Victory condition

Victory conditions (勝利条件, Shōri Jōken) refer to the various ways a player can win a Duel.

Normal Victory conditions

These are the typical ways to win in the game's mechanics.

• Your opponent's Life Points are reduced to 0.
• Your opponent is required to draw a card, but has no cards left in their Main Deck. (Your opponent being unable to send cards from their Deck to the Graveyard when resolving an effect that forces them to do so, such as Needle Worm, will not create a Win Condition.)

A player can also win if their opponent surrenders, or is issued a Game Loss or Match Loss penalty in a tournament. In addition, most tournament Duels are timed; if time runs out and the Duel has not ended, the player with more Life Points wins. If Life Points are tied, the Duel will continue until the first change in Life Points happens ("sudden death").

Alternate Victory conditions

These cards have effects that provide alternate ways to win:

Duel Winners

• "Exodia the Forbidden One": If your hand contains this card along with "Left Arm of the Forbidden One", "Right Arm of the Forbidden One", "Left Leg of the Forbidden One" and "Right Leg of the Forbidden One", you win the Duel. All five of these cards are currently Limited.
• "Destiny Board": This card can place 1 "Spirit Message" card from your hand or Deck to the field at the end of each of your opponent's turns. If this card places "Spirit Message "I"", "Spirit Message "N"", "Spirit Message "A"" and "Spirit Message "L"" all on your side of the field in that order through its effect, you win the Duel.
• "Last Turn": When you activate this card by having 1000 or fewer Life Points, you choose one monster you control, and all other cards on the field and in both players' hands are sent to the Graveyard. Your opponent then Special Summons a monster from their Deck. A special Battle Phase occurs in which the two monsters battle and Battle Damage is ignored. The player whose monster remains alone on the field at the End Phase of this turn wins the Duel. This card is currently Forbidden.
• "Final Countdown": Once this card is activated by paying 2000 Life Points, you win the Duel in 20 turns.
• "Vennominaga the Deity of Poisonous Snakes": This card gains a Hyper-Venom Counter each time it inflicts battle damage to your opponent. If this card has three Hyper-Venom Counters on it, you win the Duel. (In the anime, this card allowed you to win the Duel three turns after it inflicted Battle Damage to your opponent, with no Counters involved.)
• "Exodius the Ultimate Forbidden Lord": This card sends 1 monster from your hand or Deck to the Graveyard each time it attacks. If five different "Forbidden One" monsters are in your Graveyard that were sent there by this card's effect, you win the Duel.
• "The Creator God of Light, Horakhty": The only way to Summon this card is by Tributing monsters whose original names are "Slifer the Sky Dragon", "Obelisk the Tormentor" and "The Winged Dragon of Ra" (meaning that you cannot use cards like "Phantom of Chaos" to copy any card names). If this card is Summoned, you win the Duel. The Summon of "Horakhty" cannot be negated, so cards like "Solemn Warning", etc. cannot stop it.
• "Number 88: Gimmick Puppet of Leo": This card can gain a Destiny Counter once per turn by detaching one of its three Xyz Materials, but in order to do so, you must have no cards in your Spell & Trap Card Zone and must skip that turn's Battle Phase. If this card has three Destiny Counters on it, you win the Duel. (In the anime, this card could detach one of its Xyz Materials once per turn with no restrictions, and it allowed its controller to win the Duel if it detached all of its Xyz Materials by its own effect, with no Counters involved.)
• "Number C88: Gimmick Puppet Disaster Leo": Once per turn, this card can detach an Xyz Material to inflict 1000 damage to the opponent. During its controller's End Phase, if it has no Xyz Materials while the opponent has 2000 or fewer Life Points, its controller wins the Duel. (In the anime, the damage was 4000 instead of 1000, and it allowed its controller to win the Duel if it had no Xyz Materials at the end of a turn, with no requirement on the opponent's Life Points.)
• "Creator of Miracles": This card lets a "Number C39" monster attack directly. If it inflicts Battle Damage during that turn, and you used "Creator of Hope" and "Winning Formula" during that same Duel, you win. "Creator of Miracles", "Creator of Hope" and "Winning Formula" are all illegal OCG-exclusive cards.

Match Winners

Main article: Match Winner

If a Match Winner attacks your opponent directly and makes their Life Points 0 by the Battle Damage it inflicted (sometimes with additional conditions required), you win the entire Match instead of just the Duel. All Match Winners printed are Illegal, except for "Victory Dragon", which is instead currently Forbidden.

Changing/Removing Victory Conditions

These cards have effects that change or remove the normal victory conditions. Currently, none of the cards in this category exist in the TCG or OCG.

• Divine Serpent Geh: While you control this face-up card, you cannot lose the Duel. This is an anime-only card.
• Relay Soul and Zero Gate of the Void: When successfully activated, these cards make destroying a particular monster on the field the opponent's only victory condition. (This presumably means that if the monster should leave the field without being destroyed, then the opponent will have no way to win the Duel, although such a possibility has never been explicitly mentioned.) "Relay Soul" is an anime-only card, while "Zero Gate of the Void" is a manga-only card.
• Deuce: While this card is face-up on the field, neither player can lose the Duel if their Life Points become 0. Instead, a player wins the Duel if they damage their opponent twice in a row. This is an anime-only card.
• Infernity Zero: While you control this face-up card, you do not lose the Duel if your Life Points become 0. This card exists only in the anime and in Tag Force 5 and Tag Force 6.

Other

• Yata-Garasu: In most video games, if a player successfully inflicts Battle Damage to their opponent with "Yata-Garasu" while the opponent controls no cards and has no cards in their hand, the opponent will automatically surrender the Duel at the start of their next turn, because of "Yata"'s lockdown effect. This applies to both human and CPU players, and will occur even if not surrendering would have been beneficial (such as if the controller of "Yata-Garasu" had no cards left in their Deck and would have lost had the opponent not surrendered).