Couldn't agree more. I returned to the game last year after having left during Onslaught, and this channel was the reason why. The other channels are an echo chamber of self-perpetuating nonsense.
I want to comment something; This series has helped me not only to understand the game better, but to format my own lessons better. As a teacher, I used to feel I was lacking something during my lessons and the format in which Tolarian Tutor is presented (and how it closes by making a neat summary) helped me re-design my lessons and as a result they are more consistent and easier to understand. I'm very thankful to the Prof, Emma and Michelle for that and I think it is just fair to tell you guys that you can learn more about a video than its intended purpose
Professor, great video. I would love to see a similar video that explains the use of the word "value" for MtG. in MtG the word "value" seems to be a catch-all for any positive exchange or interaction but is often terribly vague. Tireless tracker's pseudo landfall ability creates value, same with K of kruphix's land-related abilities. These are effects that accumulate game advantages regularly over the term and are what I would consider value, but I understand it to often be a catch-all for any one time or continuous advantage generated by any particular card.
Dimir control with a mill sub-theme seems really strong, mind funeral, thought scour, Jace's phantasm, mind crank, gurmag angler, delver, counterspells, glimpse the unthinkable, I think we got a deck
A video on tempo is on the way I hope! Explaining to players the idea of higher value cards vs higher tempo cards and when to use each would be very helpful to most. You touched on it here, but it's not an easy concept to grasp. For example, Young Pyromancer and Storm Chaser mage both look like strong cards, and they both take advantage of you casting spells. One may be tempted to toss them together into the same deck, but Young Pyromancer gains you incremental advantage over time, in contrast to Storm Chaser who can deal damage immediately and gains temporary advantage each turn but ultimately fizzles out.
Gotta love seeing these videos when they first come out! Great video prof! These are key concepts to learn in order to know when you're ahead or behind, which obviously shapes how you play. I've wanted vampires to work in standard but it struggles to keep card advantage and usually by turn 3 or 4 things start to go south. Oh well, guess I'll keep trying to ramp with my Dino's!
There's a deck type called Hollow One that combines Looting effects, which already grant virtual card advantage, with effects that trigger when you discard cards, such as the namesake Hollow One, which is a 4/4 artifact creature for ⑤ with the effect "This spell costs {2} less to cast for each card you've cycled or discarded this turn." Essentially, Looting + Hollow One means you typically spend 1-2 card advantage to get some virtual card advantage and potentially multiple unfair castings of a decently strong creature.
Tolarian Tutor is a genius invention, some many videos I have seen are either "how to attack" or "how to be a spike". A perfect middle hard to find any where else.
coming from Yugioh where card advantage is literally whoever has more cards to Magic that has a mana system, I was under the impression that card advantage wasn't a thing or at least not as important. But this more detailed explanation helped me understand what it really means and how it applies to both games.
I encourage new players to try out Tempo decks. They tend to pull off very close victories due to the nature of tempo and it feels very rewarding to just barely knock in the last few hits. I play a budget mono blue Faeries deck that offers a lot of internal synergy in bouncing and recasting different creatures, so all games go different and I always have a lot of choices to think about!
Duuuuude. I used to have a wicked mono U fae deck. Never took it to a FNM though. How does yours generally fair? Do you play local stores or personal playgroups? Would love to see your list
For the "Tempo isn't card advantage" point I think something important is that just because tempo isn't card advantage doesn't mean you should remove it from card advantage calculations. For instance, Griptide and Unsummon are both tempo plays, but griptide costs the opponent a draw, while unsummon doesn't. Likewise Unsummon (probably) won't make your opponent discard at end of turn, but Cyclonic rift probably will, assuming your opponent has a reasonable board presence.
THANK YOU SIR!!!. my god all my decks have been based on card advantage and i never knew it. But this info right here is about to make each deck i have go through a tweak and i could NOT be more excited. This video was exactly what i needed. Watching it was like a breath of fresh air seriously THANK YOU!!! My turning point was when you explained Merfolk looter. I have avoided cards like this thinking they are not worth what you lose and focus on makin a deck there is no cards you wanna lose. But it doesn't work. With every opponent you will find times you need to cycle through your card fast to get what you need. The card you sacrifice are worth the potential gains. I know you are and grammer kind of guy so forgive my lack of punctuation and other errors. Dis be utube btuh.
Thanks for the video professor! Tolarian tutor is definitely my favorite series of yours. If you ever do an advanced class you should make a video on layers and time stamp
this is perfectly explained; I have a deck that doent care if the opponent has more card advantage, if it can keep the board advantage it wins, card advantage is not the games only advantage.
The best kind of card advantage I've had recently was Thought Scouring an opponent right after they used a Mirage-block tutor (AKA Instant speed tutor to top of deck.) They spent a card to have a perfect draw that didn't happen, and I came out card neutral, so it was +1 on me.
Hi Professor, I love your videos and I really appreciate the dedication and passion you put into them for your viewers like myself. This may be a long post, but ill try to keep it to the point. I was hoping you may do me and my playgroup a favor. We are all mid to high level players and brewers but sometimes we still have issues with etb effects and stack triggers. We get through them just fine, but I'm sure others have the same issues from time to time. I know this is kinda a big subject to try to tackle, but I can't think of a better person than yourself to help shed some light on the subject by making it easy to understand. Examples of this is ally decks. Its easy to understand how one ally entering will affect the board, but if you trigger 3-5 allies entering at the same time (like with March from the Tomb), it becomes more difficult to understand and keep track of. Another example of a similar but different interaction with allies is Turntimber Rangers + Xenograft. Just this interaction by itself is powerfull and if you add other allies to it becomes even more insane. There are many examples of stack triggers, and this is a much broader subject to broch. Really, you can probably make an entire segment just on complex stack and board check interactions. If you do choose to pursue some of these problems, my playgroup and I would greatly appreciate it and would love to hear your take on these most noble of subjects. Even if you don't, please keep up the great work and keep making great content. Thank you for taking some time to read this and best of luck to you and your channel.
Discard effects like Duress/thoughtseize ate also virtual card advantage, you take out the relevant cards from the hand of the opponent leaving him with the weak cards or only with lands
It depends. Milling a deck gives its player card advantage, if it's a reanimator deck or if it contains a lot of spells with flashback or unearth. It can also give board advantage by promoting effects like threshold, delve etc.
The best example of card advantage versus tempo advantage I can think of are spells that return a creature to its owner's hand, like Unsummon. (commonly referred to as bounce) You've spend one card to take zero cards away from your opponent, since they still have the card you targeted, it's just back in their hand. What you are gaining is tempo and mana advantage. Unsummon only costs one mana, and can return any creature, no matter how large, to its owner's hand. Your opponent has effectively lost the mana they spent to cast that spell.
Hi Prof, thanks for another great video and thanks for this series. I enjoyed this episode but I think you forgot one form of virtual card advantage, blanking your opponent's cards. For example if you have no creatures in your deck, all their removal spells don't do anything and therefore you're up on "cards". This works as well in decks like bogels, where losing your creature with all your auras on it would be horrible and lose you lots of cards, but hexproof blanks so much removal that you're up on "cards" and maindeck leyline shuts down lots of things as well. I think this is something which is harder to grasp than other forms of virtual card advantage, which is why I would've liked you mentioning it. Regards, Anton
This video could be watched by many other tcgs and would get the same result. It's interesting when mtg actually shares aspects of gameplay with other popular tcgs like Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokemon where card advantage is also relevant
I was going to comment that the mill card Tome Scour has the potential to decrease your opponent's virtual card advantage, since they lose the top 5 cards of their library, but the random nature of the library doesn't necessarily equate to losing higher quality cards. very good course, though, and it gave me a lot more insight into this concept. Thanks Professor! PS. this is a minor nit-pick, I know, but since the Professor was an English major, I have to believe that he knows that tome rhymes with home, not tomb, and simply mis-spoke. :)
You can effect the opponents hand with certain forms of mill. Land denial that uses land based mill? The hard part is making this type of control fit. Red tempo: using activated ability to conserve card resources, I called it “red card advantage”
A point that should have been at least mentioned in the video is the Graveyard as a second hand like the newly added Embalm cards, Snapcaster Mage, etc.
You are correct that mill can't affect what they draw. However, it can better inform you of what is *not* in their hand. If their graveyard has 3 Lightning Bolts in it, you can feel more comfortable making the assumption that they do not have one in-hand.
One time somebody who was land screwed scry-d the top of their library and seemed excited about it so I cast tome scour and they didn’t get a land like they wanted
Tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure milling your opponent doesn't hurt them at all unless 1. they're going to eventually lose by getting decked or 2. they lose something that they needed to tutor for specifically. Other than that, all unseen cards are the same. As an aggro deck, I'd be just fine playing with a randomly selected half of my deck and putting the other half in my graveyard. It's not like I'm going to be using more than 30 cards anyway--if I am, I'm either going to be losing the game to stronger late game cards, or my opponent is playing badly. If I am mistaken in this, please let me know. I'm always willing to learn. I just thought this was worth pointing out about the mill strategy.
Just to play tutors advocate; I played a game once where my opponent milled every card i would have needed to do anything and i ended up drawing nothing except lands. It was totally to their advantage. It was completely a random crusher, i freely admit. However, It is an example of how Mill could be used for advantage, especially combined with a top deck manipulation strat.
Hey Prof, great work; I'm totally enjoy the Tolarian Tutor serie Am I the only one that gets remindet of Prof Crowler from the Yu-Gi-Oh GX Series by him? xD
And another thing to is when your trying to gain card advantage is don't fall behind on the board state. Trust me I lost a lot of games where I was trying to gain card advantage and was a bit too slow of keeping up with my opponent
So... there's an article about initiative called "who's the beatdown" by Mike Flores worth reading about this topic. Also this doesn't cover what kind of card advantage is, for example, dragon fodder, I have it under the "virtual card advantage" category. And I usually define card advantage as "making a transaction with a positive balance of cards in active zones". There are zones more active than others, but usually hand and board are the active zones, while graveyard, library and exile are the inactive ones... but does this apply when playing against an ichorid, or reanimator? Or what about drawing a card with miracle? There are times where library and graveyard are active zones as well. Or the strange cases where Pull from eternity counters an ancestral visions...
Maybe you should 've covered cards like : put a plains onto play. It makes the rest of the deck more valuable because it has fewers lands. Or some lands like sacrifice this and look for a land.
If we think of life as a resource that doesn't matter until it reaches 0 and the opponent loses and we prioritize removing life then why do we not think of the 60 cards of a library that when they reach 0 the opponent loses in the same way?
Beeeyeee prof may have made the classic Cyclopean Tomb error. (Cyclopean Tomb was ment to be Cyclopean Tome but was misunderstood by the artist and drawn as a tomb)
Gage Griffin there is a suuuuuper old article called "who's the beatdown" that answers your question perfectly. It is seriously the most famous and iconic and perhaps the most important article you could ever read to become better at magic. Definitely recommend to read.
Hey professor I was wondering if you could make a updated version of the mono black tribal vampires you did almost 3 years ago Becouse you know there was a lot of new cards over almost 3 years and I am not sure what should I change in the deck love your videos keep them up thanks
I would argue that if a deck is built around it self mill is card advantage, like the includes of flashback cards, snapcaster mages, or entomb/embalm creatures
AngryBadger I dunno, I feel like some decks want cards in the graveyard just as much as in their hand, so playing something that puts it in a place where you can use it counts as card advantage¿ Just like drawing cards
Maybe I'm nitpicking, but I understood "virtual" card advantage to mean situations in which a player has the "quantifiable resources" in hand or on the battlefield, but are unable to use them. So like in Standard, where an Ixalan's Binding restricts you from paying a the card you've just drawn. Or a common example: when you have a bunch of removal in your hand but your opponent is playing a deck with little to no creatures. So essentially, even while you may technically have more cards in hand than your opponent, if you can't use those cards, they have a "virtual" advantage. Isn't what your describing defined as "card selection" or "card filtering", and isn't that an important distinction?
Mill can be card advantage, but not to make your opponent to run out of cards. What about milling/discarding myself to put cards with flashback, embalm, and eternalize into my graveyard? It's not in my hand but I have more options to do stuff with my mana which I believe is card advantage.
Roman Warrior card kingdom has battle decks, you could try one of those. Your local game store should have welcome decks that they’ll give out for free. Try to get one or two of those
I would consider myself intermediate, I never have been to Friday night magic because of lack of transit and no game stores in biking distance, but me and my friends play at a nearby parks and at sleepovers.
Would you say instant cantrips in EDH (and french duel commander) give quality advantage worth enough to be played ? Things like street wraith, gitaxian probe, peek, reach through mist ? In a combo deck ?
What if you mill half the library and remove all their key pieces tho. I feel that thats gotta be some sort of advantage. Maybe not in small quantities but when you mill or exile half a library it deprives many opponents from even playing the game at all.
So, what's it called when your deck is full of "tap five and get something that won't help you" while your opponent's deck has "tap one and play something good"? I would think my opponent has an advantage due to better cards, but what is that called?
![เจ็บที่ยังฮัก - ม่อน วรวิทย์ [ Official Mv ] จอนนี่มิวสิค](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KALIGSRSjFs/mqdefault.jpg)
It's refreshing to see an MTG channel that actually talks about the game.
Couldn't agree more. I returned to the game last year after having left during Onslaught, and this channel was the reason why.
The other channels are an echo chamber of self-perpetuating nonsense.
Some of us just wanna play some Magic to help us relief the tensions of our everyday lives.
Did you just reply to yourself?
@@j.p.rogers6731 Must have been a deleted or removed comment.
@@annexsentry it makes sense that he agrees with himself
I want to comment something; This series has helped me not only to understand the game better, but to format my own lessons better. As a teacher, I used to feel I was lacking something during my lessons and the format in which Tolarian Tutor is presented (and how it closes by making a neat summary) helped me re-design my lessons and as a result they are more consistent and easier to understand. I'm very thankful to the Prof, Emma and Michelle for that and I think it is just fair to tell you guys that you can learn more about a video than its intended purpose
I absolutely love this series. It's like Crash Course for Magic: The Gathering!
Professor, great video. I would love to see a similar video that explains the use of the word "value" for MtG. in MtG the word "value" seems to be a catch-all for any positive exchange or interaction but is often terribly vague. Tireless tracker's pseudo landfall ability creates value, same with K of kruphix's land-related abilities. These are effects that accumulate game advantages regularly over the term and are what I would consider value, but I understand it to often be a catch-all for any one time or continuous advantage generated by any particular card.
Tolarian Tutor: How To Be A Better Mill Player
Step One: Pick a different deck.
Add light control and filtering... And never give up the meme dream!
Dimir control with a mill sub-theme seems really strong, mind funeral, thought scour, Jace's phantasm, mind crank, gurmag angler, delver, counterspells, glimpse the unthinkable, I think we got a deck
Perfect mill is mill yourself like dredge lab maniac.
Trey Conover Muselk would be proud of your words.
Is lightning bolt card advantage? No Patrick, lightning bolt is not card advantage.... Doom blade is not card advantage either.
Ryan Is Forest a card advantage?
Is Mayonese card advantage?
Is hymn to tourach targeting yourself card advantage :)
Is Sensei's 1st ability a mana ability? (So sick of hearing questions about what is a mana ability...)
Also... I know it isnt.
awesome lesson! was slightly distracted by the zoom that cut off the prof's scalp though
Prof, I'm a huge fan. Would love to sit down and play a commander game with ya.
Andrew McKuzes
With that logic we all would have a concert hall sized commander game for months! :D
That would be epic!!!
The first one to lower their guard gets destroyed.
A video on tempo is on the way I hope! Explaining to players the idea of higher value cards vs higher tempo cards and when to use each would be very helpful to most. You touched on it here, but it's not an easy concept to grasp. For example, Young Pyromancer and Storm Chaser mage both look like strong cards, and they both take advantage of you casting spells. One may be tempted to toss them together into the same deck, but Young Pyromancer gains you incremental advantage over time, in contrast to Storm Chaser who can deal damage immediately and gains temporary advantage each turn but ultimately fizzles out.
Still nice to see these videos and learn a thing or two. Even veteran players can get some better insight on certain aspects of the game.
Gotta love seeing these videos when they first come out! Great video prof! These are key concepts to learn in order to know when you're ahead or behind, which obviously shapes how you play. I've wanted vampires to work in standard but it struggles to keep card advantage and usually by turn 3 or 4 things start to go south. Oh well, guess I'll keep trying to ramp with my Dino's!
Nicely done. Good to see some tutorial videos on the more subtle aspects of playing the game.
Great refresher. Love this series; it talks about complex game concepts with a precision that is often lacking in typical MTG discussion and games.
There's a deck type called Hollow One that combines Looting effects, which already grant virtual card advantage, with effects that trigger when you discard cards, such as the namesake Hollow One, which is a 4/4 artifact creature for ⑤ with the effect "This spell costs {2} less to cast for each card you've cycled or discarded this turn."
Essentially, Looting + Hollow One means you typically spend 1-2 card advantage to get some virtual card advantage and potentially multiple unfair castings of a decently strong creature.
Finally a new Tolarian Tutor! Keep this up and I might not go 0/5 in every pauper tournament I ever play on MTGO
Tolarian Tutor is a genius invention, some many videos I have seen are either "how to attack" or "how to be a spike". A perfect middle hard to find any where else.
coming from Yugioh where card advantage is literally whoever has more cards to Magic that has a mana system, I was under the impression that card advantage wasn't a thing or at least not as important. But this more detailed explanation helped me understand what it really means and how it applies to both games.
I encourage new players to try out Tempo decks. They tend to pull off very close victories due to the nature of tempo and it feels very rewarding to just barely knock in the last few hits. I play a budget mono blue Faeries deck that offers a lot of internal synergy in bouncing and recasting different creatures, so all games go different and I always have a lot of choices to think about!
Duuuuude. I used to have a wicked mono U fae deck. Never took it to a FNM though. How does yours generally fair? Do you play local stores or personal playgroups? Would love to see your list
I absolutely love this series. Been binging it whenever I have time. Really helping me improve at magic and card games in general
For the "Tempo isn't card advantage" point I think something important is that just because tempo isn't card advantage doesn't mean you should remove it from card advantage calculations. For instance, Griptide and Unsummon are both tempo plays, but griptide costs the opponent a draw, while unsummon doesn't. Likewise Unsummon (probably) won't make your opponent discard at end of turn, but Cyclonic rift probably will, assuming your opponent has a reasonable board presence.
Thanks Prof. great vid learned a lot. been playing kitchen table since 98 but went to my first FNM this past weekend.
0:24 when the shot is cropped in such a way that it makes you feel the need to scroll up because it looks like the top of the video is cut off.
This is the best series you have done in my opinion. Thank you for all the help professor!
THANK YOU SIR!!!. my god all my decks have been based on card advantage and i never knew it. But this info right here is about to make each deck i have go through a tweak and i could NOT be more excited. This video was exactly what i needed. Watching it was like a breath of fresh air seriously THANK YOU!!! My turning point was when you explained Merfolk looter. I have avoided cards like this thinking they are not worth what you lose and focus on makin a deck there is no cards you wanna lose. But it doesn't work. With every opponent you will find times you need to cycle through your card fast to get what you need. The card you sacrifice are worth the potential gains. I know you are and grammer kind of guy so forgive my lack of punctuation and other errors. Dis be utube btuh.
Thanks for the video professor! Tolarian tutor is definitely my favorite series of yours. If you ever do an advanced class you should make a video on layers and time stamp
You never seem to fail at giving great advice prof, thank you and keep up the fantastic work!
this is perfectly explained; I have a deck that doent care if the opponent has more card advantage, if it can keep the board advantage it wins, card advantage is not the games only advantage.
The best kind of card advantage I've had recently was Thought Scouring an opponent right after they used a Mirage-block tutor (AKA Instant speed tutor to top of deck.) They spent a card to have a perfect draw that didn't happen, and I came out card neutral, so it was +1 on me.
For some reason, the professor reminds me of Jeff Daniels. Great channel, I love the after hours skits; quite humorous. Subscribed.
cheers and welcome!
Hi Professor, I love your videos and I really appreciate the dedication and passion you put into them for your viewers like myself. This may be a long post, but ill try to keep it to the point.
I was hoping you may do me and my playgroup a favor. We are all mid to high level players and brewers but sometimes we still have issues with etb effects and stack triggers. We get through them just fine, but I'm sure others have the same issues from time to time.
I know this is kinda a big subject to try to tackle, but I can't think of a better person than yourself to help shed some light on the subject by making it easy to understand.
Examples of this is ally decks. Its easy to understand how one ally entering will affect the board, but if you trigger 3-5 allies entering at the same time (like with March from the Tomb), it becomes more difficult to understand and keep track of. Another example of a similar but different interaction with allies is Turntimber Rangers + Xenograft. Just this interaction by itself is powerfull and if you add other allies to it becomes even more insane.
There are many examples of stack triggers, and this is a much broader subject to broch. Really, you can probably make an entire segment just on complex stack and board check interactions.
If you do choose to pursue some of these problems, my playgroup and I would greatly appreciate it and would love to hear your take on these most noble of subjects.
Even if you don't, please keep up the great work and keep making great content. Thank you for taking some time to read this and best of luck to you and your channel.
Discard effects like Duress/thoughtseize ate also virtual card advantage, you take out the relevant cards from the hand of the opponent leaving him with the weak cards or only with lands
It depends. Milling a deck gives its player card advantage, if it's a reanimator deck or if it contains a lot of spells with flashback or unearth. It can also give board advantage by promoting effects like threshold, delve etc.
Mill in the right build can be great card advantage when pointed at yourself, Flashback and dredge strategies are great examples of this.
That's the point, Mill is no card advantage itself, you need to pair with another effects and the result will be.
Professor, I want a lecture talking about the TRON decks: Green, Red/Green, Eldrazi, and what I am playing: Blue.
Best videos by this channel. Not into product reviews anymore this is better content smarter
The best example of card advantage versus tempo advantage I can think of are spells that return a creature to its owner's hand, like Unsummon. (commonly referred to as bounce) You've spend one card to take zero cards away from your opponent, since they still have the card you targeted, it's just back in their hand. What you are gaining is tempo and mana advantage. Unsummon only costs one mana, and can return any creature, no matter how large, to its owner's hand. Your opponent has effectively lost the mana they spent to cast that spell.
Great lesson, as always.
It's almost as if you're suited to teach people things.
POT OF DESIRES IS A -9
Staahp! DX
Actually, it’s a +1 or considered a 1 for 2
EXILE YOUR COMBO PIECES REEEEEEEE-
This, this brings back nightmares of noobs being jerks.
I will say, I didn't expect this meme to make its eay to MTG too.
Hi Prof,
thanks for another great video and thanks for this series. I enjoyed this episode but I think you forgot one form of virtual card advantage, blanking your opponent's cards. For example if you have no creatures in your deck, all their removal spells don't do anything and therefore you're up on "cards". This works as well in decks like bogels, where losing your creature with all your auras on it would be horrible and lose you lots of cards, but hexproof blanks so much removal that you're up on "cards" and maindeck leyline shuts down lots of things as well. I think this is something which is harder to grasp than other forms of virtual card advantage, which is why I would've liked you mentioning it.
Regards,
Anton
This video could be watched by many other tcgs and would get the same result. It's interesting when mtg actually shares aspects of gameplay with other popular tcgs like Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokemon where card advantage is also relevant
love your content. i dont know if two intros are necessary though.
Love the new series!! Looking forward to the rest of season 2 :)
I was going to comment that the mill card Tome Scour has the potential to decrease your opponent's virtual card advantage, since they lose the top 5 cards of their library, but the random nature of the library doesn't necessarily equate to losing higher quality cards. very good course, though, and it gave me a lot more insight into this concept. Thanks Professor!
PS. this is a minor nit-pick, I know, but since the Professor was an English major, I have to believe that he knows that tome rhymes with home, not tomb, and simply mis-spoke. :)
You can effect the opponents hand with certain forms of mill. Land denial that uses land based mill? The hard part is making this type of control fit. Red tempo: using activated ability to conserve card resources, I called it “red card advantage”
A point that should have been at least mentioned in the video is the Graveyard as a second hand like the newly added Embalm cards, Snapcaster Mage, etc.
Great information Professor! Thank you for giving me a level up moment.
Prof, that tie is hella-cool. I need one!
For aggro decks, Card Advantage is all the cards your opponent has in their hand when you kill them.
You are correct that mill can't affect what they draw. However, it can better inform you of what is *not* in their hand. If their graveyard has 3 Lightning Bolts in it, you can feel more comfortable making the assumption that they do not have one in-hand.
you can mill after they put something on the top of their library with a tutor or fix the top with something like ponder/scry effect
Still is not card advantage.
That is a video every player should watch
That was crystal clear! Thanks Tolarian Tutor!
One time somebody who was land screwed scry-d the top of their library and seemed excited about it so I cast tome scour and they didn’t get a land like they wanted
Just wanted to say thanks for the sub! Really enjoy your channel!
I cast Divination, which allows me to draw two cards!
@Andrew Ruffing it allows you to draw two new cards!
Tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure milling your opponent doesn't hurt them at all unless 1. they're going to eventually lose by getting decked or 2. they lose something that they needed to tutor for specifically. Other than that, all unseen cards are the same. As an aggro deck, I'd be just fine playing with a randomly selected half of my deck and putting the other half in my graveyard. It's not like I'm going to be using more than 30 cards anyway--if I am, I'm either going to be losing the game to stronger late game cards, or my opponent is playing badly.
If I am mistaken in this, please let me know. I'm always willing to learn. I just thought this was worth pointing out about the mill strategy.
Man, I love your tie
Just to play tutors advocate; I played a game once where my opponent milled every card i would have needed to do anything and i ended up drawing nothing except lands.
It was totally to their advantage.
It was completely a random crusher, i freely admit.
However, It is an example of how Mill could be used for advantage, especially combined with a top deck manipulation strat.
man i wish you did deck reviews i have a tropical fish deck thats really awesome it would be cool if i could get you to look at the deck list
really awesome to hear about card advantage. nice video
Hey Prof, great work; I'm totally enjoy the Tolarian Tutor serie
Am I the only one that gets remindet of Prof Crowler from the Yu-Gi-Oh GX Series by him? xD
Hey, Professor!
Would you be doing a lesson video on the Stack? n_n
And another thing to is when your trying to gain card advantage is don't fall behind on the board state. Trust me I lost a lot of games where I was trying to gain card advantage and was a bit too slow of keeping up with my opponent
One of the most important parts of the game.
Hey Prof, I'm sure you've heard of the Dominaria leaks by now. Do you have any thoughts?
So... there's an article about initiative called "who's the beatdown" by Mike Flores worth reading about this topic.
Also this doesn't cover what kind of card advantage is, for example, dragon fodder, I have it under the "virtual card advantage" category.
And I usually define card advantage as "making a transaction with a positive balance of cards in active zones". There are zones more active than others, but usually hand and board are the active zones, while graveyard, library and exile are the inactive ones... but does this apply when playing against an ichorid, or reanimator? Or what about drawing a card with miracle? There are times where library and graveyard are active zones as well. Or the strange cases where Pull from eternity counters an ancestral visions...
Maybe you should 've covered cards like : put a plains onto play. It makes the rest of the deck more valuable because it has fewers lands. Or some lands like sacrifice this and look for a land.
poro proxy The math showed clearly that this does not really work, the percentage of deck thinning is so small it doesnt give you a real advantage.
This is why I love playing blue because it makes you draw cards. Black does it but it's kinda risky.
The Intro always reminds me of Scam School
Cul3bry well in some way playing magic nowadays is alot like being scammed. Only scamschool has an even more charismatic host
What about a Tolarian Tutor on self mill, not the popular dredge deck in modern but rather the Labaratory Maniac style.
Prof, would you make a video on playing mill effectively?
Totally awesome lesson Prof!
Turn card advantage into board advantage with ensnaring bridge shenanigans!!
Yay!
Yoov got a weerd wae ov spelling thengs.
Hey Professor, will you do a Tolarian Tutor episode about Mana Acceleration? :3
"Milling is not card advantage"
Dredge player smiles menacingly
If we think of life as a resource that doesn't matter until it reaches 0 and the opponent loses and we prioritize removing life then why do we not think of the 60 cards of a library that when they reach 0 the opponent loses in the same way?
Incredible content. Congratulations!!
Isn’t it Tome Scour? Not Tomb Scour?
Beeeyeee prof may have made the classic Cyclopean Tomb error. (Cyclopean Tomb was ment to be Cyclopean Tome but was misunderstood by the artist and drawn as a tomb)
I've needed this. Thank you
I'm getting plunder the graves today
very illuminating. Thank you.
When do you know if you should be on offense or defense
Gage Griffin there is a suuuuuper old article called "who's the beatdown" that answers your question perfectly. It is seriously the most famous and iconic and perhaps the most important article you could ever read to become better at magic. Definitely recommend to read.
Hey professor I was wondering if you could make a updated version of the mono black tribal vampires you did almost 3 years ago Becouse you know there was a lot of new cards over almost 3 years and I am not sure what should I change in the deck love your videos keep them up thanks
That was a great explanation, thanks!
I would argue that if a deck is built around it self mill is card advantage, like the includes of flashback cards, snapcaster mages, or entomb/embalm creatures
Sparky TheSpooderDuck Ya but wouldn't the actual spells used to get stuff from your graveyard be card advantage, not the self mill itself
AngryBadger I dunno, I feel like some decks want cards in the graveyard just as much as in their hand, so playing something that puts it in a place where you can use it counts as card advantage¿ Just like drawing cards
Nice video, played my first FNM playing a modern deck i borrowed, these tips might have helped but probably not since it was 3 color burn haha.
Great video professor!
Thank you so much professor
Maybe I'm nitpicking, but I understood "virtual" card advantage to mean situations in which a player has the "quantifiable resources" in hand or on the battlefield, but are unable to use them. So like in Standard, where an Ixalan's Binding restricts you from paying a the card you've just drawn. Or a common example: when you have a bunch of removal in your hand but your opponent is playing a deck with little to no creatures. So essentially, even while you may technically have more cards in hand than your opponent, if you can't use those cards, they have a "virtual" advantage.
Isn't what your describing defined as "card selection" or "card filtering", and isn't that an important distinction?
Mill can be card advantage, but not to make your opponent to run out of cards. What about milling/discarding myself to put cards with flashback, embalm, and eternalize into my graveyard? It's not in my hand but I have more options to do stuff with my mana which I believe is card advantage.
By The Professor's definition, that's "virtual card advantage". But it's basically "card selection" or "card filtering".
That's the point, mill is NEVER card advantage, flashback, dredge, etc, are. Mill is just the thematics that optimize said strategies.
Love this channel!!! I’m new to this game But what should I buy to build my first deck!
Roman Warrior for standard there are some new challenger decks coming out soon that would be great.
Watch the tolarian tutors video on intro decks :)
Roman Warrior card kingdom has battle decks, you could try one of those. Your local game store should have welcome decks that they’ll give out for free. Try to get one or two of those
The way I describe it is that it's like maths, you can just cancel out both sides, and you end up with cards when they have none.
i love your tie
I would consider myself intermediate, I never have been to Friday night magic because of lack of transit and no game stores in biking distance, but me and my friends play at a nearby parks and at sleepovers.
Would you say instant cantrips in EDH (and french duel commander) give quality advantage worth enough to be played ? Things like street wraith, gitaxian probe, peek, reach through mist ? In a combo deck ?
Question: would looting, choosing a card with madness, be considered card advantage?
yes because you are drawing a card for no drawback that you wouldn't otherwise have drawn.
Grats on 300K
Woke up this notification #blessed
What if you mill half the library and remove all their key pieces tho. I feel that thats gotta be some sort of advantage. Maybe not in small quantities but when you mill or exile half a library it deprives many opponents from even playing the game at all.
Great video prof!
So, what's it called when your deck is full of "tap five and get something that won't help you" while your opponent's deck has "tap one and play something good"? I would think my opponent has an advantage due to better cards, but what is that called?