What is Tempo? | The Ban Wagon 

I might be usefull to look at where the term originated: Chess. From Wikipedia: "In chess and other chess-like games, a tempo is a "turn" or single move. When a player achieves a desired result in one fewer move, the player is said to "gain a tempo"; conversely, when a player takes one more move than necessary, the player is said to "lose a tempo". Similarly, when a player forces their opponent to make moves not according to their initial plan, one is said to "gain tempo" because the opponent is wasting moves. A move that gains a tempo is often called "a move with tempo". "

"Tempo is the flow of resources that trigger game-end conditions by any element of the current game-state. Players gain tempo by increasing the flow of game-victory-triggering resources or by reducing the opponent’s flow of game-victory-triggering resources. A player is “ahead on tempo” if the current game state is capable of generating a game-victory-triggering resource for that player at a rate sufficient to defeat the opponent before the game-state generates a level of resources that trigger game-end conditions in favor of that opponent." -Adam Pierce

Tempo, like in chess, means time. In chess if a player moves a piece to improve position but you make him move the piece back, you gained tempo because he wasted a move. In magic, if you uncommon a cards, your opponent wasted a turn and has to take another turn to replay it. It doesn't really mean mana gained unless you can use your extra mana to then improve your board state like you kill a creature and play your own creature or advantageous spell. For what it's worth, that's my definition.

I feel like the entire point of this video is for LSV to make Matt Nass feel awkward whilst tripping over explaining tempo, all the while knowing LSV has a perfect definition of tempo that he can smoothly explain that he will not use....just so he can make Matt Nass feel awkward

I think you're underestimating how important board presence is to tempo. I would say that countering a 3 mana creature is a much higher tempo play than countering a Divination. A classic tempo deck often doesn't care how many cards the opponent draws because it'll kill them before those extra cards matter, and a control deck might be perfectly happy to let say a midrange opponent draw cards instead of applying pressure because the control deck has more powerful methods to gain card advantage that will let it win that fight in the long run, provided it survives long enough to do that.

Unsummoning a Craw Worm isn't Tempo unless you use the rest of your own mana to take advantage of your mana efficiency you made by unsummoning a 6-drop. Unsummoning the Craw Worm and then dropping 4/4 for 4 is a tempo play. As Dan Pyke said, it's often about double spelling. But it's also about your ability to blank the phases of another player. unsummoning the craw worm is basically a spell that says "Make your opponent's last four mana a waste", but it's not useful unless you make use of ALL your own mana, too. Tempo decks usually need to be tapping out and pinching their opponents against the mana curve. Tempo decks are racing to use the most mana over the course of all turns either by hugging their own curve, or using disruption/bounce/whatever to blank the untap/attack/draw phases of the opponent. Memory Lapse is a perfect example of "Cancel target opponent's mana, they lose a draw step". Tempo isn't about the spell Memory Lapse, it's about how you follow spells like Memory Lapse to always make the most of your phases.

Tempo seems more like controlling the flow of time, mana becomes a big part as your mana is limited for each section of time/turns; so bounce spells are tempo because they are undoing your opponents turn.

Grate video but I'm not sure it's that simple with the mana thing. The reson it's often tempo is because it often give you time and the time is the tempo part. An example with mana disadvantage tempo: Desert Twister on Timber Wolves so you can get in with Craw Wurm. Sure it's an aggro play but I would also call it a tempo play

Something that was alluded to in this discussion, but not explicitly stated is that unlike a concept like card advantage, tempo advantage is highly contextual. If a player casts Mind Rot, it is always a two-for-one in every scenario unless the opponent has one or fewer cards in hand. One card was used to eliminate two cards. The effectiveness of that play will vary widely based on the resources that are discarded, but the card advantage principle is more or less a constant. Tempo advantage is not like this. In the stated examples, e.g. Mana Leak vs Craw Wurm, you can't simply look at the cost differential to determine if tempo was generated. If both players are on six mana, if Player A uses four mana to cast a threat, and then uses the remaining two mana to Mana Leak the opponent's six mana Craw Wurm, then a tempo advantage was obviously created. Player A used their mana to both get ahead on board, and to stymie the play by Player B, essentially wasting Player B's whole turn. However, if Player A cast nothing during their turn, then the four mana "advantage" generated by the differential in cost makes no difference, and no tempo advantage is gained. Similarly, one of the game's most classic "tempo cards" Remand, only gains you tempo if by returning the spell to the opponent's hand, you have stopped them from doing something they would have otherwise done. If you Remand their spell and now they're tapped out: tempo. If you Remand their spell and they can recast it, but are now unable to cast a second spell that they would have otherwise wanted to play: tempo. If you Remand their spell, and they recast it, but they didn't have anything else they were going to do anyway: no tempo.

My personal understanding of tempo is the flow and use of time. In any turn based game (like TCGs or chess), the player that goes first inherently has a tempo(time) advantage since they were allowed to act before the other player. So for a rudimental TCG example: - Player 1 summons a creature (creatures can only attack next turn) - Player 2 summons a creature - Player 1 destroys player 2's creature and loses his creature in the process but still has resource to summon another creature. If this goes on, the tempo of the match is in player 1's favour as they are always one step ahead of player 2, hence why they can take out player 2's creature and not giving them a chance to use their creatures. To regain tempo advantage, player 2 plays a cheap spell to destroy player 1's creature, leaving enough mana to still summon a creature of their own. With no creatures on player 1's side, and one creature on player 2's side, the roles are reversed and player 2 is now 1 step ahead in that moment. Player 1 can regain tempo advantage by executing the same move as player 2, or rather spending all his mana and summoning a bigger creature, which could give him tempo advantage a few turns later.

Tempo is time (both linguistically and practically). Tempo is measured in turns (or parts thereof). You gain tempo when you exchange part of your turn for a larger part of your opponent's turn. The reason mana is so closely associated with tempo is because spending your mana is a large portion of what you do with your turn so spending small amounts of mana to interact with large amount of your opponent's mana is spending a small amount of your turn for a large amount of the opponent's turn. For example, in a topdecking situation (IE your hand is empty) you don't gain tempo by drawing a fatal push instead of a murder to kill your opponent's creature despite one leaving you with two extra mana, because you aren't spending that mana. Tapping opposing creatures creates tempo by exchanging a small amount of mana for your opponent's combat phase. Spending a spell just to draw cards costs tempo because you are exchanging your mana expenditure for cards to be played later, and relative to the ~1 card played per turn baseline drawing extra cards doesn't enable you to do anything extra (though if you are at a point in the game where you can draw cards and then play one or more of them then drawing cards can actually gain you tempo, storm operates this way). Tempo decks operate on the gameplan of trading away card resources for time resources.

Tempo isn't just about mana efficiency. Making your opponent miss a turn gains you tempo. Temple is about slowing the speed your opponent can execute their game plan compared to yours. As turns are mostly mana limited, efficient mana exchanges are one of the best ways to do it. But tapping creatures, bouncing lands, taking turns etc. all get you ahead on tempo

One thing to add is that an aggro deck vs control a deck generates virtual card advantage through tempo because the aggro deck will use all of the cards it draws over the course of the game while the control deck might only use half.

I think it's got less to do with mana, I think tempo is a measure of how much a player is advancing their game plan in a given number of turns, by undoing someone's game actions, by bouncing, tapping, killing, or countering, you gain a tempo advantage by continuing to advance your game plan while keeping your opponent further behind in theirs

I dont agree about mana being essential to tempo, some examples being liliana edict a deaths shadow imo is a tempo play, or teferi bounce your goblin guide being tempo. Also cryptic command tap your team/ bounce target permanent tempos a bit, one game I crypitic my opponets valakute twice, because they needed more mana and i was preventing their ramping. Imo tempo is gaining a time advantage. Mana is a resource that normally can only be gained through time (making land drops) (which is why mox/lotus is op as it accelerates the process) so mana tempo (unsummon your Colossal Dreadmaw) is also a time advantage, making your opponet spend annother turn to cast the creature, build up enough mana, and eventually attack with it all over again. Tapping in a similar sense gains you time advantage by preventing your opponents creatures from doing their function, attacking. So tapping a creature and opponent spent a turn to cast gives you a time advantage. That time advantages changes between decks, as a small aggro deck your gaining a time advantage to kill your opponent, where as in a combo/control deck your trying to gain time by preventing your opponents plan so you arnt dead when you slam your combo/haymaker. And cheaper mana cost can be a part of this: 1 mana unsummon, a smaller time investment into mana vs Dreadmaw a 6 mana investment that also takes a turn to cast.

The best explanation of tempo I ever heard was, "tempo is about how long untill you win vs loose." gaining tempo is when you get closer to your wincon or your opponent further away by at lease by at least one whole turn.

Tempo focuses on having mana efficient answers to gain incremental advantage. Creatures often have evasive or disruptive effects but aren’t as powerful in their own brazen borrower is a great example. Midrange focuses more on card advantage and individually more powerful cards. Tempo worries far more about controlling board state. It’s sort of aggro/midrange creatures with control interaction.

i like to look at tempo as "effects advantage" which can manifest itself in card, mana or board advantage as well as a combination of the three

I am a little over half a year late to this, but I suddenly had an idea. A lot of tempo decks are confused for aggro decks. The Jeskai deck from Khans block standard was sometimes called burn or aggro, but it was a tempo deck. The mono blue deck from historic and various recent standards was sometimes called aggro, that kind of thing. And I think that the reason for that is how it sits between aggro and control. Tempo, oddly, operates sort of like a combo deck. Not in that it's non interactive, but more that it wants to do its thing. And instead of a combo deck's tactic of not interacting and then taking off, its solution is interaction. It's an aggro deck that has the denial tools of a control deck. It want to hurt you while stopping you from having the ability to do anything about it.

I think Daze is the most interesting Tempo card. it doesnt cost you Mana the Turn you play it but it essentially costs you mana on ever subsequent turn bc you are behind on a Land. And that can be quite important bc Magic has breakpoints and you dont get to save mana from turn to turn. The best and most common way to gain Tempo in Magic is to have a turn 1 play when your opponent doesnt. and making the turn 1 play do something.

Suppose the difference between your available mana and your opponents is delta m, and you have delta b for board presence (not sure how to calculate that), and delta c for the difference between the number of cards in you and your opponents hand. Then maybe tempo is the change in the sum of those differences squared between turns. That makes it the same as the discrete equation for flow of heat where instead of 3 spatial dumensions you have m,b, and c.

I think of tempo like a musical staff with 4 beats a measure, but instead of your opponent getting all notes in each measure, you give them them some rests instead. Control is just straight up changing the time signature.

what is Tempo? Easy... Delver, Wasteland and Daze.

Awesome! Please do more videos like this!

I think it it less about raw quantities of mana and more about time, hence why gush, daze and deprive are good tempo cards despite putting you back a land.

I would say part of tempo is relying on allowing some threats and cards to persist, but gaining residual advantages.

I'd think about it in the sense of "how many turns does it take for your deck to win vs how many turns does it take for your opponent's deck to win", and how much each play affects that, on both sides. How much does casting x spell slow you down vs also slowing down the opponent? How many turns does it cost compared to how many turns it buys?

I've always thought of it as trading cards for time

Tempo is just time walking; a value time walk is the first and definitive tempo play. If a counter spell effectively skips most of your opponents turn, its a tempo play.

Was this video inspired by Vince struggling to explain how the card Æther Vial effects the game in his recent goblin combo video?

I play a lot of both Magic and Heartstone, so while similar, tempo means a little different in each. I think the way I would try to define it is "a play that gets you some combination of board and mana advantage. For example, using all your mana in HS each turn is big since you can't save it or use it on your opponents turn. So a thing like unsummon on their turn doesn't exist the same way. So in some what your play affects the board (or battlefield) in a way that is advantageous for you, and uses mana more efficiently than your opponent.

When you just talk about just as mana, you forget about Teferi, Time Raveler. It's not just mana, but turns, and time, if they are playing at a different speed and time, it can also be tempo without mana. Or if you have a board presence, they play like a 5/5 for 5 and you spend 5 mana to kill it, but are able to get in for 5 damage, that's tempo too

I think tempo play as a play that disrupts AS you apply pressure wheather its combo or a cheap creature. Cards like daze, remand, fire//ice, spell pierce, stifle and wasteland in combination with a wincon like stoneforge mystic, tarmogoyf, delver and splinter twin are the most common tempo plays.

Great topic for a video.

Excellent explanation, thank you.

If you bolt goblin guide in turn 1 and then bolt another goblin guide in turn 2, against burn, you gained tempo but not "mana". If you delay their board development even with even mana exchanges, you still win tempo.

I don’t think defining tempo purely via mana is particularly pertinent - mainly because mana is fundamentally equivalent between any deck. Tempo instead, as you mentioned numerous times, means different things to different decks depending on their intended win condition. A good demonstration of this disconnect is your esper example: using cheap removal and counters allows this deck to buy time and ‘cash in’ with draw spells digging for expensive win conditions. Imagine a ramp or aggro deck runs away to victory against this control archetype because the esper player couldn’t find enough answers. Obviously the winning deck has out-tempo’d the control player, however there likely hasn’t been many mana exchanges as you described. For me, this demonstrates how tempo means different things to different decks. Efficiently hitting a curve unopposed in a ramp deck to reach a game-winning top end is clearly a gain in tempo over an opponent. But in the example above, this could have been countered by the control player generating the card advantage needed to disrupt the curve. Now we have a link between tempo and card advantage - totally contrary to the mana argument! Obviously no single definition with respect to resources will fit every situation. I would therefore propose a more open (and probably far less useful) definition: gaining tempo is taking actions towards your win condition more efficiently than your opponent. For a control deck, card advantage could be a manifestation of tempo - finding answers to aggro/combo/ramp faster than the opponent’s progression. For aggro, limited more by actions per turn than availability of answers, a simple damage clock or life total is a better measure of tempo. For ramp, mana advantage leads to more effective use of top end payoffs and therefore - tempo! Via this definition, an understanding of the ‘usual’ progression of a specific deck without being disrupted is vital. This definitely makes it more difficult to explain (hence my essay) and an overall less useful term - but I feel is more faithful to the game. I am by no means an experienced player, so please expand upon or rip apart my idea - I just wanted to weigh in as the purely mana-driven definition didn’t seem spot on. Thanks for the video!

I think baleful strix is technically tempo as well but only against certain decks

I would say that tempo is more the ability to deploy resources than it is the direct mana relationship. If you cast a Craw Wurm and I Unsummon it, I have gained a 5 mana advantage on that turn. But I have not actually gained any tempo advantage until I do something else with my mana. If I take advantage of that mana advantage to cast a creature, or play a draw spell, or activate an ability, or attack with creatures, THAT is when I have gained the tempo advantage. If I let my extra mana go to waste, I have gained nothing. Trading up on mana costs creates the opportunity for tempo gains, but it isn't a tempo gain in itself. The tempo gain is when I do something, and my opponent does nothing

I don't think the mana advantage definition is very good. For example, say I'm playing UW spirits and I have a Selfless Spirit versus my opponent's Birds of Paradise. Reflector Mage on their Birds so I can push through damage is clearly a tempo play even though I'm -2 on mana. Wasteland or Stifle on a fetchland are undoubtedly tempo plays as well despite neither being plus on mana. I think as other people in the comments already pointed out tempo is about time advantage. If turn two I vapor snag a Birds and swing with my Delver, I've gotten one extra turn of damage (i.e. I'm one turn closer to winning) and you lost one turn of setup (i.e. you're one turn further away from winning).

I feel like the term you're looking for is 'action economy'; tempo decks get more 'actions' out of their turns, relative to their opponents, either by cheating things out faster than normal, or by negating your opponents plays in that time. This is paid for by sacrificing card advantage, with the hope that the early investment towards your win condition (or away from your opponent's) will payoff before the lack of cards results in your loss.

I think of Tempo as anything that throws the opponents normal gameplay off balance. The easiest way to do that is to stop them from using their mana efficiently. This can also be stopping them from being able to attack or black (Cryptic tapping down their team or Unsummon on their creature). If they have Leyline of Anticipation and a bunch of extra mana then unsummon on a fatty doesn't gain tempo from the mana difference but it does from stopping them from attacking. I also think that it can't deal with the problem permanently. So doom blade and hard counters are not tempo. You are simply delaying things to have time to enact your game plan.

good tempo combo example is splinter twin.... god I miss that deck

Tempo is the ability to dictate the terms of engagement by expenditure of resources.

It took me 10 seconds to realize which one was talking.

Mat Nass made a great point that control deck do not really care about tempo. If you can win or gain an big advantage in the next turn or next few turn tempo play is important. If your board is stalled and etc an unsummon on a 6 drop that doesn't break the board stall is just card disadvantage. These situational plays are one of the reasons magic is so fun IMHO, And why it is such a high skill cap game. Also heard another Gaby laugh. Would really like to hear her input on topics like this.

What if I Doomblade a Craw Wurm, but don't use my other four mana on anything? Did I gain tempo? What if I don't interact with my opponent spending mana, but I give up resources for a mana advantage over my opponent; e.g. Llanowar Elves, Dark Ritual, or Lion's Eye Diamond; is that tempo?

I kinda see it as trading up on mana to build momentum

IMO mana is imprecise; it's about *turns*. If you're on 5 lands, unsummon is 20% of your turn... but you need to cast a second spell.

Tempo is gaining initiative similar to chess.

How do you define tempo or a tempo play as something that has nothing to do with the pace of the game?

Repeal/Dismember + Baral = ubertempo

It doesn't make sense to define tempo in terms of mana, as presumably a deck that can generate arbitrarily high amounts of mana can spend lots of mana dealing with your efficient 12/12s for B and still have good tempo. Presumably, tempo involves any favorable exchange of resources towards the goal in question. Unsummon is a tempo play when it gets you closer to winning the game, but Unsummoning their Flash creature when they have extra mana(/resources) to replay it w/o an issue is not tempo. Normally, the relevant resources are things on the board that can affect the life total, but not always. Is Lava Spike good tempo? I'm inclined to say "yes" when it gets you closer to winning, and "no" when it doesn't. This is why Repeal is a tempo play, it gets you closer to winning the game despite costing more mana.

Tempo is when you care about a resource other than cards (i.e. mana, life) but you're also a blue player and need to sound smart.

What if you make a play that makes you gain tempo but you end up not using the the rest of the Mana you have left over? If you Lava coil a 3 mana creature on your turn and have 1 mana open and pass with nothing else to play, then can you say you didn't gain any tempo since you didn't use that one mana? Essentially what I am asking is do you lose tempo for not using your mana?

Is it tempo if you doom blade a gray ogre?

Craig plays Savannah Lions into White Knight into Brimaz. Gabe casts Wrath of God to destroy them all. Did Gabe get a tempo advantage?

Dark Ritual is a tempo card

IMO, a massive opportunity was missed in this video to accurately describe the nature of decks that rely on tempo to win. Essentially, the term tempo is derived from chess, in which a move on the part of a player extends his board state by more than one move. Perhaps you could call it a "two-for-one". Most tempo decks are viable only in Legacy. The best examples are decks that use the cards Delver of Secrets, Tarmagoyf, Wasteland and Daze. Cheap interaction in which you trade less Mana or cards to gain an advantage, usually in permanents on the board or cards in hand. The best example of a tempo deck in Modern would be Grixis Death Shadow. Not the best example of a tempo deck across formats, but clearly the best tempo strategy in Modern. Basically, you stick a cheap threat and use interaction to prevent the opponent from both carrying out their plan or answer your threat. The idea is to win quickly but not overtly aggressively, as in the case with Burn strategies.

Is Rampant Growth tempo? :)

Best example of a tempo deck I can think of has been dead for some time now. Modern splinter twin. Rrmamd/ mana leak or turns 1-4ish. Then win

Tempo = delaying the opponent?

I always placed counterspells in the "control" rather than "tempo" category. I consider"tempo" to be something that slows your opponent down, but doesn't stop them permanently. (So Doom Blade isn't tempo, but tappers are.)

My personal definition for tempo, always improving, is card advantage by ending the game with your opponent having cards in hand. Similar to aggro whereas mid range gets card advantage by card effects "2+ for 1's" and control has raw card advtage eg drawing cards.

What is Tempo in EDH?

If you're trying to explain tempo to people, it's probably best not to use Craw Wurm as your example 😂 People who remember what Craw Wurm is tend to be the people who already know what tempo is haha

Why don’t you two write a freaking book already? Chap’in paper

Board, life, and mana are the three areas of tempo. It's a tempo play if you're making a gain in one of these areas.

Killing people when they still have cards in hand is card advantage because they died with all these resources they could not use while you did!

Can you define reach as well?

Everyone of these videos LSV starts with saying something shitty about Matt Nass. “No one is excited to see matt Nass”. Maybe I don’t understand the “friendship” or “work relationship” but I don’t think those kind of comments are important to be part of the video. They aren’t funny they just put him down sound condescending and make LSV sound like a dick. If it correct LSV is matt Nass’s boss and that makes me feel even less good about this interaction.

Hi guys

I always thought TEMPO was just a TEMPOrary advantage that doesn’t add on to your board state

I'm pretty sure this definition is just wrong.

Tempo is everything. ftfy