Ok, so the title itself kinda describes the point I have in this post. I really just do not understand tempo mage and how the heck it is so powerful.
When somebody came up to me about it I said that it is a bogus deck, because all of the low cost spells you would use to proc Archmage Antonidas's effect are the resources used to gain and sustain control of the board, rendering it pretty much worthless late game. It just seemed to me like a strictly worse mech mage.
Can somebody explain why it is so good, and WHY it works in the current meta? It really makes no sense to me...
Synergy. That's why it works, that's why it's strong. Mana wyrm and flamewaker are gods in that deck. They play 1283761 spells by turn 4 and it's hard to keep a board up against that.
If anything flamewaker alone made tempo mage so much stronger by giving you even more reasons to run cheaper spells. You usually end up winning games pretty fast by abusing flamewakers mechanic in conjunction with arcane missiles/frostbolts/fireballs/unstable portals/etc. Archmage Antonidas is pretty good in this deck, you usually don't get too much value off of him as you said, but when you do, and if your opponent can't respond to him, he wins games. So I wouldn't say that Archmage's effect is worthless because even if you have to drop him down for tempo with some cheap spells he's a threat your opponent simply has to deal with.
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"In this world where time is your enemy, it is my greatest ally. This grand game of life that you think you play in fact plays you. To that I say... Let the games begin!" - Nefarian
Yea soFlamewakeris so great, and I completely agree... But again, you have like 0 1 cost spells by the time you can play it out and combo! A mage deck that I run is similar to Nias' mage that he played in the americas championship, some mechs, Toshley, so I have plays and combos regardless of the resources in my DECK that i use...
It's sort of so-so and depends almost entirely on mad scientist getting mirror entity and forcing the opponent to be screwed.
Otherwise you have to play the deck mostly off curve and not use the coin if you can help it and that makes the deck kind of prone to missing on good early turns and it's not the kind of deck that can close a long game.
It is a very nice deck because it is balanced vs almost all matchups. So it isn't as annoying to play like some other deck types where you can get unlucky and queue into your counters a lot. The backdraw is of course that the same "balanced vs almost all" means it doesn't counter a meta too well, so it can have less than optimal winrates.
It is also very strong with the coin, due to getting synergies from it ala oil rogue. So it can turn going second into initiative, always a strength.
It isn't generally regarded as a top competitive deck, but from what I can see it is actually creeping into a lot of tournaments. Probably somewhat due to its "can beat all" nature. Also, it is one of the decks where you can vary your build the most, so it is somewhat less stale. Not even archmage is a necessity at all for example. You have "heavier" iterations with flamestrike, boom and rag for instance.
I'd say it is overall a better deck than mech mage, but mech mage will beat it in overall winrates in the right metas.
Despite the cries that you tend to hear around here, aggro tends to be less powerful in the overall swing of things. Aggro does well against greedy control, but falls apart against Combo decks, like patron, and has no lasting power. Mech, even with it's late game cards, tend to suffer BADLY due to running out of ammo very fast, especialy if they go for their 'power move' in mech warper+board flood. The deck tends to be more reliable when it flows up from regular mechs to turn 4 drops to Dr. Boom to archmage. Thus the deck works best when it stops acting like a mech deck.
So people took to expanding on that by removing all of those aggro-based cards and putting in tempo based cards that were all threats. The result was a deck that could beat aggro and combo decks. It suffered against control..which wasn't that popular anyway, and could hold it's ground against midrange. It wasn't as fast as pure aggro, but it was still pretty quick and much stronger as a result. Thus Tempo mage.
You see the same thing happen with other decks. Aggro zoo eventually morphed into midrange zoo. Face hunter couldn't break far into high legend a year ago and, thus, went Midrange. Even secret paladin is leaning more midrange in style.
Also helps that Tempo beats aggro, meaning that Tempo is stronger than mech.
Sidenote: It's fine to use spare parts with flamewaker, since you really only need one for Archmage, which is why they carry more cheap spells that can work in the early game, power flamewaker in the midgame, or power Archmage in the late game. ANd if you don't have any spells, Boom, Rag, or simply controling the board early on wins you the game anyway.
With Tempo Mage, Archmage Antonidas isn't even necessary. It's all about going with the Mana curve, and pacing yourself, you Tempo your opponent, limiting their board presence, and keeping card advantage.
Double up Sorcerer's Apprentice, or even Duplicate it, and all of a sudden you wreak havoc with Flamewaker. Couple those with an Azure Drake, let loose the Arcane Missiles, and all of a sudden you're doing massive amounts of damage across the board, and they have to attempt to stabilize while you continue with the cheap spells.
Tempo Mage is by far one of the most valuable decks, crafting cost is low, and the amount of pressure you can put on your opponent is insane, for the mana value.
The meta is the most important factor in determining the strength of any deck. Handlock is generally a very strong deck, but in an aggro infested meta, its basically unplayable. Tempo mage is very strong right now, largely because its the best counter to secret paladin, which comprises an insanely high 33% of the current meta. If secret paladins decline (dear god, hopefully soon) and are replaced by a deck that matches up better against Tempo mage, then it will become a much weaker deck.
The meta is the most important factor in determining the strength of any deck. Handlock is generally a very strong deck, but in an aggro infested meta, its basically unplayable. Tempo mage is very strong right now, largely because its the best counter to secret paladin, which comprises an insanely high 33% of the current meta. If secret paladins decline (dear god, hopefully soon) and are replaced by a deck that matches up better against Tempo mage, then it will become a much weaker deck.
I'm curious, what specifically makes temp mage great against secret pally?
Flamewaker and arcane missiles devastate their divine shields and low health minions, so Tempo mage usually has board control going into turn 6. Then fireball ping is the perfect answer to mysterious challenger on turn 6.
"Tempo mage" describes a really broad range of decks, with Mana Wyrm, Frostbolt, Flamewaker, Fireball, and Archmage Antonidas being the only common denominators. Some lists are very aggressive, packing in lots of 1-mana spells and topping out at Dr. Boom. Others are very heavy midrange decks. Some mix in mechs. Some mix in dragons. It's pretty hard to generalize about tempo mage—the most you can say is that those five core cards are really strong and have all kinds of synergies in common.
tempo mages has minions that produce spells to activate antonidas. While cards like arcane missile and frostbolt are typically used early game, they also play card like Mechanical Yeti, Rhonin, Toshley to generate ammunition for antonidas in late game.
Therefore it is a deck with great early game (probably the best early game outside of mech mage, I would say), decent mid game (yeti and water elemental are some of the best 4 drops) as well as good late game.
The meta is the most important factor in determining the strength of any deck. Handlock is generally a very strong deck, but in an aggro infested meta, its basically unplayable. Tempo mage is very strong right now, largely because its the best counter to secret paladin, which comprises an insanely high 33% of the current meta. If secret paladins decline (dear god, hopefully soon) and are replaced by a deck that matches up better against Tempo mage, then it will become a much weaker deck.
I'm curious, what specifically makes temp mage great against secret pally?
Against the aggro version, tempo decks naturally are stronger than aggro. Tempo tends to have an early game that goes toe to toe against aggro, but doesn't get weaker afterwards. Thus the two can fight together until aggro wears down and tempo snowballs to a kill.
Otherwise, the key to beating secret paladin is in your turn 6 play. You try to get 3 things set up for that turn, set to priority:
1. A way to kill a giant. Imainge you are playing a handlock that drops a mountain giant at turn 6. Same concept.
2. A minion on the board. This is to trigger the secret chain. Note that this minion CANNOT be used for #1.
3. The clearing of the paladin's board prior to turn 6.
Thus at turn 6, when Challenger shows, you use #2 to trigger the chain, #1 to kill the Challenger, and, since #3 is about, the Avenge effect is lost in it is well.
Tempo decks tend to be good at putting down and holding the board early on. They most suffer against mid-game clears since they have no comeback mechanics. Clears that even slow Secret paladin doesn't have nor have time to play even if they did.
The result is an advantage against secret paladin. Dragon priest, another Tempo deck, has a similar advantage.
Can somebody explain why it is so good, and WHY it works in the current meta?
Can I just say, that I absolutely hate it, when people talk about the "meta" as if it was a thing? There is no such thing as a current meta and there is no such thing as a "current" meta.
Lolwhat?
"Metagaming is any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game." -- Wikipedia.
"The meta" is a construct used to refer to the existing set of all popularly-played decks, which is in turn used by hundreds of professional and tens of thousands of ardent-but-not-professional players to help guide their strategies (established during deckbuilding; i.e. "the meta is comprised mostly of combo decks like Grim Patron and Combo Druid right now, so I'd be smart to choose a strategy that disrupts combo decks") and actions (taken inside an individual game; i.e. "He's played an Equality, and Secret Paladin only ever runs one Equality, so I should be OK dropping an Ancient of War next to this Kel'Thuzad and Ragnaros."
The idea that "the meta" isn't a thing when literally everything in Hearthstone more complex than the tempo-card advantage-life tradeoff is 100% metagame based isn't just silly, it's laugh-out-loudable.
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I looked at this card originally and I thought, you know, it's a card, and you play this card. The card will be that card that you play so you're playing a card. So, it is one thing to play a card. If you're opponent doesn't really have any cards, the card will screw up the card pretty hard, and that means it's a pretty good card.
at first i really didnt like tempo mage at all, and im a mage player. But u have to figure out a list that fits your type of playstyle for it to really work. like i used the traditional list and had really bad results with it. but i tried out a deck similar to JABs tempo mage and won almost every game i had against hunter/druid/handlock.
the problem with mech mage is that it runs out of steam way to fast, if you get hit by an early board wipe its basically game over, but tempo mage can go toe to toe with late game decks other than control warrior
"Tempo mage" describes a really broad range of decks, with Mana Wyrm, Frostbolt, Flamewaker, Fireball, and Archmage Antonidas being the only common denominators. Some lists are very aggressive, packing in lots of 1-mana spells and topping out at Dr. Boom. Others are very heavy midrange decks. Some mix in mechs. Some mix in dragons. It's pretty hard to generalize about tempo mage—the most you can say is that those five core cards are really strong and have all kinds of synergies in common.
Actually there IS a general mentality with Tempo mage.. It's a Tempo deck.
No I'm not being cute.
Tempo decks focus on having a VERY rigid curve of threats that focus on you keeping the board, or at least keeping the board in contest. Thus you won't see acolytes of pain, or healbot. You do NOT play defensive. Even Mirror is used more to power up a Wyrm while making it an even more dangerous threat or as Waker/Arch fuel. The idea is to keep the threats coming until your opponent miffs a turn (typically during their weak phase: early game with control/midrange, late game with aggro, so on) then snowball from there.
All of the decks also share the same weakness: recovery. If they lose Tempo, they can't recover baring a VERY lucky flamewaker spam. They have no heal, and very little card draw (which is why Emperor is a poor card for the deck). That's why all of those decks are labeled the same. It's not the cards in the deck that determines the type: it's the style and win condition. Handlock, Demon Handlock, and Dragon Handlock all win and play VERY differently and have to be approached differently.
Whatever cards you add in, if it plays like a Tempo, wins like a Tempo, and loses like a Tempo, it's a Tempo.
Ok, so the title itself kinda describes the point I have in this post. I really just do not understand tempo mage and how the heck it is so powerful.
When somebody came up to me about it I said that it is a bogus deck, because all of the low cost spells you would use to proc Archmage Antonidas's effect are the resources used to gain and sustain control of the board, rendering it pretty much worthless late game. It just seemed to me like a strictly worse mech mage.
Can somebody explain why it is so good, and WHY it works in the current meta? It really makes no sense to me...
Tempo is a kind of meta-resource in Hearthstone; it's "how efficiently you establish board presence and remove your enemy's board presence." Tempo Mage thrives on the interactions between several uniquely efficient methods of both establishing its own board presence (Mad Scientist --> Mirror Entity; Mana Wyrm --> Mirror Image) and removing its enemy's (Flamewalker --> Cheap Spells; Sorcerer's Apprentice --> Cheap Removal).
Tempo Mage works because unlike life or card advantage, small tempo gains in the early game have a tendency to snowball rapidly, leaving the opponent unable to regain board control and thus unable to stop the loss of life. It's designed to keep the enemy from having anything on the board, basically ever. Then it relies on a finisher that, if you play it onto an empty board, essentially wins the game unless your opponent has some extremely potent removal (Antonidas).
It's a very powerful gameplan.
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I looked at this card originally and I thought, you know, it's a card, and you play this card. The card will be that card that you play so you're playing a card. So, it is one thing to play a card. If you're opponent doesn't really have any cards, the card will screw up the card pretty hard, and that means it's a pretty good card.
Actually there IS a general mentality with Tempo mage.. It's a Tempo deck.
No I'm not being cute.
Tempo decks focus on having a VERY rigid curve of threats that focus on you keeping the board, or at least keeping the board in contest. Thus you won't see acolytes of pain, or healbot. You do NOT play defensive. Even Mirror is used more to power up a Wyrm while making it an even more dangerous threat or as Waker/Arch fuel. The idea is to keep the threats coming until your opponent miffs a turn (typically during their weak phase: early game with control/midrange, late game with aggro, so on) then snowball from there.
All of the decks also share the same weakness: recovery. If they lose Tempo, they can't recover baring a VERY lucky flamewaker spam. They have no heal, and very little card draw (which is why Emperor is a poor card for the deck). That's why all of those decks are labeled the same. It's not the cards in the deck that determines the type: it's the style and win condition. Handlock, Demon Handlock, and Dragon Handlock all win and play VERY differently and have to be approached differently.
Whatever cards you add in, if it plays like a Tempo, wins like a Tempo, and loses like a Tempo, it's a Tempo.
Actually, most tempo mages run an unusually large amount of card draw to compensate for the number of cheap, low-impact spells they play (two Azure Drakes, one or two Arcane Intellects, sometimes one or two Spellslingers). Many run Flamestrike, offering them a substantial defensive tool to neutralize a lost board. Against some opponents, it is incorrect to aggressively spam threats on curve; against control warrior, for instance, it's best to hoard cards for combo turns with Flamewaker or Archmage Antonidas. In fact, it's never correct to just blindly follow some prescriptive notion of "oh, I'm a tempo deck, I must play minions on curve." You have to adapt to your hand, your opponent's deck, the board state, etc.
In fact, I just don't think "tempo deck" is a useful descriptor at all. It doesn't really mean anything. Most "tempo mages" are midrange decks; some are aggro. Simple as that.
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Ok, so the title itself kinda describes the point I have in this post. I really just do not understand tempo mage and how the heck it is so powerful.
When somebody came up to me about it I said that it is a bogus deck, because all of the low cost spells you would use to proc Archmage Antonidas's effect are the resources used to gain and sustain control of the board, rendering it pretty much worthless late game. It just seemed to me like a strictly worse mech mage.
Can somebody explain why it is so good, and WHY it works in the current meta? It really makes no sense to me...
Pog to the Champ to the one-two-Kappa.
It has a lot of synergy and can do lots of mini combos in a variety of ways.
for example. Turn 1 mana wyrm, coin, mirror image is insane.
turn 3 flamewaker with apprentice on board into arcane missiles is insane.
But it's the ability to go Aggro or wait and get value off said combos that make deck so good.
plus mad scientist is broken
Synergy. That's why it works, that's why it's strong. Mana wyrm and flamewaker are gods in that deck. They play 1283761 spells by turn 4 and it's hard to keep a board up against that.
If anything flamewaker alone made tempo mage so much stronger by giving you even more reasons to run cheaper spells. You usually end up winning games pretty fast by abusing flamewakers mechanic in conjunction with arcane missiles/frostbolts/fireballs/unstable portals/etc. Archmage Antonidas is pretty good in this deck, you usually don't get too much value off of him as you said, but when you do, and if your opponent can't respond to him, he wins games. So I wouldn't say that Archmage's effect is worthless because even if you have to drop him down for tempo with some cheap spells he's a threat your opponent simply has to deal with.
"In this world where time is your enemy, it is my greatest ally. This grand game of life that you think you play in fact plays you. To that I say... Let the games begin!" - Nefarian
Yea soFlamewakeris so great, and I completely agree... But again, you have like 0 1 cost spells by the time you can play it out and combo! A mage deck that I run is similar to Nias' mage that he played in the americas championship, some mechs, Toshley, so I have plays and combos regardless of the resources in my DECK that i use...
Pog to the Champ to the one-two-Kappa.
It's sort of so-so and depends almost entirely on mad scientist getting mirror entity and forcing the opponent to be screwed.
Otherwise you have to play the deck mostly off curve and not use the coin if you can help it and that makes the deck kind of prone to missing on good early turns and it's not the kind of deck that can close a long game.
So. Meh.
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It is a very nice deck because it is balanced vs almost all matchups. So it isn't as annoying to play like some other deck types where you can get unlucky and queue into your counters a lot. The backdraw is of course that the same "balanced vs almost all" means it doesn't counter a meta too well, so it can have less than optimal winrates.
It is also very strong with the coin, due to getting synergies from it ala oil rogue. So it can turn going second into initiative, always a strength.
It isn't generally regarded as a top competitive deck, but from what I can see it is actually creeping into a lot of tournaments. Probably somewhat due to its "can beat all" nature. Also, it is one of the decks where you can vary your build the most, so it is somewhat less stale. Not even archmage is a necessity at all for example. You have "heavier" iterations with flamestrike, boom and rag for instance.
I'd say it is overall a better deck than mech mage, but mech mage will beat it in overall winrates in the right metas.
Despite the cries that you tend to hear around here, aggro tends to be less powerful in the overall swing of things. Aggro does well against greedy control, but falls apart against Combo decks, like patron, and has no lasting power. Mech, even with it's late game cards, tend to suffer BADLY due to running out of ammo very fast, especialy if they go for their 'power move' in mech warper+board flood. The deck tends to be more reliable when it flows up from regular mechs to turn 4 drops to Dr. Boom to archmage. Thus the deck works best when it stops acting like a mech deck.
So people took to expanding on that by removing all of those aggro-based cards and putting in tempo based cards that were all threats. The result was a deck that could beat aggro and combo decks. It suffered against control..which wasn't that popular anyway, and could hold it's ground against midrange. It wasn't as fast as pure aggro, but it was still pretty quick and much stronger as a result. Thus Tempo mage.
You see the same thing happen with other decks. Aggro zoo eventually morphed into midrange zoo. Face hunter couldn't break far into high legend a year ago and, thus, went Midrange. Even secret paladin is leaning more midrange in style.
Also helps that Tempo beats aggro, meaning that Tempo is stronger than mech.
Sidenote: It's fine to use spare parts with flamewaker, since you really only need one for Archmage, which is why they carry more cheap spells that can work in the early game, power flamewaker in the midgame, or power Archmage in the late game. ANd if you don't have any spells, Boom, Rag, or simply controling the board early on wins you the game anyway.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
With Tempo Mage, Archmage Antonidas isn't even necessary. It's all about going with the Mana curve, and pacing yourself, you Tempo your opponent, limiting their board presence, and keeping card advantage.
Double up Sorcerer's Apprentice, or even Duplicate it, and all of a sudden you wreak havoc with Flamewaker. Couple those with an Azure Drake, let loose the Arcane Missiles, and all of a sudden you're doing massive amounts of damage across the board, and they have to attempt to stabilize while you continue with the cheap spells.
Tempo Mage is by far one of the most valuable decks, crafting cost is low, and the amount of pressure you can put on your opponent is insane, for the mana value.
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The meta is the most important factor in determining the strength of any deck. Handlock is generally a very strong deck, but in an aggro infested meta, its basically unplayable. Tempo mage is very strong right now, largely because its the best counter to secret paladin, which comprises an insanely high 33% of the current meta. If secret paladins decline (dear god, hopefully soon) and are replaced by a deck that matches up better against Tempo mage, then it will become a much weaker deck.
I'm curious, what specifically makes temp mage great against secret pally?
Flamewaker and arcane missiles devastate their divine shields and low health minions, so Tempo mage usually has board control going into turn 6. Then fireball ping is the perfect answer to mysterious challenger on turn 6.
"Tempo mage" describes a really broad range of decks, with Mana Wyrm, Frostbolt, Flamewaker, Fireball, and Archmage Antonidas being the only common denominators. Some lists are very aggressive, packing in lots of 1-mana spells and topping out at Dr. Boom. Others are very heavy midrange decks. Some mix in mechs. Some mix in dragons. It's pretty hard to generalize about tempo mage—the most you can say is that those five core cards are really strong and have all kinds of synergies in common.
tempo mages has minions that produce spells to activate antonidas. While cards like arcane missile and frostbolt are typically used early game, they also play card like Mechanical Yeti, Rhonin, Toshley to generate ammunition for antonidas in late game.
Therefore it is a deck with great early game (probably the best early game outside of mech mage, I would say), decent mid game (yeti and water elemental are some of the best 4 drops) as well as good late game.
Against the aggro version, tempo decks naturally are stronger than aggro. Tempo tends to have an early game that goes toe to toe against aggro, but doesn't get weaker afterwards. Thus the two can fight together until aggro wears down and tempo snowballs to a kill.
Otherwise, the key to beating secret paladin is in your turn 6 play. You try to get 3 things set up for that turn, set to priority:
1. A way to kill a giant. Imainge you are playing a handlock that drops a mountain giant at turn 6. Same concept.
2. A minion on the board. This is to trigger the secret chain. Note that this minion CANNOT be used for #1.
3. The clearing of the paladin's board prior to turn 6.
Thus at turn 6, when Challenger shows, you use #2 to trigger the chain, #1 to kill the Challenger, and, since #3 is about, the Avenge effect is lost in it is well.
Tempo decks tend to be good at putting down and holding the board early on. They most suffer against mid-game clears since they have no comeback mechanics. Clears that even slow Secret paladin doesn't have nor have time to play even if they did.
The result is an advantage against secret paladin. Dragon priest, another Tempo deck, has a similar advantage.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
Lolwhat?
"Metagaming is any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game." -- Wikipedia.
"The meta" is a construct used to refer to the existing set of all popularly-played decks, which is in turn used by hundreds of professional and tens of thousands of ardent-but-not-professional players to help guide their strategies (established during deckbuilding; i.e. "the meta is comprised mostly of combo decks like Grim Patron and Combo Druid right now, so I'd be smart to choose a strategy that disrupts combo decks") and actions (taken inside an individual game; i.e. "He's played an Equality, and Secret Paladin only ever runs one Equality, so I should be OK dropping an Ancient of War next to this Kel'Thuzad and Ragnaros."
The idea that "the meta" isn't a thing when literally everything in Hearthstone more complex than the tempo-card advantage-life tradeoff is 100% metagame based isn't just silly, it's laugh-out-loudable.
I looked at this card originally and I thought, you know, it's a card, and you play this card. The card will be that card that you play so you're playing a card. So, it is one thing to play a card. If you're opponent doesn't really have any cards, the card will screw up the card pretty hard, and that means it's a pretty good card.
at first i really didnt like tempo mage at all, and im a mage player. But u have to figure out a list that fits your type of playstyle for it to really work. like i used the traditional list and had really bad results with it. but i tried out a deck similar to JABs tempo mage and won almost every game i had against hunter/druid/handlock.
the problem with mech mage is that it runs out of steam way to fast, if you get hit by an early board wipe its basically game over, but tempo mage can go toe to toe with late game decks other than control warrior
Actually there IS a general mentality with Tempo mage.. It's a Tempo deck.
No I'm not being cute.
Tempo decks focus on having a VERY rigid curve of threats that focus on you keeping the board, or at least keeping the board in contest. Thus you won't see acolytes of pain, or healbot. You do NOT play defensive. Even Mirror is used more to power up a Wyrm while making it an even more dangerous threat or as Waker/Arch fuel. The idea is to keep the threats coming until your opponent miffs a turn (typically during their weak phase: early game with control/midrange, late game with aggro, so on) then snowball from there.
All of the decks also share the same weakness: recovery. If they lose Tempo, they can't recover baring a VERY lucky flamewaker spam. They have no heal, and very little card draw (which is why Emperor is a poor card for the deck). That's why all of those decks are labeled the same. It's not the cards in the deck that determines the type: it's the style and win condition. Handlock, Demon Handlock, and Dragon Handlock all win and play VERY differently and have to be approached differently.
Whatever cards you add in, if it plays like a Tempo, wins like a Tempo, and loses like a Tempo, it's a Tempo.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
Tempo is a kind of meta-resource in Hearthstone; it's "how efficiently you establish board presence and remove your enemy's board presence." Tempo Mage thrives on the interactions between several uniquely efficient methods of both establishing its own board presence (Mad Scientist --> Mirror Entity; Mana Wyrm --> Mirror Image) and removing its enemy's (Flamewalker --> Cheap Spells; Sorcerer's Apprentice --> Cheap Removal).
Tempo Mage works because unlike life or card advantage, small tempo gains in the early game have a tendency to snowball rapidly, leaving the opponent unable to regain board control and thus unable to stop the loss of life. It's designed to keep the enemy from having anything on the board, basically ever. Then it relies on a finisher that, if you play it onto an empty board, essentially wins the game unless your opponent has some extremely potent removal (Antonidas).
It's a very powerful gameplan.
I looked at this card originally and I thought, you know, it's a card, and you play this card. The card will be that card that you play so you're playing a card. So, it is one thing to play a card. If you're opponent doesn't really have any cards, the card will screw up the card pretty hard, and that means it's a pretty good card.
Actually, most tempo mages run an unusually large amount of card draw to compensate for the number of cheap, low-impact spells they play (two Azure Drakes, one or two Arcane Intellects, sometimes one or two Spellslingers). Many run Flamestrike, offering them a substantial defensive tool to neutralize a lost board. Against some opponents, it is incorrect to aggressively spam threats on curve; against control warrior, for instance, it's best to hoard cards for combo turns with Flamewaker or Archmage Antonidas. In fact, it's never correct to just blindly follow some prescriptive notion of "oh, I'm a tempo deck, I must play minions on curve." You have to adapt to your hand, your opponent's deck, the board state, etc.
In fact, I just don't think "tempo deck" is a useful descriptor at all. It doesn't really mean anything. Most "tempo mages" are midrange decks; some are aggro. Simple as that.