Priority

Interpreting Priority is what can turn a Good Player into a Great Player.

Take the following Scenario:

Player A has a face-up D.D. Warrior Lady. He sets a face-down Spell/Trap Card, and ends his turn.

Player B Normal Summons Exiled Force. Player A activates Trap Hole.

Here, Priority falls to Player B, seeing as he is the Turn Player. Summoning a Monster does not have a Spell Speed, and thus Player A cannot chain Trap Hole to it's summoning. Player B chooses to activate Exiled Force's Ignition Effect. Player A has effectively chained Trap Hole to Exiled Force's effect, which is Spell Speed 1.

Player B successfully Tribute's Exiled Force to Destroy Player A's D.D. Warrior Lady. This is because Tributing Exiled Force is a cost to activate it's own ability, and since a player cannot be beaten to a cost, Exiled Force is no longer on the field when Trap Hole resolves. Player A's Trap Hole no longer has a Target, and thus cannot Resolve

As a general rule of thumb, Ignition effects can be activated as soon as the monster hits the field, via a Successful Summon. The opposing player may chain a Spell or Trap Card to destroy the monster, but since a Summon cannot be chained to, he/she must chain to the effect, if the turn player chooses to activate it. Since an activated Spell or Trap Card resolves first, since it was the last link in the Chain, the monster with the effect would be destroyed, but unless the Spell or Trap Card negated the effect of the monster, the Effect would still Resolve, even if the monster is no longer on the field after the effect was activated.

The most important thing to understand, is that, unless a monster card has a Multi-Trigger effect, a monster card can never have priority, since their effects are all Spell Speed 1, and thus cannot be used against anything, not even each other. The Turn Player, however, always has priority with an Ignition Effect, as soon as the monster who can use it hits the field.

Here are some examples of cards that a turn player would be able to call Priority with when using them:


 * Barrel Dragon
 * Blowback Dragon
 * Chaos Sorcerer
 * Exiled Force
 * Hand of Nephthys
 * Tribe-Infecting Virus