This is a companion article to the classic article “Who’s The Beatdown?” by Mike Flores. It explores the different ways to play aggressive decks, and the ways to win more while doing so. It was inspired by Mike’s recent comment that there was no more strategy worth writing about for beatdown or burn decks. It is suitable for players and Goblins of all ages, though those with Elvish sympathies may find some scenes distressing.
Playing a beatdown deck is one of life’s great pleasures. Rather than reacting to your opponent, you get the chance to put them under pressure right from the start of the game. You are often the underdog, playing cards that seem less powerful than the more expensive but slower ones you face. And far from beatdown decks being simple to play, you have to eke out every last opportunity and be aware of every shift in the position on the board and the strategies of your opponents to be successful.
Much like Dodgeball, there are five plans when playing a beatdown deck. These are as follows:
Dominate
Dodge
Disrupt
Defend
Hit Your Opponent Really Hard in the Face
Each of these plans can be used separately or in combination, and picking the right plan is key to success. A brief explanation of what I mean by each follows.
The most basic plan when playing a beatdown deck is to summon the best small creatures, dominate the board, and keep on attacking until your opponent is dead, using removal spells as appropriate and available to keep control of things.
Ideally, this plan starts with a two-power creature on turn 1, and follows up with a two- or three-power creature on the second and third turns. Raphael Levy double Grand Prix winning Domain Zoo deck is a good example of this, playing the best Red, Green, and White small creatures that will quickly kill the opponent if the board is not contested — Levy’s deck regularly kills on turn 4, and has the ability to deal twenty damage by turn 3 with a good draw. A decade ago, the Green Stompy decks were perhaps the earliest example of these kind of beatdown decks — at a time when most three-powered creatures cost four or more mana, the Stompy deck was able to play 3/3s for one mana (Rogue Elephant) and two mana (Spectral Bears).
Some Dominate plans rely on cheap creatures, aiming to keep control of the board just for the first 3-4 turns, whereas others are able to aim to keep control throughout the game. The Onslaught Block Goblin decks, for example, were able to match any opponent blow for blow, with Menacing Ogres and Rorix Bladewing able to seize control of the board even after the opponent had cast a large, expensive creature or a mass removal spell.
It’s not just creatures that can help you dominate the board. Reusable sources of damage like Cursed Scroll or Stormbind can keep you in control, and help to put away an opponent who falls behind very quickly.
In any new Constructed format, one of the earliest decks to be put together is a beatdown deck based on the Dominate plan. As a result, years of practice have shown the best ways to counter this plan. These beatdown decks rely on control of the board, and are therefore vulnerable to decks that have bigger creatures, particularly if supplemented by cheap Walls to block the initial assault, or removal spells that also gain life. At present, two of the worst spells for a traditional beatdown deck to see are an early Wall of Roots (which blocks the creatures and also accelerates the opponent’s), and a Lightning Helix, which can kill a creature and also undo one or more turn’s worth of attacks. This lead to the invention of…
Dodge
The Dodge plan also involves summoning cheap creatures and attacking with them, but rather than using the creatures with the best power: casting cost ratio, it chooses creatures that can dodge the defences that are expected from opponents.
The basic version of this plan involves creatures that have some kind of evasion, flying, shadow or trample. Wall of Roots can block a Watchwolf, and a 4/4 creature can hold off smaller rivals, but neither helps much against Leonin Skyhunter or Soltari Priest. Many a control player who thought they have staved off an assault and stabilised the board has been undone when a Ball Lightning, Blistering Firecat, or Timbermare has been summoned.
But if you know your opposition, there are more subtle ways of using the Dodge plan.
In 1996, a majority of players turned up to the World Championships with a mono-Black deck based on Necropotence. The winner turned up with a mono-White deck (strictly speaking, he had one Blue card that he couldn’t cast, but anyway) that had twelve small creatures with protection from Black. The Necro deck was far more powerful than the White deck, but couldn’t cope with the pro-Black knights.
A couple of years later, most players at Pro Tour: Los Angeles had tested and found that Bottle Gnomes were extremely powerful against the mono-Red decks that relied on attacks with 2/1 and 2/2 creatures. Dave Price won the Pro Tour after dodging the Bottle Gnomes by adding Giant Strength to his deck. All of a sudden, the 1/3 Bottle Gnomes were not blocking and killing the Red Deck’s creatures, but blocking and dying, or just watching as the 4/3s and 4/4 rumbled on through.
More recent examples include the Mono-Green Aggro Decks from late last year, which cast untargetable creatures and then piled them with creature enchantments, dodging the defences of the top control decks; and the Red Decks from the recent Time Spiral Block Pro Tour. Blood Knights and Wildfire Emissaries could punch through the expected hoards of mono-White decks. Less obviously, the Greater Gargadons helped to dodge the main defensive plan of the Blue / Black control decks, which relied on casting massive Tendrils of Corruption to remove creatures and also gain life. No life was gained when the creature targeted could be sacrificed in response.
Since the release of Guildpact, beatdown players have had the choices of playing a Boros deck or a Gruul deck, and these decks have changed very little in over a year. Yet they have varied wildly in popularity. At the Pro Tour after the release of Guildpact, Gruul won the whole thing, and almost no one played Boros. At the World Championship later that year, Boros Decks dominated the Standard section of the event, while Gruul was conspicuous by its absence. At the time of writing this, Gruul is the second most popular deck on Magic Online, while Boros is unpopular and unsuccessful.
Gruul is a classic Dominate plan deck, able to summon 2/3 Kird Apes for one mana, and follow them up with 3/3 Scab Clan Maulers and 3/4 Burning Tree Shamans — some of the most efficient creatures for their casting cost, capable of quick kills. Boros, in contrast, has some of the best evasive creatures, with Soltari Priests, Leonin Skyhunters, Paladin-En-Vec and Giant Solifuge (a creature that Gruul decks sometimes avoid playing in the main deck, despite the obvious strength of doing so).
The trade off for playing creatures that can dodge is to slow the beatdown deck down. Dodge plan decks usually have a horrible time against decks that don’t care whether creatures have evasion or not. In particular, against combo decks that don’t try to contest control of the board but instead cast Dragonstorm with storm greater than or equal to four, the slower beatdown deck loses out. Other decks also adapt, so a Dodge that works one week can run into an ambush. Relying on 2/1 creatures with protection from Black is great against a deck with just Black removal spells, but if the Black deck starts playing four main deck Serrated Arrows, or Red burn spells, or if cards like Damnation or Ghostfire get printed (which can invalidate Dodge plans), then further adaptation is needed.
Both the Dominate and the Dodge plans are about seizing the initiative and making the opponent react to your plan. Another option is to try to disrupt your opponent’s strategy.
Creatures such as Meddling Mage, or the new Yixlid Jailer, are good for this — they have a decent power-to-casting-cost ratio, they attack for two, and they can also slow the opponent down. Magus of the Moon is a very welcome and exciting addition to this club — often, disruptive cards have a problem in beatdown decks in that you don’t want to draw more than one because they are wasted, and they don’t destroy anything or deal damage. Magus of the Moon can seriously hamper multi-colored decks, and also swing for two.
Mana denial is another very effective form of disruption. Strip Mine, Wasteland, and Rishadan Port have been staples in beatdown decks, and even a four-mana creature like Avalanche Riders can find a home. Just one more turn of being able to attack without the opponent casting a blocker or a removal spell can often be the difference between victory and defeat.
Mana denial doesn’t have to involve lands. Many Green decks rely on the boost from their mana Elves to keep up with the beatdown decks. Burning the Elves, in this sort of case, is not merely a pleasure but a duty. A hand with one Forest but two Elves, which can be fantastic against a Blue deck, is often revealed to be a game loser as soon as a Mountain appears on the other side of the table.
C***ters***ls can also be used to disrupt opponents, but as this is a family site I won’t give my real views about what I think of people who take that option.
Even a small amount of disruption can turn a matchup around. Often there is a choice between choosing the most powerful creature, an evasive creature, or one that is disruptive to particular opponents. Taking out Soltari Priests for a set of Ronom Unicorns can turn a match against a deck that relies on enchantments from hopeless to easy.
Defend
I have a lot of respect for people who are scratching their heads at the point. Why would an article about beatdown mention defending? Isn’t that for Island lovers?
There are two main situations in which you might need to employ a Defend plan. The first is when facing another beatdown deck. “Who’s the Beatdown?” covered this scenario. If the long game favors your deck, then not getting into a damage race but instead trading cards one-for-one and trying to maintain your life total is the best way to win.
The other time when you need to go on the defensive is if one of the above plans has failed. Sometimes you don’t manage to overrun your opponent with your creatures before they are able to wipe out all creatures or summon one or more much bigger creatures.
For example, you might find yourself with more life points than your opponent, and with burn spells in hand and no creatures in play, facing a Spectral Force. The defensive play is to use the burn spells to kill the Force, and the best beatdown players are able to judge when it is best to go on the defensive, and when it is best to stay aggressive and…
… Hit Your Opponent Really Hard in the Face
Most good beatdown decks have a back-up plan for if they aren’t able to control the board or force through any more creature damage. Affinity decks used to be able to sacrifice artifacts and cause life loss with the Disciple of the Vault, while Red Decks would sacrifice Mountains to cast Fireblast or unload a handful of damage dealing instants.
Some decks don’t try to dominate or dodge on the board at all, and aim right at the opponent’s face. The strength of this plan is that it can negate large chunks of the opponent’s deck… while its weakness is that each card can usually only count once, whereas creatures are reusable and can deal damage turn after turn.
Hybrid strategies
So those are the five different beatdown plans. It is extremely unusual for any particular deck to only be able to use one plan. Ravager Affinity, for example, could dominate the board with undercosted creatures, dodge opposing blockers, defend with a massive Arcbound Ravager if needed, and hit the opponent with Disciple of the Vault triggers or a well-placed Shrapnel Blast. That goes a long way to explain why Ravager Affinity was one of the most powerful beatdown decks ever played.
Another example of a hybrid strategy is often seen when mono-Red decks play Red/Green decks. The mono-Red creatures are smaller, and the Red deck is unable to dominate the board, dodge the big Green creatures, or successfully disrupt the Red/Green deck. Instead, Red Decks win by going on the defensive, buying time by blocking the big creatures with its small creatures, sneaking in points of damage where possible, and then when all seems lost finishing with a big x-damage spell to the opponent’s face for just enough to snatch the game.
The dream of dominating the board often does not last beyond the third or fourth turn of the game. Many a horde of Goblins have perished through the Wrath of God or an Engineered Plague. The next stage of the game sees the beatdown player change plan, not trying to dominate the board, but just to sneak a few more points of damage through, with some disruption, or by dodging through with a hasty minion.
The key point is that you need to work out at each point of the game which plan is the correct one to follow. A Red Deck that wastes all of its burn spells trying to kill off the Green creatures in a futile attempt to dominate the board, ending up without any way of finishing the opponent off, will lose. So will a player who attacks with all of his creatures, losing most of them and domination of the board to get through just a couple of points of damage at the wrong moment.
It’s just as Mike said.
Misassignment of role = game loss.
But this doesn’t just apply during games, but when building a beatdown deck. For each of the most popular decks, you need to have an idea of which plan is needed to beat them, and which ones just won’t work. Trying to dodge against a Dragonstorm deck is largely pointless, as is trying to dominate the board against a Ghazi Glare deck. You might have plenty of artifact destruction against a Blue/White Urzatron deck, only to discover that they only have a few artifacts after sideboarding, and are unaffected by your disruption, and you would be better off trying to dominate the board and kill them quickly. The consequences of getting this wrong are even more serious than mistakes made during a game.
Misassignment of plan = match loss.
The perennial danger with any strategy article is that some of the examples are meaningless to newer players, while the old hands can’t see the relevance of the theorising. So before opening up the debate to questions and comments in the forum, I thought I would finish by suggesting some implications and uses for this way of thinking about how to play beatdown decks.
First, it provides a framework for evaluating new cards, and the role that they could play. It explains when you might want the new 3/1 creature for 1W instead of a Knight of the Holy Nimbus, and when you would rather have the Knight or a Soltari Priest. Rather than just lumping together all the cards that “could be good in a beatdown deck,” it is possible to see which help you dominate, which could be used to dodge, disrupt, and defend, and which can hit the opponent where it hurts.
Second, it explains apparently random fluctuations in the popularity of beatdown decks such as Boros and Gruul. As the Extended season developed, the utility of being able to disrupt Affinity decks and dodge Red removal was less important than raw, board dominating power. Hence the decline of Boros Deck Wins and the Grand Prix wins of Domain Zoo. The last Pro Tour brutally exposed the limitations of the current White Weenie plans, and adapting the plans to turn the tables on the Red/Green and Blue/Black decks for the qualifying season ahead could see you qualify before the rest of the world has caught up. Tsuyoshi Fujita, the greatest beatdown deck designer of the century, has this ability: to spot exactly which plan blows a hole in the opposition.
Third, it helps evaluate matchups between two different beatdown decks. No less an authority than Mike Flores wrote that it had been discovered that in a matchup between two beatdown / burn decks, the more aggressive one would win. Yet one popular sideboarding strategy in this sort of match is to bring in large creatures, which goes against the principle of being as aggressive as possible. Boros decks often beat Gruul decks despite being less aggressive — while burn spells rained down on all the creatures, the untouchable Soltari Priest swung in for turn after turn.
Instead of talking about these matchups in terms of one deck being the aggressive deck and the other the controlling one – as per “Who’s the Beatdown?” – it explains more to evaluate them in terms of the five plans. To get an edge in beatdown versus beatdown matchups, you can try to dominate the board in the early game, switching to the defensive plus opponent’s face when the slower deck wrests control from you (which explains aggressive decks beating slower aggro decks in Invasion Block). Or you can bring in creatures that can dodge the hail of removal (be it Soltari Priest or Greater Gargadon). You can disrupt them, or you can employ the Philosophy of Fire and hit them in the face over and over again. Contra Mike, there is no one plan which will always work in every single matchup in every format, but if you know where you can look to get an edge, you’ll beat the people who don’t understand the matchup.
All the above just touches the surface of the theory of beatdown, but I hope it helps in some small way next time you are stumped about how to build your deck, or how to win in a particular situation.
‘Til next time, please remember that the “hit the opponent in the face” plan is about casting Red spells, and is not a plan to be followed literally, even in the case of extreme provocation.
Take care,