Card Advantage and Tempo in Magic, Made Simple

Ask strong players why they won a game and you will hear two words again and again: card advantage and tempo. Both sound like jargon. Both are simple ideas, and once you see them, you start to see every decision in a game as a choice between them.

Card advantage

Card advantage means having more useful cards than your opponent, counting your hand and your board together. Each player starts with seven and draws one a turn, so any card that gives you more than one card’s worth of value pulls you ahead.

The classic example is the two-for-one: you spend one card and your opponent loses two. A few common ways it happens:

• A removal spell that destroys two creatures.
• A creature that draws a card when it enters, then trades with an opposing creature in combat. You spent one card and got a card plus their creature.
• A combat trick that saves your creature and kills their blocker.
• A card that simply says “draw two cards.”

The opposite is a one-for-two: a pump spell on a creature that then gets removed in response, so you lose both. Or enchanting your creature with an Aura, and losing both cards to one removal spell.

Card advantage wins long games. When both players have run out of tricks, the one with more cards left usually has the last good play.

Tempo

Tempo is about time: how well you use your mana and your turns. A player with good tempo is doing more each turn than their opponent, so the opponent spends their turns answering instead of building.

Ways to gain tempo:

• Use all your mana. A turn where you have 4 lands and cast a 2-mana spell wasted 2 mana. Over a game, that adds up.
• Answer cheaply. Removing a 5-mana creature with a 2-mana spell gains you 3 mana of time.
• Bounce at the right moment. Returning a creature to its owner’s hand costs you a card, but your opponent has to spend a whole turn’s mana to cast it again.
• Curve out. A 2-drop, then a 3-drop, then a 4-drop puts pressure on an opponent who is a turn behind.

The danger of tempo plays is that they often cost cards. A bounce spell is a card that does not stay answered. Tempo wins when the time you gain turns into damage before the cards run out.

Trading one for the other

Most good decisions are a trade between the two. A few examples you will meet at the table:

• Drawing cards on your turn costs mana you could have used on the board. That is card advantage paid for in tempo. Do it when you are not under pressure.
• A cheap creature that trades with an expensive one gains tempo and is even on cards.
• A chump block spends a card to save life, which is a card spent to buy time.
• Holding up an instant and not using it wastes mana. Holding it up and using it at the perfect moment gains both.

How to tell which one you need

Ask two questions each turn.

1. Am I under pressure? If the race is against you, tempo matters more. Use your mana to stabilize the board, even at the cost of cards.
2. Is the board stable? If neither side is about to die, card advantage matters more. Draw cards, make two-for-ones, and let the long game come to you.

These two questions lead directly to a bigger one, “who’s the beatdown?”, which Level 3 covers in its own lesson.

Seeing it in your own deck

Go through your deck and mark each card with one of three letters:

• C if it tends to give you more than one card’s worth: a creature that draws, a removal spell that hits two things, a creature with a strong enters ability.
• T if it gains time: a cheap answer, a bounce spell, a fast creature.
• N if it is neither, just a body or a single effect.

A deck with only Ns is fair but flat. A deck with a few Cs wins long games, and a few Ts win races. Most good limited decks want some of each.

Cube drafts make these ideas loud, because every card is strong. Our piece on card advantage in cube shows how one color’s card draw can tilt a whole table, and our interaction density article explains why cheap answers feel so good to play.