Powerless Powerhouses

Recently, I had a discussion with a friend of mine regarding future deck projects. During our our little chat, he brought out the fact that he could not understand why a player could not chain his/her D.D. Crow to the effect of Machina Fortress that Special Summons it from the Graveyard.

Machina Fortress:

You can discard Machine-Type monster(s) whose total Levels equal 8 or more to Special Summon this card from your hand or Graveyard. When this card is destroyed by battle and sent to the Graveyard, select and destroy 1 card your opponent controls. When this face-up card you control is targeted by an opponent's Effect Monster's effect, look at your opponent's hand and discard 1 card from their hand.

D.D. Crow:

During either player's turn, you can discard this card to the Graveyard to remove from play 1 card from your opponent's Graveyard.

In the scenario he presented me, his opponent discards both Machina Fortress and Green Gadget in order to Special Summon the former from the Graveyard. His logic was that he should be able to chain the effect of his D.D. Crow after Machina Fortress is discarded from his opponent's Hand as part of the cost to Special Summon it. He could not understand why he would not be able to respond in this way.

In order to resolve this conflict, let's first look at another card:

I'm sure most players are familiar with Cyber Dragon; its ability to be easily Special Summoned combined with its 2100 ATK reinvented the standard of beatsticks upon its release in Cybernetic Revolution. Now technically speaking Cyber Dragon is an effect monster, however, it has no effect. Though it may seem like I'm contradicting myself here, it's real straightforward. Cyber Dragon's text states:

If your opponent controls a monster and you control no monsters, you can Special Summon this card from your hand.

What kind of effect is this? It's neither Continuous, Ignition, Trigger, Flip, nor Quick, which comprise the only five categories by which a Monster's effect can be organized into. In actuality this effect would fall into the range of a Summoning Condition, which explains why Cyber Dragon cannot have it's ability to Special Summon itself negated by Divine Wrath. Machina Fortress, as well as a few other monsters like Dark Armed Dragon, King of the Beasts, and Endymion, the Master Magician, also possess this inherit, or built-in, Summoning Condition, which is not considered part of their effects. As such, cards effects cannot to chained to the action of summoning them. Make no mistake, however, this method of summoning can still be negated with Solemn Judgment or responded to with Bottomless Trap Hole.

Unfortunately there are some rare exceptions that may confuse players. For example, Dark Simorgh has two methods of Special Summoning itself as indicted in its text:

While this card is face-up on the field its Attribute is also treated as WIND. You can remove from play 1 DARK monster and 1 WIND monster from your Graveyard to Special Summon this card from your hand. You can remove from play 1 DARK monster and 1 WIND monster from your hand to Special Summon this card from your Graveyard. Your opponent cannot Set any cards on the field.

In this case, unlike with Machina Fortress, Dark Simorgh's text is actually an Ignition Effect. The difference between both cases is that the former is an inherit Special Summon which involve fulfilling a condition and instantaneously Special Summoning the monster in question without using the chain, whereas in the latter is an effect that Special Summons a monster as part of a chain.

I realize that his topic is not easy for many duelists to understand, but—given time—most tend to get the hang of it eventually. When in doubt the best practice is to check the individual card rulings and look to see if the effect is classified as a summon or one of the five categories of monster effect. (Hint: When looking at the card page on Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia, look for where it displays "Card Effect Type")

Remember players, the game ends with you.