Ever since I started understanding how the game of Magic works, sideboarding always interested me. It was a dynamic part of how a match played out, but most people didn’t give it much attention. Even though players would be experienced in how every first game of a format played out, they would still end up watching from the sidelines after a few rounds of a tournament. This is the biggest flaw a player can make when trying to become a competitive Magic player.
If you are given a chance to playtest a matchup and only have time to play pre-sideboarded or post-sideboarded, the answer is very easy. You will play more sideboarded games of Magic than game ones in a tournament, so it is more important to learn to play the sideboarded games correctly, which means knowing how to build a sideboard is just as essential.
KNOW THEIR PLAN
The first step to understanding how to sideboard is to know how your opponent is sideboarding. This can be difficult at times but these days there aren’t so many rogue builds running around. You should have a good idea as to what your opponent is trying to accomplish. Figuring out what your opponent is going to bring in and take out will allow you to be one step ahead of them.
Proactive Planning
Proactive planning is when you make your spells more productive. Use the basic information of what they are going to try to accomplish on their side of the table and gain value from the spells you use to counter their strategy.
The best example I have of this is from last year’s Nationals. Conley Woods created a new, innovative Jund deck that swept through the tournament. The only three players using this deck were Woods, Brett Piazza, and I. This is the deck we played:
After the dust settled, I was up against Brett Piazza in the first round of Top 8. I tested all night to get a feel for the mirror match. We discovered every single card in the sideboard could have value in the mirror depending on how the opponent sideboards. The most important thing I could learn to prepare, in other words, was figuring out how Brett was going to prepare.
After the first two games, I was up 2-0. Game 3 was decided with a fourth turn Volcanic Fallout that killed my opponent’s team while leaving my [card]Great Sable Stag[/card] unharmed. Fallout was not very good in other Jund matchups, but it was good in this situation based on two things: whether my opponent sideboarded in a specific way and whether he knew I would bring it in. Without figuring out how my opponent was going to sideboard, this strategy would have never surfaced.
Initially we thought Fallout would be sideboarded out. We ignored the card until Brian Kowal decided to throw me for a loop and board them back in. He blew me out in a game and we started to consider the possibility of how powerful this spell can be if it is unexpected. Kowal made me understand how proactively sideboarding in unexpected cards can win games more often than more powerful expected cards.
Another great example of this is something LSV does. Luis puts Baneslayer Angels in the sideboard of decks lacking many targets for removal spells. Baneslayer Angel was not a good spell in the first game, but became an amazing card once his opponents boarded out their removal in game two.
Reactive Planning
Reactive Planning is when you make their spells less efficient by taking out cards in your deck to which they are bringing in answers.
At Pro Tour San Diego, Kyle Boggemes played against Craig Wescoe in the Top 4. Boggemes was playing Jund to Wescoes’s White Weenie. Jund is obviously a very powerful deck with many great creatures. The problem was that Wescoe’s WW deck was set up with eight protection bears in game one and four Devout Lightcasters in the board. Boggemes reacted to this by boarding out Sprouting Thrinax for Great Sable Stag, giving him a green 3/3 dude that trumped all of the 2/2 protection bears on Wescoe’s side, while at the same time reducing possible Lightcaster targets. Boggemes’ reaction to Wescoe’s sideboard strategy enabled him to blank several problematic cards.
Having strategies like this will not always win you the game, but being able to catch an opponent off guard just long enough to get a free game is always worth it.
Keep Them Guessing
If there is anything you take from this article I want it to be this: Always shuffle your sideboard into your maindeck and pull out 15 cards. It may be a bit more work, but it will win you plenty of matches. Not only will you keep your opponent in the dark regarding how many cards you sideboarded, but they won’t know if you changed that sideboard in the third game.
Another way you can keep your opponent guessing is by not always using the most obvious sideboard strategy. Grand Prix Columbus was a Flash Hulk-infested Legacy tournament before the deck died to Wizard’s banhammer. The eventual champion, Steve Sadin, devised the most chaotic sideboard strategy I’ve ever seen by playing Flash Hulk with a Fish variant sideboard. The deck feasted on the other combo-oriented Hulk decks.
Once he made Top 8 and his opponent saw his sideboard strategy, he was in a predicament. He could not just sideboard as usual since his opponent would know if he was boarding out the combo and into the Fish deck. What was his plan then? He randomly decided in his head if he was going to Combo or Control. This left his opponent always guessing.
Even if one strategy is functionally better then the other against a prepared opponent, there is no telling what the value of a wrong guess is. If his opponent guessed wrong, Steve had a huge advantage.
Every matchup isn’t as simple as randomly deciding how to board each time. Bram Snepvangers in the Top 4 of last year’s Worlds, for example, boarded out all of his red creatures on the draw against Andre Coimbra’s sideboarded Celestial Purges. He brought them back in on the play, thereby catching Coimbra with Purges at the wrong times and without them at the right times.
Catching your opponent off guard and forcing sideboard mistakes is something great players do in the third game. Keep that in mind: even if you sideboard a certain way for the second game, the plan you chose may not be correct for a third game. Your opponent might have brought in a card you are unfamiliar with or took out a card you are not used to. He may have kept a card in that you are used to them taking out. It is critical to be able to adapt.
SLIGHT UPGRADES / MAJOR UPGRADES
(Things your maindeck can do/Things your maindeck cannot do)
In the last few weeks a lot of my local friends have picked up the Boss Naya deck I played at the Pro Tour. They have been playing it at local Friday Night Magic events. I get a lot of questions about the sideboard. Most recently a friend asked me about Uril, the Miststalker in the Jund matchup. Uril would be a great inclusion for this matchup. The problem is that it is only a slight improvement to any other card you have against Jund.
The theory behind Uril is, obviously, that their removal can’t touch it. This may be true, but because every other card in your deck is targetable, Uril’s ability loses a lot of potential. It becomes a very slight upgrade to any other card you would like to board in. Uril is a very proactive spell against Jund, but it does not help your deck become proactive. Uril separates itself from the engine you are trying to build to fight Jund.
I have never been a fan of people putting cards in their sideboards that are just better versions of cards in their maindecks. [card]Celestial Purge[/card] is one of those cards that come to mind. A lot of people will board out Path to Exile to bring in Purges against Jund. This is a very poor use of sideboard space since the downside to Path to Exile may be bad at times, but is not as bad as having an eleven-card sideboard.
As an example of a sideboard I don’t like, let’s look at Andre Coimbra’s deck he used to win Worlds. Before I get in trouble for criticizing a world champion, I want to be clear that Andre is a great player – he even dealt me my third loss in that very tournament! I’m just not a fan of his sideboard:
In this tournament there was not a true control deck to merit Goblin Ruinblasters, so the Goblins were for the Jund matchup. This meant that Coimbra boarded in 12 cards against Jund. His deck was already positioned to have a great Jund matchup and didn’t need this kind of treatment. The cards in his sideboard were mere upgrades to go with what he already had in the maindeck.
What happened is that he was forced to board in Celestial Purge against Boros even though it was not a good spell against them. I don’t know about the other matchups in the tournament, but this definitely left him lacking good sideboard slots for other matchups. A card I think he would have liked would have been Qasali Pridemage.
Pridemage was a card I didn’t have much faith in at first. Tom “The Boss” Ross was all about this card going into the Pro Tour. When you get strong-spoken people like Luis and Gabe Walls in a room, it is hard to get your word across about a subject. Add Tom’s quiet and humble approach to life and you don’t get your point across very well. Tom’s only response to the question of why Pridemage was in his sideboard was, “Because it’s a good card and I like it.”
This isn’t the explanation I was looking for, but after I gave the card a chance I completely understood why it was so important. Not only does Pridemage come with a very flexible body, it helps you a lot in the small amount of matchups its good against. It solves random problems and does it in a great way. When Pridemage is put to work, it gets the job done.
So Pridemage is an example of a Major Upgrade. It might not be good in many matchups, but when it is good, it’s great.
Pridemage can also function as a beater. After playing with Boss Naya for so long, I started bringing in Pridemage in an array of matchups that don’t even have targets for his ability. The exalted ability and early body were just what I needed when I was against Vampires to lower my curve to be fast enough to beat the fanged opponent.
CURVE PRESERVATION/MANIPULATION
Speaking of lowering my curve using Pridemage, the sideboard can be used to preserve or manipulate your deck’s speed. Usually there is a downfall to changing the curve. If a player does not take this into account they could lose needed tempo in specific matchups. Tempo is a very big factor when it comes to presideboarded and post sideboarded games – and not just when you play aggressive decks. Even control decks have curves.
Most of the time a matchup is a bit slower post-sideboard. Each player can more finely tune their decks, so the games tend to go longer. The action may not necessarily slow down, however, so you still have to maintain close to the same speed of the first game.
When two aggressive decks fight each other, however, you may need to bend the rules a bit. Often you need to up the ante with more powerful spells that trump your opponent’s cards.
This is what we did with our Boss Naya deck at the Pro Tour. We needed a card to deal with the big, powerful spells like Baneslayer Angel and Rampaging Baloth. The Cunning Sparkmage/Basilisk Collar combo was fast enough to fit our curve and yet powerful enough to control a game.
Knowing when to lower, raise, or keep the same curve is something that takes practice in certain matchups. It will take a while to understand when you want to do this, but knowing that it is needed is important when building a sideboard.
SPECIFIC HATE CARDS/SACRIFICING MATCHUPS
Going into Grand Prix Oakland, I asked Cedric Philips for advice against Dredge. Since he had a lot of experience with Dredge, he was the person to ask. I was going to play a Naya deck I talked about a few weeks back that did not have a shot in hell at beating Dredge in the first game.
Because my first game was so lousy, I didn’t want to just concede the matchup entirely. What Cedric told me was different. Based on the fact that I had a slim to nil shot at winning the first game and that it would take at least four to six slots to have a decent chance post-sideboard, it just wasn’t worth it. Dredge wasn’t that big in the metagame and it was foolish to sacrifice that many slots to that matchup.
This happens a lot in Magic. I was sacrificing too many sideboard slots to a matchup that wasn’t worth caring about. Sure, I may play against Dredge and lose, but it’s worth it if all of my other matchups get better because of the extra sideboard slots I have to work with.
It is always a guessing game if specific hate cards are worth it. Meddling Mage in Extended is worth it because you can use it in many different matchups. There are a lot of decks that are oriented around a single card, which makes Meddling Mage valuable. It is a specific hate card that is still flexible in multiple matchups.
Specific hate cards usually fit the “Major Uprgrade” category, but figuring out if it is worth it is the real question. It comes down, first of all, to how large a part of the metagame the deck you’re focusing on is, and second, how good your match against them already is.
ON THE PLAY/ON THE DRAW
This is one that really gets me. It doesn’t happen with every format or every matchup, but there are times when cards are only good on the play or the draw. One of these cards is Putrid Leech. Leech is amazing against Naya on the play, but much worse on the draw. I wouldn’t recommend boarding Leech out in that situation, but it’s pretty close.
Figuring out slight sideboard decisions based on who goes first is important. Games play out differently when a deck is drawing compared to playing. Back in the year of Fae I would play with two to four Thoughtseizes depending on whether I was first or second. I had to affect games quicker on the draw, so I brought in more; if I played, I could take a few out.
Understanding that your opponent’s cards lose or gain value is also important. If they have a card that is more of a threat when they are on the play, you need to understand this and adjust accordingly. In Extended, Mono Red Burn’s Blood Moons are much more valuable when they are on the play. They will probably not board it in on the draw, so if they get you with it in the second game, it probably won’t be there for the third.
RESULTS-ORIENTED TUNNEL VISION/AUTOPILOT
Just because a player beat you a certain way in a game does not mean that’s what is going to happen in the next game. Let’s say a player just lost a game to a deck they in which they are well versed in an unusual way – UW Control managed to deck them with Jace Beleren, for example. If that player isn’t careful, they may get a nasty case of tunnel vision. They’ll assume the same thing will happen in the next game or that the UW Control player will always try to win with a Jace. This type of thinking is results-oriented.
I find myself wanting to make small sideboarding changes going into game three because of a fluke in the previous game and have to stop myself. Sometimes random things happen and you just have to go with it and believe that testing proves it won’t happen again. If it is part of your opponent’s strategy then you must adapt to it. That is when you cannot go into tunnel vision or auto pilot and use proactive/reactive planning.
Going into autopilot is the opposite of tunnel vision. Autopilot happens when you ignore a small difference in your opponent’s list and just think to yourself, “Oh, they’re playing Deck X, so here’s my plan” without really thinking through how your plan may need to adapt to each individual opponent. Many players stumble unwittingly into this pitfall.
Last season Jake Van Lunen was playing in the finals of a PTQ. If you don’t know who Jake is, you will soon. He had his debut at Pro Tour San Diego a few years ago when he was half of the infamous Sliver Kids. After taking home the title, he coasted through a year of the Pro Tour. After falling off the train, he has spent years perfecting his game and has a second shot in San Juan. This time he is back for blood!
Anyway, he was in the finals of a PTQ where he was playing the best deck in the room. It was right after UW Larkless won Great Britain’s Nationals. We worked all week on perfecting the list and I knew he was going to do well. It was not surprise to me that he called me to tell me he was waiting for the finals. What did shock me was that he lost.
He had the same strategy against Five Color Control all day. It was working since all the lists he played against were very similar”¦ until the finals. His opponent had a very inventive list with cards like Vendilion Clique, which caused unusual situations Jake was not used to. Still, Jake took the first game and boarded the same as he always did against Five Color.
After losing game two, he did not re-evaluate what his opponent was doing different and just thought it was a fluke. Unfortunately, he lost the third game the same way he lost the second. He made a big mistake in this match, but he was still able to walk away with a new and important lesson learned.
I know this was a lot of information to digest and I want to make one thing clear: this information will not sink in right away. It involves a lot of critical thinking and will take a while for it to become second nature. I just hope this will at least help you get on your way.
Brad Nelson
FFfreaK on MTGO
[email protected]
Best sideboard-devoted article I’ve read in a while! Even if I “know” these things, it’s a good reminder.
Glad you figured out your topic, and it’s a slam dunk. Great writing, and a topic that’s been delved into, but not at the depth you covered. Glad you went with this rather than my suggestion.
Great article man. You bring up quite a bit of stuff that I rarely think about.
One thing you didn’t mention that I was reminded of when you talked about curve was color requirements for SB spells. I have been playing GWb junk a decent amount recently, and one thing I needed to make sure of when I built my board was to not assume that I could just throw any black card into my SB unless I was sure my manabase could support it, or to adjust the manabase if I thought the card was too important to not include. Something like Bloodwitch was ok cause I have a little time in the game to find my double black, but something like say, vampire nighthawk, might be a little more difficult and disruptive to cast. I omitted Kor Firewalker for the same reasoning…double white early on was something that my deck didnt really do well, or even want to do at all until later in the game.
Overall I’d say this is one of the best articles you’ve written yet, shows you have understanding for theory and how to explain it. Keep it up bud!
Great article! It was a 15 minutes well spent, opposed to a lot of other articles out there. (and it will affect me for an infinitely longer amount of time)
Great article. Lots of good things to think about that I hadn’t considered. Sideboarding’s always been one of my weakest points.
Nice work
I think you should also write sth aobout Terry Soh and his very innovative sideplan In his Tooth deck during invitationals. He was playing rather standard version of monoG Toothtron list but after sideboard, when his opponent put in all the cranials landdestruction and tooth hate he had been removing all t/nails and put the whole sideboard of 10 or 15 cards full of trollascetics molder slugs and Iwamoris.
This was very innovative and made a big impact on t2 , because after that event ,many guys stay with creature hate in theirs deck but you even didnt have to change your plans.
Every article you have written is better than the last, and you seem to keep finding very interesting topics. Always looking forward to your next one! Keep it up, and good luck in your upcoming tournaments!
Poor Coimbra – getting kicked in two articles today
Thanks for this article. Sideboarding is something that I am just now trying to understand, and this article explains a lot about it!
Jake Van Lunen is a douche. He only made it back to the PT because no one had a sideboard against elves at the qualifier. The only way he has any results is bringing an unexpected deck that has modest game against the format.
Also, Lachmann was the sole reason that the “sliver kids” won that PT. Jake sucks at magic, and makes up all of the matches in his articles. Those budget decks are either terrible or already in the format.
Nice article! keep the good work
Wow, what an article!
@Jake is cool
Wow, that’s actually Jake when I called. He gave me a great idea for the big mana deck I’m working on. Thanks!
Brad,
Loved the article. What makes me feel better as a player is the fact that I already do alot of what you mentioned. Best case and point, taking out the Thrinaxes against a heavy white opponent, trying to blank some of their spells. It was a good article, and a very important topic.
The part about shuffling your whole board in and then pulling out 15 is great. Face to face that deception helps alot as opposed to MODO where it’s a non-issue.
what do you do if your opponent is sideboarding against the way you sideboard? ie youre playing jund and take out all your removal vs u/w, but they bring in baneslayers. do you flip a coin regarding whether or not you remove, say, maelstrom pulse(since you can still hit cups with it)?
Excellent article. Very well written with lots of stuff to think about. Its a little bit frustrating to me how well I know all of these steps and yet how often I don’t go through them when I sideboard or think about testing. Regardless, reading articles like this is very helpful and awesome.
@MTG: Lol, did Jacob beat you in a tournament recently or something?? What a crazy reaction on a non-consequential part of the article. JVL seems awesome. I have not met him, but from his articles, he seems super nice, he answers questions in the forums, and he is an excellent deck builder. The Building on a Budget articles he writes are not there to create meta-game breaking lists that have never been thought of before…they are there to show new players or players that can’t spend a lot of money on the game how to build decks/manabases correctly for the least amount of money possible. If he makes up the games in his articles (and I am SUPER unclear how you could know that, which really just makes it one more ad hominem attack in a string of angry words)…who efing cares? He still show cases good plays and the capability of the deck to win through a variety of opponents. I actually think the BoB articles are some of the few non-event coverage articles worth reading on dailymtg.
Anyway Brad, again, thanks for the excellent article on Sideboarding and how to think critically about matches of M:tG.
You mention some good examples, but don’t flesh them out. What did Jake V L do wrong, and what should he have done? Specifically?
@Someguy
You are absolutely correct. JVL was playing the matchup as if it was any other 5cc matchup. He would wait for a Cruel to be cast and then lock his opponent out with a Vendilion and a Glen Elendra. This was a great tactic to finish off the last few points of life in a few short turns. What was different was that his opponent was running Cliques himself. So Jakes strategy did not involve thinking about them and they were one of the reasons the games didn't play out in JVL favor.
@MTG
You are completely titled to your opinion, but to say it in my comments is bad nature and rude. Jake has become my best friend in the magic world and he means a great deal to me. To accuse him of being a bad player is just foolish. Talent is purely relative. Jake is getting better at this game every day and that is where every player wants to be. Acting like this is only hindering yourself from getting better at this game. Please do not use my articles to insult people I include in them.
@jake is Cool
REALLY!?!?! Learn the rules of the internet!
JVL just blew me off on the phone, apparently his girlfriend thats in the hospital is more important than Magic……
Excellent article. Keep up the good work.
Looking forward to the weekends even more now….
This is an amazing atricle, thanks!!
@jake is cool: I really hope thats not his real number! good luck talking to him again if it is 😛
@jake is cool
do you realize that by posting JVL’s number, hundreds(maybe even thousands) of people that read on this site will now be calling/texting JVL and that i would guess is very frustrating
People please stop calling JVL: it is invasion of privacy to just call him when you don’t know him. He’s a nice guy and all, but does not mean he can take phone calls from every magic player he has never met. Please understand this.
thanks for the great article Brad! I’ve sure learned from this.
My quick 2 cents: when sideboarding becomes a scissors, rock, paper situation, you have to, as the article points out, keep the other guy guessing. Let’s say you enter a sort of iteration like this:
-He takes off removal because I have few creatures, so I put in nice creatures.
-I take removal off, he puts nice creatures, I don’t take removal off
-Then, he doesn’t take off the removal, I stay in the configuration of the first game I win again.
– Back to step 1.
If it degenerates into this, you need to make an internal random choice, better if you don’t show your opponent you are doing so (something like whether your last life total in the last game was even or odd could work. Even you sideboard one way, odd the other).
And when your opponent is not a stone-cold pro, they can have pet peeves: if they think you “lucked out” the first game, chances are, they won’t sideboard for game 2 to prove the quality of their deck. If they’ve said once and again how much they loathe your deck, they might bring in a dozen cards from the sideboard. As usual, Sun Tzu comes handy: if you know your opponent, his deck and your deck, chances are, you’ve won already.
Nice read.
ps. how´s that block video coming?
One of my favorite side-boarding moments I had was during regionals 2005(?) when tooth&nail, which I was playing, was the deck to be. At the time, the prevailing sideboard strategy in the mirror was to board out two tooth&nails in favor of more fatties so you weren’t as wrecked by an opposing cranial extraction. Instead, I boarded out all of my tooth&nails for more sundering titans.
I remember during one mirror match that day I was extracted on turn 5 or 6 for tooth&nail when I had two titans in my hand. My opponent looked through my deck, found no tooth and nails, and then died a few turns later when I cast double sundering titan.
I love your advice about shuffling in the whole board and then pulling cards out. Anything to keep ’em guessing!
You mentioned it briefly, but a thing I’ve been pondering on lately is transformative sideboards. I’d like to here more of your thoughts on when it’s worth to sacrifice more than half of your sideboard to be able to change strategy in some match-ups. What about even changing your curve/tempo so much that you side in/out lands?
My thoughts are that with two different versions of an archetype you could surprise you opponent with a different sideboard plan. The different versions probably have match-up preferences and that way this sideboard would be another way to prepare for the field. Also by attacking from a different angle, with a different strategy or in a different state of the game (early game/late game) you can catch the opponent on the wrong foot.
great article, thank you.
Hey Brad,
Good write-up, sideboarding has always been one of my favourite part of the game. In almost any high level premier event, i almost always shuffle my sideboard into and start pulling.
Or, at times, what i do is inserting extra cards into making my opponent to think that i sideboarded heavily into them. For example, if I’m playing Jund and has only 4 sb cards against Naya, i actually inserts 8-10 cards, and makes the Naya player believes that i actually had that many cards against them, and they would start to think that i have Bloodwitch, maybe Jund Charm and by playing against non-existence cards it would affect their decisions and such.
My advice for other Magic players looking to improve, always shuffle your sb during sb time. It is a lot of work, but it helps to keep your game sharp. It not very significant, but it matters. A similar comparison would be Top poker players wearing shade to cover their eyes. they are professional and I m very sure they can control their motions well enough, but they do not want to give any possible edge out. Afterall, they have nothing to lose wearing shades.
Best sideboarding article I’ve read. Your sections are well thought out, and there are a lot of subtle strategic points going on. Well done.