The importance of card advantage - Banebow tech

[Padawan Pete]

The use of the word somehow worries me here. I mean it is about gussing whats in your hand. If you have 4 portals in your hand out of those 7 cards and 3 fire snakes then are you still at a card advantage? I dont think you can discount guessing what might be in the other players hand. Consider - we are both human. If you have 4 cards and I have 1 (an Aeon) and we both have 6 res, and you sacrifice 1 card on your turn then cast research and draw anouther card without playing anything on the board then I coundider this an advantage to me since it indicate the 2 remaining cards in your hand are (card 1) not an aeon and (card 2)something else I can guess at. I have 1 aeon and anouther card that has just come up in my hand. You are saying that we are at the same advantage here - 2 cards each, I am saying that guesing allows me to assume I might have a card advantage over you as there is a chance you did not draw an aeon an drew some lesser card. Does this make sense? I could be wrong Im just saying what I think.

Pete

[BlanketEffect]

As an aside, if you like Necro, you really ought to be playing a Warrior.

Funny you should mention that, the only other deck I play with ANY kind of frequency is Ter Adun.

However, equating Blood Frenzy to Necropotence is like equating Ancestral Recall w/ Dream Cache. It's not anywhere near the level.

With a Necro out, all life totals aside, you can pretty much count that, on ANY given round, I'll be starting with 7 cards in my hand. Blood Frenzy cannot do anything of the sort. It'd be a much better card if you could stack effects and cast it more than once on yourself.

[Kadun]

The use of the word somehow worries me here. I mean it is about gussing whats in your hand. If you have 4 portals in your hand out of those 7 cards and 3 fire snakes then are you still at a card advantage? I dont think you can discount guessing what might be in the other players hand. Consider - we are both human. If you have 4 cards and I have 1 (an Aeon) and we both have 6 res, and you sacrifice 1 card on your turn then cast research and draw anouther card without playing anything on the board then I coundider this an advantage to me since it indicate the 2 remaining cards in your hand are (card 1) not an aeon and (card 2)something else I can guess at. I have 1 aeon and anouther card that has just come up in my hand. You are saying that we are at the same advantage here - 2 cards each, I am saying that guesing allows me to assume I might have a card advantage over you as there is a chance you did not draw an aeon an drew some lesser card. Does this make sense? I could be wrong Im just saying what I think.

Pete

I see what you're saying. You're saying that if you have Aeon in your hand and I have a Fire Snake, you have an advantage through superior card quality, which is true. The term Card Advantage as we are using in this case is somewhat different, having nothing to do with the quality of cards in your hand. Read the article I posted a few pages back, it defines pretty well the term we are discussing.

[Fry]

Funny you should mention that, the only other deck I play with ANY kind of frequency is Ter Adun.

However, equating Blood Frenzy to Necropotence is like equating Ancestral Recall w/ Dream Cache. It's not anywhere near the level.

With a Necro out, all life totals aside, you can pretty much count that, on ANY given round, I'll be starting with 7 cards in my hand. Blood Frenzy cannot do anything of the sort. It'd be a much better card if you could stack effects and cast it more than once on yourself.

Sure, I know it's Phyrexian Arena rather than Necropotence, but those kinds of cards appeal to the same group of players.

[BlanketEffect]

Yeah, to me, life is just another resource. If I can burn up that resource to cause you damage somehow, I'm all on board!

[Calmdown]

The reason that you're floundering in this argument is that card advantage is not a calculated number, its a concept. It's something that, when you understand the theory behind it, you know that a player has or hasn't at any given time; it also applies specifically to situations (the simplest of which is a board sweeper like Tidal Wave; if I cast that and kill one of my critters and 5 enemy ones, I just gained card advantage, even if my opponent has been outdrawing me all game it was still a card-advantageous move).

There's no "count the number of x, y and z" here. It's all about the game state.

If I wasn't hungover I'd go find some old articles I wrote about card advantage but I can't be bothered.

[BlanketEffect]

@ Calmdown

Preceisely, the methods and numbers I was giving in my original post were just ways you can track card advantage. Card advantage is an ongoing thing, and having a 10:1 card advantage at the beginning isn't nearly as significant if your opponent manages to get off a 4 for 1 move (like the Tidal Wave move you mentioned). If that move is enough to swing the game in his favor, then that 4:1 card advantage is certainly more key than even your early-game 10:1 ratio.

Like you said, it's a concept, but, even though it's an ongoing and accruing thing, each individual event that contributes to a player's card advantage over the other can be "counted" - and, I think you'll find, the player with more checks in his column for situational card advantage throughout the game will be the one that, more often, wins the game.