XYZ Monsters! (ik-seez)
Alrighty! Moving on from Pendulum and Link Monsters, we have now found ourselves at the first instance of a game-changing monster type. XYZ Monsters not only changed how decks were built, but how the game was played, introducing their very unique summoning conditions. Today we’ll talk about how they differ from normal monsters, and how to summon them.
An XYZ Monster Card is black in color and goes in the Extra Deck with all the other monster types we’ve talked about thus far. Similarly to Link Monsters, XYZ Monsters don’t have a Level, but instead of the Link Number that Link Monsters have, XYZ Monsters have a Rank, the Rank is represented in the top right corner of the card, in the same location that a Normal Monster’s Level would be. The Rank of the XYZ Monster corresponds to the required Level of the Monsters used to summon it. In order to summon an XYZ Monster you must “overlay” monsters of the same level. Overlaying is when you take one Monster and put it on top of another, in a staggered fashion so that the far right side of the bottom card is still visible. When you want to summon an XYZ Monster from your Extra Deck you must Overlay however many Monsters of the required level as the XYZ Monster specifies, and then place the XYZ Monster on top of the overlaid monsters in the Extra Monster Zone or any Linked Zone.
XYZ Monsters have very unique effects usually focusing on the use of the overlaid monsters (Called XYZ Materials) that were used to summon them. Take for example the effect of Number 39: Utopia: “When another player’s monster declares an attack: You can detach 1 XYZ Material from this card; Negate the attack. When this card is targeted for an attack, while it has no XYZ Materials: Destroy this card.” Number 39: Utopia uses its XYZ Materials as a shield of sorts, and therefore, when the shields are down, it is destroyed.
XYZ Monsters other than their summon conditions and ranks instead of levels work the exact same as a normal monster. They have an ATK and DEF, get sent to the GY when destroyed, and some have monster effects, while some do not.
I hope this cleared up any and all confusion you had regarding XYZ Monsters, feel free to PM me with any other questions! Next time we will take a look at Synchro Monsters! If there is a specific card type or a specific issue you’re having trouble with or would like me to write about, feel free to let me know!
