Card Advantage and Tempo Manipulation - Advanced Tactics for Rising Above the CompetitionIf 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 subconciously 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 Gameplay Tricks
-Does it Really Matter?: Exceptions to the "Concrete" Law
-Applying Card Advantage to Improve Your Game: An Intro to Gamestate Simplification
Tempo Manipulation-Simplification: A Mathmatical Analysis
-Forcing Simplification: The Basics of When, Where, and How
-A Brief Aside: Advantage and Simplification Engines and CC Monarch Soul Control
-Into the Mixing Pot: Advantage and Simplification into Tempo Manipulation
Conclusion-Brief Overview and Closing Comment
-Additional References
Appendices-Appendix A: Mathmatics and Terms Glossary
-Appendix B: Self-Quiz Answer Key
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|:Section 1: Card Advantage:|
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:Card Advantage for Dummies:
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In my humble opinion, the best way to start explaining something is to define it. In accordance with this philosphy, the dictionary definition of "advantage," courtesy of dictionary.com, is:
ad·van·tage [ad-van-tij, -vahn-] noun, verb, -taged, -taging.
–noun
1. any state, circumstance, opportunity, or means specially favorable to success, interest, or any desired end: the advantage of a good education.
2. benefit; gain; profit: It will be to his advantage to learn Chinese before going to China.
3. superiority or ascendancy (often fol. by over or of): His height gave him an advantage over his opponent.
4. a position of superiority (often fol. by over or of): their advantage in experienced players.
5. Tennis. the first point scored after deuce.
Sorry tennis players, we won't be dealing with the definition you're used to, but you might be getting to say game, set, match a bit more often if you keep reading. The two definitions we do want to look at are:
1. any state, circumstance, opportunity, or means specially favorable to success, interest, or any desired end; and
4. a position of superiority
For the sake of Yu-Gi-Oh! we can replace "success, interest, or any desired end" with "winning the duel." We can also swap "a position of superiority" in for "any state, circumstance, opportunity, or means." What we're left with is:
ad·van·tage [ad-van-tij, -vahn-] noun, verb, -taged, -taging.
–noun
1. a position of superiority specifically favorable to winning the duel
We have a working definition for what "advantage" is in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game. However, we don't know exactly what a "position of superiority" looks like in Yu-Gi-Oh!. The definition of superiority, also courtesy of dictionary.com, is:
superiority
noun
1. the quality of being superior [ant: inferiority]
2. the quality of being a competitive advantage
3. displaying a sense of being better than others; "he hated the white man's superiority and condescension"
4. the state of excelling or surpassing or going beyond usual limits [syn: transcendence]
Yu-Gi-Oh! is, of course, a competition, so the obviously applicable definition is:
2. the quality of being a competitive advantage
Our "position of superiority" is therefore "a competetive advantage." We can't define "advantage" as "a competetive advantage...," that's defining a word as itself. So instead, we'll use the informal but well-known synonym, "upper-hand." For the sake of consistency later on, we'll also go ahead and change it from "winning the duel" to "winning the present duel."
ad·van·tage [ad-van-tij, -vahn-] noun, verb, -taged, -taging.
–noun
1. a competetive upper-hand specifically favorable to wining the present duel
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 mathmatical 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 "competetive 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.
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:The Basics of Generating Advantage:
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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 Mathmatics 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:
You are just starting a duel. You and your opponent both draw your first five cards. You both, therefore, have five cards. This means you both have five ways to react. Five options for what to do, or many more than five possible combinations of cards to play. You win the die roll/coin flip/rock-paper-scissors and choose to go first. You start the duel, and draw one card.
You now have six cards, while your opponent has only five. By doing the math we can see that your 6 cards - your opponent's 5 cards = +1 card. This means that you have +1 card advantage.
Example 2:
After drawing, you summon Battle Ox in attack mode and end your turn. Your opponent draws. They have now gained one more card. You still have six cards under your control: your Battle Ox on the field and five cards in hand. Your opponent also has six cards, all in their hand.
Here we start to make quick calculations in the back of our heads. We both control a total of six cards, or card counts of six each. 6-6=0, meaning that neither player currently has card advantage. The gamestate is said to be even.
Example 3:
Your opponent, after drawing their card, summons Archfiend Soldier in attack mode, and attacks your Battle Ox, destroying it.
Your opponent didn't lose any cards, but you lost your Battle Ox. You now control only five cards, all in your hand, whereas your opponent controls six cards: five in hand and Archfiend Soldier on the field. 5-6=-1, which means that you have -1 advantage. You could also say that your opponent has +1 advantage, which is the more common terminology.
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 gameplay mechanic, but, when applied to card advantage, has powerful repercusions. 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 competetive 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.
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:Complex Generation: Card Combos and Gameplay Tricks:
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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 peices 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 infinetly 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 competetive 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 refered 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
To summon XYZ Dragon Cannon, you must remove X-Head Cannon, Y-Dragon Head, and Z-Metal Tank on your side of the field from play. In return, you get to Special Summon a powerful attacker with the ability to destroy one card on the field per turn by discarding one card from your hand. As stated, summoning XYZ Dragon Cannon requires the expenditure of three cards in exchange for one. A three for one, written 3-1. Coincidentally, that's simply the reverse order of the left side of our advantage equation. In this case, it would be written 1 (gain) -3 (loss) = -2 (Payoff). If you could protect it, this combo would pay off exceptionally well, if not for the discard effect. The "discard to destroy" effect is actually a perfect example of an even trade, but here prevents this combo from paying off. If every turn you could destroy a card for free, protecting XYZ Dragon Cannon for three turns would yield positive advantage. With the discard effect, however, it just becomes a 4-2, then a 5-3, then a 6-4, and so on. In each case, it remains a -2, just with different numbers plugged in.
Example 2: Even Trade - Dark Sage
Summoning Dark Sage requires that you tribute a Dark Magician on your side of the field. Assuming that Dark Sage was in your deck, not your hand, you give up one card to summon him (Dark Magician). Upon summoning, you can add one spell from your deck to your hand. You must first succeed in effect of Time Wizard, which makes it highly situational and luck-based, but that has nothing to do with card advantage. So, you have 1 (gain) -1 (loss) = 0 (payoff). As you can see, you gained no advantage whatsoever with that combo. It was an even trade. You got to thin your deck, pick the exact spell you needed at the time, and summon a monster with 300 more attack, but, in terms of card advantage, you are no better off than you were before.
Example 3: Positive Advantage - Soul Control
Your opponent has a monster on the field. You activate Soul Exchange and offer your opponent's monster as a tribute to summon Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch, discarding one card in their hand. You've lost one card (Soul Exchange) to their two (The tributed monster and the random discard). Their loss is your gain, so 2-1= +1 advantage. This small, reliable combo set the stage for the entire current format back when Ryan Spicer won a Shonen Jump Championship with a six-monarch-triple-Cyber-triple Soul Control spells (Brain Control and Soul Exchange) deck.
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
The simplest trick to gain advantage by tricking your opponent is through chainable spells and traps when your opponent activates some form of spell/trap removal, such as Mystical Space Typhoon or Heavy Storm. Doing so allows you to still get the card's effect, while your opponent's spell/trap destruction does absolutely nothing. For example, your opponent activates Heavy Storm while you have Jar of Greed set. By chaining Jar of Greed to Heavy Storm, you get to draw a card before Heavy Storm destroys Jar of Greed. That's 1(draw) +1(Heavy Storm) -1(Jar of Greed)= +1. The same applies if your opponent targets Scapegoat for a destruction effect, or even Mystical Space Typhoon while they have another spell or trap on the field.
Example 2: Royal Decree
If you attack with a monster, and your opponent activates Sakuretsu Armor, to which you respond with Royal Decree, Sakuretsu Armor is destroyed and your attack still gets through. If your opponent wants to be able to use traps again, they must use a removal card on Royal Decree. If they do so, they have lost the Sakuretsu Armor and the removal card, while you have lost only Royal Decree. 2-1= +1.
Example 3: Survivor Control
While you have D. D. Survivor on the field, and your opponent tries to destroy it with Smashing Ground, Sakuretsu Armor, etc., you can chain Macro Cosmos to the monster removal effect. D. D. Survivor will still be destroyed, but it will be removed from play and return during the end phase. As with Royal Decree, if your opponent tries to destroy Macro Cosmos, they will recieve a -1. Because D. D. Survivor returns to your side of the field, you don't ultimately lose any cards, making it a +1.
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:Does it Really Matter?: Exceptions to the "Concrete" Law:
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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. The former typically goes something like this:
Player A has four cards in hand and two set spell or traps: a card count of six. Player B has only two cards in hand and none on the field. Player B draws, and a broad smile slowly creeps across their face. Player B beams triumphantly as they drop first Giant Trunade, then Future Fusion, then Overload Fusion to summon an 8000+ atk Chimeratech Overdragon. Stunned, Player A cries "lucksack," and angrily scoops up their cards. Player B retorts that it was Player A's fault for letting him have the opportunity to use the combo in the first place. And so on and so forth. We've all seen it.
Other times the player with advantage will lose because they simply can't do anything. Player A has Horus the Black Flame Dragon LV8 and Royal Decree on the field, and Player B has only Scapegoat, Smashing Ground, Mirror Force, Sakuretsu Armor, and Treeborn Frog. Player B will lose, despite the fact that they have +3 advantage, unless they draw Exiled Force, D. D. Warrior Lady, Neo-Spacian Grand Mole, etc. Another scenario would be that Player A has Dimensional Fissure and D. D. Survivor on the field. Player B has Smashing Ground, Sakuretsu Armor, D. D. Warrior Lady, and Bottomless Trap Hole. Even with +2 advantage, their inablity to do anything to cope with the situation will probably cost Player B the game.
Certain cards should never be counted as for card advantage. For example, and equipped Premature Burial 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).
Certain other cards lessen or remove the concept of card advantage. Such cards include:
Sacred Phoenix of Nephtys
Jinzo
Ancient Gear Gadgiltron
Ancient Gear Beast
It's not a long list, though a few others could be included. In the late part of a game, each of these cards can win on their own, simply because your opponent can't do anything to stop them.
But what could possibly make these cards great in the late game? In the late game, the duel tends to be highly simplified. Both players have few options remaining, and making any of those options useless can crush any chance of a comeback. Destroying Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys nets you one extra turn and negative card advantage; Jinzo can't be destroyed by your opponent's traps; and the Ancient Gear monsters render any sort of defensive spell or trap useless. Negating options is a powerful way to dominate the game.
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:Applying Card Advantage to Improve Your Game: An Intro to Gamestate Simplification:
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In Yu-Gi-Oh!, simplification is exactly what it sounds like: making the game more simple by removing options from both players card count. Simplification is used to make card advantage count, as we will soon see. But here I would like to introduce the reason why Player A lost that first game in the above section. Here's the scenario I'm talking about:
Player A has four cards in hand and two set spell or traps: a card count of six. Player B has only two cards in hand and none on the field. Player B draws, and a broad smile slowly creeps across their face. Player B beams triumphantly as they drop first Giant Trunade, then Future Fusion, then Overload Fusion to summon an 8000+ atk Chimeratech Overdragon. Stunned, Player A cries "lucksack," and angrily scoops up their cards. Player B retorts that it was Player A's fualt for letting him have the opportunity to use the combo in the first place. And so on and so forth. We've all seen it.
Before saying anything myself, I would like to quote Jason Grabher-Meyer, who summed it up rather nicely in his article, "Keeping it Simple," which can be found here:
http://yugioh.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=1856"I have a love-hate relationship with the entire concept of card advantage. On one hand, I love the fact that players try to impose a resource system onto a game that doesn't have one. Imposing order over chaos in order to make sense of things is one of the habits that draws us all closer as human beings, for better or worse, and keeping card advantage in the back of your head can make you a better player.
On the other hand, I hate the fact that a simple counting system often turns otherwise-skilled duelists into whining babies, or worse yet, winds up creating disappointing situations for people who are genuinely good sports. How often have you heard it? “I had like, +3 on the guy and he lucksacked me! I didn't deserve to lose!”
Well I've got news for ya', skippy. You probably did."
You'll notice that, in the scenario, Player A controlled six cards. In a typical CC Monarch Soul Control build, it would be safe to assume that at least one of those six cards was either a monster or a way to Special Summon one. It would also be likely that it was a monster they could set without a tribute, such as Treeborn Frog, Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive, Magician of Faith, Apprentice Magician, Mystic Tomato, etc. If they did, they misplayed and didn't set a monster. Therefore, it's entirely their fault that they lost, since it is also safe to assume that one of the other five is some form of trap-based monster destruction. We can all agree that this misplay cost Player A the game.
But what if he didn't have a monster to set? His opponent really did just lucksack, right? Wrong. Let's take Ryan Spicer's build that set the CC trends for the entire format. It looks like this, courtesy of Metagame.com.
Monsters: 23
3 Cyber Dragon
3 Zaborg the Thunder Monarch
3 Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch
3 Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive
2 Mystic Tomato
2 Apprentice Magician
2 Old Vindictive Magician
1 Spirit Reaper
1 Treeborn Frog
1 Magician of Faith
1 Sangan
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior
Spells: 10
2 Brain Control
1 Soul Exchange
1 Heavy Storm
1 Graceful Charity
1 Scapegoat
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Pot of Avarice
1 Nobleman of Crossout
1 Confiscation
Traps: 7
3 Sakuretsu Armor
1 Bottomless Trap Hole
1 Mirror Force
1 Torrential Tribute
1 Ring of Destruction
Without being able to summon or set any monsters, let's count the number of ways Player A could have avoided losing.
1) Chaining a set Scapegoat to Giant Trunade
2) Activating Pot of Avarice to draw into a monster
3) Activating Graceful Charity to draw into a monster
4) Activating Confiscation to rob the opponent of their in-hand card, making the combo impossible
Scapegoat would give you a turn to deal with Chimeratech Overdragon, Pot of Avarice and Graceful Charity would give you a defense, and Confiscation would make the combo impossible. The option most relevent is the activation of Confiscation. Let's evaluate it using what we know about card advantage and the advantage generation equation.
1 (gain) -1 (loss) = 0 payoff
We can determine mathmatically that Confiscation is an even trade. It is a 1-1. Simplification is where even trades start to mean something. This scenario shows the most basic use of simplification. By eliminating a specific card needed to perform a combo, even trades can prevent your opponent from shifting the momentum of the game in their favor. By simplifying the game, you have kept your opponent from doing anything, not just less. Simplification has other, more mathmatically involved applications as well, which we will discuss shortly.
I suppose I should add that, statistically, it is entirely possible that Player A had horrible draws and no outs to the situation. However, as we will see, he did not necessarily need a direct answer in order to keep from losing.
|:Section 2: Tempo Manipulation:|
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:Simplification: A Mathmatical Analysis:
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If you understand rudimentary mathmatics, the concept of simplification is actually pretty simple. When the gamestate is "simplified," it means that both players have few options remaining to them; that is, they both have relatively small card counts. A gamestate where both players have no cards on the field and are topdecking is as simplified as the duel could possibly be. More often, a simplified gamestate will involve both players controlling between one and three cards. To understand the impact of a simplified gamestate on the outcome of a duel, we need to understand the mathmatical 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 arithmatic 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 interchangable with the Advantage Equation, but, as we shall see, it is much more useful and dynamic. Mathmatically expressed:
Y/O·100=Ap
Where Y is your card count, O is your opponent's card count, and Ap is the "Advantage Percentage."
In this scenario, we can determine that:
8(your card count)/6(your opponent's card count)·100=~133%
Therefore, you have 133% as many cards as your opponent.
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. If you then activate Confiscation, you'll have six cards to your opponent's four.
6/4·100= 150%
Now you offer a monster as a tribute to summon Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch. You lose the tribute, and your opponent loses one card from their hand.
5/3·100= ~166%
As you can see, simplifying the gamestate while you have card advantage is highly advantageous to you. This concept is called "Forcing Simplification," and it can be difficult to determine when and how to use it. We spoke earlier of preventing your opponent from using their OTK combo. At this point, your opponent has only three cards, so they could still draw into a combo. However, they are much more likely to hold that combo in a five-card hand than in a three card hand. Player A lost because they failed to force simplification: something Soul Control is typically very good at doing.
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:Forcing Simplification: The Basics of When, Where, and How:
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~When~
Forcing simplification is a matter of timing. You must factor in everything that you know for a fact, and everthing 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.
Example:
You hold three cards in your hand: Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch, Smashing Ground, and Gravekeeper's Spy. You also have a set Mystic Tomato. Your opponent holds two cards in hand and has a defense-position Spirit Reaper. You have +1 advantage, and decide to force simplification. You activate Smashing Ground, destroying Spirit Reaper, and offer your Mystic Tomato as a tribute to summon Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch, thus discarding a card from your opponent's hand. You now have two cards to your opponent's one: your Advantage Percentage is 200%. You attack directly with Thestalos and end your turn. Your opponent draws. Now, suddenly, you are both back at 100% relative card counts. Your opponent activates Brain Control, offers your Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch as a tribute for their own Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch, and discards your Gravekeeper's Spy. Your opponent now has infinite advantage, since 0/1= Infinity. When you draw, you may draw some form of monster destruction, such as Exiled Force, but you will have to way to regain advantage. Forcing yourself into a topdecking situation is not a good idea.
Now, if you have +2 advantage in the same situation, it would turn out quite differently.
Example:
You hold four cards in your hand: Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch, Smashing Ground, Gravekeeper's Spy, and Exiled Force. You also have a set Mystic Tomato. Your opponent holds two cards in hand and has a defense-position Spirit Reaper. You have +2 advantage, and decide to force simplification. You activate Smashing Ground, destroying Spirit Reaper, and offer your Mystic Tomato as a tribute to summon Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch, thus discarding a card from your opponent's hand. You now have three cards to your opponent's one: your Advantage Percentage is 300%. You attack directly with Thestalos and end your turn. Your opponent draws. Now, you are back at a 150% relative card count. Your opponent activates Brain Control, offers your Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch as a tribute for their own Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch, and discards your Gravekeeper's Spy. You each have one card. You draw Cyber Dragon on your next turn. You Special Summon Cyber Dragon, Normal Summon Exiled Force, and offer Exiled Force as a tribute to destroy Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch. You now have one card to your opponent's none, or infinite advantage, and your opponent has no way of generating advantage on their next turn. The best they can do is give you perpetual +1 advantage until you eventually win the duel.
Which situation would you prefer to be in? DON'T FORCE SIMPLIFICATION TOO EARLY!!!
~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 gamestate, 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 inadvantageous (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:
Monster Removal-
Exiled Force
Smashing Ground
Nobleman of Crossout
Sakuretsu Armor
Bottomless Trap Hole
D. D. Warrior Lady
Spells/Trap Removal-
Mystical Space Typhoon
Dust Tornado
Hand Destruction-
Confiscation
As you can see, in a Soul Control meta, far more monster removal cards are popular than spell/trap removal cards, and spell/trap removal cards are more popular than hand destruction cards. This reflects the fact that, given the meta, monsters are the best targets for gamestate simplification.
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 two most commonly used examples are Snipe Hunter and Lightning Vortex. Snipe Hunter can target any card on the field by discarding a card from yout hand, and Lightning Vortex can destroy all of your opponent's face-up monsters at the cost of itself and a single discard. As long as your opponent has at least two face-up monsters on the field, Lightning Vortex will be an even trade, and any card your opponent controls on the field has a 2/3 chance of becoming involved in an even trade through Snipe Hunter.
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. You are running a Monarch Soul Control build. Your first turn will probably look something like this:
1. Draw. Card counts are now even at six cards each.
2. Activate Mystical Space Typhoon, destroying their set spell or trap. Card counts are now even at five cards each.
3. Special Summon Cyber Dragon, then tribute it to summon Zaborg the Thunder Monarch. You have four cards to your opponent's five.
4. Destroy set monster with Zaborg the Thunder Monarch. Card counts are now even at four cards each.
5. Attack directly for 2400 damage, set Sakuretsu Armor or Bottomless Trap Hole, and end your turn.
You can further simplify the duel by destroying whatever your opponent summons with Sakuretsu Armor/Bottomless Trap Hole. Any card your opponent uses to destroy Zaborg will just further simplify the duel. If your opponent does not destroy Zaborg 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, becuase 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 if they don't have the Monarch Soul Control advantage engine in hand.
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:A Brief Aside: Advantage and Simplification Engines and Monarch Soul Control:
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The deck that most consistently generates advantage and, subsequently, simplifies the gamestate becomes the most popular control deck of the format. Never before has a more dynamic and synergetic meta existed than Monarch Soul Control. Because its key components can generate advantage and force simplification in nearly all situations, Monarch Soul Control was the CC of a format. Naturally, by examining the most familiar archetype currently in existence, we can learn more of the intricacies of advantage generation and gamestate simplification. If you are not yet using the Advantage Equation and Advantage Generation Equation in the back of your head, stop, go to the Appendices, and read about them in the Glossary.
~The Monarch Advantage Engine~
Monarchs generate advantage quickly and efficiently, stripping the game of numerous cards in the process. We have already seen that tribute summoning a monarch by sacrificing your own monster results in an even trade. However, if you can tribute your opponent's monster instead, you can gain card advantage. The two cards that allow you to do this are Brain Control and Soul Exchange. The more popular of the two is Brain Control, since you can still use your Battle Phase that turn. The Monarch Soul Control advantage engine works as such:
1. Activate Brain Control to take control of an opponent's monster. -1 (Brain Control)
2. Tribute your opponent's monster to summon a monarch. +1 (Opponent loses monster)
3. Activate your monarch's effect. +1 (Destroyed card)
You just stripped your opponent of two cards, giving up only one of your own. If you attack, and your opponent responds with Sakuretsu Armor, etc., they will have lost three cards, while you have only lost two. Because the monarch has already generated advantage, it doesn't really matter all that much to you if it gets destroyed. (Cards like this that have already generated advantage are called "floaters." Other examples of floaters include flipped Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotives, flipped Gravekeeper's Spies, and Archfiends' Oaths that have been used multiple times.) Actually, an even trade to destroy it works to your advantage, because you now have advantage, and your opponent is providing the forced simplification. The combo is deadly, and it is no surprise that it became the deck to beat.
~The Monarch Simplification Engine~
The monarch simplification engine is nearly identical to its advantage engine, except that you are tributing your own monster. Idealy, a monarch summoned in this way will either destroy a monster in battle to generate positive advantage, or attack and be destroyed by Sakuretsu Armor or Mirror Force to further simplify the duel. Soul Control also uses most of the popular 1-1's listed earlier.
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:Into the Mixing Pot: Advantage and Simplification into Tempo Manipulation:
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This is it. The culminating moment of this entire article: how to manipulate the tempo of the duel. Unfortunatly, it is also a very short section, since anyone with complete understanding of the prior concepts probably already applies it; at least on a subconcious level. Here these concepts are also applied to deckbuilding, since the actual gameplay 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, but other ways of generating advantage include Dark World combos, Swap Control, Fairy Counter Control, etc. Each requires its own special style of play, but they can all generate positive advantage easily.
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 the Gadgets brought hand advantage closer to the forefront of the imagination. Most decks developed to handle Monarchs and gadgets included a balance of field and hand control. Among the field control cards, decide whether to devote more attention to spells/traps or monsters. If your deck can be ruined by Royal Decree, Dimesional 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. If you set Gravekeeper's Spy, and your opponent targets it with Nobleman of Crossout, it doesn't do any good for you. Likewise, attacking with a full field of monsters, only to hit a Mirror Force, is a serious problem. Be wary of power cards, and try to read your opponent well. There is no way to explain that in an article, and experience is the best teacher of it. It makes tempo manipulation much more difficult in practice than in theory.
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|:Section 3: Conclusion|
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:Brief Overview and Closing Comment:
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Overall, the application of card advantage, forced simplification, and, combined, tempo manipulation to your deckbuilding and gameplay, you can dramatically increase your success in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game. Remember the Advantage Equation, and constanly apply it in the back of your head. While the math for the Advantage Percentage Equation can be tedious and slow to use, remember that fewer cards in play means a greater numerical advantage for the player with more cards. Remember when to force simplification, and the "where" and "how" that your deck relies on to do so. Build decks that take advantage of these concepts to consistently manipulate the tempo. No guide or article can make you an expert duelist, but it can bring a whole lot closer to being one. As always, experience is the ultimate teacher, so practice these concepts at your next local tourney.
Thank you for reading my essay on the art of gamestate simplification and tempo manipulation. I hope that you can use the information you have been presented to better yourself as a duelist, and open your mind to various similar situations in your everyday life.
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:Additional References:
=======================
For Jason Grabher-Meyer's article, "Keeping it Simple," visit:
http://yugioh.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?id=1856For another article on Forced Simplification, visit:
http://yugioh.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?id=1796And for great articles on deck mechanics and metagame trends, visit:
http://www.metagame.com-----------------------
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|:Section 4: Appendices:|
|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|
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:Appendix A: Mathmatics and Terms Glossary:
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Advantage: A competetive upper-hand specifically favorable to wining the present duel.
Advantage Equation: |O-Y|=A
Where O is your opponent's card count, Y is your card count, and A is the difference in card counts, or numerical advantage of the advantaged player.
Advantage Generation Equation: G-L=P
Where G is the number of cards gained, L is the number of cards lost (destroyed, used, tributed), and P is the payoff, or the change in card count.
Advantage Percentage: The percentage comparing your card count to your opponent's card count by solving a ratio.
Advantage Percentage Equation: Y/O·100=Ap
Where Y is your card count, O is your opponent's card count, and Ap is the Advantage Percentage.
Card Advantage: Having more cards, and therefore more options, than your opponent, making the odds of winning the present duel favorable to you.
Card Count: The total number of cards on a players side of the field and in their hand. Cards that are accomplishing nothing on their own are not counted, such as an equipped Premature Burial.
Engine: Any synergetic group of cards dedicated to a specific goal. Common examples are draw engines, monster destruction engines, advantage engines, and field presence engines (also known as recruiter engines).
Even Trade: An exchange of cards in which no change in relative advantage occurs. Typically represented (Number of Cards Lost)-(Number of cards gained), read: x for y. Also called a "card-for-card exchange."
Floater: A card that has already generated positive advantage. Card-for-card exchanges to destroy it force simplification for you after you have gained the upper hand.
Forced Simplification: Initiating card-for-card exchanges to simplify the duel, thus maximizing the value your card advantage.
Simplification: The removal of cards from the field and hand, reducing the total number of options available to both players.
Tempo: The rate at which simplification takes place.
Top-decking: When a player has a card of 0, and only gains card through the draw at the start of their turn.
Total Card Count: The combined card count of both players.
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This is of course outdated but nontheless the same principles can be applied in all aspects of the game. Therefore it is wise to read it once more if you finished it all already to print it in your memory in order to instantly making it a second nature for yourself so that you can apply this knowledge in every duel.
Good luck and hope you liked it.
