Schoolyard Rules
For the most part, Schoolyard format uses all the same rules as modern Yu-Gi-Oh formats, but some adjustments needed to be made in order to make this format work.
All players share one 80-card deck, and one graveyard.
If the deck runs out of cards, the graveyard is shuffled back into the deck.
A deck cannot contain more than one copy of any given card.
No archetype synergies are allowed in the deck.
There is no extra deck.
Starting player is decided by the highest roll of a die, then game proceeds in clockwise order.
Player count starting rules (updated June 4th 2026):
For 2-player games, first player does not draw or attack while the second player does draw and can attack.
For 3-4 player games, all players draw a card on turn one and the last player in turn order can attack.
The buff/debuff dice are roll during each player’s standby phase. There are three 6-sided dice:
One die with the different attributes on each side.
One die with three of the sides indicating buff, and the other three indicating debuff.
One die with 6 different values: 100, 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000
When playing any card that says “Opponent” the person who played the card chooses which opponent to apply the affect to, while any other verbiage (all, both, each, etc.) will apply the effect to all players and/or cards they control. For example:
Raigeki says “ Destroys all of your opponent‘s monsters on the field” so the person playing the card will choose another player and all of that chosen players monsters will be destroyed.
Dark Hole says “Destroy all monsters on the field.” so every player’s monsters would be destroyed.
For a card like creature swap, each player will choose a creature and give control of it to the player to their left.
Only players with legal targets participate.
When an opponent triggers an effect, that effect is applied to that opponent. (rule added June 4th, 2026)
For example: Player A attacks Player B, then Player C activates Magic Cylinder. The effect of Magic Cylinder is then applied to Player A. It cannot be applied to Player D.
When a player is eliminated, their entire hand and field are sent to the graveyard.
Column effects are not applied.
These rule are subject to change and will certainly evolve as the format grows, but after a great deal of testing I feel confident in putting out this rule set.