True Advantage

Well I have a short theory post here today. Mostly about the existence of advantage. Ya see I've been thinking about why in some duels although you have card advantage and life lead you often are far from actually having the advantage. In Yu-gi-oh though we often say things like "I had card advantage" or "Field Presence" we often don't notice that though you have more overall options than the opponent often your options are sub par to the options the opponent has.

Imagine summoning Stratos who is a floater. Upon summoning you lose 1 in hand advantage but gain 1 in Field Presence but then gain 1 in hand advantage so you plus 1 in total card advantage. but the card you added is often not useful until later and gives your opponent knowledge of 1 card in your hand. So essentially unless that card becomes a plus of it's own it actually is dead weight it's card advantage but not Workable Card Advantage.

Workable Card Advantage could be described as extra cards you happen to obtain through the course of a duel that can upon obtaining be used to generate more Card Advantage over your opponent. A good example of this is Tour Guide of the Underworld. Upon summoning you lose 1 in hand advantage but gain 2 in Field Presence so it's a plus 1. If you searched Sangan its instantly an extra Plus 1 in Workable Card Advantage. You may be wondering how it's an extra plus 1 but if you think about it for a minute what does your opponent have to do in order to nullify sangan? all options aside from Dimensional Prison and battle are a minus (battle is a 1 for 1 trade which isn't good for the opponent when often the card Sangan searches can generate Workable Card Advantage)

Throughout the duel though often times if you focus on gaining the advantage in terms of just cards and not cards that can be effectively used for a plus within a turn of obtaining them. Of course this though isn't quite true either.

Card Advantage and Workable Card Advantage bear no power upon True Advantage. If you have a hand of 6 cards and a field of T.G. Hyper Librarian and Formula Synchron... and your opponent activates Mind Control on T.G Hyper Librarian... you are suddenly forced to Synchro Summon to make your opponents play into a Minus 1 for them but no one said your opponent didn't want you to do that. Now you can no longer Black Rose their field during the end of their Main Phase to destroy their set cards so they set 2 Backrow and Summon Tour Guide of the Underworld to search Sangan and Overlay for Number 17: Leviathan Dragon while one of their sets is Call of the Haunted. they now have a 2500 monster and 2 backrow but only 2 cards in hand. The opponent has a Level 7 Synchro Monster and a full hand. Once you attack that Synchro Monster though your opponent no longer can make that Synchro or Librarian or Formula Synchron until they draw a Pot of Avarice. even though they have card advantage by 1 card and hand advantage by 4 you have the True Advantage.

Keeping with the above scenario the opponent takes their turn and draws to 7  And summons Debris Dragon to revive Dandylion and sync for 7 to get rid of your field... well now you can use Call of the Haunted to bring back your Sangan who will promply die... so they have a 6 card hand and some tokens while you have a 3 card hand and no field. They no longer can Normal Summon so at best they will Monster Reborn or just set a trap or two and end... Suddenly they have 5 cards in hand and you on your draw have 4... But you haven't used any power plays while they have Nuked the field with their 1 Debris, Drew with their one Librarian and one Formula and one Glow-up Bulb/Spore and Dandylion. But you can still make big plays especially in this situation you can just summon Reborn Tengu and now you are automatically in the lead as Tengu replaces itself upon dying...

As you can see just because someone has the Advantage over you in terms of cards or field presence they don't necessarily have the True Advantage in the situation you could easily within a 4 card hand have an out to most dangerous situations while they with their large hand have already used most of their best cards and are less of a threat once those cards are dealt with. But this isn't necessarily a concrete truth it's quite easy for Card Advantage to be True Advantage if the Extra Cards are Workable Card Advantage and can change the flow of the duel. Well that's just something I've been thinking about the most important parts of the post relate to Workable Card Advantage.