Legacy is in a strange place.
This past weekend, Grand Prix New Jersey hosted by this fine website accumulated over four thousand participants. In my years playing Magic, I never would
have thought that an Eternal format like Legacy could have ever gotten that kind of turnout. There just aren’t enough Volcanic Islands in circulation! Or
at least that’s what I told myself, even just a week ago. But I was proven wrong by the public and StarCityGames itself.
We throw one hell of a party.
Tournament hiccups in a four-thousand person tournament aside, Grand Prix New Jersey was an awesome experience. Having so many like-minded people all in
one (gigantic) room, all battling in the format I love, was impressive on so many levels. People came for the times. People came for the swag. And people
came for the format. Together, we achieved something greater than ourselves, and it was a spectacle to behold. I am proud to have been a part of it.
I am also proud of my friends for doing so well. Brad Nelson and myself accumulated twelve wins resulting in three pro points, while Brian Braun-Duin and
Tom Ross fought in the finals, with BBD coming out on top. Watching that finals match was bittersweet, as I didn’t feel comfortable rooting for one friend
over the other, but the fact that I had that “problem” was pretty awesome.
Before the event started, the Roanoke gang and a few others had started a Facebook thread detailing all the decks we were playing, or had been testing.
Amidst the ten or so lists running around, BBD had posted his deck, but he was not exactly sure on his build. It looked similar to the “old” version of
Jeskai Stoneblade, but with one new addition.
At first, I didn’t like the look of the deck. It felt like it had way too much air, and only Young Pyromancer to capitalize on the turns where you cast a
draw spell into another draw spell. In theory, the deck looked pretty mediocre to me, but I can admit when I’m wrong. BBD’s deck is awesome, and I feel
like a fool for not believing in him. We can sit here and argue until we’re blue in the face, and there’s a great chance I’m being results-oriented, but
his ideas are sound and he tends to put his money where his mouth is.
I liked my deck for the Grand Prix. Don’t get me wrong. I had been playing it on Magic Online for a week or two leading up to the event and had reasonable
results. Most games or matchups felt winnable, and many of my losses came at the hands of a small change I had made, or a small mishap in sideboarding, or
a slight misplay from a Brainstorm. Long story short, Legacy is a difficult format, and one can never hope to master it. You can only minimize the mistakes
you make in a given tournament by getting in a lot of repetitions with the deck you want to play. Most of the decks in Legacy have many complex scenarios
that you need to be able to safely navigate in a timely manner, and that’s especially so when you’re playing Brainstorm. I had not done this with BBD’s
deck, and that gave me another reason not to play it.
But now things have certainly changed, and I’m going to be dedicating this week to testing his deck for the Legacy Open in Richmond. Treasure Cruise is a
powerful card that requires you to build your deck in a very specific way to utilize its potential. But having too many draw spells and not enough action
is an easy way to lose yourself the game. You need something like Young Pyromancer to gain traction while you’re casting these dig spells so that you
aren’t just wasting time.
The U/R Delver decks that littered the tournament were similar to BBD’s deck but had less staying power. Cards like Delver of Secrets and Monastery
Swiftspear are much less impressive when everyone is running six or more removal spells for one mana, not to mention having a blue threat in your deck is a
liability thanks to the maindeck inclusions of Pyroblast (which was everywhere). When the format is leaning on blue decks due to their overwhelming power
level, cards like Jace and Delver become much less potent than normal. They’re just not reliable enough to win you the game the way they used to be!
Since that is the case, BBD opted to play Stoneforge Mystic (no surprise) as his other go-to threat besides Young Pyromancer. This gave him access to a
lean threat-base, which complemented his draw spells rather nicely. Stoneforge Mystic is quite good with Brainstorm and Ponder, allowing you to shuffle
away the worst cards, while Gitaxian Probe gives you the heads up on what they’re playing or whether or not they have a removal spell for the Stoneforge
Mystic. Like the other Jeskai Stoneblade decks, True-Name Nemesis is a must, even though it doesn’t really mesh well with the rest of the deck. TNN is just
too powerful alongside Umezawa’s Jitte to leave on the sidelines, and it gives you free wins against any fair deck that doesn’t have an answer to it.
But regardless, I’m sure you’ll read all about his deck and exploits tomorrow. I just wanted to touch on New Jersey before I went deep into this week’s
topic.
Common Traps in Sideboarding
It isn’t an industry secret, but the fact that sideboards exist is one of the reasons I have a job. To be quite frank, sideboarding is one of the most
difficult aspects of Magic and the one where most people tend to fall behind. Having an obsolete sideboard will result in losses far more than how good
your maindeck is, and constantly updating it to shore the holes in your deck will take you far.
The question I get asked more than any other is, “How do you sideboard with deck X?” I generally have a solid answer or two for the person asking the
question, but what they’re really asking me is, “Can you write me out a sideboard guide for every matchup in the format?” To be completely honest, I don’t
have the time or energy to do that for every single deck I work on, nor do I ever have a plan set in stone until the tournament begins. Additionally, my
sideboard plans tend to change against every single opponent based on what they’re sideboarding or what cards I see in the games we’ve already played. A
single card in a deck can drastically change how you’re supposed to sideboard.
Having a physical sideboard guide as opposed to trying to figure things out on your own can be detrimental to your success. For example, imagine the
following scenario:
Player A: I lost to Containment Priest with Sneak and Show.
Player B: Did you bring in Pyroclasm?
Player A: No, it wasn’t in my sideboarding notes.
When you have sideboarding notes, they can become outdated in a single game, against a single card. Containment Priest is a new addition to Legacy from the
Commander series and is a powerful tool for any white-based deck that wants to shut down cards like Show and Tell, Sneak Attack, or even Green Sun’s
Zenith. If your buddy who’s played Sneak and Show for years built you a sideboard guide for the Grand Prix, but forgot to include the update for
Containment Priest, it likely cost you the entire match.
Sideboarding Theory for Each Archetype
What you need to know about sideboarding is that having a general idea of what to do is much more important than “cut X and bring in Y.” Knowing the
fundamentals in each matchup is key to learning what it means to be good at building and using a sideboard.
The Aggro Deck vs Control
Removal spells are generally weak against control decks. Most control decks across various formats don’t play that many creatures. Your Chained to the
Rocks and Abrupt Decays alike will be pretty weak. But what if they have Archangel of Thune out of the sideboard, and you just took out all of your ways to
kill it? For the most part, that is the type of thing they’ll be banking on when they’re playing a control deck, and most control decks will have a
sideboard plan that involves big, powerful creatures as a result of their opponent’s sideboarding out all of their removal.
The catch here is that you need to know what deck your opponent is playing, and you need to know common trends in sideboarding. If you keep in your Chained
to the Rocks and they don’t play a creature, that dead card could cost you the game. Finding a hedge is important against control decks, which is why cards
like Hero’s Downfall are awesome. They will rarely be dead cards, regardless of the matchup, because most control decks also play planeswalkers.
The Aggro Deck vs Midrange
You need to realize that their deck is bigger than yours, so you shouldn’t really be trying to go over the top of them. Instead, go under them with
cheaper, more explosives creatures (and answers) so that you can end the game before their bigger spells come online. If your deck is already lower to the
ground than their deck, you should be finding ways to mitigate sideboard hosers like Drown in Sorrow. This can be accomplished by playing cards like Hall
of Triumph and the like, for example.
In older formats like Modern and Legacy, the lines can often be blurred between midrange and aggressive decks. In these cases, it is important to discern
what aspects of their deck give you the most trouble, and alter your deck accordingly. Having some number of ways to keep their Stoneforge Mystics and the
like at bay is phenomenal, because Stoneforge Mystic (with Batterskull) is usually the card that beats aggressive decks.
The Aggro Mirror
In an aggressive mirror, the biggest point of concern is figuring out your role. Do you shift to be more midrange/control? Do you even have those tools at
your disposal? Brad Nelson recently built a R/W Aggro deck for Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir that had the capability of becoming a control deck after sideboard.
We’ll get more into transformational sideboards in a bit, but for now, take a look at this:
Creatures (11)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (23)
Spells (24)
As you can see, Brad takes the control route to the extreme! One game, he’s attacking with Monastery Swiftspear. The next, he’s casting End Hostilities! It
is decks like these that make Brad one of the best deckbuilders in the game. These style of sideboards give him a significant edge in a lot of matchups and
ultimately lead to a lot of free wins. Just think about what your aggro deck can change into given the right fifteen-card sideboard and make it happen!
Doing something this drastic with your sideboard is not always correct, but finding the right times to be a little eccentric is important. Sideboards
should be an extension of your deck, giving you the right sixty cards in a given matchup. Brad just so happened to find that the right sixty against some
midrange strategies involved changing his scheme altogether.
The Control Deck vs Aggro
As a control player up against an aggressive strategy, your goal should be to make it to the lategame so that your big spells can close the deal. Do
whatever you can, for the most part, to trade resources on a one-for-one basis until you can resolve your Dig Through Time, Sphinx’s Revelation, or the
like. Your sideboard should help facilitate this.
You can’t usually fill your deck with cheap spot removal like Bile Blight or Drown in Sorrow because those cards aren’t answers to the threats out of
midrange decks. You will get run over by Siege Rhino and company unless you find the right balance. Since we don’t have access to Doom Blade or anything
similar, U/B Control decks are in a bit of a bind at the moment, because they are forced to play Bile Blight and/or Drown in Sorrow because they don’t have
great spot removal or a good sweeper effect like End Hostilities.
As a control deck, figuring out the right sixty cards for each matchup is the most important aspect of deckbuilding. That’s why control decks are one of
the most difficult decks to build in the early weeks of a new Constructed season. Control decks are only as good as the answers you have, and building your
deck to fight a random metagame is incredibly difficult. It is usually feasible to distinguish the best cards from the worst, but rarely is it easy to
pinpoint every single good deck that the format is going to throw at you. I don’t recommend trying to build a control deck until a week or two after a
metagame has “set in,” and you know what you’re fighting.
The Control Deck vs Midrange
In Standard, the control deck’s job in the midrange matchup is to fight the right battle. They are going to be slinging planeswalkers at you left and right
and hoping that it will be good enough. Your job is to keep that from happening, so having a sideboard plan that involves lots of Thoughtseizes and
counterspells is probably a good thing. Most of your cards should be aimed at this exact type of strategy, because most midrange decks don’t really have
other options. Other than their own copies of Thoughtseize, their only way to interact with you is to put things on the board. Your deck should be
optimized to have the tools to fight those cards after sideboard.
Removal spells like End Hostilities can only take you so far against an opponent who has a lot of planeswalkers in their deck. This is one of the reasons
why U/B Control opts for the oft-forgotten Perilous Vault. Perilous Vault allows you to kill both creatures and planeswalkers with ease, though there is a
significant time and mana investment. Without Perilous Vault, many midrange decks would walk all over control decks, but having that reset button buys you
a lot of time and resources.
Your sideboard should complement this plan with cards like Dissolve or Negate, which are generally strong against their planeswalker-based strategy. Their
creatures are fine against you, but they will rely on them less as control decks tend to be flush with spot removal.
The Control Mirror
Control mirrors are often a huge grind. Both of you have access to a plethora of disruption, and the person who usually wins is the one who hits the most
land drops. Hitting your land drops will give you the mana you need to fight certain fights and have enough resources to win those fights. Awkwardly, there
have been some creatures printed in the last few months that invalidate that kind of mentality.
Since Pearl Lake Ancient can’t be countered or killed by conventional means, having some dagger card could be great for the control mirror. This could be
anything from Psychic Intrusion to Villainous Wealth, but mostly you just want your big spell to resolve. If you play enough copies of Thoughtseize,
Dissolve, or Negate, it won’t be that difficult to resolve your game-breaking spell. The trick is getting to that point.
Another way to attack a control mirror is with cheap threats that are resilient to conventional removal. Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver is pretty solid in the
control mirrors, as Hero’s Downfall is quite bad. After a few turns, Ashiok can threaten to exile their entire hand, ending the game in one fell swoop. At
the very least, Ashiok puts a clock on the opponent that they have to deal with, and the turn they spend to deal with it could give you a big opening to
resolve a Prognostic Sphinx or some other means of pressure.
Control mirrors tend to vary across formats, as the threats that matter change with what you have access to. In Legacy, the control mirrors often revolve
around True-Name Nemesis or Jace, the Mind Sculptor, while the Modern Jeskai Control deck tends to nickel and dime the opponent to death with Snapcaster
Mage, Celestial Colonnade, and a slew of burn spells. Figuring out the best method of attack in each of these cases, and finding the best way to fight that
battle is how you will get a leg up in the mirror.
The Midrange Deck vs Control
Midrange strategies are often in an odd place in a given metagame. The entire point of midrange is being fluid enough to become the aggro or control deck
given the situation, and having your deck and sideboard built to facilitate this is the most important part of any midrange deck. Against control
strategies, being able to go on the offensive is important, because you generally have access to cards that are weaker as the game goes longer. It is
difficult for a midrange strategy to combat Dig Through Time and sweeper effects by conventional means, and only in the last few years have you had
something other than discard spells to help you in this fight.
Midrange decks can beat control by attacking their mana. We saw this a lot in the Unburial Rites era with Acidic Slime and Restoration Angel. Accelerating
into an Acidic Slime and using Restoration Angel to kill all of their lands was backbreaking. Unfortunately, we don’t really have access to anything so
detrimental anymore, leaving us to fend them off with Thoughtseize and planeswalkers. Since most of the control decks are relying on Perilous Vault, Nissa,
Worldwaker is fantastic. The threats she makes are lands, which don’t get exiled by Perilous Vault!
Any planeswalker that can put pressure on the board or create virtual card advantage goes a long way towards winning against a control deck. They only have
so much mana at their disposal, so ramping into an Ajani, Mentor of Heroes or Liliana Vess is phenomenal. If they don’t answer one of your planeswalkers in
just a few turns, you’re going to bury them in card advantage. You should use your discard effects to take away their answers to your planeswalkers,
whether that means stripping them of Dissolve, Hero’s Downfall, or Perilous Vault.
The Midrange Deck vs Aggro
After the first game, you need to find out which of your cards is best against their deck, and for the right mana cost. Siege Rhino is generally an
auto-include, as it can effectively counter an entire burn spell while also being a large body that can end the game quickly. Sweeper effects are good
against aggressive decks, but you need to make sure that those sweeper effects don’t kill your creatures as well. This is why Drown in Sorrow is so good
out of the board in Abzan strategies.
When sideboarding, figuring out which top-end threats have the least impact is key. You don’t need much to win the game against an aggressive deck. Once
you stabilize, most of your four and five mana spells will win the game on their own. What you’re looking to keep in your deck are threats that can win the
game while also putting up resistance against their more explosive draws. Cards like Abzan Charm and Ajani, Mentor of Heroes are pretty weak against
aggressive decks, while Sorin, Solemn Visitor and Siege Rhino are great!
Lowering your curve with cheap ways to interact with your opponent is exactly what you want to be doing. In some sideboards, having access to something
like Soldier of the Pantheon can be awesome, as it will act as a one-mana removal spell. And when the opponent’s deck is full of Burning-Tree Emissaries or
Rakdos Cacklers, Soldier of the Pantheon doesn’t even die in combat! Finding unique sideboard cards for specific situations and matchups is important for
understanding the fundamentals in sideboarding. Cards like Soldier of the Pantheon can overlap against both aggressive and control matchups, giving you a
sideboard card that does two jobs. Since you only have fifteen slots, any card that can double up in a matchup is usually good.
The Midrange Mirror
The midrange mirror often comes down to who gets a little bit bigger than their opponent. More Elspeth. More planeswalkers. More big sweeper effects like
Duneblast. While not every deck has access to something like Duneblast, finding that hole in the opponent’s gameplan and exploiting it is what you need to
do. The reason why Duneblast is so good is that most midrange mirrors involve both players playing gigantic threat after gigantic threat. The person who
casts Duneblast with a Siege Rhino left over is going to be able to kill their opponent’s side of the board and ultimately kill their planeswalker as well.
Of course, this isn’t always what you want to be doing, and it doesn’t always result in a win. Sometimes the best thing you can do in a midrange mirror is
to accelerate into a quick planeswalker and start generating card advantage and board advantage early. A Nissa, Worldwalker on Turn 3 is fantastic if you
have the Elvish Mystic into Sylvan Caryatid start. Thoughtseize can be the best or worst card in a midrange matchup, depending on how your opponent’s deck
is built. Everything is contextual, and nothing is easy. Mostly, winning a midrange matchup involves a deeper understanding of how each deck is supposed to
operate, and your primary goal is to solve the equation on where their holes lie and how to exploit them.
Three Types of Sideboard Cards
Generally speaking, there are three types of cards you want in your sideboard, and a lot of different cards that don’t really fit the bill. I see many
decks trying to make small upgrades or having maximum redundancy, and I just can’t figure out why. Do you really need the tenth two-mana removal spell? Is
there nothing better than the third copy of Kor Firewalker?
Let’s finish up by talking about specific types of sideboard cards, and how they can help you win matches.
Hosers
Hoser cards are my favorite. You know the ones. These are the Grafdigger’s Cages. These are the Ethersworn Canonists. These are the cards that most decks
have access to that are specifically designed to keep annoying combo decks in check.
These types of cards can be important for formats like Modern or Legacy but tend to see much less play in Standard. The most prominent hoser cards for
Standard sideboards tend to lean towards aggressive red decks, because those generally act as the “combo” decks in the format. If your deck is weak to
Mono-Red, then maybe it is time to sleeve up those four Dragon’s Claw. If you can’t beat Dredge or Reanimator, perhaps it is time to try Tormod’s Crypt or
Leyline of the Void!
In older formats, sideboarding for these types of decks is much more difficult. Since there are so many weird combo decks in Legacy, having hoser cards
that function across multiple matchups is insane. This is why Grafdigger’s Cage has seen sideboard play in so many Legacy decks! The fact that it shuts
down most graveyard strategies while also keeping Natural Order, Green Sun’s Zenith, and a few other things in check is phenomenal for an Eternal format’s
sideboard.
In Standard, we don’t always have the luxury of having a hoser card. Many of those have gone the way of Stone Rain and haven’t seen the light of Standard
in years. The closest thing we have to hoser cards in Standard is the Gainsay cycle, and none of those are particularly exciting at the moment. But they do
have their uses, though they have less impact than hoser cards in Standard’s past.
Transformation Sideboard
This is the most dangerous type of sideboarding, but it can often yield the most reward. A combo deck that sides into a Delver deck, or potentially an
aggressive deck that sides into a control deck. These are just some examples of transformational sideboards that have been used in the past to great
success, but they are often a one-trick pony.
With transformational sideboards, keeping the information hidden is the key to success. If your opponent already knows how you’re going to sideboard, then
you’ll lose a lot of value from that transformation. Additionally, whatever transformation you make shouldn’t be vulnerable to the same types of cards that
your maindeck is weak to. For example, a Life from the Loam deck should not try to play Entomb and Reanimate in the sideboard, because it is likely they’re
going to have something like Relic of Progenitus or Rest in Peace to disrupt your core strategy.
Whenever a combo deck can transform into an aggressive or control deck, those are generally the transformational sideboards that work. They have little
removal, and their hate cards don’t really affect an aggressive creature. Something like Young Pyromancer out of a Storm deck’s sideboard could be
phenomenal, since you are already playing a ton of spells like Ponder and Brainstorm that trigger Young Pyromancer’s ability!
Matchup-Dependent Upgrade
The last type of sideboard card is what most of us are used to by now. We know that Magma Spray is a great tool for aggressive decks, and it shines
whenever they print a creature like Voice of Resurgence. We also know that cheap sweeper effects like Drown in Sorrow or Anger of the Gods are great
sideboard options against aggressive decks.
Your sideboard should be built in such a way that you have access to the perfect number of these style of cards so that you can take out the weakest cards
in your deck. But finding the right number for each matchup and figuring out what cards in your deck are the weakest is an attribute that many people lack.
That is the major reason why I get so many questions about sideboarding, and also one of the reasons why people want me to write it out for them.
But sideboarding is much less of a science and much more like an art form, much like deckbuilding in general. Each deck is unique and comes with its own
strengths and weaknesses. The best deckbuilders in the world are going to find all of their holes, and figure out exactly how many slots can be sacrificed
to each of the big matchups in the format, and they’re going to build their deck accordingly.
Much like Limited, it is important that your manabase reflect what spells are in your deck. I find that people tend to overload on sideboard cards because
they’re great in one matchup when their manabase can barely support it. Cards like Drown in Sorrow come with a price, and are only great in decks that can
support cards with a heavy black mana cost. Esper decks with nine sources of black mana should not be playing Drown in Sorrow.
In the end, I want to leave you with one last nugget to chew on. I have never claimed to be a fisherman, but I do like to fish, and I am not so bad at it.
If you would listen, I can teach you how to fish like I do. Sometimes, if you’re coming up empty, I’ll give you one of mine because you’re hungry, and I
have more than enough to give. But it is always important to learn how to do something yourself instead of having someone else do it for you. I won’t
always be there to help, but for now, let’s cast the line together.
The water is warm and the fish are biting.