Recently, the term tempo has come under fire as being incredibly ambiguous and as a result, somewhat useless when used in theory discussion. While I personally believe that tempo, as a term, is conceptually understood, the need to quantify it is present for theory buffs and players trying to understand very complex board position.

Mana Use in Aggressive Decks

Let's say you're playing a regular UW Control on RG aggro matchup, with you as the control player. Lets also assume you do nothing of relevance for the first few turns, and your opponents turn 1-4 goes as such:

Turn 1: Stomping Grounds, Kird Ape, Go

Turn 2: Swing, Forest, Keldon Marauders, Go

Turn 3: Swing, Mountain, Burning-Tree Shaman, Go

Turn 4: Swing, Land, Rumbling Slum.

Clearly a good start for the Red-Green deck. I think, intuitively, most players can agree that the Red-Green player has started the game with a lot of tempo. Or, if we're not using the word tempo anymore, let's call it something else. Thesaurus.com says that momentum is the only word close to tempo that even might fit in a Magic article, so I'm gonna go with that. What makes this a very high-momentum start, I believe is the efficient use of mana each turn. The RG player has a one, two, three and four drop. Not only did the RG player use all his mana, each of them is capable of doing high amounts of damage for their costs.

Now, back up for a moment to good old Philosophy of Fire and we remember that if you average all your burn cards in your burn deck, you come up with an average damage value that your cards are worth. Given the following deck:

20 Mountain

40 Lightning Bolt

You get your average damage per card to be 2. This tells you, that, on average, you need to draw 10 cards to have enough burn in your hand to deal twenty and win the game. Now, this is either turn 3 or turn 4, depending on who played first. However, you can't actually win the game on turn 3. You need not only an average of 10 cards, but you also need the mana to cast seven Lightning Bolts. Assuming you make a land drop turns 1-4, you have produced 1, then 3, then 6, then 10 mana. A good momentum start for this deck would clearly involve 1 Bolt turn 1, 2 on turn 2 and so on until the opponent is toasted. This deck uses its mana very efficiently; each time this deck taps a Mountain, it is to do three damage.

I believe that a deck's momentum requires a corollary to the Philosophy of Fire. Philosophy of Fire tracks the average damage per card. I believe that, for momentum, we also need to track the average damage per mana. This applies specifically to mana spent for effect. In other words, if you average out the amount of damage over the total casting cost of all your spells (not lands), you should know about how much damage you should be doing every time you resolve a spell. In our first deck, the average damage per mana is 3. Lets calculate the average damage per card and damage per mana of a different deck:

20 Mountain

20 Shock

20 Incinerate

The average damage per card is about 1.7, and the average damage per mana is also, 1.7 ([20*2 + 20*3]/60), which is the total damage in the deck divided by the total converted mana cost of all your spells). This means that each time you draw a card, you have, in essence, drawn about 1.7 points of damage. It also means that each time you cast a spell, you are dealing about 1 point of damage per mana. Therefore, you can expect to need to tap 11.8 (lets round to 12) mana to win the game. As we have already discussed, you don't actually have access to 12 mana until turn 5, and that's assuming you have the ability to utilize all your mana each turn.

The key to momentum, I believe, lies in the utilization of your mana. If we can break down mana into being worth damage, we have a metric for wasted mana. Each time you did not tap mana this turn, you have slowed your damage dealing. If you waste enough mana, you slow the turn at which you goldfish your opponent. For example, in the Shock/Incinerate deck, you need to use 12 mana to win the game. If you miss your third and fifth land drop, your available mana looks like:

Turn 1: 1 land

Turn 2: 2 lands (1 + 2 = 3 total mana)

Turn 3: 2 lands (1 + 2 + 2 = 5 total mana)

Turn 4: 3 lands (1 + 2 + 2 + 3 = 8 total mana)

Turn 5: 3 lands (1 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 3 = 11 total mana)

And on turn 6, you should have enough mana to win the game. This lack of mana has contributed directly to a loss of momentum, described most clearly by the fact that it has taken you a whole extra turn to goldfish your opponent. Now let's say you get land flooded, and don't cast a spell on turn 1, cast a Shock on turn 2, nothing turn 3, and an Incinerate turn 4. You have effectively wasted a mana turns 1 and 2, three mana on turn 3, and two mana on turn 4 by leaving some of your Mountains untapped. This means that at the beginning of turn 5, you have only spent 3 mana, and still require another 9 to win the game, which means at the very least another two turns, assuming you have spells to cast.

I've shown that by the same measure we equate damage to cards, we can equate damage to mana. It takes a certain amount of mana to win the game as the aggressive deck. Therefore, available mana, being a fixed quantity, is equated to a measure of time.

So, to summarize:

• Momentum is the measure by how quickly your deck is winning the game, assuming at that point in the game you are the beatdown. A deck wins quicker by efficiently using mana (time). In essence, momentum is a measure of time.
• Modeling Momentum for Control Decks (or whoever is NOT the beatdown)

Thus far, we have defined momentum in terms of an aggressive deck trying to win the game as fast as possible. But the deck that is assigned the control role in the matchup has a different goal all together. While the aggressive deck is trying to do twenty to the dome as fast as possible, the control deck is trying to survive to make the game go long. Put a different way, an aggressive deck attempts to make their opponent lose twenty life, while the control deck attempts to lose only nineteen life. Clearly, life gain changes that equation, but the point still stands.

The deck that falls under the control role in the matchup attempts to disrupt the opponent's momentum by invalidating their resource use. Let's use the following deck as an example:

40 Shock

20 Mountain

Damage per Card: 1.33; Damage per mana: 2; Mana to win game: 10.

Now, left alone, let's assume this deck will goldfish on its turn four. What happens when the mono-white player plays an innocuous Kabira Crossroads? All of a sudden, the mono-red player needs 11 mana and (about) two more cards to win the game. What about a Counterspell? It more or less does the same thing to the Shock deck. It requires the burn player to wait another turn and draw another 1.33 cards. The difference lies in card advantage. Card advantage and how it relates to momentum is a whole other topic that will require a whole article. Another day.

Let's look at Remand. Remand is the quintessential tempo card; let's look at four scenarios involving Remand. Both players have one Plains and two Islands on the Battlefield, and one card in hand. Yours is Remand, and your opponent does the following:

Scenario 1: Opponent casts Savannah Lions and you Remand it.

Scenario 2: Opponent casts Youthful Knight and you Remand it.

Scenario 3: Opponent casts Pegasus Charger and you Remand it.

Scenario 4: Opponent passes the turn.

The first thing that must be done is establish who the beatdown is, but we can assume since you are playing remand and he is playing creatures that you are the control deck. In each case where you cast Remand, you are actively gaining two life, because you are delaying the creature by a turn, and therefore preventing it from swinging for one turn. I believe the momentum you gain is NOT based solely on how much your opponents creature costs. If you Remand the Lions he draws Coral Merfolk, then you haven't gained anything other than the two life, because your opponent is able to tap all of his mana next turn for the Merfolk and the Lions. The same thing happens if you Remand the Youthful Knight and your opponent draws Zephyr Sprite. However, if you Remand either the Youthful Knight or the Pegasus Charger, and your opponent draws Coral Merfolk or any white creature, you have not only gained the initial two life from delaying the original creature, you have gained an additional two life because you delayed the second creature from getting played on this turn. Depending on the contents of your opponents deck, you would have to make the choice of whether or not Remanding the creature chews up a reasonable amount of your opponents momentum.

[easybox]Corollary: I think it is important to note that in the case your opponent top decks a land on his turn, Remanding the Savannah Lions is just as worthwhile as Remanding the Pegasus Charger[/easybox]

Momentum is a metric defined by who the beatdown is. The beatdown player attempts to increase his momentum in the course of the game, while the control player tries to disrupt the opponent. This directly means that the control player wants the game to go long, and the beatdown player wants to end the game as soon as possible. What momentum does is give us a measure for how our plays help us to achieve the goals of whichever role we find ourselves in.

Signing off,

Dan Emmons

Dan Emmons Magic gmail com