Going First or Second, It's All The Same...right?

So I noticed a recent trend with a lot of people. People trying to claim that going first or second gives them some sort of advantage in some sort of way. While they probably mean other things, I'm going to focus on raw card advantage because everybody loves raw card advantage and you end with a lot of nice and Yugioh centric awesomeness in the end.

As with almost anyone can notice from past math projects, I always refer to going first. Along with that, my trusty card advantage chart almost always focuses on going first. Well, I kinda just compared 2 charts and noticed something.

Going First

Draw (7), Ride (7)

Draw (8), Ride (7), Drive Check (8)

Draw (9), Ride (8), Twin Drive (10)

Going Second

Draw (7), Ride (7), Drive Check (8)

Draw (9), Ride (8), Drive Check (9)

Draw (10), Ride (9), Twin Drive (11)

So...going second means you have more cards?

Not necessarily. While it isn't wrong to assume the player who goes second has the card advantage, there's quite a few subtle factors that actually play into that. But the most important thing I'm going to point out is, how does this affect the gameplay?

Once again, it's not wrong to assume this leaves player #2 to grab more advantage and thus have more advantage in the game because of this, but the reality is, it's this slight imbalance of card advantage that actually causes a fair and equal playing field.

Okay, you may be thinking 'how does one player having more cards than the other leave both players on an equal playing field'. Well, it's rather simple really. Continuing off our trend and giving both plays +3 every turn (their draw and Twin Drives), we can see:

.....................................................................................................................................P2-10-11

P1-11-13...........................................................................................................................P2-12-14

P1-14-16...........................................................................................................................P2-15-17

P1-17-19...........................................................................................................................P2-18-20

Okay, so you probably won't notice first because you might be eyeballing Player 2 still coming off with the +1. But what I want you to focus on, is the transition of Player 2 to Player 1. When Player 1 starts their turn, they start with the same amount of cards as Player 2 after their draw, and end with 2 more. Meanwhile, Player 2 starts with 1 less than Player 1, and only end with 1 more by the end of their turn. While Player 2 technically has that net card advantage, Player 1 always has more cards within a situation to work with and thus pulls off with that form of card advantage.

Which means that Player 1 has the advantage...right?

Not exactly, again. Another thing to note about how who goes first and who goes second getting advantage has to do alot with that first attack. While neither player has a substantial advantage in terms of trigger consistency through a match just from going first or second, that first turn attacking can mean all that much. Even if you just dealt 1 damage, that means that you are one damage closer from reaching that moment when guarding is necessary to stay in the game. Subtly, this can lead to a +1 for Player 2, with that battle advantage. While this doesn't necessarily mean Player 2 has the advantage again, what with having the net and battle advantage due to how Counter-Blasting works, this means that the playing field is more than balanced despite, in fact because of, how this imbalance of card advantage works.

To sum this all up, going first or second has their own advantages, but neither will truly leave a player in advantage against one another. While finer details and that small group of exceptions always exist, one shouldn't be paranoid about an imbalance of advantage and in fact should learn to accept it, because imbalance=balance when it comes to going first or second in Vanguard, for some odd reason.