The Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V anime is in full swing, so now’s a great time to get acquainted with Pendulum Monsters, the mysterious hybrid Monster Cards featured in the series!

Pendulum Monster Cards look like they have half of an Effect Monster’s border and half of a Spell Card’s border smashed together. That’s intentional, because Pendulum Monster Cards can be Summoned as monsters OR activated as Spell Cards, and they do different things depending on which way you play them! When you Summon Pendulum Monster Cards, you play them in your Monster Zones like you would any other monster, but when you want to activate them as Spell Cards, they go in one of your two Pendulum Zones instead of a Spell & Trap Zone. That’s really useful because it doesn’t take up any Spell & Trap Zones that you’d normally want to use for defensive cards or powerful Spell Cards like Raigeki or Allure of Darkness.

Monster Cards are generally put in the Graveyard when they’re destroyed, but Pendulum Monster Cards are a little different. When a Pendulum Monster Card on the field is destroyed or would be sent to the Graveyard, even if it’s being used as a Spell Card, that card is placed face-up on top of your Extra Deck instead of being sent to the Graveyard. Pendulum Monster Cards that would go to the Graveyard from anywhere else go to the Graveyard as normal. That’s a double-edged sword, because on the one hand there are tons of cards that get monsters back from the Graveyard that generally won’t work on Pendulum Monster Cards, but on the other hand, there’s a way to get all of your Pendulum Monster Cards back from the Extra Deck all at once: Pendulum Summoning!

A Pendulum Summon is a type of Special Summon similar to Synchro Summoning or Xyz Summoning that the game rules allow you to do if you meet the right conditions. For Pendulum Summoning, you need to have a card in both of your Pendulum Zones during one of your Main Phases. If you do, you can declare a Pendulum Summon of any number of monsters from your hand and any number of face-up Pendulum Monsters from your Extra Deck whose Levels are all between the Pendulum Scales (that’s the number on the sides of the card) of the cards in your Pendulum Zones. So if you have a card that’s Pendulum Scale 2 and one that’s Pendulum Scale 7, you can Pendulum Summon monsters whose Levels are 3, 4, 5 or 6.

You can only Pendulum Summon once during each of your turns, and you can’t Pendulum Summon monsters that have their own rules for Special Summoning that you have to follow, like Ritual Monsters or Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning, but that doesn’t mean that Pendulum Summoning can’t immediately swing a Duel back in your favor! 

If you’re interested in trying Pendulum Monster Cards out, there are a bunch of them in Starter Deck – Yuya and Shining Victories , both of which are available now!