Card Game Fundamentals: Card Advantage

When I consider the past twelve months, not only was I able to top numerous BCS/BSF events, but I also came 3rd at Dragonball Fusion World Nationals and recently made the Top 32 playoffs for One Piece Nats. This disregards my other tops (numerous store champs across all games), my other interests, and the fact that I work a 9-5 job.

Is it supposed to be possible to play numerous card games and do well in all of them?

The answer is Yes.

And not just that - it should be possible for anyone. This is because all card games follow similar fundamental principles with multiple transferrable skills. That is if you're the type of player who understands the why of what they're doing in card games.

In today's article, I'll be covering the concept of card advantage. It delves into my thoughts on how card games operate, and I hope it provides you with a unique perspective and insight into SVE and any other card games you might play.

I note that I could have gone for a super cookie-cutter explanation, but I figured, what's the point? You can just look that up online. Instead, I wanted to explain it in my own words, in a way that's authentic to the way I look at card games, so you can get a viewpoint that you won't see anywhere else.

What is card advantage?

At its core, card advantage is simply the act of having more cards than your opponent. You can view it as easily as:

•  "If I have 7 cards in hand and the opponent has 4, who has the advantage?"

• "If we both have 5 cards in hand, but I have 3 followers on the field, who has the advantage?"

Of course, nothing is in a vacuum in a real game, but this is the most basic form of understanding card advantage. The person with more cards has more options than the opponent, and this means on average, the player with more options will be able to make favourable trades over and over and over again until it becomes an insurmountable lead that can be transferred into a win. 

Let's understand how "options" are relevant in this context.

Example 1: Opponent has an engaged 7/3 evolved Forte with Aura, and I have 5/5 follower on the field.

In scenario 1, I have 5 cards in hand, but none of them directly out Forte. Therefore, I am forced to trade my 5/5 into their 7/3 Forte, presumably after the Forte has already swung 7 to my leader. This sucks.

In scenario 2, I have 6 cards in hand. The 6th card happens to be a 2/2 follower that can evolve into a 3/3 follower with Rush. Now I can trade the 3/3 evolve into Forte, then swing my 5/5 to the enemy leader, dealing 5 damage, and keeping my 5/5.

You can see how Scenario 2 is considerably superior due to having the available option of swinging a 3/3 to the Forte, freeing up my 5/5 to swing face (and thereby, requiring an answer from my opponent the following turn).

Example 2: Opponent has an engaged 5/5 follower on the field, we have a 3/3 active follower on the field. Both players have 5 cards in hand.

In scenario 1, I have Execution in hand. Therefore, I can use it to clear their 5/5 follower, swing 3 to enemy leader, then pass turn. I use up one card (execution) to clear their 5/5 follower (one card). This is a pretty decent trade.

In scenario 2, I have a follower in hand that can evolve into a 4/4. In order to clear the enemy follower, I would have to trade the 3/3 and the 4/4 into the 5/5. This means that I would end the turn with two less cards, while my opponent only loses one card, the 5/5.

Again, you can see that in situations where you have less (or rather, worse options), it snowballs the amount of bad situations you will find you find yourself in. Therefore, maintaining card advantage is one of the main ways to avoid such situations.

In example 2, you will notice that you had to trade both a 3/3 and a 4/4 into the 5/5. This leads us to another key concept. Specific combinations of cards can be useful at later stages of the game. If you are forced to take a suboptimal trade like the above, then you will no longer have the 3/3 or the 4/4 for future turns, where they had the possibility of being the best option.

The role of tempo

I think this is probably an article in and of itself, but no article on card advantage is complete without an explanation of tempo.

While there is a more textbook example of tempo out there, the way I view it is any situation where your individual cards are worth more than your opponent's.

Say, for example, you have 7 cards in hand compared to 1 card in the opponent's hand. Naturally, this is an overwhelming advantage. However, what if you are on 1 life and they are at full health?

Depending on the opponent's deck, you may be far behind the opponent. A light breeze will kill you, and having a 6-card advantage is effectively worthless.

Even supposing a less extreme example, imagine you are at 7 health vs 19 health against a Dragon player and have a 5-card advantage over them. A single Forte will kill you, so this changes the way you have to play the game. A rational player will almost always play wards to avoid dying to Forte. The fact that you have to play a ward may be contrary to progressing your own game plan, yet you have no choice but to reduce the value of your own cards/plays due to the game state forcing you to do so.

But even outside of Forte, it changes how you play the game. Needless to say, if the opponent plays a 7-attack follower, you have to answer it or literally die the next turn. This means that regardless of what other plays you had in mind, you must go with the play that allows you to clear it.

However, what if they have a 4 attack follower on the field? Ordinarily, if you had 20 health, you might ignore it and push towards your win con to gain an advantage over the opponent. However, at 7 health, can you risk letting it live?

This is the fundamental concept behind tempo. While card advantage provides options, it's pointless if it cannot be converted to a tangible win condition or prevent the opponent from winning.

Summarising Card Advantage

1) Card advantage gives you more options

2) In theory, having more options than your opponent means that, on average, you can either put yourself in a more winning position or prevent your opponent from doing so (two sides of the same coin)

3) Aiming for card advantage is a fundamental principle, but it is also important to put yourself in positions where the card advantage can be transferred into tempo and eventually win the game.

Other SVE examples would be decks like DShift. Does it really matter how many cards you have in hand if they can kill you with 3 cards in hand (Dshift Kuon Merlin?). 

In other words, you would be happy to be on even a -5 in card advantage vs. this deck if you can put their life to 0 before this happens! One thing to note is that the more complex card games become, the more obfuscated card advantage calculations become. To use Spellchain or Necrocharge decks as an example, the cemetary is an additional resource, as it makes your other cards worth more as a result.

In other decks, some cards cost a considerable amount of play points, but give you ridiculous card advantage in exchange. An interesting example is something like Leonidas. For 6 pp + 1pp for evo, you can potentially clear two enemy followers and then gain an amulet that gives all your subsequent sword followers rush and +3/3. At a minimum, this is a 3 for 1, which is effectively a +2. In many card games, there exist powerful late game threats that give players huge card advantage over an opponent.

In the above example, skilled players have historically attempted to mitigate Leonidas' impact due to the ridiculous card advantage it can gain. To do this, they may choose to leave play points open for banish effects. Perhaps they leave their followers standing. Or they could save their amulet removal to remove the permanent advantage of Leonidas' Resolve. And maybe they do some combination of the above! The main reason a player would do any of these is to prevent the opponent from gaining card advantage over them! While Leo's Resolve is, in and of itself, only a single card, it makes you expend more resources to clear the buffed followers, while your opponent spends less to get more.

If you got nothing else from the above paragraph: It's that you should play differently to prevent your opponent from getting card advantage over you. And, of course, vice versa, you should play in such a way that maximises your own card advantage.

Although Card Games have different rules, cards and evolving metas, all of the ones I've played can ultimately be viewed and explained via card advantage. Even in the games where a lot of bullshit goes on each turn, it can actually be simplified into card advantage. Look at a BY Luffy mirror in One Piece, for example. With how many actions and cards fly around when Moria, Sabo Rocket Luffy Combo is played, you might not realise that, in actual fact, the combo is essentially a -1 to your hand size per turn. Each successive Moria is able to take 1 additional card off the opponent each turn. It is no exaggeration to say that the BY Mirror is purely a card advantage matchup.

Conclusion

This article was a lot of fun to write - trying to articulate the way I view card games into a format that is (hopefully) easy to understand for players of all skill levels. Sure, I think some of you probably already understand Card Advantage in your own way, subconsciously or otherwise. But perhaps the way you think about the game is different from mine - and I think understanding different perspectives and ways of thinking allow you to enhance your own way of thinking about all topics. 

Card Advantage is one of the concepts that is essential for all card games. If there's anything within this article that you'd like more clarity on, feel free to ask me about it. For those who have not consciously considered such concepts in the past, please try to implement them into your play until they become a part of your subconscious - a framework you use to assess how you make decisions.