Tempo has long been the most unexplored of the three major branches of Magic theory, if only because it is so nebulous. Many players have some idea of what tempo is, but it's quite frequently along the "I know it when I see it" line. They will tell you it is similar to the chess concept of tempo, but what is the chess concept of tempo? Chess players can give you examples of tempo, but what is the outward evaluation? Without an accurate understanding of what concept we are exploring, how can we explore it?

Every deck has a fundamental game plan or strategy, ranging from attacking for 20 damage to resolving a namesake spell. Tempo is a measure of two things – how far a deck has advanced its game plan relative to its opposition and the ability of the deck to continue advancing its game plan in the face of resistance.

The important thing to note is that tempo is completely a relative measure. Tempo means nothing outside the framework of a given game or a given match-up. It means nothing without an opponent. Decks do not "have tempo" until they have opponents. Decks can be designed to generate tempo and to control tempo, but that is all meaningless without the context of a match-up.

Thus tempo became the most important consideration for me when designing Marginal Mana as a metric. I needed some sort of way to represent tempo, if not accurately describe it. I don't claim that the system is perfect, but it at least makes the attempt, and I think it's moving in the right direction.

Marginal Mana itself is not tempo, but the derivative of Marginal Mana represents tempo fairly effectively.

Marginal Mana is a unified metric for both players because of tempo. Because tempo is relative, any attempt at measuring it must include both players. Marginal Mana itself is not tempo, but the derivative of Marginal Mana represents tempo fairly effectively. In other words, it is the change in Marginal Mana that represents tempo.

Before I attempt to unify everything with a couple of examples, let's return to a more conceptual discussion. Actively utilizing tempo requires you to actively interact with your opponent's ability to create tempo, in other words, you need to actively interact with your opponent's ability to advance their own game plan.

How is tempo used within a match-up? There are two fundamental ways (combo decks are weird):

1. Utilize primarily the Philosophy of Fire to limit your opponent's options
2. Rely on the ability to disrupt your opponent's game plan to slow them down and apply pressure when you have openings.

How do each of these methodologies work?

The first works primarily by attempting to generate virtual card advantage via pressuring life total. The basic principle is to reduce the opponent's viable options by forcing them to interact with your threats. By forcing this type of interaction you can force your opponent to open up holes in their defenses which you can hopefully exploit. If you aren't successful in exploiting these holes (usually via burn), your opponent will win.

Zoo is a good example of this. By deploying high quality aggressive drops Zoo forces you to interact with their creatures. A typical Zoo deployment will feature at minimum 5, but usually 6-7 power deployed across two creatures. With only 20 life points to work with, this type of threat must be dealt with quickly.

Ideally this allows the tempo player (Zoo in this instance) to put you in one of two situations – either you run out of answers to their threats or you are forced to leave yourself open to a burn flurry, which will hopefully be lethal. This is why burn, or reach, is so valuable to aggressive strategies. It gives their tempo interaction a second layer and thereby greatly increases their ability to exploit you lowering your defenses.

The second avenue of exploiting tempo relies on one of three forms of disruption – discard, land destruction, or countermagic. All three are capable of stunting your opponent's growth and are useful for controlling the tempo, or flow, or the game.

Countermagic works by stopping critical spells from resolving. If you have seized a tempo advantage your opponent will have to try to level the field at some point. In order to do this they will have to play spells. Countermagic stops those spells from resolving.

Land destruction works by delaying the inevitable. Destroying a land often resets the game state to that of the previous turn, which is good if the tempo deck is advantaged on the board.

Discard can serve as both proactive countermagic and proactive land destruction, depending on what it hits. Sometimes a player will discard a land, only to miss a land drop a turn or two later. In this instance, the discard spell has served as pro-active land destruction. In other instances players will discard defensive spells to discard (or have them taken by cards like Duress). In these instances the discard spell has served as proactive countermagic.

Consider, for example, Eva Green and Merfolk in Legacy. Both look to exploit the tempo game. Merfolk relies on countermagic (FoW, Daze, and sometimes Stifle) and land destruction (Wasteland, Stifle) whereas Eva Green relies on discard (Duress effects, Hymn to Tourach), and land destruction (Sinkhole, Wasteland). In the end both decks seek to disrupt your development long enough for their creatures to beat you to death. Merfolk is assisted by Islandwalk whereas Eva Green's creatures are simply large and cheap.

Tempo within the 3 stages of the game

Phase I: (Basically manascrewed)

Phase II: Mostly Errors

Phase III: Trump mode

Homework: For those of you who haven't read the Flores article, here it is.

At any given moment in the game one player is attempting to actively suppress their opponent's stage development while the other is reacting to those attempts, trying to prevent themselves from falling further behind. Most decks are designed to be better at one of these things.

Control decks are designed to be strong reactively, with many options to recover lost tempo as long as they get out of Stage 1 in sufficiently good shape. Once they are in Stage 2, their draw spells, sweepers, and more powerful creatures/synergies will take over, slowly accumulating advantage over time, eventually pushing them into stage three.

Most decks that seek to actively use tempo as a weapon (aggro and aggro-control strategies) are designed to suppress their opponent's tempo development through the means discussed at the end of the previous section. They seek to make positional gains in Stage 1 then defend those gains in Stage 2, hopefully long enough to kill their opponent. Tempo decks are thus designed to hold a lead, which typically makes them pretty bad at coming from behind.

However, this strategy means these decks have to seize a tempo advantage in the first place. How do they accomplish this? They typically attempt to seize a tempo advantage during Stage 1 or the early portion of Stage 2. This is done via two methods:

1. Deploy a cheap threat in Stage 1 – eg. Wild Nacatl, Tarmogoyf, Aether Vial, Goblin Lackey
2. Accelerate past Stage 1 to deploy Stage 2 threats while your opponent is in Stage 1 – examples include Dark Ritual, Noble Hierarch/Birds of Paradise, Lotus Cobra

After successfully developing a tempo advantage these decks seek to either maintain it or allow it to atrophy slowly (trading it for life points). In terms of Marginal Mana, what tempo decks seek to do after the first 2-3 turns is not to continually increase Marginal Mana but to keep the Marginal Mana score constant for a few turns. By maintaining a constant advantage for a few turns the tempo deck puts opposing decks in a harsh situation stemming from a reduced life total. This frequently allows the tempo deck to deal the finishing blow.

Practically this means that when two decks designed to control tempo face off, the faster deck should win. This is because both decks are designed to maintain tempo advantages, thus the one that seizes an initial tempo advantage is in a far stronger position, since its opponent's game plan is the same as its own.

Merfolk vs. Zoo in Legacy is a great example of this principle. They both are designed to play the tempo game, but anyone who knows Legacy will tell you this match-up is a complete and utter blowout. Zoo almost invariably wins. Why? Because it is faster.

Zoo's one-drops – Wild Nacatl, Kird Ape/Loam Lion, Grim Lavamancer, and sometimes Steppe Lynx – generate a large advantage over Merfolk's one-drops, Aether Vial and Cursecatcher. Cursecatcher is utterly puny in this match-up and might as well not affect the board. Aether Vial is slow. Aether Vial has to reach 2 or 3 before it starts deploying the creatures that Zoo cares about, the lords.

This means that Zoo has 2-3 turns to develop a board advantage, then defend its advantage from Merfolk's attempts to recover with burn. This strategy proves to be effective since Merfolk has very few cards that work well when they are behind. Even their typical card advantage engine, Standstill, is terrible when they are behind.

Because both decks are designed to defend advantages, Zoo is strategically superior in this match-up, since it is much better at seizing early advantages than Merfolk.

Faeries – A case study

Faeries is one of the most powerful tempo decks ever built. It is powerful enough and has enough control components that it borders on being a control deck, but it isn't. Still, it is an interesting case study for exploring the concept of tempo.

There were effectively two versions of faeries though – one with Ancestral Vision and one without. The one with Ancestral Vision was far better at playing the control game, due to the aforementioned spell. Vision gave Faeries a way of reloading, and thus enabled the deck to grind out games via persistent card advantage far better. The versions without Ancestral Vision spent more time playing the tempo game, since they had less ways of grinding out persistent advantages.

Faeries is the way it is because of its strongest card – Bitterblossom. Bitterblossom acts as both a control component (by producing chump blockers every turn), and a threat, allowing the deck to switch roles quickly and effectively. The entire deck is designed with this in mind. The high density of countermagic prevents Faeries from losing ground when it is behind or stops the opponent from gaining ground when Faeries is ahead. Mistbind Clique, Vendillion Clique, and Scion of Oona are easy to deploy threats that are also disruptive. Mutavault is the ultimate in cheap threats.

But Faeries was not invincible. Anyone who played the deck knew that red decks and Jund were problematic. The match-ups weren't unwinnable, but they weren't good by any stretch of the imagination. This is because Faeries is a slow tempo deck and a decent, but not great control deck.

When the red deck produced threats like Mogg Fanatic or Figure of Destiny and backed them up with burn, Faeries could get itself into a lot of trouble. It was far better at clawing itself out of holes than most tempo decks (due to such strong control components like Cryptic Command), but it definitely could run into its fair share of trouble doing that. This is, in a lot of ways, similar to Zoo's advantage over Merfolk. However, Faeries had another deck that performed fairly well against it – Jund. Jund could also cause a lot of problems for Faeries with T2 Putrid Leech, applying pressure and setting the Faeries player on their back foot.

Jund is built on the principle of two for ones. It plays a bunch of cards that two for one you and generates value that way. This works very well against tempo decks because tempo decks tend to exploit the fact that most decks have plays that are inherently more valuable than others. Jund really doesn't have this. While there is some value fluctuation, Jund's plays from turn to turn will be at a fairly consistent power level. Jund tries to grind you out. This is a good strategy against tempo decks.

This in fact demonstrates the best ways to attack a tempo deck:

1. Be a faster tempo deck
2. Incremental Card Advantage

By doing (1) you place the opposing tempo deck in the unenviable position of having to do something it wasn't design to do – play from behind. Faeries was MUCH better at this than most tempo decks but it was absolutely devastating when playing from ahead (untapping with Bitterblossom on an empty board). By doing (2) you blunt the effectiveness of the opposing tempo deck's game plan through the consistent value of your plays. Your opponent cannot stop all your plays and if most of your plays are roughly equal in value it becomes very difficult to stop you from gaining ground.

Conclusion

Tempo is a measure of your ability to advance your own game plan. When decks turn to exploiting this as a goal either indirectly or directly, it becomes the end goal in and of itself. After a certain point, not losing tempo becomes the goal. Of course a deck will still take tempo gains in that stage, but that is not the goal. Marginal Mana deals with this through a unified metric. A Marginal Mana change of zero represents tempo parity, and this is exactly what most tempo decks want in the mid-game. The idea is that they give up some ground on the board, trading it for life points. Then, they make a final assault on your life points. If you stop that, the tempo deck has effectively run out of gas, and you should be able to win the game.

When fighting a deck that is designed to control your tempo you can either play the same game and be faster, or try to attack it through persistent advantages. Because normal tempo decks trade cards for transient advantages they will eventually run out of gas. A tempo deck that is out of gas presents very little resistance, as its cards are usually of lower quality individually. Much of the power of tempo decks comes from synergy, and without that, the deck will quickly collapse like a house of cards blown by the wind.