Argue all you want, but now we have both LSV and Patrick Chapin on record saying that karoo lands provide card advantage. I think I'm going to trust the guys with multiple pro tour top 8s, thanks. Here's Patrick Chapin's article explaining it: http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/print.php?Article=12353. And no, you can't explain this article away as "Oh, they just didn't understand card advantage back then." They understood it fine. Karoos provide card advantage.
To summarize Chapin's argument: Karoo lands are like dual lands that come into play tapped, produce one mana, and allow you to search your deck for a land and put it into your hand. To quote the article:
Quote from Patrick Chapin »
...Karoos' real strength is that the land that gets removed from play goes to your hand, not your graveyard. This is akin to "drawing" a land.
This means your dual land is effectively drawing you a card (which is always a land). To balance things out a bit, Karoos come into play tapped, which may appear to cost you two mana, though it really only costs one because you can use the land you bounce. This is essentially paying one mana to draw and select a card.
Furthermore, karoo lands providing card advantage is not an obscure or revolutionary concept. Anyone who played back in the original Ravnica should know this already, because there was a lot of discussion about it when people figured it out. It was regarded as common knowledge by the time they rotated out of standard. My, how quickly we forget.
EDIT: And here is LSV saying that karoo lands provide card advantage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrbsjihikmM. Go to ~19:45 in the video. Here's a transcript, for those who are lazy:
LSV: And [Ravnica] had the bounce lands. I mean, how amazing were the bounce lands?
TSG: It was so nice to have mana fixing on a land that was two colors and common.
LSV: And even more than that, it was card advantage. People didn't realize that at first, and near the end of the format people were first-picking bounce lands and being happy about it. I know I was. In the beginning of the format you'd get them sixth or seventh. People did not realize how insane they were. Playing a deck with like 16 land and like 4 bounce lands meant that you just drew an extra card every game, or two extra cards every game.
He goes on, but the most relevant stuff about bounce lands being card advantage is right there.
Thinning doesn't significantly change the probabilities of your deck. There's no point bringing up such a ridiculous subtlety that changes nothing in practice.
In practice, tapping a karoo for two mana is *exactly* the same as tapping two basics. For most decks, the vast majority of cards cost at least one colored mana and one colorless mana.
Chapin is *right* here, and it's pretty easy to tell if you stop theorycrafting and go make some silly decks with karoos vs. M10 lands. You can get away with packing a lot more action with the karoos, and you end up with an extra card in hand for equivalent mana development. Card advantage is simply a metric for those real in-game effects. Seems like a lot of people are missing the forest for the trees.
You think they are good, and maybe even think they give you card advantage? Use them. Liberally. Enjoy.
You don't think they are good, and maybe think they are nothing at all like card advantage? Don't use them. Trade them to someone who wants them. I did. Got some decent stuff for it, too.
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There are (more or less) four resources in Magic: The Gathering.
1. Cards
2. Mana
3. Turns (AKA tempo)
4. Life
The problem here is that some people are recognizing that karoos give you an advantage in resources, and equating that with card advantage. A karoo does not in any way give you additional cards. It does give you additional mana. Those are two completely different resources.
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I read enough of this thread to weep at the idea that people ignore permanents when talking about card advantage.
CA is not about how many cards are in your hand. It's about the number of cards you have access to. That includes permanents, cards in hand, cards in GY that you can access (like... flashback spells).
Under the asinine definition some people are using in this thread, Snapcaster Mage is -1 CA instead of +1. You cast him and lose a card in hand (-1). You get a permanent on board (which apparently counts for nothing). You get to play a spell in your GY (which also apparently counts for nothing).
...yea.
Bouncing a land back to your hand is a net gain of precisely 0. -1 permanent on battlefield, +1 card in hand.
Saying Sol Ring gives you CA because it taps for two mana completely misses the point. There are other ways to say "Sol Ring is amazing" without saying "it gives you CA". The whole concept of tempo exists for precisely this reason.
No, that's called having a land that makes 2 mana. Being up mana is being up tempo, not CA. This concept is incredibly obvious when you consider an infinite mana combo without a kill card in hand/on board. Despite supposedly having "infinite" CA, you can't actually win because the card you need is somewhere else. Throw an actual card drawing engine into the mix (something that converts mana to cards- engines in Magic convert one resource to a different one), and you can win.
(In your example, the looter acts as an engine).
CA is not about the quality of the cards strictly speaking. Why is Lingering Souls amazing? In addition to the split cost, it gives you 4 cards for one card, even though they're only 1/1 fliers. They can each chump block, get separately pumped by Honor of the Pure, require a separate targeted removal each, etc.
If you cast a Serra Angel, you haven't somehow given yourself a 4 for 1 because you got a 4/4 flier (with vigilance!) for 5 mana.
Card advantage has a pretty specific definition; each player starts with 7 cards and anything that gets you more cards than your opponent is card advantage. Karoos don't get you up cards. You go from having X cards in hand, Y on the battlefield to X cards in hand, Y on the battlefield. The fact that it works 'like' two cards does not mean it is two cards. Lightning Blast is not card advantage because it is 'like' two Shocks. Burst Lightning kicked is not card advantage because it's 'like' two normal Burst Lightnings. They'll only ever kill one target (and sometimes none at all) so they'll only ever reach card parity.
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It's reasonable to assume that not EVERY card in a deck is a land.
so, eventually - by playing a land every turn, (and assuming a mirror match, with one player playing Karoo's, and the other player NOT playing Karoos) - it's safe to assume that both players run out of land in hand. at a similar point in time...
except the karoo player has a land in his/her hand (the one they bounced).
Meh, I'd count Gem of Becoming as card advantage, but I can see it as mana advantage. It's really a semantic argument. As long as you understand how the card affects the game, you're doing okay.
It's reasonable to assume that not EVERY card in a deck is a land.
so, eventually - by playing a land every turn, (and assuming a mirror match, with one player playing Karoo's, and the other player NOT playing Karoos) - it's safe to assume that both players run out of land in hand. at a similar point in time...
except the karoo player has a land in his/her hand (the one they bounced).
There's a significant probability (gut estimate ~50%) that the karoo player runs out of land a turn faster than the non-karoo player. That translates to an extra gas card the non-karoo doesn't have at that point in time.
Note that the Chapin is talking about limited, where the ETBT drawback matters less. Stacking your deck with a high density of karoos is similar to choosing whether you draw land or not. A 16-land deck normally runs short on mana, but Karoos fatten the mana base. You have more slots available for spells, so Karoos let you improve your average card quality.
In constructed, ETBT can be crippling. Getting a high density of karoos in a 60-card deck to effectively emulate the limited effect is more difficult; Variance makes you more likely to draw too many Karoos or not enough.
Here is an experiment that may be interesting for people.
Take a standard 60-card deck .
Seperate your lands/mana into a seperate deck.
Whenever you draw a card, draw from either your spell deck or mana deck.
Now repeat this experiment, but replace a couple lands with karoos. In this format you will find Karoos are superior than in normal MTG. In this scenario, they are effectively card advantage. In normal MTG, they elevate your card quality, but typically cost a critical tempo loss.
To those saying that karoo's are not card advantage, what do you define this card as?
Izzet Steamworks
Sorcery
You may only cast Izzet Steamworks if you have not played a land this turn, and you may not play a land this turn.
As an additional cost to play Izzet Steamworks, return a land you control to its owner's hand.
Put two land tokens with "whenever a spell or ability would target Izzet Steamworks it targets every land named Izzet Steamworks; tap Izzet Steamworks to add U or R to your mana pool" named Izzet Steamworks tapped onto the battlefield under your control.
Is this not card advantage? Or is Ranger's Path not card advantage despite cultivate being generally classed as card advantage?
Well, I'm sorry Patrick Chapin feels that way, but I can't possibly agree. The act of playing a land is neutral card advantage. The act of bouncing a land from the battlefield to your hand is neutral card advantage (though tempo disadvantage). Putting the two together, no matter what else the card does (like tap for a lot of mana - tempo advantage), can't possibly result in anything other than neutral card advantage.
If Chapin were here to answer this argument, I would love to hear it, but seeing as how he isn't, it falls on the rest of you to do so and so far there has been nothing forthcoming. "It taps for two mana" is absolutely not card advantage (it's just having high card quality!), so unless there is another argument skulking in the wings somewhere, what possible grounds could there be for defending this position?
Now, high card quality can help you in your deck construction, of course. If you find you can run 20 lands because you have a lot of high-quality lands, that's great. But there's no card advantage here. It's just having a high-quality mana base. Of course that has implications for how your deck will play out, but at no point is card advantage generated.
It's the simple fact that lands don't tap for more than 2 mana that makes Karoos card advantage. Lands are sufficiently non-interactive that the likelihood of your Karoo being answered is less important. It's like saying that Divination isn't card advantage because your opponent could cast Cancel on it. Every card has an answer that stops it from being card advantage, the question is whether it provides card advantage in the average case. The fact of the matter is that Karoos have the downside of coming into play tapped while providing you an extra turn of making your land drop. In Magic land drops are cards, you don't get a free land every turn and so Karoos giving you two turns worth of land drops in one card is card advantage. They have absolutely no tempo advantage, tapping for two with the requirement of bouncing a land is no tempo advantage at all. People arguing that Karoos aren't card advantage are focusing on the individual parts of the card as if they weren't all on a single card. What matters is how the card as a whole plays out and Dimir Aqueduct is very similar to a U/B dual land that ETBT and has ETB, search your library for a basic Island or Swamp.
I am well aware that the statistical probability is very low of upping our deck via 1 card thinning... HOWEVER! It DOES thin, and THAT is the difference. It's not irrelevant at all. It changes something, albeit minor, in practice.. By your logic, Shock is the same as Lightning Bolt? It's just a minor difference..
Edit, it was in response to this:
"To summarize Chapin's argument: Karoo lands are like dual lands that come into play tapped, produce one mana, and allow you to search your deck for a land and put it into your hand."
Do you see the difference? You won't draw the land you searched up! Karoo doesn't do this..
A deck with Karoo lands would probably allow you to play less lands than usual, but getting less lands on your hand and more spells isn't CA.
Drawing 3 lands and 5 spells vs 4 lands and 4 spells is card advantage when both players can make their first 4 land drops. Both players are left with 4 mana worth of lands in play and one has 5 spells while the other has 4 spells. That is card advantage.
Irrelevant. Two land tokens is not the same thing as one land. But if you insist: I have no freaking clue, because that's a pretty mystifying wording. Just playing this isn't card advantage, that's for sure.
Yeah, looking over the post I used incredibly confusing wording, let me try again:
Izzet Steamworks
Land - Steamworks
Izzet Steamworkss enters the battlefield tapped.
When Izzet Steamworks enters the battlefield, return a land you control to its owner's hand.
As Izzet Steamworks enters the battlefield, put a Steamworks land with "Tap: add U to your mana pool" named Compressor onto the battlefield.
If a spell or ability would target a Steamworks card, it targets all Steamworks instead.
Tap: add R to your mana pool
I think the problem is some people seem far too hung up on how many pieces of cardboard you have at a time. For another strange card to illustrate what I mean:
Not Exactly Card Advantage Island
Land - Island
As Not Exactly Card Advantage Island enters the battlefield, put a blue Enchantment token with "Shroud. Nothing is not counted for any spell or ability which counts a certain number of cards. Nothing cannot be sacrificed to pay for a cost." named Nothing onto the battlefield.
Is this card advantage? I think that the essence of card advantage is that you have things to do after your opponent has run out of things to do, so making an extra land drop due to a Karoo means that you have card advantage.
Karoos don't thin your deck at all. They don't give you 2 cards, it's 1 card.
Did you miss where LSV said you'd play fewer lands? Karoo pre-emptively thin your deck because you end up playing fewer lands and more spells.
If all your land would produce twice as much mana, you'd either play more expensive spells or more spells and fewer lands. That's what good players did in Ravnica. That's where they give you 2 cards.
Now, as I've said, only actions taken generate card advantage. A card merely existing isn't card advantage. Which of the following things do you believe generate card advantage?
* Playing the land
* Returning another land to your hand
* Tapping the land for 2 mana
I eagerly await the answer here, because it has to be one of those things.
Maybe it is the land coming into play tapped? That has to be it.
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Because it's so tightly related to what card advantage means. If you are drawing more cards or trading better than 1-for-1 with your opponent, you are gaining card advantage. That's all there is to it.
Now, as I've said, only actions taken generate card advantage. A card merely existing isn't card advantage. Which of the following things do you believe generate card advantage?
* Playing the land
* Returning another land to your hand
* Tapping the land for 2 mana
I eagerly await the answer here, because it has to be one of those things.
[ed]Answer in bold[/ed]
Cardboard is only important if it allows you to do something, and due to the low amount of interaction with lands (generally), having a land which gives two mana is nearly the same as having two lands.
So are you saying that dropping Ancient Tomb generates card advantage? Simple question.
Ancient Tomb provides both tempo and card advantage. It does so at the cost of life and the additional land it gives you taps for colorless instead of colored mana, but yes it is card advantage.
One notable difference with Ancient Tomb is that it exists only in formats with Wasteland seeing heavy play. The level of ease with which something can be answered without incurring card disadvantage does have an impact on how much you can depend on the card advantage given. Precursor Golem is a nice example of this. It provides card advantage but has that advantage lessened by the fact that it can be answered without card disadvantage by a targeted removal spell. Ancient Tomb in Standard or Modern would be much more reliable card advantage than it is in Legacy or Vintage.
If the mere ability to tap for two mana is card advantage, then Keeper of Progenitus is the sickest card advantage ever.
But, it is not card advantage, it is card QUALITY. Again, there is a huge bloody difference.
Card advantage is the number of cards you have access to playing at any given moment. Flashback gives card advantage, because it virtually increases the size of your hand. Same with Unearth. Same with any effect that allows library or graveyard plunder, like Havengul Lich. Those give you access to more playable cards.
Abilty to tap for extra mana is card quality. They can be great to have, in the right decks, but do not increase your access to additional cards outside of your hand, or put additional cards into your hand.
Get it yet?
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If the mere ability to tap for two mana is card advantage, then Keeper of Progenitus is the sickest card advantage ever.
But, it is not card advantage, it is card QUALITY. Again, there is a huge bloody difference.
Card advantage is the number of cards you have access to playing at any given moment. Flashback gives card advantage, because it virtually increases the size of your hand. Same with Unearth. Same with any effect that allows library or graveyard plunder, like Havengul Lich. Those give you access to more playable cards.
Abilty to tap for extra mana is card quality. They can be great to have, in the right decks, but do not increase your access to additional cards outside of your hand, or put additional cards into your hand.
Get it yet?
Keeper of Progenitus is a bad card, but that doesn't mean that it isn't card advantage. What if it instead said "When Keeper of Progenitus enters the battlefield, put a copy of each Plains, Forest, and Mountain you control onto the battle field. Whenever a non-token Plains, Forest, or Mountain enters the battlefield under your control, put a copy of it onto the battlefield under your control"?
I think we can agree that that wording would be card advantage. What fundamental difference is there other than the amount of cardboard involved?
If the mere ability to tap for two mana is card advantage, then Keeper of Progenitus is the sickest card advantage ever.
But, it is not card advantage, it is card QUALITY. Again, there is a huge bloody difference.
Card advantage is the number of cards you have access to playing at any given moment. Flashback gives card advantage, because it virtually increases the size of your hand. Same with Unearth. Same with any effect that allows library or graveyard plunder, like Havengul Lich. Those give you access to more playable cards.
Abilty to tap for extra mana is card quality. They can be great to have, in the right decks, but do not increase your access to additional cards outside of your hand, or put additional cards into your hand.
You seem to be saying that card advantage only comes in the form of spells. So those 24 lands in your deck and 3-4 creatures on your battlefield aren't cards.
So you're telling me Quilled Slagwurm is card advantage because it does the job of Grizzly Bears and 2 Oakenform?
You realize that defining card advantage in that manner makes the concept so nebulous as to make it entirely useless?
The problem there is that Oakenform is card disadvantage. Getting 3 cards but 2 of them are card disadvantage is +3 + -2 = 1. The ease with which a card is answered without incurring card disadvantage determines whether a card is truly providing card advantage or not.
If land destruction saw as much play as creature removal does then Karoos would not be card advantage. Since this is not the case, Karoos can reliably provide card advantage.
Once again people are misunderstanding how card advantage is generated. A card entering the battlefield is neutral card advantage. That card can create a million 1/1 Squirrel tokens when it enters the battlefield for all card advantage is concerned. Any card advantage there is not generated until your opponent deals with the card somehow.
If you cast a Grizzly Bear that enters the battlefield with two Oakenform tokens attached to it, you have generated zero card advantage. If your opponent Fireballs that bear for enough to kill it, your opponent is down one card and you are down one card. If, however, your opponent has to cast Lightning Blast twice to deal with it, your opponent is down two cards and you are down one card, thus card advantage has been generated.
This is why when you say something like "Talrand's Invocation is card advantage", what you actually mean is that you expect your opponent to have to spend more than one card dealing with the two tokens, although there is no guarantee — and if your opponent finds some way to deal with them using only one card, well, your expectations didn't come true this time. If your opponent deals with them using Day of Judgment, card advantage is still at parity because you're each down one card, but if your opponent has to use two Shocks... see where I'm going with this?
If tapping a card for two mana is card advantage, then after you've done it 10 times, have you generated ten cards worth of card advantage? Are you ten cards deeper in your deck than your opponent? Do you have ten cards more gas than your opponent? Have you gotten a sick ten-for-one just by tapping mana? Is this really what you're suggesting?
Tapping a land isn't card advantage, the ability to tap for 2 lands worth of mana is card advantage. The number of turns you have the land out doesn't matter since basics lands can tap every turn too.
I agree with you on the Talrand's Invocation vs Day of Judgement example. My point is that everything in this game follows this situation. When we say Divination is card advantage, we assume that our opponent doesn't answer it with Cancel or Mind Rot. This means that the card advantage discussion requires us to use an expected case. The question is "Will this generate card advantage in the average situation?" Every card is meaningless in the vacuum of having no opponent.
Keeper of Progenitus is a bad card, but that doesn't mean that it isn't card advantage. What if it instead said "When Keeper of Progenitus enters the battlefield, put a copy of each Plains, Forest, and Mountain you control onto the battle field. Whenever a non-token Plains, Forest, or Mountain enters the battlefield under your control, put a copy of it onto the battlefield under your control"?
I think we can agree that that wording would be card advantage. What fundamental difference is there other than the amount of cardboard involved?
The fundamental difference is the number of cards it takes your opponent to answer it. Neither version of the card gives card advantage when it's played. Only when your opponent starts using multiple of their own cards to answer the one that you played.
Would it be card advantage if it was a 2/2 which entered the battlefield with two Oakenform tokens attached?
No, because it is functionally identical either way. It costs you one card to play, and it costs your opponent one card to answer. If it came into play with two equipment tokens attached, that would be card advantage because even when your opponent doom blades the creature, you would still have two cards and they would be down one.
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To summarize Chapin's argument: Karoo lands are like dual lands that come into play tapped, produce one mana, and allow you to search your deck for a land and put it into your hand. To quote the article:
Furthermore, karoo lands providing card advantage is not an obscure or revolutionary concept. Anyone who played back in the original Ravnica should know this already, because there was a lot of discussion about it when people figured it out. It was regarded as common knowledge by the time they rotated out of standard. My, how quickly we forget.
EDIT: And here is LSV saying that karoo lands provide card advantage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrbsjihikmM. Go to ~19:45 in the video. Here's a transcript, for those who are lazy:
LSV: And [Ravnica] had the bounce lands. I mean, how amazing were the bounce lands?
TSG: It was so nice to have mana fixing on a land that was two colors and common.
LSV: And even more than that, it was card advantage. People didn't realize that at first, and near the end of the format people were first-picking bounce lands and being happy about it. I know I was. In the beginning of the format you'd get them sixth or seventh. People did not realize how insane they were. Playing a deck with like 16 land and like 4 bounce lands meant that you just drew an extra card every game, or two extra cards every game.
He goes on, but the most relevant stuff about bounce lands being card advantage is right there.
In practice, tapping a karoo for two mana is *exactly* the same as tapping two basics. For most decks, the vast majority of cards cost at least one colored mana and one colorless mana.
Chapin is *right* here, and it's pretty easy to tell if you stop theorycrafting and go make some silly decks with karoos vs. M10 lands. You can get away with packing a lot more action with the karoos, and you end up with an extra card in hand for equivalent mana development. Card advantage is simply a metric for those real in-game effects. Seems like a lot of people are missing the forest for the trees.
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You think they are good, and maybe even think they give you card advantage? Use them. Liberally. Enjoy.
You don't think they are good, and maybe think they are nothing at all like card advantage? Don't use them. Trade them to someone who wants them. I did. Got some decent stuff for it, too.
Standard:
WBRG Aggro-Reanimator Humans GRBW
Modern:
UR Twinning RU
G Venus Fly Trap G
U Artifacts Aggro U
Legacy:
B Reanimator B
WU Stoneblade UW
EDH
WBGGhave, Guru of SporesGBW
URGRiku of the Two ReflectionsGRU
WUBRGScion of the Ur-DragonGRBUW
Casual
Far too many to list
1. Cards
2. Mana
3. Turns (AKA tempo)
4. Life
The problem here is that some people are recognizing that karoos give you an advantage in resources, and equating that with card advantage. A karoo does not in any way give you additional cards. It does give you additional mana. Those are two completely different resources.
"I am confident that if anyone actually
penetrates our facades, even the most
perceptive would still be fundamentally
unprepared for the truth of House Dimir."
I play my fourth land.
I am holding 3 cards in hand.
I have four mana.
-----
I play a land, and have a Karoo out.
I am holding 4 cards in my hand.
I have four mana.
---
just to emphasize: Suppose I use a Looter.
^
Proven: mana = Card advantage.
Awesome avatar provided by Krashbot @ [Epic Graphics].
CA is not about how many cards are in your hand. It's about the number of cards you have access to. That includes permanents, cards in hand, cards in GY that you can access (like... flashback spells).
Under the asinine definition some people are using in this thread, Snapcaster Mage is -1 CA instead of +1. You cast him and lose a card in hand (-1). You get a permanent on board (which apparently counts for nothing). You get to play a spell in your GY (which also apparently counts for nothing).
...yea.
Bouncing a land back to your hand is a net gain of precisely 0. -1 permanent on battlefield, +1 card in hand.
Saying Sol Ring gives you CA because it taps for two mana completely misses the point. There are other ways to say "Sol Ring is amazing" without saying "it gives you CA". The whole concept of tempo exists for precisely this reason.
No, that's called having a land that makes 2 mana. Being up mana is being up tempo, not CA. This concept is incredibly obvious when you consider an infinite mana combo without a kill card in hand/on board. Despite supposedly having "infinite" CA, you can't actually win because the card you need is somewhere else. Throw an actual card drawing engine into the mix (something that converts mana to cards- engines in Magic convert one resource to a different one), and you can win.
(In your example, the looter acts as an engine).
CA is not about the quality of the cards strictly speaking. Why is Lingering Souls amazing? In addition to the split cost, it gives you 4 cards for one card, even though they're only 1/1 fliers. They can each chump block, get separately pumped by Honor of the Pure, require a separate targeted removal each, etc.
If you cast a Serra Angel, you haven't somehow given yourself a 4 for 1 because you got a 4/4 flier (with vigilance!) for 5 mana.
0 Karn
W Darien
U Arcanis
B Geth
R Norin
G Yeva
UW Hanna
RB Olivia
WB Obzedat
UR Melek
BG Glissa
WR Aurelia
GU Kraj
BRU Nicol Bolas
RGB Prossh
BGW Ghave
GUB Mimeoplasm
WUBRG Sliver Overlord
GWU Treva, the Renewer
EDH Spike:
U Azami, Lady of Scrolls
Trades
Card advantage has a pretty specific definition; each player starts with 7 cards and anything that gets you more cards than your opponent is card advantage. Karoos don't get you up cards. You go from having X cards in hand, Y on the battlefield to X cards in hand, Y on the battlefield. The fact that it works 'like' two cards does not mean it is two cards. Lightning Blast is not card advantage because it is 'like' two Shocks. Burst Lightning kicked is not card advantage because it's 'like' two normal Burst Lightnings. They'll only ever kill one target (and sometimes none at all) so they'll only ever reach card parity.
You got 99 attackers but I'm blocking with 1.
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so, eventually - by playing a land every turn, (and assuming a mirror match, with one player playing Karoo's, and the other player NOT playing Karoos) - it's safe to assume that both players run out of land in hand. at a similar point in time...
except the karoo player has a land in his/her hand (the one they bounced).
so, they play it.
then they have an advantage. - but not til then.
There's a significant probability (gut estimate ~50%) that the karoo player runs out of land a turn faster than the non-karoo player. That translates to an extra gas card the non-karoo doesn't have at that point in time.
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In constructed, ETBT can be crippling. Getting a high density of karoos in a 60-card deck to effectively emulate the limited effect is more difficult; Variance makes you more likely to draw too many Karoos or not enough.
Here is an experiment that may be interesting for people.
Izzet Steamworks
Sorcery
You may only cast Izzet Steamworks if you have not played a land this turn, and you may not play a land this turn.
As an additional cost to play Izzet Steamworks, return a land you control to its owner's hand.
Put two land tokens with "whenever a spell or ability would target Izzet Steamworks it targets every land named Izzet Steamworks; tap Izzet Steamworks to add U or R to your mana pool" named Izzet Steamworks tapped onto the battlefield under your control.
Is this not card advantage? Or is Ranger's Path not card advantage despite cultivate being generally classed as card advantage?
It's the simple fact that lands don't tap for more than 2 mana that makes Karoos card advantage. Lands are sufficiently non-interactive that the likelihood of your Karoo being answered is less important. It's like saying that Divination isn't card advantage because your opponent could cast Cancel on it. Every card has an answer that stops it from being card advantage, the question is whether it provides card advantage in the average case. The fact of the matter is that Karoos have the downside of coming into play tapped while providing you an extra turn of making your land drop. In Magic land drops are cards, you don't get a free land every turn and so Karoos giving you two turns worth of land drops in one card is card advantage. They have absolutely no tempo advantage, tapping for two with the requirement of bouncing a land is no tempo advantage at all. People arguing that Karoos aren't card advantage are focusing on the individual parts of the card as if they weren't all on a single card. What matters is how the card as a whole plays out and Dimir Aqueduct is very similar to a U/B dual land that ETBT and has ETB, search your library for a basic Island or Swamp.
Drawing 3 lands and 5 spells vs 4 lands and 4 spells is card advantage when both players can make their first 4 land drops. Both players are left with 4 mana worth of lands in play and one has 5 spells while the other has 4 spells. That is card advantage.
Yeah, looking over the post I used incredibly confusing wording, let me try again:
Izzet Steamworks
Land - Steamworks
Izzet Steamworkss enters the battlefield tapped.
When Izzet Steamworks enters the battlefield, return a land you control to its owner's hand.
As Izzet Steamworks enters the battlefield, put a Steamworks land with "Tap: add U to your mana pool" named Compressor onto the battlefield.
If a spell or ability would target a Steamworks card, it targets all Steamworks instead.
Tap: add R to your mana pool
I think the problem is some people seem far too hung up on how many pieces of cardboard you have at a time. For another strange card to illustrate what I mean:
Not Exactly Card Advantage Island
Land - Island
As Not Exactly Card Advantage Island enters the battlefield, put a blue Enchantment token with "Shroud. Nothing is not counted for any spell or ability which counts a certain number of cards. Nothing cannot be sacrificed to pay for a cost." named Nothing onto the battlefield.
Did you miss where LSV said you'd play fewer lands? Karoo pre-emptively thin your deck because you end up playing fewer lands and more spells.
If all your land would produce twice as much mana, you'd either play more expensive spells or more spells and fewer lands. That's what good players did in Ravnica. That's where they give you 2 cards.
Maybe it is the land coming into play tapped? That has to be it.
Standard:
WBRG Aggro-Reanimator Humans GRBW
Modern:
UR Twinning RU
G Venus Fly Trap G
U Artifacts Aggro U
Legacy:
B Reanimator B
WU Stoneblade UW
EDH
WBGGhave, Guru of SporesGBW
URGRiku of the Two ReflectionsGRU
WUBRGScion of the Ur-DragonGRBUW
Casual
Far too many to list
I actually think it is, as you get the effect of two cards (two Caves).
[ed]Answer in bold[/ed]
Cardboard is only important if it allows you to do something, and due to the low amount of interaction with lands (generally), having a land which gives two mana is nearly the same as having two lands.
Ancient Tomb provides both tempo and card advantage. It does so at the cost of life and the additional land it gives you taps for colorless instead of colored mana, but yes it is card advantage.
One notable difference with Ancient Tomb is that it exists only in formats with Wasteland seeing heavy play. The level of ease with which something can be answered without incurring card disadvantage does have an impact on how much you can depend on the card advantage given. Precursor Golem is a nice example of this. It provides card advantage but has that advantage lessened by the fact that it can be answered without card disadvantage by a targeted removal spell. Ancient Tomb in Standard or Modern would be much more reliable card advantage than it is in Legacy or Vintage.
But, it is not card advantage, it is card QUALITY. Again, there is a huge bloody difference.
Card advantage is the number of cards you have access to playing at any given moment. Flashback gives card advantage, because it virtually increases the size of your hand. Same with Unearth. Same with any effect that allows library or graveyard plunder, like Havengul Lich. Those give you access to more playable cards.
Abilty to tap for extra mana is card quality. They can be great to have, in the right decks, but do not increase your access to additional cards outside of your hand, or put additional cards into your hand.
Get it yet?
Standard:
WBRG Aggro-Reanimator Humans GRBW
Modern:
UR Twinning RU
G Venus Fly Trap G
U Artifacts Aggro U
Legacy:
B Reanimator B
WU Stoneblade UW
EDH
WBGGhave, Guru of SporesGBW
URGRiku of the Two ReflectionsGRU
WUBRGScion of the Ur-DragonGRBUW
Casual
Far too many to list
So you're telling me Quilled Slagwurm is card advantage because it does the job of Grizzly Bears and 2 Oakenform?
You realize that defining card advantage in that manner makes the concept so nebulous as to make it entirely useless?
Keeper of Progenitus is a bad card, but that doesn't mean that it isn't card advantage. What if it instead said "When Keeper of Progenitus enters the battlefield, put a copy of each Plains, Forest, and Mountain you control onto the battle field. Whenever a non-token Plains, Forest, or Mountain enters the battlefield under your control, put a copy of it onto the battlefield under your control"?
I think we can agree that that wording would be card advantage. What fundamental difference is there other than the amount of cardboard involved?
Ed:
Would it be card advantage if it was a 2/2 which entered the battlefield with two Oakenform tokens attached?
So Wrath of God isn't card advantage? Defense of the Heart isn't card advantage? Dragonstorm isn't card advantage? Boundless Realms isn't card advantage? Land Tax isn't card advantage?
You seem to be saying that card advantage only comes in the form of spells. So those 24 lands in your deck and 3-4 creatures on your battlefield aren't cards.
The problem there is that Oakenform is card disadvantage. Getting 3 cards but 2 of them are card disadvantage is +3 + -2 = 1. The ease with which a card is answered without incurring card disadvantage determines whether a card is truly providing card advantage or not.
If land destruction saw as much play as creature removal does then Karoos would not be card advantage. Since this is not the case, Karoos can reliably provide card advantage.
Tapping a land isn't card advantage, the ability to tap for 2 lands worth of mana is card advantage. The number of turns you have the land out doesn't matter since basics lands can tap every turn too.
I agree with you on the Talrand's Invocation vs Day of Judgement example. My point is that everything in this game follows this situation. When we say Divination is card advantage, we assume that our opponent doesn't answer it with Cancel or Mind Rot. This means that the card advantage discussion requires us to use an expected case. The question is "Will this generate card advantage in the average situation?" Every card is meaningless in the vacuum of having no opponent.
The fundamental difference is the number of cards it takes your opponent to answer it. Neither version of the card gives card advantage when it's played. Only when your opponent starts using multiple of their own cards to answer the one that you played.
Ed:
No, because it is functionally identical either way. It costs you one card to play, and it costs your opponent one card to answer. If it came into play with two equipment tokens attached, that would be card advantage because even when your opponent doom blades the creature, you would still have two cards and they would be down one.
"I am confident that if anyone actually
penetrates our facades, even the most
perceptive would still be fundamentally
unprepared for the truth of House Dimir."