Have you ever really struggled with a particular class? Try and try as you may, you just can't seem to master the content of the course. I have never since known the frustration that was 1st grade Handwriting. As hard as I tried I just couldn't ever seem to form my letters correctly and my marks at the end of the term were... less than stellar. The same could be said of my artistic abilities. I believe it all goes back to my preschool-kindergarten days in which I was unable to perform the critical tasks of wielding scissors to cut along the lines and crayons to color within them. Apparently my hands and lines on paper don't get along too well. Understandably I've never tried one of those "paint by numbers" kits.
The art impaired can purchase these kits and by following the cut and dry instructions end up with a visual masterpiece. However this "painting" is essentially "coloring" and we've already covered how poorly I am at staying within the lines. Yet while I may not be an artist myself, I do still enjoy the greatest artist of them all...
Ah the Joy of Painting with Bob Ross. With his happy little trees, worlds where his mountain goat lives, and snow drifts that go we don't know where, Bob Ross provides some of the most soothing audio ever recorded. Forget those tracks of whales and sounds of the jungle. You want to sleep? Crank up the Bob Ross. The allure of the Joy of Painting is that Bob Ross provides the interested artist with a straightforward system by which they can make their own landscapes with little trees, snow drifts, and mountains filled with the appropriate goats. It's essentially a step beyond "paint by numbers" into a world in which the aspiring artist has limited freedom such that their creation isn't a mere replica.
When it comes to sideboarding I believe most Magic players are less than stellar. Furthermore when we really look at how we sideboard we realize we are either painting by numbers or following the Bob Ross system of sideboarding. Emulating rather than creating.
Sideboarding by Numbers
Sideboarding by Numbers is brought to you by our sponsor, the Magic internet community. Why do people obsess about a detailed sideboarding strategy against the major players in the format (-2 Remove Soul, +2 Negate)? They're sideboarding by numbers. Now this isn't something I want to discourage, most all of us retrieve decklists from the internet and it is logical to also glean sideboarding information for those decklists. Nonetheless I believe it is important we make a cognitive note that we are sideboarding by numbers. We might reproduce a masterpiece but we could also wind up painting 16 red instead of blue and find ourselves with a strange colored pond. Most of us wouldn't walk into a tournament situation with a maindeck we don't understand (although I'm not sure how many people I played who couldn't figure out how to actually kill me with Tight Sight). In the same way we shouldn't walk into a tournament without understanding the sideboard.
Aside on Floor Rules
The floor rules are being changed with M10 to incorporate the use of outside notes between games (aka sideboarding notes). No longer will you have to memorize the various sideboard swaps you want to use. With the arrival of M10 you can just jot your standard swaps down on a sheet of paper and toss it in your deckbox to be referenced inbetween games as you sideboard. Which is one ability MTGO players have had since the programs inception. I don't believe the change will impact much apart from giving those who sideboard by numbers even less to worry about (they can just print out a cheat sheet) and those who had no clue how to sideboard now gain the opportunity to get help from friends moments before the tournament without needing to memorize their every word. Nevertheless It does seem to me however that sideboarding by numbers will be on the rise. When New Player A's opponent at FNM pulls out a sheet of paper and begins to sideboard and New Player A asks, "What are you doing?" and then is informed of the ability to use outside notes, I expect New Player A will have notes the following Friday.
The Joy of Sideboarding
The other common school of Magic sideboarding revolves around a system of cards commonly sideboarded against various archetypes. You're building a mono-green deck and without much thought your sideboard is already halfway full:
What's not to like? Every green deck needs a way to handle blue control decks and Choke is a house. Add to that the versatility of Naturalize for whatever randomness comes your way and voila you've got half your sideboard filled. However are these really the best options for your specific deck? Or more importantly have you even stopped to think if these are the best options for your specific deck?
Generally the Joy of Sideboarding is characterized by hosers and other perennial sideboard favorites: Pyroblast, Hydroblast, Duress, Relic of Progenitus, etc. While you are giving the appearance of creativity and thoughtful crafting of your sideboard, in reality you are engaging in slight improvisation via the lessons learned from the Sideboarding by Numbers system -- hosers for each color, general versatility for all the randomness.
So What's the Problem?
One of the mistakes I have often made and seen many others fall victim to is a problem of threat density or sideboard saturation. A player in the Joy of Sideboarding school realizes his matchup against blue control is bad and so they add something like 4x Thoughtseize, 4x Duress, and 2x Eyes of the Wisent to their sideboard. However in siding the ten cards in they leave themself with a deck that has seven less threats than before and the discard can't stop the blue control deck from using it's card drawing spells to gain the upperhand. Or you find they have sided out so many tribal elements that they lose value on Gilt-Leaf Palace, Wren's Run Vanquisher, and the like. When testing the Vedalken Engineer deck I found myself originally sideboarding in too many non-artifact cards which made my Arsenal Threshers, Glaze Fiends, and Glassdust Hulks look awful.
However the primary problem with the Sideboarding by Numbers and Joy of Sideboarding approaches is emulation at the cost of stifling innovation. I believe the ramifications of this are far reaching and best illustrated through a simple case study: Pauper Pyroblast. Currently Mono-blue Control (MUC) comprises a decent percentage of the Pauper metagame on MTGO. As a result if you query most decklists that have access to red you will find Pyroblast sitting in the sideboard. Now Pyroblast is a good card, perhaps even a great card, but I've come to believe there is another red card I'd prefer to have against MUC -- Ancient Grudge. Yes, Ancient Grudge. Yes, Ancient Grudge against a deck with only 4 artifacts. Yes, Ancient Grudge over Pyroblast (You can now stop reading or begin posting how awful I am in the comment thread).
Many MUC lists only have 6 ways to kill you: 4x Spire Golem and 2x Fathom Seer. If your red deck can flashback Ancient Grudge you have potentially 8 attempts at destroying the 4 means of victory for your opponent. Let's face it Fathom Seer isn't much of a threat on the life total without evasion. With Ancient Grudge you force your opponent to defend his Spire Golems which makes Ancient Grudge a better Pyroblast.
Pyroblast is going to be in counter mode since it can only destroy Fathom Seer and the blast is going to be used to force through one of your threats, most likely on your turn. Now compare that to Ancient Grudge which you can cast on their end step. Your opponent is forced to either counter the Ancient Grudge (which they would have spent on your Pyroblast) or Repulse their Spire Golem which they then can't replay. You are then able to untap and have effectively gained a red mana for your turn when you want to force through a threat with the additional bonus of perhaps getting an attack step you wouldn't have had if the Spire Golem hadn't been Repulsed. Not to mention you can do it all again from the graveyard via flashback!
Now the Joy of Sideboarding folks are at risk of never even evaluating why they are siding Pyroblast over Ancient Grudge. They have Pyroblast filed away under anti-blue and Ancient Grudge filed under anti-affinity. The categories of their sideboarding system, intended to help, actually act as a deterrent to innovative sideboarding strategies by sectioning them off never to be re-examined.
A further level of consideration occurs at the point that people begin adopting the strategy of Ancient Grudge over Pyroblast against MUC. At this point the Sideboarding by Numbers folks see a list with Ancient Grudge on the internet and that it comes in against MUC and the Joy of Sideboarding school has filed Ancient Grudge under anti-blue. In game one they play against MUC and are able to squeak out a victory on turn 9 with their opponent having one time counter remaining on a suspended Errant Ephemeron.
What's going to happen when they reach for their sideboard? They're going to bring in 4 cards that most likely don't matter. Their opponent can allow their Spire Golems to die since they have a much lower value due to the inclusion of Errant Ephemeron. Their sideboarding approach has not only prevented innovation but has now also prevented their ability to react to the slight alteration of their opponent's decklist which drastically changes their sideboard plan.
Proposed Solution
When you have your decklist, tuned in front of you, go through the most common matchups in the format and ask yourself, "what card(s) would I like to have in the matchup?" Compile a list of cards for each and every matchup you expect and then work your way back through the matchups and ask yourself, "what card(s) do I wish weren't in my deck for the matchup?"
For example heading into MOCS season two champs I was working with a friend on a Naya Mid-Range list (which we now know is terrible, but I digress)
When asked to come up with a sideboard I provided the following exchange:
Jund Aggro: -3 Dauntless Escort, -2 Armillary Sphere -- +3 Celestial Purge, +2 Path to Exile (strongly looking to path your own dudes here)
Jund Control: If they have Caldera Hellion -2 Martial Coup, +2 Voices from the Void
5cc with nonbasics: -2 Martial Coup, -1 Behemoth Sledge, -2 Lavalanche; + 3 Anathemancer, +2 Realm Razer
Cascade: -3 Dauntless escort, +2 Voices from the Void, +1 Realm Razer
Mirror: -3 Wild Nacatl, -2 Ranger of Eos; +2 Martial Coup, +1 Dauntless Escort, +2 Path to Exile (Escort)
Esper: Without Coup -3 Dauntless Escort, +3 Celestial Purge
Proposed SB:
3x Celestial Purge
2x Path to Exile
3x Anathemancer
2x Realm Razer
2x Voices from the Void
2x Martial Coup
1x Dauntless Escort
This is based on my assumption that the mirror is an 8x wrath war in which Dauntless Escort is MVP -- thus you must have access to PtE to remove your opponent's Escorts and want to max on the big spells.
The format was new and we weren't sure what to expect but we came up with a reasonable sideboard plan on the fly by asking ourselves the aforementioned questions -- what cards do I want, what cards can I cut. Notice also that Path to Exile was playing double duty as a removal spell in the mirror (which had to be strategically saved for Dauntless Escort) and as a way to ramp mana after one of your dudes had stacked damage for a trade or been targeted by a removal spell. To sideboard correctly we had to not only be cognizant of what swaps were to be made, but why they were being made. If you PtE your opponent's Woolly Thoctar you're going to be in a rough spot when that Dauntless Escort hits. We had a default list of what we were intending to swap against the decks we expected, but we also had a general understanding of why each card was in the sideboard so that when one Jund list looked differently than another changes could be made on the fly.
Adding MTGO into the Equation
Perhaps the most important tool in my efforts to become a better sideboarder (although it like my other artistic abilities leaves much to be desired) has been the deck editor window on MTGO. Every game I play, I have my deck loaded in the deck editor for quick reference and at the conclusion of every match I click over to the deck editor and think about what card(s) I would have liked to have had. Being able to make changes after each and every match allows me, over time, to experiment with various sideboard strategies and learn the approximate gains that can be made in each matchup by siding in different ways. Don't be afraid to tinker! Try swapping your sideboard around and play with it for 5-10 matches and then re-examine what card(s) you would like in the particular matchup, rinse and repeat.
And now for some Bob Ross classics:
Let’s do a little cabinectomy here.
Maybe in our world there lives a happy little tree over there.
Talk to the tree, make friends with it.
Try to imagine that you are a tree. How do you want to look out here?
We don’t make mistakes, we just have happy accidents.
I'll be back with videos next week as I'm currently moving back to Texas from Florida and have been swamped this week with planning, packing, and now driving. Until then, don't be afraid to try something different -- you can't make a mistake, only a happy accident.
6 Comments
Nice article. I am one of those people who cant make or use a sb correctly. This is some of the easiast to understand guidelines on SBs I have read.
I thourougly enjoyed that. I fall victem to sideboarding so often. Most times I do not tune my board the way I do the main. Because of this I find my self boarding haphazardly some events. It was nice to see your perspective on it.
Interesting and well written article. Always test your deck sideboarded, don't just assume that the obvious sideboard cards are going to do what you expect in a real situation.
Great article. I was thinking about sideboarding strategies lately and i found out that in some matchups,my win rate is way better with no sideboarding versus sideboarding even i bring some useful cards in.
This has been bothering me. Can someone tell me how that deck wins?
and pasted from an old article that BDM wrote on the deck
There are a lot of misconceptions about the deck that would eventually be come to known as Tight Sight and one of them is the idea that it takes a long time to play out a game. I don't know how anyone arrived at that conclusion. The deck uses its blue cantrips to gain threshold while accelerating its mana with Rampant Growth and threshold enabled Far Wanderings. The turn after Future Sight hits the table - as early as turn 4 - the game takes off at a blistering pace as you"draw" so many extra cards that you mill away your entire deck. I have won the game as early as the fifth turn many times.
Since you keep using Far Wanderings, you end up with most of the land in your deck hitting the table. Once your deck is milled away, you set up an infinite loop with two Krosan Reclamations, an Early Harvest, and a Predict by shuffling them back into your deck and being able to play them off of the Future Sight. You use the Predict on your opponent, naming a card you know is not in their deck - drawing two cards could be fatal. Rinse and repeat adding the conditioning treatment of an Early Harvest whenever you are running low on mana.