Card Advantage vs. Board Position

[perm]

I am going to make a pretty big claim here and say that Wizards is overestimating the power and value of card advantage. A simple way to show this is the power creep everyone knows and talks about. Since after Ancestral Recall was realized to be a massive mistake, the power of card draw/dig effects has remained relatively static. On the other hand, cards which establish a board position, such as creatures but also other permanents, have had an unsteady but strictly increasing power level.

I'll even argue that board position is a much more important determinant of winning than CA is. agree/disagree?

[stalkerzero]

I am going to make a pretty big claim here and say that Wizards is overestimating the power and value of card advantage. A simple way to show this is the power creep everyone knows and talks about. Since after Ancestral Recall was realized to be a massive mistake, the power of card draw/dig effects has remained relatively static. On the other hand, cards which establish a board position, such as creatures but also other permanents, have had an unsteady but strictly increasing power level.

I'll even argue that board position is a much more important determinant of winning than CA is. agree/disagree?

Card advantage nets you those cards that help establish board position. Sure the power level of the card advantage style cards has stayed pretty stagnant but they are still insanely powerful cards.

I'd probably venture to say that card advantage is one of the most important strategies in modern magic.

[Aggro_zombies]

I am going to make a pretty big claim here and say that Wizards is overestimating the power and value of card advantage. A simple way to show this is the power creep everyone knows and talks about. Since after Ancestral Recall was realized to be a massive mistake, the power of card draw/dig effects has remained relatively static. On the other hand, cards which establish a board position, such as creatures but also other permanents, have had an unsteady but strictly increasing power level.

I'll even argue that board position is a much more important determinant of winning than CA is. agree/disagree?
Board position is a form of card advantage.

Card Advantage, in the broadest sense, is seeing more cards than your opponent. All other things being equal, if you have more things in play, you have card advantage.

If you have better cards in play, it's still card advantage. Your better cards effectively blank his worse ones, and an irrelevant or blank card is basically null in terms of card advantage.

Card drawing is the most obvious manifestation of card advantage, yes, but it's not the only one. The best definition of card advantage, imo, is something like: "Gaining the most number of options by having more or superior cards relative to the opponent."

[TeenieBopper]

Board position is a form of card advantage.

Card Advantage, in the broadest sense, is seeing more cards than your opponent. All other things being equal, if you have more things in play, you have card advantage.

If you have better cards in play, it's still card advantage. Your better cards effectively blank his worse ones, and an irrelevant or blank card is basically null in terms of card advantage.

Card drawing is the most obvious manifestation of card advantage, yes, but it's not the only one. The best definition of card advantage, imo, is something like: "Gaining the most number of options by having more or superior cards relative to the opponent."

You said everything I was going to say without calling him an idiot. Kudos.

[perm]

allow me to rephrase for the neckbeards on board.... "non-board position card advantage"

[TeenieBopper]

You're still wrong, then. We're both playing a UGW thresh mirror. We're both deadlocked with Goyf on Goyf. I draw and play a Brainstorm before you do, thus seeing three cards before you do (yeah, this is card selection too, what the fuck ever). That's three more opportunities for me to get a second Goyf or a Swords. Card drawing gets you those board position card advantage cards faster.

You can say all you want how card drawing has gotten less efficient (Concentrate vs. Ancestral Recall), but in this format, it's pointless. You've got access to the most effecient card advantage engines in the game in this format. Efficient card advantage is efficient card advantage, regardless if it's drawing or board position.

[alderon666]

Board position is a form of card advantage.

Card Advantage, in the broadest sense, is seeing more cards than your opponent. All other things being equal, if you have more things in play, you have card advantage.

If you have better cards in play, it's still card advantage. Your better cards effectively blank his worse ones, and an irrelevant or blank card is basically null in terms of card advantage.

Card drawing is the most obvious manifestation of card advantage, yes, but it's not the only one. The best definition of card advantage, imo, is something like: "Gaining the most number of options by having more or superior cards relative to the opponent."

I disagree.

If and opponent goes Turn 1 Nacatl, Turn 2 Nacatl Nacatl he doesn't have ANY card advantage, he just had a much bigger board than you. Now if you cast a Perish, you're effectively trading 3 of his card for 1 of yours, there you have real card advantage.

A simple spell like Divination is card advantage because you get 2 cards losing just one. Just like Bloodbraid Elf, Sprouting Thrinax or Broodmate Dragon.

But I do agree with the OP, creatures are just getting CA built into creatures while draw spells are nerfed into oblivion. I mean just look at Vengevine, Ranger of Eos, etc...

[Aggro_zombies]

Trying to divorce card advantage and board position so you can compare them is pointless. The OP is making an arbitrary division just so he can complain.

Let's look at some simplistic scenarios here to illustrate this.

Each player has two Swamps and one Island in play. Each player is at 20 life. Each player has no cards in hand. Each player uses as much of his available mana on spells as he can each turn.

Player A's deck has forty Divinations in it. Player B's deck has forty Scathe Zombies in it.

Player B wins because he develops his board position, even though Player A will see twice as many cards as Player B does. Using the OP's definition of "non-board position card advantage," we can say here that board position spells are clearly much better than card advantage spells.

But this scenario is so unrealistic it hurts. Let's try for something still simple, but more informative. Again, each player starts with an Underground Sea in play. Each player is at 20 life. Each player has no cards in hand. Each player uses as much of his available mana on spells as he can each turn.

Player A's deck has ten Ponders, ten Scathe Zombies, and ten Underground Seas. Player B's deck has fifteen Scathe Zombies and fifteen Underground Seas.

Who wins? It's reasonable to say that, over a very large number of games, player A will win more often because the variation in his draws is reduced. The card advantage spells in his deck - the ten Ponders - allow him to have smoother board development than player B because he can better manage his resources. He can ensure that he regularly makes his land drops and, on average, will start playing Scathe Zombies sooner than player B, and can ensure a steady stream of them more regularly than player B. Sure, player B has the raw capacity to have board advantage, but he has no way to take advantage of it without some form of card selection or card advantage. Seeing only one card per turn when your opponent sees more means you'll probably have a harder time generating a dominant board position.

Also, OP, way to insult people for pointing out that your thread is pointless. Lots of people will want to have a discussion with you when you insult them for having a different opinion!

[Rico Suave]

You can't make cookies without both sugar and flour, so why try to talk about magic without both board and hand development.

This thread is like trying to say the sugar is more important than the flour.

[Phoenix Ignition]

I disagree with the initial statement.

Dark Confidant
Ponder
Ad Nauseam

Are the most powerful card draws after brainstorm, all of which have been printed somewhat recently. Heck even silvergill adept and stoneforge mystic are incredible draw card + bodies that were printed in the last couple years.

I'm really getting sick of these bitching threads. Everyone likes the good ol' days, but Legacy is Legacy. If you don't like it right now or are afraid that the old days of playing timmy decks are over then you might want to just atone with that fact and continue with your life.

For me legacy is still the most fun Magic format and the draw spells still out power the creatures, with only Tarmogoyf rivaling that. A game that I draw 3 Brainstorm is going to win me a large percentage of the time, if they print even more powerful card draw it would be ridiculous.

[Cthuloo]

The OP might make some sense if you rethink it in term of card advantage vs tempo advantage, T1 Nacatl, T2 2x Nacatl kills you by turn four, while T1 kird, T2 2x kird kills you by turn 5. Say you had a wrath of god in hand: in the first case you die before being able to use it to establish CA, in the second case, you live enough to use it and make 3x1.

So, maybe (it's a huge maybe) the OP wanted to underline how lately Tempo Advantage has become more important to achieve than Card Advantage in legacy, and this is due to the new cards in the last blocks (think also at PTE vs STP for example). Ok, in fact I'm not sure at all the OP was trying to say that, nevertheless I think it's an interesting concept. Nassif's countertop was all built around CA, packing Counterbalance, Confidant, Sower, Shackles. Modern builds of countertop play none of them, except for the namesake combo. Landstill, which made of huge late game CA his main strength, almost disappeared. It's something interesting to discuss, imho.

[jazzykat]

Aggro Zombies touched on it, but IMO the most important and only question is: Does this put me in a better position of winning relative to my opponent? Whatever, this is. The classic strategy of drawing more cards doesn't apply. Also, I would argue that board and card advantage are only 2 dimensional. How do you count decks like dredge and reanimator? There is also a time (temporal) value of your cards. i.e. Daze is awesome in the early game and sucks in the late game. Reanimate is great vs. zoo on turn 1, not so much by turn 4. How much is fireblast worth if your opponent is dead a turn earlier?

[Rico Suave]

Aggro Zombies touched on it, but IMO the most important and only question is: Does this put me in a better position of winning relative to my opponent? Whatever, this is. The classic strategy of drawing more cards doesn't apply.

How does the strategy of drawing more cards not apply? What if the card draw itself puts you in a better position of winning relative to the opponent? I know at least 2 respectable Landstill players who do well with the deck (1st/2nd frequently in tournaments) and the card that puts them in the best position to win is a draw spell.

[jazzykat]

How does the strategy of drawing more cards not apply? What if the card draw itself puts you in a better position of winning relative to the opponent?

It often does However, if all you do is draw cards (in an extreme case) then you lose. Drawing cards gives you a better chance for a threat or answer, but in the wider scope it's about increasing your options. You need to have the "right" cards to win drawing cards is a way, using selection (ponder, top), tutors, or redundancy are all methods of improving your chances of having the right mix.

[bleuisforwhimps]

The OP might make some sense if you rethink it in term of card advantage vs tempo advantage, T1 Nacatl, T2 2x Nacatl kills you by turn four, while T1 kird, T2 2x kird kills you by turn 5. Say you had a wrath of god in hand: in the first case you die before being able to use it to establish CA, in the second case, you live enough to use it and make 3x1.

So, maybe (it's a huge maybe) the OP wanted to underline how lately Tempo Advantage has become more important to achieve than Card Advantage in legacy, and this is due to the new cards in the last blocks (think also at PTE vs STP for example). Ok, in fact I'm not sure at all the OP was trying to say that, nevertheless I think it's an interesting concept. Nassif's countertop was all built around CA, packing Counterbalance, Confidant, Sower, Shackles. Modern builds of countertop play none of them, except for the namesake combo. Landstill, which made of huge late game CA his main strength, almost disappeared. It's something interesting to discuss, imho.

This.

Tempo>CA , see Force of will.

@ Phoenix ignition:I'd rather 'draw' 3 goyf ;)

my 2cents

[Phoenix Ignition]

@ Phoenix ignition:I'd rather 'draw' 3 goyf ;)

Yeah, that's probably the only creature which drawing 3 of him is better than 3 brainstorms in a general scenario, which is why I mentioned him. But also in a general (unknown opponent) scenario I would much rather have a starting hand of 3 Brainstorms. There are at least 25% of decks who don't mind seeing you drop a Goyf as they have dominant creature control or just a much faster strategy. Brainstorm allows you to filter exactly which cards of your deck you want to play, which may even be those 3 Tarmogoyfs.

[Smmenen]

I am going to make a pretty big claim here and say that Wizards is overestimating the power and value of card advantage. A simple way to show this is the power creep everyone knows and talks about. Since after Ancestral Recall was realized to be a massive mistake, the power of card draw/dig effects has remained relatively static. On the other hand, cards which establish a board position, such as creatures but also other permanents, have had an unsteady but strictly increasing power level.

I'll even argue that board position is a much more important determinant of winning than CA is. agree/disagree?


Not Wizards; players.

[chmoddity]

Legacy is the format of tempo, so if you are preaching to the converted here. Also, I think this

http://mtgsalvation.com/1166-whats-next-for-legacy-where-the-wild-things-are.html

is probably the article that brought this all to our attention. If you have not read it, it may help.

[TorpidNinja]

Not Wizards; players.

As I read it, his argument is that the design of card drawing has decreased in power over the years compared to the design of certain permanents.

[DragoFireheart]

Card advantage is simply an aspect of board advantage.

To compare them is like comparing the the stem of an apple to the rest of the apple.

[perm]

Well, a lot of what I am talking to is the relationship between cards in hands (often answers) and cards on board. The barrier between them is actually getting cards from hand to cards on board. With a power creep, a creature card that creates board position crosses over from hand to board much more easily than it would have earlier in the game's evolution. But when you invest resources in something that doesn't create board position, eg card draw, the opportunity cost of that is not casting more efficiently costed cards that create board position instead of card draw.

[Finn]

Card advantage is simply an aspect of board advantage.

To compare them is like comparing the the stem of an apple to the rest of the apple.

Where did you get this idea? They are entirely different and in many respects they are opposites. Think about playing a game.

When you are Zoo, you are likely to go for board position on most turns. When things are going well, you burn off a defender, turn your guys sideways, and perhaps play anorther. That is board advantage.

When you are MUC and things are going well, you play a land, and say GO. Then you counter a spell and at the opponent's eot play Fact or Fiction. That is card advantage.

They are not mutually exclusive as certain spells can perform both at once (Empty the Warrens for one), but the general decisions you must make in a game regarding your role (aggro or control) are ones of board position versus card advantage. Incidentally, this is one of the biggest reasons Legacy games seem so much more fun than in most other formats, because so many decks can play multiple roles in a game, thus creating a fluidity that is hard to come by elsewhere.

Now, where were we?

[android]

I'm going to throw some hypothetical situations out there for discussion;

Assume you both play identical decks with equal parts draw 2, threat, answer. You're basically at a stalemate.

Assume you play all threats and the opponent plays all answers. Stalemate.

You play threats + draw 2, opponent plays all answers. You win.

You play all threats, opponent plays answers + draw 2. You win.

Ultimately, tempo (which involves both curve & card draw) + threat density is really the best strategy in my mind. Optimally, you have only exactly enough answers to enable you to win (no more, no less).

In a control shell, the rules are kind of changed around on you as your preemptive answers are pseudo-threats to enable board dominance and your very limited win conditions are just that. In a sense, your control pieces serve to nullify any card advantage (in hand or in play) that your opponent has.

I'm not going to get into combo - (OK, maybe just a little bit). Threat density is virtually non existent. In fact you really don't want any one spell to stand out as the must counter spell. The object is to gain overwhelming card advantage at the expense of threats (in most cases), ultimately building up to your win condition (optimally with an answer for the opponents answer). It obviously all about speed and really puts the shame the traditional idea of tempo in respect to life totals. It's one big turn with maybe some delay in order to sculpt your hand.

We could discuss this for years and ultimately we are just chipping at it from different angles. Game theory can't be done justice in this forum. We can analyze and speculate and prove minor theories but at the end of the day it doesn't allow us to go build The Optimal Magic Deck, otherwise we would all be playing the exact same 75 cards.

[Rico Suave]

You play all threats, opponent plays answers + draw 2. You win.


Answers + draw 2 wins this every time.

[Aggro_zombies]

Answers + draw 2 wins this every time.
Nah. He's not playing any threats in the scenario outlined, so eventually he decks himself and loses.

[android]

Nah. He's not playing any threats in the scenario outlined, so eventually he decks himself and loses.

Thank you. Yeah, you have twice as many threats as he has answers. Time is on your side.

I know those scenarios are pretty simplistic but I'm just trying to supply food for thought.

In the scenario where you play all threats + draw 2 vs. all answers it would seem to be a stalemate but in a randomized sample I think your overall threat density would win out. This ones a good debate though as if every threat or draw 2 was countered, whoever went first would ultimately draw out. I know we're not taking mana into account here as that would further complicate the discussion.

[DragoFireheart]

Where did you get this idea? They are entirely different and in many respects they are opposites. Think about playing a game.


I have. Also, the idea comes from the fact that if you have board advantage, it's highly likely you also have card advantage.

Note: I'm not only referring to the cards in hand.



When you are Zoo, you are likely to go for board position on most turns. When things are going well, you burn off a defender, turn your guys sideways, and perhaps play anorther. That is board advantage.

Their lack of cards to stop you also means you have card advantage.




When you are MUC and things are going well, you play a land, and say GO. Then you counter a spell and at the opponent's eot play Fact or Fiction. That is card advantage.

That's not card advantage since the difference between each player in total amount of cards (in hand or on the battlefield) is still the same.



They are not mutually exclusive as certain spells can perform both at once (Empty the Warrens for one), but the general decisions you must make in a game regarding your role (aggro or control) are ones of board position versus card advantage. Incidentally, this is one of the biggest reasons Legacy games seem so much more fun than in most other formats, because so many decks can play multiple roles in a game, thus creating a fluidity that is hard to come by elsewhere.

Most people are talking about whomever has the most cards in hand, but the card advantage I speak of is cards in hand and those on the battlefield.

[Finn]

Drago, I don't know what else I can say to you. If you can not see that Fact or Fiction is powerful because of the extra cards it gets you ( on top of the dig you get, that is), I don't know how to make you understand this topic. If I said Ancestral Recall instead would it be simple enough? Did you think the counterspell was providibg the card advantage in my example? Forget that part then. It will just confuse you. Just think about the card draw here.

[DragoFireheart]

Drago, I don't know what else I can say to you. If you can not see that Fact or Fiction is powerful because of the extra cards it gets you ( on top of the dig you get, that is), I don't know how to make you understand this topic. If I said Ancestral Recall instead would it be simple enough? Did you think the counterspell was providibg the card advantage in my example? Forget that part then. It will just confuse you. Just think about the card draw here.


When you countered the spell, you prevented them from gaining more cards, but you yourself didn't gain any or lose any card advantage: you exchange one of your cards for one of his, regardless of the power between the two.

I don't see how that is confusing.

[Aggro_zombies]

When you countered the spell, you prevented them from gaining more cards, but you yourself didn't gain any or lose any card advantage: you exchange one of your cards for one of his, regardless of the power between the two.

I don't see how that is confusing.
The one-for-one is incidental to the point Finn was making (which is itself somewhat flawed, imo, but whatever).

[Rico Suave]

Nah. He's not playing any threats in the scenario outlined, so eventually he decks himself and loses.

Are you seriously trying to argue that somebody would play a deck with no ability to win? And that is why drawing cards is bad?

...

[Vacrix]

Are you seriously trying to argue that somebody would play a deck with no ability to win? And that is why drawing cards is bad?

...
My friend used to play a version of that deck that would gain Infinite life with Clerics. He would either wait for his opponents to scoop or deck. Granted it was horrible but people do actually play like this sometimes. :P

[Aggro_zombies]

Are you seriously trying to argue that somebody would play a deck with no ability to win? And that is why drawing cards is bad?

...
No, that's basically the natural extension of what the OP is trying to argue.

I was just pointing out that, in the scenario I was quoting, the card-drawing guy depletes his library and loses before you run out of the threats you're drawing one at a time. It's simplistic to prove a point, which is that card draw is very good in real-world scenarios where you have a mix of draw, threats, and answers.

Look at the posts I made previously before you try to accuse me of making bad arguments.

[Rico Suave]

No, that's basically the natural extension of what the OP is trying to argue.

I was just pointing out that, in the scenario I was quoting, the card-drawing guy depletes his library and loses before you run out of the threats you're drawing one at a time. It's simplistic to prove a point, which is that card draw is very good in real-world scenarios where you have a mix of draw, threats, and answers.

Look at the posts I made previously before you try to accuse me of making bad arguments.

The OP is trying to argue something that quite frankly cannot be argued. He's essentially trying to say that tempo is more important than card advantage. But that is a silly thing to say, because neither means anything without the other.

These comments about "you'll deck if you don't have win conditions!" are just pointless. How does that prove anything? Don't rush to their defense. =p

I'm going to try and clarify the interaction between tempo and card advantage. I'm going to respond to this quote in particular:


Well, a lot of what I am talking to is the relationship between cards in hands (often answers) and cards on board. The barrier between them is actually getting cards from hand to cards on board. With a power creep, a creature card that creates board position crosses over from hand to board much more easily than it would have earlier in the game's evolution. But when you invest resources in something that doesn't create board position, eg card draw, the opportunity cost of that is not casting more efficiently costed cards that create board position instead of card draw.

The point of card draw is not to have more cards in hand. You see, tempo comes in stages. There is early game tempo, and then mid game tempo and late game tempo.

Early game tempo is basically both players putting their hands down on the board. If you are casting card draw during this stage, it's probably not going to do much because both players *should* have relevant plays at this point. It's probably a better idea to cast a creature in hand instead of a Brainstorm. However once both players have exhausted their opening hands and whatever they've drawn in the meantime, then the game enters the mid game tempo stage.

Let's take Zoo as an example. Zoo's early game tempo is undeniably powerful. It can play a Nacatl on the first turn, a Goyf on the 2nd turn, and perhaps even 2 creatures on the 3rd turn. It is basically playing a creature each turn which is strong tempo.

However, once the Zoo player has run out of threats (let's say they all were removed), it reaches a point where it will not be able to play a creature each turn. There will be times it has no creatures on board or in hand, and it draws a land and passes. Then it draws a burn spell and passes. Suddenly, Zoo's tempo in the mid game has stagnated. It is no longer playing a creature each turn, it is playing a creature maybe once every three turns. It's tempo is 2/3 or perhaps even 1/3 of what it used to be.

Card draw is meant to extend a deck's tempo into the mid game, so that it can maintain a strong tempo while the opponent without card draw has lost their tempo.

Sylvan Library isn't good in Zoo because of card advantage, it's good because it allows the Zoo player to continue its early game tempo long past the stage where its tempo should have been lost. When they are still playing a creature each turn going into turn 7 and 8, instead of stopping around turn 4, the deck has achieved a strong mid game tempo solely through the power of card advantage.

Cards like Brainstorm aren't good because they set up the 2nd and 3rd turn plays. Brainstorm is good because when you run out of relevant cards to play, a point where your tempo should be gone, you can Brainstorm into cards that allow you to continue generating a strong tempo advantage. So many times I'll watch players burn a Brainstorm early and then peeter out in the mid game, then have no play on like turn 4. If they had just saved the Brainstorm, they could have cast a Brainstorm and dropped a Goyf on turn 4 and solidified the tempo advantage.

The problem with the argument at hand is there are a lot of assumptions that decks will always have something to do at any given point in time. Sure I'd rather play a card that affects the board, but card draw is what allows you to keep doing this when you would otherwise have no play at all.

[johanessen]

Don't confuse card advantadge with card quality.

Like:


Board position is a form of card advantage.

Card Advantage, in the broadest sense, is seeing more cards than your opponent. All other things being equal, if you have more things in play, you have card advantage.

If you have better cards in play, it's still card advantage. Your better cards effectively blank his worse ones, and an irrelevant or blank card is basically null in terms of card advantage.

Card drawing is the most obvious manifestation of card advantage, yes, but it's not the only one. The best definition of card advantage, imo, is something like: "Gaining the most number of options by having more or superior cards relative to the opponent."

I.e., Brainstorms doesn't give any card advantadge but great card quality

[android]

These comments about "you'll deck if you don't have win conditions!" are just pointless. How does that prove anything? Don't rush to their defense.

The conditions outlined were not intended to be taken as real world decks, rather as samples within a vacuum. Consider that instead of the entire deck consisting of draw 2 + answers, we analogize that out of 20 cards or out of 7 cards or out of whatever sample size you like.

Now looking at my hand of 7 threats (mana not being an issue but equal on both sides) and your hand of 3-4 answers + 3-4 draw 2. Let's assume that your answers are all counterspells; I'm likely to beat you on volume of threats. I cast all seven, you counter 4, 5 at most and draw extra cards (maybe more answers but your out of mana). In this case, I win because you answers are limited to counters which don't affect permanents.

Let's now assume a more realistic scenario where you have a 50/50 split counters/removal. This is likely worse for you in the short term. Maybe you can maneuver over the long term but it's likely you'll still be overwhelmed. Hedging your bet that you have just enough answers to not only nullify my threats but also to sneak in and protect your limited number of threats is obviously what you need to do while playing control. Against a deck that does not clearly define it's aggro role, you'll have a heyday. Against less resilient combo decks, you'll have a heyday. Against a super aggressive deck with efficient threats, you may be doomed.

So basically, we're still where we started. A good combo deck will beat aggro all day long, a good control deck will beat combo all day long and a good aggro deck will still beat control all day long. In some cases this is because of card advantage, in other cases it's because of better resource management (that being mana generation, spell efficiency/quality, spell volume per time increment, etc.).

So you can argue all day long about card advantage and what that means but there are other factors involved here. You can be rolling over combo with an aggro deck and right when you have lethal damage on the stack they just barf up their entire deck and kick the shit out of you. You may even have card advantage but storm could give a rat's ass about card advantage, it only needs to cast X spells and even feeds off your supposed card advantage. I'm off track...

Carry on.

[DragoFireheart]

So you can argue all day long about card advantage and what that means but there are other factors involved here. You can be rolling over combo with an aggro deck and right when you have lethal damage on the stack they just barf up their entire deck and kick the shit out of you. You may even have card advantage but storm could give a rat's ass about card advantage, it only needs to cast X spells and even feeds off your supposed card advantage. I'm off track...

Carry on.


Exactly. That is why card advantage is only an aspect of board advantage (aka, winning). All it takes is a single play to change all of your card advantage (quality and quantity) into nothing.