If you go to yugioh.wikia.com you’re sure to find thousands of pages, each dedicated to one specific card. Each card has an associated rulings page, and each associated rulings page always seems to have two rules. You either can or can’t use a card during the Damage Step, and the card either does or doesn’t “target.”

This is because in the OCG they don’t have PSCT, and before having it, knowing if a card targeted sometimes even came right down to word of mouth. Nowadays, PSCT makes it easy to see if a card targets; it literally will say “Target 1 X;”.

But PSCT also tells us one more thing, and that’s how to resolve the card, and how it will affect its target….if it can at all.

So what happens if the target is lost? In Yu-Gi-Oh!, a targeted card must remain exactly the same way it was when first targeted, in order for the targeting effect to resolve. That is, unless the card says otherwise. This is not clear on the original text of Effect Veiler, but let’s take a closer look at the PSCT version of the card.

Seems pretty good. We can tell when to use it, as that comes before a colon “During your opponent’s Main Phase:” and since the next part is before a semi-colon, we can tell it happens at activation, and is a cost, to send (not discard) it from your hand to the Graveyard (so if it would be banished, it couldn’t be used) to target 1 face-up Effect Monster that your opponent controls. It says that we negate “that target’s” effects until the End Phase.

So what can we infer from this?

When the resolution text (that is, the part after the semi-colon) says “that target”, it means the point in the game when you are resolving the card. You go back and check the targeting conditions again: “1 face-up Effect monster your opponent controls”. If this is no longer true, then “Effect Veiler” will fail! This is why if you chain Book of Moon to Effect Veiler, and flip your monster into face-down Defense Position, Effect Veiler will fail; it’s no longer 1 “face-up” Effect Monster that you control.

Noble Knights are a really cool deck, and knowing how targeting works and when a card doesn’t target (…looking at you Memory of an Adversary/Spellbook of Fate) can really change the outcome of your Duels. I hope this information helps and that you learned something from this article. I look forward to writing another one soon, but until then, be sure to have fun.