Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1035: Card Advantage with Brian Weissman

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

In this podcast, I sit down with the Brian Weissman, long-time Magic pro and expert in card advantage, to talk about the concept of card advantage.

I'm not pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the Drive to Work at Home Edition. So today I want to talk about a concept that's very important to Magic that's a little on the complex side, card advantage. So what I've done is I got an expert, Brian Weissman, long-time pro player, creator of the deck, one would argue the first ever recorded deck that took advantage of card advantage, to come talk about what is card advantage. So hey, Brian. How's it going, Mark? Thanks for having me on. Okay, so this is going to be like a waiting pool where, what they call a zero entry pool, where we're going to start very shallow, and then as we go along, we'll get to the deep end. So we're not going to start at the deep end, but we will get there. Okay. So Brian. Yes. In simplest terms, what is card advantage? In simplest terms, Mark, card advantage is simply the idea that the easiest, almost deterministic

route to winning a game of magic is to dominate your opponent in resources, specifically in the resources of cards, either by destroying more of their cards for fewer of yours, or more simply by drawing more cards than your opponent. And the central idea that if you accomplish that, winning the game becomes inevitable, regardless of their strategy and generally regardless of your strategy. becomes inevitable, regardless of their strategy and generally regardless of your strategy. Okay, so let's just walk through some simple examples. Okay, so let's take Divination. Okay, so Divination, you spend mana, you draw two cards. So you've spent one card, but you've drawn two cards. Precisely. And I mean, drawing cards is the kind of the most simplest version of card advantage, right?

I spent one card, I got more than one card. Precisely. And I think on the surface, on face value, it's a very relatively easy concept to understand. Mainly because I think if you pay attention to what people value the most about a given turn in magic, one of the behaviors that I observe a lot when people are learning the game and something that was totally endemic to all of the players that I first started playing Magic with back in early 1994 was that everybody really, really wanted to draw a card more than anything else. As soon as their turn began, often at the expense of the

uncapped step and sometimes even the upkeep step, people would reach over to their deck and grab another card. It was clearly obvious to people that they understood that drawing a card was fundamentally important, not only for entrenching their strategy, but also for just enjoying the game more. More cards means more options, more mana to do the things you want, and eventually gets you to whatever the theme of your deck is. to do the things you want, and eventually gets you to whatever the theme of your deck is. And so I think that early on, most players recognize that drawing cards feels good and is powerful in some way that they may not necessarily understand. But in terms of really getting into the nitty gritty of what made that so important, it took a little bit of time for that to be understood in the community. Okay, so now the second example here is Mine Rot. So Mine Rot is a spell that makes your opponent discard two cards.

So assuming your opponent has two cards, although most likely you're casting Mine Rot, they have two cards. I cast one card, they lose two cards. So now this is another, as we're getting into the pool, the idea that it's not that I'm going up in cards, is that I have, in comparison to my opponent, I have played one, I lost one card, but they lost two cards. So let's talk a little bit about, like, the idea that it's,

I have more cards in relation to my opponent. Yes, exactly. And I think that getting back to one of the things that I really like to explain to new players and one of the things that is a really good indicator of whether or not something matters a lot is how people feel about it emotionally. And anybody that's ever been forced to discard cards kind of has that icky feeling in the middle of their chest. It kind of feels uncomfortable to be made to discard. And when i think back to magic's early days there was there was one incredibly powerful discard spell um called mind twist that was considerably

more powerful than mine rot basically imagine mine rod but it scales you can cast spend as much mana as you want on it and the discard is a random discard rather than a choice discard which feels a lot worse but it wasn't until the fallen empires expansion was printed in, I think, mid to late 1994, that a lot of people were playing with discard because a two black mana discard spell called Hymn to Torok was printed. And everybody was playing with it because it was a common card and it was just hundreds of decks. And it created a really kind of uncomfortable game experience for a lot of players.

People began to realize, I think, around the time when Hymn to Tora came out, that making your opponent discard was a strategy unto itself and began to understand why that was a thing. Because it felt bad to discard. You weren't really sure. You threw cards in the graveyard. Was that the same as the cards being milled off the top of your library by Millstone? Kind of seems the same, but it isn't really the same. And it certainly felt a lot worse. got Millstone. Kind of seems the same, but it isn't really the same, and it certainly felt a lot worse. And I think gradually people came to understand that if you could make your opponent

lose additional resources for fewer cards that you were expending to do that, that it got you further ahead, and it made the situation, you began to feel more powerful in the context of the game, and they began to feel weaker. And I think that was a clue that there was something really important going on there that wasn't just necessarily i'm drawing more cards than you it was it was the idea that i'm losing options i'm losing my foothold in this game something important is happening here and it seems like it's kind of leading to the guy doing uh causing all the discard to win a disproportionate number of games okay so the next example is I cast a spell. I'll use Fireball, I guess.

I cast a spell in which I have one spell but I'm able to destroy two creatures with it. So the idea is I've cast one spell. Now, note, these aren't cards in their hand. These are creatures on the battle. So the next thing to understand is when we say cards, we don't just mean cards in hand. Both discard and drawing

are talking about cards in hand. But now we're starting to talk about, I went up in cards because they lost two cards on the table and I lost one card in my hand. So let's talk about the idea that it's not just cards in hand, but just cards you have. Yeah, precisely. I mean, it elicits that same feeling.

You overextend on the board, your opponent casts a Wrath of God, an early creature removal spell from Alpha that everybody was playing with. It was a rare, the board, your opponent casts a Wrath of God, an early creature removal spell from Alpha that everybody was playing with. It was a rare, so you didn't see it a ton, and it cost double white. But still, the card showed up a lot. Certainly, Earthquake was around. Fireball was around. In Legends, they printed the card Pyrotechnics, which could kill a bunch of creatures. Anytime that happened, you would feel like, ugh, I feel kind of gutted as a result of that. I lost my three guys off the battlefield. That, ugh, I feel kind of gutted as a result of that. I lost my

three guys off the battlefield. That felt bad. But I kind of just feel like I'm really falling behind now. I just feel like I have far fewer options, a lot less going on. And my opponent just feels like they're getting a dominant position. And so again, it became really apparent that you didn't just need to mess around and interact with cards in hand, drawing more cards, making them discard. But if you could get two for one or three for one or four for one on the battlefield from cards that had already been played, it was kind of the same sense of getting much further ahead in the game right away from something that was clearly impactful. Okay.

So the next example, I'm going to use Giant Growth to talk about going both directions, how you can lose card advantage. Giant Growth can gain card advantage or lose you card advantage. So the example for gain card advantage is I'm attacking with a 2-2 creature and my opponent has what's a good example?

A pair of 1-1s. A pair of 1-1s. Okay, a pair of 1-1s is good. I'm attacking with a 2-2. They have two 1-1s. Or even could be the thing about one-ones is they were going to trade both their one-ones for your two-two. Yeah, maybe a one-one and a one-two. Yeah, a one-one and a one-two. The idea being that I wasn't going to destroy

both of their creatures. I was destroying one of their creatures, but not both of their creatures. And then, you cast Giant Growth, now it's a five-five, and instead of them losing one creature, they lost both creatures. Exactly. To a single spell that cost only one mana. And a very similar situation that happened a lot was the card Lightning Bolt. One red mana, instant deal three damage.

And so you'd have that exact scenario. I attack with a 3-3, my opponent puts two 2-2s in front of it, thinking that they're going to trade a 2-2 for a 3-3. I bolt away one of the other guys, now a 2-2 for a 3-3. I bolt away one of the other guys. Now a 2-2 hits a 3-3, and I kill two creatures for one red mana. Incredibly potent effect that also just feels backbreaking when it happens to you. And the other important thing with this example is it's not that a giant growth is inherently card advantage. It doesn't—a lot of times I can attack with a creature, a giant growth, it hit you. I haven't gained any card advantage

so it's not that giant growth is inherently card advantage but it can be and that's the thing to understand is that

like a divination is always card advantage I'm always going up in cards but a giant growth situationally I could go up in cards

but let's use the other example here's where it can cost you card advantage which is I'm attacking with a tutu creature I use giant growth on it and then like the lightning bolt you're talking about in response to my Here's where it can cost you card advantage, which is I'm attacking with a 2-2 creature.

I use Giant Growth on it, and then the Lightning Bolt you're talking about, in response to my Giant Growth, you Lightning Bolt my creature. Now I lose my creature, and my Giant Growth essentially went for nothing. It doesn't do anything because the creature isn't there anymore. So now I've lost card advantage by casting Giant Growth. Yep. And you go through that experience having a creature bolted or, more commonly, swords to plowshares back in the era. One white mana, exile a creature, and the person gains life equal to the power of the creature that was exiled. But the same exact thing.

I try to pump up my guy, somehow enhance my guy as a combat trick. And then my guy gets blown away from underneath me, and I lose two cards for one and feel quite awful. And so totally interchangeable, right? All the cards, whether it's the situation we described at the very beginning, simply drawing more cards, make your opponent discard more cards,

getting two for one, getting three for one on the battlefield with some kind of a sweeper or even a combat trick, giant girthing during a multi-block or something like that, or killing a bander when your opponent tried to block with a banding creature and you killed the other thing. Any one of those things gets you further into the game

and makes it considerably harder for your opponent to recover their position. And if it happens a couple of times, you'll often engineer the ideal situation where you have three or four cards in your hand and parity on the battlefield or even the lead, and your opponent has cards in your hand and parity on the battlefield or even the lead and your opponent has nothing in their hand and is reduced to drawing a single card per turn off the top okay so all these examples so far are super practical right that you can look you can look back at what happened you can count the number of cards and you can see oh one player

at the end of it ended up has cards in relation to the other player. Exactly, yes. Okay, so now the next step is the idea that I can play a card that costs you cards, but not immediately. So, for example, let's say I play a card. We were talking old school today, so I'll use an old school card.

I play a Circle Protection. Yes. So Circle Protection is an enchantment that you can spend one generic mana to prevent any source of that color. So I play, let's say you're playing red and I play Circle Protection red. How's this card advantage? Nothing got lost.

So why is this card advantage? Yeah, in fact, actually it feels initially the opposite right i play a circle protection red and it doesn't immediately impact the board you still have all your red spells in hand you still have your red creatures in play it feels like i've actually spent two mana and a card that i've drawn to accomplish nothing but the problem is is that the circle protection red provided that you have mana to fuel it not only neutralizes most of the red spells in your opponent's hand but more importantly it is a future negation every red card that they draw now particularly

if they're drawing a deck that's based around dealing damage directly to the player every single time they now draw chain lightning or lightning bolt or pyrotechnics or fireball or whatever they're unable to do any damage so it's almost as if their draw step didn't matter at all and we talked before about how you're gleeful and happy to draw your card every turn. That's the really fun part of the game. Well, when your opponent has a Circle Protection Red in play, you're not looking forward to drawing off the top of your deck

unless it's maybe the one or two cards in your deck that might interact with that Circle Protection Red. You might not even have any way to deal with it at all. And in fact, it wasn't until I think the card Anarchy was printed in Ice Age. Maybe it was Anarchy and Alliances. It's around then. Anarchy is from Ice Age, I believe. Yeah.

And it destroys all white permanents in play, a red sorcery. And it wasn't until Anarchy. A color break, by the way. That card should have been printed. You learned some lessons, I think. I think you've done a few videos about that sort of thing but uh anyway um it wasn't until anarchy was printed that red actually had a direct way of dealing with enchantments and so if you put a circle protection red in play with three single spell you could often nullify 30 cards in their deck

in play in hand whatever it was one of the most powerful card advantage cards in the world so people think oh circle protection red is unsportsmanlike. It's so powerful. It's strong. But what it really is is it's just the ultimate card advantage card when it's employed against a deck that's very narrow, like a mono-red burn deck or something. Right, and so that's the next thing I understand on card advantage is it's not necessarily that I'm trying to get more cards

in the immediate present right now, but it could be that I'm over the course of the game, I'm going to make cards, I'm going to go up in cards. And so, here's the next thing for us to explain. The difference between card advantage and virtual card advantage. I see, yeah. So card advantage means that if you actually count the cards, you know, I'm up in cards, I have more cards than you.

If you count all my cards in play and cards in my hand, I have more cards than you do. Right. Virtual card advantage, and this is kind of what the Sword Protection Red was getting at, is it's not that that card necessarily made them discard cards or destroyed cards, but it made cards they have kind of not be useful anymore.

And so you went up cards, but you went up virtual cards, and that card, yeah, they still have it. It's still in their hand. You can count it, but it's not advancing them toward winning. Yeah, the best example I can think of in that regard was a situation that happened a lot back in the day.

An enchantment that was printed in Legends, one of the most powerful enchantments ever made, and oddly enough, not an enchant world, even though I don't believe there are any enchant worlds that was printed in Legends. One of the most powerful enchantments ever made, and oddly enough, not an enchant world, even though I don't believe there are any enchant worlds in white, is the card Moat. It costs two generic, two white mana, and simply, while it's on the battlefield,

it says, non-flying creatures cannot attack, hard stop. And back when Moat was around and people were still learning the game, I'd have people walk up to games that i was playing and i'd have a mode in play sort of just you know surreptitiously sitting on the side of the battlefield and they'd have 11 creatures in play and the person would walk up and their initial assumption would be look how many creatures are in play on one side of the

battlefield that guy must be winning and then they notice that over on the right corner i have this singular enchantment holding all of those creatures at bay. And my hand has several ways to stop any attempt that they might make to get rid of the moat. Consequently, all 11 of those creatures are effectively dead, rendered totallyer, a card drawing spell that allows you to draw X cards in addition to the blue initial casting cost of it. So you think, oh, Brain Geyser for eight is really powerful. Well, Moat that destroys 10 creatures in play and 13 more creatures in their deck is way better than Brain Geyser. And understanding that that's a real thing is kind of a big light bulb moment for people when they're learning how to play the game better. Okay, now here, as we continue to delve deeper here, the next thing that's interesting is cards are situationally create advantage. Like,

virtual advantage means, well, I play a card and it means something. Now, in the case of moat, you might have things in play, so you could right away invalidate things, but sometimes what happens is, by watching you play your deck, I'm figuring out what I believe is in your deck, and then I play a card, and sometimes there are cards where you get to name something,

you can use knowledge that you have, but I play something that's going to cause you problems, not that I've seen it yet, but I can anticipate, and'm the card advantage is like future virtual card advantage which is a very odd concept but the idea that i'm going to do something because i've read you and i understand what you're doing and that i'm causing you problems in the future so let's talk a little bit about sort of future future virtual card advantage yeah i mean i think that i think to understand the value of what you're

describing, future card advantage, I think that you have to kind of make a mental leap as a player where you develop from the idea of dealing with the here and now and starting to develop your strategy so that you incorporate some planning. You begin to think about what could I draw? What could the opponent draw? And as soon as you start to consider those things, not just what is the creature in play that I have to block or remove, but more of what could the person have down the road? And you start to formulate a strategy. Cards like the ones you're describing, which sort of preemptively deal with things, become increasingly attractive. And you can start to actually sculpt and plan a strategy where you are not even necessarily dealing with the stuff that's in play, but you're sculpting a situation where everything that they draw from that point onward is nullified.

And those lead to some of the most powerful and advanced decks that have ever been played in Constructed Magic. And the other thing to remember is, the thing where it starts getting very complicated is sometimes I can do something like, the example of circle protection is one for one, meaning I play circle protection and red cards now can't be played. I play moat and non-flyers can't attack. Non-flyers, non-island walkers, can't

attack. But sometimes I can do something where it's not I'm destroying a particular card, it's I'm making certain strategies harder. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I think so. I would say that probably the class of cards that's in that case, I'm very glad that you brought that up, actually, because in an article I wrote a million years ago, I think probably almost 30 years ago, where I talked about

this idea, I think the best example of that are cards that are directly involved in resource denial, specifically cards like Winter Orb and Armageddon. Winter Orb is a two-mana artifact that was printed in Alpha. It shows up in Commander, particularly Competitive Commander, fairly often. And it says that during the untap step, players only are allowed to untap a single land. The remainder of their lands stay tapped. So if you play a Winter Orb and your opponent has a hand full of cards and all of their lands are stay tapped so if you play a winner orb and your opponent has a hand full of cards and all of their lands are tapped they may draw three four five spells consecutively and be unable to do anything and actually be forced to discard so for two mana because of the situation that you sculpted your opponent is discarding the cards that they draw

off the top of their deck rather than playing them and maybe if they discard three or four cards that winner orb has gotten four for one or five for one. Then they play one card through the winner orb, tapping out again, and then the next four or five cards they draw are nullified by it. And Armageddon, the famous sorcery from Alpha, one white, three generic, destroys all lands in play, can create very much the same situation and can straight up just win the game a lot of the time, too. And it's not just that you lose your mana it's the fact that you've had such a crippling crushing blow to the

card advantage dynamic between the two players that the other person is just out of the game they're not dead yet here's what I like to think about it which is imagine when you cast that spell it splits now there's two timelines one in which you cast the spell and one in which you didn't cast a spell.

Ah, that's great. A lot of what you're talking about is, well, they actually discard the card. It's not even that. In one timeline where I did do it, they play some number of cards. In the timeline where I didn't do it, they play a different number of cards. If in another timeline they played more

cards, every card they played that wasn't played in the timeline where you did play it is card advantage. Like, have you, for example, like, I play it, and they can only play three cards for the rest of the game, where if I didn't and they played eight cards, I netted this sort of virtual five cards. Yes.

No, I love that analogy. That makes a ton of sense, and that's a really, it's an excellent way of looking at it, this sort of split timeline. And you'll often, and people recognize this instinctively, too, because when the game is over, in the game that you cast the Armageddon, you cast Winter Orb, the person says, oh, I would have done this, and I would have done this, and I had this card, and I had this, and I would have done this. And you're like, well, you couldn't do any of those things because I had a Winter Orb in play, and you were limited to doing one thing every four turns.

Okay, so the next level, as we go deeper. Sure. four turns. Okay, so the next level, as we go deeper, so sometimes, because you can read what your opponent wants to do, you can take steps that makes it so they have trouble doing that. Of course. For example, let's just use giant growth, because that's a great example.

If you read them as having giant growth, you can act in such a way that a giant growth isn't going to cause card disadvantage for you. Right. So what that means is sometimes card advantage is a matter of understanding the situation where you might suffer card disadvantage and not allowing those opportunities.

Can we talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I think that that comes down to, of course, understanding specific interactions and playing around a range of effects in a situation where you might be vulnerable. So another example would be, let's say I've got a creature enchantment in my hand, and it's a creature enchantment that draws a card whenever the creature deals damage. I could just play it on my guy and try to attack and try to get a card out of it right away, but he's got three mana sitting there untapped, you know, two red and a white or something.

And I can't just play it because if he has any range of red and white removal spells, I might lose card advantage. I might lose the creature and the enchantment. But if I wait until he's tapped out, then I know that I can safely invest in the creature, get through for an attack, at least have the enchantment replace itself.

Let me say real quickly, just so the audience understands. If I have an enchantment that says, when this enters the battlefield, draw a card, if the creature I'm putting it on is not there, meaning it fizzles, then the ad effect doesn't happen. Yeah, I was thinking more along the lines of a card like Curiosity, for example. Oh, sure, something that does damage, sure. Right, the idea that when the creature attacks and deals combat damage you get to draw a card from it so it's the idea that

i really want to play this but i recognize that if my opponent has three mana on tap and he's playing red and white there's a high probability or black he might be able to kill my creature at instant speed and i lose two for one so by understanding that and waiting until he's tapped out so that i guarantee that i at least get through for an attack. That at least nullifies the aspect of that interaction that would result in me getting two for one. And the important point here for card advantage is, early on, we go back to our first example with the divination, that is kind of card advantage separated from gameplay, right?

If I cast a divination, I'm going up in card, I mean, barring some very weird cases, but I'm going to go up in cards, I mean, barring some very weird cases, but I'm going to go up in cards and my opponent isn't interacting with that. I'm just gaining card advantage. Exactly. But as we, as the stuff we're getting to now, it's like, there's a lot of card advantage that has to, from understanding the game and playing correctly and reading what your opponent

is doing, that a lot of card advantage is putting myself in situations where I'm increasing card advantage or decreasing disadvantage, you know. Yeah. Can I give a fairly technical explanation of that idea? Sure. Okay, so back in old school format, back in the day, the most powerful, reliable card advantage engine was a four- artifact called jam day tone which was also printed in alpha by by modern standards jam day tone is quite obsolesce in fact it's been printed for quite cheaper both to cast and activate and hasn't seen widespread adoption but in that era jam day tone was the way that slower deterministic control decks won games of magic so both players generally if they were savvy,

particularly the person playing with Jam Day Tome, recognized that the card was instrumental to their win. In fact, it was the win condition. It may have been a four mana artifact that didn't deal damage, that took four to cast and four to activate to draw a single card, but it was actually your win condition. I used to tell people that every time I tap my Jam Day Tome, you may die to a Sarah Angel later, but every time that Jam Day Tome, you may die to a Sarah Angel later, but every time that Jam Day Tome taps, you're taking four damage. And if I tap it five times over the course of the game, you've already lost. It may take a little while for my Angel to eventually finish you or the Mirror Universe or a Fireball, but you've lost to the Jam Day Tome already. It's actually the win condition. So because the card is so critical to your victory,

protecting it is critical as well. And that may lead you, in the case of using countermagic, which is the other tool that control decks use to control the board state, is the prioritizing of counterspell to protect Jam Day Tome above all else. So I might let you kill two or three things in play with a counterspell in my hand, because I recognize that my route to victory is actually casting a Jam Day Tome three turns from now with enough mana to protect it. So when you try to kill the Jam Day Tome, I counterspell that. Now you can't kill it. And now the Jam Day Tome starts dealing four damage a turn until the game's over. And that's a high sort of high mastery behavior that takes a lot of time to figure out. And back to what you were saying, it means that you need to

understand intrinsically as a player where the sources of card advantage are as the context of the game evolves. Okay, the next thing I want to explain is, we use the term card advantage just because that's the term we've used forever. Yeah. Card can be a little misleading, so I also want to say that there are other resources, tokens probably being the most famous example. Meaning, when we're talking about cards, what we mean is things that you can use. So, for example, there are strategies in which I'm going to keep making tokens, and my tokens are my card advantage. That I'm going to beat you because you're not stopping me from making the tokens, and that tokens eventually will overwhelm you. And so, once again, I also want to explain that we use the term card advantage, but it doesn't even mean it has to be cards.

As you said earlier, really it's about resources. Cards are the simplest resources, but whatever the resource is, I'm doing something in which I'm going up on you. And token creatures are nice because it's easy to understand that if you have a token card

to represent your token creature and think of those as cards, that's the other thing to understand is that there's many different facets for how you can do that. Okay, so... Go ahead, go ahead. Oh, no, it's fine. Go ahead.

So now I want to explain where people get a little lost. Let's talk about looting. So looting is an effect where you draw a card and discard a card so let's talk about how how is looting card advantage when you are not going up cards yeah it's it's it's so it's quite enigmatic i think to a lot of players it's i liken it a little bit to i'm sorry to introduce another concept but i talked about the idea of milling too and there are a lot of people that when they initially start playing, they think that having their library milled by a card like millstone, for example, just mills two cards when it's used, is card advantage. They're thinking, oh, look, I'm putting cards in your graveyard. I'm getting ahead. This feels important. It feels powerful.

And it certainly elicits bad feelings, but they're obviously very distinctly different. powerful and it certainly elicits bad feelings but they're obviously very distinctly different looting which involves drawing one card and then discarding a card versus milling cards from the top of your opponent's library are not the same thing and the real reason why looting can actually be quasi card advantage is because there is an aspect to card advantage particularly as it pertains to the idea of resources that is uh has to do with context it's contextual cards can be very powerful at some point at other times they can be utterly redundant lands in particular right if you if your deck runs off three or four mana once you get to three or four mana and you're not interested in doing two or three things in a turn every additional land you draw after that is useless it's basically

like a dead draw it's just like drawing a creature when your opponent has moat in play. And so if you have the ability to loot, you can exchange a totally dead or useless situational card for something that might be more powerful at that moment. And so that card selection can inevitably lead to victory in the same way that just simply drawing more cards can too. And the way to think of it is when we're talking about card advantage, one of the ideas we introduce is the idea that you can make dead cards. You can make cards that, even though the opponent has them in their hand or on the battlefield, they've lost their potency to win the game, to have any function. And so the reason that looting and things like it become very important for card advantage is,

you need the ability to take sort of dead cards and turn them into live cards. Exactly. And that is why looting... I mean, there's a lot of other types of things. But anything in which I can trade, I can do a trade of a dead card for a live card. When I say card, it could be a token. But, you know, I'm taking a dead resource

and turning it into a usable resource. That is going up in card advantage from a virtual standpoint. I mean, that's why this gets very complicated because... Yeah, no, it does. I think you can't overstate the point of context and timing in a game of Magic. And I think a really good example would be the card's Brainstorm and the card Ancestral Recall. So Ancestral Recall, arguably the most powerful Magic card ever printed. One blue mana instant target player draws three.

So it's one blue mana draw three at instant speed, plus two hand size, tons more resources and options. Just a bonkers card, and not in print since Unlimited Edition a million years ago. Contrasted with Brainstorm, which was printed in Ice Age and then reprinted a bunch of times, a commander staple. Draw three cards, then take two cards from your hand and put them back on top of your library. And so to a relatively inexperienced player, they might see those two cards side by side and think, huh, they both draw you three cards for one blue mana at instant speed. They must be roughly the same. But the brainstorm is effectively a double looting effect, whereas the ancestral is an actual card drawing effect.

So they're not they're not mechanically the same at all in terms of how they increase your hand size but in a lot of games casting brainstorm wins you the game just as fast as it as casting ancestral recall does because it contextually draws three cards in your hand right away gives you more resources and options in that moment even if you have to put cards from your hand back on top of your library. And so you can kind of understand, even though we're not doing the same thing here, the impact on the game is the same. And it was actually so apparent after a while in, I guess it was vintage or maybe type one format, that Brainstorm eventually had to be restricted in type one, right alongside Ancestor Recall. The cards were almost functionally the same in most situations,

which is kind of a really amazing thing to consider. That draw once, loot twice is most of the time the same as draw, draw, draw. Okay, so one last thing. We have to wrap up soon here. So the one other concept I want to throw in here is you can turn things that aren't resources into resources.

So, for example, let's say I... What's a good... Yawgmoth's Will, I guess, since we're going old school today. Yawgmoth's Will is a spell that lets you, when you cast it, you now can cast things out of your graveyard. And play lands. And play lands.

But the idea there is the sort of card advantage of it is I took cards that were dead cards, cards in my graveyard, and I turned them at least even temporarily and once again, we even get into card advantage can be temporary. I mean, there's a lot of nuance here, but by

turning my graveyard into I mean, it's kind of like I put them in my hand for the turn. I mean, at the end of the turn I have to discard them, so I don't get to keep them, but I get them for a turn, and that is a... Yawgmoth's Will is a very, very powerful card for that ability to just temporarily allow you to do something. It gives, like, temporary card advantage. Yeah, I mean, imagine if Yawgmoth's Will read

one black, two generic sorcery. Draw your graveyard. Yeah. I mean, that's essentially what it is, almost, right? But discard those cards at the end of the turn. It's almost exactly what that is. Three mana, draw your graveyard. That's pretty insane. And so what that also means is that part of card advantage could be turning things into

a usable card that previously weren't a usable card. And so for example, there's a card called intuition um where you get four cards out of your library and then your opponent chooses two of them they go in your hand and the two other ones go to your graveyard and the way the card gets used that's very efficient is i don't care what you pick the cards being my graveyard is just as useful to me as the cards being my hand so for all intents and purposes i've drawn four cards i've grown up four cards yeah and in some in many cases actually

because of effects like flashback and so on you might actually be up even more than that right because the two cards go to the graveyard you might be able to play them anyway so you're drawing four cards at instant speed for three mana so anyway that hopefully today today was kind of intro to card advantage is it's a very interesting thing in that, like I said, Brian, when did you make the deck? So this was like 94? Built in, first version was probably early April of 1994. Okay. So the deck is kind of known as being the first sort of named deck, you know.

The internet wasn't quite what it is now, so it wasn't as easy to share information. But the idea that Card Advantage, which was like the, you know, it was the engine that ran the deck. To modern day, like, Card Advantage is still a very important part of just magic theory, and that's kind of what I wanted

to walk through today, is that part of getting better at magic is understanding how do I win? Why do I win? What, what makes me win? And there are other concepts, card advantage isn't the only thing that matters, but it is a very potent idea that was true, you know, almost 30 years ago. And it's true today. Yeah, I actually, I kind of, I wanted to talk very briefly to a card that's probably familiar to a lot of listeners and that's the card Rhystic Study from, which I don't remember when it was printed, but it's a prophecy, incredibly powerful and that's the card Rhystic Study, which I don't remember when it was printed.

From Prophecy, I believe. From Prophecy, yeah. Incredibly powerful card that's all over the place in Commander, particularly because it's a very problematic mechanic when there's three other opponents. Tell people what it does. I'm sorry, yeah. One blue, two generic mana enchantment.

It says whenever any opponent would cast a spell, any spell, if they do not pay an additional generic mana during the spell's resolution, actually on the casting of a spell, any spell, if they do not pay an additional generic mana during the spell's resolution, actually on the casting of the spell, the Rhystic Study triggers and the controller Rhystic Study draws a card. And once it's in play, all of the players have to monitor it if they're accountable to this. And what you'll notice is that the behavior of players around Rhystic Study is very demonstrative of their relative skill levels and their understanding of the game in general.

The savvy players, the people with experience, understand that paying for Rhystic Study is very important. You can't just feed cards indiscriminately to the opponent. The less experienced players, the less sophisticated players who are more new to the game, will often just play stuff and not even pay the extra mana, even when they can do it. And not out of some idea of collusion. It just doesn't occur to them that that's a thing

that's quite deleterious to their ability to win the game. They just don't even notice. And so there's definitely a, there's kind of an evolution that goes on among players where they go from being the person that happily just gleefully casts their spells into Rhystic Study to being a person like me, who it causes me physical pain to allow players to draw cards and I will bend over backwards to prevent you from ever drawing even one card from Rhystic Study even if that means

that it's constraining my development for you know half the uh half the game and you have to treat it that way and when players really begin to recognize that you can kind of do a gut check. Whenever you start to get that feeling that my opponent is drawing extra cards and it's making me uncomfortable, you're kind of starting to understand what's going on and why it's so important. And the one thing I will say for people that this is a new concept for them, the next time you play, it's kind of fun just to sort of notice. That's the first step I say when you're beginning. Just try to notice when card advantage happens.

Just be thinking about it. Oh, I cast this one spell and they lost two spells. And once again, it could be on the battlefield, in their hand. I spent one spell and they lost two spells. And the spells could be tokens and stuff.

That's the first step, I think, to understanding card advantage. It's just noticing it happening in the game absolutely and uh there was the opportunities to make that observation are everywhere in the game of magic i mean in a game of commander for example you're often engaged in card advantage effects literally from turn one and every single decision you make from that point onward is predicated on how do I establish card advantage in this game? How do I draw more cards? How do I make my opponent discard more cards? How do I nullify key things that give them card advantage or protect the things that give me card advantage and so on?

And once you begin to understand that and you recognize that, you can sculpt an entire sort of meta strategy around that idea. And it's very effective. and it's very effective. So I'm going to leave everybody with one. Here's the most important lesson I'm ever learning in the early days, which comes out of Card Advantage, is the following, is the thing that keeps you

from getting better at magic is you. Like you are making decisions that with more knowledge and more understanding that you will, you know, like anybody can get, absolutely anybody can get better. It's just a matter of saying,

oh, I am doing things that if I learn not to do them or I learn to do things a little differently, I will become a better magic player. And that's a really important first step to be getting better at magic is understanding that you are in control of whether you are better or not. Yes, precisely.

Exactly. Just be self-analytical, be self-critical, pay attention to what lets you win, pay attention to what lets you win and pay attention to what causes you to lose. And if you monitor that closely, you will inevitably improve. That's how we learned how to play this game in the first place. When I started playing in 1994, we had this little inscrutable manual that we could barely even understand the rules in it, much less the strategy. And it was just a systematic way of paying attention to what worked and what didn't work and really honing in on the key components, the key mechanics of magic.

And at the heart of it, at least in 1994 and even to this day, is card advantage. It informs everything. It's sort of the unified theory of everything in magic. It kind of does come down to that. Okay. Well, I want to thank you for being with us, Brian. You're welcome, Mark. Thanks for having me. I knew when we

talked about this topic, there was no better authority than you on Uncarded Event, so I'm glad to have you with us. Very, very glad to be on, Mark. Thank you. But anyway, guys, I can see my desk, so we all know what this means. This means instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So I'll see you all next time, and once again,

thanks, Brian. Take care, Mark. Bye-bye, everybody.