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By: oraymw, Oraymw
Jul 01 2009 12:46am
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During Magic’s formative years, one Brian Weissman developed a magic theory that continues to dominate current magic strategy. He coined the term “Card Advantage,” which we still use today. Gradually, other strategists developed theories that attempted to describe the fundamental strategies of Magic. Of these, only one seems to have held on, though it is usually regarded as inferior to the first. Tempo was something that was promoted by Eric "Danger" Taylor, and attempted to describe how a game of Magic progresses over the course of several turns.

Some theorists see these theories as describing competing elements, but this has led to a misinterpretation of Magic strategy. While studying these concepts, I stumbled across an article on Wikipedia that led me to a better understanding of the interaction between tempo and card advantage.

Because both concepts are primarily concerned with the proliferation or limitation of options available to players, some theorists have suggested that they are actually aspects of the same central idea: namely, that play is driven by attempts by players to gain options for themselves and take them from opponents, an exchange which continues until one player is able to gain the option to win the game.

Essentially, everything we do in magic does one of two things: we either create more options for ourselves, or limit the options available to our opponents. This conceptual shift allows us to better understand why we win games, and why we lose them. This article will explore the concept of Options and attempt to apply this knowledge to actual Magic situations.

Card Advantage

Most Magic players have a basic understanding of Card Advantage. They know that when they play Ancestral Recall they get a three-for-one. They know that when they Wrath away four of their opponent’s critters, they get a four-for-one. They know that when they cast a Bloodbraid Elf, they will get at least a two-for-one.

Most Magic players also understand the concept of Virtual Card Advantage, where one card neutralizes other cards. Moat is a classic example. We understand that while killing a Flameblast Dragon with a Path to Exile, the basic land that they fetch is going to be much less dangerous than the Flameblast Dragon that they already have in play.

Bloodbraid Elf

Why is this important? Why does card advantage matter so much?

Cards are options. Each card represents the ability to do something. Forest gives us the option to use green mana to cast our cards. Grizzly Bears gives us the option to attack or defend. Shock gives us the ability to remove one of our opponent’s options. Path to Exile allows us to change one of our opponent’s options for a worse option. Every card that we draw gives us another option, while every card of our opponent’s that we destroy gives them one less options. As we accumulate options, we will eventually gain the option of winning the game.

This theory explains why Ancestral Recall is so much better than, say, Lightning Bolt. Ancestral Recall allows you to draw three cards, which gives you several more options. Lightning Bolt allows you to choose between two options, both of which usually take away only one of your opponent’s options. Drawing cards is good because it gives you more options. Destroying your opponent’s cards is good because it takes away your opponent’s options.

Now, let’s look at some interesting cards, and see how they affect our options.

  •  Sleight of Hand. This is a card that gives you the option of choosing between two other potential options. We can look at two cards, decide which option is best for us, then take the better option. Essentially, it improves our future options, but it doesn’t gives us more options. It trades one option for a better option. However, in most decks it is better to replace Sleight of Hand with an option that gives you more options or reduces your opponent’s options.
  •  Wild Nacatl. For example, Wild Nacatl is a card that gives you more options while reducing your opponent’s options. For the same mana investment of Sleight of Hand, you gain the option to attack your opponent or to block a creature. Each attack decreases your opponent’s options because they are closer to dying, which is when they no longer have any options. It increases your options, because it means that you are closer to the option of winning the game. If your opponent plays a creature, you have the option to attack anyways, or you gain the option of blocking the creature or taking away some of your opponent’s options.
  • Dusk Imp. For three mana, this is a creature that cannot reduce your opponent’s life total as quickly, nor is it as able to stop your opponent from attacking. However, the heavier mana investment is a result of having flying. Flying is an ability that reduces your opponent’s ability to block, which means they are less able to reduce your options. Essentially, you take all the creatures on their board, and take away half of their function by simply playing a card with flying.
  •  Wall of Denial. This card significantly decreases your opponent’s options. It makes most of their attacks irrelevant, which means that you neutralized some of their options. Because it has flying, it neutralizes a threat that your opponent had to invest more to play. Furthermore, it is immune to many of the answers that your opponent’s can play, which reduces their ability to get rid of the Wall. It neutralizes half of the function of your opponent’s largest attacker, it neutralizes the evasion of flying creatures, which means their mana was invested poorly, and it reduces the versatility of their removal.

Using the theory of Options, we can better see how different cards create virtual card advantage. They either amplify your options, or reduce your opponent’s options. Most of the time, they do both at the same time.

Tempo

Tempo is something much more ambiguous for most Magic players. We understand that Savannah Lions generates more tempo than Fugitive Wizard. We understand that Unsummon can create a tempo advantage. We understand that we want to utilize as much mana as possible each turn by building decks with low curves, a concept that was demonstrated with Sligh decks.

In his article, “Tempo IS interesting,” Stephen Menendian says, “The effect of Tempo is to create a situation where the opponent's tactical options, and eventually strategic options, continually dwindle until the game ends.” However, this definition of Tempo is limited, in that it only refers to the options of our opponents. Tempo is a reflection of time, and it represents two things: 1. How many options we are able to obtain for ourselves per turn, 2. How many options we are able to remove from our opponents per turn. Tempo represents card advantage provided over a period of time. In this essence, they are basically two parts of the same concept.

There are a few things that we are able to do on our turn. We untap, draw a card, play a land, use our mana to play spells, and gain an attack phase. Untapping gives us the opportunity to play our spells, which gives us an option. Drawing a card gives us more options to use on our turn. Playing a land gives us the ability to increase the number of options by opening up cards in our hand. Attacking reduces our opponent’s life total, which limits the choices they are able to make, while getting us closer to obtaining the option of winning the game.

We generate tempo whenever we accelerate or decelerate one of these factors. For example, if we tap all of our opponent’s land in their upkeep, then they lose the option of playing spells during that turn. This is a major limitation on our opponent’s resources, though it only lasts for a turn. However, on their next turn, they will still be limited on options because they won’t be able to play as many spells. If we draw extra cards, then we provide more options for ourselves in the short term. Furthermore, if we get to a point where we can only cast one spell per turn we are effectively limited to one additional option per turn. However, if we draw additional cards, we gain the ability to use our turn to make several options. We see that even drawing cards can create tempo.

Essentially, we generate tempo whenever we create more options for ourselves than our opponents have. This can be through Mana Acceleration, Mana Denial, Removal, Bigger Creatures, Card Drawing, or Combos. In limited games, much of our tempo comes from better resource management, which makes our resources last longer than our opponent’s; the classic battle of attrition. Essentially, tempo is the rate of change between our options and those of our opponent’s.

This is why a card like Birds of Paradise creates so much tempo. If you play Birds on the first turn, you are essentially giving up a one-drop that can attack, but by doing so, you are giving yourself the option of playing more powerful cards on turn two, cards that reduce your opponents options more quickly, or increase yours more rapidly. For example, the Fires decks of old would drop Birds on turn one, which allows them to drop Fires of Yavimaya on turn two. This is another accelerant, which allows the Fires player to have more options on the next turn; namely, the option to play a Blastoderm and attack on the same turn. They would top out on turn four with a Saproling Burst with the option to create several tokens and attack with them on the same turn. The Birds and Fires were tempo accelerants that allowed the Fires player to play threats that could reduce their opponent’s options more quickly.

The Relationship Between Card Advantage and Tempo

There is more to say on this topic than can be written in any one article. This article merely attempts to draw a relationship between Card Advantage and Tempo, an underlying principle that ties the two concepts together. That principle is that of the proliferation or limitation of options. Card Advantage is actually when we have more options available to us than our opponents, and Tempo is the rate of change between our options and those of our opponents.

Because these two concepts are tied together intrinsically, it makes no sense to separate decks into those that win through Tempo or Card Advantage. A Sligh deck tries to optimize it first few turns by playing cards that will either increase their options or reduce their opponents, but so does a control deck. They just do it in different ways. One tries to play cheap, efficient creatures that can attack the opponent’s life total, thereby reducing the opponent’s options and forcing them to make unfavorable concessions until you get in range to kill your opponent. Also, the Sligh deck plays synergistic cards that build off of each other to create options. For example, the Sligh deck plays Mountain and Fireblast. However, a control deck will often play cards that can fix its mana early on, which increases their options, then they will try to remove their opponent’s threats which decreases their opponent’s options, then try to remove all of their opponent’s threats at once with a card like Wrath of God. The control player then draws some cards so that they have more options with removal, and gain the ability to negate all of their opponent’s options while increasing their own ability to win the game.

This doesn’t really change the way that we play very much. Most Magic players understand these concepts instinctively. This is why we look forward and think “What will happen if I do X?” Essentially, we are asking ourselves if doing X will result in a game state where we have more options and our opponent has less. We build our decks in such a way that we can best use every turn to either create more options for ourselves, or negate our opponent’s actions. All this theory tries to do is explain the basic principle that explains why certain choices win games compared to other choices. This commonality is Optional Theory.

First Three Picks

I intend to write more articles discussing Optional Theory and its practical application to Magic. Also, I want to use this theory to break apart the things we do and analyze why they work, or why they didn’t work. However, while I work on the next article, I also want to do an article dealing with the first three draft picks in the ACR format. What I want to understand is how those first three picks shape our decks, and whether decks win more often when they stick to their first three picks. Also, I want to see what picks make us more likely to win.

In order to do this, I need a lot of raw data. So, if you are interested, please send me the following draft data:

  1. Deck Performance: How many games you won. Example: 3-0, 2-1.
  2. Deck Build: What were your main colors. Example: GWr, UBw, RWg, Gwrub.
  3. First Three Picks: Just find this information in your draft log, and copy and paste the information from your first three picks. Please don’t send me more than the first three picks, as I can’t compute too much information.

Please send this information to oraymw@gmail.com. If I get enough raw data, then I will compile it and write an article on my findings.

10 Comments

Theory by oraymw at Fri, 06/26/2009 - 09:34
oraymw's picture

This article attempts to describe the fundamental relationship between Card Advantage and Tempo. I intend to write some more theory articles in the future. I think that PureMTGO needs more articles that focus on theory, and this is a step in that direction.

Draft Info by oraymw at Wed, 03/20/2024 - 10:00
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J

Nice article. Keep them by Anonymous (not verified) at Wed, 07/01/2009 - 04:00
Anonymous's picture

Nice article. Keep them coming. I think there is a place here for this sort of discussion.

There are some rich ideas here by ben_hurt at Wed, 07/01/2009 - 12:02
ben_hurt's picture
5

I think you're onto something with Optional Theory in draft. Are you starting your draft with picks that lead to more, better options than your opposing drafters or are you drafting negative options? Is that 1st-pick Resounding Thunder over Naya Charm leading to more or less options?

Keep it up!

:P by ghweiss (not verified) at Wed, 07/01/2009 - 20:37
ghweiss's picture

This is not theory. This is 90 incidences of the word "option" without once defining how you are using the term, or what it is that you are trying to accomplish by using it.

At least now I know to stock up on Charms. One card, 3 options, sounds good!

Is this an attempt to coin by lenney (not verified) at Wed, 07/01/2009 - 22:05
lenney's picture

Is this an attempt to coin your own little saying? If it is, I don't see that I have an option to not use it, as it feels like my options are limited in that you've forced it down my throat about 70 times... err 90

good article by Rerepete at Thu, 07/02/2009 - 17:22
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4

I'm waiting for the next article, although, I am sure that this topic will be a bit dry for most LOL.

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