Forum:+1 Advantage makes me want to divide by 0

Someone please explain to me how the hell "+1 Advantage" is supposed to work. All I know about it is that it counts how many cards you get on your hand/field against how many cards you lose as a result, and counts the card you activate as part of the loss.

Now that last part is what gets me; to me, it makes sense that, in order to get the benefits of a card effect, you need to USE that card, so how can the card being used be counted as a loss? For example, people call Pot of Greed a +1 advantage, because you're "losing" Pot of Greed to gain 2 cards, but you'd never be able to get those two cards WITHOUT activating Pot of Greed, so how can it be "losing" Pot of Greed to play it?

Or, here's another one: Horn of Heaven is supposedly a -1 advantage, because you're losing two cards (Heaven itself plus the monster you tribute to activate it) to negate the summon of an opponent's monster, but again, you have to use Horn of Heaven to activate its effect, so how can it be counted as part of the loss?

In my opinion, the card being activated itself should be neutral, not even counted as part of the equation. What SHOULD be counted, though, is the advantage you gain from the effect and the other costs you need to pay for the card's activation and/or effect. So, in the above cases, Horn of Heaven would be a 1 for 1 (sacrificing one of your own monsters to negate the summoning of one of the opponent's monsters), while Pot of Greed is a +2.

Also, why isn't life points considered part of advantage? There are several card effects that activate through an LP payment, and there's been plenty of times where someone has gotten screwed over by said payments (because, y'know, your LP is your main source of life in this game, and if that's gone, you lose), so why are people so flippant with LP payments, but so staunch with card payments? SynjoDeonecros (talk • contribs) 18:35, June 22, 2011 (UTC)