If you are a returning Yu-Gi-Oh fan picking up Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel as your first foray into the competitive card game in a long time, some of the new summoning mechanics might be a bit confusing at first. Depending when you last picked up a duel disk, many of the new summoning techniques might look like magic or cheating when you first see them, including the Pendulum cards. Don’t worry though, Pendulum Summoning looks more complicated than it really is. Here’s how Pendulum cards work in Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel.
How Pendulum cards work
Pendulum cards are special monster cards, which are marked by their distinct green lower half. Unlike other new types of monsters like XYZ and Link, Pendulum monsters go into the main deck and can function like normal monsters. What makes Pendulum cards unique is that in addition to having a monster level, Pendulum cards also have a Pendulum level, indicated by the gem icon on the card. The way Pendulum summoning works is that you put two Pendulum monsters in your spell zone, on the two far sides.
Once per turn, you can summon any Pendulum monsters from your hand that are in the level range determined by the two Pendulum monsters on the field. If the one on the left is a 2 and the one on the right is an 8, you can summon monsters level 3 through 7. This can only be performed once per turn, but you can summon as many monsters as possible. If either of the Pendulum monsters in the spell zone are destroyed, they are placed face up on the extra deck. When Pendulum summoning, one face up Pendulum monster in the extra deck can be summoned in addition to card from your hand.
