Understanding Tempo

[Asthereal]

Many people mistake card advantage with tempo. Today I read one in the ANT thread again, so I felt compelled to share this.

Card advantage is an entirely different thing than tempo. Actually they are often opposites.
I'll explain the concept of tempo with two examples, and give a definition and a list of tempo cards.

Tempo example (wacky Bant against Burn):
T1: Forest, cast Noble Hierarch.
T1: Draw, Mountain, cast Goblin Guide - Bant responds: Force of Will that Guide.
T2: Draw, play City of Traitors, cast Garruk Wildspeaker, untap both lands, cast Tarmogoyf.
Bant is now way ahead in development, at the expense of card advantage (pitching a card to Force). That's tempo. Using accellerating cards or free cards to develop your board and expand your resources, while preventing the opponent from developing his board and/or denying him his resources.

Hymn to Tourach is often called a tempo card, but it's actually quite the opposite.
Hymn example (Eva Green against Zoo):
T1. Swamp, Dark Ritual, Hypnotic Specter.
T1. Draw, fetch Mountain, Lightning Bolt that Hyppie.
T2. Draw, fetch Bayou, cast Hymn to Tourach. Zoo discards two cards.
T2. Draw, play Savannah, cast Tarmogoyf.
Situation is now: Both have three cards in hand. Eva Green player has a board of two lands, Zoo player has two lands and a big creature. So, casting the Hymn was loss of tempo (he let the opponent develop his board more, while not doing so himself). The turn one play from the Eva player was a tempo play though (accellerating into a serious CMC3 threat). The turn one play by Zoo shows why such a play can sometimes backfire.

Tempo cards:
- Submerge!!
- Force of Will!!
- Pyrokinesis!!
- Mox Diamond & Chrome Mox!!
- Dark Ritual (if used properly)
- Mana accelleration creatures (Hierarch, Deathrite, Zenith for Arbor)
- Mana denial cards that cost little mana to play/use
- Tangle Wire
- Daze on the play

Non-tempo cards:
- Any discard spell
- Cantrips, SDT, Sylvan Library
- Daze on the draw (slows your own development down too much)

Tempo simply means "who has the initiative?". Playing on tempo too much runs the risk of running "out of gas". This could give the opponent time to recover, take over the initiative, and often win the game. That's why playing a tempo deck is quite hard.

Any additions by strong tempo players are always welcome. :wink:

[Julian23]

Who would ever call Hymn a tempo card? The reason I dislike it so much is because it's such a loss of tempo, I hate it! :eek:

[Asthereal]

Who would ever call Hymn a tempo card? The reason I dislike it so much is because it's such a loss of tempo, I hate it! :eek:
You wouldn't want to know how many. :wink:

[bjholmes3]

lol, it's another one of those things people say that don't make much sense, like banning FoW or that Brainstorm is meh.

As for your analysis, I think it would do you well to use examples that are more relevant. It wouldn't be hard, really; just use RUG for your tempo examples and Jund for your, well, not-tempo Hymn example. You could also demonstrate how specific cards build tempo in some situations and lose it in others, like you did with Daze.

[SirTylerGalt]

Card advantage is an entirely different thing than tempo. Actually they are often opposites.

I think some people might associate tempo decks to card advantage because a tempo deck generates *virtual* card advantage:

Stifle / Wasteland stop the opponent from playing expensive threats --> if the opponent has only one land in play, the 4 2CMC+ cards stranded his hand do not matter.
If a tempo deck kills his/her opponent before he/she can use all the cards in his/her hand, it's as if those cards were never there
Tempo decks can usually function with just 2-3 lands, shuffling away excess lands with Daze, Brainstorm, and Fetchlands. If your deck only needs 2 lands while your opponent's deck needs 5 lands to function, that's like 3 more "virtual" cards in your hand.

[GoblinZ]

Non-tempo cards:
- Any discard spell
- Cantrips, SDT, Sylvan Library
- Daze on the draw (slows your own development down too much)



you could add stoneforge mystic on the non- tempo cards. This old article is still worth reading nowadays http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=3690

[Asthereal]

@Tyler: It's not just the virtual card advantage that fools people. I read several articles on tempo, and many of them - written by better players than myself - also mentioned card advantage as an aspect of tempo. So several good players are also putting us on the wrong foot.

The thing is, if a tempo deck does run out of gas, it becomes vulnerable to a tempo swing. To generate a tempo swing, one needs some resources (mana, cards in hand). One cannot generate a tempo swing with an empty hand. So card advantage can aid to gaining the initiative, but we find the problem in the fact that generating card advantage usually doesn't influence the board much. Best example is Ancestral Vision. Suspending it doesn't influence the board in any way. If the opponent doesn't kill you before it resolves though, you will have a nice full grip of cards to help you take over the initiative. So in the strictest sense, card advantage isn't an aspect of tempo, but of course it can influence tempo in certain situations.


@bjholmes: sure I can get you tempo examples of Canadian Thresh and so on. :wink:

Canadian Thresh against Miracles (card advantage engine!) example I
T1. Play Volcanic Island, cast Delver of Secrets
T1. Draw, play Island, cast Sensei's Divining Top
T2. Upkeep cast Brainstorm, flip Delver, draw, fetch for Tropical, cast Nimble Mongoose, attack with Insectile.
T2. Draw, play Tundra, cast Counterbalance - resp. Daze that counterbalance. Miracles Force of Wills back, pitching Jace.

Now, if Canadian Thresh can Daze or Force of Will, a hughe tempo difference in generated. The soft lock from Miracles is stopped, the Thresh player has two serious threats on the board, and the Miracles player has a Top and that's basically it. If Counterbalance resolves, Miracles will have completed its softlock, and the only thing Miracles still has to do is find a Terminus to wipe the board. If that happens, Miracles will have a serious card advantage engine (not needing to spend cards to counter threats, AND the 2-for-1 from Treminus). If Miracles then resolves a threat (say a Vendilion Clique at end of an opponent's turn), the initiative will have shifted completely. As we see, this depends greatly on Thresh having an extra free counterspell or not. This matchup is a great example of tempo cards versus card advantage cards.

Jund against Canadian Thresh example II
T1. Fetch Swamp, cast Deathrite Shaman
T1. Draw, fetch Volcanic Island, Forked Bolt that Deathrite.
T2. Draw, play Badlands, cast Hymn to Tourach. Thresh discards two cards.
T2. Draw, play Tropical Island, cast Nimble Mongoose and Delver of Secrets.
T3. Draw, fetch Forest, cast Liliana of the Veil - resp. Daze that Lily.

I added that third turn to show why Tempo Threshold is your definitive tempo deck: it can defend it's tempo advantage very well. Jund here used up his secodn turn to generate card advantage, but that alowed Thresh to completely take over the game. Thresh now has two creatures and enough lands, while Jund has three lands and that's it. And it's not even Jund's turn.
So what should Jund board out against Canadian Thresh? :tongue:


@GoblinZ: I'm not sold on adding Stoneforge Mystic to the non-tempo cards. It does provide a small board presence, and it allows for a turn three Batterskull, which is very serious board presence. It's a very slow card, but it does influence tempo. Additionally, the unanswered SFM threatens a very serious tempo swing (Batterskull can take over games on it's own), so the opponent will still have to remove or counter SFM, which might clear the path for other, even bigger threats (Knight of the Reliquary for instance).

BTW, that article is very old. :eek: Still, tempo hasn't changed, the cards just got better, so thanks for posting it! :smile:

[The Spanish Tunnel King]

Non-tempo cards:
- Any discard spell



Just to chime in and say that while I agree a hymn is hard pushed to be a tempo play, an inquisition of kozilek/thoughtsieze might be a tempo play if you take what they would have otherwise cast next turn, leaving them to just untap, draw and say 'go'

[nitewolf9]

Hymn to Tourach is also an interesting example of a card advantage spell that can be a tempo play. The card can hit lands, and if you prevent them from playing a land the next turn by making them discard them, it can be a tempo investment. As stated above, it can also take the cards they were planning on playing next turn and leave them without a play, which is also tempo when all is said and done because you have hampered their board development.

So, I guess Hymn is kind of like a tempo 401k. Or something.

In a vacuum it is a tempo negative play but in the context of other disruption it can be deceptively tempo positive.

[GoboLord]

I stepped by to say that I found this opening posts of yours very informative. While the example you have chosen are not the most common situations to find in legacy they are still very clear and to the point and ultimately thats what an example is all about.

Well done!

[Parcher]

Tempo, in simplest terms, is trading one resource for another. But most often on a non-parallel axis in an attempt to deny the opponent of whatever their "scarce resource" may be. This is in order to gain time to implement your plan, or deny your opponent the same. That is to say, you trade your Land Drop for their Draw step. Or your Card in Hand for their Mana. That's all it boils down to. When you see everyone ever commenting on RUG or BUG being a 1-for-1 deck. That's what they mean.

Daze=Card in Hand+Land Drop for Card+Mana
Submerge=Card for Mana+Draw+Attack Step
Stifle=Card+Mana for Land Drop+Card
Force=Card+Card+Life for Card+Mana


Tempo simply means "who has the initiative?". Playing on tempo too much runs the risk of running "out of gas". This could give the opponent time to recover, take over the initiative, and often win the game. That's why playing a tempo deck is quite hard.

This is also 100% correct, and a better definition of the term when not directly related to a "Tempo Deck".