I think tempo is the worst term around this discussion. It sort-of means “keep a steady pace without much explosion of power”, but at the end of the day it can only translate to “good plays for the mana used”.
I mean who says tempo isn’t any play that was just sequentially good: is it just because the mana used was low and the game was early? It’s all subjective junk.
That’s not what Tempo means, that’s what value means. A good tempo play would be so regardless of the mana spent to do it.
Let’s say you start a turn with an empty board and your opponent has 4 3/3 minions on board. They are ahead in tempo because they’re threatening you with 12 damage, thereby forcing you to think how to deal with their threat during your turn. You don’t have the initiative - they have it. Let’s say what you really wanted to do was to play a 5 mana do-nothing spell that would further your win condition somehow. Now you probably can’t, because you need to spend mana dealing with your opponent’s board first. In other words, you are too far behind in tempo and you don’t have the initiative or the luxury to do nothing.
Imagine you instead play a 6 mana spell that says: summon 4 3/3 minions with Rush and Divine Shield. It’s not a cheap spell but with it you achieve something pretty good: a tempo swing. Notice that achieving that swing had nothing to do with the mana spent but with the state of the board.
So you might think ‘so tempo is just who has more stats on board?’ and the answer is yes and no. Tempo is who has the initiative and who is setting the pace of the game through the threats they present. A threat is often board-based but not necessarily. As long as your plays are conditioned as a reaction to your opponent’s threats, you are in the reactive position and are therefore behind in tempo. A tempo deck is a deck that is characterized by presenting such pressure that they are in control of tempo all the time until they win through sheer tempo dominance.
It does seem to me we’re gonna be having some problems with specific archetypes, but we’ll probably solve those problems on a case by case basis, analyzing the specific decks and searching for distinctive features which tilt the categorization one way or another.
By doing that we should also naturally come up with more specific definitions of each deck type, so I’ll be ready to update this with any new discoveries.
The reason why I’m having troubles accepting the “tempo deck” type as simply putting enough pressure to always keep your opponent defending is that I could clearly delineate the difference between aggro-aggro and aggro-tempo while playing Sludgelock. Most of the games you were required 1-2 tempo swings which would allow you to play your burn cards or sequences, which makes those games “tempo games” (against DK-s, mages, rogues…), but some of them were pure “all out attack” with efficient stat flooding with one clear goal in mind - end the game before turn X (against warriors or any other slow decks in general).
Like, Sludgelock was such a specific deck that it clearly communicated the difference between pressure and tempo because even if you gave up the tempo at some point, you’re probably still one turn away from win with a good card draw, but you’re forced to be on the defensive until you draw it.
Similar issues happen while playing other ultra-fast aggro decks such as Weapon rogue if you’re looking for a specific card at a specific turn (for example, the minion or Shipment card). At that point you are forced to give up the tempo and proceed to defending until you pick up that one card which will allow you to threaten lethal (the ultimate tempo swing from a non-tempo deck).
Alternatively, we can just put those decks both in the tempo category, but then we’re gonna have to agree that at this point in game, pure aggro doesn’t even exist anymore (or/and yet).
I think both decks are probably better described as combo decks. They try to fend off aggression by micro-managing the board with cheap and efficient control tools (a few sludges, silences, targeted removal or a few rush minions), while they use the rest of their mana on setting up a win condition (shuffling sludges or buffing weapon).
The boundaries are blurry and a lot of decks are perfectly able to maintain tempo dominance but those two decks are trying to invest their tempo gains in a wider endgoal, which in my opinion makes them moro combo-oriented than tempo. I agree the definitions are not always clear-cut tho.
Yes, this is true, when we give up the tempo we turn it into a combo deck.
I mean, I guess it’s not even a problem. It’s more like, if a deck has the innate possibility to switch archetypes in game based on the opponent/flow of the game, it’s just more flexible/maybe it’s just better in general.
I’m not sure if flexibility automatically equals stronger, but I sure as hell do love me some flexibility, so I’m going to agree with you about everything you said.
So we’re going to have to put more emphasis on specific matchups/plays rather than chosing one archetype which best describes the average scenario and going from there.
OK in simple terms you say that tempo is “to be ahead”. OK while that is specific it’s not that descriptive or objective. You can be ahead with any deck and sometimes you can be ahead but not seem to be ahead.
For example an aggressively mana-ramping deck might seem to be “bad” at tempo but they may know what they’re doing and know they are in control while just having board is only subjectively “ahead”.
We go back to it being severely subjective and the only way to fully describe a deck is to just read the full list of cards of the deck specifically.
No. You go back to not comprehending the difference between hyper aggro “glass cannon” strategies, midrange ramp strategies and decks that tempo out threats that needs to be answered.
Ffs.
Just to get that nail fully set. Some individual cards can be considered tempo cards and some individual cards can be considered combo cards, and individual cards can fall into every category. A decks/strategies gameplan, or the “sum of its parts” is defined by how the deck/strategy is utilized during the course of a game.
I could build a deck with nothing but seemingly tempo or combo cards but it might play like a hyper aggro or attrition deck.
The individual parts do not always define the end product. Sometimes the end product defines itself, i.e. planks, nails and lumber arent a home until they are.
I was not responding to you so I don’t know what goalposts you want to move there. I was responding to Chapuzo who implicitly described having a tempo advantage by being generally ahead, which is subjective.
If you want to keep being rude and on a different tangent than I was responding to go on, but don’t expect a response.
Beautifully said.
Much of the added agency or flexibility in this game depends on the synergistic effects between the cards, which is precisely why they print cards in “packages”, which is, again, precisely why we have specific deck names and deck types to begin with