Card Advantage

Overview

You’ve likely noticed our use of the term “card advantage” over “card draw”. That’s because we want to consider effects beyond those that net you additional cards in hand.

Card advantage can be broken up into 3 categories: smoothers, refillers, and engines.

Smoothers

These effects are meant to smooth out your draws early in the game. Smoothers will generally leave you card neutral or minimally card positive. This includes effects that grant card selection (as opposed to card draw) or cantrip (replace themselves by letting you draw a card).

Smoothers act as low-level redundancy in your deck, helping you find more card advantage, interaction, ramp, lands, and key pieces of your strategy. They are dependent on the play pattern of your deck and can allow you to spend early turns smoothing your hand before enacting your game plan.

Examples: Ponder, Thrill of Possibility, Faithless Looting, Night’s Whisper, Cut a Deal

Refillers

These effects are meant to refill your hand later in the game. Refillers play an important role in making sure you don’t run out of gas, as you play lands and cast spells each turn. These cards generally will net you 2 or more additional cards in your hand at a time, and are generally cast on later turns.

Examples: Windfall, Harmonize, Stinging Study, Return of the Wildspeaker, Wheel of Misfortune

Engines

Engines are the most powerful draw effects in most decks and are meant to draw you cards continuously throughout the game. Engines are generally better to deploy early so you can generate as great of an advantage as possible.

Examples: Rhystic Study, Trouble in Pairs, Dark Prophecy, Garruk’s Uprising, Faerie Mastermind

Density

A deck needs at least 10 pieces of card advantage to function consistently. 13-16 pieces is likely sufficient, with a deck needing a good reason to want to run more than 16 pieces.

Some things that can influence the amount of card advantage in your deck include:

• The strategy of the deck (does your deck “care” about drawing cards?)
• The play pattern of the deck (when are you trying to play your commander?)
• The amount of redundancy in the command zone and the rest of your deck (tutors, for example)
• The colors available to you (some colors just have higher quality card advantage).

Type

While the amount of card advantage in your deck doesn’t vary drastically due to power level, the composition of your card advantage does change.

• Low-power decks will include a combination of mostly smoothers and refillers.
• Mid-power decks will include a combination of mostly refillers and engines.
• High-power decks will mostly focus on card advantage engines.