Fast decks have a lower skill floor, their goal of winning is more straightforward: getting the opponents health to 0
That is the point of literally every deck in the game. If you’re finding wins hard to come by right now, I can point out where you’re going wrong... 😂
Out of the top 11 decks according to VS, 7 or 8 of them are aggro or tempo decks. Just because a deck doesn't look to kill you on turn 5 doesn't mean it isn't an aggro deck.
Tier 1: Even Warlock, Taunt Warrior, Cube Warlock, Token Druid, Kathrena Hunter, Big Spell Mage
Tier 2: Odd Paladin, Even Shaman, Odd Rogue, Taunt Druid, Big Warrior
No way are 7 or 8 of these considered "Fast" or "Aggro" decks.
Aggro doesn't necessarily mean "kills you on turn 5." Out of all those, the only ones that are not aggro or midrange are Taunt Warrior, BSM, and Taunt Druid. I'm not sure how Recruit Warrior plays, having never played/played against it.
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Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.
Control decks as well as mid range decks used to be the strongest decks available example being control warrior that had justicar, mid range hunter, control priest, etc. Ages ago this thread would've been reversed and it would've been talking about aggro needing more tools against control.
Most 1 and 2 Manacost Minions are superstrong compared to their cost. The Tunnel Trogg into Totem Golem was a sick opener, if you get a Flametongue Totem out the next turn you have nearly won against a control deck. That's 9/10 worth of stats for 5 Mana (ignoring overload).
Just by stats, it's insane tempo gain in the early turns, that's why aggro decks will always be superior at the start of the game.
You can counter them with good AOE cards, but you also have to draw them. If you are sitting at turn 3 with your win condition in hand, but unable to play anything you will be overwhelmed.
It's that simple.
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Current Golden Heroes: Shaman, Warrior, Druid, Warlock, Rogue
'control vs control is all about who draws their win condition first' is as true as 'aggro vs aggro is all about who goes face more'
which is to say, it's not. both are are resource management games, and identifying how you'll actually win (in control vs control for example, sure it's true if you draw your win condition first you'll have an edge, but did you give up a fatigue advantage to get there, and was it ultimately worth it?).
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Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.
'control vs control is all about who draws their win condition first' is as true as 'aggro vs aggro is all about who goes face more'
which is to say, it's not. both are are resource management games, and identifying how you'll actually win (in control vs control for example, sure it's true if you draw your win condition first you'll have an edge, but did you give up a fatigue advantage to get there, and was it ultimately worth it?).
I was just kinda dumbing it down for the sake of proving a point with regard to the thread haha (fast decks being best, which I know isn't completely true). I know it's not completely set in stone just like that. I hate control vs control exact mirror matches. Apart from being incredibly long and boring, I know that usually if I lose it's my own fault lol. It's easier to accept a loss if there was literally nothing I could have done better (maybe counter-intuitive, but whatever).
I'm on the side that thinks aggro is tougher than some people say, to play perfectly. Obviously the floor of the fast decks is much higher because it's easier to play on curve and have better top decks that overwhelm your enemy in the first few turns. Aggro vs aggro is still my favorite match, I'll stand by that.
I used to be on the side that thinks control is harder to play all the time every time. Then I opened up my mind a bit haha, actually played some aggro decks for a while. Every game has its intricacies. If it didn't, I wouldn't still be playing this stupid game lol.
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Exclusing the obvious reasoning associated with the amount of proper technical play required to play those decks and have them be effective (Midrange decks require the least, followed by Aggro, and then Control with Combo at the end as the most intensive ones), there are two aspects you have to keep in mind:
1 - This is Casual game, designed to be casual, designed so players can hop in while taking a dump, do a 5/10 minute session, and leave. There is a massive mobile audience in this game, and unfortunately the game needs to account for that. If people were to be forced into 30 minute games every time, that wouldn't work well for mobile players. Also, remember that the Ranked system is just a boring, tedious process which doesn't actually emphasize quality play, it emphasizes quantity play. All that matters for Ranked mode is that you can play as many games as fast as you can, since that makes the process of climbing much faster. Since there is literally no difference between a 2 minute Pirate Warrior win that you get for your opponent not drawing a card under 4 mana, and a 50 minute extremely intensive control mirror that goes to fatigue and requires a lot of resource management, why would players bother doing the 50 minute one?
Because it's more fun, yes, personally for me yes, which is why I do it, but most players don't intend on doing that, they just want to win win win.
2 - This brings us to the second point, instant gratification. The more casual your player base is, the more you need to appeal to the lowest common demoninator. Reality is, most people DO NOT like to be told they are not good and they need to improve. Most players who play don't give a crap about improving, they just want to win because that is where they get instant gratification, no matter what it takes to get it.
If everyone wanted to become better and perfect their technical play, they would all be using the most complicated decks available just to ensure their games were decided by how well they played, not by how well they draw a curve and the opponent cannot answer. And so Blizzard catters to this, they add as much randomness as possible, which ensures that ANY player in the world can still have a chance to win any game. You can be the worst player in the world, be matched up against, for example, one of the World Champions, and still win the game. That is completely illogical for me, the better player should win the game, and this is assuming we have a roughly neutral matchup and draw order, but reality is it is still possible for the better player to lose the game.
Either way, we know this is how the game works, we know Blizzard designes the game with this in mind, it is only our fault if we don't enjoy that and still play it. (I don't enjoy that aspect but since I don't care about competing anymore, I can enjoy the game for it's Casual appeal, many fun things you can do)
ALL OF THIS!
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Courage is not the absence of fear, Courage is the presence of faith.
The ladder system rewards faster decks. Even when slower decks have higher win rates, the difference isn't enough to offset the game time to play.
Faster decks have traditionally been less expensive.
Slower decks have often introduced more randomness - it doesn't feel good to play a long game and essentially lose because of an Elise pack card. Many players prefer to win with cards they included within their deck and lose to cards their opponent included, rather than RNG effects.
Anti-control decks have historically been the most polarizing and frustrating to lose against - quest Mage, quest Rogue, Jade, mill decks.
Hearthstone is a mobile game and has relatively straightforward rules with small deck sizes. It wasn't designed to be played like an hour-long tabletop CCG.
(I'm a Control Warlock main, who despite the deck being reported as Tier 4, teched Howlfiend + Treachery at ranks 5-1 to have chances against the zillion hyper greedy combo decks currently on ladder. It worked more often than not, but I got a little tired of it).
"But isn't aggro braindead?"
This is a complain many have leveled against the archetype. It seems like just running out everything you have as quickly as possible and making a mad dash for face damage betrays a lack of strategy, but nothing could be further from the truth.
For starters, I suspect a healthy portion of the psychological connection between, "aggro decks," and "bad players," has to due simply with how cheap aggressive decks tend to be. Because new players don't have lots of resources to throw around, they tend to make what is cheapest, and those are usually aggressive decks. This might lead to many bad players playing aggro, but it's not because aggro is easy to play.
On that note, many people believe games require more skill the longer they go on. The logic is generally sound: the longer the game, the more decisions need to be made, and the more decisions that are made, the more probable it is player knowledge will shine through. But let's take a look at two cases where this doesn't really hold.
In the first, the aggressive deck rushes an opponent down before they feel they got to make meaningful decisions. By the time the opponent could play a card or two, they were effectively dead. In such cases, the slower player's skill doesn't get to be highlighted because of decisions made before the match began.When you a build a deck that's unable to reliably make choices in the early game, you are effectively saying that skill doesn't matter in that stage of play.
You want a free pass to avoid having to make decisions for the first few turns and have to hope your opponent agrees. But when they say, "turns 1-3 really, really matter because of the attacker advantage in Hearthstone and ability to compound tempo," they are demonstrating a good understanding of the game.
Another such example is when you have control on control matches. For those who have had the pleasure of watching these long, drawn-out games, you notice a few things such as, (a) they can be quite dull and, more importantly (b) the players often decide to simply not make decisions and play nothing. Each player will sit back until one is literally forced to make a choice or begin to lose key resources. Not making choices for many turns isn't the peak of skillful decision making. Doubly so when the control decks have single-card value engines/win conditions that cannot be easily removed (see Deathknights or Justicar back in the control warrior days), turning many games into matters of who drew their key resource first. If my Control Mage has Jaina in the top 5 cards yours is in the bottom 5, guess who's going to win that one? It's not a display of skill at that point to the degree the length of the game might suggest.
Also books with more pages aren't better than books with fewer. It's all about the content, not the length. This applies to games of Hearthstone as well.
In the aggro mirror, the small decisions made immediately matter a lot more. The mulligan stage can be crucial. Early decisions about whether to take board or face damage can determine the course of the whole match.
What happens when aggro becomes too weak?
What happens when aggressive decks are too easily countered? A few things. First, the game itself becomes less skill testing in some contexts. If you have access to hundreds of collective points of life gain and taunt minions in your deck, your life total becomes less of a resource. This means players need to focus less on the trade-offs between protecting their face and doing things like building boards or building their deck to manage other strategies as well. Second, the meta can devolve into weird, greedy places where decks are allowed to do excessively powerful things that render their opponent helpless. The less aggro there is, the more the meta can become focused on who does their big, unfair thing first (not unlike the deathknight example above).
As a final note, I would like to say that "aggressive" doesn't necessarily mean "face/burn" decks. Aggressive refers more broadly to which player is able to more quickly exhaust the vital resources of their opponent. Quest Rogue, for instance, is an aggressive combo deck. It can assemble it's pieces and kill its opponents very quickly. By contrast, Togglewaggle Mill Druid is a slow combo deck. It does basically the same thing (has similar kinds of match ups), but over a longer period of time. Midrange decks are usually those that act as control decks against the fast aggressive ones, and fast aggressive decks against the control match. Which role each player has to fill depends on the match.
When I play Kingsbane Rogue, for instance, I can force my Taunt Warrior opponents to play the role of the aggressive deck because I win if the game goes long. I can't fatigue and I out-heal Rag hero powers. However, because the Warrior isn't well suited to play the aggressor, given their deck composition, the match becomes heavily polarized. But when the Kingsbane Rogue is against a Shudderwock combo deck, then the Rogue needs to play the aggressor, as their combo would (eventually) beat mine.
Out of the top 11 decks according to VS, 7 or 8 of them are aggro or tempo decks. Just because a deck doesn't look to kill you on turn 5 doesn't mean it isn't an aggro deck.
Aggro and Tempo are not one in the same, contrary to popular belief. With that out of the way, we can take notice of the fact that most T1 decks take massive dumps on their aggro brethren.
Tempo = midrange. I'm not moving any goalposts. To pretend this is a control-heavy meta is to be willfully ignorant.
This is simply not true. Midrange generally refers to decks that play for a 'midgame victory' by playing on curve minions in the early game to draw out resources, then drop more big minions (in the 5/6/7 slots) than the control opponent can remove. The best known midrange deck of the past was midrange jade shaman. It played on a curve in the early game, then would seek to pressure their opponent with more big minions (jades) than they could handle in the mid/late game.
'Tempo' refers to a playstyle that involves sacrificing value for board advantage, unlike aggro that sacrifices value for face damage. Tempo mage is a little different because of fireball, edging it closer to the 'aggro' deck category. In fact, I would argue that the tempo classification is a holdover from when flamewalker was standard. The best example of a tempo deck is tempo rogue. Cards like backstab and SI7 agent are perfect examples of this.
And not only are the playstyles different, the matchups are different as well. Midrange looks to punish control, but does poorly against aggro and tempo. Tempo does well against midrange, and minion based control decks, but flops against removal style decks.
Tempo = midrange. I'm not moving any goalposts. To pretend this is a control-heavy meta is to be willfully ignorant.
You just moved the goalposts twice in this one post. Tempo is clearly not midrange, and isn't even relevant to the discussion about aggro. And then you move it again by implying that anything that isn't control falls into the "aggro" category, which is obviously wrong.
You can make up your own definitions all you want, just don't expect people to take you seriously.
This has always been a problem in Hearthstone, I think.
Sure, we've had outliers like cube lock, and now taunt druid, but more often than not it's fast, or at least semifast, decks dominating. Why is that? Is it poor design by Blizzard, are they bad at designing good, slow cards, or is it inherit to how Hearthstone works?
What can Blizzard do to make sure that more slow decks are more consistent in winning?
Because if your opponent doesnt have enough asnwers you win quickly. The trick is to have a deck that wins at least 50.1% of the time, you will just climb over time. In the other hand you can climb with a control deck with 55%-56% win ratio that games last 3x in length (average control game is around 11 min+). When your typical aggro game is over by turn 5 (so even if they rope that is about 5 mins.) So if your goal is to climb as high as possible regardless of what you time and you have limited time. You will play aggro.
I like playing against aggro decks with a control deck. I could not handle control vs control all the time.
Tempo = midrange. I'm not moving any goalposts. To pretend this is a control-heavy meta is to be willfully ignorant.
This is simply not true. Midrange generally refers to decks that play for a 'midgame victory' by playing on curve minions in the early game to draw out resources, then drop more big minions (in the 5/6/7 slots) than the control opponent can remove. The best known midrange deck of the past was midrange jade shaman. It played on a curve in the early game, then would seek to pressure their opponent with more big minions (jades) than they could handle in the mid/late game.
'Tempo' refers to a playstyle that involves sacrificing value for board advantage, unlike aggro that sacrifices value for face damage. Tempo mage is a little different because of fireball, edging it closer to the 'aggro' deck category. In fact, I would argue that the tempo classification is a holdover from when flamewalker was standard. The best example of a tempo deck is tempo rogue. Cards like backstab and SI7 agent are perfect examples of this.
And not only are the playstyles different, the matchups are different as well. Midrange looks to punish control, but does poorly against aggro and tempo. Tempo does well against midrange, and minion based control decks, but flops against removal style decks.
tempo =/= midrange
This artificial distinction between tempo and midrange is just not working. Generally, there are aggro midrange and control decks. These terms refer to the turns when the deck is supposed to make their winning moves or pressure turns. Adding „tempo“ and „combo“ in the equation just doesn’t make sense because they refer to different aspects of the game, namely the impact on the board of your plays and the game winning combination of cards. Every deck can be fitted into aggro midrange and control, although it might also be called tempo or combo. Like quest Mage is a combo deck, but wants to control and stall the board as long as possible. Same with togwaggle Druid. Controlling the board and then playing combo cards to take over the opponent’s deck.
Putting on curve minions on the board is nothing else than playing a tempo game. Just because rogue has some high tempo cards doesn’t make it a different category. For instance, tempo rogue also plays Keleseth which is not an instant tempo play, but sacrifices immediate tempo for a tempo boost and in the midgame. Tempo rogue fits your definition of a midrange deck. The win condition is to put pressure on the board in the midgame (turns 5/6/7).
I know that many people call fast midrange decks and slower aggro decks „tempo“, like In the earlier days, there was a slightly slower face hunter that was called „hybrid hunter“ since it played savannah highmane and shredder. But that doesn’t really help to classify the decks better. Just adds a category between aggro and midrange that has not necessarily much to do with its name and shifts the blurry line between the categories do different places. Like you admit yourself when you call tempo Mage more an aggro deck. Nonetheless it’s called „tempo Mage“ and means „slightly slower than other aggro decks“.
So I don’t see a problem if someone says tempo decks are midrange decks. At least some of them obviously are, although I admit that others of them fit more an aggro category.
Its all about "time" my friend. Some of us work and have families and can only play one hour (or less) per night. If you only have 45 minutes to play (because the baby is screaming or about to roll down the stairs) would you rather play 10 games of aggro (for the gold because of f2p) or 2 control games? The choice is yours. Honestly, if I had more time I would love to get into control.
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Rob Dawg
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I think the game is at a fine balance at the moment.
That is the point of literally every deck in the game. If you’re finding wins hard to come by right now, I can point out where you’re going wrong... 😂
Aggro doesn't necessarily mean "kills you on turn 5." Out of all those, the only ones that are not aggro or midrange are Taunt Warrior, BSM, and Taunt Druid. I'm not sure how Recruit Warrior plays, having never played/played against it.
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Control decks as well as mid range decks used to be the strongest decks available example being control warrior that had justicar, mid range hunter, control priest, etc. Ages ago this thread would've been reversed and it would've been talking about aggro needing more tools against control.
Most 1 and 2 Manacost Minions are superstrong compared to their cost. The Tunnel Trogg into Totem Golem was a sick opener, if you get a Flametongue Totem out the next turn you have nearly won against a control deck. That's 9/10 worth of stats for 5 Mana (ignoring overload).
Just by stats, it's insane tempo gain in the early turns, that's why aggro decks will always be superior at the start of the game.
You can counter them with good AOE cards, but you also have to draw them. If you are sitting at turn 3 with your win condition in hand, but unable to play anything you will be overwhelmed.
It's that simple.
Current Golden Heroes: Shaman, Warrior, Druid, Warlock, Rogue
'control vs control is all about who draws their win condition first' is as true as 'aggro vs aggro is all about who goes face more'
which is to say, it's not. both are are resource management games, and identifying how you'll actually win (in control vs control for example, sure it's true if you draw your win condition first you'll have an edge, but did you give up a fatigue advantage to get there, and was it ultimately worth it?).
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I was just kinda dumbing it down for the sake of proving a point with regard to the thread haha (fast decks being best, which I know isn't completely true). I know it's not completely set in stone just like that. I hate control vs control exact mirror matches. Apart from being incredibly long and boring, I know that usually if I lose it's my own fault lol. It's easier to accept a loss if there was literally nothing I could have done better (maybe counter-intuitive, but whatever).
I'm on the side that thinks aggro is tougher than some people say, to play perfectly. Obviously the floor of the fast decks is much higher because it's easier to play on curve and have better top decks that overwhelm your enemy in the first few turns. Aggro vs aggro is still my favorite match, I'll stand by that.
I used to be on the side that thinks control is harder to play all the time every time. Then I opened up my mind a bit haha, actually played some aggro decks for a while. Every game has its intricacies. If it didn't, I wouldn't still be playing this stupid game lol.
Twitch name: Anatak15
NA Legend Season 48, 49, 52, 53, 54, 74
ALL OF THIS!
Courage is not the absence of fear, Courage is the presence of faith.
CCGing since '98.
Tempo = midrange. I'm not moving any goalposts. To pretend this is a control-heavy meta is to be willfully ignorant.
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I'm gonna post this and highlight some parts: Understanding Aggro: What makes it good and what makes it necessary https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveHS/comments/8pswvh/understanding_aggro_what_makes_it_good_and_what/
(I'm a Control Warlock main, who despite the deck being reported as Tier 4, teched Howlfiend + Treachery at ranks 5-1 to have chances against the zillion hyper greedy combo decks currently on ladder. It worked more often than not, but I got a little tired of it).
"But isn't aggro braindead?"
This is a complain many have leveled against the archetype. It seems like just running out everything you have as quickly as possible and making a mad dash for face damage betrays a lack of strategy, but nothing could be further from the truth.
For starters, I suspect a healthy portion of the psychological connection between, "aggro decks," and "bad players," has to due simply with how cheap aggressive decks tend to be. Because new players don't have lots of resources to throw around, they tend to make what is cheapest, and those are usually aggressive decks. This might lead to many bad players playing aggro, but it's not because aggro is easy to play.
On that note, many people believe games require more skill the longer they go on. The logic is generally sound: the longer the game, the more decisions need to be made, and the more decisions that are made, the more probable it is player knowledge will shine through. But let's take a look at two cases where this doesn't really hold.
In the first, the aggressive deck rushes an opponent down before they feel they got to make meaningful decisions. By the time the opponent could play a card or two, they were effectively dead. In such cases, the slower player's skill doesn't get to be highlighted because of decisions made before the match began. When you a build a deck that's unable to reliably make choices in the early game, you are effectively saying that skill doesn't matter in that stage of play.
You want a free pass to avoid having to make decisions for the first few turns and have to hope your opponent agrees. But when they say, "turns 1-3 really, really matter because of the attacker advantage in Hearthstone and ability to compound tempo," they are demonstrating a good understanding of the game.
Another such example is when you have control on control matches. For those who have had the pleasure of watching these long, drawn-out games, you notice a few things such as, (a) they can be quite dull and, more importantly (b) the players often decide to simply not make decisions and play nothing. Each player will sit back until one is literally forced to make a choice or begin to lose key resources. Not making choices for many turns isn't the peak of skillful decision making. Doubly so when the control decks have single-card value engines/win conditions that cannot be easily removed (see Deathknights or Justicar back in the control warrior days), turning many games into matters of who drew their key resource first. If my Control Mage has Jaina in the top 5 cards yours is in the bottom 5, guess who's going to win that one? It's not a display of skill at that point to the degree the length of the game might suggest.
Also books with more pages aren't better than books with fewer. It's all about the content, not the length. This applies to games of Hearthstone as well.
In the aggro mirror, the small decisions made immediately matter a lot more. The mulligan stage can be crucial. Early decisions about whether to take board or face damage can determine the course of the whole match.
What happens when aggro becomes too weak?
What happens when aggressive decks are too easily countered? A few things. First, the game itself becomes less skill testing in some contexts. If you have access to hundreds of collective points of life gain and taunt minions in your deck, your life total becomes less of a resource. This means players need to focus less on the trade-offs between protecting their face and doing things like building boards or building their deck to manage other strategies as well. Second, the meta can devolve into weird, greedy places where decks are allowed to do excessively powerful things that render their opponent helpless. The less aggro there is, the more the meta can become focused on who does their big, unfair thing first (not unlike the deathknight example above).
As a final note, I would like to say that "aggressive" doesn't necessarily mean "face/burn" decks. Aggressive refers more broadly to which player is able to more quickly exhaust the vital resources of their opponent. Quest Rogue, for instance, is an aggressive combo deck. It can assemble it's pieces and kill its opponents very quickly. By contrast, Togglewaggle Mill Druid is a slow combo deck. It does basically the same thing (has similar kinds of match ups), but over a longer period of time. Midrange decks are usually those that act as control decks against the fast aggressive ones, and fast aggressive decks against the control match. Which role each player has to fill depends on the match.
When I play Kingsbane Rogue, for instance, I can force my Taunt Warrior opponents to play the role of the aggressive deck because I win if the game goes long. I can't fatigue and I out-heal Rag hero powers. However, because the Warrior isn't well suited to play the aggressor, given their deck composition, the match becomes heavily polarized. But when the Kingsbane Rogue is against a Shudderwock combo deck, then the Rogue needs to play the aggressor, as their combo would (eventually) beat mine.
Aggro and Tempo are not one in the same, contrary to popular belief. With that out of the way, we can take notice of the fact that most T1 decks take massive dumps on their aggro brethren.
This is simply not true. Midrange generally refers to decks that play for a 'midgame victory' by playing on curve minions in the early game to draw out resources, then drop more big minions (in the 5/6/7 slots) than the control opponent can remove. The best known midrange deck of the past was midrange jade shaman. It played on a curve in the early game, then would seek to pressure their opponent with more big minions (jades) than they could handle in the mid/late game.
'Tempo' refers to a playstyle that involves sacrificing value for board advantage, unlike aggro that sacrifices value for face damage. Tempo mage is a little different because of fireball, edging it closer to the 'aggro' deck category. In fact, I would argue that the tempo classification is a holdover from when flamewalker was standard. The best example of a tempo deck is tempo rogue. Cards like backstab and SI7 agent are perfect examples of this.
And not only are the playstyles different, the matchups are different as well. Midrange looks to punish control, but does poorly against aggro and tempo. Tempo does well against midrange, and minion based control decks, but flops against removal style decks.
tempo =/= midrange
You just moved the goalposts twice in this one post. Tempo is clearly not midrange, and isn't even relevant to the discussion about aggro. And then you move it again by implying that anything that isn't control falls into the "aggro" category, which is obviously wrong.
You can make up your own definitions all you want, just don't expect people to take you seriously.
Unpopular opinion: Rogue is OP
Because with a fast deck u can play 3 or 5 games in 30-40 min with priest memedictus 30-40 min for a game
Because if your opponent doesnt have enough asnwers you win quickly. The trick is to have a deck that wins at least 50.1% of the time, you will just climb over time. In the other hand you can climb with a control deck with 55%-56% win ratio that games last 3x in length (average control game is around 11 min+). When your typical aggro game is over by turn 5 (so even if they rope that is about 5 mins.) So if your goal is to climb as high as possible regardless of what you time and you have limited time. You will play aggro.
I like playing against aggro decks with a control deck. I could not handle control vs control all the time.
This artificial distinction between tempo and midrange is just not working. Generally, there are aggro midrange and control decks. These terms refer to the turns when the deck is supposed to make their winning moves or pressure turns. Adding „tempo“ and „combo“ in the equation just doesn’t make sense because they refer to different aspects of the game, namely the impact on the board of your plays and the game winning combination of cards. Every deck can be fitted into aggro midrange and control, although it might also be called tempo or combo. Like quest Mage is a combo deck, but wants to control and stall the board as long as possible. Same with togwaggle Druid. Controlling the board and then playing combo cards to take over the opponent’s deck.
Putting on curve minions on the board is nothing else than playing a tempo game. Just because rogue has some high tempo cards doesn’t make it a different category. For instance, tempo rogue also plays Keleseth which is not an instant tempo play, but sacrifices immediate tempo for a tempo boost and in the midgame. Tempo rogue fits your definition of a midrange deck. The win condition is to put pressure on the board in the midgame (turns 5/6/7).
I know that many people call fast midrange decks and slower aggro decks „tempo“, like In the earlier days, there was a slightly slower face hunter that was called „hybrid hunter“ since it played savannah highmane and shredder. But that doesn’t really help to classify the decks better. Just adds a category between aggro and midrange that has not necessarily much to do with its name and shifts the blurry line between the categories do different places. Like you admit yourself when you call tempo Mage more an aggro deck. Nonetheless it’s called „tempo Mage“ and means „slightly slower than other aggro decks“.
So I don’t see a problem if someone says tempo decks are midrange decks. At least some of them obviously are, although I admit that others of them fit more an aggro category.
cool stuff can we talk about why fast decks always push the meta instead of arguing over the definition of midrange?
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Amen
Rob Dawg
Its all about "time" my friend. Some of us work and have families and can only play one hour (or less) per night. If you only have 45 minutes to play (because the baby is screaming or about to roll down the stairs) would you rather play 10 games of aggro (for the gold because of f2p) or 2 control games? The choice is yours. Honestly, if I had more time I would love to get into control.
Rob Dawg