Hey guys its not Kripparian but how’re y’all doin’ anyway~

Thought I’d put down my ideas on card advantage today, to start.

Let’s get a working definition for the concept. What is ‘card advantage’? Simply put, it is having more cards in hand over your opponent, equating to more options and play making possibilities. There are many other things to consider of course.

The value of card draw sky-rocketed once Patch 0.61 dropped, with the change to draw 1. I went Lyonar for the first few games and barely noticed a difference due to the way I am used to playing it – minions on curve with the occasional spell every two turns. Once I changed to Abyssian though, there was a quick realisation. Having 1/6 cards at the start of your turn sucks. Cards which drew were soon to be really core to deck building, and in anticipation we were provided with whole new minions that achieved this purpose. More on that later.

Number of cards

The easiest way to establish and maintain card advantage. There’s a few ways to do this-

Card draw: Old Scion’s Second Wish (2 mana: Draw 2 cards) is the simple use 1 card to get a 2 for 1 in hand. It replaces itself – and adds another card. The price you pay is that it does not affect the board directly, but gives you more options to utilise your remaining mana this turn as well as mana next turn.

This is almost always a drawback of trying to generate card advantage, incidentally – you lose some tempo, and the game then depends on whether it provides you with enough future play making to compensate. This effect is priced higher as it gets stronger – Rite of the Undervault costs 5 for a complete refuel, and actually discards a card if you cannot play another that turn. Heaven’s Eclipse costs 5 for basically a 2-card increase but is invaluable in the decks it is employed.

Cantrip: A term that is borrowed from Magic: the Gathering, used to refer to a card that draws a card upon being played, thus preserving the number of cards in hand. The most common card that you will see doing this is Scion’s First Wish (1 mana: Give a friendly minion 1/1. Draw a card). These serve to thin your deck allowing you to reach your mid and late game cards quicker, and are useful when building decks that benefit from casting spells e.g. Mana Vortex in Spell-based Songhai, Arcanyst, Firestarter etc.

Recursion: Cards that return one or more cards you played earlier, typically spells. Alcuin Loremaster (3 mana 3/1, Add the last played spell to your hand) is the easiest to understand. It replaces itself in the hand, and allows for high-value plays. Progressively greater effects can be produced either to assist hand or the board directly – moving up from Twilight Sorcerer and Keeper of the Vale returning a used spell or a killed minion respectively, to the mighty Zurael the Lifegiver which can return many mana worth of board presence at a heavy loss of tempo for that turn.

Minions: Opening Gambit and Dying Wish can also read ‘draw a card’ for some minions, essentially maintaining card advantage while also putting a body on the board. The minion usually compensates by having worse stats. Void Hunter (3 mana 4/2, Dying Wish: Draw a card) is the simplest one, losing approximately 1 hp for its effect.

Indirect Card Advantage

Now we reach a different form of card advantage – presence on the board. Typically at the end of turn 1 for Player 1, he has 5 cards in hand and 1 on the board. Player 2 will often respond with a single 3 mana minion, and the result is the same – 5 cards in hand, one on board. If both players continue to play on curve, they will maintain their hands.

General Health: Somewhat uniquely in Duelyst, you can use your General near permanently to reduce the enemy board presence, indirectly creating card advantage. A Helm of Mechaz0r! is a 2/2 body for 1, but it can be removed by the General using his health total as a resource, creating card advantage. This brings a new element to consider: trading General health for card advantage and balancing it with your plays and board presence. Spectral Blade and Arclyte Regalia produce frightening indirect card advantage in many situations.

Favourable Trades: This is when the opponent has to kill your minion with the loss of more than one of his minions. Silverguard Knight (3 mana 1/5, Zeal:+2 attack) is a regular 3 mana play. If the opponent used a Saberspine Tiger (3 mana, 3/2 Rush) and his General to trade with it, he spent an equal amount of mana and 3 hp to do so. On the other hand if he uses a Saberspine Tiger and a Healing Mystic he had on the board earlier to deal the 5 damage to Knight, he used 2 cards to trade with 1 – a beneficial trade for you. This forms the basis of a lot of midrange deck play styles as well as often the dominant consideration for gauntlet plays.

A word on Chassis. With the change of Tiger from 4/1 to 3/2, the value of Chassis of Mechaz0r! (4 mana 5/4, Cannot be targeted by spells) has increased in this particular form – a spell-immune 4hp minion that can hit the board on turn 2 is often a regular initiator of favourable trades.

Card Economy: Here, you use 1 card to remove enemy presence from board and establish it in some form, effectively performing the role of a 2-for-1. Say the opponent has a 3/3 vanilla minion directly adjacent to you. On your turn you have 7 mana, so you play a 3 mana Tiger to trade 1-for-1 with the 3/3 minion and play your own Hailstone Golem, a respectable 4/6 for 4. The same effect can be achieved with Dancing Blades, which removes the 3/3 and plays the 4/6 for a total of 1 less card for 1 more mana. This allows you to play a 2 mana card this turn, or use your Bloodborn Spell and maintain card advantage for next turn. Hard Counters are a special case of economy – Crossbones or Hollow Grovekeeper removing an enemy MECHAZ0R! is a far more economical removal than finding 8 damage with multiple cards that can reach a spell-immune minion.

A different form of Card Economy can be seen when cantrips provide a higher quality/efficiency. For example, the Lyonar spell War Surge for 2 mana gives your on-board minions +1/+1. Say you have 2 minions, so you get a +2/+2 cumulative benefit. On the other hand, a Vetruvian player can cast a copy each of Scion’s First Wish on two separate minions they have on board. This does exactly the same as the above War Surge did in 1 card for the same cost. However, casting two First Wishes did not consume any cards, thus preserving hand advantage while also thinning the deck increasing future consistency for the remainder of the game. Card quality, therefore, is also an important factor in building decks – as much as we want it to be otherwise, some cards were just created to be more aylmao than others.

Board clearing: Often, a special case of Card Economy. Plasma Storm is the easiest to utilise – if the opponent is playing a Mechaz0r! deck they may play 2 or more minions on the field with 3 or less attack, and at the cost of 1 card for 5 mana the board presence of the Mechaz0r! player is drastically reduced. The Frenzy mechanic is often seen achieving this end, making positioning of minions on the board an important factor in deriving card advantage.

Neutral card draw options

These are some varieties of card draw that we are provided now, all costing 3 mana but having various benefits and drawbacks.

Blaze Hound – good for aggro decks trying to win with the card they draw now, largely ignoring the draw they provide the opponent. If you are playing a slower deck, this card will not be as useful and may even be detrimental.

Sojourner – good for midrange decks trying to generate a card-generating resource for their important turn or two. 5 hp also allows for a body that can be buffed next turn to strike and draw a card. The drawback is the lack of immediate draw and a general lack of control over the effect. Zen’Rui, Natural Selection, Plasma Storm and Nightsorrow Assassin severely undercut its effectiveness.

Mogwai – good for greedy control decks, it has the highest theoretical benefit. It is continuous player-only draw that is controllable if your hand is full or will be full at the end of the turn. Its drawback is the weak body. 3hp is dealt lethal damage by a variety of minions and effects, such as Saberspine Tiger and Phoenix Fire. Zen’Rui, Plasma Storm, Nightsorrow Assassin return as antagonists, while provokes and Sand Trap make for a rather impoverished Mogwai.

Spelljammer – good for aggro, tempo, combo and midrange decks (!) and not too shabby for specific controlling archetypes. This is a really versatile minion because actually what the card really says is (3 mana 2/4, Opening Gambit: Draw a card at the end of turn). Any turn the opponent gets rid of Spelljammer you gain the extra card it provides, and they do not. An extra card like that makes this a preferable effect in nearly every non-pure-control deck, providing options for buffs, out-of-hand burst and clutch removal. Beware the usual suspects like Zen’Rui.

A word of acknowledgement for Void Hunter and Necroseer, and for E’xun which is so heavily costed that it can only really work in control decks.

That’s it for today. This is basically a starter course on the concept, since it really is a lot more complex than the scope of this article. I will return to this idea and develop it further with examples in the future. Gotta keep ya guys coming back for more, right!