Hand (original) (raw)

A hand of cards in the anime

A player's hand (Japanese: 手（て）札（ふだ） Tefuda) refers to the cards each player holds that have not yet been played. Cards that are drawn are placed in the hand, although cards can be added to the hand in other ways. Extra Deck monsters cannot exist in the hand; effects that can add them to the hand would instead return them to the Extra Deck face-down. As the name suggests, such cards are generally held in a player's physical hand.

At the start of a Duel, each player draws until they have five cards in their hand, and at the start of each turn (except for the first player's first turn), during the Draw Phase, the turn player draws one card.

From the hand, among other things: Monster Cards can be Normal Summoned/Set, Pendulum Monsters can be activated in the Pendulum Zone, Spell Cards can be activated, Spell/Trap Cards (except Field Spell Cards) can be Set in the Spell & Trap Zone, and Field Spell Cards can be Set in the Field Zone.

During the End Phase, the turn player must discard cards until their hand meets the hand size limit of six cards.

Certain effects can interact with cards in players' hands. For example, "Spirit Reaper" can discard 1 card from the opponent's hand as part of its effect, and "Exchange" allows one card from the hand to be swapped with one card from the opponent's hand. Many effects have costs that require discarding a card(s) from the hand, such as "Raigeki Break"; these effects cannot be activated unless there are enough cards in the hand to pay the cost.

In other languages[edit]

"Hand" in languages other than English

See also[edit]

• Hand size limit