Because this is my very first article, I want to talk about something that is probably one of the most important things in competetive duelling: card advantage.

So let’s start with the basics, what exactly IS card advantage?
Card advantage is the amount of cards you have as opposed to your opponents. At the very beginning of the duel, both players have 5 cards, so the card advantage is +-0. Then the player who won RPS (Rock Paper Scissors) gets to draw a card which effectively sets him/her at +1 from the very beginning. This is why going first is so important, because you get to set the pace of the game. However, as a duel progresses, effects and attacks can all change card advantage and that’s why most players will use cards that create card advantage for them. The prime example of a Deck that focusses on card advantage has got to be Gadget builds. Every Gadget creates a +1 in card advantage when they are summoned and while they are relatively weak, they often win their duels by running a lot of 1-for-1 cards, such as Smashing Ground and Mystical Space Typhoon. As such a duel progresses, the Gadget player will have an army of Gadgets while the opponent has to rely on top decking. Another Deck that runs solely on card advantage is OjaMachineGun, which focusses around Snipe Hunter and Ojamagic. While Snipe Hunter’s effect on its own is always a 1-for-1 (unless you’re unlucky), when it discards Ojamagic, it creates a +3 in card advantage. Even though the three Ojamas that are drawn with Ojamagic are useless on their own, Snipe Hunter changes each of those into a card that can destroy an opponent’s card.


That means that whoever has the most cards, will most likely also have the most options and flexibility to handle certain threats. However, if this was solely the case to win a duel, everybody would run decks like Gadgets and OjaMachineGun. There is another way to create advantage, as I had already stated. You can also create card advantage through attacking, where –if you destroy the opponents monster– you go into a straight +1. This is what Decks such as Dragons focus on, as they summon a lot of powerful monsters with relative ease.

But that’s not all. There is also a more indirect way of creating card advantage, which is a lockdown. If you have a Horus the Black Flame Dragon LV8 and Royal Decree, all of your opponents Spell and Traps are useless. Since they cannot use those cards, it’s effectively the same as a +1 whenever they draw such a card. The downside to such strategies is that once your opponent can break the Lockdown (say, a Breaker the Magical Warrior to destroy Royal Decree), all of their Traps become usable again, nullifying your “advantage”. This is why most competetive players prefer direct card advantage over indirect advantage. However, there ARE still competetive ways to create indirect card advantage. Many of you may (or may not) have seen that some Decks prefer not to run any Trap cards at all. This is because we’re currently in a meta where there’s Heavy Storm and 3 Mystical Space Typhoons, which are often found in numerous copies in all Decks. By not running any Traps, your opponent will never be able to activate these cards, giving you an indirect advantage of up to +4 before the Duel has even started.


Next I’d like to talk about something that often gets (unrightfully) mixed into “card advantage”. This is card presence. Where card advantage relates to every single card in the duel (both hand and field), card presence relates to the usefulness of the card while active. A Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning has a much higher field presence than a Green Gadget. This is also sometimes called “card pressure”, referring to the fact that BLS-EotB emits more “pressure” than a Green Gadget. You have to get rid of BLS as soon as possible, while there’s not much harm in leaving a Green Gadget unchecked on the field. While both cards count as 1 in card advantage (and both even relate to a direct +1 due to their abilities), BLS is a much bigger threat. A bigger threat will force your opponent to “waste” cards on it. You don’t want to use Smashing Ground on a Green Gadget, but you’ll play it instantly on a BLS.


So even if you are behind in card advantage, card presence can still win the duel for you. This is why I like to view card advantage as the chance to get a better field presence (which is the total sum of all card presence). The Horus Lock, which I discussed earlier, also has an incredibly powerful field presence, as you have 2 cards that your opponent wants to get rid of as soon as possible. Again, the flaw in these kind of strategies is that once your opponent gets rid of one (or both even), you’re instantly fighting an uphill battle, which means your opponent now has the better field presence.


To conclude: Card advantage is key to flexibility, which in turn is key to winning Duels. This does not, however, mean that whoever has the biggest card advantage will always win the Duel. It simply means they have the most options to do so, but in the end, a single card can win you the Duel. Examples of these are the previously discussed BLS or the new Number 16: Shock Master. Both cards simply have so much field presence, that going through the trouble of summoning them is totally worth it.

Thanks Liyana, but lol, now you're pressuring me in to using even better pictures next time D:

First key things that are to note...
- The title, definitely wonder. It calls focus to your article without demanding the attention to be brought back to it.
- Very pleasant to read; Brief, but descriptive passages that are divided make it a lot easier to stay focused without being bored by the ongoing Charles Dickens writing style.
- Visual aids are pleasant and are in no way overly florescent; Meaning easy on the eyes and do not call focus either.
- Use of terminology is wonderful. Pressure. You won me over with that. Physics nerd in the house. >.<

Overall, this article actually gets to the point and is informative without giving unnecessary information or trivia. Only issue I have is the use of "I" in some statements. I'd recommend avoiding that a bit, as it is necessary to associate with the reader and more concrete, to ensure the reader says "Yes, she is certain of what she is speaking about and has a valid point!". It is a pet-peeve of mines due to the MLA Essay Format, but still. I Love it.

Wonderful work, Valkyra. I look forward to reading your next article, or should I state "Lesson".

hi

Nice piece of work Valkyra and a good starting point for people.
If it's ok with you i could pop a post on now and again just to help.


Oh and nice dissection Obscurum lol but would hate to see what you would write about my stuff


-EB-

Very good lesson Valk, it will be helpful to a lot of people, both beginner and intermediate duelsits.

I, however, would have added one last concept to tie it all. Don't get me wrong, you talked about that last concept, but you didn't give it a name. This would have helped in relating all 3 concepts to each other.

Concept A: how many cards you have got (field + hand). You called this card advantage.
Concept B: what each of those cards is worth (note: the value of a card is extremely dynamic). You called this card pressence, but you only referred to the pressence of a card while that card is active; what do you mean by "active": live, or on the field?
Concept C: the ponderated sum of A and B, like this: C = a1*b1+a2*b2+a3*b3, etc. This one concept will give you all the information you need to know in regards to advantage, pressence and economy.

Even in a lockdown situation, the "Concept C" explains what's going on very well: the lockdown player has a total value of C much higher than their opponent. This is because the lockdown cards (for example, Decree + Horus + Angel O7) have an extremely high value when they are together on the field.

I don't take credit for this, I got it from an old article I read a long time ago by one of the most lucid minds in theory-oh I have ever seen.

Looking forward to the next lesson.

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Thanks Darrell, although I clearly said Lockdowns have their own disadvantages and why they aren't looked at as real competetive decks

The rest is pretty much spot-on though lol.

I just learned something new.

Lockdowns can be very competitive. Back in the day, Perfect Herald was a real thing, but those days are long gone. It just depends on what Konami thinks is better for the game, by which I mean better for cash-milking out of consumers, and lockdown decks that decrease interaction to a competitive extent are considered less "fun" than field-swarmers and OTK-enablers.

Perfect Herald was more than a Lockdown deck though, because it always created 1-for-1's, unlike the "generic" Lockdown decks.

Alright, Six Sam could perform ridiculous lockdowns as well, more so if they teched Great Shogun Shien.

Valkyra this posting makes it easier for newer people starting out to understand the game a little better as well as understand what it means when someone says "card advantage" great work