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Yellow tempo

Posted by Nightingale on 14/02/2017

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Guide for building yellow tempo deck

Read the deck linked to this guide
  • 1 Hold the Line! 3
  • 3 2 Oradrim Fanatic 3
  • 6 3 Last Nightmare 3
  • 3 2 Wind Soldier 3
  • 0 3 Flash Wind 1
  • 4 2 Choking Sand 2
  • 20 Radiance, Imperial Air... 1
  • 3 Outland Ranger 3
  • 5 3 Khalim, Sky Prodigy 1
  • 2 3 Altar of Souls 3
  • 10 2 Windstorm Colossus 1
  • 2 2 Soul Drain 3
  • 3 2 Windstorm Charger 3

Since Faeria entered exited early access the yellow tempo deck was always present in the format in one way or the other. Sometimes it is weaker sometimes stronger. After the recent change to the way structures work, the Altar of Souls became one of the strongest win conditions in the game. By providing a stream of 6/1 and mitigating the lifeloss to the improved Hold the Line, the deck can outvalue opponents in the long game, while keeping the control of early game with chargers and rangers.
First 2 turns of the game are usually spent building deserts, after which you are free to gain faeria, draw cards or play more lands. The fact that you don't need more than 3 deserts for any of the cards, means you have versatility and can play 2x prairie whenever you need to get somewhere fast with movement trick. And there are games where altar comes on second turn and wins the game...
Explanations on cardchoices:

  • I have seen people play as many as 2 or 3 colossi in this deck, but consider that running more than one is too greedy. There is already altar to win you the game and other cards provide threats, so colossi that are kinda expensive aren't worth the investment
  • Archer is a card that has been a staple in this type of deck and is a perfectly valid inclusion as long as you play enough movement tricks (3+, but preferably 5+). Reason I dislike it is that it dies to too many things and it gets too hard to keep them alive in some of the matchup-
  • Champion is a very strong creature in yellow that can justify archers and is hard to kill. Playing him is basically a tradeoff of versatility against power - it will become harder to kill opponent's stuff in the early game (because playing prairies becomes more difficult), but easier to survive longer games.
  • Number of choking sands depends entirely on the metagame. As burn burn and yellow tempo are popular and strong choices, I opted to run 2 and strongly considered third because of how efficient of an answer it is to Lord of Terror and Khalim as well as charger. In metagames where it doesn't work it isn't rare to see this card being cut entirely
  • Soul Pact is also a valid option as this is event (helping event synergies) and allows you to cast radiance easier. Only problem is that alongside altar the lifeloss starts accumulating so you will be forced to run healing songs alongside them to compensate that. This in turn means that deck's powerlevel will drop as you will have more cards that don't impact the game directly

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