Understanding what is Card Advantage and what is Tempo

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Understanding what is Card Advantage and what is Tempo

Hi all,

I wanted to highlight one important thing - players often misinterpret the meaning of the term "card advantage". Like in any similar card game, in Gwent, card advantage is anything that will win you the game: number of cards in your hand, their values, values of cards on the table and even amount & values of cards in your graveyard, if you can use these to your advantage. Increasing number of cards in your hand against number of cards in the opponent's hand (e.g., with Ciri, spies or Decoy) does not necessarily give you card advantage - in case you throw away a strength 8 Stennis spy to draw a strength 6 card, you actually lose card advantage. Even if you draw a strength 10 card, you only gain 2 strength with this change - most bronze common cards would give you so much more than that.

What you gain with increasing number of cards in your hand is tempo, which is another very important parameter. In the majority of games where you are not limited to one card per turn (and don't even have to play anything in your turn without passing, such as Magic:the Gathering), your tempo is how many cards can you get out for a limited number of rounds and create card advantage on the table. In this games, there is a special resource called mana or whatever else that limits how many cards you can play and at which time.

However, Gwent is completely different in this regard: you can play strongest cards as fast as turn 1, and the only two thing that matter are: 1) get maximum values in the last turn of the last round and 2) get the last turn in the last round, as it often allows you to finish developing your strategy (e.g., play Biting Frost without opponent being able to react to it anymore, or play/resurrect your strongest unit without the fear of getting scorched).

To sum up: when you play a card, you increase your CARD ADVANTAGE on the table.
When you return a card to your hand and therefore increase your hand size (or just keep it the same, as with Decoy), you boost your TEMPO, not CARD ADVANTAGE as it allows you to go last and gain the strategical advantage of having the last word.

Stay cool and use card game terms correctly! ;)
 
Poisonous, venomous... either way people understand what you're talking about, unless you really want to highlight a specific situation. Otherwise it's just semantics.

As for Gwent, I don't think this game has a tempo in the traditional sense, like you already explained. It's more like a game of chess really. You can force an opponent's hand and create an advantage. Whether or not you call it tempo or something else, it remains an advantage.
 
I think the OP dont understand the terms right.
Card advantage is always the amount of cards you have in your hand, that has nothing to do with the board. Card advantage is usefull to play the last cards to counter the opponent tactic. Or in good case you can play then more cards after the opponent runs out of cards.
The other term is Board Advantage: And all cards that give you card advantage has a drawback and give you board disadvantage, so winning a round and gain card advantage is very hard.

Tempo has nothing to do with your Hand or the amount of cards in your hand. Tempo means how fast can you raise the power on the field.

As your description would give a caretaker card advantage, but caretaker dont change who played last. He bring only more power on the board.
But he dont give card advantage, he bring only more cards on the board and in this game has this nothing to do with card advantage.
 
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shdcs1975;n7236980 said:
I think the OP dont understand the terms right. Card advantage is always the amount of cards you have in your hand, that has nothing to do with the board. Card advantage is usefull to play the last cards to counter the opponent tactic. Or in good case you can play then more cards after the opponent runs out of cards. The other term is Board Advantage: And all cards that give you card advantage has a drawback and give you board disadvantage, so winning a round and gain card advantage is very hard.
Tempo has nothing to do with your Hand or the amount of cards in your hand. Tempo means how fast can you raise the power on the field.

If you read e.g. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_advantage) you will see that CA covers board, graveyard etc. - it's a common misinterpretation that it only covers cards in hands.
I do agree though that calling this tempo is at the very least far stretched. But as "tempo" in the original sense is not really applicable to the game, I suggested to use it in Gwent in this sense. As kings deploy their armies, the one who can foresee the opponent's moves first and counter-deploy the opponent has sort of better tempo. If you can come up with a better word to describe the advantage of going last - you're welcome :)
 
Card advantage (often abbreviated CA) is a term used in collectible card game strategy to indicate one player having access to more cards than another player, usually by drawing more cards through in-game effects.[SUP][1][/SUP] The concept was first described early in the evolution of Magic: The Gathering strategy, where many early decks relied on a player drawing more cards than their opponent, and then using this advantage to play more cards and advance their position faster than their opponent. By 2007 it was recognized as one of the most important indicators of who is ahead in a game and has been utilized in the development of strategy for nearly every collectible card game created.[SUP][2][/SUP]

I dont read in this text that it coverd the field and the graveyard. In magic it can be mean the graveyard, because you can play in Magic cards from your graveyard in the same way as if they are in your Hand. That mean that this type of cards increase the amount of cards that you can play. But in this game i can't play cards from my graveyard without playing a card from my hand. All the example are from Magic in the Wiki, so you need to translate the gameplay to this game. In Magic is good to kill 2 cards with 1 card to get advantage, this worked in magic, because you can skip a round. But in this game you must play a card every turn. So remove 2 cards with 1 cards dont bring you card advantage in this game.
 
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shdcs1975;n7237140 said:
I dont read in this text that it coverd the field and the graveyard. In magic it can be mean the graveyard, because you can play in Magic cards from your graveyard in the same way as if they are in your Hand. That mean that this type of cards increase the amount of cards that you can play. But in this game i can't play cards from my graveyard without playing a card from my hand.

The first sentence reads: "The basic concept of card advantage is one player having more cards in hand and/or in play than their opponent". Graveyard doesn't really matter - I wanted to stress, that cards in play also count towards CA.
 
IMO this part clearly proves that CA also covers the field: "Card advantage is often also the result of making a play where your own cards are used to neutralise or eliminate a greater number of your opponent's cards."

Probably because you spent less cards than your opponent to get ahead of him, which requires him to spend yet another card to catch up, which in the best case will equal both players out. Obviously, what has been already played will have an effect on the future cards that will need to be played to stay competitive, so the concept is dependent on both the "resources" (cards still available) and "power" (cards already played to lesser or greater effect which require the opponent to spend resources = cards to catch up or at least remain competitive in the game)
 
aspsnake0;n7237240 said:
The first sentence reads: "The basic concept of card advantage is one player having more cards in hand and/or in play than their opponent". Graveyard doesn't really matter - I wanted to stress, that cards in play also count towards CA.

The gameplay is other in Magic then in Gwent. In Magic you can create card advantage by killing 2 creature with 1 card or Killing 5 creature with 1 card. In Gwent you dont create card advantage with borkh, when he killed 2 cards from the opponent. In Magic my opponent played 4 cards in one turn, so he decreased his hand by 4. In my turn i killed his 4 cards with 1 card from me, so it changed the amount i can play to -1 and my opponent to -4. This is card advantage. In Gwent i don't change the amount of cards when i play borkh.

So you can't used your definition from Magic to gwent. The sentence from Card Advantage is the amount of cards you can play.

In Gwent you don't change the cards you can play, when you play Caretaker. You dont change the cards you can play, when you play Last Wish.
Only Cards like decoy change the amount of cards you can play.
 
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You're assuming your opponent could have still "played" the 4 units you have destroyed with 1 card. I don't get that. They're already on the field, just like they are in gwent. In both games you decrease your hand by playing, in both games you can destroy several units with 1 card or debuff and waste the process he made with several buffs. That's clearly card advantage to me.
 
4RM3D;n7236200 said:
Poisonous, venomous... either way people understand what you're talking about, unless you really want to highlight a specific situation. Otherwise it's just semantics.

Exactly. Call whatever you want. Card advantage is card advantage and card advantage is this game is how much cards you have in hand compared to your opponent.

You can call it tempo, you can call it mammoth, you can call it mother, you can call it whatever you want.... doesnt change the fact that whats important in this game is how much cards you have on hand compared to your opponent.

So lets just simplify and call it card advantage. :)
 
Necro_Man_Ser;n7237570 said:
You're assuming your opponent could have still "played" the 4 units you have destroyed with 1 card. I don't get that. They're already on the field, just like they are in gwent. In both games you decrease your hand by playing, in both games you can destroy several units with 1 card or debuff and waste the process he made with several buffs. That's clearly card advantage to me.

In Magic you can play more then 1 card per turn. That's not possible in Gwent. So removing more than 1 card in Gwent dont change the amount of cards i can play.

 
Laveley;n7237680 said:
So lets just simplify and call it card advantage.

Can I call it pancakes? I love pancakes ... and I love having more cards than my opponent. So it works right? In all seriousness though, I do agree this is largely semantics and that using the term card advantage generally or specifically in regards to increasing number of cards relative to opponent is fine. It's almost always apparent from the context of the post what the member means.
 
Laveley;n7237680 said:
Exactly. Call whatever you want. Card advantage is card advantage and card advantage is this game is how much cards you have in hand compared to your opponent.

You can call it tempo, you can call it mammoth, you can call it mother, you can call it whatever you want.... doesnt change the fact that whats important in this game is how much cards you have on hand compared to your opponent.

So lets just simplify and call it card advantage. :)

I like your postings. I want more poster like you that understand this game.
 
4RM3D;n7236200 said:
Poisonous, venomous... either way people understand what you're talking about, unless you really want to highlight a specific situation. Otherwise it's just semantics.

As for Gwent, I don't think this game has a tempo in the traditional sense, like you already explained. It's more like a game of chess really. You can force an opponent's hand and create an advantage. Whether or not you call it tempo or something else, it remains an advantage.

If anything, Gwent is nothing like chess. To begin with, the opponents usually have different pieces to play with. Well, that will make it...
Rawls;n7237740 said:
Can I call it pancakes? I love pancakes ... and I love having more cards than my opponent. So it works right? In all seriousness though, I do agree this is largely semantics and that using the term card advantage generally or specifically in regards to increasing number of cards relative to opponent is fine. It's almost always apparent from the context of the post what the member means.
Blueberry pancakes. It's what I get every Saturday morning and I'm loving it. So, yes... pancakes sounds great!
 
Rawls;n7237740 said:
Can I call it pancakes? I love pancakes ...
HenryGrosmont;n7238370 said:
Blueberry pancakes.
So it's agreed, then: Pancakes all around, right? No waffles, I trust?

[Personally -- and rather uninterestingly -- I use the term 'card count' to describe the number of cards in a hand. A higher card count has the potential to translate into a numerical advantage on the board. Naturally, this isn't invariably the case, however, as a generality, having a few more cards in your hand can mean you've the potential to defeat your opponents. (Unless, of course, you've only three Thunderbolts and a Swallow Potion, but no units. Argh.) Until they are played, cards are merely potential power, rather than an assured advantage.]

Now, just add butter, syrup, or strawberry jam, and victory is assured!
 
HenryGrosmont;n7238370 said:
If anything, Gwent is nothing like chess. To begin with, the opponents usually have different pieces to play with. Well, that will make it...

Gwent is similar to chess as in having to play one piece each turn, compared to other CCGs. There are also obvious differences, yeah.
 
4RM3D;n7239350 said:
Gwent is similar to chess as in having to play one piece each turn, compared to other CCGs. There are also obvious differences, yeah.

Just like chess and checkers, same board... please, nothing similar. I mean, absolutely nothing.
 
The original post reverses the terms from their common use, but what you call them, it highlights one important card concept and hints at a second.

As it says, it helps to track the strength of cards in your hand, since each time you put a card out on the board, your hand diminishes. How many cards you hold is only part of that equation.

So we have board strength and hand strength. Call them what you want, card advantage or pancakes or whatever. That's a semantic issue.

What's commonly called tempo, though is another concept worth adding to this thread. It refers to controlling a game's pace (which is what tempo means in Italian. Italiano è pieno di termini utili). In Magic: the Gathering, the term came to mean "board presence" for doing just that:
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/level-one/tempo-2014-09-22

Tempo thus is a more subtle version of gaining the initiative. You don't necessarily dictate your opponent's response, but you control how the game will play out.

In Gwent, tempo is subtle indeed because of the use of rounds. In Hearthstone, if I get the dominant presence early with my rush deck, my opponent must play defense or face a loss. In chess, tempo can be traded constantly as players gain minor advantages that persist through the game. But in Gwent, winning a round doesn't necessarily mean winning the game, so if you put out a big board presence, your opponent can meet it or choose to save cards for the next round.

So rounds themselves help set the tempo in Gwent. A loss of the first round forces a player to commit to the second. A first-round board with a strong presence that will persist into the second round may force a fight right away. It's one of the aspects I find most fun and unique about the game.
 
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