Explaining Priority Ruling

As most people know the TCG recently had the March 2011 Priority Ruling implemented into their play. Due to the complexity of YGO rulings in general, some players fail to grasp what this ruling actually does.

The official word is that Ignition effects no longer have fast effect timing or priority of whatever bullshit they call it. This simply means what it says, Ignition effects no longer have priority.

However to the layman they assume any effect will not be able to activate if the summon was somehow disrupted by say, Bottomless Trap Hole or Compulsory Evacuation Device. While this is true for Ignition effects, the same cannot be said for Trigger and Quick effects.

I'm sure all youse testing your Gadget builds hav had your Gearframes BTH and told you cannot search. This is UNTRUE, as Gearframe's effect is a Trigger effect. Trigger effects are effects that are activated when some sort of condition or action is met, ie there must be some sort of window for which the Trigger effect can activate. In Gearframe's example, the condition would be its Normal Summon. Other example would be E-HERO Airman (Stratos) and Tour Guide of the Underworld.

Quick effects are another type of effects which are not affected by the new ruling. They are similar to Ignition effects in that they can be activated for no reason in the Main Phase without any specific window required for some of them. A simple way to distinguish them are effects that can activate during the opponent's turn ie Stardust Dragon, Shi'en and Enishi. Note that certain conditions must still be in place for some of the to activate in the first place. The reason these effects are not affected by the ruling is because they are Spell Speed 2, and can be chained to the activation of those disruption traps.

While lesser seen, Continuous effects are DEFINIATELY NOT affected by the priority ruling. Effects such as Jinzo are active the moment the summon is successful, and cannot be Bottomless-ed just cause priority is gone. They have no Spell Speed, and hence are not part of any Chain.

You can check what the effect types of your cards on Yugioh Wikia, some cards are Quick just BKSS. It is good to know whether or not your stuff is affected by the priority ruling. The big decks that get hit are still Rabbit and Wind-Ups in the TCG, as their decks revolve mainly around Ignition of Rabbit and Hunter. Even Zenmaighty's effect is Ignition. Laggia's effect is Quick and so is Dolkka's.

Solemn Warning and Judgement and any counter trap that writes "negate the summon" means just that, with the summon negated the monster won't even have the chance to activate any Trigger or Quick effect, let alone Ignition. So please don't crap that it was a Trigger effect.