Stepping Up Your Game: Part 4

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jacelightning

7 January 2011

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Table of Contents

What is a Sideboard?
The First Rule of Sideboard
The Second Rule of Sideboard
The Third Rule of Sideboard
Example


Originally I was going to write about Extended and give an overview of what the major players in the format are going to be, but there is a great guide to the format located here: The New World of Extended by crossclimber. Since there is a great guide to the format, I wanted to talk about every tournament player’s best friend the sideboard. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people (and done this myself) just jam fifteen cards together and letting that be their sideboard. I don’t have to say that this isn’t optimal for success but I just did anyway and I’ll say it one more time that doing that for your sideboard doesn’t lead to your deck having much success. Now that I’m done repeating myself three times lets move on to the sideboard.

So lets start with a definition, a sideboard consists of 15 cards that can be switched in to your constructed decks between games after game one in a tournament match. 15 cards is the exact number. The rules actually state that you have 15 cards in the sideboard or you have 0. After you choose to switch cards out you must then take cards out of your deck until you have 15 cards in your sideboard once more. After each match you must desideboard and remove all cards brought in from your deck and restore the main deck to the format on the deck registration sheet. Now that we have covered the definition of what a sideboard is, we have to ask why should be sideboard at all. I’ll be honest I wasn’t a fan of sideboarding for the first several years I played magic. My theory was that I’d just build my 60 card deck to be good enough that I won’t have to switch any cards out. My theory was wrong and during that time I saw exactly the same number of tournament wins as the Cleveland Browns have super bowls. The purpose of the sideboard is to increase your odds of winning in a particular match-up. The sideboard does this in two ways: by bringing in cards that are stronger against particular match-ups and not against the entire field and by bringing in cards that hose particular match-ups. Now I’ve defined the sideboard I want to go over the rules of sideboard.

The First Rule of Sideboard is that there should be no crap cards in the sideboard. This rule is pretty self explanatory that the sideboard isn’t a place for just some junk cards that you need to fill out your fifteen-card sideboard. This seems like an easy rule to follow but I still find myself wanting to put crap cards in my sideboard. You won’t look at those fifteen cards as a resource until you stop looking at your decks as sixty card decks but instead of seventy-five cards that you only could play with sixty of at a time. When you take this view of a deck the sideboard stops being some pile of cards but becomes a living breathing organism that morphs to defeat what ever decks your facing. It’s that point that makes your decks the strongest they can be. Most control decks are examples of decks like these as they have threats and answers that they get to change out to make their decks optimal against a given match-up. Decks like these don’t get the luxury of using their sideboards for filler. They have to put careful conscientious thought behind every card selection. Each card could be the one card that separates them from having the right answer at a really bad time.

         

The second rule of sideboard is what goes in must also come out. The DCI rule about sideboarding is that there has to be fifteen cards in the sideboard. It can seem really good to bring in nine to ten cards in match-up but for every card that comes in something has to come out. All to often decks can get ruined because people gut the core of their deck to bring in some good hate cards instead of just focusing on doing what makes their decks good. So even though you’ve planned to take down that particular match-up, you need to make sure that you’re not focusing on the trees so much that you forget the forest and the big picture that you want to accomplish. This means that sometimes the best sideboard for your deck is a transformational sideboard that changes the fundamental strategy of your deck. An example of that is the current standard Pyromancer Ascension decks that have the same core idea to win with the ascension, but after sideboarding becomes more of a U/R control deck to grind out long games and to make all the enchantment removal that they have sideboarded in dead cards.

         

The third rule of sideboard is that fifteen cards might not solve your problem. Sometimes we work so hard on a deck trying to get an idea to work that we can’t see the better way of doing things. I know how frustrating that feeling can be. I know that there have been several times when I worked on decks that I’ve been working to get the sideboard to protect against four to five different decks and eventually realizing that my deck isn’t really good enough to stand up to the field. I think in such a wide-open format as the new Extended that we need to keep these rules in mind when constructing our decks to fight the format. I want to take a moment to show you an example of sideboarding using the deck we talked about last week against the three most popular decks in the format, Vampires, U/B Control and Valakut.

R/G land kill

Modern squire1

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Vampires

Against Vampires you sideboard in 4 Pyroclasm, 1 Acidic Slime and you sideboard out 3 Melt Terrain and 2 Roiling Terrain. The reason for this is that Vampires is primarily a swarm deck so a Pyroclasm will eliminate their field and since it is either Mono colored or R/B which has pretty secure mana the land destruction package won’t be as effective as simple board sweep. The Acidic Slime is not so we can keep on destroying lands, but instead so that we can kill Dark Tutelage which after a board sweeper is the only reach a vampire deck has to finish the game. A note to be had if they side in the Demon of Death's Gate plan you can bring in Mark of Mutiny in the place of the last Roiling Terrain and a Destructive Force and an Inferno Titan. A note on this change, even though I’m pulling out what seems like the core to the deck instead I’m preparing the deck to blow out my opponent by counteracting his biggest threat.

U/B Control

In the U/b Control matchup, you have to deal with Jaces, Mana Leaks, and the fact that they are probably bringing in Flashfreezes. The way to sideboard in this situation is to pull in 3 Summoning Trap, 1 Melt Terrain, 1 Acidic Slime, 1 Roiling Terrain, 2 [Raging Ravine]], and take out 2 Lightning Bolt, 2 Everflowing Chalice, 2 Destructive Force, 1 Copperline Gorge, and 1 Rootbound Crag. The goal is to ramp up the land destruction package to such a level that it makes sure they don’t resolve a jace and you go off into the sunset with your Inferno Titan swinging away. The Summoning Trap comes into play when they counter the ramp spells to prevent the game from getting out of hand. Flashfreeze is super effective against this deck and Summoning Trap helps lower the sting a little bit by making the opponent think twice about his counter. The Raging Ravines are here to attack planeswalkers and to add another win condition against control. A note here that sometimes the sideboard is just a place to make some of your weapons in your deck stand out a little more because it is those weapons that are most effective against the opponent.

Valakut

Against Valakut the best weapon this deck has is land destruction so the preferred sideboard plan is to sideboard in 1 Acidic Slime, 1 Melt Terrain, 1 Roiling Terrain and 2 Mark of Mutiny and to pull out 4 Lightning Bolt and 1 Destructive Force. The three land destruction spells allow me to focus on turning off valakut by having as many ways to kill mountains as they perhaps have in their entire deck. The two Mark of Mutiny allows me to prepare for the blowout win by stealing a Primeval Titan or some other creature to attack them with. Again the keys to beat the deck are already there, but you have to emphasize certain parts of the plan in order for it to work. I hope that I’ve shown you a little more about sideboarding and that you can put it into practice for extended season. Good Luck to everyone PTQing!