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United States24814 Posts
Let me make sure I understand what those mean:
Combo: Only when several cards are used in conjunction is this strong, but it's hard to stop if the player is able to pull it off
Control: Many actions slow down or stop actions of the opponent
Tempo: Gain an advantage that grows over time, such as mana ramping to play big permanents early
Aggro: get out creatures quickly and overwhelm the opponent, killing them before they can activate their deck fully
Midrange: Most of your 'tools' cannot come out early, but you will very quickly switch from being weak to strong
If those are accurate (I'm sure there are intricacies I'm not hitting on) then I don't really get the difference between tempo and midrange.
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On September 26 2013 07:20 micronesia wrote:
Let me make sure I understand what those mean:
Combo: Only when several cards are used in conjunction is this strong, but it's hard to stop if the player is able to pull it off
Control: Many actions slow down or stop actions of the opponent
Tempo: Gain an advantage that grows over time, such as mana ramping to play big permanents early
Aggro: get out creatures quickly and overwhelm the opponent, killing them before they can activate their deck fully
Midrange: Most of your 'tools' cannot come out early, but you will very quickly switch from being weak to strong
If those are accurate (I'm sure there are intricacies I'm not hitting on) then I don't really get the difference between tempo and midrange.
Close, and pretty much correct. Here's my 5 second definitions.
Combo: Assemble the pieces and win when they are assembled.
Control: Prevent the opponent's plan from working, win via a strong finisher backed by protection
Tempo: Play a threat, protect it long enough to deal 20dmg
Aggro: Play more threats than opponents can deal with in an attempt to deal 20dmg
Midrange: Play high value creatures that can't be 1 for 1'd easily and end the game before control's finisher can take over.
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On September 26 2013 07:20 micronesia wrote:
Let me make sure I understand what those mean:
Combo: Only when several cards are used in conjunction is this strong, but it's hard to stop if the player is able to pull it off
Control: Many actions slow down or stop actions of the opponent
Tempo: Gain an advantage that grows over time, such as mana ramping to play big permanents early
Aggro: get out creatures quickly and overwhelm the opponent, killing them before they can activate their deck fully
Midrange: Most of your 'tools' cannot come out early, but you will very quickly switch from being weak to strong
If those are accurate (I'm sure there are intricacies I'm not hitting on) then I don't really get the difference between tempo and midrange.
tempo to me is actually mana efficiency. In most basic terms you cast cheap dudes and support them with disruption--although that's not always that clear cut.
Counters...
Blue Skies
Fish
Delver
etc....
Mana disruptions....
Sligh
Dead Guy Red
Angry Hermit
etc...
Discard is another popular option
Suicide Black
Eva Green
etc....
Hatebears is another option and so forth
Tempo, to me, usually is the conjunction of small and efficient creatures supported by disruption and usually gives the opponent a feeling of "if I had just one more turn you'd be dead!"
WW embodied this the best in the past dropping Savannah Lions and White Knights into a turn 4 Armageddon.
Decks don't really fit these definitions tightly anymore. For example BUG leans towards control while RUG leans towards tempo but the two decks play almost exactly the same as each other...
A lot of control decks in Vintage have the ability to combo out in the first 3 turns as well.
So its less "is this a control deck?" and more "am I the control deck in this match?"
I recall in Dragons Maze block where a UW control deck had to play the beatdown against a gate deck.
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On September 26 2013 07:09 Judicator wrote:Show nested quote +On September 26 2013 06:23 Risen wrote:On September 26 2013 05:44 slyboogie wrote:On September 26 2013 02:23 Risen wrote:
Modern has become so diverse at this point I just feel like if control is going to have a shot at all it needs to be in the form of tutor shell. Mystical is too slow at instant on T4, maybe sorc on T2 will be fast enough. Teachings is better than its been for a long time in my experience. The format has really slowed down in my opinion. The fastest deck, Zoo, is as ubiquitous. Combo is less consistent without premium cantrips. And the Bloodbraid ban has been surprisingly significant (at least, more than I thought.) It's still a tad slow, I agree, and Modern isn't the best format for traditional U control but I'm still fairly sure that Glittering Wish is the opposite direction of where it needs to look. Fair enough. My problem when I piloted teachings this past season was that it was just weak to any deck that could land a threat and protect it with counters. Things like UWR cleaned house with the deck (though it was ALWAYS close. I'm talking I'd stabilize on 2/3 life sometimes and pull a victory if they didn't topdeck a lightning bolt with countermagic support) That was true of any control deck. Tempo always matched up well against pure Control for the most part. I mean when you think about Delver vs UB or Caw-Blade vs. UW/UB, the match ups were clearly in their favor most of the time.
I never thought of Caw-Blade as tempo, though I guess you could describe it as "proto-tempo." But even in its Sword days, it was playing Gideon Jura and Day of Judgement. Philosophically, did you ever Into the Roil unkicked unless you had a Sword of Feast and Famine attached? It had elements of tempo, but it wasn't playing 4 Unsummons, right?
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On September 26 2013 08:32 slyboogie wrote:Show nested quote +On September 26 2013 07:09 Judicator wrote:On September 26 2013 06:23 Risen wrote:On September 26 2013 05:44 slyboogie wrote:On September 26 2013 02:23 Risen wrote:
Modern has become so diverse at this point I just feel like if control is going to have a shot at all it needs to be in the form of tutor shell. Mystical is too slow at instant on T4, maybe sorc on T2 will be fast enough. Teachings is better than its been for a long time in my experience. The format has really slowed down in my opinion. The fastest deck, Zoo, is as ubiquitous. Combo is less consistent without premium cantrips. And the Bloodbraid ban has been surprisingly significant (at least, more than I thought.) It's still a tad slow, I agree, and Modern isn't the best format for traditional U control but I'm still fairly sure that Glittering Wish is the opposite direction of where it needs to look. Fair enough. My problem when I piloted teachings this past season was that it was just weak to any deck that could land a threat and protect it with counters. Things like UWR cleaned house with the deck (though it was ALWAYS close. I'm talking I'd stabilize on 2/3 life sometimes and pull a victory if they didn't topdeck a lightning bolt with countermagic support) That was true of any control deck. Tempo always matched up well against pure Control for the most part. I mean when you think about Delver vs UB or Caw-Blade vs. UW/UB, the match ups were clearly in their favor most of the time. I never thought of Caw-Blade as tempo, though I guess you could describe it as "proto-tempo." But even in its Sword days, it was playing Gideon Jura and Day of Judgement. Philosophically, did you ever Into the Roil unkicked unless you had a Sword of Feast and Famine attached? It had elements of tempo, but it wasn't playing 4 Unsummons, right?
They're all kind of mushed together.
Belcher, for example, more often than not is a deck that puts down a swarm of small creatures in the first 1-3 turns that can sometimes combo.
Sure it doesn't cast "creatures" but does a deck that makes 10-16 goblins as fast as possible sound like a combo deck or a rush deck?
The answer is yes. Lots of gray areas of definitions.
Caw blade sometimes acted like tempo, dropping early had to stop threats and using control elements to protect them.
Sometimes it was control using its birds as "pseudo ancestrals" for card advantage followed by control elements to lockdown the game.
Sligh decks, for example, were sometimes tempo, using wastelands, tangle wire, and pillage to protect its threats. Other times it was control, throwing all its burn at enemy creatures relying on cursed scroll lock to win the game.
decks now a days have to be able to do more than one thing.
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Ehh, i dont like that kind of explanation. I've also killed an opponent with swings of Keening Apparition Snapcaster in a post-board Esper Mirror - doesn't make it a tempo deck. I understand your point though. Ultimately, you need to know what role to assume in a situation and be wise about.
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On September 26 2013 09:25 slyboogie wrote:
Ehh, i dont like that kind of explanation. I've also killed an opponent with swings of Keening Apparition Snapcaster in a post-board Esper Mirror - doesn't make it a tempo deck. I understand your point though. Ultimately, you need to know what role to assume in a situation and be wise about.
Well yes, the reason I'm pointing out roles is that its important to not get "stuck" with an assumed role.
A control deck will not outrush a rush deck, but if you have 4-5 power on the board and your opponent doesn't have dudes, then don't be shy about turning sideways. Likewise, sometimes its more important to save up burn spells to kill threats than it is to race your opponent.
There are roles your deck is better able to fill than others, but don't ever forget that you're not trapped by it.
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You are wise. Like a sage owl.
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O man, sage owl. I remember running that card in my sweet mono blue tempo deck back in kamigawa block. Sage Owl + ninjitsu for insane value lol (creatures so much better now). I think jitte pretty much carried the deck though...
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On September 26 2013 10:40 DEN1ED wrote:
O man, sage owl. I remember running that card in my sweet mono blue tempo deck back in kamigawa block. Sage Owl + ninjitsu for insane value lol (creatures so much better now). I think jitte pretty much carried the deck though...
This was a 4 of in most of decks with any amount of blue.
Don't tell me about how its not actually card advantage!
![[image loading]](https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTm5z1t551xCEpa8U0NdxQ8lvjylX0qOMRRjWR57Zlrluoph8lz)
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On September 26 2013 10:37 nicknack wrote:Watching Joe Rogan Pod cast and Josh Barnett UFC heavyweight plays Magic, start at 1 hour 23 mins. http://vimeo.com/75353473
I want to play Magic with hot chicks...
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Re: Tempo, it's just a term used to define mana efficiency, usually denying your opponent their mana temporarily or using stuff like Vapor Snag to end up ahead in the short term. "Tempo decks" do not exist on the same axis as aggro/combo/control, tempo is simply an element that you can add to those decks.
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On September 26 2013 11:46 Cel.erity wrote:
Re: Tempo, it's just a term used to define mana efficiency, usually denying your opponent their mana temporarily or using stuff like Vapor Snag to end up ahead in the short term. "Tempo decks" do not exist on the same axis as aggro/combo/control, tempo is simply an element that you can add to those decks.
I guess tempo decks and aggro control decks are synonymous to me. For much the same reason "control decks" are simply decks that use board control and spell frequency inhibitors to dictate long term game flow, tempo decks are decks that contain tempo maximization elements to fluster the opponent's turn sequence efficiencies in order to hit vulnerability timings.
But I don't want to get too technical and definition specific.
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To be fair, CawBlade could pretty much play any given role at any given point in any given game, so the games where you tempo someone out with a sworded squawk and a pile of Spell Pierces weren't exactly strange, and the deck was designed to play those kind of games when they came up. Whereas an Esper control deck playing a 2 drop and trying their hardest to defend it till their opponent dies... it comes up but it's not what the deck is trying to do in like 99% of their games.
Definitely part of why Faeries/CawBlade/Delver were not only the dominant decks of their respective eras, but also some of the most interesting/fun decks to play as well (though I guess Jace/Stoneforge/Batterskull was a bit much...).
I typically think of aggro-control decks and tempo decks as being fairly different. In a tempo deck, all of your spells are Lightning Bolts, and when they stop being Bolt then they all suck. In an aggro-control deck, your cards are all Charms and Commands, so they will be good as long as you keep choosing the correct modes; sometimes that means your games look very tempo-oriented, but you don't have to play that kind of game to be operating optimally.
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On September 26 2013 12:19 MCMcEmcee wrote:
To be fair, CawBlade could pretty much play any given role at any given point in any given game, so the games where you tempo someone out with a sworded squawk and a pile of Spell Pierces weren't exactly strange, and the deck was designed to play those kind of games when they came up. Whereas an Esper control deck playing a 2 drop and trying their hardest to defend it till their opponent dies... it comes up but it's not what the deck is trying to do in like 99% of their games.
Definitely part of why Faeries/CawBlade/Delver were not only the dominant decks of their respective eras, but also some of the most interesting/fun decks to play as well (though I guess Jace/Stoneforge/Batterskull was a bit much...).
I typically think of aggro-control decks and tempo decks as being fairly different. In a tempo deck, all of your spells are Lightning Bolts, and when they stop being Bolt then they all suck. In an aggro-control deck, your cards are all Charms and Commands, so they will be good as long as you keep choosing the correct modes; sometimes that means your games look very tempo-oriented, but you don't have to play that kind of game to be operating optimally.
Yeah, I played in the time period WAY before charms and bolts made it back into the rotation.
It didn't matter if games ended in Rhystic Lightning or if they ended with two blockers bounced by Aether Burst as Gaea's Skyfolk swung for 2, it was all considered tempo, all considered aggro control.
So it didn't matter if the early play was Jackal Pup or a Cloudskate, when aggro control got the tempo advantage by bolts or by bounce, they were all called the same thing.
Also, you don't need to drop a 2 drop and protect it to be going "aggro control" sometimes you just cast a Snapcaster to flashback a removal spell, cast a resto angel to flashaback another removal spell and suddenly you're offensively using Azorious Charms to stop their topdecks from being relevant as you win beating down for 3-5 damage a turn. Your transformation into a tempo deck didn't start till turn 8 sure, but it still happens.
In the Urza Block standard I recall a lot of players losing because they didn't realize accelerated blue could be as strong a control deck as it was an aggro deck depending on its opening hand. Sometimes you died to the turn 3 morphling, other games you were stonewalled by counters until they cast treachery and morphling on the same turn and you have no way to stop their tempo advantage.
But their general definitions are in the end arbitrary.
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1) Happy Birthday Cel.
2) Initial standard testing indicates Alms Beast is a...beast in this format, especially with Whip of Erebos.
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On September 28 2013 06:28 deth2munkies wrote:
1) Happy Birthday Cel.
Thanks!
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On September 28 2013 06:28 deth2munkies wrote:
1) Happy Birthday Cel.
2) Initial standard testing indicates Alms Beast is a...beast in this format, especially with Whip of Erebos.
Treasury Thrull seems alright as well.
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I love the look of the UB control list Sam Black posted in his article. Definitley gonna try it out. I really want Ashiok to be good.
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EPT
