ClusterFuck

[Smmenen]

In my article yesterday I attempted to address a TON of key issues that had arisen over the last year.  My suspicion is that my article was so dense and large that few people probably read the whole thing.  As such I'd like to pull out some for individualized discussion.

Card Advantage

might as well sound off on what I think about the importance of card advantage.

Lesson #2
As a concept, it is theoretically useful for understanding what makes some decks successful. As a practical analytical tool, I believe the concept is irrelevant. I think conceptually, its rather straightforward, and I'm a little surprised why so many people seem so confused.

My problem with card advantage is that it is simply too obvious and omnipresent to be a useful concept - it doesn't reveal anything, it doesn't enlighten, it simply exists. Evaluating cards, scenarios, or decks under the lens of card advantage seems to me to be a huge waste of time for anything other than a mental exercise. The Gro examples reveal a chink in the validity of card advantage as an analytical tool - two players can be perfectly even in card advantage, yet it will not reflect the status of the game board. Instead, it is a great example of a game that is won by using card disadvantage Tempo-abusers to create board advantage on a light mana base.

Second, I think that analysis of cards through the rubric of card advantage can be actually harmful, because it will not allow you to see a way in which a seemingly card disadvantageous card or combination might yield a huge net card advantage in the end. Specifically, Lion's Eye Diamond springs to mind. Analyzing the card in isolation through the lens of card advantage will blind oneself to the uses for the card. But even if it doesn't, my other criticisms remain.

Most card evaluations implicitly discuss card advantage anyway. Tempo is far more important in actual game interactions that are dictated by turns. After all, what do we make of cards like Force of Will, Gush, and Lion's Eye Diamond? Sure, Gush is card advantage - but if you have read Oscar's articles on Gush - he sure hated that card because under his reasoning, the loss of two lands sets you back two turns, justifying the two card draw.

I'm curious what people think now that I've focused the issue.

Now this is going to be very controversial.  I painstakingly constructed this argument so I hope it gets some discussion:

Lesson #3:
This is a lesson repeated throughout this narrative: play the most powerful deck and you will be rewarded. I could have played Mono-Blue and done well, but by playing the new powerful deck, I had a better shot.

This is perhaps one of the most important lessons, and the real flaw in the Weissman school of magic. As a theoretical idea, I was intrigued with the possibility that Type One was fundamentally flawed, not in its power level, but in that a critical mass of counterspells were printed such that a purely reactive strategy of just trying to counterspell everything could literally be the perfect deck, if it only needed the most minimal amounts of card advantage to seal the deal.

The Weissman school will continue to play a deck until they start losing. Some people will always be able to play a very well metagamed control deck and do better than 50%. This is sets the bar too low. People should play the best deck available to them, not the deck they haven't been losing with. The critical flaw in my approach with Mono-Blue is that you don't just want to win, but you want to maximize your chances at winning. If you play a deck that wins 51% of the time against everything, that is simply not good enough. Magic has too many random elements to be satisfied with such a deck.

Your deck is a weapon. Like most weapons, using it to kill efficiently requires skill as well as practice. A well trained Samurai can defeat an inexperienced enemy with a gun. By the same token, a well experienced player can win with an inferior deck against an inferior opponent with a superior deck. However, I'd rather be the person with the gun and the experience.

I hope some players take this lesson to heart - it certainly took me long enough to realize it. Sometimes a player can take a seriously underpowered deck and win, even though they are fighting swords against guns. A well-designed deck piloted by a more experienced, tested, and skilled player is a real threat in Type One.

Steve

[Kowal]

It's an uncommon occurance for me, but I completely agree on the your lesson #3.  However, playing what you believe to be the best 'weapon' in the format doesn't mean what others might think.  For example, many players in the northeast thought of long as complete garbage in the metagame of control decks that could handle it, and they resorted to their own control builds thinking they were good enough.  Likewise, you need to include the idea that people will build and play hate decks for the purpose of beating everyone, even if I have to take the metaphor so far as a guy with an EMP grenade and a whiffle ball bat.  He won't be taking out the samurai any time soon, but how many of those are there left in the world nowadays anyhow?

[Ric_Flair]

Lesson #2:  

I think your conclusions are correct.  Card advantage, at least at this point, is so basic to the game that it is not really a strategy.  It is just what good decks do.  The other problem with this focus on card advantage is exactly what you pointed out: blindness to other concepts.  I can think of many cards and many decks where card DISadvantage was what won the game.  Anyone remember decks that successfully used Karvek's Spite?  That was a ballsy card but it WON.  In the end, those that try to forward card advantage as some sort of metatheory of the game or some secret strategy are selling snake oil.  Draw as many cards as you want, but I want to WIN.  

This brings me to a second point: changing of the guard.  I like Oscar Tan.  He is a nice guy, a decent writer, and a good spokesperson for the format, but he is to Vintage what Voltaire was to philosophy.  Oscar is a popularizer.  He promotes the hell out of the format and has a great pulpit to do so, but his notions of theory, of deck construction, card selection, his handle on the metagame, and his deck are somewhat outdated.  I am not a great Vintage player.  Hell, I am not even a good Vintage player.  But I pay attention.  I think about the game all the time.   And I read like someone told me I was going blind tomorrow.  I just think that Oscar's stuff is old news.  I also think his views of what is good for the format are a bit different than the average competitive Vintage player.  

This is not meant to be a personal attack on Oscar.  He is an excellent human being and Magic player.  It is just to point out that the format does not need a popularizer as much anymore.  Instead we need good strategy writers (which we have), good advocates (which we have), and good community people (which we have).  So really I think my point is this:  pass the torch.  Card advantage is not a theory or strategy it is a basic element of the game.  We don't need people to explain this to us anymore.  Move on to a more complex view of the game.  

Lesson #3:  The entire argument--the premise, reasoning, and conclusion--is flawless.  The only barrier to acceptance is not its truth, but the emotional attachment Vintage players have to certain decks.  If had all the cards I needed I would probably play either Tog or TnT.  I don't have all the cards I need so I play GAT, probably one of the best mid priced decks out there.  But in a format where I do have all the cards the truth remains the same--play the best deck.  Drop your personal attachments.  Forget your favorite card.  WIN.  Just win.  That is what a game is about: WINNING.  People who tell you otherwise are people who do not win.  This is not to mean that causal formats are stupid.  It is just to remind people what the name of the game is in competitive Magic: WINNING.

Proof of this lesson came this weekend.  I wanted to play a 1.x deck with a good solid chance, but I did not want to take a deck as complex as Tog, though I am sure that it is the best deck in 1.x right now, by a mile.  RDK is good. Rock is good.  But Tog WINS.  I took Rock.  The truth is Rock can win about 55% with hardly any playskill.  The deck is a machine.  Deed is a wrecking ball.  And Duress/Cabal Therapy is retardly good.  But the fact is that winning 55% is not enough.  The margin of success is too thin to offset random elements like mana screw, bad draws, opponent's with God draws, and random decks.  The issue with Rock is that I can invest more time into the deck, but the skill level has so little to do with winning that I will not be able to boost the winning percentage that much.  I should have gone with Tog.  Complex good decks reward playskill.  So play them.  They are generally the best deck.  If not play the best deck.

[Smmenen]

Absolutely correct.   Absolutely.  Rock is a 51% deck.

Somone once said to me: i'll continue to play this deck until I start losing.  My point is that that is too low of a threshold.  You should not try to not lose - you should try to win by a handy amount.  That doesn't mean that deck isn't the best weapon for that person, it just puts the burden on them to prove that it is - not forgetting that skill with the weapon is half the equation.

Steve

[st00mie]

Obviously, a truly competitive player such as yourself, Smmenen, will play the best deck in the format (cost issues aside).  However, I don't feel that many Vintage player's primary goal is to win.  Simply put, not many of us are true Spikes.  This is true with almost any activity, if you look at the player base for a game like Counter-Strike, there is a very small percentage of players who are on the highly competitive level.  Since Magic is designed as a game, most people will treat it as such, and this problem is only compounded by the fact that Vintage isn't supported like Standard.  I fear attempts at creating a higher concentration of 'good' players will be very difficult.  If all anybody cared about was winning, we might have seen more top finishes by Long last year.  We just need more Vintage players, in my opinion.  If we pile more people onto the format, inevitably we will discover more competitive players.

[kirdape3]

The thing is, Rock is at least a 55% deck against absolutely everybody.  I would not have any problems at all playing a deck that has no matchups that it is not favored in by at least that amount.  Against certain matchups, that 55% is going to be about 75 or 80% (RDW for example, cannot beat the version of Rock that I am running without Tangle Wire deployed on their board almost immediately).  There is no deck in Extended that is a 90% deck against more than one part of the field, and I'll be damned if I try to metagame based on such incomplete information - make one mistake and you're going to go about 3-3 on the day.

Type One is a different matter.  It's pretty easy to find the overpowered cards and decks here, as well as just being able to blatantly outplay the opposition.  Playing Long for example took a lot of playtesting, but once that was done you pretty much couldn't lose with the deck except to a specific set of cards in your opponent's possible hand.

[Jakedasnake]

Lesson #2 is spot on. Bazaar of Baghdad is a perfect example. It's quite obvious that you lose a lot of card advantage. First off, the land doesn't add mana, so you've effectively stunted your mana development. Second, when used, it makes you lose a card. However, some decks use this 'disadvantage' to spring out madness creatures. In fact, late game, the card that was card disadvantageous can become card advantage through Squee, Goblin Nabob.

I agree with the thoughts of an 'onmipotent' deck. Long.dec WAS indeed a good example of this. When I first played the deck, I was goldfishing at turns 3-4, but after I worked the deck inside and out I was able to goldfish around turns 1-2. Packed with Duress, this deck was all but unbeatable when piloted correctly.

Nice article, I stuck it out.

[Moxlotus]

Lesson #2:  

I think your conclusions are correct.  Card advantage, at least at this point, is so basic to the game that it is not really a strategy.  It is just what good decks do.  The other problem with this focus on card advantage is exactly what you pointed out: blindness to other concepts.  I can think of many cards and many decks where card DISadvantage was what won the game.  Anyone remember decks that successfully used Karvek's Spite?  That was a ballsy card but it WON.  In the end, those that try to forward card advantage as some sort of metatheory of the game or some secret strategy are selling snake oil.  Draw as many cards as you want, but I want to WIN.

I remember Kaervek's Spite in Suicide Black (this was REAL suicide black, half the time you kill yourself before you kill your opponent) and Spite was great in the deck. Another good example is Fireblast. Lose 2 mountains(2 turns of tempo) and the card itself, but when you cast 2 lightning bolts with those mountains-you have dealt 10 damage and won the game. LED in madness is like this too.  Dump your hand to play your 6/6 Roar. If your opponent can't do anything than you won, but if he has StP or FoW you are in topdeck mode on turn 2.


On an off topic note-Kirdape3: I love your signature. Conan rules!!!

[zero]

It's not just card advantage, it's card/deck synergy that should be looked at as well. Not everything is as obvious as ancestral recall. Look at gush in GAT   vs. keeper, or AK in Tog vs. keeper. Yes, they draw cards, but neither gush nor AK seem to work as well as skeletal scrying in keeper. Yet all three decks have the same basic strategy : draw cards to win the game. Or look at duress; it's a proactive counterspell, yet it's only good in 2 of these 3 control type decks. It's the synergy that leads to tempo; gushing in keeper really did have the potential to set you back to turns, but was downright evil in GAT. There's a good reason LED wasn't played in anything other than long and madness : it wasn't synergistic with decks unless discarding cards from your hand was part of the deck's strategy. It's card advantage tunnel-vision that prevents one from understanding that; relying on a simple mathematical formula that tells them that they should be winning, but aren't.

[Ensign]

While card advantage is obvious to us, it isn't neccessarily so to players just getting started with the game - and with the high turnover in the playerbase, there are always newbies who need to learn the basics.  I agree that the in-depth articles that are currently being written are a waste.  Once you start looking at complex situations that arise in game there is usually much more going on than simple 'who's up a card' calculations.  Show the theory, basic applications, and be done with it.

Your point in lesson #3 is spot on.  The only caveat I wish to add is that there is not always a deck that is objectively the most powerful, like Long was.  The power of any given deck must be examined in the context of its environment.  I'm fairly certain that Dragon is the most broken deck available right now, but I wouldn't even think about running it with all the hate out there.  What I think is a more important point is that you should always play the deck that has the best chance of winning a given tournament.  I wouldn't play the most powerful deck if I didn't think it would also give me the best chance of winning.  If the decision were close, though, I'd always err on the side of broken.  You can only get lucky if you set yourself up to.

Peace,
-CxE

[rozetta]

It's definitely true that tempo has more of an effect on Type 1 than card advantage right now. It would be interesting to run an analysis similar to what Dr. Sylvan has been doing recently on the percentages of tempo versus card advantage spells used recently. It's probably not too easy, though, since it's difficult to pidgeonhole a lot of cards either way.

One of the inherent reasons is obviously that the game is just too fast for many benchmark card advantage spells. For instance, we never see Wrath of God played in type 1, regardless of the amount of aggro, since it's just too slow. This is likely the same reason why Moat and Abyss have not showed up in a while.

Another problem is obviously that answers (with the exception of a few cards like FoW and Wasteland) are just not as efficient as threats. And those efficient answers are often not card-advantageous. I think a lot of card advantage cards fit in the "solution" category. Why bother running card-advantage solutions when you're going to get, for instance, ritual-duress-hymned before you even take a turn?

This whole thing is a very interesting topic for discussion and one which could be explored on many levels.

[PucktheCat]

Lesson #2
As a concept, it is theoretically useful for understanding what makes some decks successful. As a practical analytical tool, I believe the concept is irrelevant. I think conceptually, its rather straightforward, and I'm a little surprised why so many people seem so confused.

Doesn’t it seem likely that the reason card advantage theory seems so banal to most relatively capable players these days is because it is so fundamental to our current magic paradigm that we can’t really even imagine the game without it?

This kind of thing happens all the time in intellectual history.  Can any of us really appreciate how intellectually astounding Newtonian physics is?  I don’t think we can.  We have much more sophisticated models of motion now and Newton’s model is just an everyday shorthand for it.

Weissman-esque card advantage theory gets no respect because, like Newton’s physics, it is just an everyday tool for getting some information about a situation.  Nonetheless, like the mother who puts her arm across her child’s chest when she slams on the breaks, most of us instinctively know that card advantage is a part of the game.

In deckbuilding card advantage is mostly, as you say, irrelevant.  Most deck building these days is done via testing in bulk and so a deck's results speak for themselves.  Where I think you underestimate card advantage theory is in game-play situations.  The cards that are put in the deck are fixed at this point, but how you use them can be dramatically influenced by the importance of card advantage.  For example, Coffin Purge played in response to a spell that targets the grave is generally a better play than Purging with an empty stack.  Similarly we often counter spells based on card advantage considerations.

I also think that someone with a bit more drive to write than I have could write quite an article on the interaction between tempo and card advantage in this game of ours.   They aren’t exclusive concepts.  In a short game, for example, a land might only be tapped twice.  That means that, taking the concepts of tempo and card advantage at face value, a Dark Ritual might be generate as much mana as another land would have (or even more) making it no more card disadvantageous than laying a land.  On the other side of the coin, over time a deck that generates card advantage will achieve tempo advantage as well.  As the drawing deck draws more mana producers it will pull ahead on tempo and eventually even the most absurdly overcosted recurring draw engines will pay for themselves.  The classic example of card advantage creating tempo is when you don’t have a land to lay so you cast Ancestral Recall, tapping one mana but drawing another, leaving you with the same amount of mana available this turn and one more than you would have otherwise next turn (and possibly every other turn for the rest of the game in many decks)

One thing that I do think has changed somewhat with the increase in the speed of T1 is why card advantage works as a strategy.  More and more card advantage is used for its features as a way to find what you need rather than a way to overwhelm your opponent.  Long.dec, for example, would generally use its draw-7s to find its next draw spell, like a 3cc Impulse for seven cards.  The fact that it was a card draw spell was useful in that it supplied more mana sources to power the next draw spell but usually wasn’t necessary to get around defenses.  In older, Zoo-style, decks draw-7s were used in an entirely different way.  They were used in conjunction with cheap, useful spells in order to ensure that you drew one more business spell than your opponent had answers.

Even this is simply a shift in emphasis, though.  Long.dec still used card advantage to overwhelm defenses (see Duress) and Zoo certainly liked the fact that its card advantage spells could help it find its Black Vises and other powerhouses.

To wrap this up, card advantage is a powerful concept that anyone who plays magic well uses more often than they realize.  Its role in T1 is changing but it will never go away and anyone who wants to be good at this game needs to understand it.

Leo

[zero]

Also, card advantage was so high on the totem pole because of type I's past as a control dominated format. If you are running essentialy the same deck as your opponent, then statistically you should win by drawing more cards in a mirror match.  But now let's say you resolve an ancestral against another, psychatog based control deck. You now have a stp in hand to plow the tog he might have in hand. On his turn he duresses...card advantage is still to you, tempo is to him, as he plays a tog. So how much better was the ancestral vs. a brainstorm or an impulse? If you still lose, are you consoled that you drew a few more cards than the other person? It's probably harder to quantify tempo as compared to card advantage, simply because tempo is so situational, like puck's dark ritual example.
You could say that in the past, card advantage was synonymous with tempo, but nowadays a little of both is what is needed to to win.

[xrizzo]

This brings me to a second point: changing of the guard.  I like Oscar Tan.  He is a nice guy, a decent writer, and a good spokesperson for the format, but he is to Vintage what Voltaire was to philosophy.  Oscar is a popularizer.  He promotes the hell out of the format and has a great pulpit to do so, but his notions of theory, of deck construction, card selection, his handle on the metagame, and his deck are somewhat outdated.  I am not a great Vintage player.  Hell, I am not even a good Vintage player.  But I pay attention.  I think about the game all the time.   And I read like someone told me I was going blind tomorrow.  I just think that Oscar's stuff is old news.  I also think his views of what is good for the format are a bit different than the average competitive Vintage player.  

This is not meant to be a personal attack on Oscar.  He is an excellent human being and Magic player.  It is just to point out that the format does not need a popularizer as much anymore.  Instead we need good strategy writers (which we have), good advocates (which we have), and good community people (which we have).  So really I think my point is this:  pass the torch.  Card advantage is not a theory or strategy it is a basic element of the game.  We don't need people to explain this to us anymore.  Move on to a more complex view of the game.  

I disagree here.

Oscar may not write on the cutting edge of vintage tech or provide the most updated card choices for his deck... but that does not stop him from being an important component of the vintage community.  I agree that reading Steve's works are more beneficial.  But I also recognize there is a place for what Oscar is doing as an ambassador for the format.  

Card advantage in its simplist form, as Oscar is explaining, is important to understand cards properly.  In evaluating a card with inherent 'disadvantage,' we must still recognize the actual potency of its potential.  You are able to see through the disadvantage of Bazaar of Baghdad because you are able to focus on the part of the card which provides the card advantage, and capitalize on it.  

I look at the vintage community as a true 'community.'  Some of the players try to win every tournament they compete in, (true spikes) but most of the players I know are Johnny/Spikes.  And I think a common trait of a Johnny/Spike is to include new players who are interested in the format.  I personally don't have the time or energy to train a new player on each topic Oscar has covered, and appreciate having that online resource available.  Once the new player masters Oscar, and probably at the same time they will start to critisize him, then I will point him to more advanced writers.  And they will be a treat for the new player just as they were for us when Steve busted onto the writing scene.

With that, I think the second and third lessons are dead on.  I don't think that people are willing to be perfect "metagame creators."  By this I mean, I don't think people are willing to take a deck that gives the best chance against the field - partly because at all times that deck is not known.  I do think people will take a deck which they think has a reasonable chance to win, and that gives the true spikes a chance to win more tournaments, and a longer time between cards being restricted.

[Smmenen]

Puck the Cat and Xrizzo said:

In deckbuilding card advantage is mostly, as you say, irrelevant.

I would like to point out my other point about card advantage that I made:

Second, I think that analysis of cards through the rubric of card advantage can be actually harmful, because it will not allow you to see a way in which a seemingly card disadvantageous card or combination might yield a huge net card advantage in the end. Specifically, Lion's Eye Diamond springs to mind. Analyzing the card in isolation through the lens of card advantage will blind oneself to the uses for the card. But even if it doesn't, my other criticisms remain.

In other words, if we actively pay attention to card advantage - instead of focusing on how a card functions in a matchup or in a deck, we may dismiss a card as being weak - or put up a mental block to its use, when in actuality it has a powerful effect.

I beleive this was done with Lion's Eye Diamond.  With that barrier down, I beleive it would have seen alot more play.

But the point I'm making is that even discussing card advantager can be HARMFUL becuase it nudges us to view cards through a prism that doesn't actually affect games in an important way.

So, its not only irrelvant, its BAD.

Steve

[Ric_Flair]

Steve's point could be made with data as well as rhetoric.  Here are cards that were underused/ignored for a long time because of "card disadvantage."

Major Errors:
Force of Will:  Hard to believe, but this the most powerful of unrestricted cards, was eschewed by Keeper players because of card disadvantage.

Brainstorm:  Impluse was played over this card because there was no real gain.  Um...yeah whatever.

Bazaar of Baghdad:  Reuseable card disadvantage.

Lions Eye Diamond:  See comments above.

Other Misses:
Waterfront Bouncer
Contagion
Elvish Spirit Guide
Merfolk Looter (originally printed in Tempest Block, not used until 7th)


These are just off the top of my head, and I am sure there are others out there.  The point is, card advantage is now Magic dogma, and like all dogma, it blocks off ways of thinking.

[Jacob Orlove]

To be fair, Looter saw a little play in rec/sur builds and such, but there was just too much combo for it to be any good. Saga block had that effect on a number of other cards that would have otherwise seen a ton of play (FTK did too).

[Matt]

Bazaar of Baghdad: Reuseable card disadvantage.
Lions Eye Diamond: See comments above.

You're missing the point entirely. Bazaar is not good because it's card disadvantageous, it's good because when you use it, you turn that loss of cards into a net GAIN. Bazaar is only good - is only worth playing - when you make it become card ADvantage by playing with cards you want to discard. This doesn't undermine the importance of card advantage at all; in fact, it only reinforces it.

Same thing with LED, only here, you might also be trading cards for tempo (like FoW and Contagion and ESG), which is still regrettable. Card disadvantage does not make them good, they simply provide enough gains of another resource (tempo) to be worth the trade. NONE of these examples show that card advantage is flawed; in fact, several of them only reinforce the theory (Bazaar, Contagion, maybe FoW depending on how you count card advantage [FoW on a t1 Ancestral]).

Card disadvantage is still never good, and only sometimes worth putting up with.

PS: As far as Brainstorm vs Impulse goes, neither of these cards produces any card advantage or disadvantage, so I don't know what they're doing in your list.

And as FoW goes, if I didn't need that huge tempo-gain to survive, I would drop it in a minute. However, it is difficult to imagine a format so lacking in tempo that FoW was not needed.

PPS: Really, the facts are this: using fewer cards is always good and using fewer mana is always good, and whether a particular card-advantage or tempo-advantage effect is worth its cost in the other resource is the fundamental decision all magic players must face.

[SpencerForHire]

What about potence.. or are we just talking about card disadvantage?
Necropotence took a long time to see play, consult too.. Once they saw it they didn't NOT see it though.. Sick cards..  I love em!

[Smmenen]

Bazaar of Baghdad: Reuseable card disadvantage.
Lions Eye Diamond: See comments above.

You're missing the point entirely. Bazaar is not good because it's card disadvantageous, it's good because when you use it, you turn that loss of cards into a net GAIN. Bazaar is only good - is only worth playing - when you make it become card ADvantage by playing with cards you want to discard. This doesn't undermine the importance of card advantage at all; in fact, it only reinforces it.

I'm sorry Matt, but you are completely wrong.

Bazaar is good when it wins you the game on turn two by dropping a Dragon in your GY without a single Squee to make it card advantagous over a few turns.

Winning the game is the important thing, not the card disadvantage.

That's where the focus should be: on Tempo, deck interaction, and game play - not abstract shit as dangerous as card advantage.

Steve

[Ric_Flair]

Matt,  I used the phrase "reuseable card disadvantage" ironically.  In light of what Smemmen said above, I thought it would be a good way to point out the change in thinking that we have had.  We now know that things like "reusable card disadvantage" can actually be a good thing because either the disadvantage can be made into an advantage, i.e. Bazaar, or the effect is powerful enough to offset the loss of a card, i.e. Waterfront Bouncer.  It was an ironic label.  

Card disadvantage, strictly speaking is never good, of course, but the point is that CA is not the end all and be all.  Tempo and card effect ultimately trump CA.  In the early stages of the game, they had not figured out how good CA was and hence made cards that caused card disadvatage that were either terrible or broken.  Now they know how important it is and they price things accordingly.  I guess my point is that WINNING is the end all and be all.

[xrizzo]

PPS: Really, the facts are this: using fewer cards is always good and using fewer mana is always good, and whether a particular card-advantage or tempo-advantage effect is worth its cost in the other resource is the fundamental decision all magic players must face.

I think what I take from this is simple: You should always use cards which are strictly better.   Great, I get that.

Now, Ancestral Recall is a better card drawer than Brainstorm.  But soon after a couple cards, you run out of strictly better options.  In fact, there are so few options where you can point to a clearly better card, that the rest of the card analysis comes in evaluating how well you can capitalize on the cards disadvantages and make them work for you.  If you exclude consideration of cards based on card disadvantage, then you may never develop as potent a deck as possible.  

Some very solid decks are run with cards that have a natural disadvantage, but taking that disadvantage and turning it into an advantage, say to dump dragon into the grave, is where a card can really shine.  (or using LED to activate madness, and still get 2G to cast the creature)

[Matt]

Bazaar is good when it wins you the game on turn two by dropping a Dragon in your GY without a single Squee to make it card advantagous over a few turns.

Discarding Dragon to Bazaar turns a dead card in hand into an active card in the graveyard -- this is the very definition of card advantage. Bazaar is all set up to give you -1 CA (+2,-3), but when you discard a card you wanted in the graveyard anyway, it turns that into +3,-2*, for - shock! horror! - plus one card advantage. Anything beyond that (if you expect to win on turn three, any land beyond your third is a 'dead' card) is advantage. This is not difficult to comprehend.

That's where the focus should be: on Tempo, deck interaction, and game play - not abstract shit as dangerous as card advantage.

Another misunderstanding. Tempo is not more or less equal to card advantage. If tempo was everything, Culling the Weak and Cabal Ritual should be mainstays in every format, and Stompy should be tier 1, no? But they aren't, because they're too much card disadvantage for the tempo they provide. Tempo does not "trump" CA any more than CA trumps tempo. They are both equal concerns. Sure, when you get enough tempo, the card disadvantage is of minimal concern -- but so what? When you get enough card advantage, the tempo loss is of minimal concern. Would you trade your first turn's mana for +2 CA (Ancestral Recall)? HELL YES. Would you trade an extra card for +2 first-turn mana** (Dark Ritual)? Again, hell yes.

Tempo only beats card advantage when there's a lot of tempo gain and minimal card disadvantage, and vice versa. Braingeyser's CA isn't worth the tempo loss; Culling of the Weak's tempo gain isn't worth the card advantage loss. The symmetry here is fascinating.

And the definition of how much is too much is largely dependent on the rest of the cards in the format, and also changes depending on the opponent's deck, and the proper evaulation of this critical amount is the number one determinant of in-game playskill.

I guess my point is that WINNING is the end all and be all.

Yes, but this is so vague that's it's utterly meaningless. The effort to understand these concepts is an effort to extend understanding beyond your glib interpretation, the better to decide a course of action when it's not clear which play (or card choice) will "win the game." ANYONE can tell that's good to Bolt a player who's on three life, but what does "winning is the be all and end all" have to say about bolting a player on ten life? Nothing at all.

If you exclude consideration of cards based on card disadvantage, then you may never develop as potent a deck as possible.

Yes, and the proponents of tempo over C.A. DO have a point, but their point is not the great revelation they make it out to be. Your statement is just as true if change "card disadvantage" to "tempo loss"; people are just less familiar with your version of that sentence.

My overall point is that both extremes are wrong.

It's like going to the market for food. 1995-Weissman says, "eat steak every night, and screw the price!" and Smmemen says "Bah, flavor is too abstract, people should be shopping at the 99-cent store and living off corn nog and cool ranch soda!"

Meanwhile, Tony is saying "I don't want to starve to death."


*draw 2 (+2), discard dragon (+1), discard two other cards (-2).

**Tempo considerations introduce some weird phrases, but first-turn mana IS a lot more valuable than eleventh-turn mana.

[Smmenen]

Bazaar is good when it wins you the game on turn two by dropping a Dragon in your GY without a single Squee to make it card advantagous over a few turns.

Discarding Dragon to Bazaar turns a dead card in hand into an active card in the graveyard -- this is the very definition of card advantage. Bazaar is all set up to give you -1 CA (+2,-3), but when you discard a card you wanted in the graveyard anyway, it turns that into +3,-2*, for - shock! horror! - plus one card advantage. Anything beyond that (if you expect to win on turn three, any land beyond your third is a 'dead' card) is advantage. This is not difficult to comprehend.

This is wrong.

Bazaar is -1 in itself.  +2 -3 + 1 from Dragon being active is still -1.

It is inherent card disadvantage even if dropping a Dragon.  

I will not debate this point any further - I have made my point and I will firmly stand by it rather than argue miniutia with you.

Steve

[Matt]

No, you're still wrong on two counts: one, because you didn't lose the Bazaar. Moving a card from your hand to in play is not minus 1. And two, your math is wrong - you're counting Dragon twice (once in the -3, and again as +1).

Even if you never use the Bazaar again (thus indeed making it a lost card) it's still card parity.

And I'm actually surprised to see you, who have railed against such tactics in the past, straw man my response, of which the card counting minutiae was only a small part.

[Smmenen]

Ok fair enough.

To be honest, I have no idea what you are trying to say in half of your post.

My point, however, is simple.  First, Card Advantage may be useful.  It may explain why/how a deck wins.  But it isn't practically applicable nor does it assist in helping to make decisions that help win games.  That is my opinion on that matter.  

If that were all - it would be a benign, but helpful analytical tool.  I think it is worse than that though.  There is a small harm that acrues becuase of the use of the concept - misvaluing cards - which Ric Flair agrees with.

The bottom line is that it is a waste to even discuss when we could be laying out the dynamics of the Tog v. TnT match or some such.  Such "in-game" analysis is FAR more important becuase it reflects, primarily, tempo.  I say this from the perspective who has written such articles (i.e. in game analysis).

Steve

[Matt]

I apolgize in advance if any of this is a tired re-tread of things you know. If that is the case, chalk it up to the fact that I post for the entire community, and not just you.

As a matter of fact, I hold the opinion that card advantage does help in making game-winning decisions, but I won't press the point.

But here, you bring up an excellent example: the tog vs tnt matchup. This is a wonderful place to illustrate how card advantage and tempo are not seperable concepts (or are useless when seperated), because Psychatog directly converts card advantage into a faster kill (tempo). Psychatog needs a certain amount of resources available to kill a player, and the further ahead in card advantage it gets - the more card drawing spells you allow it to resolve - the faster you must be to win.

If you can't beat them in the CA arena, you must beat them at the tempo game (which is not to imply that you should try to win the CA game first and only focus on tempo as a secondary consideration). This is how I link the tempo, CA, and "who's the beatdown" role-assignment concepts in my mind. In the in-game analysis, if you try to play TNT as a control deck, you will lose. However, if you let Tog get further ahead in card advantage (by paying no attention to card advantage) than you have gotten in tempo*, you will also lose, and it is for this reason that Tubbies decks need a backup draw engine: they are not fast enough to guarantee that they will be further ahead in tempo than the opponent will be in CA*.

Contrast this with something like Mask. It is extraordinarily difficult for a deck to out-tempo a first or second-turn 12/12, and so Mask decks need not waste time fighting the card advantage battle.

If someone would like another example, take TNT versus a combo deck such as TPS. TNT cannot win the tempo battle, so it is forced to win via card advantage spells such as Chalice of the Void and Pyrostatic Pillar (which makes any spells after the first ten or so dead cards).

My argument is that concepts like CA and tempo are not especially esoteric, and do have easy-to-see and highly useful applications within any given game or matchup.


P.S.  If by "misvaluing cards" you mean the disregarding of a card because of apparant card disadvantage, this is the point I was agreeing with in my prior post, but I went on to [attempt to] make clear that cards that create so-called 'good card disadvantage' are not good because of the CA-disadvantage, but in spite of it.

* I realize that this is something of an apples-to-oranges comparison, and the fruits are mutating even as they are being compared. Taken with that grain of salt, I still find this to be a strong explaination of matchup outcomes.

[Matt]

Appendix response, re: undervalued cards

Smmemen and Ric_Flair claim that many cards are undervalued. This is true. They claim that tempo is not considered highly enough by many players. This, too, is true. But I have seen only a shallow investigation into these matters, and so to rectify this, here is a thing to think about when evaluating a card-disadvantageous card's hidden playability:

Question 1.(a): Does this card-disadvantageous card give me a tempo boost? If yes, proceed to 1b. If no, proceed to question 2.
Question 1.(b): Is this tempo boost significant enough to offset the card disadvantage?*
Question 2: Can I somehow negate the disadvantages of this card, resulting in actual card advantage?

These two properties, I claim, explain most or all useful cards that were tossed aside for being not-card-advantageous, and as such would make a good rubric for testing new cards' playability. Cards like ESG, LED, and FoW fall under question 1; cards such as Bazaar of Baghdad fall under question 2.
There ARE cards that are not covered by these, but they are few, and I'll let the general public try and find them.


*The answer to this is largely determined by the rest of the cards in your and your opponent's decks. For example, should you Force a first turn Negator? If you have a StP in hand, then no, you should not give up the card advantage, because you can stop the opponent's tempo without losing CA. If all your removal is Searing Winds, then you should Force it, because otherwise you will be ceding far too much tempo to the opponent. Most cases are not this obvious (though I think they ARE this simple), and are judgement calls. This is where playskill and experience step in.

[Ric_Flair]

Suffice to say that if Thursday, yesterday, was not my busy day I would have posted this in the midst of the back and forth between Steve and Matt.  But it was, so I had to wait...and I am glad I did.  I had a chance to formulate a better response and hopefully parse out the issue in a way that makes sense.  

Let's take the long view.  Let's sit down and look at how card advantage (CA), tempo (T), and Magic theory has evolved.  I am going to try and chart significant moments in the game and show how things have changed and why CA and T are not what they used to be.  

Opening Scene:  Nationals, on the floor at Origins, Necro Summer

My friend John Glass, who was probably one of the best minds in the game I have ever met, but has since went on to glory as a programmer extraordinare, and I were watching the Necro/anti-Necro arms race evolve.  The Pro Team that included Tommi Hovi was late, they got lost at the airport.  Necro was tearing things up and only George Baxter's deck was doing anything about it.  Then Hovi arrived and word spread throughout the hall that the anti-Necro deck had arrived.  Despotic Scepter went up to $5 in like 2 hours.  We knew something was afoot.  We finally managed to squirm our way into the main hall and see Matt Place's deck, and everyone who was around then knows what it was, Turbo Stasis.  So here we have a perfect example of what I have been trying to get at.  One the one hand we have the ultimate CA machine: Necropotence.  On the other we have the ultimate T machine: Stasis.  Stasis beat Necro all day long.  But the point is not that T beats CA.  It is not that simple.  Stasis won because, perhaps for the first time, we see a truly revolutionary step in deckbuilding.  We see a deck that on paper looks awful.  The Mines give your opponent more cards, Stasis is a burden to handle, and the thing that made the deck possible, the Scepter, destroyed only your cards.  In the end all of these drawbacks did not matter because the deck did what it was supposed to do: beat Necro.  There were only three Turbo Stasis decks in the whole series of meatgrinders.  All three made it to Nationals and 2 decks made it to the top 4, which consisted of a Necro deck, Baxter's Song deck, and 2 Turbo Stasis decks.  

Flashback:  Weissman

So how did we get here?  Weissman is probably the Parmenides of Magic.  He was the first to systematically consider the theory behind the game.  He quickly recognized that CA was tremendously important.  His whole deck was focused on that.  Balance, Mind Twist, Mana Drains, the Moat, the Mirror Universe, the Library, the Scepters--all of these cards did the same thing: they created CA, virtual (in the case of Moat) or real in the case of most of the other cards.  

Another look at the deck reveals something elemental.  The cards in the deck were all pretty unsophisticated.  The deck was powerful, but the cards were simple.  There was no ACC, no flashback, no graveyard interaction.  In short the cards were simple CA generators with no way to recoup, alter, or warp the fundamentals of the game.  

Scene Two: Mirage Pre-Release

Some years after Weissman and shortly after Necro Summer Mirage was released and for the first time in the game we saw a card of unusual complexity:  Hammer of Bogardan.  We now have a card that bucks the rules that Weissman saw.  It recouped itself and offset the loss in CA.  CA and mana became interchangeable and Hammer was as good as your mana would let it be.  The old way of looking at cards for clear CA was out the window.  Over time (that is Tempo spread out) mana became CA.  

Scene Three:  Sligh is born

Now we have a deck that bucks all of the post Weissman theories: Sligh.  It had AWFUL creatures in it.  The original Sligh quite literally was scooped out of a commons bin.  The idea was that every turn a new and slightly bigger threat was played.  Over and over again, befuddling those that understood CA and card quality, Sligh won.  

Scene Four:  Living Death

Now when Tempest was released the Prerelease was abuzz with crazy cards.  Living Death was a backwards Wrath of God, I remember hearing.  Aluren made all your weenies free.  And so on.  The point is that now the old rule that was rarely violated that graveyard cards were useless went out the window.  Cards like Fallen Angel, with their building in loss of CA were now good because of Living Death.  Survival and Recurring Nightmare was just down the pike and about to bust the game wide open.

What happened?  First, the designers of the game got smarter.  They realized that cards like Mind Twist and others were too good and too simple.  In the old days people didn't evaluate the game like they do now, but Weissman was ahead of the curve and "broke" the game.  He figured out just how good CA was.  As the designers realized this they knew that they could not make cards better than Mind Twist, that is simple cards that generated open card advantage.  So they went another way.  They added complexity to cards.  They manipulated CA with cards like Hammer.

The second thing that happened was that people got wise.  They realized that putting together certain cards can geometrically expand the power of individual cards.  This was best seen in the early Turbo Stasis decks.  They were tweaked and tested, ignoring at least temporarily, the loss of real CA, opting instead for virtual CA.  But the point was that testing became the centerpiece of Magic.  As cards got more complex and the cardpool got deeper it was not enough to slap together Necro, black weenies, and disruption and win.  The cards and their interactions were too complex to forego testing.

The final thing that happened was Pros did a huge amout of testing.  This is how Sligh was found, and how cards like Kaervek's Spite, a HUGE gamble, were discovered.  In the end, the card's actual use and value outweighed its theoretical potential.  

So we arrive to the present.  Long.dec broke so many rules that it proved that even in Vintage where many of the simple powerful cards still exist, that theory is trumped by testing.  This is the exact same debate that gripped philosophy prior to Kant.  Rationalists, like Descartes, had the whole world figured out using "necessary" laws without opening their eyes.  Then the empiricists, like Hume, come through and say none of that matters.  The truth, the thing that Kant found, was that theory supports reality.  

Good deckbuilders understand CA and tempo.  They know that sometimes it is worth losing CA and tempo.  They know how much it is worth.  They also know that cards are so well made today that shooting from the hip and using theory alone is pointless.  That is the innovation of this site and of Steve's articles.  Playtesting is a necessary thing now.  There are few stupidly obvious cards being made now.  The makers and the players are just about equally smart.  

The corollary is that debate about CA v. tempo is absurd.  My quip that WINNING is important is not just an empty phrase.  It is the truth.  Since we can no longer theorize and build great decks we have to playtest, which I think it a GREAT thing.  In playtesting we have to understand CA and T, but never forget that WINNING is the thing.  Don't count out Kaervek's Spite or Force of Will because of loss of CA.  Don't count out Brainstorm because it "nets you nothing."  Swap cards around, test them out, but remember that those cards that WIN are the cards that should be in your deck.  And also remember that what wins differs from deck to deck.  

Matt's calculations of simple CA are pointless to a degree.  If you just say that Bazaar nets you -2 cards you are doing a great disservice to the game.  If those two cards are Ambassador Laquatas and Worldgorger, the minus two cards is inconsequential if you have the right stuff in play.  Merely counting CA is no longer profitable as the complexity of cards and their interactions have increased.  We all need to understand it, but see it as the first step.

[Carlos El Salvador]

I feel like ringing in my two cents here, so just bare with me.

Card Advantage VS Tempo VS BOARD POSITION:
I feel that all of you are leaving out a third part of the solution.  Board position, while it has much interaction with card advantage and tempo, it still is it's own componet.  I don't just mean who has the most permenets in play, I mean who has the upper hand on the board.  Sure, long.dec made Board Position irrelivant to some decks, but look at the Long VS MUD matchup, one where board position adds up quickly.  Long is a card advantagagous and tempo advantagous deck, but the deck can find itself in horrid board position when MUD would drop one of it's trump cards (which it often does on first turn).  wMUD's first drop is usually along the lines of a fist turn sphere of Resistance, Tangle wire (If the long player is a moron and dropped all his artifacts already), Chalice of the Void, Pyrostotic pillar, and sometimes, smokestacks.  Out of these cards which produce no advantage while in hand or on the stack, the ones that truely upped card advantage by upping board position were chalice and Sphere.  I should of done this already, but I need to point out what I think is important about board position.  Much like chess, you want to be in control of the center of the board, at sometimes the cost of card advantage AND tempo.  Control wins by securing board position.  Combo wins by trying not to interact with board position, putting the Tempo and Card Advantage ahead.  Aggro, while mostly dead, Relies hevily on board position to put pressure on your oppoent and put them on a clock with a mix of Board Position and Tempo.  Prision Decks like wMUD rely on board position, tempo, and card advatnage, giving them the hardest time to make the correct plays.

Now that I have set up a third dimention and how the basis of many decks uses them, I wish to elaborate that board position isn't just permenets in play, it is also the useful cards in hand.  A deck that uses a little bit less tempo for a better card advantage and board position is Keeper.  A keeper player uses the off color moxen for the simple fact that it helps establish good board position faster, much like the role of Dark Ritual in Suicide black.  The card itself is inherent card disadvantage, but can quickly be turned around due to the boost in tempo to give you a better board position.  As I said, when playign combo or playing against combo, you'll find your board postion is the least of your worries, if your doing good in your speed and card advantage.