Lesson 6: Costs

Costs are a complicated mechanic of Yugioh or can be, but basically a cost is something you have to do when you activate an effect, keep a card on the field, or perform any action in general. Costs can include, but are not limited to Banishing a monster, Paying Life points, Tributing, and Discarding. If a cost cannot be paid, the effect does not activate, For example, you cannot activate Fire fist Bear's effect to send a fire formation tenki to the graveyard as cost if macro cosmos is on the field, so he cannot be activated.  Ok so now that we have established what the hell a cost actually is, let's explore the different types of costs.

Activation Cost
An activation cost is something you do before so you can activate the effect. (example:Trade-in discard a level 8)This is indicated by a semi-colon in the text or, if the card does not have PSCT the word "to". The important thing about this is that the cost cannot be negated, and occurs at activation, not resolution. So effects with activation costs, first pay the cost and if the timing is correct up to the colon, the effect resolves, then the effect starts a chain or is placed on chain, the effect resolves after both players decide whether or not to chain to the effect, and happens in its specific chain link, given that there is a chain. Also, if a cost starts with " You can..." the effect is optional and the cost is only payed if the player wants to use the effect.

Costs From Continuous effects
Continuous effects, such as chain energy have a cost on performing options ,such as summoning a monster or declaring an attack. What we need to know about these is that if the player cannot pay the cost for said action, they cannot perform said action (ex: gravekeeper's servant if they cant mill no attack)

Maintenance Cost
Now these are complex, but basically a maintenance cost is a cost you pay to keep a card on the field (Example: pay 400 life points in your standby phase or destroy this card) , these costs are normally paid in the end phase or standby phase, if it is a life point cost, and they dont have enough life points, the card would go, and if it is exact amount of lifepoints, the player pays them and is forced to lose the duel at that point. Maintenance costs cannot be negated nor do they start a chain link.Also even if the card is negated, the cost has to be paid (example: you still pay 1000 for skill drain if jinzo is on the field but skill drain is still negatead) And thats it on Maintenance costs the raw essentials basically.


Ok so that concludes Our lesson on costs, if anybody has a question pertaining to costs, critiques, or feedback in general feel free to let me know and I am sorry i havent posted many lessons lately its just nobody seems to care about them, but i do them anyway, anyways hopefully now we can be more educated on what a cost is .