Tactics to Rise above the Competition 1.0

Tactics for Rising Above the Competition

If you're reading this, you're either an average player looking for an edge, or an advanced player looking to refresh their memory, gain new insight, or find miniscule "flaws" in the reasoning here presented in an attempt to discredit me out of spite. The latter can stop now; you're wasting your time. As for the rest, you'll find this guide to be divided into two main parts: Card Advantage, the more basic of the two concepts and the more solid; and Tempo Manipulation, a rather advanced technique that, while having no definite boundaries with which to gauge it, has a far greater impact on the outcome of the game. Some of the advanced players may find the section on card advantage rather repetitive and dull, but I encourage them nonetheless to at least scan through it to make it fresh in their minds for the second section. I encourage less advanced players, or those not already well-acquainted with the concept of card advantage, to read the entire first section carefully, and practice subconsciously applying card advantage before moving on to tempo manipulation.

The guide will be broken down as such:

Card Advantage

-Card Advantage for Dummies
-The Basics of Generating Advantage
-Complex Generation: Card Combos and Game play Tricks
-Does it Really Matter?: Exceptions to the "Concrete" Law

Tempo Manipulation

-Simplification: A Mathematical Analysis
-Forcing Simplification: The Basics of When, Where, and How
-Into the Mixing Pot: Advantage and Simplification into Tempo Manipulation

Reading Your Opponent

-Reading your opponent: The Basics
- Beneficial Plays based on your reads

Card Advantage

Card Advantage for Dummies:

In my humble opinion, the best way to start explaining something is to define it. In accordance with this philosophy, the dictionary definition of "advantage," courtesy of dictionary.com, is:

Spoiler:

Now, more advanced players tend to forget why newer players run massive decks packed full of every conceivable strategy. It's really a pretty basic concept: be able to counter your opponent's moves, and you will win the duel. Advanced players will talk about "versatile" and "situational" cards when building decks. The only real difference between this concept and that of the beginner is that beginners will add a card or two to deal with every situation imaginable; advanced players try to use only cards that, while not necessarily perfect for a given situation, can be used in many different situations. This works on the principle that less cards means a greater chance of drawing them, which in turn means that you are more likely to work around your opponent's moves as they make them.

They seem radically different, but both are connected by the same basic mathematical concept: if you have more cards, you're more likely to have the one(s) that you need. Anyone can see the truth of this statement. If I take the top eight cards from a forty-card deck, I'm more likely to draw a given card than if I draw only the top five cards. By the same logic, if I have eight cards between my hand and field combined, I am more likely to have a given card than if I have only five total cards. If I have eight cards between my field and hand, and my opponent has only five, I am more likely to have an answer to his moves than he is likely to have an answer to mine. My "competitive upper-hand" is that I have more cards, and therefore more options, than my opponent. Because I have more options than my opponent, I am more likely to win the game. That is the concept of card advantage. So, by having more options than your opponent, you maximize your ability to win the present duel.

The Basics of Generating Advantage:

Advantage is relative. That is, when one player is said to have card advantage, it means that they have more cards than their opponent, not just "more cards in general". This holds true in all scenarios, regardless of how many total cards are currently involved in the game. To determine who has card advantage, and to what degree, simply count the total number of cards controlled by both players, both on the field and in that respective player's hand. This is called that player's "card count." When you subtract one player's card count from the other player's card count, you will find a whole number that is either negative, positive, or exactly zero. In math terms, the operation will yield an integer. The player with the most cards has card advantage, equal to the difference between the two card counts. EXAMPLE: If your opponent has a card count of three, and you have a card count of five, you have a card advantage of two cards. This would be called "+2 advantage."

The actual equation, for you algebra-heads out there, is |O-Y|=A. It is called the "Advantage Equation," and can be found with further explanation in the Mathematics and Terms Glossary near the end of this article.

Got it? If not, read that paragraph again. The rest of this guide means nothing if you don't understand that concept.
Re-read it? Good. Now we need to know how to apply it.

Example 1:

Spoiler:

Example 2:

Spoiler:

Example 3:

Spoiler:

These examples illustrate the two most basic ways of generating advantage: drawing at the start of your turn, and destroying your opponent's monsters in battle. Drawing from your deck is a basic game play mechanic, but, when applied to card advantage, has powerful repercussions. It allows a player without advantage an opportunity to come back, and a player with advantage to maintain pressure on their opponent, but more on that later.

Various effects also generate advantage. For example, by activating the now-banned Pot of Greed, you are giving up one card (Pot of Greed itself), and gaining two more. In the end, you'll have gained one card. If your opponent has advantage, this narrows the gap, if the game is even, it will give you advantage, and if you already have advantage, it will widen the gap between you and your opponent. As you can see, effects that give you more cards generate advantage when they give you more cards than the combo requires. If you subtract the number of cards used from the number of cards gained, it will yield a positive result. Gain, cost; profit, expense; investment, payoff. In the case of Pot of Greed, the gain (2) minus the loss (1) equals one (this is called the "Advantage Generation Equation"). As you can see, activating Pot of Greed results in gaining one card worth of advantage. This is a +1 though in a different context than previously. It signifies that you gained one card from the action, and becomes more relevant when determining the effectiveness of various combos.

Card effects that destroy the opponent's cards can also generate advantage. Another banned card, Harpie's Feather Duster, is perfect for explaining this. Imagine that your opponent has three spell or trap cards on the field. You activate Harpie's Feather Duster, destroying all spell or trap cards on your opponent's side of the field. The same rules of gain and loss apply; however, in this case, your opponent's loss is your gain. Your opponent loses three cards, which makes your gain also three cards. You lost only one card, Harpie's Feather Duster. Therefore, you achieved a +2 by activating Harpie's Feather Duster. In this scenario, you will have even card advantage with your opponent if your opponent previously had +2 advantage; you will have +1 advantage if your opponent previously had +1 advantage; you will have +2 advantage if the game was previously even; and you will have sick advantage if you already had any advantage at all.

These cards both generated massive advantage and momentum swings quickly and easily, which is why they both got banned. They both had the power to single-handedly turn the tables on your opponent by giving you instant card advantage. Cards that do (did) so tend to get banned (or at least limited) very quickly. As such, we have very few ways to generate advantage left through the use of a single card. At best, a competitive combo will use two cards to eliminate an opponent's three, which is where the gain-loss calculations become useful. If a combo does not have a good payoff, it will not be worthy of use.

Complex Generation: Card Combos and Game play Tricks:

With powerful single-card advantage generators banned, many a powerful combo has been created for the sake of generating card advantage. Some of these have had pieces banned, due to being too powerful. A good example would be the Gearfried the Iron Knight/Royal Magical Library/Butterfly Dagger - Elma combo, which allowed a player to infinitely loop the combo to draw through their entire deck in the same turn, if they so wished.

While the modern metagame contains none of these infinite loop combos (at least not to generate card advantage), a few combos to generate advantage through your own gain; and many combos to generate +1's or +2's by destroying your opponent's cards. However, the concept is still there, and card advantage is applied to every deck ever considered for highly competitive play. Combos that result in negative advantage are useless, combos that have equal gain and loss are situational, and combos that generate positive advantage at a nearly 100% success rate become popular. Far more numerous are those that generate negative advantage, followed by the "no advantage" combos (hereafter referred to as "even trades," "card-for-card exchanges," "one-for-ones (abrv. "1-1," "2-2," etc., representing [cards used]-[cards gained]). To demonstrate the application of +x and -x in determining whether combos are playable or not, I will give an example of each of the three types, followed by a short self-test on the subject.

Example 1: Negative Advantage - XYZ Dragon Cannon

Spoiler:

Example 2: Even Trade – Allure of Darkness

Spoiler:

Example 3: Positive Advantage - Soul Control

Spoiler:

Other than battle, drawing, combos, and individual card effects, the only way to gain advantage is to trick your opponent into wasting cards to destroy yours, while making that destruction null. This typically involves chaining the targeted card to get the effect anyway, or chaining another card to make the destruction effect and all future destruction effects useless. Three examples of this are below.

Example 1: Hook, Line, and Sucker

Spoiler:

Example 2: Royal Decree

Spoiler:

Example 3: Survivor Control

Spoiler:

Does it Really Matter?: Exceptions to the "Concrete" Law:

So far, we have acted as though card advantage wins games. This is not true. There is nothing in the rule book, errata, or official rulings that even mentions card advantage, let alone say that you win if you have +x on your opponent. You win a game by reducing your opponent's life points to zero, causing them to deck out, holding Exodia, or playing the entire Destiny Board. Card advantage is an imaginary system imposed by players to bring order to a chaotic game. It gives a game without one a resource system. And while it helps to win games, and increases your chances of winning games, there are situations where the player with card advantage ends up losing. This typically happens in one of two ways: the advantaged player is OTK'ed, or the advantaged player's extra cards are all useless.

Certain cards should never be counted as for card advantage. For example, an equipped Call of the Haunted should not be counted if you are already counting the monster it summoned. Also, tokens, such as Ojama Tokens and Goat Tokens, should not generally be counted, since they don't really do anything (though they can be used in combos that generate advantage).

Tempo Manipulation

Simplification: A Mathematical Analysis:

If you understand rudimentary mathematics, the concept of simplification is actually pretty simple. When the game state is "simplified," it means that both players have few options remaining to them; that is, they both have relatively small card counts. A game state where both players have no cards on the field and are top decking is as simplified as the duel could possibly be. More often, a simplified game state will involve both players controlling between one and three cards. To understand the impact of a simplified game state on the outcome of a duel, we need to understand the mathematical significance of having fewer options in play.

Let's start with the assumption that you have a card count of eight, and your opponent has a card count of six. Simple arithmetic tells us that you have +2 advantage, which means that you are most likely to win the present duel. However, experience tells us that an opponent with six cards is likely to have some way of mounting a comeback. Some readers may already have realized that another way of calculating advantage is to find the percentage of your card count relative to your opponent's card count. To do so, we divide your card count by your opponents, and move the decimal place two places to the right in the solution. This may seem interchangeable with the Advantage Equation, but, as we shall see, it is much more useful and dynamic. Mathematically expressed:

Spoiler:

This is where even trades become important. While you have card advantage over your opponent, and you start initiating card-for-card exchanges, you're Advantage Percentage goes up. If this turn you use one card, say, Smashing Ground, to destroy one of your opponent's cards, in this case a face-up monster, the card counts change. Now, you have seven cards to your opponent's five. We plug it in to the Advantage Percentage Equation and find that:

7/5•100= 140%

So you now have 140% as many cards as your opponent. So as you can see, even trades pay-off when you are already in advantage. This means, if you have the chance to simplify the game even further, I would advise you to do it for the simply sake of having more “possible” outs then your opponent has.

Forcing Simplification: The Basics of When, Where, and How:

When:

Forcing simplification is a matter of timing. You must factor in everything that you know for a fact, and everything that you strongly suspect to be fact. If you time incorrectly, it could very well cost you the game. The general rule of thumb is to never force simplification unless 1) you must in order to survive the nest turn, or 2) you have at least +2 advantage, as determined by the Advantage Equation. If you attempt to force simplification when both players have an equal card count, or you have only +1 advantage, it can backfire horribly and you will most likely lose the duel.

Where:

Obviously, there are two places to target for simplification: the hand and the field. Both are equally valid options, but, depending on the metagame, the game state, and your deck, one may be far more effective than the other. The field also has two different places that you can target: the monster cards and the spell/trap cards. As described earlier, spells and traps can sometimes be chained to the effect that would destroy them, thus giving the targeted player easy advantage. Monsters can't be chained, however (with a few notable exceptions), and so destroying monsters is much safer than targeting a spell or trap. When forcing simplification, first pay attention to monster removal, unless the specific situation makes that in advantageous (i.e. you can win the game if you eliminate the opponent's spell/trap with Raiza rather than their monster).

How:

Simplification can be forced with any card or card combination that costs you and your opponent the same number of cards. Simplification cards that exchange themselves for one of your opponents cards include:

Spoiler:

Still other cards can cause even trades without sacrificing themselves in the process. They do this through costs, typically involving discarding one card from your hand. These cards also tend to be either more versatile or more powerful. The remaining method of initiating card-for-card exchanges is through combos that use the same number of cards as they cost your opponent. This is the type of simplification that makes monarchs so powerful. Let's say your opponent started the duel, drew, then set one card to each zone.

Your first turn will probably look something like this:

Spoiler:

You can further simplify the duel by destroying whatever your opponent summons with Bottomless Trap Hole. Any card your opponent uses to destroy Caius will just further simplify the duel. If your opponent does not destroy Caius with an even trade, you will likely be able to gain advantage with him through battle, in addition to anything else you may be able to do. Now, this is still a suboptimal move, because as soon as your opponent draws they will have card advantage, and it sets you up to be subject to the Monarch Advantage engine next turn. Still, the gamestate is not yet simple enough that a single draw will make an enormous difference, and your opponent will have a difficult time recovering.

Into the Mixing Pot: Advantage and Simplification into Tempo Manipulation:

Unfortunately, it is also a very short section, since anyone with complete understanding of the prior concepts probably already applies it; at least on a subconscious level. Here these concepts are also applied to deck building, since the actual game play usage of it has already been (mostly) explained under "Forcing Simplification: The Basics of When, Where, and How."

Take the "When" of applying simplification. You know that the best time to simplify the gamestate is when you already have card advantage, so you need to decide how you are going to generate it. Monarchs, again, provide an excellent example of this, as previously described.

Now decide "Where;" are you going to build your deck to target the hand or the field? While field advantage has the wider popularity in the current format, the release of Rescue Rabbit brought hand advantage closer to the forefront of the imagination. I say this because the actual Dino Rabbit decks control the board without a leaving a crack. While at the start of this format I was highly convinced it was going to be a format that would focus around hand traps, which are still popular though. Among the field control cards, decide if you wish to devote more space in your deck for Spell/Trap Removal or Monster removal. If your deck can be ruined by Royal Decree, Dimensional Fissure, or Macro Cosmos, then use more spell/trap removal than usual. If not, it should be pretty much limited to Mystical Space Typhoon, and Heavy Storm, and/or any synergistic spell/trap destruction engine your deck may support.

Finally, "How." Any card that generates advantage or forces simplification is an option for this. The standards are set out time and time again elsewhere, so I need not delve into specific card choices.

Tempo is the rate at which cards are being exchanged in a duel. If someone is rapidly simplifying the gamestate, the game is said to have a fast tempo. Manipulating the tempo is all about being able to generate advantage and force simplification whenever your opponent gives you the opportunity. Consistently being able to do so is what wins major tournaments.

When you build a deck, it must include components for when, where, and how to force simplification. It must also include a method of generating advantage so that forced simplification does not backfire on you. If you follow the standards of when, where, and how, you will see a significant improvement in your game, but reading the opponent can be difficult. You must be able to figure out if your opponent will be able to stop your advantage/simplification engines. In order to that you just need to get your reading glasses on and keep on reading.

Reading your Opponent

Reading your opponent: The Basics:

Obviously by having the knowledge gained through the pervious sections of this article should already help you a great deal in winning your games. And yet there is an entire section we have not covered, which is in my opinion the most important one. Simply because it lets you apply all the previously gained knowledge into a game and probably makes you win the game in case you used the tools given properly.

Reading your opponent is a skill that comes after a lot of experience and analyzing of the mainstream decks and the ways they are commonly played. Furthermore, I would like to have it said that; “No matter how great an article is regarding this topic, it will never teach you HOW to read your opponent. It will only give you some insight in what is important in order to read your opponent”.
While keeping this in mind, let’s get down to it shall we.

The basic means in being able to read your opponents moves are everywhere around you. Yes, even in your home. Simply get behind your computer and educate yourself about the current meta. Seeing meta decks normally only differ from each other by 4-6 cards. Which is a weakness for you to exploit, in terms of getting familiar with their deck(s). Furthermore, we have the ability to use Dueling Network for the sole purpose of testing against these decks before entering major events ( of course you can playtest against friends or at your locals and regionals if you wish ) to get even more familiar with the decks and the people’s play styles while playing these decks. On top of this, a huge factor of reading your opponents moves comes from the actual information in the duel. Mainly the opponents graveyard is your information source. Seeing that your opponent has used up certain power cards like; Heavy Storm, Dark Hole, Monster Reborn etc. influence you game by being more aggressive or the complete opposite.

Having this experience already ( before heading out to your serious events ) helps you in your serious duels/matches and will determine how you play your cards and most importantly when. Obviously this alone isn’t going to bring you victory, seeing basic reads are good but not good enough most of the time, therefore you need to adapt to them.

Beneficial Plays based on your reads:

It is a great skill to being able to read your opponent’s moves prematurely. With this I mean that you read what they are going to do a turn or 2 before they are actually going to do it. The only thing with that is, reading them just isn’t good enough. You will have to adapt to them in order to stay in the lead or to come back from a vulnerable position. So how do you adapt to certain things, well yet again there is pre-determined answer for that. Seeing it all depends on the actual gamestate, your hand, the current board, the actual read and on top of that your outs to it. But what we can do is analyzing the common situation you will find yourself in and going every scenario, which is exactly what you are going to do;

Information regarding for the upcoming 2 examples. In all examples you are player A and you are playing player B who is using a Plant Synchro deck.

Example 1:

Spoiler:

Example 2:

Spoiler:

Now you obviously should see the difference between the two situations. You just stopped a tremendous play by using just one card. Or your opponent has to be so sure of himself that he would give you the 8 draws off of Maxx “C” hoping you wouldn’t draw into an answer like Effect Veiler to his Trishula. I honestly do not believe anyone would give you those 8 draws off of Maxx “C” to have a risk ending in their move. The read was the same, but the outcome was very different because of the simple difference between Effect Veiler and Maxx “C”.

Now that we have cleared out the big and highly important difference between those 2 it is about time we start making the hard choices in our simulation duel.

Example 1:

Spoiler:

Seeing you do not know what type of deck your opponent is playing it makes it slightly easier to be honest. Since now the only sure thing that you count is him going to fetch Sangan, Tour guide or Broww. If the opponent is going to fetch Sangan, what would you gain out of a Maxx “C” play. It would be a one for one trade, with you having the loss of Maxx “C” itself, which in my opinion is a loss that counts for a minus 2 in this format. If you respond with Effect Veiler, your opponent didn’t lose anything and you lost your Effect Veiler, which on itself is a minus 1 and thereby probably more beneficial to your opponent than it was for you.

Furthermore if you don’t respond your opponent is going to fetch Sangan. With the possibility of going to overlay the two to make a Leviathan Dragon, Zenmaines or Leviair the Sea Dragon. Now obviously the Zenmaines would make the most sense, if your opponent isn’t going to remove anything via Allure of Darkness or Gold Sarcophagus. Let’s assume you are “lucky” your opponent only has the Tour guide play. You do not respond and they fetch Sangan. Would that be a bad thing for you, seeing you already have the means to run over that set-up field via your own Tour guide-Sangan or your Reborn Tengu. So why should you “waste” a hand trap like Effect Veiler or Maxx “C” on that.

Example 2:

Spoiler:

Now some people would say; Effect Veiler go, to these people I only can say DENIED. Because you cannot Effect Veiler a Rescue Rabbit, seeing it tributes itself to resolve in the RFG-zone. Meaning Veiler can’t do anything about it. Meaning you only have 2 options. Either to not respond with Maxx “C” or to respond with it. In any case I do advise you to make use of your Maxx “C” at this point. Simply because you do not know if your opponent is going to bring out two Dino’s which still is most likely. At least because of this you have a plus 1 at the end of the turn.

Example 3:

Spoiler:

Will you normal summon Tour Guide to fetch out Sangan/Tour Guide or would you normal summon your own Reborn Tengu?, I would always normal summon my own Reborn Tengu. Reason is simple and yet complex at the same time. Seeing my opponent hasn’t set any backrow cards, which either indicates he/she doesn’t have any or he/she is sitting on a Gorz and hoping for me to go all out and go through their 3 copies of Reborn Tengu. Which is actually what we are going to do here. By dropping Maxx “C” here and doing the kamikaze action, you will always have it as a one for one trade-off. In almost every case you will plus off of it seeing Reborn Tengu has a mandatory effect to special summon another copy. Which means a plus 1 in the case your opponent is smart and summons the 2nd Tengu in defense. If not you gain yet another draw. Knowing you also have at least 1 good backrow to protect yourself against hostile summons via Solemn Warning and a Spell/Trap removal card. So all in all, you have gained advantage here and now the only thing you need to do is making sure to keep it.

Example 4:

Spoiler:

Do you Veiler the Earth, or do you let it fetch out Venus. Those are the only options. Judging from my hand I would let them fetch out the Venus, so that I can have the option of either using Effect Veiler or Maxx “C” on that Venus. Seeing no matter what, I can run over the Earth with my Tour Guide-Sangan play, and gain a card via Sangan or just via my Reborn Tengu. This however does require the knowledge you have gained from the section; Reading your opponent: The Basics. Since we analyzed the deck we are facing we know that the Agent Fairy deck resolves around Venus, Shine balls and their boss monsters. With the support of Tour Guide/T.G. and Earth.

Example 5:

Spoiler:

Now you have 3 choices. One being to do absolutely nothing. One being chaining Effect Veiler and the last one being chaining Maxx “C”. In the case you Veiler at the payment of the 500 lp. You minus yourself in the process. But you do ensure that you will be able to run over the Venus with your Tengu in your upcoming turn. If you Maxx “C” here the opponent will just stop and you have a one for one with the Venus. Meaning yet again no advantage. I say this because the other copies of Venus are still live because he still has 2 Shine Balls left in the deck or hand.

Now to make any of the 3 choices is hard and complex. Since it depends a lot on your opening hand. Seeing a Venus with a Gachi Gachi on board makes the Venus a 2k beater, which itself is something you cannot immediately go over with this hand at least not without burning up 2 resources. Now let’s say instead of Reborn Tengu you had Cyber Dragon, that certainly makes the choice a lot easier. Seeing I would then do the following;

1. Opponent pays 500 lp to special the first Shine ball. I do not respond.
2. Opponent pays 500 lp to special summon the second Shine ball, here I chain Maxx “C”.
3. I get to draw 1 card and my opponent gets their second Shine Ball.

Now the opponent has to chose either to go into Gahi Gahi, to get to their 3rd Shine Ball or to leave the field as it is. In either case I can do something about it. Besides this by giving him that choice, they also have to consider giving you a plus off of Maxx “C” or not, and this choices makes the decision harder to make. Let’s assume they pass up on the 3rd ball and XYZ into Gachi Gachi. Giving you the plus you were looking for. Now you have an out to their 2k Venus via Cyber Dragon, you gained a plus 1 off of it and the other Venus copies in their decks lost a lot of their usefulness. That is what I call reading your opponent and making beneficial plays based on your read.

Notice that all these examples resolve around Maxx “C” and the timing on which you should activate it. I have used this card in the examples seeing it perfectly illustrates the usefulness of advantage and advantage making along with making reads and acting on them.

As seen in the current format, people have been starting to play Maxx “C” a lot more and it is even considered to be a staple in every deck if not multiple copies of it. So now that you also got to learn how and when to use Maxx “C” along with acting on your reads it is time for you to take it to the dueling fields of Dueling Network or your locals and perhaps regionals. So practice up on these corners of Yu-Gi-Oh! and win your duels for me.

Kind Regards,
The_Dutch_Prince

solid article for beginners. Just one issue, the Advantage Formula should not be an absolute value and should be You - Opponent = Advantage. This is because if in the equation you give, let's say your opponent has 5 cards and you have 3, it is yielding an advantage of 2 same with if your opponent had 3 cards and you had 5 cards. For simplicity's sake it should be the equation I give where it is possible to have a negative advantage (disadvantage) to your opponent. If you have 5 cards in the new equation and the opponent has 3 you have +2 card advantage, and if the cards controlled were switched you would have -2 card advantage (a disadvantage). Also there are infinite loops that generate card advantage in the current advanced metagame (infernities mostly). But this is a very small complaint and the rest of the article is very thorough.

I have no idea how i didn't ever see this article o.O. amazing job TDP, this article rocks. +1 for you