Card Advantage - Forms of Card Advantage

Forms of Card Advantage

Card advantage is typically generated in four ways.

• Draw spells and effects. These are effects which cause players to draw more cards from their decks, referred to in Magic as the library. Cards in hand can be played, so drawing more cards gives players more options and the ability to do more things to create an advantage for themselves. Card advantage is generated when a player casts a spell that draws more than one card, trading the spell itself for more resources.
• Discard spells. These are cards which cause a player to put cards from their hand into their discard pile, referred to in Magic as the graveyard. This term is also used to refer to cards which put the cards from the player's hand into other inaccessible zones, such as exiling a card (also known as removing it from the game) or putting them back into the player's deck. A player can generate card advantage this way by casting a spell that makes the opponent discard two or more cards; as above, playing a card which makes your opponent discard just one card has caused a 1-for-1 which is not card advantage (though it is not necessarily a bad play.)
• "Sweeper" spells. These are cards which put multiple cards the opposing player has played from play into their discard pile. These spells sometimes put cards into other inaccessible zones. Some of these cards, such as Day of Judgment, will destroy all cards of a certain type, but often decks which include such cards will minimize the number of their own cards which will be affected by such cards and thus make the impact their opponent much greater.
• Unfavorable combat. Many collectible card games involve some form of player interaction generally referred to as "combat;" generally a player pits some of their cards in play (often representing characters or creatures) against their opponent's cards, the result of the combat is often destruction of some cards and an advancement of one player's position toward victory. Sometimes a player will be in a situation where they will be essentially forced to unfavorably "trade" their resources in combat to prevent losing the game. For example, a player at a low life total in Magic might find themselves essentially forced to block a large attacking creature with a smaller blocking creature so they do not lose the game. Referred to as "chump blocking" (the smaller creature being the "chump"), the small creature will die and the large attacking creature will survive. This is often a desperate measure on the part of the defending player and indicates that player is losing or is playing for time in order to play a card which will improve their poor board position. Sometimes the defending player will block a single large attacking creature with two or more defending creatures, losing several or all of their creatures in order to get rid of the attacking creature. Occasionally, an attacking player will intentionally engineer the opposite situation, where a defending creature will block and kill one of their creatures without itself dying. This is generally done with the intent of causing as much damage to the defending player as possible as quickly as possible, so as to end the game sooner in victory rather than let the other player play cards which will save them.

Other means of one player getting ahead on cards exist. For instance, if one player attacks with a Hill Giant, and the other player blocks with a Grizzly Bears, the Grizzly Bears will die and the Hill Giant will survive. If the defending player then casts Shock on the Hill Giant, they will have traded two cards of their own (the Grizzly Bears and the Shock) for one card of their opponent's (the Hill Giant), putting their opponent ahead in terms of card advantage.

Another relatively common mode of card advantage generation is when one player plays an aura spell, an enchantment card which attaches to another card in play. If the card the aura is attached to is destroyed in some manner, then the aura will be placed into that player's discard pile because the aura no longer has anything to enchant. Because many auras are cast on creatures, and creatures are fairly easily destroyed, playing with aura spells often provides a player's opponent the chance to get a "2-for-1" by destroying the creature the aura was attached to with a single card. As such, auras are seldom seen in competitive play unless they have some way of overcoming this inherent weakness.