Hello, folks! Have you ever had a problem with tempo?

I can still remember my first run-in with a Stasis deck. You had a variety of Stasis combos, such as Chronatog Stasis or Turbo Stasis that won by keeping Stasis long enough to win. Cards like Howling Mine and bounce effects could keep Stasis going (with your own land drops), and you’d use Island Sanctuary, Moat, or Kismet to keep people locked down or unable to attack you.

And Stasis and Armageddon were hardly the only entries into serious tempo fun times. One of the earliest strong decks was called Prison. It ran a bunch of artifacts—Winter Orb and Howling Mine—to tap down with Relic Barrier and Icy Manipulator. You turned them off at the end of someone’s turn so you could untap under the Orb and then tap the Mine after you drew your card. After blowing out the table, you’d win with Titania's Song.

Tempo lasted. People might have really disliked the Combo Winter era of Urza’s block, with a lot of cards banned back then, but the slow, tempo-fueled Masques block, with cards like Rising Waters and Rishadan Port, might not have been as hard to crack, but was slower and less fun.

Meanwhile, don’t ever forget the epic struggle of a game against land removal. Stone Rain? Sinkhole? Ice Storm? Strip Mine? All check! Then combine that with powerful beaters like Juzam Djinn or stuff like Dingus Egg and Ankh of Mishra. Did you know that land destruction used to be so ubiquitous that Dingus Egg was restricted? That is not a typo.

There was a popular combo deck around Masques block in Standard that used Ankh of Mishra.

Today, we don’t play around with cards like this. We want people to play the game. So a card like blue’s Fade Away doesn’t work. Take a look at just how strong of a card it is. If you had Fade Away in today’s Standard, and if that’s the only change you make, what would happen? How would the format be different? If someone taps out to play a nasty beater, right now, all he or she is risking is some removal, and at the worst, some mass removal. But you can drop multiple creatures or force the player to choose to swap a land for that Siege Rhino. It’s a virtual 3-mana blue Wrath of God in the right situation. And you can plan it since you know it’s coming.

How could Rishadan Cutpurse be printed today? What about its Pirate friends Rishadan Brigand and Rishadan Footpad? With all of the love blinking out a creature has today, do you really want to deal with someone who uses Ghostly Flicker on those?

And since tempo in that old-school sense has gone the way of the (INSERT EXTINCT ANIMAL HERE), people aren’t expecting it any more at the kitchen table—except for the occasional Cyclonic Rift. So let’s use some cards both new and old to bring back some of that tempo, but without going all Armageddon-crazy. No one wants to see that thang again! But tempo should not be a bad word. Yes, there have been decks throughout Magic’s history that have used elements of tempo. Tradewind Rider was combined with Awakening to make Tradewake decks that slowly bounced all of your stuff. You also had a certain deck win with Psychatog and Upheaval. So we can embrace some good tempo that works without pushing into tempo that’s annoying.

Imagine if someone in your playgroup always ran into a ton of counters every time he or she played. That player would quickly grow sick of counters. There’s still a place for them, but too much of anything is too much—too much ramp, too much tutoring, too much counters, or whatever. Tempo elements are the same thing. You can destroy lands with stuff without feeling bad, as long as you aren’t recurring Strip Mine with Crucible of Worlds every turn and going sick about it. It’s the same here. I’ll show you:

From the Deep ? Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (23)
• 2 Colossal Whale
• 2 Deep-Sea Kraken
• 2 Kraken of the Straits
• 2 Scourge of Fleets
• 2 Shipbreaker Kraken
• 4 Kraken Hatchling
• 4 Man-o'-War
• 4 Reef Worm
• 1 Lorthos, the Tidemaker

• Spells (11)
• 4 Whelming Wave
• 4 Quest for Ula's Temple
• 3 Sky Diamond

• Lands (26)
• 22 Island
• 4 Myriad Landscape

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In addition to the Wave, it has some other tempo aspects. Our good Jellyfish and one of our Krakens will bounce creatures on arrival. Other tempo aspects including playing, and then paying for, the monstrosity of the Shipbreaker Kraken and paying that 8 mana when you swing with Lorthos, the Tidemaker. There’s a strong tempo angle to this deck.

But you know what? Nobody cares about this. If you bring this hugely flavorful deck to play at most kitchen tables, no one is going to be cross with you. They are easy to manage. Wave just bounces. Shipbreaker Kraken just taps and keeps them tapped—all you have to do is kill the Kraken (and someone spent a lot of mana for that trick, too), Lorthos just taps, but you can untap later, and this deck has no card-draw, no card-advantage engines, no counters, and nothing that’s a real issue. This is a tempo deck that’s fully in the tempo realm of Magic but that isn’t going to get heat. If you bounce my team with Whelming Wave and then swing and kill me with Lorthos and Colossal Whale, I’m going to congratulate you, not get all huffy.

Here’s another:

Rakdos Madness ? Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (18)
• 2 Big Game Hunter
• 2 Grave Scrabbler
• 2 Hammer Mage
• 2 Mad Prophet
• 2 Muck Drubb
• 4 Putrid Imp
• 4 Reckless Wurm

• Spells (18)
• 2 Lightning Axe
• 4 Dark Withering
• 4 Fiery Temper
• 4 Violent Eruption
• 4 Faithless Looting

• Lands (24)
• 10 Mountain
• 12 Swamp
• 2 Keldon Megaliths

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G/U Madness is a great example of a Tempo deck because it used madness to pay a bunch of creatures for a lot cheaper than normal, particularly when twinned off pumping your Wild Mongrel for more damage. So I felt it would be fun to build a Rakdos Madness deck instead. Without the Mongrel, Circular Logic, and Basking Rootwalla, the deck feels a lot more fair.

What black and red have always been good at is blowing up creatures, and this deck focuses on that, too—Dark Withering, Fiery Temper, and Violent Eruption are here to destroy things. That’s what Rakdos does. Shoot, I even tossed in two each of Big Game Hunter and Lightning Axe for more removal. This plays into the color’s strengths.

But then your creature base weakens. Are you going to run something like Gorgon Recluse or Brain Gorgers? So I stuck with Muck Drubb because you can have it protect better creatures by redirecting removal to itself. It knows it sucks, and it will die for its master. Anyway, from there, I tossed in Grave Scrabbler for more madness fun.

And then we needed some discard stuff. Faithless Looting is super-hot here, and the flashback really suits the deck. Then I lobbed in Hammer Mage, Putrid Imp, and Mad Prophet. This is a very aggressive deck that wants to generate a discard trigger for one effect and then play a cheap card for another, thus building up tempo quickly. And again, no one is going to mind if you sleeve up Rakdos Madness at the next Magic night.

A deck that accelerates its mana quickly gives you tempo because you can play beaters faster. Speed matters. Dropping Sol Ring into Solemn Simulacrum into a huge 6-drop on turn three is a time-tested fun part about Commander. Even the classic Timmy Standard deck Fires used Llanowar Elves and Birds of Paradise to drop Fires of Yavimaya on the second turn in order out begin swinging with your beaters the next turn. Tempo cares about things like haste and acceleration.

So grab some tempo, and play! It shouldn’t be a bad word at kitchen tables and Magic nights!

Get your tempo on!