Sideboards are one of Legacy’s most easily wasted resources. I admit, I’m guilty of throwing in untested cards and overweighting my board against certain matches, just as many other people are. The end result, and the result this article will help you avoid, is coming out of the tournament and thinking “I didn’t board this card in once!” With a full fifteen cards to work with, we’ve got plenty of room to cover all of our bases and get the most use out of the board.
If the Maindeck Tilts One Way, The Sideboard Brings It Back To Center
Essentially, if you have several cards in your deck that are very sharp at handling one kind of problem but are useless against others (Swords to Plowshares and Stifle come to mind), then you should have cards on the sideboard to replace them. This problem is most prevalent in control and aggro-control decks, where the player packs several efficient answers in their deck, but risks drawing dead cards postboard if they can’t find a better replacement.
Let’s take a look at some examples. Before I flash some decks and talk about poor sideboards, I’ll emphasize that the players did do well with these decks in spite of their boards, so I’m not picking people out for public shaming.
First, let’s look at this solid Merfolk list, piloted to a 3rd place finish in a midsize American event:
Main:
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Merrow Reejerey
4 Cursecatcher
4 Silvergill Adept
2 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
2 Sygg, River Cutthroat
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
2 Relic of Progenitus
3 Stifle
4 Standstill
4 Aether Vial
3 Wasteland
3 Mutavault
13 Island
Sideboard:
3 Pithing Needle
1 Relic of Progenitus
3 Echoing Truth
2 Propaganda
3 Divert
3 Back to Basics
Merfolk is becoming a Real Deck because it preys strongly on traditional Blue decks and can hang with more aggressive decks, thanks to having a full 8 Lord creatures. My first thought when deep-reading this deck was “what does this sideboard out against Goblins and Elves?” Those two are also Real Decks, and this has a lot of dead room in the maindeck. At the minimum, I’d want to take out the Relic of Progenitus and Cursecatchers. Sure, the latter is a 1/1 body, but wouldn’t something stronger off the board be better? We can probably bring in Propaganda and Echoing Truth, but neither of these really amaze me.
I’d like to see some serious anti-creature cards here, such as Umezawa’s Jitte. Even a 4th Stifle would be strong against Goblins. Finally, is playing Propaganda what we really want to do against Goblins anyway? We’ll be seeing lots of creature stalemates, where */2 bodies are staring each other down. Something that solves that problem, like Vedalken Shackles or Threads of Disloyalty. A potentially backbreaking card for the deck is Mirrorweave, especially given the Lord count in the deck. It’s entirely possible to cast the card, and Mirrorweaving every Goblin on the board into Lord of Atlantis if you’ve got two Merfolk getting through unblocked seems like an instant kill.
As I mentioned before, Landstill decks have a real struggle with this. Consider this list, which placed highly in a recent large German event:
Main:
1 Academy Ruins
1 Dust Bowl
1 Tolaria West
1 Kor Haven
3 Mishra’s Factory
2 Plains
2 Island
1 Scrubland[/author]“][author name="Scrubland"]Scrubland[/author]
1 Underground Sea
4 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Vindicate
2 Sensei’s Divining Top
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Decree of Justice
2 Humility
2 Wrath of God
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
3 Spell Snare
3 Counterspell
4 Standstill
Sideboard:
1 Tormod’s Crypt
3 Blue Elemental Blast
2 Runed Halo
2 Ajani Goldmane
3 Relic of Progenitus
4 Meddling Mage
This deck has a solid eight completely dead cards against combo – Swords to Plowshares, Humility, and Wrath of God. As combo is, interestingly, one of the harder matchups for Landstill because it can slow-roll wins, Landstill needs every card it draws to count. Postboard, we can cut the creaturekill for Runed Halo, Meddling Mage and… Ajani seems the best choice at that point, at least gaining us life.
I’d like to see a stronger sideboard plan against combo, and I’d probably start by cutting the cute-but-chaff Ajani from the board (yes, he plays well with Humility, I get it) and replace with two more Runed Halo. If you haven’t gotten the memo yet, Halo is incredible, as you can name Tendrils of Agony against combo and have four more persnickety Meddling Mages in the deck to cause headaches. Otherwise, I think this is a fine Landstill deck and if I were playing the archetype, I’d definitely opt for something like this. Okay, I’d probably cut out the Vindicate, and thus Black, for Oblivion Rings.
Only Answer What Needs Answering
I catch myself falling into this trap often; that classic “I need some sort of answer to Goblins/Combo/Dredge/Threshold/Pitch World” and subsequently fill my board with cards that I don’t need. The maxim to take away from this is that if you are already strong in one match and don’t have any dead cards in it, don’t sideboard cards that help that match unless they specifically answer something the opponent will bring in that your maindeck cannot handle.
For example, Enchantress is really good against Dredge, thanks to Elephant Grass and Solitary Confinement, among others. It’s a real waste of boardspace to pack things like Tormod’s Crypt or Ground Seal in anticipation of that match, because you just need to replace dead maindeck cards (hard to think of any against Dredge) with playable board cards. If you fear Chain of Vapor or Reverent Silence, consider something like Karmic Justice instead of the typical graveyard hate. You might want Ground Seal against decks with Life from the Loam, but don’t sell yourself on a sideboard card because it helps a match that you’re already favored in.
If you have matchups where you don’t realistically have to change a single card in your maindeck to still win a great deal of the time (and I hope you do!), then strongly consider whether you actually want to devote boardspace to the match. It’s really cool to win matchups where you haven’t actually changed the maindeck one bit. Aside from being cool, it also frees up sideboard space for what really matters.
When Cards Come In, Others Come Out
Any tournament player knows that when you sideboard, you swap cards in and out for each other. A critical mistake that I see a lot in Vintage and Legacy is packing six sideboard cards for the match with only four slots in the maindeck to trim out. I had to break myself of this habit in Vintage, where any blue deck I ran had four Pyroblasts on the board for anti-control power. I realized that the cards I boarded out were stronger than Pyroblasts and better in line with my game plan. Did I really want a Red Elemental Blast over a Mystical Tutor? Of course not. I finally realized the strength of this when I began consistently beating people who overboarded against me, killing them while they gripped useless Pyroblasts of their own while my Time Vault cranked out infinite turns.
In Eternal formats, we often have strong sideboard cards that can come in for a variety of matches. We may want to sideboard in Spell Snare, Krosan Grip and Threads of Disloyalty in the Counterbalance mirror match, but we don’t really have room for all of that. It’s much better to make an assessment of how many slots you can reasonably change up in every match and use that as your guide. Vintage Tezzeret decks, for example, can board out a maximum of around four or five cards, and usually want to board out a lot less than that. Knowing that you have limited space in the maindeck before you dilute your strategy will ensure that the board cards you bring in are actually better than what you took out for them. This skill, in particular, separates the strong deckbuilders from the weak.
Make The Most Of Every Card You Board
Finally, I want to emphasize that because of Legacy’s deep cardpool, there are enough sideboard options that you can run efficient cards in every spot for the holes you need to patch up. This requires analysis on what you’re using your sideboard spots for, and whether they can be better put to a different card. For example, if you are running a Merfolk deck with Pithing Needle on the board with the goal of fighting Pernicious Deed and Engineered Explosives, is there a better card to run instead? Needle is certainly efficient, but if we’re looking at shoring up against just those cards, while catching outliers like Survival of the Fittest and Umezawa’s Jitte, then I’d take a long, hard look at Annul instead. It has a surprise factor and can be boarded against decks like WhiteStax and Enchantress with profitable results. The way I practice this policy is to take a look through my sorted and alphabetized box of Legacy and Vintage-playable cards to make sure I’ve seen everything that could help.
Further, there are sometimes artifacts of previous testing sideboards that linger on in final lists, but should have been trimmed a long time ago. The most obvious example of this is a list with two sideboard Engineered Plague. At some point, there were probably three, and then one got trimmed. It’s a card that’s only really effective when two copies are in play, and running only two really lowers that possibility. If I were looking for some broad-sweeping creature containment and I was in Black with two open sideboard spots, I’d consider Infest instead. It takes care of a lot of Slivers, Goblins, Elves and Merfolk and doesn’t need a twin copy to be effective. If you’re running something like Plague that’s best in multiples, consider another card if you cannot devote enough spots to it.
I also see a lot of Tormod’s Crypts on sideboards that should probably become Relic of Progenitus. Granted, there’s a two-mana difference between the cards, but that’s usually not going to lose the game for you, and the effect of Relic is far more potent if you aren’t worried about losing your graveyard. Take a look at this list:
16 Island
4 Mishra’s Factory
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Leak
4 Snap
3 Ninja of the Deep Hours
4 Looter il-Kor
4 Mistblade Shinobi
4 Cloud of Faeries
4 Gilded Drake
3 Serum Visions
2 Umezawa’s Jitte
Sideboard:
4 Echoing Truth
4 Tormod’s Crypt
4 Pithing Needle
3 Wasteland
This is from Niklas Kläve, who took it to a 2nd place finish in a 35-person event. I love, love, love this deck. Look how well it plays with Gilded Drake! It’s really strong-looking, but those Crypts on the board would be so much better as Relics. This deck doesn’t care about its own graveyard at all, and having something else that can pull a double duty mimicking the Lightning Bolt in Mario Kart when Tarmogoyf shows up is quite strong. Also, this deck has a lot of dead cards against combo; something along the lines of Counterspell or Negate on the sideboard could easily come in for Snap and Gilded Drake when the opponent isn’t nice enough to play creatures.
Make the most of your sideboard space and boarding options, and you’ll be satisfied after an event that you used all your cards effectively and never had a Solomon-like choice of what cards to cut for board cards. You won’t bemoan drawing that dead Swords to Plowshares in the combo match because you didn’t have enough cards to replace it with.
Good luck at GP: Chicago! My next article will cover my experiences at the event. See you next week!
P.S. Since people periodically ask me about my playlist, here’s what I’ve been listening to lately:
Jay Reatard – Seesaw
Band of Horses – Is There A Ghost
The Knife – We Share Our Mother’s Health (RATATAT Remix)
Times New Viking – My Head, teenageLUST
The Olivia Tremor Control – I Have Been Floated
Blitzen Trapper — Furr
Sea Wolf — You’re a Wolf