Synchro Monster

Synchro Monsters are a type of Monster Card, first released in Starter Deck 2008. The color of their card frame is white. These cards are placed in the Extra Deck.

Synchro Monsters require Tuner Monsters to be face-up on your Field. When the total Level of the Tuner monster and any other face-up monsters on your Field exactly matches the Level of the Synchro Monster you wish to Summon (no more or less); by sending them to the Graveyard, you can "Synchro Summon" the Synchro monster. Some Synchro Monsters require a specific "Tuner Monster" in order to be Synchro Summoned (such as "Junk Synchron" for "Junk Warrior") or monsters of a particular Type or Attribute as Material Monsters, but many do not, so they can be in just about any Extra Deck.

Because Synchro Monsters belong in the Extra Deck, they return there whenever they would be returned to the hand or Main Deck, like Fusion Monsters before.ref Also, like Fusion Monsters, they cannot be Special Summoned from the Graveyard if they were not properly Synchro Summoned first.

Some players have begun to use the term 'Synchronize,' 'Sync,' or 'Tune/Tuning' to then list which Tuner Monster and non-Tuner monsters will be sent to the Graveyard when they perform a Synchro Summon and summoning a Synchro Monster. (i.e. "I Tune my 'Quillbolt Hedgehog' [LV2] and 'Speed Warrior' [LV2] with my 'Junk Synchron' [LV3] to Synchro Summon 'Junk Archer' [LV7, requires 'Junk Synchron' as the Tuner]!")

There are currently no Aqua or Fish-Type Synchro Monsters in TCG or OCG. However, Konami has released Synchros for certain Archetypes of monsters, including the Aliens, Iron Chain, XX-Sabers, and Blackwing monsters.

Strategically speaking, Synchro Monsters allow for a large amount of rapid power to be summoned to the field with relative ease and speed. Most of them have very potent effects in addition to their ease in summoning. They do not necessarily always have card advantage over Fusion Monsters because a player might use up as many cards getting all of the Material Monsters on the field to perform a Synchro summon in one turn, but they have the advantage of increased flexibility and speed over Fusion Monsters due to the fact that many of them have very unspecific requirements for them to be summoned, so a player with a Tuner monster and a non-Tuner monster on the field will always have one or more options for summoning, especially if card effects that allow Levels to be changed are used.

See different methods for Synchro Summoning than the original: Accel Synchro & Double Tuning

Trivia
Several Warrior-type Synchro Monsters, especially the ones used by Yusei in the anime, actually resemble other types of monsters than the ones printed on the cards (Junk Warrior, Drill Warrior and Turbo Warrior all look like Machine-types and Nitro Warrior looks like a Fiend-type).

Also see List of Synchro Monsters See Also: "Synchro Summon". See Also: "Special Summon".