We’ve talked before in these headers about how the Yu-Gi-Oh card game is technically two separate card games: the Official Card Game (or “OCG”), which is played in Asia, and the Trading Card Game (or “TCG”), which is played everywhere else. 90% of the time this is a distinction without a difference. The games have slightly different card pools (sets come out earlier in the OCG, and both games have timed exclusives from various sources) and since 2014 maintain separate ban lists, but the cards all work the same way, and someone familiar with one game could effortlessly and instantly pick up the other.

However, by far the biggest difference is that the OCG has a Master Rules Document, and the TCG does not. Casual TCG players in the audience may remember the small paper booklet that comes with Yu-Gi-Oh starter decks and which explains the rules of the game. This is merely a summary of the basics, and does not cover many important concepts. This is common for TCGs; Magic: The Gathering has a 252 page Comprehensive Rules Document that judges may consult whenever they need to resolve a tricky rules interaction, and also a much smaller, non-comprehensive webpage meant for new players.

So, when players or judges need to understand a tricky situation in the TCG, their options are limited. If it’s not covered by the basic rules booklet, maybe it’s covered in a strategy article on the official website. Or maybe it’s covered by a rules insert in a structure deck1Tiny, one-page deals that explain a specific advanced rules interaction relevant to the mechanics of that structure deck.. Or maybe an official ruling released alongside the set. (At least, before they stopped doing those.) But if it’s not covered in those, then the official stance of the Yu-Gi-Oh TCG is “idk your head judge can figure it out”.

Except, in practice it’s not quite that chaotic. Remember how TCG and OCG players can migrate effortlessly between games? That’s because, on a long enough timeline, every TCG ruling falls in line with the OCG Master Rules Document. Which makes sense, right? All the cards are designed in Japan, even the ones that start as TCG-exclusives. The TCG being a technically separate entity is just because the rights to the Yu-Gi-Oh card game are a weird clusterfuck2I believe that the company that publishes the manga, the company that produces the anime, the company that produces the card game, AND the original manga artist himself all own a piece , not an actual deliberate choice. And so “idk your head judge can figure it out” means in practice that the judge will just ask designated bilingual fans to tell them what the rulings are in Japan and then use those. (The designated fans are part of a group called “The Organization” modeled directly off of Organization XIII from Kingdom Hearts because of course they are)

Sometimes it can take a minute, though, especially for cards that debut in the TCG. There are plenty of these cards that have had wildly, obviously incorrect rulings applied by judges until Japan got the card and laid down the law. Often, these rulings “just so happen” to make new, in-demand decks better, and the correct rulings come down right about when the deck goes out of print. Long-time player will remember Inzektor Hopper being activated even during the first player’s first turn, or XX-Saber Darksoul getting a search for every time it touched the graveyard that turn, neither of which I have the time to explain today.

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However, this loosey-goosey scheme has occasionally backfired spectacularly. Let us examine the nonsense that went down at YCS3Yu-Gi-Oh Championship Series, the main competitive tournament for the TCG Meadowlands (2013). This was the first tournament where the set “Hidden Arsenal 7: Knight of Stars” was legal, meaning the debut of two new archetypes: Evilswarm and Constellar. These archetypes are more-or-less mirrors of each other, featuring very similar cards. We’re concerned today with one pair, that of Evilswarm Castor and Constellar Pollux. These cards both read:

During the turn this card was Normal Summoned, you can Normal Summon 1 “lswarm”/”Constellar” monster in addition to your Normal Summon/Set. (You can only gain this effect once per turn.)

(And yes, that “lswarm” is correct. It’s not “Evilswarm” for Reasons)

This is a deceptively tricky effect; the way it works is, if the normal summon of Castor or Pollux is not negated, and if its effect is not negated from the exact second it touches the field4Say, due to the effect of an already face-up Skill Drain, then the player who summoned them gets the extra normal summon, and it cannot be taken away by any means. It doesn’t matter what happens to the monster at this point; it could get destroyed, its effect could be negated by a card like Fiendish Chain or Effect Veiler, whatever. That second summon can still happen.

Despite this being somewhat weird, players were fully aware of how they worked. These cards had existed in the OCG for over a year by the time they made it over to the TCG, and were highly anticipated. Thanks to The Organization, everyone knew this interaction. Everyone, that is, except for the Head Judge at YCS Meadowlands.

See, he didn’t put stock in these “fan translations”. Maybe they could be wrong technically. So instead, he looked at the card Dverg of the Nordic Alfar, a card from two years prior that nobody else even remembered on account of it being bad. That card had the same exact wording as Castor and Pollux, he reasoned, and it had an Official Ruling stating that if it was removed from the field or had its effect negated the second normal summon disappeared. Therefore, he concluded that screw what the OCG says; if you negate or remove Castor or Pollux before the second normal summon is conducted, you can deny your opponent that summon altogether.

Now, an active reader might be wondering “well gee, this sounds very reasonable. After all, Dverg did have the exact same wording. Why should it work differently?” Unfortunately, Yu-Gi-Oh doesn’t work that way. Specifically, in July 2011 (after the release of Dverg and before the release of Castor/Pollux) there was a little something called Problem Solving Card Text, a new way of wording cards that made basic rules way easier to understand and generally made the game a lot more playable5Like, before PSCT you couldn’t even know for sure if a card targeted or not, since cards that targeted never actually used that word. Absolute amateur hour, and it took 10 years of the game being printed in the TCG to be addressed.. PSCT was such a seismic shift that it’s not actually safe to assume cards that share the same wording pre- and post- PSCT would work the same as each other. Like, the fact that Castor and Pollux don’t have any colons or semicolons means for a fact that their effects don’t start a chain, but the fact that Dverg doesn’t have any means nothing, cards just didn’t have those back then.

Nevertheless, that’s what our intrepid head judge decided, causing dozens of players who bought the latest sets to learn at the last minute that their decks were a whole lot worse. As you can imagine, this was a massive controversy. Players were quite rightly livid having the rug pulled out from under them after spending a couple hundred dollars on new cards. And this wasn’t going to go away; Evilswarms especially were projected to have a place in the coming metagame as a counter to Dragon Rulers. And while Konami of America are quite willing to slow-roll rules corrections when the incorrect ruling makes new cards more desirable, they weren’t about to let this pedantic weirdo spoil their latest set. So three days after the YCS they issued an official correction, clarifying that Castor and Pollux work the way literally everyone in the world minus one thought they did, and updating Dverg to work this way too for good measure6Was Dverg originally ruled incorrectly, and this is how it always worked in the OCG, or is this itself an incorrect ruling and Dverg was always meant to be more vulnerable than Castor/Pollux? No one knows, because I cannot stress enough how irrelevant a card Dverg is.. They did slip in an…interesting perspective about the head judge’s fuckup, saying:

This was obviously the correct ruling to make, considering the identical text of the cards, knowledge of Problem-Solving Card Text, and the published Storm of Ragnarok rulebook.

Which, okay, sure guys. Sure. Really they’re just covering for Their Guy here, since power protects power, even when that power is as petty as regional authority over the rules of the Yu-Gi-Oh card game. The fact that this ruling needed to be corrected less than a week after it was given is surely incidental. But I’m sure Konami learned a very valuable lesson from this whole incident, and has full, official translations of the Master Rules available in the TCG to prevent this very situation from ever happening again.

….right?

Anyway, not too long after this there was a literally years-long fight over whether or not The Transmigration Prophecy can stop the effects of Atlantean monsters, featuring an unofficial-but-consistent difference in rulings between North America and Europe that NA judges literally refused to acknowledge existed. I remember that one really heating up in winter of 2014, and it was eventually resolved via an official rules change in April of 2020. That didn’t prompt a translation of the Master Rules either. Yu-Gi-Oooooooooh!