Today’s topic is on negating activations. This simple phenomenon has some surprisingly complex effects on a duel. But before I get into any of that, perhaps we should define what “negate” actually means in Yu-Gi-Oh!
To “negate” something essentially means to cancel it out, to make it like it isn’t there. It’s as simple as that, really. If you negate an effect, you’ve canceled it out. If you negate an activation, it’s like it never happened.
There’s a huge difference between negating an activation and simply negating an effect. To negate the activation of a card or effect means that you have canceled that activation entirely. There’s really no analogy I can give that would perfectly illustrate this, but here’s the best I can do. The best example might be to say that it’s like erasing something from a record of events. Like saying something exceptionally offensive in court and the judge orders it stricken from the record (with the exception of “Thank you”).
Negating an effect is very different. Here’s an example that should illustrate it perfectly: You move to turn on a lamp, but someone else gets their first. This other person unscrews the light bulb. They don’t stop you from turning the switch on, but nothing will happen when you do. That is what negating an effect is. An in-game example would be activating a Trap Card while
Royal Decree is face-up. You can still activate the Trap Card, but it’ll do about as much good as flipping a light switch with the bulb unscrewed.
Negating an activation is a bit more complex than that. As far as I know, there are no Continuous Effects that negate activations (
Great Dezard is up for debate), so that makes things a bit easier. However, it’s still tough to explain and understand. We’ll look at an example to figure it out.
Rick activates
Pot of Duality from his hand. His opponent, Seth, Chains to it with
Dark Bribe. Neither player wishes to respond to that, so the Chain begins resolving.
Dark Bribe negates the activation of
Pot of Duality and destroys it, while also letting Rick draw one card. After all of that’s done, it comes time for Duality to resolve. But since its activation was negated, nothing happens. The gamestate has completely forgotten that Duality was activated at all.
Here’s what I mean when I say the gamestate has “forgotten” that
Pot of Duality was activated.
Pot of Duality has two conditions on it: The first is that you cannot Special Summon in the same turn that you activate it; and the second is that you can only activate one copy of
Pot of Duality per turn. By negating the activation of Duality, Seth has made the gamestate “believe” that it never happened. As far as the duel itself is concerned, Duality was never played. This means that Rick can either Special Summon or activate another copy of
Pot of Duality this turn.
I should probably note here that negating a Special Summon directly (i.e. negating a Synchro Summon with
Solemn Warning) will NOT create the same situation. An attempt at Special Summoning was still noted, so Duality could not be played that turn. The same thing holds true if an effect that Special Summons is activated, but that effect- and NOT its activation- is negated, i.e.
Effect Veiler is chained to the effect of
Tin Goldfish.
However, if
Monster Reborn is activated and the activation is negated (such as by Warning or Bribe), then no Special Summon was attempted- resolution of the card never happened, so you never got to try to Special Summon- and so Duality CAN be played this turn.
https://ygorulestheory.wordpress.com/category/rules/card-interactions/negation-card-interactions/negating-effects/
Przyda się. Pamiętajcie, że tekst dotyczy efektów mających w zapisie słowo
activate. Efekty mające w zapisie
use są ponad to, ponieważ karta/efekt, których
aktywacja została zanegowana wciąż liczą się jako
użyte.