Card advantage

Card advantage (often abbreviated CA) is a term used in collectible card game strategy to indicate one player having access to more cards than another player, usually by drawing more cards through in-game effects.[1] The concept was first described early in the evolution of Magic: The Gathering strategy, where many early decks relied on a player drawing more cards than their opponent, and then using this advantage to play more cards and advance their position faster than their opponent. By 2007 it was recognized as one of the most important indicators of who is ahead in a game and has been utilized in the development of strategy for nearly every collectible card game created.[2]

Terminology

The basic concept of card advantage is one player having more cards in hand and/or in play than their opponent. Card advantage is generally indicated in terms of a positive number: if a player casts Ancestral Recall, a spell that causes a player to draw 3 cards, that player is said to have gained +2 card advantage (he gains three cards (the ones he drew) while losing one (the Ancestral Recall itself)).

Card advantage is often also the result of making a play where your own cards are used to neutralise or eliminate a greater number of your opponent's cards. This form of card advantage is often stated in terms of X-for-Y, where X and Y are numbers; if X is bigger then it expresses card advantage, if Y is bigger it expresses card disadvantage; i.e. a 3-for-1 is a positive advantage, a 1-for-2 is not. Example: If in a game of Magic a player plays Day of Judgment, a card which destroys all creatures in play, when they themselves have no creatures in play and their opponent has two creatures in play, they are said to have gotten a "2-for-1", where 2 indicates the number of opposing cards removed from play and 1 indicates the card spent in order to accomplish this task.

It is seen as a baseline to spend one card to get rid of one opposing card; this is often referred to as trading[3] (not to be confused with the actual bargaining/trading of cards outside of a game). A player who "trades" one card of their own for two of their opponent's is often gaining a long-term advantage as their opponent will run out of cards before they always do.

Forms of card advantage

Card advantage is typically generated in four ways.

Other means of one player getting ahead on cards exist. For instance, if one player attacks with a Hill Giant, and the other player blocks with a Grizzly Bears, the Grizzly Bears will die and the Hill Giant will survive. If the defending player then casts Shock on the Hill Giant, they will have traded two cards of their own (the Grizzly Bears and the Shock) for one card of their opponent's (the Hill Giant), putting their opponent ahead in terms of card advantage.[1]

Another relatively common mode of card advantage generation is when one player plays an aura spell, an enchantment card which attaches to another card in play. If the card the aura is attached to is destroyed in some manner, then the aura will be placed into that player's discard pile because the aura no longer has anything to enchant. Because many auras are cast on creatures, and creatures are fairly easily destroyed, playing with aura spells often provides a player's opponent the chance to get a "2-for-1" by destroying the creature the aura was attached to with a single card. As such, auras are seldom seen in competitive play unless they have some way of overcoming this inherent weakness.[5]

Virtual card advantage

Virtual card advantage can refer to a number of different situations and effects which, while not providing a direct advantage in the number of cards available, changes the value of the cards available to one or both players. There are three primary forms of virtual card advantage: card selection, recurring effects and playing such that the opponents cards are no longer as valuable to them.

Card selection is the simplest of these, which allows for the player to influence which cards he or she will draw. For example a card such as Ponder does not directly provide card advantage, as it costs one card to play, and draws one card, netting zero cards. However as it allows the player to choose the order of the top three cards of their deck before they draw, the value of the drawn card will almost always be significantly higher than the value of a single random card in any given situation. Even in the event of not finding a valuable card, knowing that such a card is not going to be drawn still provides value in that the player can plan for the cards that are available. An extreme form of card selection is 'tutoring', an effect that allows the player to search their entire deck for a specific card and put it into their hand. While this does not provide direct card advantage, as one card is drawn and one card is used, it is obviously extremely advantageous to have access to whatever card is needed.

Recurring effects come in many different forms, but all of them give the potential to obtain an effect multiple times for the cost of a single card, thus obtaining more than one card's worth of value. There are an exceptionally wide variety of these effects, ranging from single cards that can be cast multiple times, to cards that once in play can be repeatedly used. Similarly there are cards which allow for other cards to be recurred but provide no value themselves by returning a used card to its owners hand or resetting an ability so it can be used again. In all of these cases, more effects are available than the cards used. Magic: The Gathering's flashback mechanic, for example, allows for one card to be cast twice, obtaining two effects while only costing a single card. Recursive cards normally require the investment of resources other than cards to maintain balance, however some allow the player to trade unhelpful cards in their hand for a repetition of another cards effect. In this case when discarded card is worth less than the effect provided, additional value is gained.

Denying the opponents cards value is a more complex strategy which requires specific card choices to provide value. Value can be removed either through directly affecting the cards themselves, through effects that prevent certain cards being played, or by employing a strategy that the opponents deck cannot interact with. In either case, cards that the opponent has that cannot be used effectively become 'dead' even though they are still an available resource, thus depriving them of their value but not actually of their cards.

Cards that provide virtual advantage, or that enable cards or effects to be recycled are typically some of the most powerful in any game because virtual advantage is often significantly more powerful than direct card advantage. While having access to a larger number of cards is certainly an advantage, having access to or denying the use of specific cards or effects can be even more so. As all games limit the number of cards of the same name that can be played having access to any one card just by drawing can require much higher numbers of draws than are practical to achieve. Also, as cards are a finite resource, simply drawing a large number of them can be disadvantageous as most games force players to discard excess cards at the end of their turn, and running out of cards causes a player to lose the game. As a result, most decks that rely on card advantage to create a winning position, where the opponent runs out of cards in hand to play but the player still has many, use a mix of direct and virtual advantage to ensure that not only do they have cards available to them, but the cards that are available are those they require to win.

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Knutson, Ted (2006-09-23). "Introduction to Card Advantage". Wizards of the Coast. Retrieved 2007-05-01.
  2. Mowshowitz, Zvi (2006-04-25). "Systemic Thought". Wizards of the Coast. Retrieved 2007-05-01.
  3. 3.0 3.1 Knutson, Ted (2006-11-11). "The Art of the Block". Wizards of the Coast. Retrieved 2007-05-02.
  4. Flores, Michael J. (2004-04-25). "The Philosophy of Fire". StarCity Games. Retrieved 2007-05-02.
  5. Rosewater, Mark (2005-08-22). "Equipment to Be". Wizards of the Coast. Retrieved 2007-05-01.

Further reading