cards meeting the same condition. But it is a cap, not a guarantee.

vs paper: most paper search, mana-recovery and graveyard-recovery effects were converted into this when they came across. It exists to keep turns short, and it is one of the larger reasons a card can behave differently here.

PLAY'S caps each player at seven cards in the battle zone — creatures, Cross Gear and Draghearts counted together. Once full, you cannot summon, and anything an effect tries to put into play goes to the graveyard instead.

vs paper: the paper game has no limit at all. This is the single largest structural difference between the two versions, and it decides whether a wide strategy works here.

The defining mechanic. When a shield with this keyword breaks and enters your hand, you may cast it immediately without paying its cost, during your opponent's turn.

vs Magic: like an instant, except it comes from your life total, costs nothing, and your opponent triggered it by attacking you.

A spell that, when cast from hand, goes face-up on top of one of your own shields instead of to the graveyard — so it can be used a second time when that shield breaks.

A keyword, not a default ability. Only creatures with Blocker can block — everything else stands there while attacks go past.

What it actually does is more specific than "block": tap this creature and change the attack's target to it. A redirect, not an interception, and it costs a tap.

vs Magic: the opposite default — in Magic any untapped creature can block, and blocking does not tap it. The redirect wording also means a creature that "cannot be attacked" can still be blocked into an attack. More on this.

Can attack the turn it arrives. Magic calls this haste.

Can attack a creature the turn it arrives, but not a player. A restricted haste that exists to kill things without opening shields.

When a qualifying creature attacks, you may swap it with a Revolution Change card from your hand. The new creature continues the attack. It arrives without being summoned, for no mana, already attacking.

vs Magic: there is no equivalent. Attacking becomes the cost of cheating something into play.

A separate twelve-card zone outside your deck. When an effect calls for a GR summon, you turn over the top card of that zone and put it into play. You do not choose which.

vs Magic: a second library, played from the top, at random. Closest thing is the command zone, but that is deterministic.

Another zone outside the deck, holding Psychic creatures. Unlike GR, cards here are summoned deterministically — an effect names what it brings out.

A conditional ability that switches on when your mana zone contains a specified number of cards of a given civilization. Rewards committing to one colour.

Cast this card for free if a stated board condition is met.

Destroys any creature it fights, whatever the power. Magic's deathtouch.

Untargetable and unblockable until the start of your next turn. Protects a creature for exactly one rotation.

One card with a creature on the top half and a spell on the bottom. Two costs are printed on it and you choose which half to play. In the mana zone it counts as both civilizations.

vs Magic: closest to a modal double-faced card, except both halves are visible at once and it is a single physical face.

Appears on a Twinpact creature. When it attacks, you may cast that same card's spell half without paying for it.

Why it matters: a Twinpact normally makes you choose a half. This keyword lets one card be both — a creature that fires its own spell every time it swings.

Playable from hand for free — but only when a creature is attacking you and you have no shields left. Several can be declared at once and resolve in the order you pick.

Note: distinct from Revolution Change despite the shared word. This one is a last-ditch defence; that one is an attack-step swap.

Lets you play the card for a stated amount less, at the price of it being destroyed at end of turn. On a Speed Attacker the drawback costs almost nothing on the turn you want it.

A conditional ability that switches on when your hand is down to one card or fewer — the state an aggressive deck ends up in naturally.

Lets you cast a Twinpact's spell half while the creature stays in the battle zone, paying the cost as normal. The effect scales with how many copies of that creature you control.

Reading note: the set name RINGFINITY is this keyword, not a coinage — 輪廻 · rinne is the cycle of rebirth, read here as "rin", plus infinity.

Rather than being summoned to an empty space, an evolution creature is placed on top of a creature you already control that meets its stated condition. The stack counts as one creature.

It never suffers summoning sickness. Not "if the creature underneath could attack" — at all. Stacking onto something that arrived this turn clears the sickness, so you can play the base and the evolution on the same turn and swing immediately.

Why it matters: it sidesteps summoning sickness and the 盤面制限 · banmen seigen board limit at the same time, since the stack occupies one slot.

Spells only. After the spell resolves, it goes to your mana zone instead of the graveyard — so it does something now and leaves you a mana afterwards.

Note: this is why several decks run spells that look overpriced. You are paying for the effect and the ramp together.

When a creature of a stated civilization and race attacks, you may stack this card on top of it from your hand, for free, as an evolution. The attack carries on with the new creature.

Compare: Revolution Change swaps the attacker; Invasion stacks on top of it. Both cheat something expensive into an attack already underway.

Creatures only, and every card with it belongs to the Shinobi race. It summons the creature from your hand at a moment you would not normally be able to — during your opponent's attack — with the condition tied to how few shields you have left.

Cards are taken from the top of a deck and placed face-down on top of a card in the battle zone. While sealed, that card is treated as though it were not there at all. Seals come off when stated conditions are met.

A card that starts in the battle zone before the game begins, sealed. Remove all of its seals and it flips over into an enormous creature. The first card in the game's history to be in play from turn zero.

A card that sits in the battle zone but is not a creature, so creature removal does not touch it. Only one can be out at a time — a new one replaces the old. Denjara Switch is a one-per-game effect, used by turning the card upside down.

Pay an additional cost on top of the normal one when you use the card, and get an extra effect for it.

A card from outside the deck that arrives as a weapon or a fortress rather than a creature, then flips to its creature side when a stated condition is met. Draghearts count against the seven-card battle zone limit.

ND rotates — older sets fall out over time. AD holds everything. Separate ranked ladders, separate metagames, separate tier lists. The Grand Prix uses ND.

vs Magic: Standard versus Legacy, roughly — except both run inside the same client with their own ladders.

The paper game's restriction system. Five categories, not two:

プレミアム殿堂コンビ · premium dendō combi — two named cards cannot share a deck; four of each is legal apart
プレミアム殿堂超次元コンビ · premium dendō chōjigen combi — same idea for the Hyperspatial zone
プレミアム殿堂 · premium dendō — zero copies
殿堂入り · dendō-iri — one copy
解除 · kaijo — unrestricted, four copies

Cards move both ways. A card dropping from Premium to Hall of Fame goes from zero copies to one — that is a loosening, and it is easy to misread as a restriction. Worked example.

PLAY'S has its own restriction list, separate from paper. It also does something paper cannot: rewrite a card's text. Nerfs shipped in January, February, March, April and June of 2026.

Separate from the Hall of Fame and unchanging. Two entries: one red-backed 2004 promo, and Duel Masters cards in any language other than Japanese. The entire 2002–2006 English print run is unusable in sanctioned Japanese play.