At what point does something no longer qualify? Kiki-Chord can easily chain tutoring from the Kiki-Witness-Chord Chain every turn?

No, they’re not linear aggro decks, but they are directly descended from them. A tempo deck is an aggro deck built around interaction where aggro decks may run some but it isn’t an integral part of the strategy. Sorry if this was no clear enough

>Linear Aggro
>Interaction

Linear and interactive are antonyms. Tempo decks (Merfolk, Delver, etc.) are interactive aggro decks. Bogles, Bushwhacker Zoo, Infect are examples of linear aggro decks.

Do you disagree with this assessment or was labeling tempo decks “linear” a mistake?

You have been playing Kiki-Chord, the closest thing Modern has to a Toolbox strategy anymore. It relies on tutors and bullets which make it look like a Toolbox deck, but it is not a true inheritor of the archetype. The defining aspect of the Toolbox strategy was that it was built around a repeatable engine, such as Survival of the Fittest and Birthing Pod. Many decks can play tutors, and in fact it is correct to do so if it supports your strategy, but that alone does not make a Toolbox deck. You have to be able to do it every turn. For this reason, Kiki-Chord is a Fair Combo deck with a Toolbox package.

In this series of articles, David is trying to come up with very specific terms to encompass every possible type of deck. In some cases he’s used the terms very differently from how the community has traditionally used them. I too would classify Kiki Chord as Toolbox (and probably Abzan CoCo too), but he appears to be using it differently here. His criteria is that the tutoring engine/suite be repeatable—I could easily see expanding that to include regular tutoring. I’ll let him weigh in here on the criticism.

What I mean is that chord especially post board is very toolbox. While in many matchups they’re tryin. To assemble the combo asap, they become heavily toolbox is it’s any of the matchups where combo is not the answer