SEGOC, and chain-blocking Sacred
At the time of writing, in the TCG, all Trigger Effects that would activate simultaneously, will start a single Chain. This is called SEGOC, or "Simultaneous Effects Go On Chain".
SEGOC rules work as follows - whenever multiple trigger effects would activate at the same time, they will activate in the following order:
- The turn player's mandatory effects
- The opponent's mandatory effects
- The turn player's optional effects
- The opponent's optional effects
If multiple effects are part of the same category, the respective player chooses the order in which they are activated.
Making use of this ruling can help you protect important effects from a large number of interruptions. This is called chain-blocking and it is an important concept to grasp in order to play effectively.
This often comes up after using Fire King Island - you'll destroy, for example, a Fire King Avatar Arvata and search Sacred Fire King Garunix. If Arvata has a valid target in the GY, you can activate both Arvata and Sacred, and decide which order they go in.
A beginner player might activate Arvata first, and then Sacred. The opponent now has an opportunity to respond to Sacred's activation, potentially negating it with Dominus Impulse. This can be disastrous for us, as we heavily rely on Sacred resolving to get any of our combos going.
Doing the reverse is much safer - Arvata could potentially get negated, but it hurts much less in the long run. Pay attention to what effects you activate, and to the order you activate them in.
A note on simulators
Some simulators, like EDOPro (which was used to record the replays throughout this guide), abide by OCG rulings, meaning SEGOC works much differently - first, effects activate in public knowledge areas (like the GY), then in private knowledge areas (like the hand). As such, all the replays in this guide had to activate Sacred last.
To fix this, in EDOPro you can activate the "TCG SEGOC" custom rule when creating your lobby.
If you use other simulators for practice, check with the developers or their community to see which rulings they abide by.
At the time of writing, the following simulators use:
- Master Duel - OCG rulings
- EDOPro - OCG rulings, custom rule for TCG rulings
- Dueling Nexus - OCG rulings
- YGO Omega - OCG rulings in OCG queues, TCG rulings in TCG queues