M:TG to Shadow Era: How to think in card advantage.

**Salivanth** · 09-03-2012, 01:15 PM

Glad you liked it

Yeah, TCG's are awesome like that. Glad I was able to help!

**Tyr Anasazi** · 09-04-2012, 01:29 PM

Originally Posted by psychobabble

As others have said, a good article.

I'm not quite sure what you were suggesting with the MTG reference though. if you were saying that you thought MTG players might come to this game and look at a card like Bazaar

/bad santa and think it was awesome card advantage, then I don't think that's right. Bazaar

is exactly the same as Howling Mine, a card which has been around since alpha (with numerous other versions like the recent Otherworld Atlas), so MTG players should be quite aware that non-unilateral card draw engines shouldn't be used outside of niche strategies - interestingly howling mine is used in turbo fog strategies in MTG, which are very similar to millstalker strategies in SE.

The biggest single difference between bi-lateral draw in MTG and SE is maximum hand size. Bad santa would be universally bad in MTG (outside of some combo applciations where you don't care what your opponent is doing) because of the way maximum hand size works in that game, but the hard cap here means that you can actually exploit it to gain some card advantage. This play is only really powerful in on turn 2 though - gaining a net of 2 cards (ancestral recall!!) if you do a true santa bomb (on the play, after casting a T1 ally), is much more powerful than doing it with an empty hand late game when your opponent has 4 cards, where you actually gain a net of zero cards (you draw 3, lose 1 from playing the santa, your opponent gains 2) at the cost of also accelerating your opponent's game and giving them more options.

one interesting shadow-era specific card advantage question that I think about a bit is how to evaluate shadow era abilities. This can affect how you evaluate plays where you try to draw out shadow ability usage, or how to use it yourself. My general thought is that one ability usage = one card. Perhaps it's better to think about it as 3 SE = one card though (given that's how much you get from shadow font). I'm not quite sure how to think about this one given that it's a completely different resource, but has the sort of effect that you normally get from cards.

Well, Shadow Font

is 1 card + 4 resources for 3 SE. And till very late game, 4 resources is at least as valuable as 1 card, IMHO.

Another data point is Majiya

's ability. 4SE for 1 card and very likely a kill (>1 card). So I think 3SE > 1 card.

**psychobabble** · 09-06-2012, 06:53 AM

Originally Posted by Tyr Anasazi

Well, Shadow Font

is 1 card + 4 resources for 3 SE. And till very late game, 4 resources is at least as valuable as 1 card, IMHO.

/facepalm. of course, you're right, dunno what I was thinking.

Another data point is Majiya

's ability. 4SE for 1 card and very likely a kill (>1 card). So I think 3SE > 1 card.

and another good indication. I don't agree that 3 damage is a kill on average, it's usually only going to be one of two attacks used to take down the relevant ally giving it a value of half a card.

I think somewhere around 1.5 cards or more for 4 SE is in the right ballpark.

**Zhou86** · 09-27-2012, 05:56 AM

Just managed to read this article.
Awesome read.

Looking forward for more, especially the other topics you mentioned on the last paragraph.

**Volunteer13** · 09-27-2012, 06:37 AM

Originally Posted by TJ MinatoX

This was very good mate

I loved it.
I think it's a must for EVERYONE! Do you like fighting games? ArcheBlade by CodeBrush is a new action game. It was currently in closed beta, most players all feel nice about this game. Why don't you have a try?

I had just installed Shadow Era and played a few rounds of the game before the guys did their review. Have played a few hours now and I'm really enjoying it. For Magic users, it's easy to pick up pretty quickly and it even has an improvement here on the old formula.

**Zhou86** · 09-27-2012, 06:47 AM

Originally Posted by Volunteer13

I had just installed Shadow Era and played a few rounds of the game before the guys did their review. Have played a few hours now and I'm really enjoying it. For Magic users, it's easy to pick up pretty quickly and it even has an improvement here on the old formula.

Noticed its your first post in the forums.

Welcome and hope you enjoy your time here!

Feel free to ask around regarding any questions you have about the game and we will do our very best to help you out.