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I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but I don't really know what I'm talking about, so it's probably okay.
Anyway, before I think I was rambling incoherently about something to do with threat creation/neutralization. Or that's where I was going. Anyway, quantized Tempo.
Obviously, a 3/3 for two mana is better than a 2/2 for two mana. Is it 50% better? What about a hypothetical 2/3 with first strike for two mana- is it better than a 3/3 for the same price?
This shit needs to be quantized, yo. So here's what I'm doing, right now: 1 mana = 1 unit of Tempo = 1 life/damage.
Trip on that. I know I still am.
Now we just need to assign Tempo value to everything. I'm abbreviating quantized "Tempo" to "T" right now, because I'm pretty sure I just invented this, so I get to do that sort of thing. Cards have Tempo measured as "X T for N mana" or "XTN" for short.
A card's Tempo is how much it helps kill your opponent. For example, one unit of power on a creature = 1 T. On the other hand, I'll estimate one unit of toughness to be worth 1/2 T, because it doesn't help kill the opponent, but helps keep the creature alive (to kill the opponent in the future). I'll only be working with Tempo in sanctioned constructed formats and primarily Type II, although it should work just as well in Extended.
Over on mtgsalvation, there are people saying Kulrath Knight is, and I quote, "Good". Clearly they are insane, but now it's possible to prove. It's a 3/3 Flying Wither with a stupid "counters = pacifism" ability for five mana. For a creature to be playable these days it apparently has to have T = twice its mana cost. Kulrath Knight gets 4.5 from its power and toughness. 5.5 to go! Flying I'll say is worth .75 T, based on other flying creatures. Wither, like First Strike, is nearly worthless in constructed- .25. And the final ability is large but also nearly worthless in constructed- .5. So Kulrath Knight has a Tempo value of 6 (6 T for 5 mana, or 6T5), far less than the 10 it needs to be constructed worthy. It would have to cost 3 to be constructed-worthy, and this makes sense; Would you play a 3/3 Flyer with two worthless abilities for 4 mana?
Also, the amount of mana a spell costs is equal not to the number in the top-right corner, but rather the amount of mana you have over the course of a turn divided by the number of spells you play that turn. If you're top-decking with 7 lands (and nothing else) and draw-and-play a Llanowar Elves, it cost 7 mana. Inefficient!
I'm pretty sure there are two types of Tempo to be measured. One is the theoretical T of a card in a vacuum. So Llanowar Elves is, by itself, maybe 2 T for 1 mana (depending on what the mana ability is worth). The other is the marginal Tempo a card is worth in a game. Top-decking-and-playing Llanowar Elves for 7 mana means at that moment means its marginal Tempo is 2T7.
I don't know the full ramifications of this sort of measurement. For example, what's the T of a token generator? I suspect the T of the token ability is the same as if it was a creature, modified for things like tapping the creator or sacrificing something, added to the creating card's total T value. So Imperious perfect is itself 3 T for 3 mana plus an undefined Lord ability plus 1.5 T for 1 mana = 4.5 T for 3 (+1) mana (meaning the Lord ability must be something like 1 T). Removal? How does WotC justify 5 mana black "kill anything" sorceries in light of Terror? Mana cost has something important to do with it- If I use an X mana spell to kill your Y mana creature, then the spell's T is equal to Y-X, I think. Tarmogoyf is so good because it's at least 5-8 T for 2 mana, but also because it's impossible to kill for cheaper than it costs. If it was 3 mana it would be balanced. Is it better to have one fat body, or a bunch of little ones? See: Siege-Gang Commander (although that has, eh, an important ability that gives it a lot of power and internal synergy). Hopefully next time I'll be able to pin down how spells and unusual abilities fit into this idea of quantized Tempo. But for now this could be a tool for quickly evaluating if a card is playable.
Tags: Tempo Theory
Tempo = Board Advantage / Mana
If Tempo is going to be useful for anything other than being able to say, "That card really screws up your tempo" or "I had really good tempo that game", then it needs to be better defined. I think the formula above is a good place to start.
For our purposes, the goal in Magic is to reduce your opponent's life to 0. Toward that end, there are two main archetypes: Aggro and Control. (Mill decks are control decks. Combo decks work by trying to play a different game.)
For aggro decks, improving board position is the way to reduce the opponent's life to 0 as fast as possible. Control decks want to disrupt the opponent's board position, preventing their own demise. This leads to Zvi Mowshowitz's idea of the 'fundamental turn'- for aggro, the turn they win; for control, the turn it becomes extremely unlikely the other player will win.
Creatures are the most important cards in aggro decks, and for them the "advantage" attribute, I think, can be calculated. Power would seem at first to be the most important attribute, but creatures are not always in a deck to attack. Wall of Roots's role is mana acceleration and neutralizing the opponent's creatures, for example (abilities which are synergistic in control decks, which want as much mana as possible, and need to survive an aggro rush).
So let's start with a simple example: Eager Cadet. This card sucks. It's a vanilla 1/1 for W and a card. How much better is a player's board position when they have this, compared to not having this (all other things the same)? It seems very much like a "lowest common denominator" card, so let's assign it a value of 1. The board position value of all other cards can be calculated in terms of how many Eager Cadets they're worth. Because it's funny, I propose the unit be shortened to "Cadets" or abbreviated as "C" (eventually we might be able to say, "Yeah, that card's worth about 1.2 kilocadets (KC)" ).
This doesn't necessarily mean that a 10/10 creature is worth 1 decacadet (DC). It can only block one creature; 10 Eager Cadets can block 10 creatures. If it attacks, it can be blocked by one creature; 10 Eager Cadets require 10 blockers to be completely stopped. On the other hand, Tempo does not care about life total (although it's certainly possible that it cares about change in life total- If you're dropping 8 life per turn, you're probably getting out-tempo'd pretty hard).
This is getting long so I'll stop here.
Tempo = Board Advantage / Mana
Mana could either mean the total amount of mana you could have spent in a game up to each turn, to get an aggregate 'total' of Tempo for an entire game; or mana in one turn, to get 'marginal' Tempo change per turn.
Board Advantage means the power of the cards you have on the table to affect the game. We've realized for a while that Card Advantage does not improve Tempo. Putting important permanents in play is fundamental to Tempo. Removing or neutralizing your opponent's game-affecting permanents reduces their tempo without increasing yours, slowing the game down.
I'm intentionally leaving this more vague than it should be to avoid saying more about Tempo than I feel qualified to.
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