Shifting Planes - The Three Advantages That Win You Games,

by Planeshifter2

How does one win a game of Magic? Two main ways present themselves after a perusal of the rulebook. To triumph in this battle over a deadly foe, one must either reduce his life total to below zero, or have your opponent draw a card when none remain in his library. Admittedly, there ARE alternative methods of victory, such as casting Coalition Victory with a permanent of each color in play and one of each basic land, or having more life when Celestial Convergence runs out of omen counters... But these situations will manifest themselves very rarely. And even the second winning condition mentioned in the rulebook, that of decking, is scarcely seen as well. Thus, going into a game, one's main objective is to bring the opponent's life total from twenty to zero.

However, how is this to be done?

At the beginning, neither side has an advantage. Both players will have drawn hands of seven cards, and one will choose either to play or to draw, the choice made on the basis of the strategy of the deck chosen to duel. However, from this equal beginning, one deck will invariably emerge victorious. How will the victor have won? Probably not from packing dozens of direct damage spells and trying to simply burn out the opponent, as this idea has been found to fail. The victor will have won by accumulating the Three Advantages.

What are these advantages, so vital to this great game? Card Advantage, Tempo Advantage, and Board Advantage.

Of these three, Board Advantage is often the most clearly presented in the course of a game. To calculate this, ignore the life totals, or what cards either player has in hand. Simply view the permanents in play. If no cards were ever drawn from this point on, and no cards ever played, which side would win? This side in question has Board Advantage. In addition to being clearest, it is also the most important at any stage of a game. One of the most powerful decks in the environment today is Fires, which lives and breathes on Board Advantage. Its plan is simple: To cast large creatures given haste, and simply crush the opponent before an adequate defense can be mounted. No matter what dastardly cards a deck may have in hand, any deck facing down Blastoderms, Shivan Wurms, and multiple Saproling tokens attacking at once is in grave danger. The principle of Board Advantage defines why removal is so important in Draft and Limited, while one will never see an Agonizing Demise in a tournament deck. In an environment where combos and control are non-existent, the deck's welfare depends on what creatures are in play at any given moment. When Demising a creature, even though you are simply trading one-for-one in cards, you are then giving yourself an opportunity to attack with your superior body of creatures, damaging an opponent, and forcing him to come up with a threat to counter your plan.

However, against a deck such as Fires, the creatures will come too quickly to kill each, making this first-pick Draft card worthless in Constructed. The efficiency of creatures in Fires enables this deck to be so dominant in T2. No other combination of colors offers fast creatures as Shivan Wurms, Blastoderms, and the like - thus, in a contest of speed, no deck will beat Fires.

One of the latest and most important additions to Fires epitomizes this theme: Flametongue Kavu. The Kavu, when coming into play, deals four damage to any creature - almost always destroying it on the spot. If this were the extent of this card's power, it would be no better than a spot removal card. However, once in play it is a 4/2 creature; certainly a force to be reckoned with. Suddenly, the opponent finds his only defense gone, and is forced to take four damage from the Kavu attacking. If he cannot find a suitably defensive creature fast enough, Saproling Burst can hit the table the next turn, ending the game. Even if a creature does present itself, the Fires player can simply play another fattie, or even another Flametongue Kavu, and the beatdown continues.

Cards like Wrath of God have proved very powerful against this deck - but even so, Fires has found ways to adapt. After a Wrath, the opponent likely will have no mana open. The next turn, another creature will hit the board and attack. Despite the wide offering of decks in the environment, none have been proven to stand up to Fires, and the great majority of Regionals winning decks are based on this archetype. Without the concept of Board Advantage, this deck would have never came to be. Sligh and Stompy are other decks that have been hugely successful in the past, this success coming almost wholly from their having Board Advantage in each game played.

Tempo Advantage, defined by the amount of mana one is capable of producing, is greatly related to Board Advantage. This is due to the fact that having this advantage, while it may seem irrelevant at first sight, will almost always lead to the player in question having Board Advantage. Magic cards have different levels of power, or impact, on a game once played. However, to correct this imbalance, Wizards makes the casting cost proportionate to each card's power. If a card has an incredible, game-changing effect, examples of this being the Winds from Prophecy, it should have an extremely high and prohibitive casting cost - in the case of the Winds, nine mana. As many games would be long over by the time a player has the capability to cast such spells, they saw very little play. However, if a player actually managed to accumulate this amount of mana, these spells become excellent. The more mana one has in play, the more powerful and hard to deal with his threats will become.

When both players have an equal amount of mana, however, the increasingly powerful threats coming from one side of the table will be met by increasingly powerful threats from the other, creating a standoff. However, if one player has Tempo Advantage, the game will quickly turn in his favor. A player with six mana at his disposal will be casting threats either twice as powerful as one stuck at three, or twice as many threats. A horde of creatures will usually hit the table quickly, giving this player insurmountable Board Advantage, ending the game shortly. Most decks, therefore, contain not only enough mana to ward off the unfortunate, but occasional mana screw, but supplemental mana cards to further one's casting ability.

Taking another look at Fires, one notices that it runs eight of these sources in the form of four Llanowar Elves and four Birds of Paradise. These cards greatly facilitate Fires' speedy kills, enabling a player to cast the all-important enchantment on Turn 2 rather than 3, and then to follow that up with any of the horde of nasty creatures that happens to be in one's hand. While a 1/1 creature that can tap for one green mana may seem inconsequential, a difference can be noticed almost immediately. On each of the decks' second turn, Fires will have access to three mana, while the opposing deck will have but two available. Thus, the cards that Fires plays second turn will be, on average, 50% more powerful than the cards of the opponent. Fires also gains virtual Tempo Advantage via the use of creatures with casting cost lower than what would be expected for a card of that power. A card like Blastoderm, being a 5/5, would be expected to come into play at about the 5th turn. However, its casting cost is only four, making it 5/4ths, or 125% more powerful than a creature that the opponent, having the same amount of mana, would cast.

(This is not STRICTLY true, since Wizards does not jack the power proportionately on each card. Giant Growth, for example, gives a creature +3/+3 until the end of the turn for one green mana, whereas Might Of Oaks gives a creature +7/+7 until the end of the turn for FOUR mana. If the power curve doubled for each additional mana given, as Planeshift suggests, then Might Of Oaks would give a creature +12/+12 until the end of the turn - which would obviously be broken. As a rule, first-turn drops tend to be very powerful and the power curve slacks off slightly from there... Blastoderm is also far more powerful than its mana costs indicate because it has fading, and the built-in drawback (fading) allowed Wizards to give it a spectacular ability (cannot be the target of spells or effects). But still, the principle that more expensive cards are the more powerful they are is 100% true, except when you're playing with Carnival of Souls or Turf Wound. - The Ferrett)

Tempo Advantage is not only visible in the T2 environment, however. In T1, a great advantage is granted to any player having the most coveted cards in Magic: The Power Nine. These cards have long been labeled incredibly broken, as they perform one of two functions - either they provide an immensely powerful effect for a miniscule amount of mana, or they speed up one's mana base enormously. Six cards have the latter function - the Moxes and the Black Lotus - and may not seem spectacular at first sight. The Moxes simply are zero casting cost artifacts that add one mana to your mana pool, while the Lotus adds three mana, but must be sacrificed after use. However, the potential to abuse these is ridiculous.

The Moxes are identical to basic land in all but one way; more than one can be played a turn. A player receiving two Moxes and a land in his first draw can drop them all and play spellswith a total cost of three mana. This Tempo Advantage will make the cards he plays on average 300% stronger than his opponent. Needless to say, this made for very short games. The Lotus is even more broken, as although it is a one-time effect, this speeds up one's first turn so greatly that the game can effectively end on the first turn. Powerful combos that take much time to set up can come into play immediately. Mind Twists can be cast, leaving one's opponent with no cards in hand. These cards are great due to one reason alone - Tempo Advantage.

The third advantage is one over which some of the hottest battles have been fought in Magic history - Card Advantage. While having Tempo or Board Advantage is obviously beneficial, Card Advantage works in a far subtler way. One can only ascertain to gain these other advantages by playing cards from hand, and the player having a greater selection of cards to choose from will likely have the upper hand. Having more cards than the opponent can be extremely powerful, for not only does the player with Card Advantage have greater selection, but holds more threats to play. It is nearly impossible to lose a game in which one draws four or more cards than one's opponent. (Well, it's entirely possible, but this assumes you're drawing good cards - a common beginner's mistake is to build a deck that draws cards like crazy but doesn't really present any threats with the cards it has - The Ferrett)

However, while Tempo and Board Advantage coexist peacefully, and are strongly linked, Card Advantage often battles these two. At the start of each tournament game, the winner of the coin flip decides on whether to take the first turn, giving him Tempo Advantage and possibly Board Advantage, or to go second. However, the player going first skips his draw phase, losing Card Advantage. If this player does not like his opening hand, he may trade it in for another, at the cost of only one card. This great service shows how important Card Advantage is thought to be in tournament circles. Which of the advantages is more important to accumulate? Often, it depends on the deck one is playing. An aggressive deck will often throw Card Advantage to the winds, attempting only to take its adversary down to zero before this card loss can be capitalized upon. However, a control deck, with creatures that are often far less powerful, will attempt to stave off an early rush until its superior card advantage, gained via cards such as Fact or Fiction and the like, proves overwhelming. This battle is even carried out in individual cards. Indentured Djinn is a blue rare from Mercadian Masques that epitomizes this theme. It is a 4/4 flyer for only three mana - an incredible bargain that ranks it among the cheapest creatures in Magic history. However, when it comes into play, one's opponent is allowed to draw up to three cards. This glaring loss of Card Advantage has led to it seeing little play, as it is likely that among these cards a suitable answer to this great threat will be found.

Fireblast is a similar card, but it has met with a much different reaction among Magic players. It is a straightforward burn spell, dealing four damage for six mana. Rather than pay this intensive cost, however, one can pay the ACC and sacrifice two mountains. This loses Card Advantage - but if one's opponent is at four life or under, two mountains are unimportant. It has great surprise value against an enemy's army, as the opponent usually feels his creatures are quite safe when all of one's land is tapped, and this Fireblast can provide such great Board Advantage against an unsuspecting opponent that the game can be over almost instantly. However, cards like Fireblast that break the norm are few and far between.

Cantrips, cards that replace themselves by allowing the caster to draw a card when cast, are always some of the most anticipated cards in each new set. The card widely considered to be the best ever, Ancestral Recall, deserves this honor simply due to Card Advantage. Being able to draw three cards for one mana has proved greater than all the tempo accelerators and efficient creatures printed - it can effectively win the game on the first turn.

Card Advantage is defined as simply having more cards in hand and in play than one's opponent. However, there is another sub-type of Card Advantage related closely to Board Advantage as well that has surfaced recently: Virtual Card Advantage. This form of advantage, related closely to Board Advantage as well, clarifies the slight inaccuracies that pure Card Advantage entails. It simply compares the number of cards on each side that are not only in play or in hand, but playing an active role in the game's proceedings. For example, when playing a deck such as Stasis, the game will usually end with one's opponent having huge Card Advantage. He will likely have far more creatures and lands in play and more cards in hand... But they will all be tapped and useless. Using the technique of Virtual Card Advantage, these useless cards are not entered into the equation, and the Stasis player's victory is clear.

The card most representative of this theme is Moat, an enchantment that forbids non-flying creatures from attacking. This card is found in almost every T1 control oriented deck, as it simply shuts down an aggressive deck. Facing off against a horde of creatures? Simply play Moat, and they will bother one no more. A deck with no purpose other than attack will always use creatures with limited defensive value, making them basically worthless once Moat hits the table. However, traditional Card Advantage still enters them into the equation, while the Virtual variant does not. Thus, Virtual Card Advantage is more accepted in Magic circles today.

In any player's quest to achieve mastery of Magic, these advantages will present themselves very often. To succeed at this noble game, they should never be far away from one's mind. All non-combo decks ever built reflect these guidelines, and strive after victory by accumulating an advantage, be it the Board, Tempo, or Card version. The build of one's deck should show at a glance the aim of this deck in question - and in creating a deck, one should never stray far from this aim. While cards that increase one's Tempo Advantage are usually beneficial in any deck, a card-drawer in a Stompy or Sligh deck will almost always prove inferior, as will an aggressive creature in a control deck. Concentrate on one advantage, acquire it, and victory will be yours!