As fun as it is to win at anything, every competition has a loser. All Magic games inherently pit players against one another, which means that every game will have a winner and a loser. Sometimes, you draw badly. Sometimes, you make a mistake. Whether or not there was anything you could do about it, no one wins every MTG game they play.
While losing is not the result that any MTG player wants to see, it is one of the most valuable things that can happen. That said, it’s really difficult to lose properly. Emotional outbursts at unfair odds are a common thing, even for the most seasoned MTG players.
The best players in the game, at least in my opinion, know how to weaponize losing games. Every loss is a lesson, some better than others, and if you can tap into the power of losing your games, you will become a much stronger MTG player.
How to Lose Properly
The first step of losing Magic games properly, in my opinion, is a simple one. You need to think about your losses logically instead of emotionally. This is an incredibly difficult thing to achieve for many. After all, if you’re passionate about Magic, emotions will run high when you miss out on a win in a big tournament.
Not only will you enjoy Magic more if you don’t become emotionally devastated by each loss, but this will also get you into a state of mind where you can learn from your losses. Obviously, this sort of thing is easier said than done.
For me, becoming curious about my losses helped me become less attached to them. Instead of reacting to the loss, analyze it. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still the odd game of Magic that brews a ridiculous bad-beat story, and tempers will run high. Everyone wishes that they didn’t experience this, but it will inevitably happen at some point.
Once you can rationalize most of your losses, the next step is determining if a game action directly led to the loss. Was there anything you could’ve done to yield a different result? Sometimes, these are incredibly obvious, like not using a hate piece when you were supposed to or discovering a new interaction. Other times, the misplay is a lot more complex. Did you commit a resource incorrectly? Did you make a bad attack? Did you play around the wrong card? These gameplay mistakes can lead to wins in the future once you understand them.
If you’re serious about learning how to lose, you should consider watching recordings of your matches. Ideally, watching them with a better player can help accelerate the understanding process even more. If there are spots where you can clean up your play, make it a point to remember those places the next time that you play the matchup.
What If I Didn’t Make a Mistake?
Things become more difficult when your game was truly unwinnable. Heavy variance, like excessive flooding, aside, if your deck isn’t equipped to beat a certain strategy, there are a few things you need to consider.
Before you start asking yourself how to solve the matchup, the first question you should ask yourself is if this is a matchup that you even care about. When preparing a deck, you should be tuning it in accordance with the decks that you expect to play against. Another word for this is a metagame.
Your specific metagame may not necessarily be the overall metagame for the format you’re playing. If you are playing games at a local game store, the metagame instead becomes what decks you expect to see on a weekly basis. Dimir Mill in Modern, for example, is not a popular deck but you could encounter it a lot at your local store.
In comparison, you wouldn’t want to prepare for a rogue deck like Modern Dimir Mill at a big event. According to MTG Goldfish, Modern Mill is only 2% of the metagame. That makes it the 14th most popular deck. When going to larger tournaments, it is in your best interest to build your deck to beat the most common matchups in a larger metagame since those are the decks that you are most likely to see.
The best way to prepare your deck is to test the matchups with friends, or by getting some games in ahead of time. Try different cards that beat the specific strategies you have problems with. A lot of the time, resources will be available online offering suggestions. Try them for yourself and see what you think.
If all else fails, and you can’t get the matchup to a place where you’re comfortable, then you may need to consider switching your deck. If your goal going into an event is beating Mono-Red Aggro, but you’re playing a deck that has a horrendous matchup, it’ll be hard to achieve that. Conversely, if you need to give up a ton of deckbuilding space to fix a bad matchup, you’ll lose traction in your other matchups. This also may not be worth it. If you don’t want to switch your deck, you may just have to accept that you don’t win the matchup.
Learn From Your Losses
Losing is the most valuable opportunity in many competitive activities. It gives you the chance to learn new aspects of the skills involved in your hobby or trade and enables you to become an even better player in the future. Once you learn how to use your losses, you will start to improve at any skill at a monstrous rate. Magic: The Gathering is no different – and is probably one of the best ways to learn a skill that can serve you for a lifetime.
