Victory condition

Victory condition
Japanese (base text)	勝利条件
Japanese (romanized)	Shōri Jōken
English	Victory Condition
Other names French: Condition de victoire German: Siegbedingung Italian: Condizione di Vittoria Portuguese: Condição de Vitória Spanish: Condición de Victoria Korean: 승리 조건 (勝利條件) Seungni Jogeon Traditional Chinese: 勝利條件 Shènglì Tiáojiàn / Sing3 lei6 Tiu4 gin2

Victory conditions (勝利条件 Shōri Jōken) refer to the various ways a player can win a Duel or Match.

Standard victory conditions

These are the typical ways to win a Duel in the game's mechanics.

• Your opponent's Life Points are reduced to 0.
• Your opponent is required to draw a card, but has no cards left in their Main Deck.

A player can also win a Duel if their opponent surrenders, or is issued a Game Loss penalty in a tournament. In addition, most tournament Duels are timed; if time runs out and the Duel has not ended, the player with more Life Points wins. If Life Points are tied, the Duel will continue until the first change in Life Points happens ("sudden death").

If both players satisfy a victory condition at the same time, then the Duel ends in a DRAW.

If one of these victory conditions is met while an effect is still resolving (i.e. "Ring of Destruction" or "Flowerbot"), the Duel ends immediately without resolving the rest of that effect.

A Match is typically won by winning two Duels. In tournaments, Matches can also be won by the opponent forfeiting the match or receiving a Match Loss penalty, or by time running out when the player has won a Duel while the opponent has not.

Alternate victory conditions

If one of these special victory conditions is met while resolving a card effect, victory cannot be declared until after that effect completely resolves and the victory condition still remains true.

Duel winners

Main article: Duel winner

Since the beginning of the game, there have existed cards whose effects provide alternate ways to win a Duel. The first and arguably the most famous of these is "Exodia the Forbidden One". There are currently a total of fourteen Duel winner cards released in the OCG or TCG.

Match winners

Main article: Match winner

A series of monsters, known as the Match winners, all possess the effect that if they successfully attack your opponent directly and make their Life Points 0 by the battle damage it inflicted (sometimes with additional conditions), then you win the entire Match instead of just the Duel. All Match winners printed are illegal to use in official Duels, except for "Victory Dragon", which is instead currently Forbidden.

In the anime

In the anime, five duels have been won using an alternate victory condition: Yami Yugi against Seto Kaiba, Seeker against Joey Wheeler, Noah Kaiba against Seto Kaiba, Yami Yugi against Dartz, Jaden Yuki against Harrington Rosewood, and Adrian Gecko against Aster Phoenix.

Duelists such as Seeker, Yami Bakura, Seto Kaiba, Dartz, Harrington Rosewood, Thelonious Viper, Yubel (through Marcel Bonaparte), Adrian Gecko, Quattro, Don Thousand, and Nash have attempted to win using an alternate victory condition, albeit unsuccessfully.

Removing or replacing victory conditions

These cards have effects that remove or replace the standard victory conditions. Currently, no such effects exist in the TCG or OCG.

• "Template:Anime": In the anime, while you control this face-up card, you cannot lose the Duel.
• "Template:Anime": In the anime, this card's effect allows you to Special Summon a monster from your hand when your Life Points become 0, and makes destroying that monster your opponent's only victory condition, replacing all others. (This card has a different effect in the TCG/OCG; see "Duel winners" above.)
• "Deuce": While this card is face-up on the field, neither player can lose the Duel if their Life Points become 0. Instead, a player wins the Duel if they damage their opponent twice in a row. This is an anime-only card.
• "Infernity Zero": While you control this face-up card, you do not lose the Duel if your Life Points become 0. This card exists only in the anime and in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Tag Force series of video games from Tag Force 5 onward.
• "Zero Gate of the Void": Similar to "Relay Soul", this card's effect allows you to Special Summon "Void Ogre Dragon" if your Life Points become 0 while your field and hand are empty, and your opponent's only victory condition becomes the destruction of that monster. This is a manga-only card.

Video game automatic surrender

• "Yata-Garasu": In most video games, if a player successfully inflicts battle damage to their opponent with "Yata-Garasu" while the opponent controls no cards and has no cards in their hand, then the opponent will automatically surrender the Duel at the start of their next turn, because of the lock effect of "Yata-Garasu". This forced surrender applies to both human and CPU players, and will occur even if not surrendering would have been beneficial (such as if the controller of "Yata-Garasu" had no cards left in their Deck and would have lost had the opponent not surrendered).

Trivia

Prior to March 20, 2015 in the TCG, it was the rule that a Duel could not end in the middle of resolving a card effect. For example:

• If a player activated "Berserker Soul" and excavated a Monster Card, lowering the opponent's LP to 0 as a result, that player would still be required to keep excavating cards until they excavated a non-Monster Card or excavated a total of 8 Monster Cards, before the opponent would actually lose.

On March 20, 2015, the rules were changed for standard victory conditions only, stating that a Duel ends immediately if a player's Life Points reaches 0 or they are forced to draw a card when there are no cards in their Deck (even while an effect is still resolving). This change does not carry over to alternate victory conditions (i.e. a player draws a fifth "Forbidden One" monster by the effect of "Dark World Dealings", but cannot declare victory until after they discard). This change was presumably made in response to the then-new erratum of "Ring of Destruction" in the TCG.