Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel: What Is Xyz Summoning?

thegamer.com:

Yu-Gi-Oh! is full of ways to grab powerful monsters from your extra deck onto the battlefield, but one of the most flexible and unpredictable ways is with Xyz Summoning. First introduced in the Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL anime, XYZ Summoning transforms your monsters into materials to drive the effects of your even more powerful Xyz Monsters.

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Whether you're playing in paper or on Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel, Xyz is the focal point for a lot of the game's most popular archetypes. Here is everything you need to know about Xyz Summoning.

Xyz Monsters are the stars of an Xyz deck. Like almost all Special Summon-specific monsters, Xyz Monsters are placed face-down in your Extra Deck, where they can be summoned through their own mechanic, called Xyz Summoning.

Xyz Monsters can be identified by their black frame, with every Xyz Monster having at least some black on the frame somewhere. Most of the time, it will be complete, but Xyz Pendulum Monsters also split the frame between the Xyz Black and a spell card's green.

Most Xyz Monsters have abilities that can either attach or detach 'Xyz Materials' (we'll get to that). For example, Snowdust Giant allows you to detach one Xyz Material from it to reveal as many water-attribute monsters from your hand, and produce that many Ice Counters to weaken every non-Water monster by 200ATK each.

This is what makes Xyz Monsters so tricky. They are big, heavy hitters, and they have can have lots of different effects that can be activated at almost any time.

Xyz Materials are cards that are placed underneath your Xyz Monster (similarly to Magic the Gathering's Mutate mechanic).

The materials you use to Xyz Summon a monster are placed underneath it, as