First off, this was initially intended to be part of my BitterStalker primer, but while writing it, I wanted to explain the basic principles of tempo as well, so it became more and more universal. Still, its main focus is on Legacy and the decks in this format, as I don't play any other formats anymore. Anyway, I hope that it helps those of you who want to know more about the principles of tempo.
When figuring how to exploit tempo most efficiently, we need to determine what tempo actually is. I believe there are two faces of tempo - passive tempo and active tempo. Simply put, passive tempo is what you consider when you rebuilding your deck, whereas active tempo is what you consider when you are playing.
Passive tempo is actually pretty simple. It means having the most cost-efficient cards, i.e. playing Counterspell and not Cancel, despite them having the exact same effect. I think this is quite obvious; Counterspell is faster because it costs less mana, therefore it's better for your tempo. Of course it's not always as simple as that since there are cards like Force Of Will, that have the same effect as well, but you need to consider more than the card's actual manacost, you also have to consider what you want to card to do, and when you need it.
You can cast Force Of Will for free mana-wise, but this comes at a cost: you have to design your deck in a way that you can reliably cast Force Of Will for it's alternate casting cost and you have to be able to do something with the tempo you gained and not lose to the carddisadvantage. This will happen when you neither have a way to achieve cardadvantage nor can make use of your tempo.
How well designed your deck is in terms of passive tempo has direct influence on its ability to deal with and use active tempo. The more expensive your spells are, the harder you get hit by a loss of tempo, but when all of your spells only cost one mana, you will be able to recover from it more easily.
Active tempo is a bit more complicated, as it's not always straightforward. You sometimes have to accept a loss of tempo to achieve more tempo later on. This is for example important when casting Daze, essentially another version of Counterspell when cast at the right time (when your opponent taps out).
Daze's tempo comes at a cost: you lose tempo yourself. Active tempo is figuring how to mitigate this tempo loss, it's about making symmetrical effects asymmetrical. The best time to cast Daze (despite when your opponent is tapped out) is when you either don't need any additional landdrops for your deck to fully function or when you won't have a landdrop in your next turn anyway; you have essentially neutered Daze's drawback.
By the way, there sure are corner-cases when you have to cast Daze even though neither of these criteria is met, for example when your opponent is casting a most probably game-breaking Ad Nauseam on turn one or two, which is more often than not before your fundamental turn.
Knowing about your own and your opponent's fundamental turn is crucial to playing active tempo. This is due to the fact that you're often trying to use symmetrical effects. In general you want to place them during or after your fundamental turn and before or during your opponent's. If your opponent's fundamental turn is before your own, you're usually going to use asymmetrical effects to deal with them, but sometimes you can also just use the most cost-efficient answers that are available to mitigate their tempo. This is important when playing against most aggro decks, as they usually don't have an obvious fundamental turn, they have important business going on in almost every turn. In this case, all you can do is trying to slow them down as much as possible, but with the right tools this is perfectly doable.
The most commonly used card for asymmetrical tempo is Stifle. When you use it on your opponents fetchland on turn one, you gain an advantage of one whole turn. You're already able to cast your two-drop and your opponent will just have their first landdrop. This is an incredibly strong play when your fundamental turn is turn is turn two, and it doesn't matter whether you're up against a faster deck or not, as you want to be the first player to be in your fundamental turn and want your opponent to be in theirs as late as possible.
To achieve this, you can either slow them down like with Stifle or speed up yourself. To do so, you can use Noble Hierarch for example, to essentially skip one of your turns, being closer to your fundamental turn. What's so strong about Noble Hierarch is that it helps developing your board in several ways. You get a (small) body, mana fixing and acceleration for just one mana. The technique of speeding yourself up is often used in slower formats, but it's also quite common in Legacy. Vintage is completely different by the way, as they have moxen and all the other stuff.
After you once got ahead you can start using symmetrical effects. Due to the fact that you're ahead and can develop your board better than they can, they hit your opponents harder, they become asymmetrical.
A card that's both, unique and quite important when speaking of making symmetrical effects asymmetrical is Wasteland. In general, you want to use your Wastelands after you started developing your board; most preferably after your fundamental turn. It's also really important to know what your opponent's fundamental turn will be when using Wasteland. If you're playing an aggressive tribal deck like Goblins against a control variant with access to red, your opponent's fundamental turn will be turn three, when they're able to cast Firespout. Since this can completely wreck you, you want it to happen as late as possible so that you can either play around it or be in a position from that you can easily recover, for example via Goblin Ringleader.
Tempo in general also has a lot in common with virtual cardadvantage, and in a way, one could say that it actually is virtual cardadvantage. When you have a tempo-advantage, you usually also have more options of how to further develop your board, you have more life draws. This is especially important when you're playing against a rather controllish deck. You want to make sure that the amount of answers they can use is as low as possible. This matters a lot against decks with Counterbalance or Standstill. You want to develop a strong board before they can resolve either enchantment because either of these automatically results in a higher amount of answers for them. It doesn't matter anymore that they have slightly less life draws than you have since they see so many cards that they will still see more important cards than you.
Another thing that's quite important to know about tempo is that's it's not limited to any kind of deck- or archetype. Almost every deck you face has a focus on tempo, or at least utilises tempo as an important element when executing their gameplan. Some decks, mostly aggro and combo, mainly focus on passive tempo, but in a way, combo also has active tempo in mind, albeit in a different way than other decks..
Aggro decks usually try to throw out as many threats as possible as early as possible. This is how they win; they gain momentum in the early game but have no influence on their opponent's tempo. They try to win by having as much business going on as possible and before their opponents can actively execute their gameplan.
The main concept behind most combo decks is the same: be as fast as possible on your own. They usually only need to resolve one key spell that wins the game for them (be it Ad Nauseam, Show And Tell or Goblin Charbelcher). Their plan is to artificially accelerate into their fundamental turn and to cast spells they usually could not cast that early. To do this, they often use one-shot mana acceleration like Dark Ritual or Lotus Petal, which can be explained with tempo. Basically, this is like casting Noble Hierarch, but with the difference that they have an immediate effect on their tempo and can only be used once, therefore their tempo is only temporary.
Like aggro decks, combo decks usually want to win before their opponents can begin to execute their own gameplan. They only need momentum for one single turn, during which they usually win. Therefore it's best for them to let this turn happen as early as possible, before their opponents can dig for answers or just win on their own. Storm combo actively benefits from the amount of acceleration they cast, it affects their wincondition (typically Tendrils Of Agony). Other combo decks, like Show And Tell / Emrakul, The Aeons Torn, work a bit different, but they often exploit tempo in the same way.
It's not that far fetched to say that tempo changed the face of Magic; it certainly did, even though it has always been there. But it might be more accurate to say that the awareness of active tempo has changed the face of Magic. Partly, the recent power creep in creatures is responsible for this, as it's no longer enough to cast your Wrath Of God on turn four, since you might not even survive until turn four.
As a control player you need to disrupt your opponents as early as possible. There are basically two ways to do this. The first is relying on passive tempo, decks doing this just pack a bunch of cheap answers and try to survive until they can establish a Counterbalance lock for example. But this is often not enough anymore, they will still get out-tempoed by aggro and combo decks, plus there are strong answers against their engines, like Pithing Needle, which in turn also create passive tempo on their own.
As a result decks evolved that do not only try to control the board with cheap answers, but also seek to control their opponents' tempo. These are decks that are commonly referred to as tempo-decks. In general, these decks are also labeled aggro-control, but this is not entirely true. Essentially these are control decks, but they're packing more threats than traditional control decks do. This is due to the fact that they're usually trying to win as fast as possible, they want to land a threat as long as their tempo still matters. There's no point in gaining tempo in the early game when you're not using it and let your opponent develop their board just as they normally do anyway.
When playing a deck that focuses on winning via active tempo you often have to make a lot of decisions and making the wrong decision can cost you games; this frequently happens when a tempo player casts Daze at the wrong time, but it can also result from Wastelands used at the wrong time. These decks' raw power certainly makes up for this, though. When playing tempo decks you win quite some games just because of the autopilot a Stifle on turn one poses when followed by a threat on turn two. When you have hands like these it's usually really hard to win for your opponent.
I think it's also important to note that exploiting your tempo does not mean that you should be rushing out threats blindly. Before casting any spells you should consider if you really need to cast them. You also should not counter or remove your opponents' threats just because you can. When dealing with your opponents' spells you should consider how important they are for them. You don't need to deal with every single creature when playing against Zoo, nor should you always counter every cantrip your opponents cast. Countering cantrips in important situations can often lead to a win, sure, but I think this falls under considering how important it is for your opponent to resolve certain spells.
The problem that arises when you try to build a deck that's making use of active tempo is that there aren't many cards that let you exploit tempo, you have to heavily rely on passive tempo. The main cards to consider when building a deck that seeks to exploit tempo are Stifle, Wasteland, Daze, Force Of Will and to a lesser extent Noble Hierarch.
As you can see, most of these cards are blue-aligned. This is mainly due to two things. The first one is that blue is the typical control-colour. When thinking of control, you think of blue, because blue has the best tools to control. The second reason is that since blue is the colour of control, it's also the colour that's explored the most in this matter.
But of course there are also other decks that are looking to manipulate their opponents' tempo and make symmetrical effects asymmetrical. The most important ones are decks that utilise Chalice Of The Void and Trinisphere, both of which are excellent tempo cards, but only when you can make them asymmetrical. With Chalice Of The Void, this is quite easy; just don't play any one-drops (you usually opt for Chalice Of The Void for one). Trinisphere works similarly, you're usually looking to mainly play three-drops, so that you won't get affected by it.
Obviously this alone does not make you faster, in fact it only slows you down. To make good use of these effects you need another kind of tempo to help you; you need acceleration. Decks that are packing Trinisphere and Chalice Of The Void adjusted their manabase in a way that they can reliably cast these cards on turn one or two; usually they utilise lands like Ancient Tomb and City Of Traitors, but they also use other acceleration like Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond to have access to as much mana as possible as early as possible.
The main issue with these decks is inconsistency. Due to their devouring manabases they often draw hands with nothing but mana, or draw into nothing but mana. But they also quite often manage to not draw into coloured manasources, despite packing quite a lot of them.
Basically, there's only one important thing left to say about decks that are focused on exploiting active tempo. They are meta-dependant. This is a problem that every deck that looks to control their opponent is going to face sometime; you can lose matches because you don't have the right answers, and these decks' raw power will not always make up for that.
This is more true for decks that are looking to slow down their opponents; i.e. controllish decks. Decks that are looking to exploit tempo in that they speed up themselves are in general better positioned in matchups where they couldn't disrupt their opponents tempo. In general one could say that the more aggressive your own deck is, the better you are positioned in these matchups. When you can rush out a turn one Sea Drake and equip it with a Sword Of Fire And Ice on turn two, it doesn't really matter that you can't slow down your opponent, as you probably wouldn't do so anyway.
In metagames with a lot of basics and mono-coloured decks in general, you should usually rather play decks that focus on passive tempo; i.e. decks like Zoo or even some kind of combo, as you don't need to directly interact with your opponent as much as with control-variants.
Last edited by Jonathan Alexander; 12-30-2010 at 10:35 AM.
Interesting read. I haven't read all the articles regarding tempo so I am not sure if you brought anything new to the table but you certainly didn't detract either.
I have been working on a New Horizonesque/Tempo Bant deck which I have designed to create as much "active" tempo (Stifle, Wasteland, Daze, Force Of Will and Noble Hierarch) as I could squeeze into it.
Shameless link here: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...ead.php?15244-[DTW]-New-Horizons&p=511010&viewfull=1#post511010
I've read the arguments that say you don't want to play Noble Hierarch along with stifle and I'm honestly not buying them. What Noble Hierarch allows you to do is always menace fetches with a Stifle. Then drop him on turn 2 with Stifle still active and either jam your opponent with Daze and/or Stifle and still make a 2 drop to play around their Daze or make your 3 drop. Even after a Daze the 2 drop on turn 3 allows your land for the turn to be a Waste and then your opponent is usually hopelessly behind.
Also, for people saying that Stifle is dead in the late game that is becoming less and less true for the following reasons:
1. Almost everyone and their brother is playing Top and/or Brainstorm, stifling a late fetch still makes them draw chaff and keeps their mana a little lower.
2. It keeps Daze relevant longer (this has always been true)
3. It aids in color screwing your opponent which seems more relevant as manabases appear to be getting greedier again to me.
4. At least with the decks that I see more and more are looking to activated abilities. Playing a deck like the one I have been working on really often needs 1 extra turn. E.g. you stifle an Aether Vial activation and then go Hulkamania all over Merfolk without their extra lord. Or stifle MoM's protection ability and make it Tarmo food thus turning on your StP for their Flickerwisp with a Jitte on it. Stifle a Stoneforge Mystic or Trinket Mage's ability makes them a lot less scary. How about Elspeth's or Jace's ultimate? (Granted if they have out the planeswalkers you probably failed)
I guess my point is, stifle is not just for the early game anymore.
To be honest, I haven't read all articles on tempo either, only the classics. So I'm not quite sure if I brought up something new, but actually, this wasn't even my intention. My intention was just to sum up what I know and think about tempo. Chances are that I didn't bring something new, as I'm not exactly that innovative.
Anyway, I don't think that Noble Hierarch and Stifle work too well together, just like Stifle and Æther Vial don't work too well together. The reason for this is that they create different kinds of tempo. Against slower decks, it's generally better to develop your own tempo, whereas against faster decks, you rather want to disrupt your opponent. When you have both of them in your opening seven, you usually want to lead with Æther Vial (assuming you don't know what your opponent is playing). If you keep mana open for Stifle, and they didn't crack a fetchland (or try to), they gained tempo on you, as you spent your first turn doing nothing.
Stifle on a fetchland on turn two is definitely weaker than on turn one, as they might have had two one-drops or even a two drop on turn two because of their own Noble Hierarch. Nonetheless you're right about Stifle not being dead at all as the game proceeds. With a neutral board position, Stifle on a fetchland after your opponent cast a cantrip is still a very strong tempo play, they probably get two dead draws while your still draw as normal.
You're also right about the increasing amount of activated abilities that see play. A lot of control cards that see play right now work with activated abilities, for example Pernicious Deed and Engineered Explosives, but also every single Planeswalker. You can also use your Stifles to protect your graveyard when playing a Threshold list or New Horizons, there are a lot of things like this you can do with it.
One thing I think I need to make clear about Stifle and Wasteland is that their main purpose is not manadenial. Sure, this will sometimes win you games, but you really shouldn't include them in your deck just for manadenial, and you never should count on this, sometimes your opponent just has excess lands anyway, and your manadenial won't matter.
This has nothing to do with your article, which looks to be spot on. I just wanted to get this off my chest since this is a "tempo" thread:
I love how people automatically call any deck with Stifle and Wasteland in them a "tempo" deck. I also love how some of the biggest tempo plays in the format are in decks that don't have the name "tempo" in them.
The deal with tempo is that there's more to it than what it seems. For example, your example of Daze being a tempo card when it counters a spell but costing you tempo e.g. a land-drop. In different decks, these are seen differently. Daze is a loss of tempo for decks like Countertop, Landstill but some countertop lists still run it because the overall benefits of running Daze to survive early and push the lock through outweighs the tempo-loss. Decks like landstill suffer more if they cast Daze so they don't run it. Tempo Thresh, Team America, New Horizons however, are decks that suffer minimally from the tempo loss of Daze, so in that sense, Daze becomes another x4 copy of cards that play a role for what the decks want, i.e. controlling the early game with disruptions.
Another few less obvious examples highlighting tempo include this one: Your opponent plays a 2/3 Goyf for 1G, you bolt and kill it EOT for R. The player bolting the goyf has generated tempo because even though this situation involves 1 card for 1 card, but the Goyf player has invested 1G over a turn doing nothing whereas the bolt player solved the threat with just R during his opponents turn, allowing him to make plays and setups on his own turns. This is not a usual thinking of tempo but I think that despite whatever deck you play, you cannot ignore tempo/board development/resource development. MTG is all about mana/board/card-position. The tempo decks we see today, are the ones that are aiming to play the tempo game, whereas non tempo decks are still inevitably maintaining the tempo game but not trying to disrupt it unlike tempo decks.
What is tempo really depends on the matchup as well. Is Gobs/Merfolks an aggro or tempo deck? It's both, but I primarily view them as tempo decks. In gobs, Lackey, Wasteland, Ports, Vials are all clear examples of tempo cards i.e. these cards develop unfair board positions. If you were playing a tempo deck say Tempo Thresh against goblins, you will mainly be concerned with these cards: Vial, Lackey because they generate unfair tempo that you cannot deal with. When the Goblin player does not drop Lackey/Vial, then the gameplan changes. That's the really interesting thing about MTG/Legacy, every matchup is different. Tempo is not a fixed thing. IMO it's a function on the decks facing against each other, and the interactions of cards in hand and on the board, guessing what deck your opponent is playing will inevitably set the lines on how you achieve your tempo advantage/strategy.
One recent enlightenment was re-evaluating an old deck Dreadstalker. The deck has a weak threatbase i.e. Tombstalker/Dreadnoughts are horrible against Jace/bounce etc and still eat StP. The deck really focuses on winning with Dreadnoughts and Tombstalkers, argubly creatures that cannot be stopped outside of removal. Unlike Bob Thresh, you never have to worry about your creatures getting blocked by another Goyf or Warmonk. So in terms of tempo development, Dreadstalker plays differently from Tempo Thresh. The same goes for Faeries, Faeries players know that outside of a fast Goyf clocks, they dominate the air so their tempo strategy is to make sure that Bitterblossom Tombstalker sticks and have a comparable or faster clock than the dudes on the ground. This is one thing Dreadstalker does not have to worry about: creatures being contended, but the price to pay is the fragile creature-base that dies to Pridemage and Jace.
All in all, I don't disagree with what you say, it's a good analysis, and I'm also learning over time what tempo means, and what it means to hold Stifle anticipating a fetch/waste. Sometimes that decision isn't always optimal. What if your opponent plays around Stifle? Then you have essentially lost tempo if you don't follow that turn up with a Brainstorm. The game of tempo really focuses on your own board/mana/card-development v.s. your opponents'. Sometimes it's not always best to keep a mana open for Stifle when that Ponder will set you up for a denser tempo war on turn 2. Running Stifles/Wastes does not mean you're the tempo deck. You are the tempo deck only if you know what you're doing (because you can Wasteland and totally screw yourself over), and I think that's the challenge of playing tempo decks because a worthy opponent will not fall trap into your tempo strategies, and sometimes they may end up backfiring, e.g. if a tempo thresh player is too primarily focused on disrupting mana without pushing a threat through, and for example a landstill player eventually recovers on turn 7 after the tempo thresh player uselessly blew his counters on cards like Brainstorm, then not only does the Landstill player recovers tempo, but the recovered tempo now out-tempos the Tempo thresh's tempo because his gameplan is no longer relevant when his creatures are dead. My opinion: that is tempo: matchups v.s matchups, knowing the ins and outs of decks, evaluating mana-costs, board densities, potential for opponents to disrupt and how much density of threats they can generate, from either the tempo gain from a counterspell or a wasted dual etc etc.
One of these days I'm going to write a bit about late-game tempo and blow people's minds.
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Interesting article. Indeed, tempo is probably the most interesting term in the whole magic theory.
Tempo is a short-time advantage. “short-time” means that the advantage lasts only for a short-time and is soon gone. Advantage is control. The short-time advantage enables one to pull off a lasting advantage. (-> Exploiting Tempo) There is a very interesting article by Stephen Menendian about Tempo: “Tempo IS interesting”. I quote him: “Tempo is about decreasing your opponent's tactical options - in effect stunting their game plan to the degree that they cannot address yours either.” (=Tempo is control).
Jazzykat: it is true that people seem to be playing with more and more activated abilities, and that their fear of Wasteland seems to have disappeared for whatever reason (more fetch into duals), so a Stifle late game isn't completely dead anymore. Still, would you want to draw one in turn 6 or 7? It's all fine if you can still find a use for one at that moment if you drew it earlier, but if you draw new ones at that moment you'll usually curse (unless of course if you need foor for your FoW). The card has become better than it was 6 months ago, but I would never play with a full playset. If you do, it would be interesting if you'd inform the board of the use you had for late game stifles in your future reports of your deck. I for one would like to know how relevant they remain in an actual tournament, as opposed to theoretical arguments on a forum.
Stifling a Ringleader/Matron/Siege-Gang Commander is decent.
Originally Posted by ktkenshinx
This is true.
Ever since someone decided to call the - God rest its soul - UGr Threshold a.k.a. Gro as "Tempo Threshold" and later called something else, Tempo became "Aggro Control". I don't really get it, every deck has it's own Tempo, what Aggro-Control got is a way to play different matches in different speeds, which means its main strategy is to bend tempo according to the match, not that it's the only deck with "tempo moves" (whatever that should mean).
Every single deck in the format wants to abuse tempo, ofc.
AFAIK, Tempo = Pace, Speed.
If you fail to explain the reason behind your choice, technically, it's the wrong choice.
Zerk Thread -- Really, fun deck! ^^
And that's the common mistake so many people make. Tempo actually doesn't have a whole lot to do with speed. It is true that you can measure tempo during the turn and after each turn, and tempo differences can be created in what we earthlings see as a time interval - like all changes. But there's no speed required for tempo.
Tempo means the pace of the deck, the speed of it. As for its origin, in musical theory, where Tempo means the pace of the song. "slow" is actually a speed. Or at least this is close to the way I see it... Tempo in magic became pretty hard to explain, since everyone believes it to be "stiffle your opponent land" (not saying it isn't tempo advantage, just saying it is not the only way to achieve it)
If you fail to explain the reason behind your choice, technically, it's the wrong choice.
Zerk Thread -- Really, fun deck! ^^
No, this is not what tempo means. It's only a part of what I described as passive tempo. In fact, it's only a part of what passive tempo means in aggro and combo decks; to goldfish your opponent as early as possible. Nessaja is totally right with saying that tempo doesn't equal speed.
Control decks can sometimes be (and often actually are) really slow when it comes to killing their opponent. But still, they can have a tempo-advantage throughout the whole game. When they spend the first fifteen turns handling your threats, spend less mana to do so than you casting them and therefore are able to do other stuff while dealing with your board, they have a tempo-advantage. In-game tempo, active tempo has to do with developing your board. It's not about goldfishing your opponent within three turns.
Nevertheless, to not always be goldfished on turn three (or even earlier, depending on what you're playing against) you often need tempo. You can either go the "I kill my opponent before they kill me"-route or the "I don't let my opponent kill me on turn three"-route. The first method is the beatdown method, whereas the latter is the control-method.
By the way, about decks with tempo in their names not having anything to do with tempo; this isn't true. Every deck in the format has to deal with tempo. Not even in this format. But it's true, that these decks don't really have the strongest tempo plays in the format. The strongest tempo play in this format is opening with Trinisphere. Against almost every single deck this means you get two more turns before your opponent can do anything at all.
And as I said, you're wrong.
Optimizing tempo is resource management, the only time component in this is a turn, you can cast more things in a turn, you can't cast things faster in a turn. The change in board position is the amount of tempo you gain.
If you still don't understand what it is I suggest you read some of the articles about this subject (is a good one)
Just to clarify, tempo can be gained at any point of the game, as such there's no speed component. You could say that fast tempo has a speed component (after all, it's fast); this would mean that you're creating a lot of tempo in the early turns. But tempo as it is is not related to speed.
Thanks for the awesome explanation, and for all the reference, but I don't think there's only one way to see tempo, and certainly yours isn't the only one.
What you call "Tempo" I call "Tempo advantage", and essentially tempo advatage is just something that puts you ahead at something. When you Stiffle a fetchland, when you Memory Lapse something and force the opposing player to play the same turn again, all you are doing is slowing him down. Or do you think these moves are different from delaying your opponent?
If you consider tempo by itself as being the speed of the decks, tempo advantage is acquired by either being faster so that the opponent can do nothing, or delay your oponent moves.
And for the record, tempo is the latin work for time. Speed, which of course isn't used as in kinematics, is length divided by time. and as I see it, messing with Time will mess with Speed.
Well, anyways, I don't consider myself master of time, I won't argue with all the set on stone tempo theory in which you two are masters, so whatever...
Last edited by Gui; 01-07-2011 at 04:03 PM.
If you fail to explain the reason behind your choice, technically, it's the wrong choice.
Zerk Thread -- Really, fun deck! ^^
This is a fun thread. I bet my definition of love is better than yours.
Why do geeks of any given topic feel the need to prove someone else wrong before they can be right? It's a nebulous, multi-faceted phenomenon, folks. From any given perspective, any of you can be right. Any of you can be wrong. But the conversation has been as good a read as the article.
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"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
Yup, quoted for truth
If you fail to explain the reason behind your choice, technically, it's the wrong choice.
Zerk Thread -- Really, fun deck! ^^
I disagree, Tempo is very clearly defined.
You realize that even in your example, time is not a factor. You're making sure your board position remains better.If you can take out the entire speed aspect (from which you think it's crucial for the definition of tempo) and still have the same result, then it isn't a component of it.What you call "Tempo" I call "Tempo advantage", and essentially tempo advatage is just something that puts you ahead at something. When you Stiffle a fetchland, when you Memory Lapse something and force the opposing player to play the same turn again, all you are doing is slowing him down. Or do you think these moves are different from delaying your opponent?
A wrath of god detsorying the entire board with no creatures of your own is a HUGE tempo swing, but there's nothing faster about it.If you consider tempo by itself as being the speed of the decks, tempo advantage is acquired by either being faster so that the opponent can do nothing, or delay your oponent moves.
The problem is that your definition quite simply doesn't cover all aspects of tempo. I'm entirely willing to accept other definitions of tempo but yours just don't cover all aspects.Well, anyways, I don't consider myself master of time, I won't argue with all the set on stone tempo theory in which you two are masters, so whatever...
And Finn. If you don't want to argue, then don't argue. Putting up signs about special olympics is just weak entirely.
Nessaja, right. Tempo is very clearly defined. By who? I don't care if the pope says Tempo is the same as your definition of it, it's an abstract concept, and as far as I know, there's no scientifical method to define gaming theories (Ok, there is, but I don't think tempo is defined on Game Theory, since it's so specifically used at CGs -- correct me if I'm wrong)
Anyways, I uderstand your idea of Tempo, and now I think I know where our way of viewing Tempo diverges: It's on "speed" definition.
I consider "speed" to be the the time the deck takes to reach its reaches its objective, so that, for example, a counterspell against a tarmogoyf would reduce goyf's player speed, generating Tempo Advantage.
This definition fits for regular conception of speed: An aggro deck is faster, and that's how he exploits tempo, while a control deck is slower (read: takes more time to goldfish) and exploits tempo by slowing the opponent down, or by generating card advantage, which makes it faster, if you consider that each CA generated puts the control player one turn-draw ahead for his goldfish, and enables him to delay the opponent better.
Your consideration of speed (again, correct me if I'm wrong -- I shouldn't talk by the others) is the same as my consideration of acceleration: A deck only got speed if it is able to do things a regular deck would do turns after -- As for playing Dark ritual into Hypnotic specter T1. This is what I consider acceleration, which is what rises deck speed, giving it a faster goldfish, which is also a way to exploit tempo.
I understand your definition of tempo as having no relation with time, you consider the board state to be better. In my oppinion the board state is better if it suggests that the opponent won't be able to win the game before you do, and that's why I think speed is crucial -- not acceleration.
Wrath of God is your example on why speed is not Crucial. Wrath delays aggro enough for control decks to be faster than aggro, so I think it has to do with speed.
If you fail to explain the reason behind your choice, technically, it's the wrong choice.
Zerk Thread -- Really, fun deck! ^^
I say that tempo is clearly defined because we are both talking about tempo and we both know what we're talking about, giving examples about what plays constitute to tempo and alike.
Our definition does differ though. As (if I understood you correctly) you seem to be under the impression that tempo is the thing that wins a game, and I believe that to be untrue. By your definition, combo decks would be some sort of hyper tempo decks, and I believe that to be false. The problem that I have with this is that tempo isn't the only way to win the game.While a combo deck does increase its resources at the cost of life and cards it usually doesn't develop a board position, and I do believe that tempo is a crucial part of tempo. If that's what we disagree upon then I guess it's less clearly defined then I thought.
So I think that tempo goes a little deeper then quite simply winning faster then your opponent. Tempo is a tool to win a game, but certainly not the only way, you can still lose a game with a superior board position, for instance when a hasted berserked infect critter runs at you - even if your board position was much better you lost that one.
Would you agree that playing a Berserk on a Kavu Predator isn't a tempo play? If you don't then we very much differ on what actually >is< tempo, if you do agree your definition of speed doesn't apply.
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