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Leon’s South Wall Corner Club
How many cards? An Analysis of Card Advantage
August 22, 2005

Hello everyone. Welcome back to SWCC. Today’s piece will be much more educative than simply fun. I felt it time to spend some of my real knowledge on this game instead of keeping with just fun and random topics.

Today’s article will be an analysis of the general concept of card advantage, its importance, and its evolution in the current environment. I will discuss definitions, examples, and common ways to manipulate this concept to your advantage.

We can start with a sample duel.

Player B has one card facedown in his S/T zone and nothing else. Player A decides to go “all out” and try to win the game then and there. He activates Call of the Haunted targeting his Jinzo. It resolves. He removes a light and a dark in his graveyard to Special Summon Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning. He summons Blade Knight and sets two face-downs to pump its attack to 2000. He starts the attack but Player B activates Scapegoat.
Player A has no choice but to attack all of the goats. Player A currently has three huge monsters on the field and two face-down cards. Player B has nothing on the field at all. However, Player A shakes his head and says, “I already lost this one. I can tell.”

Why?

I told you this situation intentionally leaving one important detail out.
Player B currently has five cards in his hand. Player A used up all the cards in his hand to push his latest offense. When Player B starts his next turn he will now have six cards in his hand to his opponent’s zero. More often than not, when this is the case, Player A’s prediction would be correct - he would lose.

The concept of true advantage is taken in multiple steps. First off, good and constant field presence is a type of advantage. Being the player with the bigger monsters to kill your opponent’s weaker ones is a type of advantageous situation. However, cards not yet played on the field but remaining in your hand also generate advantage. They are resources not yet used; reserves set aside for future use. Just because you did not play something the very same turn you drew it does not mean you do not still possess the advantage of having it.

Experience has taught me that Life Points do not matter over the long term of a duel. Someone once told me that you could have one player start at 3000 life points and 6 cards in hand and the other start at 10,000 life points and 3 cards in hand, and the person with 6 cards in hand will win every single time. Late game, of course, the story could be different, and many one turn kill decks do not abide by this rule either. For any general, offensive deck, however, this is almost always the case. The person who ends up winning the duel usually is the one who maintains card advantage over his opponent.

Let us define the term. Card Advantage is used to describe the situation where one player has a distinct greater number of stockpile resources and/or field presence then his opponent. If player A has four cards in hand and Player B has three - keeping field presence essentially equal - than player A is said to have card advantage over Player B.

Why does this matter so much? The cards in your hand - as I already said - are your resources. Having more resources in reserve than your opponent means more options. Having more options means a better chance of having a suitable answer to your opponents threats. Having suitable answers to your opponent’s threats means you win.

If we employ this concept of dueling to our game than we realize that it fundamentally effects both how we construct our decks and how we end up playing the game. Those who play competitively with a fore-front concern on card advantage know that the objective of the game shifts. No longer is it the goal of each game to reduce your opponent’s life points to zero before yours. The goal of the game now becomes using your resources to combat and destroy your opponents.

Lets discuss how resources can do battle. At the start of each game you and your opponent are given five resources. Then, at the start of each turn you gain one resource from drawing a card from the top of your deck. When you use one card to destroy one of your opponent’s cards (i.e. Smashing Ground on his monster) you are considered to have one-for-one’d your opponent. This is an even break between the two of you. While you both lost one resource the ratio between you and your opponent remains the same.

So those are even breaks, but how do I actually gain advantage? Well, the situation I described was considered a one-for-one. One way to gain advantage is to create two-for-ones, three-for-ones, or higher. This means that you are using only one resource of your own to eliminate multiple resources of your opponents. The ratio now changes and you now possess a distinct, theoretical advantage in the match.

Here are some examples.

Player A, keeping the concepts of card advantage in mind, decided it best not to use the Heavy Storm in his hand just yet, even though doing so would allow him to press an early advantage. His patience pays off. Player B, lulled into a false sense of security by Player A’s inactivity, sets a second S/T in addition to his first and activates Premature Burial on his Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer, taking an early lead and a chunk of Player A’s life points. Player A responds coolly on his turn by activating his Heavy Storm to eliminate four of his opponent’s resources - his two face-downs, Premature Burial, and Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer. The ratio of resources shifts by three. Only one resource of yours was actually used, but four resources were eliminated by it.

Player A observes Player B’s board. He notices he has a face-up attack position Berserk Gorilla and one face-down S/T. It is still early enough in the game for Player A to do a variety of things, but which would be the best. Player A begins thinking with card advantage in mind. He deduces that Player B would expect him to be able to destroy his monster this early in the game and most likely his face-down would be some sort of defense against a cleared field. How can he deal with the situation with as few cards as possible? Player A chooses to activate Snatch Steal, spending one of his resources, to take control of his opponent’s Berserk Gorilla. Rather than summon an additional monster to attack for more damage he decides it best to practice conservation and simply attack with the monster he newly acquired.
Player B has no choice but to activate his face-down Sakuretsu Armor to avoid losing 1/4th of his life points. Player A created a two-for-one by using his one resource to eliminate both of his opponents. Player A is now free to set up his defenses since he was summon free. While he did not get to deal life point damage to Player B he generated a +1 advantage (terminology for ratio shifts, which I previously discussed), which gives a theoretical advantage for the remainder of the duel.

Hence, another layer is added to this concept of card advantage. Not only is it the goal of a player practicing this concept to eliminate your opponent’s resources, it is to do so with as few of your resources as possible. In other words we have learned that one way to gain card advantage is to eliminate multiple resources of your opponents with a lesser amount of your own.

Another important method for generating advantage is to generate resources faster than your opponent. Chiefly, this is done through drawing cards from the top of your deck, but graveyard manipulation and deck searching also work towards this. Pot of Greed is the simplest method for illustrating this type of card advantage. You spend one resource of your own and, instead of eliminating your opponents resources, you gain two more from drawing off of the top of your deck. Going back to terminology this shifts the ratio by one in your favor (+1).

There are many other ways to do this. Sinister Serpent allows you to essentially gain two resources at the start of each turn - your draw for the turn and the return of Serpent from the graveyard. Thunder Dragon will allow you to send one copy of the card to the graveyard to search the deck for two more and add them to your hand. T.A.D.P.O.L.E. allows you to do the same when destroyed by battle. Giant Germ, Nimble Momonga, Hyena, and Troop Dragon all do the same but bring both copies to the field. There are many different ways to manipulate this. Search for some yourselves.

The differences between these two types of advantage gaining can be confusing since the terminology is the same. Both using a Heavy Storm on two of your opponent’s face-downs and using Pot of Greed are considered two-for-one, or +1 advantage. It is important to note the differences in the actual ways they accomplish this: one involves you directly gaining more resources and the other involves you taking them away from your opponent.

So, we all hopefully have learned that its not always safe to push a huge offense, but we still see many people doing it to win games. How do you explain this? The people who push offenses to end games do so intelligently.
They have constantly kept in mind the concepts we have discusses of advantage early to mid-game and have adequately employed them against the opponent. Those people push the advantage only when they feel it safe to do so. Let us go back to the very first example.

Remember, if you will, Player A only viewed Player B’s one face-down S/T. He chose to try for the huge push to end the game by swarming with Jinzo, Soldier, and Blade Knight. Was it safe to do so? There is a certain rule-of-thumb I use to determine this. Check your opponent’s cards in hand.
If he has only one or two than usually it will be safe to do so. Three cards in hand should be more of a judgment call. Ask to look at his graveyard and try to guess if you feel it safe. Four cards and you should generally wait it out a bit longer. Five or more would be simply suicidal.

Wow. I just realized how much I have given you guys to think about. When delving into the theory of competitive play you would be amazed at all the levels that can surface. We have discussed most of the essentials of card advantage - its importance, its definition, and the ways in which it can be used to play the game differently than maybe you used to. The rest I will generally leave up to you. As homework I want you all to dissect your decks tonight. Separate all of the cards and view them closely find out the ways in which they function through advantage. Its alright if most of the cards tend to only be one-for-one trade offs - that is usually the norm - but try and find ways to play the game with these core principles and gain a real advantage over the competition.

Here’s to hoping I did not put you all to sleep with this monster article.
Have fun. Take care of yourselves. Peace.