It is now dawning on me that this semi-series is not going to move linearly; “Deck Fundamentals” is not going to forward the kind of articles that start at position A and terminate at any kind of conclusive end point. I guess that doesn’t matter overmuch because anyone reading this on Star City Premium will be a hard core enough gamer that he knows basics about tournament decks, sideboards, and so forth. So I’m just going to jump forward and assume that if you are reading “Three-and-a-Half Models for Sideboarding” you know that any deck, whether it is a properly tuned 60 card deck, clumsily assembled 62 card pile, or wittily and chunkily stacked 244 card battler, gets exactly 15 cards to play in games two and three: the sideboard.
Attitudes on the sideboard vary depending on a player’s level of skill and experience. When I was starting out, I believed that any deck that was “good enough” should be able to “stand on its own,” and looked down on sideboards. Realizing that if I eschewed sideboards completely I would be at a ridiculous disadvantage in tournament play and eventually stocked mine full of Red Elemental Blasts, Pyroblasts, Flashfires, and Shatters… largely because I didn’t know how to make a proper sideboard. Not surprisingly, I had no idea how to side in and out, or even what cards in my deck were worse than my board cards, or what cards I could afford cutting before terminally marginalizing my core plan. Barns at the store where I played thought 15 cards was a huge number for additional options… Today as well as then, I eventually came to realize that 15 cards was not so many at all, not when there is so much work to do.
Generally speaking, I hate Wish sideboards. They are usually terrible and played far too often. The reason that I dislike Wish sideboards in the abstract is that sideboarded games are much more important than game ones. Think about it like this: Unless you are playing against a glacial time manager, Game Two is equally as important as Game One. In a two game match, each of Game One and Game Two contributes the same amount to victory; in a three game match, Game Three (which is often a carbon copy of Game Two in terms of deck configuration) now comes into play. Because some number of matches go three games, sideboarded games are more important statistically to the overall success or failure of a deck over time than Game Ones.
The problem with Wish sideboards is that they restrict your ability to answer the opponent’s ability to take advantage of sideboarded games. A good example is at the recent Legacy Grand Prix in Philadelphia, there was a lot of discussion on the Neutral Ground mailing list about the proper configuration of Psychatog. I advocated the Intuition/Stinkweed Imp version that got Paul Jordan within one game of Top 8, whereas others wanted to splash Green for Cunning Wish/Berserk. The problem with a “versatile” Wish sideboard for Psychatog in particular is that for Philadelphia, we expected Goblins decks to bring in between 3 and 8 Red Elemental Blasts (Pyroblast)… If Psychatog were bringing in nothing (because it used all its sideboard slots on Berserks, Hibernations, and other such special case bullets), it would be both behind in a foot race and simply out-classed. Success over the course of 14+ rounds would be difficult at best, even if Psychatog could present some flamboyant Berserk kills.
This same problem can be translated across many different formats, many different decks. In the most recent Extended, Affinity was highly favored against Ichorid for any number of reasons. Line the decks up and you can see one million ways where Affinity has the advantage. Both decks are fast; both decks laugh at any notion of linear mana development; both decks deploy their men and spread across the board like a paint bucket tipped across a tabletop. The difference is that while both decks have irresistable offenses, only one can block. Moreover, when it comes to blocking, one deck blocks… better than the other attacks. 4/4 wall v. 3/1 haste much? Irresistible, my Myr Enforcer.
This problem gives us the lead-in to our first model.
Here is the version of Friggorid I played two weeks ago, with the hyper-aggressive sideboard I played:
Creatures (25)
Lands (17)
Spells (18)
- 4 Zombie Infestation
- 4 Cabal Therapy
- 1 Ray of Revelation
- 4 Deep Analysis
- 4 Chrome Mox
- 1 Life from the Loam
Sideboard
Now I know that there has been a week of Grand Prix since my PTQ Top 8, and different players addressed different issues different ways (Dredge Fog, nice), but for the metagame I predicted, this is how I looked at preparation:
Hold: I beat everything.
Caveat: Well not everything, exactly.
Revision: If I side in 13 cards, I really do beat everything.
So that’s what I did.
When you have an incredibly dominating deck that is powerful and unexpected enough that you don’t necessarily have to deal with the mirror (or you can reasonably assume no one is gunning for you, say), you can devote a large chunk of your 15 cards to winning a single matchup. Early in Mirrodin Block, many respectable players started off in the format with Big Red decks sporting any number of horrible cards (Vulshok War Boar) and No Way To Beat Affinity. In the absence of Skullclamp, these players didn’t expect as much Affinity as they might have at PT: Kobe, and just overloaded their sideboards with artifact hate for sideboard games. No, it didn’t work out very well. This model only works when your deck is just super fantastic against everything such that you don’t need the cards against the rest of the field. Big Red was a strong deck in Mirrodin Block (in two set, it even walked away with the Pro Tour trophy), but it wasn’t the best. Even barring Affinity, Big Red wasn’t irresistible either. Red might have been sufficient against, say, U/G, but it would never win against an Entwined Rude Awakening; that was just one of the many ways the deck could lose in non-robotic combat.
One of the advantages of the all-in sideboard, similar to the Wish sideboard, is that you can’t screw your core competency up overmuch. While I don’t like Wish sideboards in general, they are perfect for a deck like Chris McDaniel’s Heartbeat Combo from PTLA:
Spells (34)
Combo decks like this one are so acute that any extensive amount of sideboarding will disrupt the core engine. While SWK was able to do things like bring in ancillary Brain Freezes or boost his Fog count, he would not typically be able to strip himself of sufficient machinery to hit critical mass… The cards just weren’t there in his board to knock out the center pieces.
Similarly, the Ichorid deck didn’t have the cards to sway too far off target. If I had played it again, I would probably have gone -1 Swamp main for a third Riftstone Portal and played two copies of Life from the Loam in the board. This would have given me a different potential plan against The Rock. The Rock, while not a difficult matchup in and of itself, can sometimes exploit a slower draw and get Ichorid into a long game resource war that is difficult to win. Say you don’t just kill the ponderous Rock deck on turn 3 when he is tapped out for Sakura-Tribe Elder or some such irrelevant non-flyer. If he is a lucky ducky, he might get some Cranial Extractions online or odd defense like Night of Soul’s Betrayal. If you just Dredge Golgari Grave-Troll a couple of times, with three Loams in your deck, you can just go Ancestral Deep Dog on The Rock and never look back. Do you remember the U/G matchup from two years ago? The Rock had reasonable tools against Deep Dog, but unless it either had Withered Wretch online or had gone Vampiric Tutor for Buried Alive on Genesis and Bone Shredder, a slow clock that relied on Duress and Cabal Therapy to keep an aggressive card advantage machine on its knees almost never beat a single hard-cast Deep Analysis. It was insane how bad The Rock was against “I draw two” and, say, an Aquamoeba. If you go Loam long, you can just deploy huge Grave-Trolls via Dredge and probably Ancestral into flying or some other sort of unblockability even if your Ichorids or even Psychatogs went offline.
… But that would have been the extent of the tools. The beauty of course was that Ichorid was so powerful that with a fairly narrow sideboard, you wouldn’t be able to screw it up with a hundred options. One of the main reasons I didn’t play Duress was that I didn’t think I was good enough to side them in.
Sometimes writers will caution you – superficially – about screwing up your core competency. “Don’t side out too many creatures,” they might say, “or you won’t be able to win.” When you are all-in with a sideboard like the Ichorid anti-Affinity, you have to mess with your middle. There is no other way to do it… but that’s okay. The reason you have so many cards for a particular matchup is that your maindeck doesn’t work against that opponent. Isn’t it sort of stupid to stay on a plan that won’t win, just for the purposes of preserving said sub-optimal plan?
I remember the first time I qualified for the Pro Tour, in the deciding game for the Blue Envelope, I HAD to side out most of my creatures. I came to the realization that I had to have all my Pyroblasts, Dystopias, and Stone Rains in because I had gotten Circled out of Game Two with a clear advantage in play. If I didn’t seriously manascrew or otherwise disrupt my opponent, I was just going to lose… Luckily I had one of my pump Knights in my opening hand and it was enough given my stated God-draw. If I had slavishly adhered to my core deck of 2/1 creatures and burn spells, I would have just lost with a core deck that wasn’t good enough against the potentially inviolate fortress the opponent was presenting.
In the same vein, my version of Friggorid from two weeks ago didn’t want Deep Analysis against Affinity. I can’t remember any game against Affinity where I had four mana to play slow Inspiration or three free life to throw away. The only game I’ve ever played any kind of Deep Analysis against Affinity, I ate a lethal Cranial Plating the next turn.
Competent sideboarding is like the process of good writing: you can’t be afraid to kill your darlings.
A few weeks ago I tried to make a G/W Extended deck for the Friggorid-aware metagame. It went like this:
Creatures (20)
- 4 White Knight
- 4 Silver Knight
- 2 Mystic Enforcer
- 4 Phantom Centaur
- 1 True Believer
- 1 Viridian Zealot
- 1 Arashi, the Sky Asunder
- 2 Hand of Honor
- 1 Kataki, War's Wage
Lands (21)
Spells (19)
Now a deck like this has a lot going for it, but like many rogue decks, it is low on the power curve. A deck like this one therefore presents its own sideboarding challenges. It doesn’t have a lot of obvious holes, but still needs help in games two and three. When I started working on it, I used a technique I call “slotting” and worked backward. Basically, I laid out all the major matchups and decided how many cards in my main deck I hated and tried to fill the holes as best I could. To wit:
Psychatog
Hate:
1 Viridian Zealot
1 Kataki, War’s Wage
1 True Believer
(1 Arashi, The Sky Asunder)
Generally dislike:
4 Eladamri’s Call
(1 Arashi, The Sky Asunder)
Zealot, Kataki, and True Believer just don’t justify their costs. They’re not terrible… they’re just the equivalent of Golgari Brownscale in Limited. Cards of their efficiency level are not the hallmark of a winning deck in the matchup. Eladamri’s Call is also conditionally amazing, but you don’t necessarily have time to waste fingering your deck when Psychatog gets better and better as the game progresses. Strictly speaking I am not in love with Armadillo Cloak or Jitte against Dr. Teeth, but this deck has so much Protection from Black that any guy who slips through can either go all the way or just keep lethal from ever happening with a couple of key gains… Not necessarily something you want to as your main plan, but creature enhancement can give you the win, especially when the other guy isn’t looking for it. Arashi can conditionally show up in the “Hate” category depending on the version of ‘Tog (does he have Meloku?), but can also steal games; he isn’t winning any land speed records.
End result: 3-8 cards
Boros
Hate:
1 Viridian Zealot
1 Kataki, War’s Wage
Generally Dislike:
4 Pithing Needle
4 Eladamri’s Call
2 Mystic Enforcer
Viridian Zealot is clunky but can trade and Kataki just makes your Moxes and Jittes worse. Yes you can 187 his Kataki but you are probably winning games where Boros is dropping his worst Bear, whereas if he is trading Katakis with you that is bad news indeed. Neither card is a death sentence, but you also don’t really want to see them. The same can almost be said for most of the “Generally Dislike” category. Pithing Needle can be annoying against their many Onslaught duals or decrease the efficiency of Goblin Legionnaire. Half-card trades aren’t amazing but there is probably a reason the card goes for $28 or whatever. Mystic Enforcer is lowest on the list; a 3/3 for four mana isn’t actually that horrible against their deck because it can still force favorable trades, and at 6/6 flying, the Enforcer can just win the game; that said, I still don’t love it because it costs so damn much.
End Result: 2-12 cards
Heartbeat
Hate:
4 Pithing Needle
Generally Dislike:
2 Umezawa’s Jitte
2 Armadillo Cloak
2 Mystic Enforcer
1 Arashi, The Sky Asunder
4 Phantom Centaur
1 Kataki, War’s Wage
In this matchup we have a huge number of cards that do literally nothing. Especially as Heartbeat is a bad matchup, we have to address these. Pithing Needle is so bad it is difficult to express in words. I would almost add the enhancers to this list, but as they can conceivably quicken the clock in non-Moment’s Peace games, these cards are merely in the “please can I cut them” pile. Due to the speed of the opposing deck and general ability to ignore beatdown, I don’t like anything that costs four or more for a vanilla threat, hence the fatties in the second group. That said, given enough disruption, there is no wrong threat. Therefore fatties are not terminally useless (especially as this deck can go turn-2/turn-3 crazy with Eladamri’s Call on top of anything else).
Note that although the bare minimum on this matchup is four cards, that doesn’t necessarily describe the true number of cards necessary to repair the matchup, just the lowest possible number of cards we can change without hating every peel.
End Result: 4-16 cards
Affinity
Hate:
Generally Dislike:
2 Mystic Enforcer
1 Arashi, The Sky Asunder
4 Phantom Centaur
1 True Believer
There is nothing truly odious in this deck against Affinity, and the maindeck capabilities like Eladamri’s Call into Kataki are actually quite sexy. This is of course a philosophical trap: barring Jitte or a good Armadillo fighter, Affinity is just faster and more fundamentally sound deck in the matchup. G/W will not beat it fighting fair.
End Result: 0-8 cards
Astral Slide
Hate:
2 Umezawa’s Jitte
2 Armadillo Cloak
Generally Dislike:
2 Mystic Enforcer
1 Arashi, The Sky Asunder
4 Phantom Centaur
1 Kataki, War’s Wage
1 True Believer
Here is another “trap” situation. The enhancement cards are the weakest, but you still have to pay attention. It isn’t so much an issue of cards being bad as the deck’s plan being too weak fundamentally to win the matchup. You might not want to tear out your engine block, but the cards you bring in have to be of sufficient potency to carry against a deck with superior strategy in the matchup
End Result: 4-13 cards
NO Stick
Hate:
2 Armadillo Cloak
Generally Dislike:
2 Umezawa’s Jitte
2 Mystic Enforcer
1 Arashi, The Sky Asunder
4 Phantom Centaur
Barring the bears, I’d analyze this matchup the same way from a “slotting” standpoint as Slide. True Believer is actually reasonably strong, and Kataki can be annoying against NO Stick, but the core competency of NO Stick is actually geared towards squashing decks like G/W at the baseline. G/W has decent enough fellows, and cards like Silver Knight – as with Slide – are surprisingly good, but a deck with Wraths and card advantage-generating recurring creature kill is just going to beat a deck of all guys, no matter how efficient, boring draw against boring draw.
End Result: 2-11 cards
Ichorid
Hate:
Generally Dislike:
1 Viridian Zealot
1 Kataki, War’s Wage
1 True Believer
G/W presents nothing really horrible here (the deck was put together with Ichorid in mind), but there are inefficiencies. As with Affinity, this is a matchup where there are no truly horrible and useless cards, but where the power level of the opposing deck must be respected.
End Result: 0-3 cards
In the end, there is no way that we can address the maximum amount of cards in every matchup. However, we can strive to hit the minimums across the board and pay attention where the opposing deck demands it. Also, the way we’ve laid out the numbers allows us to figure out places where we can stretch specific answer cards across multiple matchups. If it comes to a decision between Disenchant and Purge for Affinity, how do we pick one? One 1W instant helps against Heartbeat and one kills Atogs. The matchup where we need more help will inform our decision.
Our slotting needs:
Psychatog: 3-8 cards
Boros: 2-12 cards
Heartbeat: 4-16 cards
Affinity: 0-8 cards
Astral Slide: 4-13 cards
NO Stick: 2-11 cards
Ichorid: 0-3 cards
This is how I chose to address the matchups:
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
1 Armadillo Cloak
4 Naturalize
3 Kataki, War’s Wage
2 Purge
3 Rule Of Law
Psychatog: 3-8 cards
2 Purge
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
1 Armadillo Cloak
Purges will appear unconditionally; the enhancers come in depending on how much you want to take out. Against Dredgatog I would not want Arashi, but would consider up to all the Naturalizes depening on the opponent’s configuration; the last thing I would want would be trading for a Bottle Gnomes. Against some versions of B/U ‘Tog, I might even play Kataki (perhaps over some or all enhancers), just to steal mana.
Boros: 2-12 cards
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
1 Armadillo Cloak
Note that we can add the Naturalizes if need be if the opponent decides to answer Jitte and Cloak with a card like Sulfuric Vortex.
Heartbeat: 4-16 cards
4 Naturalize
3 Rule Of Law
They may be less than half the “ideal” sixteen but seven cards is a lot for a matchup. In this case, three of them are particularly annoying, especially alongside True Believer. You can add more enhancers if you wish (despite the fact that they are also on the “please cut me” list), just because they might be better than four drops.
Affinity: 0-8 cards
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
4 Naturalize
3 Kataki, War’s Wage
2 Purge
This matchup lets you go over the top, past slotting to tweaking. For example, Jitte is just a better enhancer in the matchup than Armadillo Cloak. Even though the slotting count requires 0 cards for a reasonable post-boards deck, this is one of those matchups where their deck is better than yours and that you should probably keep that in mind before presenting.
Astral Slide: 4-13 cards
4 Naturalize
I wouldn’t really count on winning this matchup. I didn’t devote more cards just because the deck isn’t overly popular. I would consider Jitte over Cloak because of Elephants… but then, again, tramping over Snake Shamans isn’t the worst.
NO Stick: 2-11 cards
4 Naturalize
3 Kataki, War’s Wage
Armadillo Cloak is bad because of Ice. One saving grace that the G/W has against what was probably the most successful overall deck of this year’s Extended season is that Pithing Needle + beatdown is a house; moreover Naturalizes always go two-for-one. Kataki both sucks and eats only half a Fire/Ice but it is fairly annoying and much better than any four-drop in games where the opponent has an artifact draw. As with Slide, I wouldn’t want the matchup, but at least you have some options and can present a not embarrassing deck post boards.
Ichorid: 0-3 cards
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
1 Armadillo Cloak
2 Purge
I’d go over the top again for this matchup. Ichorid is just too insane, even though G/W has a ton of First Strike and even more Protection from Black (some flying). As long as you can stop the ‘Togs with Needles and Purges, you won’t tend to lose with lifegain online – especially with the Ichorid-eating Umezawa’s Jitte available.
Keep in mind I’m not saying to play this G/W deck; it just happens to be a good example of sideboard slotting. I actually use slotting a lot for “phase one” sideboards. When I put together tournament decks at the outset, I usually have a lot of cards that I want to play. Slotting helps me figure out what balance of what cards should be played, at least at the outset. I bet if I played the G/W over the course of multiple weeks, I would have come up with a significantly different sideboard, as experience trumped theory over time.
The main limitation of slotting as a technique is that it is imprecise and sometimes downright deceptive. Whether a card is completely useless or not doesn’t necessarily tell you how many cards you should sideboard. For example, the Psychatog matchup asks for as 8 swaps, which doesn’t really paint the right picture. You can just play a Protection from Black dude and stick something on it and a regular Psychatog deck might just be kold. At the same time, the deck has no cards that are stone cold useless against Affinity (even True Believer trades with Froggy), but mano a mano, Affinity is just faster and more powerful; if you don’t respect that, you aren’t going to consistently beat the onetime bane of all constructed Magic.
The last sideboarding technique (which, I guess, includes the “-and-a-Half” from the title) is the Change in Plans. The half, which I’m just going to touch on, is the Surprise! sideboard, which has been covered in greater detail elsewhere. A less dramatic take than the “sideboard 15 creatures into my creatureless deck” plan is a mere twist out of the board. Adding two Life from the Loam in Friggorid for a resource fight (spoken out of turn above) is a good example of this. The deck isn’t a fundamentally different animal after boards, but the core plan is enriched; The Rock has to beat not only a much stronger aggressive deck (Friggorid’s page-turning offense), but a card advantage machine that can reliably produce a 10/10 regenerating flyer every turn starting turn five, never dropping below 7 cards in hand. How can he win?
One of the things that has always fascinated me about testing against the CAL is that I consistently side out creature kill and/or offense and the opponent consistently sides in Overgrown Estate and Loxodon Hierarch… And We’re Both Right. Like the creatures in the CAL – notably Robert Maher, Jr. – can be insanely powerful, but I usually take the position that the CAL is going to Ancestral me every turn no matter what I do, so I might as well concentrate on the things that I can control (rather than trying in vain to Smother some Mahers when the opponent might draw zero relevant 0-3 drops). Hierarch is an interesting problem because while it seems to come in no matter what the opponent is playing, the CAL is never a creature-intensive enough deck that you will want a lot of cards like Wrath of God. Like the Life from the Loams out of Friggorid, the subtle Change in Plans can generate an advantage in post sideboarded games. While the CAL retains its core capabilities, weird faux-combo main plan, irresistible and hate-proof card advantage engine, fortress-like defensive position, its added life gain and efficient offense layers create additional Fields of Battle wherein the opponent may have little or no ground to hold.
While it didn’t work as well at Nationals as it may have before the deck picked up in popularity, the Change in Plans in Josh Ravitz Nationals deck was one of the best I have ever engineered. Superficial opponents, or those who don’t read Star City Premium articles, might have brought in worthless anti-Boil cards, while keeping in their anti-creature measures (or even enriched them with Bribery). Those opponents would have had inefficient draws, not to mention a sad time against the heavy Boseiju plan of Kuroda-style Red post boards. Minus men, in winnable fights:
Creatures (8)
Lands (24)
Spells (28)
- 4 Sensei's Divining Top
- 1 Sowing Salt
- 4 Magma Jet
- 3 Beacon of Destruction
- 4 Pulse of the Forge
- 4 Shrapnel Blast
- 4 Wayfarer's Bauble
- 4 Molten Rain
Sideboard
This is a nice example to close on because it also touches on our discussion of slotting somewhat. The Kuroda-style deck was fundamentally agnostic. None of its cards were bad in any matchups. You couldn’t really point to anything beyond the fact that “he might steal that” and say a card was bad; as such, it defied slotting. At the same time, the deck’s core plan against Blue Control was simply too slow. As such, a Change in Plans or some similar was required in order for the deck to become competitive at all, let alone place highly at a major event.
Happy games two and three,
LOVE
MIKE