Duelyst Forums

Understanding Terminology Better

There are some very good explanations up above, but there is another way to sort of tell. Based on how your General trades into the board you can gauge the aggressiveness of the deck. Keep in mind these are about as far as you can get from being set in stone, just something to help put meaning to the words.

If you are prioritize hitting the enemy General you are aggro.
If you do a mix, with slightly more focus on board control you are midrange or tempo
If you don’t attack the enemy general at all until you have a sizable lead you are a slightly lategame focused midrange/tempo
If you don’t attack the general at all unless they have absolutely no board presence you are some sort of control.

Healing is also more important the more later your focus is. If you are aggro you might run Healing Mystics or something but for midrange/control you are going to want some healing minions as well as any in faction options you have.

I’ve always felt that Midrange is very loosely defined as a deck that is somewhere between Aggro and Control in terms of pace that don’t really rely on ramping, combos or tempo to win.

Yeah, mid-range is really the “other” box after you decided it’s not aggro control or combo/otk.

Also arcane devourer is a terrible ramp card. It’s 8 mana to summon at best a revenant, which is 7 mana anyways. I tried it with blood taura, but that doesn’t even work since it constantly checks your health and doesn’t decrease cost.

Actually, no. There was a time, but Tempo and Midrange are sortof parallels that catch everything not covered by the 4 older archetypes.

What Midrange decks do, as force of habit is play to the highest EV (expected value) of their cards, (not to be conflated with “goodstuff”, which is just a type of deck under Midrange’s umbrella.). The hallmark of a Midrange deck is to play only cards with super high utility, regardless of how much support the deck has for them. A Midrange Argeon deck, for example- might play Blades and Trinity Oaths over Bonds and Ironcliffes- and Elyx to layer with the blades. The shell of bomb 2 and 3 drops remains relatively un-molested, but that’s because Midrange decks want to be live at every stage of the game. A card you probably wouldn’t play much in a midrange deck would be Slo. An excellent card with a low opportunity cost, but a low EV as well. Windblade Adept can pressure or make good trades, Lions give you options, and Silverguard Knight can mess with your opponent’s positioning and create strong trades. But Slo is primarily played for it’s Immolation combo- where a midrange deck may prefer Maw or Bloodtear for the same trick to give it scaling.

A Tempo deck, on the otherhand is all about resource efficiency- making sure you get the best of it, and your opponent gets the worst of it. Here, you want to be playing lots of “beatsticks”- generously costed bodies relative to their cost, as opposed to cards with a high baseline of EV. A tempo deck will likely eschew most high-drops in favor of inexpensive disruption. In this deck, Slo is the absolute best card- because it develops without using mana- making it capable of taking a spring and ramping- or more importantly, it makes movement tougher for your opponent and allows you to force them to make answers. Tempo Argeon, for example, plays Arclyte Sentinel- because it often allows you to trade face, or a small minion, and then finish off your opponent’s threat with the sentinel- further developing your board while cheaply putting your opponent behind.

I like to think of archetypes as being on an axis- where they are at odds with another archetype. I learned to think about it this way from a book written by Patrick Chapin called “Next Level Magic”. His model isn’t exactly the same, but the ideas are coherent.

The “Fair” Axis- Aggro vs. Control:

The deckbuilding strain to play threats vs. utilities. Typically, trying to have lots of both tends to make a deck inconsistent or ineffective.

The “Unfair” Axis- Ramp vs. Combo:

Deckbuilding strain related to building a sick combo that wins the game, or playing something ahead of schedule to the same effect. Historically, in most CCGs, these are the decks that get “banned out”, or in the case of Digital CCGs, get errata’d the most, because they exploit blemishes in the game design.

The “Switch” Axis- Midrange vs. Tempo:

These used to be collectively called “Aggro-Control”, since the decks play “fair”, but unlike Aggro and Control, they have a habit of not punishing Unfair decks for playing unfair. The operative strain here is what manner of “gear shifting” occurs over the game. A tempo deck can quickly shift into playing like a combo deck, where a Midrange deck can often easily shift into playing like a Control deck. A tempo deck is built to include surprise kills, or to put such insane pressure on the opponent when you get far enough ahead, even answering your threats leaves you in danger. Where a midrange deck would prefer tools that make it resilient as the games moves through it’s phases- meaning that the all-in tempo plays are just no bueno.

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Actually midranged ia between tempo and control. Not tempo and aggro, they dont try to burn you down but rather to efficiently control your board while building there own and once they have board control they will start to wail on your general.
Also you forgot to include crystal wisp as a ramp card.

This is where and why I’m struggling to see differences in identities.

Quickly looking through reddit, this is apparently Pandajj’s Tempo Lyonar deck.

Strangely, I couldn’t find a midrange lyonar deck available. I do not understand why that is. But, here is a claimed midrange budget vet deck.

Any explanation about how these are what they claim to be is appreciated :slight_smile:

The Lyonar deck naturally counters several popular early plays. A combination of Tempest, Blood Tear, General damage. The deck is loaded to make the most out of Holy Immolation. The third Oath and the circles are questionable. It wants to get on board, stay on board, and make itself difficult to answer while squeezing free damage.

The Vetruvian deck has a stronger “neutral game”, things you develop matter more, and as the game continues, you’ll crunch through card quality. Ofcourse that list has many questionable choices, but the concept is solid enough.

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Confusion.

Same question that I did to whyb0t as to how you would describe my deck that I posted here.

Your low curve, high amount of burn cards and aggresively statted minions say aggro.

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Aggro. Your non-minions are threats, your minions are threats, your combos care about face more than board. You can come back from behind easier than a Tempo deck, but can be fragile due to needing a body for so many cards. You have multiple minions that do face damage without actually having to cash in their health totals. It’s all damage acceleration, and your card flow is limited by Sojourner and Blaze Hound- because any card you draw will probably increase your pressure output.

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There’s overlap. Bloodtear and Maw are tempo because they remove things while putting a body on the board, which is very efficient. But they fit a midrange deck too because they’re good for controlling board, which allows you to play nice 4/5 drops.

Like I said, you don’t have to squeeze your deck into these categories. They’re only used to describe decks, not generally to build them. And they aren’t the only way to describe a deck. Your deck could be built around specific cards you wanted to use, or have a different method of play.

It’s up to you, the creator, if you want to call your deck midrange or a Zendo deck or a Divine Bond deck or a Pressure deck etc.

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True, almost all of my games end up pretty face vs face

I would have thought that tempo decks can come back easier than aggro, as when aggro runs out of steam, you’re usually finished.

Guess so, but I can’t go running around everywhere telling people to check out this sweet control deck :joy:

Actually, I would describe them actually as devices to help build decks. While there certainly aren’t hard and fast cards that only cater to a single archetype, viewing and revising your deck with archetype based logic tends to make cuts and decisions easier to understand. The operative idea isn’t to treat them as “sacred cows”, but as templates for what values you have in mind for the deck. Deck names are often wrong or hardly descriptive lol. I call my main Midrange Zirix deck “Space Lord”, because I think the song is really fun to play Duelyst to.

@seraphicreaper
Tempo decks require a type of tigherope play. You have to get ahead and position yourself to constantly be ahead- and tend to be less forgiving than a traditional aggro deck, because you have fewer sweet topdecks, and can’t just jam in a few value cards that double as threats as tech. Veteran “aggro players” (there really is no such thing as “archetype players”, but we all have archetypes were are more comfortable with than others,) know when not to over-develop or to play something a little more value oriented to keep themselves going. Playing L’Kian, Spelljammer or Hollowed Grovekeeper isn’t going to ruin your Reva deck- but Sunset Paragon or Ruby Rifter just aren’t playing the kind of game you want to be involved in even if one is perfect tech, and the other is a strong threat.

Then flameblood warlock flashes in the background.

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@Owlington
Until you remember that both combo and tempo use them as pressure tools :stuck_out_tongue: And they’re certifiably okay in an aggro deck with lots of reach.

I think this hits a point I struggle with in regards to decking, the idea of balancing board attention and face attention. As I’d say we established and I’ve experienced, my deck is pretty aggro oriented. My question then is, how much or how does an aggro deck typically mind the board?

Additionally, would flamebloods suit my deck better?

In my opinion yeah it does suit your deck but i dont see any card to substitue it for

I suppose I prefer to build my decks off concept :slight_smile:

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Do you feel like you’re playing it in aggro fashion? If so, would 3 face damage and a 3/1 body be useful? If so, try it out. If it doesn’t work, toss it. No deck is perfect straight out of crafting, you have to play with it and rotate cards and find what works best with your deck and how you play.

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I only have 1, so currently not really an option lol.

And simplified question to whoever: How does aggro attempt to handle an opposing board?