Duels in Yu-Gi-Oh! are well-known and loved for their exciting and dramatic turnarounds! This year’s Starter Deck, Super Starter: Space-Time Showdown celebrates over a decade of wild rides and insane comebacks by introducing a brand new kind of Monster Card that blurs the line between Monsters and Spells...and can be played as either! They’re called Pendulum Monsters, and they can swing the scales of victory in your favor again and again. 

Pendulum Monsters are very different from a run-of-the-mill Monster Card! They’re half Monster and half Spell, so the card frames themselves are half Monster and half Spell! Every Pendulum Monster also has two text boxes—the normal one for their regular Monster Effect, and another for their special Pendulum Effect. If you want to use the regular Monster Effect, just Summon the Pendulum Monster as you would any other Monster. But when you want the special Pendulum Effect, you activate the Pendulum Monster as a Spell Card in one of the new Pendulum Zones! 

Two new Zones have been added to the field for you to use with Pendulum Monsters! This is where you put them when you want to activate them as Spell Cards and use their Pendulum Effects. But that’s not all you can do by placing Pendulum Monsters in these Zones! Once you have two Pendulum Monsters activated in your Pendulum Zones, you gain the ability to Pendulum Summon – the power to turn the tide of a Duel in your favor in an instant!

The numbers on the sides of each Pendulum Monster are its Pendulum Scale. When it’s your turn and you have a Pendulum Monster in each Pendulum Zone, you can declare a Pendulum Summon and Special Summon as many monsters from your hand as you want—as long as their Levels fall between the Pendulum Scales of your Pendulum Monsters! So with Timegazer Magician and Stargazer Magician active, you can Pendulum Summon Levels 2–7 Monsters from your hand, allowing you to amass an army of monsters instantaneously!

That would be pretty good as-is, but the Pendulum Summon is actually even better than that. Whether they’re Monsters or Spells, Pendulum Monsters are very difficult to destroy for good. Whenever a Pendulum Monster on the field goes to the Graveyard, including the ones activated as Spell Cards in your Pendulum Zones, place it face-up in your Extra Deck instead. If you have face-up Pendulum Monsters in your Extra Deck when you Pendulum Summon, you can Special Summon them from the Extra Deck in addition to any monsters you choose to Summon from your hand, as long as their Levels are also in the correct range.

Sending Pendulum Monsters to your Extra Deck doesn’t count against the maximum number of cards you can have in your Extra Deck, so feel free to play lots of Synchro, Xyz, and Fusion Monsters along with your Pendulum Monsters! In fact, if you use Pendulum Monsters on the field as Synchro or Fusion Materials, they’ll go right back to the Extra Deck so you can Pendulum Summon them again! Timegazer Magician and Stargazer Magician are just the first two Pendulum Monsters! The first full wave of Pendulum Monsters will arrive in Duelist Alliance, which includes the incredible Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon that can seek out other Pendulum Monsters by adding itself to the Extra Deck, protect your Life Points from harm and inflict double damage to your opponent!

Pick up Super Starter: Space-Time Showdown, available on July 11!