Carte TCG Card Advantage Basic Guide

Carte TCG Card Advantage Basic Guide by Gitaxia

So, what is card advantage? For those of you from other TCG’s, this is something you probably already know. Card advantage is, very simply, how many cards you have available for interaction compared to how many cards your opponent has. This includes cards on the field, hand, your hero, and occasionally your graveyard.

The Mana Pool:
In Carte, card advantage is characterized by the mana pool. Each turn you draw a card, that is 1 card worth of advantage each and every turn. Of course, your opponent does the same thing, so you’re not really gaining an advantage here. But, in Carte you expend this turn-based card advantage into mana, so that you can actually play your cards. This means that, if you put 1 card into the mana pool each turn, your card advantage is at an equilibrium. So, how can you gain card advantage here? Easy. Put shards in your deck. That might sound a little silly, since everyone already uses shards, but that’s the easiest way to gain card advantage. Just use your shards. I usually run around 18-22 shards per deck, ’cause I’m a controlly type of player, but I would say about 16 shards minimum, unless you have an awesome strategy that can kill your opponent before they reach 5 mana. And always, always, always set the shard into the shard zone. Unless you’re really desperately defending against someone who’s going to kill you in 2 turns, or you know you can kill your opponent in 2 turns, don’t waste a card on a slight mana boost. Also, if you’re early in the game and have no shards, refresh. I’ve also learned that it’s also okay if you have a hand full of shards, because you’re not going to draw many more from the shards’ effects, and you just drew a hand full of card advantage awesomeness.

The Field:
The second easiest way to gain card advantage is to manipulate the field, playing creatures, magic, traps, and such. If you manage to kill 2 of your opponent’s creatures with 1 of yours, you just gained 1 point of card advantage. If your opponent killed 3 of your creatures with 1 magic, he/she just gained 2 points of card advantage. If you used one of your creatures to kill one of your opponent’s nobody gained any card advantage. You get the idea. Sometimes, you will have to sacrifice card advantage. I normally find that the only time you really should sacrifice card advantage is when you’re on the defense, or if you have such an enormous board presence and can kill your opponent in the next turn, and even then, I don’t like to sacrifice card advantage.

Marginal Card Advantage:
Applies mainly to green and blue, but every deck can exploit this. For green, if you play a creature that puts another free creature into play, you have gained marginal card advantage. If a blast creature you controlled died and did damage to another creature, that’s also marginal card advantage. Marginal card advantage adds up more slowly than regular card advantage, but if used correctly, can be just as effective. Green swarm decks exploit this regularly, as do blue blast decks.

Carte-Unique Card Advantage.

Hero:
Your hero is treated like a card, except it’s not a card. It’s much better than just one card. A hero can generate so much card advantage, it should really be treated like two or three cards. That you can’t lose. Unless you lose the game, of course. Still, I generally find that saving the hero’s skills for the situation where it can generate the most card advantage is the best way to play. Unless you know you can win the game in the next turn by using your hero’s skill, save it. Don’t throw your hero’s skill away for early tempo, or an extra 2 points of damage or whatever. Save it for the situation where you need to completely turn the game around by generating massive card advantage.

Items:
Also unique to Carte is the inclusion of items (correct me if I’m wrong). Items can generate pure card advantage very easily. You boost your hero by 2 AP and 2 SP and kill a creature. Every turn. That adds up quickly. Generally, though, items use up quite a lot of mana, that could be used for playing creatures. So, when using items, be careful not to let your defenses falter, and keep up with your board position.

Board Presence:
So, I’m running out of things to say by now, so I’ll just try and express this as simply as I can. There are 2 pieces to board presence. Early game, and late game. Tempo/aggro players exploit the early game, control/attrition players exploit the late game. A tempo player doesn’t care about how many cards their opponent has in their hand (generally speaking). All they care about is ending the game as quickly as possible. So, by organizing your deck with cards made specifically to dominate board presence in the early game, you have effectively made every late game card your opponents have useless, as long as you can win in time. For a control player (such as myself), they try to slow down the tempo as much as possible, utilizing magic cards that kill things cheaply, or creatures that can put up a decent defense. So, if you are successful in slowing things down enough, you have effectively neutralized every early game card in your opponent’s deck by besting them with late game cards. This is a very abstract concept with no fine dividing lines between what makes an early game card and/or a late game card. And don’t even get me started on the transition.

Tarots:
These do not generate card advantage. Tarots are purely for tempo purposes. If you’re a tempo player, you don’t care if your opponent receives 3 cards, because you’re planning on them being dead before they can use them. However, in certain situations, a tarot could be used for card advantage, like Death when only your opponent controls a creature, but the late-game tarots tend to be much worse than the early-game ones. I mean, are you really going to trade that 4/4 of yours for a 1/1, wasting mana in the process?

I’m still trying to find even more ways to generate card advantage, with traps maybe? Who knows? But if you find any, don’t hesitate to tell us. Or just be mean and keep the secret all to yourself. Thanks for reading, and I hope you didn’t get too tired of hearing me say “card advantage”.