SCRY, an alternative YGO Ruleset for 4 player duels

Simultaneous Cross Rush Yugioh

Introduction

Simultaneous Cross Rush Yugioh (SCRY) is a format intended to be played with at least 4 players in a draft format. The objective of this alternative game rule set is to create a faster and more dynamic game of Yu-Gi-Oh between multiple duelists. Previously games of Yu-Gi-Oh with multiple duelists involved waiting for one’s turn. A duelist who takes their turn last in a 4 player setting would have to sit through 3 players worth of turns. This is largely boring and provides little interaction between duelists. This rule set attempts to fix this issue by allowing all players to take their turns somewhat simultaneously. 

Mechanical Changes

A turn in SCRY is treated as each player’s turn and their opponents’ as well, however only one player is actively playing at a time. During the main phase 1, each player will take turns playing one card from their hand or pass action (electing to not play a card and waiting to conduct battle phase) to the next player who in turn will play one card and so on and so forth. This will continue until a player decides to switch to their battle phase. 

Playing a card from the hand can be summoning a monster in face-up attack or face-up defense, setting a magic or trap or monster in face-down defense mode or activating a spell or monster effect from the hand (typically these are monsters that discard themselves to activate an effect i.e. an ignition effect belonging to the monster). For monster cards, there is no limit on how many normal summons can be performed a turn. This also applies to tribute summons.

Set traps may be activated (are live) after passing to the next player’s action even on the same turn the card was first set. The same is applied for quick-play spell cards that are set. Continuous spells and monsters with ignition effects can activate their effects following the activation response window. 

For example: It is possible to stop a continuous spells such as fire formation - tenki with a mystical space typhoon as the card must remain face up in order to resolve. 

Example 2: a D.D.M (Different Dimension Master) can be Bottomless Traphole before it can activate its effect to special summon a banished monster.

To elaborate, in the Main phase for each player’s action phase, they have 1 action point that can be spent to play any 1 card in their hand onto the field. Quick play spell cards and monsters with an effect denoted as ‘quick-effect’ do not take an action to play however. Before or after playing a card, a player can activate the effects of a card already on the field or in the graveyard or switch battle positions of any number of monsters if currently able.

Field Changes

A field on SCRY is currently 4x2. 

From Top Left to Top Right: 

• MAIN MONSTER ZONE - MAIN MONSTER ZONE - MAIN MONSTER ZONE - MAIN MONSTER ZONE - GRAVEYARD

From Bottom Left to Bottom Right:

• SPELL/TRAP ZONE - SPELL/TRAP ZONE - SPELL/TRAP ZONE - SPELL/TRAP ZONE - DECK

Seal of Orichalcos House Rule - Under the Seal of Orichalcos House Rule, it is possible to play monsters, spells and traps in any of the Main Monster Zones and Spell/Trap Zones. For Spells and Traps played in the Main Monster Zone there is no change from their function in either zone however a Spell or Trap in a Main Monster Zone does not prevent direct attacks against that player. A monster played in a Spell/Trap Zones is treated differently, this monster cannot be targeted for an attack as long as a monster exists in a Main Monster Zone. It can still be targeted by effects of others cards like normal, and is still treated as a monster while in the zone. A monster in the Spell/Trap Zone does not prevent direct attacks to the player. 

Turn Breakdown

A game of SCRY begins with deciding the turn order through dice, once the turn order is decided. All players draw 4 cards for their starting hand and start at 8000 life points. 1 card is drawn from the deck during the draw phase and once the standby phase has resolved, the main phase can begin. Players each take turns playing their cards. Once a player has decided to stop playing cards, they may declare they are entering their battle phase or simply pass to the next player. 

• 3 Card Rush Rule- at the draw phase, if a player has less than 3 cards in hand, they may draw to 3 cards. Otherwise, players draw 1 card during their draw phase

Battle Phase

During a player’s battle phase they may attack with a monster. If the monster is capable of attacking multiple times a battle phase, it may declare additional attacks after its first. Only 1 monster may attack per player action phase. Think of declaring an attack with a specific monster as requiring 1 action point.

Main Phase 2 & End Phase

Main phase 2 is reached once a player has ended their battle phase. In this phase, players are able to play a card from their hand as normal or they can simply pass to the next player. Once all players are in the Main Phase 2, the end phase is automatically reached.

Victory Conditions

A game of SCRY is over once either a player’s life points have been reduced 0 or 5-7 turns have passed. The winner in both cases is the player with the highest life points. 

Notes

This game mode has only been play tested with a draft cube that does not feature extra deck monsters of any kind and is singleton. The draft rule of all monsters are all types was applied in drafting.

This game mode can also be played with two players.

How long should I expect a game to be? 

(this game mode reminds me of Legends of Runeterra turn passing system, which intrigues me) 

Including drafting a deck with other players, it took on average about an hour to finish a game. Its gotten faster once my friends got more used to the rule set and mechanics and some duels can go incredibly fast if a single player gets punished (i.e. running into a mirror force and losing all their monsters) and cannot defend themselves (i.e. not drawing any monsters) as the duel is over once a single player losses all their life points.

One minor issue I saw at the start of playing with this Ruleset was other players tend to favor passivity when faced with 3 other opponents. I recommend in this case, making an alliance with another player (preferably the player with the scariest looking board) so it becomes a 2 v 2. That prevents a pseudo coldwar where each player sits there waiting to see who acts first/who gets punished first.

(Oh nice, I shall have to look into how Legends of Runeterra works to see if I can gleam anything from its mechanics.)