Many modern collectible card games are about resource management. Players may need to manage the cards in their hand, the cards in play on the board, and often a life point total or score. The decisions made in managing these resources often come with tradeoffs; do I want to gain an advantage on the board now (at the cost of some inefficient use of what’s in my hand), or do I want to optimize for using each card to its maximum potential?
Tempo plays generally resemble greedy algorithms: “what’s the largest immediate impact I can make on the game?” In other words, “what move helps me the most right now?” Value plays, on the other hand, can attempt at investing in a strategy that can eventually reap greater rewards in the long run: “what move most efficiently uses my resources to get rewards, potentially in the future?”
Startups in the business world focus heavily on tempo.