People, just to be clear because I got some comments that implied otherwise - this is not meant to be a diss on Flores or anything. As I said, I think his article was incredibly important for MTG and applies for most other games as well. I only mentioned he was known as a deckbuilder/writer rather than a player because I thought it explained why he framed things so much in terms of the decks and not what's happening in the game, whereas Zvi and I see things more from the perspective of what happened inside the game.
Dont worry Paulo, you made it crystal clear that this was not your intent. People who read it that way are doing so on purpose. There is no way to understand what you said otherwise. They are trolls.
You stated this very clear but in these days you will allways find some one who is "offended" or who ist not intelligent enough to understand your point. Allways nice to hear your insights on the game, keep the good work up.
Fundemental reading circa 1999 and you can still find it on google. Philosophy of Fire and many more. Damn Im so glad I was around for that era of MtG content late 90s, early 2000s.
hey dude, thanks so much for this! i recently heard LS (a league analyst) mention "the beatdown" in passing and wasnt sure what it was a reference to. really appreciate an indepth summary of this concept and agree its useful for any game
Thanks PV. I've always heard about sideboarding differently when you had the play vs the draw in games 2 and 3, and this really shines light onto why those decisions matter
I'm glad it helped :D if you want to go more in depth about this sideboarding differently on the play or draw aspect, you can check the sideboard video from a while back, the link is in the description
Realized you had a channel after CGB recommended. This deep competitive analysis is a spot that isn't currently well filled on youtube. Thanks for your contribution!
I believe one of the most enlightening instances of "I'm playing an Aggro deck and I'm no longer the beatdown anymore" I had with this video is: I already have attackers in play and I'm able to cast more creatures but I'm holding back because I know the opponent is already forced to play a boardwipe. Thank you PV :D
I remember those articles like i red them yesterday. Those and one by Randy Buehler in the Duelist magazine "playing to win", really elevated my game and changed my perspective at the time. Extremely useful for creating a gameplan and make meaningful decisions. I hope this video does the same for all watching it
CGB Sent me here, didn't know you had a channel but been following your pro stuff for years, congrats on winning the world championship, and thanks for tutoring the best in best of 1, keep on keeping on my dude and I look forward to learning from you
Came over after seeing your collab with CGB! Didn’t know you had a RUclips but I’m glad I found it now! Keep up the awesome work PV, can’t wait to binge these!
Came here straight from the collab video you did with CGB. That was such a killer video! Learned so much in that coaching session. Also super psyched to head you get into the beatdown question! I'm commenting before I watch but I have no doubt it's gonna be equally educational. Thanks again!
Great collab over with CGB. I love magic and watch his channel every day. I didn't even know you had one, so was happy to find out about it. Just subscribed. Looking forward to basking in your great analysis.
A long time ago I found that article which is the "part two" of who is the beatdown, not easy to read but awesome that you refer to it ahah ! Thanks sharing that much of knowledge and insight.
Great video. I know as a control player since the begining of the game whether im the beatdown or not changes upon my draws , my plays, there draws , there plays, time left in the match etc.
Videos like this are great. Never really think this way while playing. After playing long enough it kind of becomes instinctive but it's great to take a step back and analyze the framework.
I always love these topics! They come up in martial arts, or any competition, very often! How do I know im gonna win BEFORE ive played lol lets be honest, thats what people THINK should be done. The truth is, we never know. We still have to play every card with confidence. We can learn about our opponents, that is the greatest effort to be made to victory. That will never just be a deck, always the player of that deck. The rest is truly up to the fates and that is the true allure..... Very wonderful explanation here PV! We must always remain adaptable to any situation that may arise!!
Great video and explanation of one of the most important concepts in the game :) This is why Legion Warboss was such an interesting sideboard card for Red control decks. After sideboard they might have boarded in 4 Warbosses and play a completely different game than Game 1.
I think this is your better more relevant video so far (and by just thinking a bit I got how it applies to soccer, no clue about League of Legends since I know nothing about it). So here's my question: on the current Standard Mono Red mirror (which I'm not playing anymore because I no longer think it's a very good meta choice) I've been sideboarding in order to NOT be the beatdown if at all possible and it usually payed out. Duo to what you said on the video, I wonder if I should actually be only doing it on the draw.
I think it depends on what cards you have and what cards they have, honestly. I think stuff like Redcap Melee is always going to be good regardless, for example
@@PVDDRMTG I see. I felt like any bigger creature and any removal were better than the low drops regardless of P/D. (But the difference was even bigger on the draw.)
Zvi's knowledgeable about a lot more than just Magic. Like most of the Rationalists, he was ahead of the Coronavirus situation by months. On his blog he also does game reviews, political/economic predictions, and high-level social theory. He's working on a digital TCG that I'm looking forward to demo-ing.
Thanks for great video! Also, in context of it’s arrival in historic - would love to see a video about Brainstorm! There is so much to talk about this iconic piece of card! Please 🙏🏻
Amazing work! Standard examples made this really relatable and easy to understand. I’d love to see another video like this on Reid Duke’s article from 2013; Thoughtseize You. Keep up the great content!
Muito legal o conceito! Acho que se alinha muito com entender qual é a sua "Condição de Vitória", como é muito falado em Lol (comp que precisa ganhar o early game, ou apostar na Alma do dragão uma vez que vc já tem 3 drags, ou uma comp que precisa de Baron pois é ruim quebrando siege).
I want to expand ion what you said after 13:00 if you are in a nonmirror match and know your matchup, drawing a hand for the wrong role doesnt mean you play a diffrent role: it means you take a mulligan. (after SB there shouldnt be bad cards in the deck so less likely) If I play something midrange and my opponent is Yorion value pile I cant afford reactive 1 for 1s. Mulligan into oblivion feels bad but a 4 card hand capeable of agression has like 20% while 3land/4 doom blade is just 0% every time.
Awesome video. I'd love to see you revisit other old articles with a more modern framework. It's hard to follow some of those articles since Magic is so different now.
Probably we have to look even deeper, meaning we separate deck and game parts. Deck part feels like about overall condition, pre-battle, role that fits your deck vs another one, and this one doesn't seems to change a lot tbh. On the other hand game part of it is more variable it depends on initial hand, on draws, on board state. But still it feels like, despite current board state (at least if it is not in almost finished state when you have to take desperate moves like in example with roiling vortex) you have to seek a way to match your deck type. So second one part is temporal and you have to try to make it in same way as deck is. Hopefully I managed to explain my thoughts :) Thx for video, very interesting, always nice to be able to watch at game with pro's eyes
Hi Paulo. I have watched you many times competing over the years and at recent Worlds online. I am a casual FTP player on MTG Arena but enjoy the fact the meta in casual can be varied and occasionally I can brew a deck that competes well. As you are aware MTG can absorb a lot of time in particular for serious players so therefore I limit my watching to the Mythic events and the CGB channel where I watched your commentary on His Naya adventure v mono Red aggro. I like from your list that you can focus on detailed aspects so look forward to dropping in. Squider Dragon 🦑 🐉
I just ran into the roiling vortex example on ladder. I'm mono red, I have the vortex, and a bonecrusher giant with embercleave equipped. My opponent has an elder gargaroth and could potentially attack me back for lethal, so I decided to pass instead of attacking to avoid giving them a block trigger and dying if they removed my giant. It turns out they did have the removal spell- so they just ended up dying to bonecrusher trigger and roiling vortex.
PV great article/video! Just in the funny side, watch the video and have a shot for every time PV say Beatdown! Haven't counted but I will finish at least 3 bottles :P
This video is especially thought provoking in the sense that it presents that the aggressive player, in a way, is the defensive party. If you are winning, you want to minimize actions that risk upsetting the game state and just pressure the opponent to burn their resources simply to get the game back to parity (hypothetically). When you are losing, that is when you need to take actions the absolute most and take the most shots at your opponent. Not to say whether you should or shouldn't take shots at your opponent in a winning position, as that depends on the situation, but more to say that the leading player is the most capable of being vocationally inactive in the game. The person who is able to control the game while using the least resources is the person who is winning. Not sure if I conveyed my thoughts super well, but it's just very funny to me that, in this context, the player who is hypothetically closer to losing is the beatdown player, because they have to go on the offense in order to maintain a defense in the form of winning before they lose.
Best (Standard) card for changing from not being the Beatdown to having to be the Beatdown (or vice-versa). My opinion: Dream Devourer. Good to play on turn 3 or 4 to foretell a big spell safely. but can be played on turn 2 and become big to pressure the opponent or pull a removal spell.
Watch his video from a few weeks ago. He explains where deck selection is only one part of winning a tournament, (which events can be informally thought of as). It's not enough to have the best deck, you have to know how to play it, where the outs are, and what the match-ups are. With the top tier decks being so close to each other in performance, the player skill and knowledge of the meta environment will result in the wins.
I've never liked framing this concept as "who's the beatdown?" for reasons that I think this video illustrates pretty well. It's certainly a good framework to use as a starting point, but it unnecessarily frames the question in terms of there being one attacking player and one defending player, which just isn't always the right way to look at a game. It's more about identifying what is the game state based on deck choice, the board, and your hand; and then identifying what both players plans are and how far along achieving those plans they are; and then using that information to determine whether your actions need to advance your own plan or attempt to stop the opponent's plan.
I highly aggree with all of it, however, there is a small part, that i would like to add: the question of who is the beatdown is not only dependent on board state and hand, but also on what you know is in your deck AND whether you can actually win when being forced into another role. I would call this: Use the resources to maintain an unfavored role for a limited time. E.g. you play a control deck and an aggro deck manages to resolve a creature turn 1/2. do you have to remove it with your only card in hand immediatly? Eventhough you would die to this boardstate eventually, the answer may be no: if you don't play control for the next 2 turns, the next threat might be even more punishing. Thus, you use your lifetotal as a resource to maintain your control plan, until you absolutly have to remove the creature. -> understand, which player is the beatdown by what they will likely draw to set a plan: when can your use/spare resources to perform an/no action that is outside of your anticipated role.
I still wouldn't call the "what is in your deck" part of "the beatdown", per se. Rather, you have the *potential* to become the beatdown based on your deck contents, but you *are* the beatdown based on board state and action in hand. What you are describing is an area that I think people gloss over and leave out of the discussion but is equally important; the pivot. Recognizing that you are the beatdown, or are not the beatdown, is absolutely critical. But even more important than those is recognizing when you are one of these rolls and are in the pivot, but have not yet swapped. You may stall out as the beatdown, but you haven't lost the beatdown...yet. Your opponent needs to fully reverse their negative tempo to neutral *first* at some point, which is effectively what you're describing. Recognizing that you are teetering on being the beatdown AND have the potential to beatdown is what most people describe as "having outs". Having outs is technically broader, as you can have outs whether you're the beatdown or not, but in the pivot, this would be the moment where "concede/don't" is the critical action. The pivot is where most games will end up, and the area where most control players can look back at a game and have a generally great idea that they've won the game well before they have done so, even without inevitability. People always like to expand the "beatdown or not" angle of this topic, but that's not really that useful 20 years after Flores' article tbh. This video comes *close* to touching on the real meat and potatoes left, and maybe somebody will take a deep dive to finish the topic. Until then, we're left with people missing out on "the pivot"
To me, Zvi's article wasn't so much better as it was simply building upon the years of foundational work done before by many others, himself included. Without the original quite earth shattering piece by Flores, pieces such as Zvi's would not have had the platform to jump to new heights. Much of why Zvi's article works as well as it does is because so much foundation had been laid before it. Without the prior knowledge assumed of the reader, that lvl of awareness, the article just goes write over a readers head. It does a great job building on the base content, but next to nothing to actually preparing the reader for it. (Personal experience from being in the 'business' of helping players 'next lvl' as it were as well as having a son who's now 18 I've been teaching these to for going on a decade now as they really do apply to so much more than just gaming, let alone just MtG. Man, that was an amazing time to be alive and deeply into MtG as I was. Late 1990s to early 2000s. What a time for MtG content and game theory, the players of today missing so much, wish there was an archive for all those great articles kept somewhere for them. Great content as always and so welcome to see content finally being produced that highlights these fundementally important lessons of learning to improve at magic, gaming and life that we just haven't seen anymore for way too long now, and knowing your history, and own lvl of contribution, such as your Sideboarding next lvl articles years and years ago, if it was going to be anybody who brought it back, I always figured it would be you good sir. Great stuff.
Not sure if I'm understanding this correctly. I've always thought you only are the beatdown when you're stable on board and/or winning the race, and it essentially meaning that you are attacking and/or trying to win the game (unlike the other side, which is trying to not lose the game). It sounds weird to say you're the beatdown when you're actually on tight defense. But yeah, it absolutely changes during games. I've lost rogues mirrors on the play to them having a 1-drop and me playing a tapland while we both had a curve, so there's also that...
This sounds far more correct to the original context. In the example of a "tight defense" "being the beatdown", I would have called this a "micro pivot" in that it would be a moment in the game where both players still retained their "beatdown" status BUT the game state is teetering such that it could remain the same or flip. I would *never* call these moments "becoming the beatdown" because you are generally NOT the beatdown at this stage in the game, and often going for it will overextend you. If you reach this moment and KNOW you are the beatdown, then you're past the "tight on defense" stage and you have already stabilized and started to pull traction. In terms of tempo, the beatdown is the player who is current gaining or maintaining positive tempo. The other player is at negative or moving towards further negative (loss) or towards net zero (pivot). You almost never "just flip" in a game, and I think *this* is an equally important distinction that people gloss over when discussing "Who's the Beatdown?"
I think this video does a good job of explaining the concept, but is mainly for an audience that is already inclined to agree with you. Hopefully you can expand upon it in a future video, but this explanation is still missing a critical piece in the counter-argument. It does not address the question that someone who does not already agree with you may ask of "What happens when I play the Beat Down when I'm supposed to play the Control (slower)" In essence, I think there is a further strength in the argument if there can be a full explanation or scenario in which, like with the Roiling Vortex example, you can demonstrate why doing the opposite of what is suggested would be punishing or bad. An example where there are creatures on board with Roiling Vortex, where attacking with those creatures could lead into a losing game state where as inaction would have lead into a win.
Also, about wording and terms: I'm used to see Proactive vs. Reactive; Board State instead of status quo; clock/pressure. Does "Not the Beatdown" may be called "Beatup"? (from Music the analogy of downbeat and upbeat to proactive and reactive is astonishingly appropriate). Also about it's prevalence in other games, yes! I recognized SKTT1 and Korean posture in general ahead of its time in League of Legends many World Championships across the years \o
PV, quando é que você vai escrever um livro sobre Magic? Escrever artigos é muito bom, mas o livro pode dar uma solidez às tuas ideias. Falo em algo próximo ao que o Chapin fez com os dois livros dele.
Quando comecei a entender esse conceito, as coisas ficaram bem menos complicadas. Principalmente, a não ser tão ganancioso e tomar a colera logo em seguida
I'm not sure I agree with your description of who's the beat down as the person who wants to change the status quo. Couldn't you say that a control player staring down two goblin guides is then the beat down against a burn deck since that is not a status quo that they would want to maintain? Or I suppose you could also view it as, the control player still has life points and that is not a status quo the burn player wants to allow to continue so the burn player is the beat down. But then there are two players on the beat down; a contradiction, right? I guess I've always thought of who is the beat down as the player who's likelihood of winning the game decreases the longer the game continues and therefore who's aim should be to end the game as quickly as possible and vice versa. I wonder if this is conflating two related but distinct concepts. Being under pressure to make a play and being the beat down. I think both or only one player could be under pressure to make a play (which could be playing a card or making an attack or possibly some other game action) whereas both players cannot have increasing chances to win the game the longer the game goes on as, by definition, one player's odds increasing necessarily means that the other player's odds are decreasing. In the burn vs control example, the burn player with two goblin guides should still be looking to deploy threats and attack but the control player should also be looking to answer the threats and preserve their life total. So I would say both players should be looking to make plays but the burn player is the beat down. Also, not all decks even really have the ability to work towards maintaining a given game state. In your example with roiling vortex, to say that the aggro player is now not the beat down, to me, seems to imply that the aggro player should now take their foot off the gas and instead seek to maintain their current position. Assuming this is a mono red deck, it has no way of padding or preserving it's life total or it's roiling vortex, and other than perhaps being careful not to tap out and cast a spell into an absorb or something, the aggro player should still be looking to deploy other threats and get in for damage even though, yes, the roiling vortex will win the game for them in 4 turns on it's own if unanswered. No reason not to bolt the opponent's face and end the game in 1 turn, right? You're just protecting your roiling vortex the only way your deck is capable of; ending the game before your opponent can answer it! All decks have ways of winning the game, but not all decks have the ability to protect their threats and sit back and try to answer the wide variety of problems their opponent may try to cause them. Please let me know if I have misunderstood your point. Could just be semantics; I agree with the major points in your video.
@FUT Scout have you read reid duke's article on inevitability? magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/level-one/inevitability-2014-12-08 It seems he defines the term a bit differently than you are using it here. Not saying you or he are wrong, just bring it up because my understanding of the term, and I assume many others since Reid is a fairly popular guy in the community, are influenced by that article. In particular, I like this paragraph: "Inevitability is a late-stage issue. Inevitability is concerned with a point in the game where tempo no longer matters. It's a point where both players have ample mana and ample time to spend it. More than that, you can think of it as a contest of a complete deck against a complete deck, instead of about whatever particular cards happened to have been drawn early in the game."
I think something that is very important to keep in mind here is that this article was written so long ago. Magic was a very different beast back then and nowadays decks are so much more refined, well-tuned and the cards that you could play were by no means as versatile as modern magic cards are. It makes sense for the original article to be subject to these contraints at the time it was written, not necessarily because Flores is more a deckbuilder type of player. I understand that your idea here was definetely not to attack Flores or his work, but still came off a bit demeaning. Great video as usual Paulo.
Do you think that when two identical 75 card mirrors played vs each other in 1999 no one was the beatdown? I agree that Magic is a different game now but I don't think that this accounts for all of the differences, so to me it seems like there's a difference in philosophy included as well.
For example, in a counter slivers vs control matchup, counter slivers is usually the beatdown, but once counter slivers get some creatures in play, they change into a control role where they want to stop something else from resolving (e.g. a sweeper). So they wanna keep the status quo; the control deck wants to change it, so they have to be more proactive (they have to be the beatdown). So even back then you already had to account for the fact that roles change in the middle of the match, it doesn't just have to do with the new cards.
@@PVDDRMTG the last example is interesting and creates me the same feeling I had watching this video with the Rogues vs Gruul example. So I could argue that the Slivers player is the beatdown, they want to close the game quickly enough before the control player manages to sweep the board find the answers. As well as the gruul player has to still understand that they are the beatdown or eventually they will get milled out. Or at least this concept is the one that confused me the most out of the video and this comment.
@@karlsarap911 The idea behind this concept is to ask the question "all things being equal who wins this game ?". In the slivers example after the sliver army is in play the control player has to put blockers on the field, kill the slivers, do something or he is dying, therefore he has to be proactive, he has to initiate interactions and stop playing in response cause otherwise he just dies. Meanwhile the slivers players wants nothing more than to keep things exactly like they are. Based on the original article we tend to look at beatdown as aggression, the beatdown is the one dealing damage, and control as removal or counterspells, so anyone killing things or countering things is control. The concept Paulo presents here is that we shouldn't do that, he argues that the person doing the damage can also be the control player if they are actively trying to prevent the opponent from changing the status quo (like if you play a Teferi's Protection to keep your creatures from being removed you are controlling the match). At the same time the person not doing the damage can be the beatdown because they need to initiate the actions in order to change the game state and gain back (or gain for the first time) the control of the match (a guy with 2 draw spells and a counterspell in hand versus a board of 3 creatures that presents a lethal threat has to use those draw spells to dig for removal and prevent his opponent from wining, he cant sit and wait leaving mana open for the counterspell). In my opinion both concepts complement each other and are not exactly the same thing, they each tackle the situation at a different angle.
People, just to be clear because I got some comments that implied otherwise - this is not meant to be a diss on Flores or anything. As I said, I think his article was incredibly important for MTG and applies for most other games as well. I only mentioned he was known as a deckbuilder/writer rather than a player because I thought it explained why he framed things so much in terms of the decks and not what's happening in the game, whereas Zvi and I see things more from the perspective of what happened inside the game.
PV, fix this comment so no one can miss it
Ridiculous you have to explain this. I get it from that side but geez. I felt like you explained it very well in the video.
Dont worry Paulo, you made it crystal clear that this was not your intent. People who read it that way are doing so on purpose. There is no way to understand what you said otherwise. They are trolls.
You stated this very clear but in these days you will allways find some one who is "offended" or who ist not intelligent enough to understand your point. Allways nice to hear your insights on the game, keep the good work up.
I think people who played early 2000 knows how important Mike is for the magic community.
paulo, we'd love to see some play by play gameplay while you explain examples of these concepts
Yeaah, that would be awesome
@@joao31323k13k1p his last 2 videos have been gameplay.
@@rydeordie164 Have you seen his video with ConvertGoBlue? I believe Michael Cammarata meant to say that type of video.
Fundemental reading circa 1999 and you can still find it on google.
Philosophy of Fire and many more. Damn Im so glad I was around for that era of MtG content late 90s, early 2000s.
PV, thanks for being so generous with your thoughts and experience. Pretty freakin' rad to hear from one of the best =)
Glad it's being useful :)
hey dude, thanks so much for this! i recently heard LS (a league analyst) mention "the beatdown" in passing and wasnt sure what it was a reference to. really appreciate an indepth summary of this concept and agree its useful for any game
Thanks PV. I've always heard about sideboarding differently when you had the play vs the draw in games 2 and 3, and this really shines light onto why those decisions matter
I'm glad it helped :D if you want to go more in depth about this sideboarding differently on the play or draw aspect, you can check the sideboard video from a while back, the link is in the description
Realized you had a channel after CGB recommended. This deep competitive analysis is a spot that isn't currently well filled on youtube. Thanks for your contribution!
Yeah, the idea of the channel started because I couldn't find what I was looking for. Glad you liked it :)
Great explanation, I find this very tied to the concept of "inevitability"
Yeah it definitely is
I believe one of the most enlightening instances of "I'm playing an Aggro deck and I'm no longer the beatdown anymore" I had with this video is: I already have attackers in play and I'm able to cast more creatures but I'm holding back because I know the opponent is already forced to play a boardwipe. Thank you PV :D
CGB sent me.
Elite collab!
Thanks, glad you liked it!
I feel like you could have a fun Spartacus moment with this in multi-player
"I'm the beatdown..."
"No I'm the beatdown..."
I remember those articles like i red them yesterday. Those and one by Randy Buehler in the Duelist magazine "playing to win", really elevated my game and changed my perspective at the time. Extremely useful for creating a gameplan and make meaningful decisions.
I hope this video does the same for all watching it
CGB Sent me here, didn't know you had a channel but been following your pro stuff for years, congrats on winning the world championship, and thanks for tutoring the best in best of 1, keep on keeping on my dude and I look forward to learning from you
Thanks, appreciate it!
Came over after seeing your collab with CGB! Didn’t know you had a RUclips but I’m glad I found it now! Keep up the awesome work PV, can’t wait to binge these!
Thank you :D
Came here straight from the collab video you did with CGB. That was such a killer video! Learned so much in that coaching session. Also super psyched to head you get into the beatdown question! I'm commenting before I watch but I have no doubt it's gonna be equally educational. Thanks again!
Thank you, I hope you enjoy it!
Great collab over with CGB. I love magic and watch his channel every day. I didn't even know you had one, so was happy to find out about it. Just subscribed. Looking forward to basking in your great analysis.
Thanks, I hope you like it!
A long time ago I found that article which is the "part two" of who is the beatdown, not easy to read but awesome that you refer to it ahah !
Thanks sharing that much of knowledge and insight.
Hello PVDDR, coming from CGB collab. Thank you gor such amazing content
Thanks, I appreciate it!
CGB sent me! LOVED the collab video. Looking forward to your future videos!
CGB sent me here. I just watch his video with you "THE CHAMP IS HERE". That was really cool to hear your insight. Thank you!
Great video. I know as a control player since the begining of the game whether im the beatdown or not changes upon my draws , my plays, there draws , there plays, time left in the match etc.
Very great expansion of the core principle, and I loved how the intro mentioned how this concept extends beyond Magic - it hooked me in!
Thanks, I'm glad you liked it!
You made this so easy to understand! You have a real knack for imparting your knowledge. I appreciate these videos a lot. Thank you!
Thank you for the video and thank you for the web archive link, it would have been so difficult to find otherwise.
The new CGB video featuring you made me want to subscribe
Nice :D welcome
Awesome video!
By the way, looking forward to you collab with CGB!
Yeah, it should be up soon :D
The Best MTG Content Creator on RUclips by far Good Job PV
Amazing content! I think that your approach about this concept is much more practical and realistic than a lot of other contents that I see online...
Videos like this are great. Never really think this way while playing. After playing long enough it kind of becomes instinctive but it's great to take a step back and analyze the framework.
This is exactly the kind of magic content that's been missing on youtube. Mtg is easy to play, but hard to play right.
I always love these topics! They come up in martial arts, or any competition, very often! How do I know im gonna win BEFORE ive played lol lets be honest, thats what people THINK should be done. The truth is, we never know. We still have to play every card with confidence. We can learn about our opponents, that is the greatest effort to be made to victory. That will never just be a deck, always the player of that deck. The rest is truly up to the fates and that is the true allure..... Very wonderful explanation here PV! We must always remain adaptable to any situation that may arise!!
Thank you :)
Seems something as simple as on the play or on the draw could flip who the beat down is. Love the theory talk!
Paulo thank you for the great advice as always. Your advice has helped me stay in rankings for arena consistently. True master of the game here.
Thanks, I'm glad it's helping!
Greets from CGB :)
Greetings :)
Thx LS for making me watch such a cool video!
Great video and explanation of one of the most important concepts in the game :) This is why Legion Warboss was such an interesting sideboard card for Red control decks. After sideboard they might have boarded in 4 Warbosses and play a completely different game than Game 1.
Surely a pillar among MTG articles. "Thoughtseize You" is also a great one.
Cgb sent me. Got yourself a new sub!
Thanks :D
CGB says hi... Pleasure to watch your collab!
Hello, welcome :D
Great video PVDDR! When using mono red in standard, if im being out-aggroed, i have The Akroan War to help turn the tide.
Amazing content here in this channel. Thank you!
Thank you!
I think this is your better more relevant video so far (and by just thinking a bit I got how it applies to soccer, no clue about League of Legends since I know nothing about it).
So here's my question: on the current Standard Mono Red mirror (which I'm not playing anymore because I no longer think it's a very good meta choice) I've been sideboarding in order to NOT be the beatdown if at all possible and it usually payed out. Duo to what you said on the video, I wonder if I should actually be only doing it on the draw.
I think it depends on what cards you have and what cards they have, honestly. I think stuff like Redcap Melee is always going to be good regardless, for example
@@PVDDRMTG I see. I felt like any bigger creature and any removal were better than the low drops regardless of P/D. (But the difference was even bigger on the draw.)
Zvi's knowledgeable about a lot more than just Magic. Like most of the Rationalists, he was ahead of the Coronavirus situation by months. On his blog he also does game reviews, political/economic predictions, and high-level social theory. He's working on a digital TCG that I'm looking forward to demo-ing.
Thanks for great video! Also, in context of it’s arrival in historic - would love to see a video about Brainstorm! There is so much to talk about this iconic piece of card! Please 🙏🏻
Amazing work! Standard examples made this really relatable and easy to understand. I’d love to see another video like this on Reid Duke’s article from 2013; Thoughtseize You. Keep up the great content!
Thanks for the tip! That is a good article indeed.
PV é um monstro sagrado do Magic
:D
Muito legal o conceito! Acho que se alinha muito com entender qual é a sua "Condição de Vitória", como é muito falado em Lol (comp que precisa ganhar o early game, ou apostar na Alma do dragão uma vez que vc já tem 3 drags, ou uma comp que precisa de Baron pois é ruim quebrando siege).
I want to expand ion what you said after 13:00 if you are in a nonmirror match and know your matchup, drawing a hand for the wrong role doesnt mean you play a diffrent role: it means you take a mulligan. (after SB there shouldnt be bad cards in the deck so less likely) If I play something midrange and my opponent is Yorion value pile I cant afford reactive 1 for 1s. Mulligan into oblivion feels bad but a 4 card hand capeable of agression has like 20% while 3land/4 doom blade is just 0% every time.
Man I love ur content, keep it up. It's deep enough to be useful but not obvious
Thanks!
When I first read that article it improved my games, but I always get anxious and lose the timing of changing from control to beatdown lel
Awesome video. I'd love to see you revisit other old articles with a more modern framework. It's hard to follow some of those articles since Magic is so different now.
Probably we have to look even deeper, meaning we separate deck and game parts. Deck part feels like about overall condition, pre-battle, role that fits your deck vs another one, and this one doesn't seems to change a lot tbh. On the other hand game part of it is more variable it depends on initial hand, on draws, on board state. But still it feels like, despite current board state (at least if it is not in almost finished state when you have to take desperate moves like in example with roiling vortex) you have to seek a way to match your deck type. So second one part is temporal and you have to try to make it in same way as deck is.
Hopefully I managed to explain my thoughts :) Thx for video, very interesting, always nice to be able to watch at game with pro's eyes
PVDDR thank you for this channel. I wish i could support you financially. One day hopefully soon
im here cause of LS lets goooo
LESSGOOOO
Really miss the SCG section with all the great old articles. Luckily the Internet Archive still has them.
Hi Paulo. I have watched you many times competing over the years and at recent Worlds online. I am a casual FTP player on MTG Arena but enjoy the fact the meta in casual can be varied and occasionally I can brew a deck that competes well. As you are aware MTG can absorb a lot of time in particular for serious players so therefore I limit my watching to the Mythic events and the CGB channel where I watched your commentary on His Naya adventure v mono Red aggro. I like from your list that you can focus on detailed aspects so look forward to dropping in. Squider Dragon 🦑 🐉
o/
I just ran into the roiling vortex example on ladder. I'm mono red, I have the vortex, and a bonecrusher giant with embercleave equipped. My opponent has an elder gargaroth and could potentially attack me back for lethal, so I decided to pass instead of attacking to avoid giving them a block trigger and dying if they removed my giant. It turns out they did have the removal spell- so they just ended up dying to bonecrusher trigger and roiling vortex.
Eu não conhecia esse conceito, obrigada por nos trazer sempre ótimos vídeos, sempre aprendo mais! Lerei os artigos também☺️
PV great article/video!
Just in the funny side, watch the video and have a shot for every time PV say Beatdown!
Haven't counted but I will finish at least 3 bottles :P
This video is especially thought provoking in the sense that it presents that the aggressive player, in a way, is the defensive party. If you are winning, you want to minimize actions that risk upsetting the game state and just pressure the opponent to burn their resources simply to get the game back to parity (hypothetically). When you are losing, that is when you need to take actions the absolute most and take the most shots at your opponent. Not to say whether you should or shouldn't take shots at your opponent in a winning position, as that depends on the situation, but more to say that the leading player is the most capable of being vocationally inactive in the game.
The person who is able to control the game while using the least resources is the person who is winning.
Not sure if I conveyed my thoughts super well, but it's just very funny to me that, in this context, the player who is hypothetically closer to losing is the beatdown player, because they have to go on the offense in order to maintain a defense in the form of winning before they lose.
Best (Standard) card for changing from not being the Beatdown to having to be the Beatdown (or vice-versa).
My opinion: Dream Devourer.
Good to play on turn 3 or 4 to foretell a big spell safely. but can be played on turn 2 and become big to pressure the opponent or pull a removal spell.
Greetings from CGB :)
Hello :D
Going back to the example you posed at the beginning of the video of each player having a 2/2. Which role would be willing to trade?
I recently netdecked into standard to do the bo3 event and I suffered tremendously from not understanding my state often enough.
Watch his video from a few weeks ago. He explains where deck selection is only one part of winning a tournament, (which events can be informally thought of as). It's not enough to have the best deck, you have to know how to play it, where the outs are, and what the match-ups are. With the top tier decks being so close to each other in performance, the player skill and knowledge of the meta environment will result in the wins.
I've never liked framing this concept as "who's the beatdown?" for reasons that I think this video illustrates pretty well. It's certainly a good framework to use as a starting point, but it unnecessarily frames the question in terms of there being one attacking player and one defending player, which just isn't always the right way to look at a game. It's more about identifying what is the game state based on deck choice, the board, and your hand; and then identifying what both players plans are and how far along achieving those plans they are; and then using that information to determine whether your actions need to advance your own plan or attempt to stop the opponent's plan.
I highly aggree with all of it, however, there is a small part, that i would like to add:
the question of who is the beatdown is not only dependent on board state and hand, but also on what you know is in your deck AND whether you can actually win when being forced into another role.
I would call this: Use the resources to maintain an unfavored role for a limited time.
E.g. you play a control deck and an aggro deck manages to resolve a creature turn 1/2. do you have to remove it with your only card in hand immediatly?
Eventhough you would die to this boardstate eventually, the answer may be no: if you don't play control for the next 2 turns, the next threat might be even more punishing.
Thus, you use your lifetotal as a resource to maintain your control plan, until you absolutly have to remove the creature.
-> understand, which player is the beatdown by what they will likely draw to set a plan: when can your use/spare resources to perform an/no action that is outside of your anticipated role.
*only removal card in hand
I still wouldn't call the "what is in your deck" part of "the beatdown", per se. Rather, you have the *potential* to become the beatdown based on your deck contents, but you *are* the beatdown based on board state and action in hand. What you are describing is an area that I think people gloss over and leave out of the discussion but is equally important; the pivot.
Recognizing that you are the beatdown, or are not the beatdown, is absolutely critical. But even more important than those is recognizing when you are one of these rolls and are in the pivot, but have not yet swapped. You may stall out as the beatdown, but you haven't lost the beatdown...yet. Your opponent needs to fully reverse their negative tempo to neutral *first* at some point, which is effectively what you're describing.
Recognizing that you are teetering on being the beatdown AND have the potential to beatdown is what most people describe as "having outs". Having outs is technically broader, as you can have outs whether you're the beatdown or not, but in the pivot, this would be the moment where "concede/don't" is the critical action. The pivot is where most games will end up, and the area where most control players can look back at a game and have a generally great idea that they've won the game well before they have done so, even without inevitability.
People always like to expand the "beatdown or not" angle of this topic, but that's not really that useful 20 years after Flores' article tbh. This video comes *close* to touching on the real meat and potatoes left, and maybe somebody will take a deep dive to finish the topic.
Until then, we're left with people missing out on "the pivot"
To me, Zvi's article wasn't so much better as it was simply building upon the years of foundational work done before by many others, himself included.
Without the original quite earth shattering piece by Flores, pieces such as Zvi's would not have had the platform to jump to new heights. Much of why Zvi's article works as well as it does is because so much foundation had been laid before it.
Without the prior knowledge assumed of the reader, that lvl of awareness, the article just goes write over a readers head. It does a great job building on the base content, but next to nothing to actually preparing the reader for it. (Personal experience from being in the 'business' of helping players 'next lvl' as it were as well as having a son who's now 18 I've been teaching these to for going on a decade now as they really do apply to so much more than just gaming, let alone just MtG.
Man, that was an amazing time to be alive and deeply into MtG as I was. Late 1990s to early 2000s. What a time for MtG content and game theory, the players of today missing so much, wish there was an archive for all those great articles kept somewhere for them.
Great content as always and so welcome to see content finally being produced that highlights these fundementally important lessons of learning to improve at magic, gaming and life that we just haven't seen anymore for way too long now, and knowing your history, and own lvl of contribution, such as your Sideboarding next lvl articles years and years ago, if it was going to be anybody who brought it back, I always figured it would be you good sir. Great stuff.
Please consider explaining limited/drafting concepts!
Really awesome video!
Thanks!
CoolKidsClub arrived! Thumbs up!
o/
Amazing theoretical content!
Thanks!
Not sure if I'm understanding this correctly. I've always thought you only are the beatdown when you're stable on board and/or winning the race, and it essentially meaning that you are attacking and/or trying to win the game (unlike the other side, which is trying to not lose the game). It sounds weird to say you're the beatdown when you're actually on tight defense. But yeah, it absolutely changes during games. I've lost rogues mirrors on the play to them having a 1-drop and me playing a tapland while we both had a curve, so there's also that...
This sounds far more correct to the original context. In the example of a "tight defense" "being the beatdown", I would have called this a "micro pivot" in that it would be a moment in the game where both players still retained their "beatdown" status BUT the game state is teetering such that it could remain the same or flip. I would *never* call these moments "becoming the beatdown" because you are generally NOT the beatdown at this stage in the game, and often going for it will overextend you. If you reach this moment and KNOW you are the beatdown, then you're past the "tight on defense" stage and you have already stabilized and started to pull traction.
In terms of tempo, the beatdown is the player who is current gaining or maintaining positive tempo. The other player is at negative or moving towards further negative (loss) or towards net zero (pivot). You almost never "just flip" in a game, and I think *this* is an equally important distinction that people gloss over when discussing "Who's the Beatdown?"
hey nice video Elite Spellbinder!
:D
I consider this video being proactive or not rather than being the beatdown player
Well yes, the point is that they're roughly the same thing
I think this video does a good job of explaining the concept, but is mainly for an audience that is already inclined to agree with you. Hopefully you can expand upon it in a future video, but this explanation is still missing a critical piece in the counter-argument. It does not address the question that someone who does not already agree with you may ask of "What happens when I play the Beat Down when I'm supposed to play the Control (slower)"
In essence, I think there is a further strength in the argument if there can be a full explanation or scenario in which, like with the Roiling Vortex example, you can demonstrate why doing the opposite of what is suggested would be punishing or bad. An example where there are creatures on board with Roiling Vortex, where attacking with those creatures could lead into a losing game state where as inaction would have lead into a win.
Also, about wording and terms: I'm used to see Proactive vs. Reactive; Board State instead of status quo; clock/pressure. Does "Not the Beatdown" may be called "Beatup"? (from Music the analogy of downbeat and upbeat to proactive and reactive is astonishingly appropriate). Also about it's prevalence in other games, yes! I recognized SKTT1 and Korean posture in general ahead of its time in League of Legends many World Championships across the years \o
Thank You
Paulo, vc vai lançar legenda em Português do Brasil? Parabéns pelp video!
The concept of "sente" and "gote" (from the board game Go) are similar, I think, to the MTG concept of being the "beatdown"
Great video ☺️
Thank you :D
PV, quando é que você vai escrever um livro sobre Magic? Escrever artigos é muito bom, mas o livro pode dar uma solidez às tuas ideias. Falo em algo próximo ao que o Chapin fez com os dois livros dele.
Is the Gruul list the same on his SCG article ?
Hit the like button first. Then watch the video
I hope to prove deserving of this level of trust :P
@@PVDDRMTG So far so good hahaha
So _the beatdown_ is the player who will lose by default if the board state stays the same. That's interesting.
Quando comecei a entender esse conceito, as coisas ficaram bem menos complicadas. Principalmente, a não ser tão ganancioso e tomar a colera logo em seguida
You write an article yourself on the subject and it seems to have disappeared from CFB, is it still available somewhere?
It sounds like beatdown = initiator, non beatdown = responder
Something like that yeah
I think spectator magic can benefit from seeing a “who is beat down” marker versus advantage bar
Well, "advantage" basically says "in control of the match and currently winning"
You get a hair cut? Looks great!
I did! First haircut in over half a year lol, my hair has never been longer than it was right before this video
The champ
LS approved
I'm not sure I agree with your description of who's the beat down as the person who wants to change the status quo. Couldn't you say that a control player staring down two goblin guides is then the beat down against a burn deck since that is not a status quo that they would want to maintain? Or I suppose you could also view it as, the control player still has life points and that is not a status quo the burn player wants to allow to continue so the burn player is the beat down. But then there are two players on the beat down; a contradiction, right? I guess I've always thought of who is the beat down as the player who's likelihood of winning the game decreases the longer the game continues and therefore who's aim should be to end the game as quickly as possible and vice versa. I wonder if this is conflating two related but distinct concepts. Being under pressure to make a play and being the beat down. I think both or only one player could be under pressure to make a play (which could be playing a card or making an attack or possibly some other game action) whereas both players cannot have increasing chances to win the game the longer the game goes on as, by definition, one player's odds increasing necessarily means that the other player's odds are decreasing. In the burn vs control example, the burn player with two goblin guides should still be looking to deploy threats and attack but the control player should also be looking to answer the threats and preserve their life total. So I would say both players should be looking to make plays but the burn player is the beat down. Also, not all decks even really have the ability to work towards maintaining a given game state. In your example with roiling vortex, to say that the aggro player is now not the beat down, to me, seems to imply that the aggro player should now take their foot off the gas and instead seek to maintain their current position. Assuming this is a mono red deck, it has no way of padding or preserving it's life total or it's roiling vortex, and other than perhaps being careful not to tap out and cast a spell into an absorb or something, the aggro player should still be looking to deploy other threats and get in for damage even though, yes, the roiling vortex will win the game for them in 4 turns on it's own if unanswered. No reason not to bolt the opponent's face and end the game in 1 turn, right? You're just protecting your roiling vortex the only way your deck is capable of; ending the game before your opponent can answer it! All decks have ways of winning the game, but not all decks have the ability to protect their threats and sit back and try to answer the wide variety of problems their opponent may try to cause them. Please let me know if I have misunderstood your point. Could just be semantics; I agree with the major points in your video.
@FUT Scout have you read reid duke's article on inevitability?
magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/level-one/inevitability-2014-12-08
It seems he defines the term a bit differently than you are using it here. Not saying you or he are wrong, just bring it up because my understanding of the term, and I assume many others since Reid is a fairly popular guy in the community, are influenced by that article.
In particular, I like this paragraph:
"Inevitability is a late-stage issue. Inevitability is concerned with a point in the game where tempo no longer matters. It's a point where both players have ample mana and ample time to spend it. More than that, you can think of it as a contest of a complete deck against a complete deck, instead of about whatever particular cards happened to have been drawn early in the game."
I think something that is very important to keep in mind here is that this article was written so long ago. Magic was a very different beast back then and nowadays decks are so much more refined, well-tuned and the cards that you could play were by no means as versatile as modern magic cards are. It makes sense for the original article to be subject to these contraints at the time it was written, not necessarily because Flores is more a deckbuilder type of player.
I understand that your idea here was definetely not to attack Flores or his work, but still came off a bit demeaning.
Great video as usual Paulo.
Do you think that when two identical 75 card mirrors played vs each other in 1999 no one was the beatdown? I agree that Magic is a different game now but I don't think that this accounts for all of the differences, so to me it seems like there's a difference in philosophy included as well.
For example, in a counter slivers vs control matchup, counter slivers is usually the beatdown, but once counter slivers get some creatures in play, they change into a control role where they want to stop something else from resolving (e.g. a sweeper). So they wanna keep the status quo; the control deck wants to change it, so they have to be more proactive (they have to be the beatdown). So even back then you already had to account for the fact that roles change in the middle of the match, it doesn't just have to do with the new cards.
@@PVDDRMTG the last example is interesting and creates me the same feeling I had watching this video with the Rogues vs Gruul example. So I could argue that the Slivers player is the beatdown, they want to close the game quickly enough before the control player manages to sweep the board find the answers. As well as the gruul player has to still understand that they are the beatdown or eventually they will get milled out.
Or at least this concept is the one that confused me the most out of the video and this comment.
@@karlsarap911 The idea behind this concept is to ask the question "all things being equal who wins this game ?". In the slivers example after the sliver army is in play the control player has to put blockers on the field, kill the slivers, do something or he is dying, therefore he has to be proactive, he has to initiate interactions and stop playing in response cause otherwise he just dies. Meanwhile the slivers players wants nothing more than to keep things exactly like they are.
Based on the original article we tend to look at beatdown as aggression, the beatdown is the one dealing damage, and control as removal or counterspells, so anyone killing things or countering things is control. The concept Paulo presents here is that we shouldn't do that, he argues that the person doing the damage can also be the control player if they are actively trying to prevent the opponent from changing the status quo (like if you play a Teferi's Protection to keep your creatures from being removed you are controlling the match). At the same time the person not doing the damage can be the beatdown because they need to initiate the actions in order to change the game state and gain back (or gain for the first time) the control of the match (a guy with 2 draw spells and a counterspell in hand versus a board of 3 creatures that presents a lethal threat has to use those draw spells to dig for removal and prevent his opponent from wining, he cant sit and wait leaving mana open for the counterspell).
In my opinion both concepts complement each other and are not exactly the same thing, they each tackle the situation at a different angle.
CGB sent me!
Hello :)
damn that was a good video
Thanks :)
A Classic!
Who is the beatdown?
Is it CGB?
muito bom!
vlw :D
Some say MTG is the perfect game. It is a mix of chess and poker. Some have even said it’s the perfect game.
Mattress man very wise.
lol