Article: Card Advantage

Card Advantage

How many of you have seen someone new to the game running a 60-card deck? That's pretty nooblike right? Well the concept behind it actually is a good idea: if you have more cards than the opponent, you have more options and are therfore more likely to win. What many new players don't realize is, it's far better to have as little cards as possible, because then you have a much higher chance of being able to draw those cards. Every card that you add to your 40 cards decreases the chance that you will be able to draw into your best combos and best cards. Also, having too many random combos is not a good idea because it hurts the consistancy of the deck. But like I said before, their concept is good: if you have more cards, you have a better chance of winning. But what many inexperienced duelists don't realize is: you have to be able to use those cards for it to count. This brings us to the discussion of card advantage.

Card advantage, essentially, is nothing but using basic mathematics to increase your chances of winning. If you have more cards in you hand and on your field, you inherently have more options than the opponent. For this article, I'm going to get mathematical on you guys xD. This is the advantage equation:

Y-O=A

Where Y equals the number of cards on your field and in your hand, O equals the number of cards on your opponent's field and in their hand, and A equals the net advantage. So, for example, let's say you have a Thunder King Rai-Oh on your field, a set spell or trap, and 2 cards in your hand, while the opponent has 3 set spell or traps. Well you have 4 cards to the opponent's 3, so you have a +1 in advantage. It's that simple. Where this really comes into play is applying this to card effects to see if the card is worth it. First let's look at a very popular card, Monster Reborn. You're using 1 card (Reborn) and gaining a different card (the monster you summoned). Plug that into the advantage equation: -1+1=0. So technically, Monster Reborn gives you no advantage. Now obviously, Reborn is amazing because the monster you summoned will help you far more than Reborn sitting in your hand, but still, no advantage. Let's look at Solemb Judgement, another limited card. You're using 1 card (Judgement) to negate an opponent's card. So -1+1=0. Still no real advantge is gained here, and you lost half your life points. So it must be bad right? Well...not really. Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, cards that give easy advantage are banned or at the very least limited. Even the simple +1 of Pot Of Greed was too broken for Konami. Dark Hole, Mirror Force, and Torrential Tribute are the only cards that comes to mind that can potentially give you massive advantage no matter what deck you use it in and aren't banned. 
So by now you may be thinking: "Well why do I even use cards like Monster Reborn and Solemn Judgement if they don't give me any advantage?" Here, we come to the concept of One For One Tradeoffs

One For One Tradeoffs: the act of using one of your cards to eliminate one of the opponent's cards, thereby giving yourself a +0 in advantage and simplifying the game.

But how does that help you? Sure you got rid of an opponent's card but how does that help? Let's think of the advantage equation in another way:

Y/O=A

Going back to my original illustration, you have that Thunder King, a set spell/trap and 2 cards in hand, and the opponent has 3 set spell or traps. So divide your 4 cards by the opponent's 3 cards. 4/3 equals1.3, which means you have 130% more cards than your opponent. Now, let's say one of your cards in your hand is Mystical Space Typhoon. If you activate Mystical Space Typhoon you will have 3 cards and the opponent will have 2. 3/2=1.5, which means you now have 150% MORE CARDS THAN THE OPPONENT. See what I mean? Whenever you use a one for one card (such as Monster Reborn, Solemn Judgement, Bottomless Trap Hole, Seven Tools Of The Bandit, etc.), you are lessening the chance that the opponent can make a comeback. Now let's say both cards in your hand were Mystical Space Typhoon, and your set card was Dust Tornado, and you activate them all, destroying all pf your opponent's set cards. You would only have 1 card left (Thunder King), but the opponent would have nothing. 1/0=infinity. Infinite advantage is definately something you want to have xD. 

Card advantage is a very important concept in this game. Most decks, whether you realize it or not, are about gaining card advantage, and that's how they win. Scrap decks, for example, are a kind of deck that focus a lot on one for one tradeoffs. Scraps try to gain early advantage like a +1 somehow, and then summon Scrap Dragon and simplify the game by 2 cards each turn. After a few turns of that, there are very few ways the opponent can recover, especially since Scrap Dragon has 2800 attack points, and it revives a fellow Scrap to take its place when destroyed. If you have a Scrap Golem in the grave and the opponent has only two cards left, even the best topdeck like Dark Hole is useless because Golem will simply be revived if Scrap Dragon dies and you can use his effect to summon a tuner and synch it up again. Gadgets work much the same way, except they plus more often than Scraps. Just by moving a Gadget from your hand to the field (normal summoning it), you can add another Gadget from your deck to your hand: a +1.

IMPORTANT NOTE: one for one tradeoffs only help if you ALREADY HAVE ADVANTAGE. Now let's pretend your opponent has 5 set spell or traps instead of 3. The opponent has 5 cards to your 4, making him/her have 125% more cards than you. If you activate those Mystical Space Typhoons and Dust Tornado, they will have 2 cards to your 1 card, making him/her have 200% more cards than you. THAT'S BAD! DON'T DO IT! Just because you can activate something and kill and opponent's card doesn't mean you should. Always pay attention to where advantage is. If you keep the advantage equation in the back of your mind, it will make you a better duelist. It wins duels.

Even though advantage is extremely important, there are right times to intentionally minus yourself. Usually, you should only do this when you're about to go for game or go for such a strong hit that the opponent can't recover. Giant Trunade is my favorite minus 1 card. True, you are using 1 card to do basically hurt yourself advantage-wise. But it gives you the freedom for one turn to not have to worry about spell or trap interference, and that's very important since it's the only card left unbanned that does that. Trap Stun is almost like that, but there's always those nasty quickplay spells like Book Of Moon to worry about. Brionac Dragon Of The Ice Batrier is limited for a reason. Yes, it's usually a bad idea to activate his effect and bounce 3 cards when the opponent has 8000 life points. But if you can otk, he is extremely helpful in clearing the field of any problems. In addition, there are many cards that work well in the grave, so it isn't always a total loss if you fail to otk. It's a good idea to have a backup plan though.

But take care fellow duelist, advantage isn't everything. In this format, many of the top decks can otk, some quite easily. In addition, there are several more rogue decks that can easily otk you if you wait around too long. If you don't know what I mean by rogue decks, watch some of Percival's Tag Force 5 videos on Youtube sometime. If you wait around too long just to build advantage, you might lose. Risks must be taken in yugioh, you will very rarely have that coveted situation of infinite advantage. Not only that, but by the time you accomplish infinite advantage, you will often have only 1 or 2 cards left that can be killed by a topdeck like Reborn. So remember, focus on gaining and keeping advantge, just be careful, you're not a math robot xD

Well, I hope you all enjoyed this article and I hope it helped you. Ask if you have any more questions
~Harper7000  

Nice article, reminds me of TDP's one but it's still great and understandable. You are summarizing up one of the most important factors of the game realy nicely but well i just spotted something i wanted to point out

Quote :

1/0=infinity

You cannot divide by zero because the whole proccess is unlogical. You have no one/nothing to divde something to so the whole math is just unreasonable

Nice work Harper, also I didn't know vem was a mathematician XD

Very good article Harper and very helpful too!


@Vem:

Spoiler:

Great article Harper. Very good job. Nice to see the mathematic view of the game. A well-earned +1 and I am looking forward to your next article.

When you compare the percentage of cards you have to your opponent's, always subtrack 100%.
For example if I have 6 cards and my opponent has 3, I don't have 200% more cards than my opponent, I have 100% more cards than him. The difference is in the "more". You have 200% of your opponent's hand, or 100% more cards than him ;)

Quote :

If you activate those Mystical Space Typhoons and Dust Tornado, they will have 2 cards to your 1 card, making him/her have 200% more cards than you. THAT'S BAD! DON'T DO IT!

Well I'm not a very good player myself, but what if the face-downs are Solemns? Most of the face-downs played are 1for1 trade-offs (bth, solemns etc) or just one-turn-immunities (trap stuns) or stuff like that. If I already had a set MST and my opponent played a facedown, i would most likely activate it. That could mean that next turn, if I drew or had something worth playing (in my case, just a lv4 or an instant-synchro card like Alien Ammonite) he wouldn't fall for torrential, solemn or something similar.

Playing the mst next turn could stall the game if someone was running Waboku (previous formats/stall decks) or an icarus attack while you had two cards on the field.

Of course, I would do it with caution, but just posting a plausible scenario.

Also, as Harper already said, card advantage is NOT something you must always do, but something you have to keep in mind if you want to improve. The Aliens I use, for example, are not just any build. It's based on simplifiying the game (offering, virus) but then I need luck to beat an opponent (1600*5=8000, so I basicly need to hit him 5 times successfuly with a 1600 monster), something I don't have while facing meta decks or epic top-deckers.

Most not-competitive decks fall when they lose card advantage.
Meta screws the rules because you have money :P

Nice article Harper ;)

nice work but what about graveyard advantage like glow up bulb and those cards.
They can create a +1 advantage. I always use one for one cards even if i have a card disadvantage but now i know better.

Vem: thanks :). About the 1/0, redgar explained it better than I was going to so there ya go xD
Frost: thanks for the support
redgar: thanks to you too. yeah and that's why you can't rely totally on advantage. Math is an important part of the game but it sure isn't everything. That's why you have to be careful
sin: yeah you're right about the 200% more thing. In actuality I meant to say 200% of the opponent's cards. Even in meta advantage is important though. That's why people with say...six samurai often lose to a good player playing a tier 2.5 deck: they think they can screw the rules bc they have money. To a point that's true but a bad player playing the best deck around will still lose often. As for the example...it really depends on the situation. If the opponent had 1900 or less lp I would use all the removal and attack with thunder king. If they still had a lot of lp left I most likeley wouldn't reveal my entire hand for a 1900 poke. Maybe next turn if I drew a monster I would use them or if the opponent had another monster summoned on their turn I would change my mind, but when all I have to worry about is mf and prison...I would probably just attack. It all depends though
ineedbettercards: well you see there's technicaly no such thing as graveyard advantage because USUALLY cards in the grave are unusable. But the thing that makes Glow Up and Spore so broken is as soon as you activate the effect, it gives you a +1. Milling and removing from the grave don't affect the equation but gettig a free monster does. And at times it is okay to purposefully lose advantage if you can be aggressive, but if you're going to just say...set a ryko and end, there's no need to use 141 removal on that turn. Thx for the comments