Magic Deck Vortex: Shifting Lineaments: The ‘Other’ Cards

In most of my previous Shifting Lineaments articles, we talked about decks that can be fairly competitive or fun in casual settings. This time around, we will shift away from deck building. I know that you guys enjoy critiquing my decks, but I felt that there was something far more pressing that had to be addressed. Namely: your sideboards.

Ever since I first came to this website back in 2005, I have felt the need to try and help the younger players out and get them up to speed. My days of playing are over, but that does not mean that my 11+ years of experience should disappear from the Magic community.

During my numerous years of competitive play, I have noticed a similarity in struggling players, young players, and nonsense players alike. You guys have no clue as to what you are doing with your sideboards.

This is not to sound harsh, but serve as a wakeup call for all of you who fall into those categories. If you want to be able to beat someone, you need to beat them two out of three games, not just one. When you get into major tournaments, you may even find yourself going best of five games, and in both three and five game sets, how important do you think your sideboard will be?

Take into account that in a typical tournament – Friday Night Magic, for example – you will play in four to five rounds of Swiss. If you play five rounds this Friday night, you will minimally play ten games. Five of those games will be played with only the main deck. Five of those games will be played with access to the sideboard cards. This, as we all know, means that half of the games you play will depend on cards not found in your main deck. Now, consider that you lose game one in each round, and in order to go 5-0, you must play all three games, and win games two and three. This means that you are playing 15 games that night, and 2/3 (or ten) of those games are being played with the sideboard available.

Magic: The Gathering® DCI Floor Rules
Effective February 20, 2007

122. Sideboard Use
If a player wishes to use a sideboard, it must contain exactly fifteen cards.

Before each game begins, players must present their sideboards and allow their opponents to count the number of cards in their sideboards (face down), if requested. Players may not look at their sideboards during a game (Exception: if a player is resolving a spell or effect that refers to “choosing a card from outside the game,” the player may look at his or her sideboard – see section 103). The sideboard must be clearly identified and separated from all other cards in the play area. The sideboard may not be kept where it could be confused or switched with other cards.

The deck and sideboard must each be returned to their original compositions before the first game of each match. Cards transferred from a player’s deck to his or her sideboard, and vice versa, must be returned before the player begins a new match. If a penalty causes a player to forfeit the first game in a match before that game began, neither player may use cards from his or her sideboard for the second game.

Before the beginning of the second or subsequent game in a match, players may change the composition of their decks by exchanging cards from their decks for cards in their sideboards. Any card exchange between decks and sideboards must be made on a one-for-one basis to ensure that the sideboards remain at exactly fifteen cards. There are no restrictions on the number of cards a player may exchange this way. Players are not required to reveal how many cards he or she is sideboarding.

Clear as mud, right? The above rule is the ‘Official’ definition of a sideboard. However, as we all know, those don’t really tell us much about anything when it comes to practical application.

A sideboard is your deck’s answers to your opponent’s threats. It is that easy… almost.

When designing your deck, typically you do not sit and think about what your opponents are going to be doing. You simply design your deck to function in its most efficient and productive way. Whether that means putting out a handful of Goblins at lightning fast pace, getting your supply of Blue mana into play and setting up your control, or establishing your combo pieces, your deck’s initial design is intended to get your objective across.

Once game one ends, you now have a chance to stack your deck against your opponent and finish the deed after a win, or perhaps bring in the tide-breaking cards that will stop his momentum and get you back into the game following a loss.

When I casually scan your forum decks and I see two Llanowar Elves in your main deck, and then find the other two hibernating in the sideboard, I just about lose my mind.

Rule of Thumb: If you are not building a Tournament Deck, then you do not need a sideboard.

Obviously, if you are playing Casually, and want to play Wishes, you need a pile of cards to Wish from. In a tournament, you use your sideboard. However, since it is a Casual game, you just pull out your Trade Binder and pluck a meaty card from it. A Casual deck that you play with your friends does not get a sideboard.

Since we have established this, then it simply makes no sense to have copies three and four of a card in your sideboard. There are always exceptions to the rule, and I will get to a few in due time, but under normal circumstances, if the card was not good enough to make it into the main deck, it is not qualified to find a place in your sideboard either.

So there you are, sitting in your chair confidently scooping up your cards following your round one - game one beat down of your opponent. You look up and see him flipping through a few cards, and you realize that he is preparing to sideboard against you.

Ah, and that brings us to the next phase of what a sideboard is. A sideboard is the answer to your opponent’s answers.

In your first game, you got a good jump out of the gate and slammed a pair of Savannah Lions and Soltari Priests into the fray. A few Lightning Helix’s and Char’s later, you found yourself up one game to zero. He didn’t even do a single point of damage to you during the game, so you should be pretty confident that game two will go the same way, correct? If that is then case, you should start looking around to scout the other decks now, right?

What could happen to you is that your opponent is bringing in three copies of Sulfur Elemental (which will eliminate almost all of your creatures, and you can’t stop it), Circle of Protection: Red (which would eliminate your direct damage threats), and a couple copies of Condemn to help slow down your initial assault. Had you done what you initially had thought to do – ignore your opponent and not sideboard – then you would have been scooping up your cards, wondering what had just happened to you.

However, since you had the presence of mind to be proactive, and paid attention to his deck during the game, you realize now that he not only has access to Red and White mana, which allows him to side those cards in, but he also has Blue mana available to protect the cards he is about to bring in.

Sounds like a pretty bleak situation for a guy who just won game one of the round.

So what can you do to protect yourself, and get that last game needed to win the match?

If you had thought about the metagame before showing up, you’d have seen how pretty much everyone is playing Sulfur Elemental. This would tell you that your White creatures would need to have at least two toughness. This may have altered your deck build slightly, but only by altering your creature choices, not the quantity and play of the deck. You also have the common sense to know that pretty much anyone who can produce White mana has Circle of Protection: Red in their sideboard for bigger threats than you, namely Dragonstorm decks. Knowing this, you should definitely have Disenchant in your side to be able to break the enchantment. There really isn’t much you can do about the Condemn threat, except persevere through it.

You may be feeling a bit disheartened by now, as I just gave you the bad news: Pretty much everyone has plenty of ammunition against you. However, at this point, I am going to give you the good news: You have just as much ammo as they have.

The true utilization and metagaming aspect of the sideboard comes into play here. You not only need to strengthen and defend your deck’s weak points with your sideboard, but you also need to exploit the weaknesses of your opponent’s decks as well.

Stepping aside from the example I have given, we will now look at how to take your first steps into the conception of your sideboard.

More likely than not, you know that you will be running into a control deck or two. Most likely, they are including Blue with a splash of White and/or Black. Today, you can also expect a Blue and Red Control version, and perhaps even Blue – Green Aggro control. To know this is to know that their mana base is typically going to be around 80% non-basic lands. Why not play Blood Moon? Since most of their non-basics are also Islands, how about Boiling Seas? The other half are Plains, so how about Flashfires? When we still had Obliterate, control decks mightily feared the ultimate reset button. We don’t have that anymore, but we do have an Akroma that is not counterable, and cannot be Condemned or Faith’s Fettered. Future Sight did give us an uncounterable Earthquake in Molten Disaster, albeit an expensive one, but it does kill Teferi.

Speaking of Teferi, you need to think about how you are going to deal with him. Reality check: You are going to see him at least once or twice in your tournament. How can you get him off of the board? Sudden Death is the best way, as they cannot counter it or even bounce Teferi in response. They can use Willbender to redirect it, however.

Control really does not like having its mana base disrupted, so maybe a collection of Ghost Quarters in the side can help break up the Urza Tron boost and give you a chance.

Also, cards that have Split Second and the term, ‘Cannot be countered’ (or Shroud) are great fits here. Scragnoth and his cousin Quagnoth are perfect examples; as they cannot be stopped coming into play, are difficult or impossible to target, and have relatively high toughness, which makes them hard to get off the board. Obviously, I would be a bad tutor if I didn’t remind you that Extirpate is probably your best option against Control, as once they counter a card, you remove all of those counters. Or if you can get a Teferi in the yard, you can remove the rest. Some great targets include: Teferi, Mystical Teachings, Wrath of God/Damnation, and Compulsive Research.

The last thing about typical Control decks is that discard eats them alive. Land Destruction is good, but can be outraced. Discard is the inevitable doom of Control. If you can continue to force a discard, the Control deck will eventually run out of cards in hand, which gives you free reign to cast at will, and that is what Control doesn't ever want to happen. Add to that the fact that cards knocked to the grave are now vulnerable to Extirpate, and you can see the end result clearing up before your very eyes. As a Control player, I hate to see a Swamp played on turn one, because I know what I am going to have to deal with in games two and three.

Next, and maybe more importantly than standard control decks, you need to have some sort of answer to Dragonstorm type decks. Initially, I was going to just talk about Dragonstorm, but I realized that there is another deck that falls into this category, and that is Snow White. These decks really don’t care what you are planning to do. They play their game and look for pieces to lock you down and finish you with. Commonly categorized as combo decks, today, these decks hold more control pieces, and can be deceiving. To go into a tournament tomorrow and blindly think that you will not face one of these decks is to invite disaster.

Dragonstorm can, with a great hand, kill you on turn two (which doesn’t give us much of a chance), but normally will deliver its killing blow by around turn four or five. You have plenty of time to get your board established before this happens. Some of the best answers for this deck are Discard, Circle of Protection: Red, Trickbind, Shadow of Doubt, Voidslime, and Honorable Passage. You may see here that Discard makes its return. Dragonstorm needs to be able to use all of its cards in a very efficient way in order to go off early. If you can knock three or four cards into the grave before turn four, you have most likely disrupted them enough to get across enough damage for a win. However, if all you do is force a discard and do not give them 20 damage, they can always draw back into the lost pieces and pull out a win. This deck did win last years World Championship, after all. Cards like Voidslime and Trickbind can counter the Storm trigger and only allow the player to search for one Dragon, which again buys you time (countering the spell itself would not stop the Storm copies). Shadow of Doubt causes the player to get nothing, as they cannot search their library. Aven Mindcensor is a White solution similar to Shadow of Doubt, but if I based it on my luck, the needed Dragons would be cards one through four of his deck.

Snow White is grouped with Dragonstorm because of its nasty nature of comboing up enough life points to not really care about your board position. They play a resource battle, one in which you typically are not able to participate in. By Forecasting a Martyr of Sands from their graveyard in to play with Proclamation of Rebirth, they continually gain 18 to 21 life every turn. Even a mighty Dragonstrom is not going to touch this life gain. They will simply sit there gaining life, which forces you to overextend yourself. Once this happens, they will reset the board with Wrath of God and wipe you out with a continual stream of Martyrs, or perhaps be nice and send in Akroma to finish the job quickly.

The problem comes when you realize that there is not much you can do about the deck. You can kill it fast if they don’t draw into six mana, Martyr of Sands, and Proclamation of Rebirth, or somehow get rid of one of the card pieces. To do this, you must be able to get the Proclamation out of their hand. The best method is to again attack with Discard. Once you knock the card to the grave, jump on it with both feet and Extirpate it out of play. Also, keeping them discarding is a great idea, as even if you can’t get the Proclamation out, limiting them to only gaining three or six life is much better than watching them rocketing past 50 life.

Another option is to use Land Destruction to keep them under six mana. Most of the Snow White variants use the Urza Tron to fuel the Proclamation, so concentrating on Urza’s Tower and White mana lands would be a good idea.

Yet another option you have is to remove the Martyr from the game. The most efficient way is Extirpate again (notice a pattern here?) or you could just remove them one by one as they leave play, but this is not as efficient.

Finally, dealing with the actual gain of life is available in a few ways. Rain of Gore can be devastating to this deck once in play. You can expect this player to bring in a collection of Disenchants if you play Red and Black, though. The other thing that can be done is to play Kavu Predator. This will definitely force them into using their board clearing spells early.

The next deck type you need to consider is the Aggro deck. Aggro decks want to punch you in the face four times and get 20 damage on you before you can put up a defense. Commonly, you will see Red direct damage spells teaming up with Green or White creatures to deal this damage. Needless to say, mass creature removal spells such as Wrath of God and Damnation shine here, but a lot of creatures that are used have Haste, and thus render a board sweep ineffective. These decks only expect to get one attack out of a creature, so a Haste creature is very effective.

Instant removal helps tremendously here, and Black really shines. Sudden Death, Last Gasp, Mortify, Putrefy, etc. are your common solutions. Also, playing Blue has its benefits, as cards like Delay and Remand will buy you that extra turn you need to get to your board sweep cards.

Don’t forget that the Red portion of the deck is the most threatening part of it. Circle of Protection (COP): Red shines brightly, but remember that those decks will be bringing in Naturalize and Disenchant, so make certain that you have three or four copies of COP: Red.

Lastly, life gain is beneficial in that not only are you buying a turn, but also you are canceling out the damage already done. So cards like Loxodon Hierarch and Faith’s Fetters are great selections.

Finally, we take a look at Disruption decks. Discard and Land Destruction are devastating to decks that are not prepared for them. Considering that not only do they hurt you in the present with the loss of card(s), but also that it takes a few more turns to recover from that damage. If you lose a land to a Stone Rain, you may not draw another to replace it for two or three turns. In that amount of time, they have destroyed one or two more lands! If you were hit by a Persecute and lose your hand, how many turns do you need to escape the Rack? At least three turns of not casting spells.

So what can we do about these decks? Land Destruction can be thwarted for a while by Sacred Ground and COP: Red (as most of its damage will be Red). You can also play Flagstones of Trokair, which replaces itself with a Plains when destroyed. Or you could utilize Green’s ability to search out lands and put them directly into play. Or you could simply have a couple copies of lands in your sideboard to boost the number of lands you have in your deck, thus being able to draw them more often. Remember that a typical Land Destruction deck will only be playing around 12 to 16 land-killing spells, so boosting your land count by two post-sideboard will effectively eliminate two of those spells. The drawback of this approach is that they will have a mana advantage on you. Or, you could simply play Remand and Delay and postpone the spells until you get your mana base established and minimize the damage of Land Destruction. What I mean is to let him kill a few lands, but protect them once you get down to around three or four. This may sound silly, but it does save your counters for their real threats – cards like Wildfire, Akroma, and Magnivore.

Discard decks can be tricky to play against, because you never know what form they will come in. Black is not the only color of Discard choice these days. Blue gained three decent discard spells, and Red tags up with Black in Fall (from Rise//Fall). The idea behind Discard is not to keep your opponent at zero cards, but force them into casting spells early in an attempt to save some spells, and perhaps even knock those crucial spells aside before they can be effective. You will know that your opponent’s discard deck is dominating you when you draw a card and, no matter what it is, you immediately cast it. At that point, he has you on the ropes and either the Rack or his beat stick is pulverizing you.

You can stop a lot of bleeding by bringing in Quagnoth from your side. There is no real way for him to get that card out of your hand except by a Lobotomy type effect. Even if you are not playing Green, you can bring him in to sit in your hand and just keep revealing him when you are forced to discard, and that saves the extra spells in your hand. Red offers a few cards here. First, Ignorant Bliss hides your hand for the turn, and nets you a card. Gorilla Tactics allows you to pick off a creature should your opponent make you discard it, and the last is Arrogant – errr, Reckless Wurm. Madness is not too friendly to discard, as in the end you are benefited by the forced discard.

Now you have a direction. Now you know what some good sample sideboard cards are. I don’t want to head over to the forums and see your third and fourth copies of Birds of Paradise in your side, but there are times where that could be called for.

Say you are playing Black, and you are seeing that in every single game, you are siding in Extirpate. You could decide to bump two copies in to your main deck to assist in stealing game one. Ideally, if you win game one due to the Extirpation of a key card, by bringing in more bullets of the same thing you should be set in the match finale.

As always, there are exceptions to every rule, and there is nothing I am more sure of in life right now than the fact that you are eagerly waiting to click the link below and point out some of those exceptions, so with that thought, I will end my article so you can do just that.

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