Forced Requisition

Yu-Gi-Oh Rulings
1

I enjoy creating decks that aren’t conventional, taking older cards and trying to find combos that may or may not have been explored before to forge a better understanding of the game for myself and to have fun creating and trying out combos in general.

Forced Requisition seems to be a Continuous Trap Card that a lot of people overlooked in my opinion and the reasoning from what I find is that the ruling isn’t entirely clear on it since it’s an older card and it’s harder to understand its interactions with newer cards.

The card is read as follows:

Forced Requisition

[Trap Card; Continuous]
You can activate this card when you discard from your hand. After that, each time you discard from your hand, your opponent must also discard the same number of cards from his/her hand.

It’s fairly cut and dry in my opinion. Whenever you discard from your hand, your opponent does too.

However the interaction with this card and “Costs” seems to be a debated issue that I’d like to talk about. On Yu-Gi-Oh Omega specifically the interactions seem very strange to me.
For example a card called Guarded Treasure has the following effect:

Guarded Treasure

[Spell Card; Continuous]
Activate this card by discarding 5 cards; draw 2 cards. While this card is on the field, draw 2 cards instead of 1 for your normal draw during your Draw Phase.

To me, this card would have activated Forced Requisition. You discard 5, so why wouldn’t your opponent discard 5? (Note that I’m not talking about a missed timing/when the aforementioned Trap card hasn’t been activated.) The above effect of Guarded Treasure doesn’t activate even the first effect at all much less the latter.

I find issue with this because while yes, it’s a “Cost” to use this card, to me discarding any card should be considered a “Cost” to use it. A card that DOES trigger with Forced Requisition is phrased similarly and I highlighted its effect below:

Fossil Warrior Skull King:

[Rock/Fusion/Effect]
[Rock Monster + 1 Level 7 or Higher monster]
Must be special summoned with “Fossil Fusion” This card can make a second attack during each Battle Phase. If this card attacks a Defense Position Monster, inflict piercing battle damage. During your opponent’s turn (Quick Effect) You can target one monster in your opponent’s GY; discard 1 card, and if you do Special Summon that monster to your field. You can only use this effect of “Fossil Warrior Skull King” Once per turn.

Now I’d argue that it’s talking about a cost here; the above successfully triggers the effect of forced requisition. In a similar vein here’s another card:

A Feather of the Phoenix:

[Spell Card]
Discard 1 card, then target 1 card in your GY; return that target to the top of your deck.

The above is something that has a similar effect, has the exact same “Cost” and I’d even consider less powerful compared to Fossil Warrior Skull King, yet doesn’t trigger the effect of Forced Requisition. In fact, almost nothing I’ve tried seems to Trigger it except Skull King. I brought up a single example to the Bug’s board as not interacting but I was told it was a matter of it triggering on “Costs” but I’d argue that’s the entire point of Forced Requisition, to trigger on a cost of yourself and make your opponent expend at least some kind of resource to get rid of it, whether it be a once a turn effect or discarding XYZ material.

Cards like Card Destruction and Hand Destruction also don’t seem to Trigger Forced Requisition even though in my opinion they should also do so.

Anyone else have thoughts on this?
(Also sorry if the tag is improper. Not really sure where this fits in.)

2

Are you trying to activate Forced Recquisition itself, when you discard for cost? Or is Forced Recquisition already face up and not making your opponent discard when you discard for cost?

3

Fossil Warrior Skull King triggers both regardless.

The others do not trigger either effect, whether it being first activated or making the opponent discard.

Am I just not seeing how Fossil Warrior Skull King isn’t doing something for a “Cost” compared to the other cards? It doesn’t make sense to me.
(If anyone wants I can provide a replay.)

4

Literally yes. Skull king doesn’t discard for cost, the discard is after the semicolon, so it’s part of the effect. More to that, the conjunction “and if you do” means that they are actions that take place simultaneously, meaning that it won’t miss timing for forced requisition to initially activate.

5

I am extremely confused. “Part of the effect”

Is discarding 1 card not “Part of the effect” for A Feather of the Phoenix, then?

“Discard 1 card, then target 1 card in your GY; Return that target to the top of your deck.”

" You can target one monster in your opponent’s GY; discard 1 card, and if you do Special Summon that monster to your field."

I don’t understand at all how you could consider this more or less of a cost compared to the effect of Skull King.
To me Skull King reads that if you discard 1 card after targeting an opponent’s monster in the GY, you can special summon said monster. And if you don’t discard 1 card/can’t, then you don’t get to do it.

While the Phoenix Feather reads, that if you discard 1 card, you can target something in the grave afterwards. How does it miss the timing/not work for it in comparison? I feel like a fool but don’t understand what exactly I’m missing.

Is it because the entire effect hasn’t resolved before the discard so it “misses” it in terms of the entire effect had to resolve first, and if the discard was at the end it would work?

Because to me “Then” means that the discard portion of the Phoenix feather was a separate chain that Forced Requisition should be able to activate in response to and/or to cause the discarding of opponents cards as well before all the other effects of Phoenix Feather activate.

6

To clarify “For effect” and “for cost”.

When you activate any card, you do what you must up to any form of conjunction before the card effect, then ask your opponent for a response. Over-simplifying things, card text can be read as any form of these three elements.

[ Activation condition ] COLON [ cost to activate card or activation requirements] SEMI COLON [ Card Effect applied during resolution ]

Some cards do not have activation conditions (or text before a : ) , and some cards do not have activation requirements, but EVERY card has an effect (outside of non-effect monsters and some niche cases).

So, looking at something like Twin Twisters.

"Discard 1 card, then target up to 2 Spells/Traps on the field; destroy them. "

You discard 1 card, and declare your targets as apart of the activation requirements, and there is no condition you must meet before activating this card. You ask your opponent to respond. If they negate your Twin twister’s activation or effect, you do not get a refund on the cost, the card has already been discarded.

This is what it means to discard for cost.

Compare this to Tearlaments Heartbeat.
[Relevant effect]
" Target 1 Spell/Trap on the field, or you can target 2 if you control “Visas Starfrost”; shuffle them into the Deck, then send 1 card from your hand to the GY. "

You target 1 spell or trap, or 2 if you control Visas, as apart of the activation requirement, then ask your opponent to respond. If they negate your Heartbeat, you stop and do not shuffle the targets AND you do not send a card from your hand to the grave.

If they do allow it resolve, you shuffle the targets AND THEN send a card from your hand to the graveyard.

NOTE: This still does not discard for effect, but it does SEND for effect.

Now, Lets look at Dark World Dealings.
"Each player draws 1 card, then each player discards 1 card. "

Dark world dealings has no condition or activation requirements so you can play it at any time from your hand. If the card is allowed to resolve, you draw and then discard all apart of the effect. If your activation or effect is negated then you do not draw AND you do not discard.

This is what it would mean to discard for an effect.

The only difference between this, heartbeat and Skull Knight is that Skull Knight discards as the first step while applying its effect, and heartbeat sends a card not discards a card.

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7

Ahhhhh, I see. Apologies I wasn’t well versed in how the cards are read when it comes to the conditions and requirements.

So for Forced Requisition let me break it down and see if I’m understanding it correctly then:

[Trap Card; Continuous]
[You can activate this card [when] you discard from your hand.] That’s the activation condition and you ask your opponent if they have a response to the initialized card. If they have none then the card stays on the field. Then actions whenever you discard from your hand, the following effect occurs. [After that, each time you discard from your hand, your opponent must also discard the same number of cards from his/her hand.]

Now when it comes to Phoenix Feather. You discard 1 card from your hand to activate it’s effect as its cost right- but the phrasing is discarding 1 card.

Is there a rule somewhere that says the “Cost” part is different than the “effect part” and it applies to situations like this where the card is only mentioning discarding from the hand in a very generalized way; IE common sense dictates this so we don’t have weird OP Mill combos coming out? (Ironic)

8

Your understanding of the card is almost there!

So there are a few confusing parts I’d like to clarify.

The easiest thing to clarify is the way the Force Requisition works. Its not exactly how its written because it hasn’t ever gotten an updated card text from its original printings before Problem solving card text.

If I were to try my hand at trying to re-write it using modern terms it would be as follows.

“When you Discard a card for an effect: You can activate this card. When you discard for a card effect, your opponent must discard the same number of cards you discarded.”

(THIS IS NOT OFFICIAL, there is no effect that would ever say activate this card, but its for understanding)

This is supported by ruling database entry found here: Card Database

The second is the explanation of WHEN effects.
The FAQ roughly translates to “Cards can be activated when your hand is discarded. (It is not an effect that targets. It cannot be activated when the hand is discarded due to a cost or the effect of a card activated after Chain 2. Also, it cannot be activated during the Damage Step.)”

This means that you can only activate this when you discard for a card effect as the last thing that happened. So if it was an effect that says any of the following:
“Discard”
“Discard AND …”
“…THEN Discard”
“…AND Discard”

(You can insert “If you do” in any of those combinations)

AND it resolves as Chain link 1. Then on a NEW chain you would be able to activate Forced Requisition placing it face up just as you described.

After that point, each time you discard apart of an effect’s resolution, you’d make your opponent discard the same number.

Because of this specificity, for WHEN card effects, Costs are inherently thrown out the window for possibilities because you are always going to be applying some form of effect after that point. Which would prevent it from being able to activate as the last thing you, or your opponent did, wasn’t discarding a card, it was applying some effect, or negating some effect.

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9

For activating the card itself, Recquisition can only be used when a card is discarded. If it is already face up, then the discard can happen at any time.

If Forced Recquisition is already face up and not making your opponent discard cards, that is a bug.

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10

I appreciate you taking all that time to write all that out and sorry for this late reply- was at work. I understand now and that changes a lot of things perspective for me when it comes to building so I really appreciate your insight in this.

Basically, if it’s an afterthought, an additional clause to the effect, it will then activate the initial step, then after that point any discards will trigger it because it’s the action of discarding cards that triggers the opponent discarding cards at THAT point.

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11

I’ll double check and test if it’s working while already face up with other discard effects just to be sure.

12

Yeah everything works now, appreciate it everyone that popped in and helped me clear up the confusion!

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