Yu-Gi-Oh! Cross Duel's Four-Player Battles Could Revolutionize the Main Card Game

gamerant.com:

Yu-Gi-Oh Cross Duel is the latest spin-off of the original Yu-Gi-Oh trading card game, creating a new format that could influence the original card game if it takes off. With the passing of Yu-Gi-Oh creator Kazuki Takahashi, the series is now entering into an era far beyond the creative vision that birthed it, and the game itself is following suit.

The Yu-Gi-Oh card game has never shied away from changes to its formula, and for a while, it introduced an extra deck monster alongside its new series releases, beginning with synchro monsters and, at the time of writing, ending with link monsters. These sometimes brought huge shifts to the rules and eventually led to new play formats, which include Speed Duels, Rush Duels, and now Cross Duels.

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The bones of the Cross Duel have their roots in the Speed Duel, which itself is a stripped down version of the original format of Yu-Gi-Oh as seen in games like Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel, which even bans and limits Yu-Gi-Oh cards for the same reasons as the physical game. Like Speed Duels, Cross Duels give each player three monster zones and three spell/trap zones, as well as 4000 life points for each player. That, however, is where the similarities end.

Each monster zone is linked to another player: one to the right, one ot the left, and one straight across. When a player has a monster in attack mode, it travels one zone towards the enemy player's monster zone at the start of the Battle Phase. Monsters that encounter each other battle, reducing their Atk points (or Def points if one monster is in defense mode) by their opponent's total. When Atk or Def reaches 0, a monster is destroyed. Monsters that reach their opponent's zone inflict