TempoNaught? Or Not tempo?

[Mizeri]

I've been toying with an attempt at a mono blue tempo mess. It blows. Help me magic gods! I think it should work, i just don"t know what its missing. Here's my abortion..

Creatures-4
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought

Instants-28
4 Brainstorm
4 Boomerang
3 Fire/Ice
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
3 Spell Pierce
4 Stifle
2 Trickbind

Arftifacts-6
4 Tangle Wire
2 Isochron Scepter

Land-22
6 Blue fetch
12 Island
4 Rishadan Port


Any thoughts? What exactly makes tempo?

[Nidd]

Lacks CounterTop.
And Vendilion Clique.

[GGoober]

This is considered a tempo deck by definition, but probably not the best one due to a number of reasons:

1) Weak win-conditions: you only have dreadnought as a main win outside of Scepter/Fire//ICe
2) Lack of cantrips/card draw/filters.
3) No wastelands to maintain tempo

A true tempo deck e.g. Canadian Thresh, Team America, New Horizons play in the following philosophy:

Tempo is by definition the process of maintaining turn/interaction parity e.g. I take an action, you take yours. If I disrupt your action, I gain a slight tempo advantage, but if my disruption costs me more cards/interaction/turns, then I'm losing tempo.

Tempo decks function on the very above principle, and you'll note that Canadian Thresh, Team America play some form of cheap creature e.g. Tarmogoyf, Tombstalker that come into play very fast and very huge. While disrupting your opponents, you need to quickly resolve a threat, and carry it to victory while continuing to disrupt and maintaining tempo.

Example of classic Canadian Thresh tempo play:

Turn 1: Delta->Tropical Island go.
Opponents drops a fetchland but doesn't want to fetch it in fear of Stifle, if an opponent wants to waste the Trop, then he also risk getting out-tempoed by a Stifle. Therefore the CT-player maintains a state of tempo by the very nature of his deck, even if he's bluffing a stifle.

Turn 2: Drop a volcanic Island, play Nimble Mongoose pass turn with 1 mana open. Now the CT can choose to drop a Goyf and tap out, but that would allow the opponent to crack his fetch to grab a land, potentially weakening the stifle in his hand. Or the CT player can choose to drop Goyf in anticipation of the opponent playing a 2cc spell which he can daze, but depending on how much tempo he wants to maintain in the game, he has to decide whether making his opponents lose a land via Stifle is a better choice than resolving a 1/2 or 2/3 Goyf. If his hand contains a Wasteland, it would be best to drop the Mongoose and Stifle a fetch then waste a nonbasic if there is a chance. He can drop Goyf turn 3 to have a free mana open for Spell Snare/Pierce/Stifle

Playing a tempo deck requires you to have knowledge on what your deck can do, and a knowledge on the fundamental turn of your deck v.s. your opponent's deck. To play tempo correctly, you need to know your opponent's deck/plays, and infer what he will be planning to do by observing how he plays his hand/lands. A good tempo player will be able to guess what's in the opponents hand through strong observation, and this information will help him to continue maintaining the tempo state of the game.

If a tempo player fails to maintain tempo, then he will slowly fall back and lose the game because non-tempo decks in Legacy usually have more solid win-conditions while a tempo deck simply seeks to clock the opponent while stopping him from reaching his fundamental turn.

Hope this brief example helped :)


Your list lacks the threat-density to maintain tempo. You can be disrupting your opponents, but if you never have a threat fast enough, then the tempo will be recovered and your strategy fails, and hence lose. It is another reason why tempo decks not only run 8-12 big threats, but they also play with cantrips (4 brainstorm, 4 ponder) to continue to maintain a strong hand/reactive gameplan while riding their threats to victory.

@Nidd: Countertop is not a tempo deck, at least it is counter-synergistic to a tempo deck due to the intial high investment of tapping out to get the CTengine out.

[Nidd]

@Nidd: Countertop is not a tempo deck, at least it is counter-synergistic to a tempo deck due to the intial high investment of tapping out to get the CTengine out.
I know. However, my experience with playing Nought in a pure tempo deck is a huge blowout - for you if he can't handle it, for him if he can handle it. Tempo decks already trade away cards for FoW, if you continously 2-for-1 yourself you run out of cards and suddenly have to face more threats than you can handle.
That's why Mono Blue Tempo with Dreadnought is a bad deck, at least in my book.

[Mizeri]

Lacks CounterTop.
And Vendilion Clique.

Countertop always seems to tie up too much mana. I don't want just another cb deck, I know its good tho. The clique would make me want karakas and a white splash. Then I want chants, and there goes the deck. I didn't post this in the deck forum because I was wondering if anyone could help me discuss making tempo in general. I was trying to make it throw off their first couple turns and land a threat. I thought about Delay, its not bad against counters, better than remand? Is tangle wire what tempo is? Should I be going a different way? I would like to know everyones view on current tempo in legacy, and what makes it work.

-Miz

[Mizeri]

I assumed most of the cantrips in tempo was for thresh and your goyfs. Isn't tempo more than creatures? Ankh? Pirates? What does it take? I'm not trying to be stubborn, but I've always been interested it what makes tempo tick.

[Meekrab]

Isn't this deck essentially a worse version of DreadStill?

[Mizeri]

If you want to say worse, then yes. I was trying to cut standstill. It doesn't really fit tempo imo. Maybe fact or fiction? Seems too slow tho. It would help bring back card advantage tho. Aside from discussing my horrible list, what besides stifle helps? My reasoning for not running wasteland is so I can keep dropping lands without sacking them. But it needs more something.

[AriLax]

The point of generating tempo is that your undercosted threats can get there before the costly answers that get CA against them or the giant threats that obsolete them come online. You don't have nearly enough threats.

[SlopeeJ]

Seems interesting... I'm pretty bad, but isn't echoing truth a lot better then boomerang? Unless you want to bounce lands.. I'm not sure I like the cute sceptor, those could probably be clique? You could also just the tangle wire, not really sure how that helps with tempo

[Mizeri]

Serendib efreet, volrath's shapeshifter? Is boomerang unplayable then?

[Rood]

General rule I like to keep about Scepter is if you're going to use it, play 4. It's either 0 or 4 for me. Tangle Wire/Boomerang/Fire/Ice all seem pretty meh. You definetally need some other form of card advantage to abuse Scepter more. Maybe something like Predict/AK.. If you add it in though you'll probally need 2-3 copies of Intuition. Impulse is also another card to think about.

[Mizeri]

@rood
I hate drawing multiple sticks. I would only run 4 in scepter chant, but that's just me. I see where you are coming from tho. I always thought in the back of my mind that two for oneing myself more was a bad idea. Time for the edited list!

I would also like to say, I believe I've read every article I could find on tempo. There isn't anywhere near enough discussion about it imo. I would like to know everyones thoughts on using it as a deckbuilding mechanic. A threat isn't always a huge creature? Here's my new list.

Lands-22
4 Wasteland
4 Rishidan Port
6 Blue fetch
8 Island

Creatures-9
4 Phyrexian Dreadnaught
3 Serendib Efreet
2 Verdillion Clique

Spells-29
4 Stifle
3 Trickbind
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Spell Pierce
4 Brainstorm
4 Impulse
2 Fact or Fiction

Now it looks like bad muc. Bleh. Not tempoey enough!

[Di]

Moved to N&D.